"GODS AND SUPER GODS"
Writer/Editor: Marv Wolfman | Artist: Steve Gan
Letterer: San Jose | Colorist: Michele Wolfman
The Plot: Jim Scully is dragged by his caveman captor to a primitive camp, where he's thrown into a cave with the other plane survivors: Ann, Doctor Corey, and a young man named Jeff. Revealing his nickname of Skull, Scully leads the survivors in an escape from the cavemen. But when a herd of rampaging dinosaurs storms through the camp, Skull commandeers one and leads the beasts away. This earns him the respect of the cavemen, who lead the survivors into another cave. There, then find the skeletal remains of an alien in a futuristic chamber.
As Doctor Corey, Ann, and Jeff study alien writing on the wall, Skull decides to pilfer the alien corpse of its skull-buckled belt. He takes and dons the garment, but the alien skeleton crumbles to dust, causing the cavemen to attack. Skull holds them at bay and then joins the other survivors in fleeing to the jungle. They attempt to cross a river to escape the cavemen, but are attacked in the water by a Brontosaurus. Skull begins to glow and somehow subdues the dinosaur. The survivors all make it ashore, where Jeff points out that the glow is coming from Skull's stolen belt.
Continuity Notes: For some reason, the cover logo from issue 1 has already been replaced. The new logo will carry through the remainder of the series, though the issue 1 logo does appear on the title page of this issue (but then never shows up again). I don't know why it was changed, but I liked the first logo a lot better. Its primitive look gave more insight into what the series was about.
Page 1 provides a brief textual recap of all the events in the prior issue, with a few illustrations.
Jeff reveals that he was on the military transport in issue 1 because he ran away from his overbearing senator father, who sent the army to find him and bring him home. We also learn that Ann is Doctor Corey's assistant. Also, I don't think I mentioned it last week, but Corey hates Skull and the feeling appears to be mutual.
Skull's nickname is stated to be something he originally hated, but later adopted for his time in the armed forces.
My Thoughts: Okay, so I'll give this to Marv Wolfman: he has considerably pulled back on presenting Skull as an unlikeable jerk. But in part, that seems to be because Doctor Corey is
also an ulikeable jerk. It's possible Skull just looks beter next to the unbearable Corey, but I really do think Wolfman has mellowed him a bit. He's still belligerant, but only to those who deserve it: Corey and his cavemen captors.
That said, while Skull's personality may have improved, Wolfman has given him a new, uhh, quirk: he's a grave-robber. It's bizarre. He walks into this room, sees that the alien corpse is wearing a neat skull-faced belt buckle, and decides to take and wear it. I think I said this once or twice when I looked at Wolfman's Superman comics a few years back, but sometimes he just comes across a little lazy in finding ways for things to happen. This is such an occasion. I'm sure there was a way to get Skull into the belt that would not have involved him looking like a creepy dope, but this is not it.
Lastly, I still have issues with Wolfman's scripting, as well. He's thankfully pulled back from the over-the-top conversational style he used in issue 1 (though the omniscient narrator does call Skull "baby" once in this issue), but his pages are absolutely covered in copy. Captions, dialogue balloons, all of it. If there's a way to convey what he wants to say with the absolute most words possible, Wolfman will do it here. This is what I was expecting from Roy Thomas when I started looking at INVADERS, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that, while Thomas did seem to overdo it somewhat, he had reined in his overwriting considerably from what I knew of his Silver Age stuff. But Wolfman here seems to be trying to emulate Silver Age Thomas, and the result is occasionally painful to endure.
ReplyDeleteI preferred the claw marks / distress lines in the first issue’s logo as well.
You’ve mentioned that Invaders felt more Silver Age than Bronze Age to you and, maybe because I was reading it “live” in the ’70s, that struck me as odd. The styles of cover art, trade dress, etc. was the same as on Avengers, Captain America, Amazing Spider-Man, *Spectacular* Spider-Man, The Human Fly — you know, the stalwart classics. I’m pretty sure part of the disconnect is that when I hear “Silver Age” I tend to think DC Silver Age (and on the earlier side to boot). Jumping back into Wolfman’s narration to begin this issue, though, I realize that to an extent it’s of a piece with Deadly Hands of Kung Fu, which I totally wasn’t reading back when it came out; I pretty much only wanted superheroes in my single-digit years, not streetwise martial artists or barbarians or soldiers of fortune, even with a sci-fi or fantasy bent. And the more experimental writing, for the most part the more would-be ”adult” writing, came on those features that were at best superhero-adjacent. I won’t argue there was no difference between Thomas’s scripting on Invaders and Claremont’s on X-Men, and I’ve written before — in comments here, even, I believe — that Marvel (superhero) comics felt darker and more intense to me overall than DC (superhero) comics of the era. However, while drugs and race and sex were not topics wholly untouched in Spider-Man and Captain America, I hope you dig where I’m coming from when I say the raps Wolfman and others laid on us in certain newer features like Skull and Sons of the Tiger are distinct from, say, Wolfman’s Nova.
Now, I banged out the above before reading this post, and your final paragraph is rather at odds with my premise, so I’m curious whether any of what I said resonates. Wolfman’s verbosity may align with Thomas’s in the Silver Age, but the content surely doesn’t.
I think I understand what you're saying regarding the scripting style, Blam. I'll try to elaborate on what I mean when I talk about something like INVADERS or SKULL feeling more "Silver Age" to me.
DeleteWhen I say that, I'm really specifically thinking of early Silver Age (or if you prefer, Marvel Age) Stan Lee, as that's my main exposure to the Silver Age. Early FANTASTIC FOUR, AVENGERS, SPIDER-MAN, etc. -- it's been years since I read some of that stuff, but my recollection is that Stan wrote... a lot. Tons of words on every page! And I think Thomas continued that trend; at least when I read some of his AVENGERS many years ago, I found it practically impenetrable due to the walls of words everywhere.
(The funny thing is, by the time Thomas was doing it that way, I feel like Stan had pulled back on it. Read his Spider-Man stuff with John Romita, and it's nowhere near as wordy as it was when he worked with Ditko.)
I think a lot of the writers of the 70s were heavily influenced by that Lee/Thomas style, because guys like Wolfman, Englehart, and Wein seemed to subscribe to a similar philosophy: "Why use five words when twenty will do the same job?" Those guys feel like "Silver Age throwbacks" to me in that way. Whereas someone like Jim Starlin or Gerry Conway or even Chris Claremont doesn't. Claremont used a lot of words, but strangely, at least early on, he actually seemed to use fewer! His early X-MEN with Cockrum and his MARVEL TEAM-UP with Byrne read breezier to me than a lot of his later X-Men material. (Though that could also be in large part due to his writing style. Though he has many tics that irritate me, I generally find Claremont's prose a lot more palatable than others who came up in the 70s.)
I hope that all makes sense to you... I'm still trying to figure out if it does to me!
DeleteI guess in a way you’re talking more about from/style and I’m talking more about content/substance. There’s also undoubtedly an elision from the Silver Age to Bronze Age that didn’t occur, in the superhero genre especially, from Golden to Silver. Neal Adams’ early work, I think, straddles both and makes a clear line of demarcation hard to draw. (I nearly used the term “Marvel Age” myself but depending on context it can mean either the period from Fantastic Four #1 through the Marvel Universe’s coalescence over the several years following to basically everything from then to now, although the latter sense has probably been employed most by the publisher.)
Anyway, I do appreciate the response, and I hope you don’t mind my saying that your parting paragraph reads delightfully like one from Roy Thomas himself.
Ugh... “more about form/style,” obviously…
DeleteHa! That does sound a little Rascally, doesn't it?
DeleteBut yes, I think you're right -- when I'm saying "Silver Age" in this context, I'm talking more about the writing style than the content. SKULL definitely has a Bronze Age flavor in terms of content.
I really have no idea when the Silver Age gives way to the Bronze. I know I've seen it debated in various places as well... some say it was the night Gwen Stacy died, but I've also seen it placed as early as Harry's drug trip in the late 90s of AMAZING SPIDER-MAN.
And that's just the Spidey stuff. For Batman, I've seen it said to be circa "The Secret of the Waiting Graves", but that seems kind of arbitrary. I guess it was the first O'Neil/Adams collaboration, but both had been working on Batman separately prior to that. If you're going to say it was there, why not just go with "One Bullet Too Many" since that story actually changed Batman to his Bronze Age status quo by sending Dick off to college and moving Bruce to the Wayne Foundation penthouse?
Anyway, not that you asked -- you were just making a comment. But I think it was a gradual evolutionary process from book to book and perhaps even from publisher to publisher.
ReplyDelete// Skull decides to pilfer the alien corpse of its skull-buckled belt. //
I’m pretty sure you pilfer the item being stolen rather than the person or place you’re stealing it from. He could relieve the corpse of the belt. You’re welcome to delete this page of my comment if the correction is too presumptuous. 8^)
Oops, yes -- you are correct! I didn't phrase that as I intended. I likely meant to say "relieve the alien corpse of its skull-buckled belt," or something similar!
Delete