MARVEL FANFARE #13

”THE WIDOW… ALONE”
Script: Ralph Macchio | Pencils: George Pérez | Inks: John Beatty & Brett Breeding
Letters: Diana Albers | Colors: Ben Sean | Editing: Allen Milgrom
Editor-in-Chief: Jim Shooter

The Plot: An unconscious Black Widow is taken to a mysterious island complex, where Snap Dragon brings her before her master, Damon Dran. Dran explains that he has replaced the Widow with a lookalike who Jimmy Woo is bringing back to the S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier. The false Widow will lead the helicarrier to Dran’s island and then assassinate Nick Fury on the bridge, escaping just before Dran’s cannons blow the ship out of the sky.

Widow is thrown into a dungeon but manages to escape. She bumps into her guardian, Ivan, brainwashed by Dran, and knocks him out. As she explores Dran’s complex, the Widow is attacked by Snap Dragon, but this time she defeats the assassin. Ivan regains some of his old memory and joins Widow in her mission.

The Widow calls the helicarrier and convinces those aboard that the Black Widow with them in an imposter. Fury shoots the false Widow and orders all weapons to open fire on Dran’s island. The island, filled with munitions, explodes, and the Black Widow and Ivan are found drifting in the sea by a S.H.I.E.L.D. aircraft.

FANTASTIC FOUR #264

"INFERNO"
Story & Art: John Byrne | Lettering: Michael Higgins | Coloring: Julianna Ferriter
Editing: Bob Budiansky | Editor-in-Chief: Jim Shooter

The Plot: Beneath the ground off the coast of California, Mole Man prepares to execute the Thing, but Ben pleads with him to listen to reason. Meanwhile, in New York, Reed investigates an energy signature in Central Park.

Just as Johnny's nova flame is about to be used by Alden Maas to reignite the Earth's core, the Thing and Mole Man arrive and rescue him. Together, the trio, joined by Mole Man's Subterranean Moloids, make their way through an army of Maas’s robots only to find him dead in his control room before he could complete his life's work. The remaining robots take Maas’s corpse and walk away into the sea.

Sub-Plots & Continuity Notes: Mole Man was last seen in FANTASTIC FOUR ANNUAL #13, where he took in several outcasts from the surface world, turned over a new leaf, and lived in peace as their ruler… until Maas’s boring toward the Earth’s core let loose flowing magma in the Mole Man’s realm, killing his subjects.

(Byrne likes to talk about how often his stories get undone by other writers, but he’s not exactly above doing so himself, sometimes in extremely violent ways. As another example, much as people hate THE NEW TEEN TITANS' Terry Long, I'd argue, if only due to his prominence in the series' heyday, that he -- and his young daughter -- probably deserved a better fate than being killed off, off-panel, by Byrne during his WONDER WOMAN run.)

THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #250

"CONFESSIONS!"
Writer: Roger Stern | Artists: John Romita, Jr. & Klaus Janson
Letterer: Joe Rosen | Colorist: Christie Scheele | Editor: Danny Fingeroth
Editor-in-Chief: Jim Shooter

The Plot: Spider-Man exits the Century Club, changes back into Peter Parker, and meets up with Harry Osborn inside. Harry informs Peter that the club members have decided not to report the Hobgoblin's extortion scheme to the police.

Later, with no spider-sense to guide him to the tracer planted on Hobgoblin last issue, Spider-Man uses a list of the victims' names provided to Peter by Harry and traverses New York looking for leads, but finds none. Finally he realizes that he can find the tracer with his old receiver device. Peter repairs the receiver and follows it to the Hobgoblin's warehouse, where the two begin a battle which quickly sets fire to the goblin's lair.

The Sub-Plots: Jonah Jameson decides to one-up the Hobgoblin by admitting his culpability in the Scorpion's creation via a Daily Bugle editorial. Spider-Man pulls the editorial from Jameson's typewriter, telling him to keep it to himself, but as soon as the web-slinger leaves Jameson's office, the publisher begins his confession again. On the issue's final page, Jameson gives the manuscript to a copy boy for composing.

HERCULES: PRINCE OF POWER, VOLUME 2

"MY LOVE IS... GREEN?" | "RED WOLF STALKS THE STARS!"
"DEADLY LEGACY" | "A PEARL OF GREAT PRICE!"
Writer/Artist: Bob Layton
Letterer: Rick Parker | Colorist: Christie Scheele | Editor: Bob Budiansky
Editor-in-Chief: Jim Shooter

Something became clear to me as I began reading Bob Layton's second HERCULES mini-series. This is all one big "What If" story. I recall that Volume One began with narration stating that Hercules was returning to Olympus following his adventures with the Avengers. I simply took this to mean that he had recently left the Avengers in the continuity of the time, but apparently not. It actually meant that the story was starting after all of Hercules's adventures on Earth, at some undisclosed time in the future. Layton did not do a good job of explaining this.

However, Volume Two clears things up right off the bat as we join Hercules, 400 years later and still on his exile to learn humility. Narration indicates that Hercules spent some time on the brewery planet we last left him on, before returning to his travels across the universe with the Recorder.