Trollheart

No.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Trollheart

You think your job sucks? How would you like to be the herald for one of the most powerful, godlike and hated creatures in the universe? Tooling around through space on a surfboard? And then end up trapped on one of those planets he was supposed to consume? Yeah: nine to five not looking so bad now, huh? Meet

Born Norrin Radd on the far distant planet of Zenn-la, his race have reached the apex of evolution. With every evil eliminated – war, crime, poverty – his people have slipped into a “Eloi-like” state of boredom and listlessness, or so it seems to him. Nothing is built any more. No science is practiced. Nobody strives, nobody questions, nobody yearns. His society, in other words, has become stagnant, and Radd does not like this. He yearns to travel back to the time before perfection was achieved, and to this end visits the museum of antiquities where he climbs into a time machine, though it does not physically transport him anywhere. It's called a Mental Transportation Element, and it creates pictures in his mind of the time he wishes to see, from the very earliest savage days of Zenn-la, when its inhabitants struggled for survival and dominance over the animals, to the wars that tore through his planet for centuries, finally culminating in their Age of Reason, where war was renounced and the population dedicated themselves to study, art and literature.

He speaks to his lover, Shalla Bal, about his dissatisfaction with how things were on Zenn-la, where centuries of academic knowledge can be downloaded into the brain in an instant, making true learning redundant, where the heart's desire can be created by machines and where the parliament discuss endless laws, completely aware of the fact that their discourse serves no purpose, as they are governed by computers. He remembers how once, the people of Zenn-la were explorers, adventurers who conquered galaxy after galaxy (actually, they may not have conquered them, the text doesn't make that clear, but you have to assume some of them were inhabited and would have put up a fight) but that after so long exploring and colonising they grew bored, and returned to their home planet, never to leave again, the urge to explore and test the frontier forever satisfied, and no longer attractive to them.

Just then the alarm sounds, for the first time in a thousand years. An unidentified spacecraft has been detected moving towards them, brushing aside their intricate defences. Though worried at the thoughts of a possible invasion after all this time, Radd believes this may be the impetus his people need to, well, get up off their arses and do something instead of lolling around all day, looking for more and better ways to waste time and divert themselves. As the citizens and government panic, and dither about how to face this unexpected and seemingly all-powerful enemy, they turn to their computers for the answer. That answer is that they must deploy the Weapon Supreme, their planet-busting super weapon, which is the only thing that can save them. Unfortunately, the backwash from the weapon, in addition to knocking many smaller planets out of their orbits, wreaks havoc on Zenn-La, reducing it to rubble. But at least the invader has been destroyed.

But then they see that it has all been for nothing. The invading vessel, a massive globe nearly the size of their own planet, is not destroyed. It had moved into another dimension to avoid the blast, and now comes triumphantly onwards. Despair and panic grip the citizens, as long-submerged and forgotten fears surface, but cometh the hour, cometh the man (or in this case, the alien) and Radd is determined not to just lie down and accept what seems to be an inevitable fate. He rushes out into the streets, seeking allies to help him defend the planet, but finds to his dismay (though surely not surprise) that nobody shares his defiant attitude. He comes across a scientist, and demands a spaceship be built to carry him up to the alien, there to find out what it wants and perhaps turn it aside. Luckily for him, as mentioned, these people can create something like that in seconds, and so they do, and he sets off.

Approaching the ominous alien ship he hails it but receives no answer. Suddenly his ship is gripped in an irresistible force and pulled towards, and then inside, the alien ship. Here he comes face to face with the mighty Galactus, an alien cosmic entity who stands many hundreds of feet tall, dwarfing Radd, and tells him that his planet is to be consumed by the titanic being, to provide energy which will sustain the massive alien. The name of Galactus – also called the Planet Destroyer, and with good reason – is known to Radd, even though he has never personally been beyond his home planet, and he quakes and quails as he considers the fate which now awaits Zenn-la.

Galactus doesn't seem, on the face of it, evil really. He explains that he laments the imminent loss of life on Zenn-la, but that he simply has not time to scour the universe looking for suitable, uninhabited planets. He likens his destroying Zenn-la in order that he may live to a human stepping on an ant-hill, and it's kind of hard to argue with that sort of logic. Radd, however, offers to be his herald, one who will do all the groundwork for him, find him uninhabited planets he can consume, if he will spare his homeworld. Galactus agrees, and Norrin Radd is transformed into ... the Silver Surfer!

For ages uncounted he roams the universe, searching for planets for his master, ensuring no life resides on them. But finally he comes to Earth, at a time when Galactus's hunger is stretched to breaking point, and the huge entity decides to destroy this world regardless of the life teeming upon its surface. Having come to know and respect the humans here, the Silver Surfer defies, for the first time ever, his master, who tries to destroy him but is prevented by the Fantastic Four, who have recovered the Ultimate Nullifer, a weapon of even more power than the Weapon Supreme that the people of Zenn-la possessed. Unwilling to face its awesome power, Galactus backs down for the first time ever, but since the Surfer betrayed him, he takes away his powers, dismissing him as his herald, and trapping him on Earth. He who had roamed the trackless depths of the universe is now condemned to the flimsy confines of one small blue-green world.

Notes

The first thing that struck me about this is the incredibly stiff and over-dramatic style in which it's written. Instead of saying things like “We're going to die because we became too arrogant” it's sentences like “We, who thought ourselves the mightiest of the mighty, are now brought low by this unknown alien force.” And so on. It's very flowery, almost laughably so. Also, it seems Radd must articulate every thought in his head - “The museum of artifacts: pulling me towards it” or “I feel my destiny calling” - which also gets a little wearing. It's not just this story though: there's a small feature after this, in the same comic, about The Watcher, and the same archaic forms are used there. A doctor, lamenting losing his patient, wails “We are only human: if only we understood the secrets of the universe!” Uh, yeah dude. People really do talk like that. No, they do. Really.

It's quite a pity really, because although intrinsically, a story about an alien who gets made into some new alien who can surf the stars (what was Jack Kirby on when he worked this one out?) being hard enough to credit anyway, it makes it doubly difficult to treat it with any kind of seriousness – even comic seriousness, where we all suspend our disbelief for the duration – when the speech is so bloody stilted.

I also have to laugh and grudgingly applaud the lack of effort to explain what the substance that covers the Silver Surfer's body is - “A silvery substance,” says Galactus, “of my own creation.” Nicely dodged, guys. Stan Lee was the same with cosmic rays and gamma rays, neither of which he understood, the former of which he made up, but hey: it's comics, who cares? Except that later, as you grow up and are not quite as willing to accept things on trust as you were when you were a kid, you do care. You want to know how and why these things happened, and it's a bit deflating to find that there was precisely zero scientific research put in to any of this. It wouldn't be quite so bad if this were being played for laughs, but it's clearly meant to be taken seriously, which kind of only makes me want to laugh more.

I must freely admit, the Silver Surfer was never one of my favourite characters growing up. I disliked his aloof, holier-than-thou attitude, was not crazy about his white eyes and to be honest, even to someone brought up on the fantastic and weird traditions of Marvel, he seemed a step too far. Flying on surfboard? In space? A huge alien who eats fucking planets? Get out. There was also a marked lack of humour, something I found integral and often vital to Marvel, in The Silver Surfer series. It always seemed so damn serious, self-important and up itself. Spiderman this was not! I always kind of hoped Galactus would eat him, either on purpose or by accident, the latter of which would be at least funny. “Now where is that lazy herald of mine? Belch! Oh, excuse me!”

I think once he was allowed leave the confines of Earth and get back out into space the stories got better – there's only so much you can do on Earth when you're basically invulnerable and no fun at parties – but we'll see as we go along. For now, this is at least the origin of certainly one of Marvel's weirdest and trippiest characters. Ah, those heady sixties!

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Trollheart

Marvel has a habit of often collecting superheroes and putting them together in fighting justice gangs. The Avengers. X-Men. Fantastic Four. And these guys.

You know, it's weird but there are some eerie similarities between this and The Silver Surfer. Both have their genesis in a Fantastic Four comic, both are highly intelligent and advanced civilisations (although the Inhumans originate on Earth) and both have a connection to an alien race, as we'll see. Also, both were created by Jack Kirby.

As Man struggles with the elements and tames fire, another race has managed to become far advanced, but wary of these superior beings Homo Sapiens hunts and shuns them, and they eventually move to their own city, Attilan, where they devote themselves entirely to learning and science. Finally, their leader, Randac, decides the time has come to test the Terrigen gas, which they have developed, and which will either turn out to be the answer to man's own evolutionary advancement or will destroy him, unleashing a deadly plague upon the planet. Unwilling to ask his people to do what he would not, Randac volunteers to be the test subject while his people look on in awe. Meanwhile, a representative of the alien race the Kree (who feature a lot in Marvel) has been awoken from a sleep of thousand of years, and wondering what could have activated his program and roused him, the being known as The Sentry, seeing the gleaming city rising above the mud huts and caves of early Man, deduces that his master's experiment has been a success, and approaches Attilan.

The Sentry thinks back to when his masters arrived on Earth, trying out a small experiment by seeding a portion of the emerging human race with certain advancements, speeding up their evolution and rearranging their genes, to see, well, what would happen. But it seems the Kree lost interest and fucked off back across the cosmos, leaving the forgotten Sentry to wait down the millennia until their project came to fruition. Now that it has, and even if his masters are no longer bothered, the Sentry must follow his programming and investigate. And so he does. The people of Attilan do not however shrink from or fear his approach, but welcome the stranger. He has come at a very portentous time, as Randac is about to emerge from his exposure to the Terrigen gas.

The Sentry tells the inhabitants of Attilan about the Kree experiment, finally solving a mystery that has plagued the more advanced humans for generations, and though it is unlikely his masters will ever return, the Sentry still wishes to gain all the information about the experiment that he can, in case they ever do coem back and he has to report. He finds that Randac has been changed, that he has gained a power, specifically, to be able to blast people with some sort of ray from his hand. The Sentry nods, and tells Randac that after this his people must be called the Inhumans, for they are so much more than human. Randac agrees to let all his subjects enter the Terrogen chamber so that they can all be changed, and the Sentry buggers off.

That's the origin of the Inhumans, but it leaves me feeling vaguely unfulfilled. The next story in this particular issue deal with one of them making his way into the city and being, shall we say, not exactly welcomed with open arms? He reports back to Black Bolt, who I assume is Randac, but it's sketchy. I remember from the time I read The Inhumans as a kid that something happened to Black Bolt – who is the leader of the Inhumans – that prevents him speaking. It's not that he's been struck dumb or anything, more something to do with some idea that if he ever speaks his voice could destroy the world, or something. But this issue doesn't make that clear, instead seeming to jump ahead, assuming we know who Black Bolt is. Well, it is a special, so maybe they do expect you to have read all the relevant issues. Meh. Perhaps, when we start reading their own series we may get more answers. For now though, here's a quick rundown of who's who in the Inhumans.

Black Bolt: Leader of the Inhumans, he is silent as above but has great mental powers which he can channel through the tuning-fork-like antenna on his head.

Medusa: His wife and also cousin. Like the gorgon of myth, she can use her hair almost as an appendage, and it is preternaturally strong.

Crystal: Sister to Medusa, she can control all aspects of the four elements: fire, earth, air and water.

Gorgon: His bull-like powerful legs can create an earthquake if he stomps hard enough.

Karnak: Technically not a true Inhuman, as he chose to forego exposure to the Terrigen mist, but he is a superb master of tactics and martial arts, and a cunning strategist.

Triton: Basically a human fish, Triton is very powerful and fast when underwater, can of course breathe easily under the sea but does not do so well on land, where he has to have artificial aids to allow him to remain out of water.

Maximus: Evil brother to Black Bolt, he is a genius whose control over the minds of others is almost total, and he constantly wars against the Inhumans, trying to unseat his brother and take his kingdom.

Ahura Boltagon: Son of Black Bolt, and another who has devastating psionic powers.

Luna Maximus: Perhaps the only non-”pure” Inhuman, she is the daughter of Crystal and the X-Man Quicksilver. She has many powers though, including being able to divine a person's state of mind and if necessary manipulate it, basically an empath on steroids.

These are of course just very basic sketches. Once I start reviewing these guys in detail I'll be going a whole lot more into each character's traits, personalities and powers, and where they stand in the power structure of the Inhumans.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Trollheart

I'm pretty sure I'm correct in saying that never before, or since, did Marvel create a character purely for merchandising and promotion, but such was the case with our next look behind the locked doors and into the dusty, seldom-swept forgotten chambers of minor Marvel characters. Seeing how popular KISS had become, not only as a rock band but as a merchandising brand, their label, Casablanca, asked Marvel to develop for them a female hero who they could use to promote and sell disco records. Sounds a bit bizarre, almost like putting the cart before the horse, but this is what they did, and so a new hero was born.

A mutant by birth, Alison Blaire's ability to control and direct light and sound first manifest when she is in high school, securing her a job as the “human lightshow” at the discos. Always on the alert for new mutants, and eager to contact them with a view to either recruiting or at least helping them understand their abilities, three of the X-Men – Cyclops, Phoenix and Nightcrawler – track a signal to a local disco in New York, unaware that they themselves are being tracked by a mysterious organisation called the Hellfire Club, an inner circle of which is dedicated to taking power at any cost. Now, I'm not up on the X-Men – they were never my favourite heroes, not even my favourite group: I was really more of an Avengers girl – but it appears that one of the Hellfire Club has designs on wooing Phoenix (Jean Grey) from the X-Men and into joining the Hellfire Club, and this man, Jason Wyngarde, is also present here. We learn that the rest of the X-Men, who had gone to investigate another signal, this one from Chicago, have been captured by the Hellfire Club's ally, the White Queen, Frost (look, don't blame me: I don't write this stuff!) but one junior X-Man in training, one Kitty Pride, has escaped.

She is still in the building, and Storm gives her a telephone number to ring, and she evades her pursuers, her power being the ability to move through solid objects at will. She gets to a phone, rings Nightcrawler, who is waiting outside the disco, but just then the Hellfire Club goons attack. Using specially adapted weaponry that renders their powers useless, the goons tackle Nightcrawler and others head into the disco, where Alison Blaire has revealed herself as Dazzler, the mutant Cyclops and Phoenix sought. As the two of them are attacked, Dazzler fights back with the power of light, rendering one of them (who presumably was not prepared for this new mutant and has no defence against her) catatonic. Luckily for the other two X-Men, he was the one holding the weapon that was nullifying their powers, and they are now free to strike back.

Having disposed of the goons, Cyclops tells Dazzler that she is a mutant, which is news to her. She has apparently never up to now questioned where her powers came from, and now she is told that she is special, and that that could get her killed, as she has just seen. With little choice left, she tags along with the three X-Men as they go to free their comrades in Chicago. Blah de blah blah, don't really care about the X-dudes; upshot is she helps them free the others and then says the life of an X-Man is not for her and heads back home.

The next time we meet her is in her own title, Dazzler. The first page of this first issue has her using her powers against the toughs of a record company executive who had offered her an unfair contract which she had refused. She manages to blind and deafen the goons but firing wildly, one of them manages a lucky shot and takes out her radio, which stops the music and so cuts her power off. She is then rescued by Spiderman, who had already met and fought alongside her in one of his own titles. To be fair, the comic does not glamourise the music business nor make it seem that it's easy to succeed. Dazzler is living on the breadline, two months behind in her rent and with no food. As she says herself, all that is left in the fridge is “half a cantaloupe and a packet of crackers. I'd fake tomato soup, but I can't afford the ketchup!” No, life is not all roses for this young lady, and her powers, while they may be useful, don't appear to be helping her earn any money. She is something of a cliche, not surprisingly, with a strict father who wishes her to follow him into the law, being a judge himself, and to whom she has not dared reveal her mutant powers. She feels like jacking it all in, but music means so much to her.

So far, so melodramatic, but so at least realistic. I'm sure there are hundreds, thousands, or more, kids who leave home trying to be a star and make it in the music biz (or there were, before the likes of the X Factor, so maybe I can grudgingly give that show some credit for providing an outlet, a safe outlet, for kids who seek fame and fortune) only to find that the world is a cold, hard, lonely place, as Alison is finding out now. She thinks back to her first realisation of her powers, when she was singing in the school talent contest and some local thugs broke in, trashig the place and attacking everyone. She responded with a blast of light so powerful and intense that it blinded everyone – except her – and she knew that somehow she could draw on this amazing ability when she needed to.

Now it's the turn of the Avengers, in what's rapidly becoming a list of guest starring spots, or a sort of product endorsement for Marvel, the product being their many superheroes! Alerted by the Beast (don't ask) to auditions being held at a top night club called “Numero Uno”, Blaire heads there but finds she has competition in the shape of the Enchantress, a goddess from Asgard who has come down to ... you know what? This is just pointless and I can't follow, or in some cases believe it: read it if you want, but take it from me, she's here to battle for the singer slot. Good Lord, Lee! What, again, were you thinking of? Um, Dazzler wins and the Enchantress leaves, vowing to return and wreak an unholy vengeance. Um again.

Notes

Not sure what to say, really. The plotting for this is all over the place, pulling in many diverse Marvel characters and settings. It makes little sense, to me, anyway, but then I suppose the core idea was to sell a brand, and they do that ... well, they don't do that very well either. They mention Pink Floyd (EMI) and Billy Joel (Capitol) but none of their own artistes, and they also namecheck a Marantz sound system, but other than that, I really don't see the point. I can't see this, on the face of it, turning into any sort of epic adventure, but then the Wiki page says she meets Galactus! How in hell that happens I can only guess. My head hurts.

Further note

Stan Lee, you cheap whore, you! Within these pages are a blantant ad for Hostess Fruit Pies, in which Daredevil (who I never liked anyway) uses them as a way to foil criminals. Oh god! Superheroes advertising candy treats? Is there no low you won't sink to, Stan? Shame on you.

I think it's time to get back to Judge Dredd...

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

The Batlord

Amusing that a character designed to sell disco has been so immortalized simply for having a minor place in the Dark Phoenix Saga. Dazzler was in the pilot for that never-was Pryde of the X-Men cartoon, then she was basically a stripper during the Dark Phoenix Saga in the 90s cartoon, and she still has a solid place in the current comics as well (last I heard she was an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. who was basically the ambassador to mutants, but was kidnapped and replaced by Mystique, and now that Dazzler's free she kind of wants to ****ing kill Mystique).

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The Batlord

Oh ****, I totally forgot, but if you're down for Spider-Ham then maybe... I guess you should read the recent Spider-Verse event. I mean, it's not the best thing ever... but it hilariously prominently features Spider-Ham in a legit Spider-Man story that isn't a joke.

Spider-Verse – GetComics

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