Black hole sun, won't you come--oh, it might be here already. From 1984,
ROM #60, "The Eyes of a Child!" Written by Bill Mantlo, pencils by Steve Ditko, inks by Tom Palmer.
Rick Jones is having a nightmare, that he thinks is about Wraithworld, but he gets the "it was earth all along" twist when he sees the fallen Statue of Liberty. But, then we get Rom flying through unseasonably cold weather: it's one of comics' best "red skies" crossovers, the opening of the Casket of Ancient Winters! The editorial caption box credits it to
Thor #349, but I think it was actually #348. Massive snowfall across the planet, and across multiple titles, like the Avengers books, and perhaps most famously,
Amazing Spider-Man #258. While Rom has a talk with Brandy Clark, who was currently the spaceknight Starshine and getting progressively angrier and more violent; we check in on a train stopped by the snows, just in time to see everyone on board murdered by the Dire Wraiths. The Wraith Sisterhood, the magic-using ones, seem somewhat divided: sure, they can kill a bunch of people, but so what? What was their goal? Conveniently, one explains it: to recreate Wraithworld on earth!
The army, with Rick, Rom, and Brandy in tow; discover the train and the slaughter two days later. Rom is even at a loss to explain the Wraiths' cruelty, while Rick is trying to hold it together, since the cancer he picked up trying to turn himself into a Hulk was progressing. Rick does find a survivor: a little girl, who was beyond traumatized. But, Starshine points out, she has the tell-tale wound on her head of a Wraith tongue-sucker, and must die! Rick has to throw himself in front of a blast; and Rom's analyzer reveals the child to be human. The girl, Cindy--I don't think we get her name this issue!--tells how the Wraiths killed her parents, but her mom had survived long enough to slice the Wraith's tongue. Instead of getting her brain sucked out, now she knew everything that Wraith had known...including their Wraithworld plans! She would be a recurring character for a good chunk of the rest of the run.
1 comment:
Yeah I have no doubt Cindy would not just be probably permanently traumatized by the whole thing, but also be EXTREMELY xenophobic towards all aliens. I happened to look into her bio, and apparently she was not only fixed/cured of her Wraith connection leftover from her attack, but also had her parents brought back to life thanks to the Beyonder. I wonder what she had to agree to in order for that to happen.
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