Showcase Presents Doc Savage volume 1

It's time for a special side-step to look at a Marvel series collected in a black and white on cheap paper - but it's not quite an Essential.

Over the years Marvel have seen many licences come and go, often making it hard to reprint some adventures in later years - we've already seen issues of Giant-Size Spider-Man or Marvel Team-Up amongst other series that have had to be left out of the Essentials because of the guest stars involved. But often the terms of the original licence are more favourable for reprinting the character's own series, albeit in unusual places. Usually the rights to the stories end up being held by the characters' copyright owners and so later licensees can reprint the adventures. The likes of Marvel's Conan, Transformers, G.I. Joe and others have found their way back into publication under these terms (although joint adventures with Marvel's own characters can remain problematic). Doc Savage is another such series, with the rights held in recent years by DC.

Showcase Presents Doc Savage volume 1 reprints the eight issue magazine series Doc Savage from 1975-1977. Everything is written by Doug Moench, with plotting on one story by John Warner and John Whitmore. The art is by the likes of John Buscema, John Romita, Tony DeZuniga, Rico Rival, Marie Severin, Val Mayerik and Ernie Chan. The volume includes a number of pin-ups from the series but leaves out articles and interviews even though it only comes to 448 pages - Showcase Presents volumes have shown a much greater flexibility on page counts than Essentials.

Doc Savage first appeared in 1933 and has very much remained a man of his time. The amazing men - and they were invariably men - of the pulp magazines of the era are the direct ancestors of the superheroes who emerged at the end of the decade but often they haven't aged as well. Whereas the superheroes have been subject to a steady updating over the years, reflecting changing priorities and attitudes, the pulp action heroes and some of the contemporary comic strip characters have proved harder to adapt and update into complex and fallible characters struggling against the odds. As a result there are usually two latter day ways of presenting them - either in a self-mockery that extenuates the ridiculousness of the characters and the situation around them or else played straight in a reasonably accurate recreation of their original era give or take some the embellishments of the original stories. A lot of the movies of heroes of this era or homages to them just fall flat with only the Indiana Jones series really succeeding.

A movie version of Doc Savage was released in June 1975, but I've never seen it in full (and it's not had a conventional DVD release but rather a burn on demand one; a sign of a perceived limited market). Clips on YouTube suggest it was a rather campy take on the character and it frankly looks like it felt at least a decade old on its original release. The trailer is not the most enticing. But it's clear that there was an attempt to drum up interest in the character following the success of the republishing of the original pulp magazine stories as paperback books in the previous decade with James Bama's stylised covers forming the basis for the character's look in subsequent comics. Earlier in the 1970s Marvel had run an eight issue normal sized colour series and there was a both a Giant-Size reprint special and a team-up with Spider-Man in his own Giant-Size series in the first half of 1975. Then came this magazine series, which is a blatant tie in as the first issue came out the same month as the movie and both use the subtitle "The Man of Bronze" although the magazine's cover drops it from issue #3 onwards.

The man himself is not the most developed of characters, reflecting his pulp roots. Doc Savage has trained his body and mind to the ultimate perfection, making him super strong and super intelligent, with fast reflexes and the ability to solve any problem or situation with the utmost ease. He is highly disciplined with most stories showing him taking two hours each day to undertake a physical and mental workout to enhance himself. He is also focused - like many traditional heroes of serialised fiction he shows no interest in romance at all and is instead dedicated to the mission at hand. But here come the two problems with the character. He is too perfect with no substantial flaws that cause significant problems in his adventures. About the only flaw on display is his sexism towards both his cousin Pat and Monk's secretary Monica, declaring "Adventure is no place for a woman" (page 267) when brushing off the former. But even this flaw isn't used efficiently as Pat forces her way into going on the adventure with the regular team from the outset rather than coming in to the rescue. Beyond this Doc Savage is a know-all and do-all who can achieve just about anything and this makes it harder to get excited about such a hero. And at times he seems beyond human - indeed some of his foes explicitly shout this in frustration. On only one occasion do we hear of how he deals with captured criminals (most foes die in the climaxes) and it is to "perform certain surgical procedures upon your brains after which you will remember nothing of this -- nothing of what you did..." (page 389) In other words he will perform lobotomies on them. From a modern perspective the practice itself is horrifying but what's also concerning is the way in which Doc Savage feels he has the right to arbitrarily impose a punishment and literally change how people think. Given the characterisation and the era it is hard to avoid thinking of the concept of the übermensch, especially as that word has historically been translated as "superman".

Now Nietzsche's philosophy is generally unfamiliar to me and his own ideas have had their reputation damaged through association with the Nazis, so it's hard to judge just how far Doc Savage conforms to the übermensch model as originally conceived, though it's notable that Doc Savage's adventures often start out as the straightforward helping of others rather than proactively seeking to save the world and personally make history. But the perfect man is not a character concept that works well in this day and age. It didn't really in the 1960s & 1970s which is why so many film and TV adaptations went down the road of camp and self-mockery. But here we have a straight adaptation of the original pulps that is all too faithful to their 1930s sensibilities and outlook. And that just doesn't feel right.

To some extent Doc's aides, only once here called the "Famous Five", offer a more realistic approach. Several defy stereotypes in their appearance and characterisation but they are all experts in one way or another. They consist of:

• "Monk" aka Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair - expert in chemistry and owner of a pig called "Habeus Corpus" (sic - occasionally the correct spelling "Habeas Corpus" is used instead) who sometimes accompanies him on his adventures.
• "Ham" aka Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks - top attorney and stylish dresser
• "Renny" aka Colonel John Renwick - engineer
• "Long Tom" aka Major Thomas J. Roberts - electrical expert
• "Johnny" aka William Harper Littlejohn - archaeologist and geologist expert

What immediately dates this group is its composition, being all male and appearing to all be from the same ethnic and social background. Had the not been created until at least the 1960s then there would have almost certainly been a woman there and if created in the 1970s the group would have been multi-racial. The military ranks are mentioned on each introduction and raises questions as to how the first four, who all appear to be around their 30s, could have risen to such high ranks. None of them appear to be career soldiers but equally they seem a little young to have achieved these ranks as recruits in the First World War, especially given that the United States was only a belligerent for less than two years before the Armistice. The problem is slightly compounded by the adventures being given dates between 1933 and 1939, yet nobody seems to age in this time. It feels like these titles have been given to the characters just to enhance their standing as expert support for Savage. Monk and Ham get the most attention, with the two constantly bickering, fighting and playing practical jokes on each other. Ham fancies himself as a ladies' man, although women he flirts with do not always want the same outcome, but most of the team are attracted to at least one woman throughout the run, leaving Doc Savage above sexuality.

Issue #3 states it is starting a series of solo adventures for the five as back-up tales; however that issue's solo story of Monk is the only one to appear and subsequent issues revert to the format of full-length adventures. The story is set at the same time as the issue's main adventure, with Monk thus absent from it, and this restriction may have proved the feature's undoing.

The other character of note from the original pulps to appear here is Pat Savage, Doc's cousin who appears in just issue #5. There isn't room to fully explore her skills and strengths but she is similar to her cousin in many regards and more than a match for any of his aides as well as resourceful enough to force her way into an adventure to Loch Ness. Clearly a forerunner of the likes of Supergirl, she is rather underused and could have appeared more to provide balance in the series and help to pull it forward.

The adventures themselves are very much in the pulp tradition with lots of over the top villainy, some science fiction and fantasy, globe trotting, fancy gadgets and the resolution of matters with fists. There are monsters, mutants, deformed men in iron masks, secret bases, global conspiracies and more. It's all traditional adventuring that sticks to its roots. None of the villains are recurring and the dates given suggest the adventures may take place out of publication order. There's some sophistication, with problems to be solved and so providing a challenge beyond getting to a place and fighting a solution. Some of the puzzles are immensely complicated such as a pair of multi-levelled cryptic clues in the first issue that take nearly four whole pages for Doc Savage to unravel and seem almost impossible for any readers bar perhaps the most advanced crossword solvers. Yet the same issue features a blatant clue to the villain's identity in the form of his name, though notably this isn't remarked upon. Perhaps Doc Savage doesn't want to admit to being so complicated that he overlooked the obvious. On another occasion Savage is able to deduce that "Maison Blanche" is a translation from not English but Spanish and so the destination is not the White House but Casa Blanca.

The reproduction on this volume is quite good considering that the source material for the magazines is often in a worse state than the regular sized comics. A small note on the front page thanks Mark Waid "for loan of source material" suggesting that this volume has been compiled from original copies of the printed magazines themselves. If so then an excellent job has been done in remastering them. Unfortunately a few errors have crept in such as the inversion of pages 166 & 167. I don't know if that error was made in 2011 or 1975.

Overall this volume is of interest as a curiosity, being one of a surprisingly high number of times when one of Marvel's licensed titles has been reprinted by the current rights holder. Unfortunately the contents aren't that great. If you're a fan of the 1930s pulp adventures then this volume is a good homage to them. But if you're expecting something more sophisticated and reflecting the sensibilities of the 1970s then it's a disappointment. Both the character and the wider cast are very clearly dated and no real attempt has been made to update them in any way. That may have been an artistic decision or a restriction of the licence but the result is a fairly lightweight series that fails to hold up by even the standards of when it was first printed.

Essential Power Man and Iron Fist volume 2 - creator labels

We have yet another volume with lots of creators so here's a separate post to carry the labels for them.

Essential Rampaging Hulk volume 1

Essential Rampaging Hulk volume 1 reprints the Hulk stories from the first fifteen issues of the Hulk's late 1970s black & white magazine series, entitled The Rampaging Hulk on the first nine issues and then The Hulk! from issue #10 onwards. A bonus is a short story from Incredible Hulk #269 which addresses the continuity of the magazines. All but one of the magazines' strip stories are written by Doug Moench; the exception is by John Warner. The art is mainly by Walter Simonson, Keith Pollard and Ron Wilson with other contributions by Jim Starlin, Herb Trimpe, Sal Buscema and Bill Sienkiewicz. Also included is a text story from issue #10 that is written by David Anthony Kraft & D[wight] Jon Zimmerman and drawn by Ernie Chan plus the Moon Knight back-up story from issue #15 that crosses over with the Hulk story, written by Moench and drawn by Sienkiewicz. The Incredible Hulk story is written by Bill Mantlo and drawn by Sal Buscema.

Looking back at the period before the mid 1980s it's amazing just how restrained Marvel used to be about giving popular characters additional titles. Even when they did succumb to producing a second book it was significantly different in some way - a quarterly, a magazine or a team-up title instead of just a second ongoing solo book. The main exceptions that I can think of were Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man and A Date with Millie/Life with Millie/Modelling with Millie but otherwise everything was sufficiently different so as to not be interchangeable. It's unsurprising that the Hulk wound up getting an additional book at around the time when his TV series was gearing up to launch. Agents of SHIELD may now be challenging for the crown but up to now the Incredible Hulk is Marvel's only real success with live action television. But boldly this was a series that stood on its own, not only in a different format from the existing monthly but also taking place in a different era.

Adventures retroactively set earlier in the careers of established characters were still rare at this stage in Marvel's history. Some of the Second World War heroes had had a variety of wartime stories, most notably the Invaders, but otherwise Marvel's history was largely confined to reprints, What If?s and the occasional substantial flashback to prepare a modern story. And of course Marvel continuity has long had an ambiguous relationship with material printed before Fantastic Four #1, so even the Invaders and the wartime adventures of Captain America could be excused as replacement material. But now the Hulk was given his own retroactive series set during an obvious part of his career but using the setting in a less than obvious way.

Maybe it's because of the brevity of the original series but the Hulk's earliest adventures have attracted many latter day creators to them. Perhaps it's because the Hulk still had his secret identity and so the stories felt the most superheroey. It could be down to the various early cartoons also basing themselves on this period. Or it could just be the sense of a truly classic era, helped by brevity cutting it off at a clear point instead of fizzling out after several years. Whatever the reason creators have often returned to those days to add more tales. Unfortunately some have been more successful at reaching them than others and this is one of the less successful versions.

The first problem is that the series rapidly ditches the status quo of the Hulk circa 1963 in favour of a global epic that could frankly have been placed at almost any period in the character's history up to this point - and in fact, as I'll come to below, would be a better fit elsewhere. So there's very little of Bruce maintaining his secret around the Gamma Base or the classic dynamic with Betty and Thunderbolt Ross. Later on in the run there's an encounter with the Sub-Mariner who has just lost his people once more but again the character's history and personality is such that it doesn't take much to generate a fight with him at just about any point in his history. The last couple of issues in the sequence try to add something to the history of the Avengers by bringing the five founders together for the first time. Now it's probably true that there is no dialogue in the Avengers' history that explicitly says "And we had never come together before the battle with Loki" but this encounter still feels like a very awkward addition to the team's history, undermining the dynamics seen in the first issue because there was little reason to have discovered they could form a team on the second meeting if they hadn't done so the first time round. Also the series is nominally set in 1963, being one of the last times I'm aware of when Marvel time explicitly matched publication time. However this series doesn't feel like a nostalgia piece, if that's possible at a gap of only fourteen years (which seems a rather small gap but a lot of classic literature was set about as many years before publication) and instead it just feels like an alternate modern take on the Hulk. Indeed at times the series actually forgets it's set in the past, such as when Namor is searching Rome for the "Main Command" and gets told the war ended "thirty years ago" - approximately accurate for 1977 but not 1963. And although the main ongoing plotline about the alien Krylorians trying to invade Earth, including using shapeshifting to disguise themselves amongst us, may reflect some of the paranoid "they walk amongst us" science fiction of the original era, the execution feels much more late 1970s than early 1960s. The same is true of Bereet, a renegade female Krylorian who befriends the Hulk and Rick and helps them fight her race, complete with her many special gadgets. The character is quite well depicted as an advanced, liberated woman but again doesn't feel like someone who would have appeared in such a story in 1963, even if the author was making an effort to have a strong female role like Marvel Girl in the contemporary X-Men or Wonder Woman.

But the biggest problem is the Hulk himself. The "Savage Hulk" is the main personality written in the first nine issues, although the art varies between the classic "Savage" look and the original short haired neater look. Furthermore at this stage of the Hulk's history the transformation to and from Bruce Banner was controlled by exposure to gamma rays, albeit with some bodily resistance creeping in. But here we get a Bruce who changes into the Hulk when stressed and whose only control over the process is to deliberately work himself up into a tense state. Now only a very small handful of the original Hulk stories were reprinted in the 1970s so it's possible Doug Moench assumed he could just depict the more familiar version of the character with nobody noticing. However when reprinted the original stories were also back in print, courtesy of both the Essentials and the Omnibuses, and so the discontinuity stands out the more. The whole thing feels like a bad exercise in nostalgia. And it seems these problems were noticed at the time, leading to a shift in direction from issue #10 onwards and then a later story set out to tidy up the mess.

"Not a hoax, not a dream, not an imaginary story...so what IS it?" proclaims the volume's back cover. It turns out the first nine issues were a metafiction, a film made by Bereet for the inhabitants of Krylor, who are rather more tame and isolationist than their depiction suggests. In the space of five pages Bill Mantlo writes off the entire of the first nine issues, possibly in response to years of questions in the letter columns about how the adventures could have taken place. It's a blunt solution to the problem, though not unprecedented (Marvel had already used metafiction to write off the adventures of the original Two-Gun Kid). Maybe another writer could have produced a multi-part tale that managed to preserve the issues within continuity whilst explaining away the fundamental anachronisms but it would probably have taken too long after so many years. Instead, we get a simple five-page hand wave and that is it.

With issue #10 the magazine undergoes a transformation. The stories are now in full colour, though that doesn't make much difference here as it seems in both the 1970s and the 2000s the respective black and white pages were produced with colour "burned in" to create an greyscale effect. But the series has also shifted to the present, though there's none of the Hulk's status quo from his regular comic and these tales could in fact take place at almost any point in the history of the Savage Hulk. The series has taken its cue from the television series but doesn't want to contradict the comic. So we still have Bruce Banner with his classic look (instead of "David Banner" drawn like Bill Bixby) transforming into a talking Hulk, but rather than interacting with his usual supporting cast, fighting monsters and being pursued by the military we instead have Banner travelling the world alone, seeking both peace and a cure and getting involved with a succession of localised problems. There's the occasional discreet acknowledgement of the television series, most notably in issue #14 when Bruce uses the alias "David Bixby".

The foes are generally one-off non-powered ones of the type who could have easily stepped out of the television series. We get a mixture of unscrupulous businessmen of one kind or another, carnival thugs, terrorists, immoral scientists and fanatical military types. A scientist's experiments with gamma radiation accidentally turn him into a monster who fights the Hulk whilst the military are developing "Cybortrons" - robots mentally controlled from afar by soldiers - but that's the extent of the more fantastic. But in general this feels like an attempt to draw television viewers into the comic character without all the wider elements that would be unfamiliar to those who'd only seen the screen version.

The stories themselves don't pull their punches with some quite brutal deaths, including the casual gunning down of first a reporter infiltrating a mine and later an ill woman who tries to get help when a hijacked aeroplane crashes. Issue #11 focuses on an unfortunate boy who is being routinely beaten by his father. Elsewhere there's racism on the streets of Chicago, paranoia amongst scientists and the military and thugs attacking the isolated. Once again the magazine format shows how to tell strong stories free from the constraints of the Comics Code Authority but without getting gratuitous for the sake of it.

The artwork throughout the volume is generally good but the showcase nature of the assignments can undermine visual continuity. And occasionally there are some unfortunate results - Walt Simonson's pencils on issue #2 are inked by Alfredo Alcala but the printed result feels like a pencil and crayon effect. Perhaps they were aiming for something stylish but it just doesn't come off. But on a better note are the painted covers. They don't always reproduce so well in black and white, and I'm not persuaded the best choices of issues #1 & #9 were made for the volume's front and back covers, but they are an impressive set of mainly standalone images. A decade later several of these were used for the early issues of the Marvel UK series The Incredible Hulk Presents and they proved highly striking on the newsstands as they must have been on the original magazines a decade earlier.

As can often happen with the Essentials, this is a volume of two halves and it's more obvious than most. The first stage is a retro-based epic that totally fails to evoke nostalgia for the original era or exploit its setting and it's easily forgotten, with the retcon to hand wave it away proving surprisingly effective. After that we get a stand alone series of present day tales that could almost have come from the television series and which prove surprisingly effective. There's a real determination to offer something more than just standard Hulk stories in a different format publication, and on the second attempt the series achieves this. It's not the most essential of Essentials but it gives the old magazine series a good revisiting.

Essential Marvel Two-in-One volume 2 - creator labels

Once again we have a volume with a lot of creators, so here's a separate post to carry the labels for some of them.

Essential Tales of the Zombie volume 1 - creator labels 1

This volume has by far the largest number of creator credits so the labels need three extra posts. Links to post 2 & post 3.

Essential Spider-Woman volume 2

Next comes Essential Spider-Woman volume 2, which reprints Spider-Woman #26-50, Marvel Team-Up #97 and Uncanny X-Men #148. This sees the conclusion of the title and this particular Spider-Woman wouldn’t have another for over twenty years. (There would be other Spider-Women in the meantime but they’re now mainly forgotten.)

These issues see the rest of Michael Fleisher’s run, followed by a run by Chris Claremont (who also writes the X-Men issue) and finally a brief run by Ann Nocenti. There’s also a fill-in by J.M. DeMatteis, whilst the Team-Up is by Steven Grant. The art sees runs by Steve Leialoha and Brian Postman, with fill-ins by Jerry Bingham and Ernie Chan. The Team-Up issue is drawn by Carmine Infantino, whilst the X-Men issue is done by Dave Cockrum.

The Team-Up issue, which hasn’t yet been reached by Essential Marvel Team-Up, is a rare one without Spider-Man and instead headlines the Hulk, no doubt because of his TV series. It’s an odd inclusion here as it doesn’t contribute anything to Spider-Woman’s own series and instead just sees her and the Hulk fighting a mad scientist and his monstrous creations in a remote desert town. The X-Men issue’s claim to be here is more arguable because it’s the aftermath of a storyline in Spider-Woman’s own title that sees the X-Men guest-starring for the final battle, but whilst the issue completes the introduction of Siryn it again adds nothing to Spider-Woman, being just another guest appearance and a fight, and could have been equally left out. After all it also guest stars the Dazzler but hasn't been included in her Essentials. The most surprising omission is of Avengers #240-241 which served as an epilogue to the series, undoing much of the conclusion and ending things on a more positive note and putting Jessica Drew into the status quo she’d have for another two decades until the New Avengers came along. Had that been included then the initial story of Spider-Woman could have been told completely across these two volumes. Instead we get the main series itself and it’s really quite appropriate that the series ends with Magnus wiping all trace of Spider-Woman’s existence from everyone’s memory, making it as though she never existed. Because frankly the series is still as forgettable as ever.

Part of the problem is the turnover of writers, with few lasting long enough to make many developments last. Instead, each writer seems to rapidly alter the status quo from their predecessor. So we have Spider-Woman working as a bounty hunter in Los Angeles, followed by Jessica Drew working as a private investigator in San Francisco with Spider-Woman working to enhance the service, and finally the last few issues see a temporary return to Los Angeles followed by what appears to be a rapid dismantling of her San Francisco life in favour of something different when suddenly a final crisis emerges from nowhere and ends it all – for now. To add to the mess we also get changing of the handling of Jessica’s physiognomy and powers – at one point she ditches the drugs to suppress her negative pheromone problem and for most of the rest of the run people don’t find her unsettling – until another writer comes along and briefly uses that aspect. Her powers fluctuate quite a bit, particularly her capacity to recharge and store her electric venom bolts, whilst at times she has super hearing and other times not. (And she apparently lost her power of immunity in an appearance in Marvel Two-in-One that isn’t included here; not that the series itself notices.) And of top of it all the bounty hunter set-up was just dropped into the title back in issue #21 in the first volume, with a promise that a future story would reveal how the set-up came about. That promise is never delivered on. It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that this title was still being produced solely to secure the intellectual property. Were writers forced onto the title as a contractual obligation? Several of the writers have won huge accolades for their work elsewhere, but there’s little here that soars to such heights. However Steve Leialoha’s art is extremely good, and his longevity on the title (drawing all but two issues in a twenty-two issue run – well that’s epic compared to everyone else) suggests he actually wanted to be there. However Brian Postman’s work on the last four issues does little for me, although there are signs towards the end that had both he and the book lasted longer he would have improved.

The inconsistency is also present in the situations Spider-Woman goes through, but this is a feature common within writers’ runs as well as between them. Is Spider-Woman a series about a costumed crime fighter like Spider-Man or Daredevil, an espionage/world conqueror series like Captain America, a magic and myth series like Thor, or a science fiction/fantasy series like the Fantastic Four? Elements from all of these sub-genres pop up over the course of these issues with the result that Spider-Woman can go from fighting Hydra in one issue to having to cope with the Impossible Man in the very next. Whilst some books can effective juggle a wide variety of scenarios and problems, most are at their best when they decide early on just what sort of series they’re going to be and broadly stick to that. Here it feels like the series is going through all manner of situations and menaces without much great reason, adding to the disjointed nature of the work.

That’s not to say there aren’t some individual stories that work reasonably well on their own. The volume kicks off with an epic focused on the twin troubles of the return of the Enforcer, albeit now as a generic supervillain with a gag, and the manipulations of the press. Issue #26 introduces us to a particularly odious character, the new publisher of the Los Angeles Courier, once a highly respected newspaper but since its take-over by a publisher from the UK it’s become a rather trashy rag. He and his reporters also resort to rather dubious methods to obtain stories, including a willingness to break the law. His name is “Rupert M. Dockery”. Now I wonder who he’s a parody of?! It’s a reminder that even thirty years ago Rupert Murdoch’s approach to journalism had its critics. I’m writing this at a time when in the real world the Murdoch empire is taking a battering, starting with revelations about the way reporters on one of his papers obtained stories through illegal and immoral methods, but the revelations have gone much deeper. So it’s amazing to see such a blatant parody of him engaging in equivalent activities such as arranging for the creation of a supervillain to fight Spider-Woman and then contriving the Enforcer’s escape from prison in order to generate exclusive news stories his papers and television stations will have coverage of. Curiously few people realise what’s going on until a visiting Spider-Man spots the coincidence and follows up the lead. (Now what profession does Jessica subsequently go into again?) But Dockery gets his final comeuppance when Spider-Woman and Captain Walsh obtain a confession and since it’s not enough to convict they force him out of the city’s media. This parody is over thirty years old but it’s still recognisable to those day.

The same storyline sees Spider-Woman’s ally, Scott McDowell, try to save her from the Enforcer and instead winds up wounded by a poison dart and in suspended animation, with Spider-Woman blackmailed by the Enforcer into aiding him so she can obtain the cure for Scott. It’s good to see that both Spider-Woman and Scott care for each other to go to such lengths, but not enough is made of Spider-Woman’s moral dilemma over the situation. It would have been more credible to show her resisting at fist and trying to find an antidote independently below reluctantly accepting the situation. It’s also a sign of her gullibility that she accepts the Enforcer actually has an antidote – when captured he admits he doesn’t. The story also brings in a return guest appearance by Spider-Man, and both spiders have now discovered each other’s name. It takes his intervention to break the chain of the Enforcer’s hold but it could have been achieved by Captain Walsh or another character so this does feel like a more gratuitous guest appearance than is necessary. The narrative doesn’t end there but flows into the next tale as Spider-Woman fights the Fly, a minor Spider-Man villain, and Dr Malus, one of a number of scientists who stay on the sidelines helping the supervillain community. Malus, it turns out, invented the dart and cures Scott – but also injects him with a drug that changes him into a new villain, the Hornet.

Over the years there’s been a lot of discussion about the treatment of women in comics and whether they specifically get a raw deal because of their gender or if it’s just the curse of being major spin-off or supporting characters. Much of this debate stems from the Women in Refrigerators website. I’ll come to Spider-Woman’s fate later, but the treatment of Scott could be held up as a case for the argument that it’s really about putting supporting characters through the wringer. The character is confined to a wheelchair due to a past incident but now serves as an information support resource – a decade or so before DC’s Oracle. When he tries to rescue his partner he winds up very much in the damsel in distress role, held hostage to manipulate the hero, and he’s even stored in a refrigerator! Then he gets turned against his will into a monstrous form to fight the hero, similar to Alicia Masters in the Marvel Two-in-One issues reprinted in volume one. And the Hornet particularly brings out a lot of male stereotyping as he’s written as a very macho, sexist man, with Malus’s drugs massively boosting Scott’s testosterone levels. However he’s ultimately cured quite easily – just a week’s rest in which the drugs are naturally purged from his system. I guess it became clear quite quickly that Hornet didn’t have much ongoing potential as a recurring villain.

This is still a big problem for the series, and the relocation to San Francisco doesn’t solve it. Most of the villains in this volume are either imports from other Marvel series who don’t have a direct connection to Spider-Woman, or they’re forgettable localised creations or both. As well as the Enforcer, Hornet and Dr Malus we also get Turner D. Century, Hammer an’ Anvil, Angar the Screamer, the Juggernaut and Black Tom Cassidy, Deathstroke and his Terminators (appearing very soon after Deathstroke the Terminator debuted in DC’s New Teen Titans – I assume this was a coincidence), the Flying Tiger, the Silver Samurai, Cthon, Daddy Longlegs, the Gypsy Moth, Locksmith and Ticktock, as well as the forces of Hydra and various organised crime groups, plus a variety of non-costumed foes including crooked businessmen, corrupt small town officials and the like. The Kingpin shows up but on this occasion as the target to be saved rather than the criminal. Whilst there are a few big names on that list, they’re by and large only around for a single story to serve wider purposes. Otherwise the list is full of second stringers and one-offs. They may make for some good individual tales – Turner D. Century’s crusade to replace modern day “immorality” with traditional values from the 1900s makes for a strong tale about the dangers of taking refuge in an idealised past – but overall they add little value with few personalised rivalries built up. Even when villains from earlier in the series are brought back like the Enforcer or the Gypsy Moth they largely go through the motions rather than add anything particularly spectacular to the series.

The two main exceptions are Morgan le Fay and the Viper. Morgan le Fay pops up several times, and brings the revelation that Spider-Woman grew up near the influence of the demon Cthon and was believed to be a pawn of him, but it feels like a clumsy attempt to shoe-horn in an explanation for why an immortal sorceress is so interested in Spider-Woman. Morgan first tries to enlist Spider-Woman to her side but when rejected she swears vengeance. By virtue of her number of appearances and the level of the conflict Morgan le Fay is basically Spider-Woman’s archenemy but it’s an incredibly imbalanced conflict. Magical arch foes can work when the hero has a suitable power level and a background with myth and magic in it, but here it feels clumsy. The theme of Cthon’s influence also comes up in a multi-part story the Hydra, the Silver Samurai and the Viper. Here we get the revelation that the Viper arranged for Spider-Woman to be recruited into Hydra and she is in fact Jessica’s mother. Yes the mother who was supposed to have died when Spider-Woman’s origin was revised at the start of the series. That particular inconsistency isn’t really resolved here (although later on it would be retconned away) and instead we get a retcon just to reinforce the ties between Spider-Woman and Hydra; ties that have not really played much of a part in the series. And with this (#45) being Claremont’s penultimate issue the ties are swiftly forgotten again for the remainder of the run. I’m not sure what this revelation really adds to either character and once again it shows just how poorly established and developed Spider-Woman’s backstory is. The Cthon link is explored as it’s revealed that the demon has had the Viper as his slave for half a century, hoping to use her to escape from his realm but she proved flawed and so he now hopes to use her daughter. Again this is all mystical stuff that doesn’t really feel naturally connected to Spider-Woman’s more normal run of adventures.

Better handled are Spider-Woman’s supporting cast. By far the most prominent is Jessica’s best friend Lindsay McCabe who is about as close to a depiction of a lesbian as you can get in c1980 Marvel Comics. She sticks with Jessica through thick and thin, and works out her identity early on but doesn’t let on until after she’s been badly injured falling off a roof with the Viper and Jessica decides to confess up. Subsequently she gets involved in further adventures, including giving relationship guidance counselling to the Impossible Woman! (Another female spin-off because the Impossible Man wanted a mate. But neither of them understands relationships which just adds to the madness.) Unfortunately with changing writers she does get left on the side at times – in particular she’s absent from most of the early issues of this volume before a new writer and status quo comes along. Sadly for Lindsay, Jessica finds a boyfriend in San Francisco in the form of David Ishima, their landlord. David brings an early storyline when he discovers the building he’s working on is for a criminal organisation, but otherwise drifts onto the sidelines and it appears the next writer sets things up to ditch him altogether by having him unable to accept both sides of Jessica’s life. However because of the shortness of the run the actual break comes in the very last issue. The one other recurring character of note is Lieutenant Sabrina Morrell of the San Francisco police force who becomes a recurring reluctant ally and associate of both Spider-Woman and Jessica. Like a number of others she is sharp enough to work out the secret identity and she is also a member of the shadowy Yakuza organisation, a Japanese clan. In Claremont’s last issue the Yakuza are revealed as an organisation dedicated to protecting the powerless, whether inside the law or outside it. There is clearly more potential in the Yakuza but once again we get another change, the dropping of possibilities and characters and a new direction for the final few issues.

The last four issues are by Ann Nocenti and see the series wandering once more, almost literally with two of them taken up with a brief return to Los Angeles. Spider-Woman tackles a string of characters who are not bad but rather frustrated with aspects of their lives – a would-be dancer who’s too short until he fools with Giant-Man’s growth serum, the Gypsy Moth just seeking attention and affection, and a runaway boy with no control over psychic powers that cause chaotic destruction whenever he’s upset. All three, plus the guest starring Tigra and other foes are then captured by Locksmith, a former escape artist who saw audiences dwindle due to superheroes and so now captures them and imprisons them in specially designed cells, and his sidekick Ticktock who can foresee the near future. Spider-Woman saves the day halfway through the double-sized issue and we get a strange follow-up as she freely invites everyone to her home for a party, not even caring about her secret identity. Okay a lot of people have figures it out, but she’s hardly gone public with it and taking some former foes is really risky. The party sees her finally break up with David, wiping the slate clean then suddenly Magnus reappears in spirit form after having been completely absent for some four years. He reveals he’s a ghost who takes others’ forms and she’s never seen his real self – once again altering a character from what was see before. Morgan le Fay has been attacking Jessica with illusions but is based in the sixth century and Magnus explains they must astrally travel in time to defeat her, so Spider-Woman’s spirit form laves her body and goes back to do this. But on her return she finds her body dead, thanks to Morgan’s final act. Jessica faces death and asks Magnus to cast a final spell to wipe everyone’s memory of her. Then she walks off into the afterlife and the series ends.

My dislike for the magical elements of the series has been stated enough by now, so all I’ll say on this is that the universal mind wipe is a very easy plot device to remove all traces of the character and cut out loose ends so future writers wouldn’t have to worry about the series. But it brings different problems such as what happens to Spider-Woman’s body? How do all the party guests react to each other when they can’t remember who brought them there? What happens to all the other consequences of Spider-Woman’s actions? It’s bad enough to kill off a character with good potential just because her own series wasn’t selling well enough. But to try to make it as though she’d never existed is even worse. I don’t know if there were developments in corporate or intellectual property practices at the time so I have no idea if it was now the case that Spider-Woman was no longer needed. I suspect not as a new character using the name showed up a year later in Secret Wars – and she also appeared without a clearly defined backstory and set-up at outset. Had somebody realised that the character was a creative mess, with a backstory regularly revised and tied in umpteen knots, and decided that the only solution was to literally wipe the slate clean and start again with a new Spider-Woman? But whatever the reasons it’s a very poor way to end a character’s series, even if it was a pretty poor series anyway.

Of all the Essential volumes I’ve reviewed so far, the two Spider-Woman ones are by far the weakest, because of the ever changing set-ups and poor situations the character is put through. About the only clear idea that ever stuck was “Don’t make her too much of a female Spider-Man”. She’s to be credited for not being a more direct derivative of the male character, and the series understandably tried to avoid being an urban crime-adventure series like its counterparts. But when a core aim is to not be something and another is “be in print” it leaves a complete lack of defining principles and direction. As a result just about every writer brought their own take on the character and there’s little character and situation building across the series as a whole. The result is a massive missed opportunity. The character certainly had potential and interest, and in the right hands could have become a big hit for Marvel. Instead she seemed to be an assignment dumped on writers and it shows. “To know her is to fear her!” proclaimed the tagline on an early version of the logo, used on the volume’s cover (although none of the issues in here use it). I wonder if that reflected how many in Marvel felt at the time?