The Mighty World of Marvel #10
Week Ending 9th December 1973
Ten weeks of MWOM seems like a good round number for an anniversary, the editors have gotten into the swing of a British super-hero weekly the cover stars rotate regularly with one strip taking much of the cover while the other two have an equal one sixth of the cover to let the reading public know you can get an action fix from both the co-star features. Jim Starlin with Joe Sinnott produce this weeks cover, functional but not one of my favourites. It tells you who's in the FF strip but little else about the story.
The Hordes of General Fang! The Hulk stretches is muscles only to stumble into the crosshairs of General Ross's Iceberg Rocket, which was used on a test dummy in issue 7 of MWOM. This time it's used on the original emerald giant but fails as the intense heat of the gamma powered monsters body heat melts the ice and the Hulk makes his escape. Meanwhile (good word that, I'm surprised that it isn't used more in comics,) in Asia General Fang and his Hordes approach a tiny village in the principality of Llhasa. Lhasa (one "L") is the administrative centre and capital of Tibet. General Fang bears all the hallmarks of a Red China leader, so it doesn't take much of anyones imagination to assume that it is a Chinese invasion of Tibet that is underway. Tibet was certainly a troubled area around the time of the original comic strip production time in 1962/63. There was the Tibetan Revolution in 1959 and 1962 China and India found a brief war over the South Tibet and the Aksai Chin area.
This is the first time the Hulk can be seen in a suit, at least one that isn't ripped to shreds, before the Mr. Fixit persona was ever thought up by Peter David in 1988. The Hulk also dons another suit of sorts, a white Yeti costume. The idea was to scare the Generals troupes. A little bit of horse play by Stan and Jack, when in the Himalayas why not dress like a creature of legend? 'Cause a green giant monster isn't scary enough. General Fang and his hordes are defeated and humiliated, he is (gladly) never heard of again.
A advertisement for the Marvel 1973 annual, 126 pages for only 65 pence. An ideal stocking filler for the Christmas of 1972, produced under license by IPC Magazines ltd under the brand name Fleetway. A strange mix of stories, some Hulk tales ("the terror of theToad men" and "Beauty and the beast!" in last weeks issue) that had only just been printed in MWOM, "the uncanny threat of the terrible Tinkerer!" also printed in MWOM not so long ago, as well as a Conan tale that won't see print in a Marvel UK comic for some time. All that and some Fantastic Four stories and a Spider-man v the Scorpion tale that won't see print in MWOM till next year. If I can find the time I'll do a feature on it.
This weeks mail bag starts with a letter from Harry Downside from Kent who discuss the problems of getting his big sister to iron on his Marvel T-shirt transfer. Roger Masters from Bristol wants his dad to decorate his bedroom with Marvel wallpaper. Thelma Peters (was Thelma a real name in the 70's?) from Birmingham writes to say that her mother thought that Marvel comics were OK if not a little violent. Rosemary Briggs from Wolverhampton loves Spider-man and Peter Parker even though she has a fear of spiders. While finally 19 year old Stephen Wilde from Surrey loved the T-shirt transfer and is collecting all the coupons so he can send off for the mystery gift.
The might Marvel mistakes game, can you spot all the mistakes? I spotted 13, how many did you spot? Find out next week if you've got them all.
The second part of Spider-man's encounter with the Sandman uses an edited version of Steve Ditko's cover for Amazing Spider-man #4 as the opening page, which leads to some strange continuity as Spider-man fled from the Sandman last issue, after his mask was ripped only to appear to be fighting the villain again in the four panel cover artwork, while on the next page Sandman goes on a crime spree and Peter repairs his mask. Amazingly this continuity error doesn't bother me, I guess I'm immune to this kind of error as I expect splash pages to be flashbacks of the adventure as a common practice with British weeklies. My copy of issue 10 is missing one full page of the Spider-man strip, but I managed to catch up on that page with a digital copy. The reason for that was the original owner of this comic cut out the page that was required to stick your special coupons on to and post it away to receive you Mystery Gift/special poster.
This is what you've been waiting for a 20 by 25 inch giant poster of the Mighty World of Marvel super-stars. It's a cool poster that I would have loved to own, but as I don't own it I'm not convinced it's worth cutting out pages and coupon in my comics. That's just sower grapes from me, I would have wanted my comics and my poster. Hopefully there'll be less damage to my collection from now on. Maybe?
Another Merry Marvel Maze Page this issue, like last weeks I don't have any idea if it was made just for this publication or if it appeared somewhere else. Next to the maze page is a recoloured version of the cover for this weeks Fantastic Four adventure From the US edition #5 as a preview of the tales conclusion to be see next issue.
As for how the male members of the FF are getting on in the past we find them drugged and press-ganged into the service of pirates, I'm not sure who gets the most pleasure out of this time travel adventure, if its Stan Lee or Jack Kirby but its full panto shenanigans as the three super-heroes have fun in the past, especially Ben Grimm who really love the BlackBeard lifestyle. Mr. Fantastic cooks up the idea that they'll replace BlackBeards treasure with chains for weight and return Doom the treasure chest as he requested. Will that work? Find out next week.
Spider-man and the FF are getting the smallest shares of the comic with their stories split into three weekly parts. The Hulk story feels like a complete story as his original US comic had two Hulk stories per issue, one of which would be used per MWOM issue. Although both FF and Spider-man get more than their fair share of feature pages so it probably balance itself out. Like this FF feature page originally from US Fantastic Four #9 "How the Human Torch flies" as promised on last weeks back page.
More of the same next week, see you in seven.
Make Mine Marvel.
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