I won't buy it every time, but if it's a cheap copy? Yeah, buying it again! From 1984,
Crystar #6, "Demon" Written by Jo Duffy, pencils by Ricardo Villamonte, inks by Dave Simons. The
best cover by Michael Golden!
Weirdly, while I know I had the
first and
third issues for sure, I don't think I got a copy of this one until much later, although I suspect I might've read it in-store. Nightcrawler guest-stars this issue, gets more panel time than in like a year of
Uncanny X-Men, and is of course just the coolest. After a session in the Danger Room (where we hear the Professor, but don't see him or any of the other X-Men) Kurt gets dressed up for a date with his girlfriend Amanda. Although it hadn't come up in a while and she was semi-retired, she was a pretty decent sorceress, and had been trying to follow up on a weird magical feeling she had experienced lately: too late, she warns Kurt, maybe don't teleport near the space rift...
Kurt gets zapped to Crystalium...that is a terrible name for a planet. Oh, like 'earth' is that great. He hides out as two local farmers walk their dragon, but is then spotted by the youngest crystal warrior, Stalax, who thinks he must be a Chaos demon. While Crystar and his men search for the 'demon,' Kurt is taken in by Moltar and his lava men, who assume he's on their side. Lava babe Lavour gives Kurt the tour, and confides that Moltar and his wizard Zardeth are probably sweating the idea that he's there to replace them. (
EDIT: Lavour had dated first one brother, then the other; she was conniving, greedy, and calculating. So, basically the book's Veronica.)
Stalax finds Kurt's clothes, since he changed into his usual costume after arriving; and Crystar recognizes them as earth garments: maybe it's not a Chaos demon after all. But, the crystal girl wizard Ika gets captured by the lava men, who plan to kill her, and Kurt doesn't hold with that: he saves Ika, Crystar and company show up, and a bit of a scuffle ensues. Kurt teleports around to draw fire, and maybe showboat a bit, and the heroes get away safely. Ika is grateful at being saved, and offers to send Kurt back to earth...maybe later. Hours after disappearing, Kurt reappears at Amanda's, where she's a little miffed to recognize he had some gems from Ika! If Kurt talks his way out of that one,
that's his real mutant power!
Checking out the
racks that month,
G.I. Joe #21 was also on sale; but I suspect my favorite was the first issue of the second
Hercules mini-series. Chris Claremont would have still had a firm grip on the X-Men:
X-Men/Micronauts #3 and
New Mutants #13 would have been the only ancillary X-titles that month; but I wish Jo Duffy had gotten to do more with Nightcrawler.
1 comment:
If this issue doesn't cement Kurt as an outright ladies man and poonhound( but in a good way if that makes sense) I don't know what else will? Can't say I'd have blamed Kurt if he did take the long way home, if you know what I mean ;)
Really nice Ink job by Dan Simons here. The art style here, either due to his inks or due to the pencils reminds me a lot of Ed Piskor's style of drawing. Btw, apparently Simons died in '09 of cancer. I went to his wiki and was amazed at all the stuff he worked on for both Marvel & DC, specially once he left the industry & got into the world of animation, drawing storyboards. He worked on one of my favorite modern animated shows, Courage the Cowardly Dog & even drew the DC monthly comic adaptation, which I didn't know they made.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Simons
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