MARCH 2025: I TAKE THINGS TOO LITERALLY

And we're back! So far, so good with this new format. And this month I even have something of interest (at least to me) to talk about!

Not too long ago on the Marvel Masterworks Message Board, in a discussion about X-Men Omnibuses, the dreaded Chuck Austen was name-dropped. I was there when Austin's run on UNCANNY X-MEN was published. I read it. I actually thought it started off okay, but it quickly went off the rails and ended as one of the most rightly reviled stretches in the title's history. However -- even when it was briefly good, it wasn't what I was expecting.

See, in advance of his run, Austen did an interview with WIZARD magazine where he said that to prepare, he had gone back and re-read the 1970s Chris Claremont/Dave Cockrum issues. I'm assuming he was a kid when that material was published, because he seemed to consider it the X-Men's gold standard, even more than the subsequent Claremont/John Byrne run. So naturally when he said this, I figured, "Great! He'll probably bring back Banshee and redeem him from Joe Casey's character assassination. Maybe they'll even visit his castle! Maybe they'll fight Count Nefaria or something. I bet we'll get some good swashbuckling Nightcrawler action. Ooh, maybe he'll even bring back Eric the Red!!

None of that happened. In fact, Austen's run bore zero resemblance to the Claremont/Cockrum run I loved. Aside from Nightcrawler and Wolverine, it was a completely different cast. The stories did not in any way, shape, or form, call back to that classic run. It didn't "feel" like the run in terms of style, either.

KELLY GREEN: THE COMIC-CON HEIST

By Leonard Starr & Stan Drake

Kelly Green's final adventures, while still dealing with some heavy material, turns out to be the most light-hearted, or perhaps least depressing, installment in her saga -- it even comes with a happy ending for our heroine (though we'll get to that in due time)!

The adventure begins as San Diego Police detective Gunther moonlights at the home of TV talk show host Dave Farrel in the capacity of a security guard. Gunther kills a robber in cold blood, then our tale moves into the story proper when Kelly is recruited to act as go-between for an art gallery looking to recover a million dollars worth of original comic strips. Kelly travels to San Diego with the museum's Gretchen, who gives our heroine a crash course in the history and value of sequential art.

At this point you may get the idea that this story is a big ol' love letter from Leonard Starr and Stan Drake to their profession, and you'd be a hundred percent right. Much of the action, as the title suggests, occurs at or adjacent to the San Diego Comic-Con. There's a scene where Gretchen shows Kelly around the Con, pointing out Drake's detailed likenesses of Will Eisner, Milton Caniff, Burne Hogarth, and Jack Kirby as they stand around chatting. Gretchen also introduces Kelly to Comic-Con co-founder Shel Dorf, and a brief conversation ensues.

KELLY GREEN: THE BLOOD TAPES

By Leonard Starr & Stan Drake

For a change, Kelly Green's life doesn't feel like a never-ending stream of agony and despair! It's not all roses, of course -- it never is. But at the least, her latest adventure, THE BLOOD TAPES, doesn't see her beaten, tortured, or plagued by the loss of a friend or loved one.

Our story begins as rock star Alec Blood lays down a track for his new album, then drives home and gets shot as he exits his car. Soon after, it's revealed that the tapes for what is now Alec's final album have been stolen and are being ransomed back to his record label for $500,000. But the company doesn't have cash to spare, so they make a deal with mob boss Tom Ragan to supply the funds. Naturally, Kelly is retained as the go-between, having apparently built a pretty good reputation since entering the business.

So Kelly flies to California for a meeting with the record execs, then moves on to Las Vegas to pick up the cash from Ragan. But she finds herself unexpectedly attracted to the mobster, who reminds her, in his own way, of her late husband. It's a similarity that even her friends, Spats and Meathooks, pick up on when they come to Vegas to try and talk Kelly out of doing business with Ragan. Once the well-meaning men realize there's a spark between Kelly and Ragan, they back off and return to New York, leaving Kelly on her own for the rest of her adventure.

As with the previous three stories, there's a bit of a mystery involved in this one -- namely, who killed Alec and stole the tapes? The answer turns out to be that it was two different parties, operating distinctly from one another, but this scarcely feels like any sort of revelation since no one in the story spends any time wondering about the questions. The mystery is more of an afterthought as the story concentrates mostly on Kelly's interactions with Tom Ragan.

KELLY GREEN: THE MILLION DOLLAR HIT

Life still sucks royally for poor Kelly Green. This time around, she's called upon to deliver a payoff from an oil company to a former executive who has embezzled five million dollars from them with the promise to reveal to the world how he did it, thus allowing further such thefts in the future. The premise alone is... weird. The embezzler, Gus Arakian, is an old friend of Kelly's pal Spats, and Spats explains that, yeah -- the guy got away with $5 million, but it was earned more or less legitimately, and will thus not be as respected in the underworld compared with money stolen in a more direct manner. Thus our enterprising villain attempts to ransom an additional million, which is somehow more criminally respectable.

Now I don't know how these things work. I'm not a criminal. But it seems to me that stealing is stealing. You still have millions of dollars that don't belong to you, after all! But I guess the idea that this guy put in years as a loyal employee just to embezzle a few million bucks makes him look like a chump to his fellow crooks -- though the fact that he only wants one additional million after all that makes him look like a chump to me (and to Kelly as well)!

But regardless, that's our premise. And unlike the last story, which was set entirely in New York state, this one sees Kelly traveling once more as in her debut appearance. This time she heads to Oklahoma to meet with the Tyree family, Arakian's former employers. Instructions from Arakian tell her to go from there to Alaska, but she makes a stopover with her friend Jimmy DeLocke in Seattle, where she trades the ransom -- a million dollars in bearer bonds -- to a shady businessman for several valuable coins worth the same amount. Jimmy provides her with forged bonds to act as a decoy ransom, while Kelly wears the coins on her wrist as a bracelet.

KELLY GREEN: ONE, TWO, THREE... DIE!

By Leonard Starr & Stan Drake

Well, Kelly Green sure lives a sucky life. She became a widow in her first story. Now, in the second outing from Leonard Starr and Stan Drake, things get worse.

It all starts when a socialite is murdered at her father's mansion upstate. The girl's sister happens to be Kelly's landlady, a beautiful artist named Samantha Brockhurst. Kelly and Samantha bond over the tragedy, and Kelly soon gets drawn into a trail of murder as, one by one, members of Samantha's family are picked off by a mystery man with a grudge. Samantha's father believes to be a disgruntled former employee, but while the characters in the story have little reason to believe otherwise, the clues presented to the reader leave little doubt that this is meant to be a red herring. Meanwhile, Kelly is warned multiple times to keep away from Samantha and the Brokhursts, but she is undeterred. Eventually the killer is revealed and Kelly knocks him out until the police arrive to take him away.

So like I said, it's a sucky life for Kelly Green. This time around, in a sort of "cold open" to the story, she acts as go-between to deliver ransom money for a kidnapped dog, but winds up recovering an imposter pooch instead, who she names Lady. Then, about halfway through the story, as one of the warnings to keep away from Samantha, the dog is killed and left at Kelly's door. Later, Samantha herself, who Kelly has befriended and who seems to be the one member of the Brockhurst family declared "off-limits" to the killer by the narrative, is murdered in her apartment. Kelly wins in the end, but not until after authors Leonard Starr and Stan Drake have heaped these further tragedies upon her.

KELLY GREEN: THE GO-BETWEEN

By Leonard Starr & Stan Drake

NYPD officer Dan Green is killed in a raid. Not long after, a beautiful and wealthy young woman is murdered in the seedy part of town. Soon, Green's widow, Kelly, becomes involved in a blackmail scheme linking both deaths.

As Kelly mopes about, her late husband's partner, Angelo, struggles to cheer her up, while three ex-cons who Dan had sent up the river in the past vow to protect her. When the cons bring her an offer to become a "go-between" -- an impartial third party exchanging money for incriminating evidence in a blackmail case -- Kelly agrees, stating that she now hates the cops and hates criminals, so she might as well live between both their worlds.

The ensuing story sees Kelly work briefly as a go-go dancer to gather some information about her client, travel to Florida to make the exchange (and discover another dead body), then return to New York for a finale which reveals who got her husband killed and how he's related to the blackmail scheme.

As usual, I'm trying to be a little vague in my description of the story -- this material is thirty years old, but was only relatively recently re-released in a new collection -- and it is a mystery, after all. I'm much less cavalier about revealing random plot points than I am about spoiling mystery stories, especially if they're relatively obscure like this one.

KELLY GREEN

...Who...?

Well, if you'll indulge me, it all started with Leonard Starr.

Again -- who?!

Folks -- we're about to do some deep digging, which hopefully someone out there will find at least a teensy bit interesting and/or informational.

When I was a kid, one of the many properties hurled at us children of the eighties was THUNDERCATS. I watched the cartoon, I owned some of the toys. Eventually it went off the air and I more or less forgot about it. Then, a decade or so later in 1997 -- when I was in high school -- Cartoon Network began to air the original show as part of their weekday afternoon Toonami programming block. I started watching again, and this time I was able to see every single episode, as opposed to my childhood viewings of only some here and there.

I also paid attention to the credits during those Toonami airings, and saw that nearly all the major episodes, continuity-wise, were written by a fellow named Leonard Starr, who also appeared on the end credits of every episode as the Head Writer. At the time I didn't really think much of it other than that he was a pretty creative guy, and that was that.