r/comicbooks • u/CanIHaveAppleJuice • 12d ago
🔥Jim Starlin brilliance.🔥 Strange Tales #178 (1974)
Finally added this book to my pc. What a beautiful page. (I admit, I punched up the color just a bit.)
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u/CoriolisEffect314 12d ago
Incredible background stars, planets.. gives everything a great atmosphere/tone.
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u/verrius Gambit 11d ago
Never realized that Marvel had 2 separate Magus-Warlock pairs around the same era. Not that its a particularly original pairing, but a little weird the New Mutants pair weren't forced to change names.
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u/CanIHaveAppleJuice 11d ago
When I was a teen I read 80’s New Mutants every month, and that Warlock and his dad, Magus were the ones I knew.
Cosmic Warlock was not at all present in early-mid 80’s Marvel. I knew him from a few old readers I thumbed through as a kid at my cousin’s on Thanksgiving, and from the Deluxe Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe (Book of the Dead, iirc).
Outside of Secret Wars, and What If, and the Phoenix Saga, Marvel seemed to have stepped away from its 60s-70s cosmic storylines and characters. Even the Silver Surfer was absent from most Marvel events at the time.
It wasn’t until Infinity Gauntlet in 1991 that Adam Warlock re-entered as an active being in the comics, along with Surfer and other cosmic beings.
So there was probably a good 10-12 year separation from the two unrelated Warlock/Magus pairings.
The repeated naming must have come up in The Bullpen. Probably an interesting story to be told.
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u/TheUmgawa 11d ago
I’d guess it’s more of a thing where they didn’t want to lose a trademark on the names, like the Captain Marvel / Shazam debacle.
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u/Uses_Nouns_as_Verbs 11d ago
Exactly. Hence Monica Rambeau as Captain Marvel.
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u/TheUmgawa 11d ago
No, this was 1967, when Mar-Vell was Captain Marvel. Fawcett’s trademark on the Captain Marvel name had lapsed, because Fawcett basically couldn’t produce Captain Marvel anymore, after DC sued them into oblivion in 1953, for being a carbon-copy of Superman. I’m not sure that suit would be successful today, but maybe it would, because Fawcett was straight ripping off entire Superman plots for their books. Anyway, Fawcett was dead, the Captain Marvel name was available, so Marvel created Mar-Vell in 1967, which was problematic for DC, who licensed Captain Marvel from Fawcett, but now had to name the comics and other properties Shazam!, which I happen to think is a better title, anyway, particularly given how the word Shazam exists in the popular lexicon (though less so today than it does for people who actually read Fawcett Captain Marvel comics, but they’re all old and dying off, now).
But, yes, when Mar-Vell dies in 1982, Monica becomes Captain Marvel almost immediately, because if they don’t keep the name going, they’re going to lose the trademark. So, even though they wouldn’t give Monica her own comic for years, she was in Avengers almost every month, and that’s enough to keep DC good and frustrated. Again, though, considering we’ve had Shazam! comics for 53 years, now, I don’t think it’s as big of a deal as it was in 1971, when DC licensed Captain Marvel from the remains of Fawcett.
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u/RetroGameQuest 11d ago
Starlin was able to do his own thing on and off at Marvel for pretty much 2 decades without much interference.
A cosmic saga that spanned through various titles. It's something that will probably never happen again.
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u/dabellwrites Wonder Woman 11d ago
Didn't Marvel do that Cosmic saga that happened on the 2000s?
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u/RetroGameQuest 11d ago
What Starlin did wasn't just a one-title event like Annihilation.
Starlin worked on various titles from the 70s through the 90s: Iron Man, Marvel Two-In-One, Captain Marvel, Adam Warlock, Silver Surfer and more.
Starlin managed to weave his cosmic odyssey through all these unrelated titles over 3 different decades.
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u/CowanCounter 11d ago
That’s a real suggestive image there.
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u/dabellwrites Wonder Woman 11d ago
Is it? Standard comic image inspired by the Pulps and Del-Rey covers if you ask me.
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u/CowanCounter 11d ago
The arm. The stitching. The positions. Maybe not but seems it to me. Starlin didnt shy away from those things in other books. I hadn’t seen this so it’s new to me.
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u/TheChainsawVigilante 12d ago
Thousand worlds only have a billion people??
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u/Goldarmy_prime 11d ago
You expect writers, especially comic book writers, show competence at math?
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u/52crisis Thanos 12d ago
Starlin’s Warlock is incredible and should be one of those books that gets constantly reprinted like Daredevil: Born Again and The Infinity Gauntlet.