Venus was one of several heroines introduced by Marvel at the tail end of the 1940s. Her title underwent a curious sequence of transformations in comics genres in its 19-issue run, starting as a glamour comic, becoming a romance comics, then a science fiction comic, and finally a horror comic. Throughout her run, Venus always remained the same character: the Olympian goddess with the power of Love, who came to Earth from the planet Venus to live among mortals for a while. It’s interesting to speculate how these adventures jibe with the modern day Marvel Universe. Yes, I know she was involved in the origin of The Champions, and I’m aware that Jeff Parker later retooled the “Avengers of the 1950s” from What If? #9 into the Agents of Atlas, but those appearances are almost mutually exclusive. The most obvious explanation is that she’s not an Olympian goddess at all, but really one of Jack Kirby’s Eternals. That’s not the tack Jeff Parker took, but I guess that’s the difference between a professional writer and a fanboy. Still, it’s fun to imagine that there’s a little bit of truth in both versions of her backstory, especially when one considers one of her early antagonists was none other than Loki. I’ve been curious about this series most of my life, and whereas I expected to enjoy it, I didn’t expect it to fire my imagination to the degree it has. The Marvel Boy, Black Claw, and now Venus Marvel Masterworks make an excellent complement to Jeff Parker’s (now sadly defunct) Agents of Atlas. Volume one collects the humor/glamour/romance run, but the best is yet to come. After the title switches to science fiction/horror, Bill Everett takes over as artist!
Replies
VENUS #15:
First Story: "The Graveyard Waxworks"
But, knowing that they would be percieved and treated like monsters, they have concocted a plan to take over the bodies of freshly dead corpses by using the super-science they have developed to transplant their hearts and brains into them.
This is one of those stories that doesn’t hold up to scrutiny because alien species find us attractive, instead of each other. Like the Creature of the Black Lagoon digging human girls.
“I shall truly be lovely, shan’t I?” says Princess Nakima, salivating over the prospect of inhabiting Venus’ body.
Common sense says they’d find us as hideous as we find them.
Whit: “There’s a strengthening rumor that these grave-robbers aren’t human at all! The country folk are saying that they’re ghosts or vampires that rise out of the ground whenever the moon is dark!”
Venus: “But—but how ridiculous, Whit! Such a thing couldn’t be! It—it—or, Whit! Could it? Could a thing like that really happen?”
Jeepers, Venus, you’re a thousands-year-old goddess who looks 27 and has magic powers! Your father throws thunderbolts! Your uncle rules the Underworld! And you draw the line at vampires and ghosts?
For whatever reason, the leader decides to take her at her word, and she goes straight to Whit to lay a trap.
The leader of the underground people suffers from plot-induced stupidity.
The leader decides to lead the rest of the tribe to free the captives.
Maybe he really is stupid.
By the time they get to the graveyard, the sun is coming up, blinding their supersensitive eyes.
This is an an old saw. Of course the underground people are sensitive to light. They always are.
Venus suspected their eyes would be sensitive to light, but she didn't intend to kill them.
But nobody’s shedding any tears, nor should they.
This is a kind of crazy story, not entirely hole-free, but representative of the kind of horror Atlas/Everett was pumping out in the pre-Code '50s.
You have to put your suspension of disbelief on a kite string and fly it high in the sky.
Second Story: "The Day That Venus Vanished"
As soon as he snaps the photo, Venus disappears, but her image is now "imprisomed" on Lenz's "revolutionary animated photographic paper." She cannot move, however, until Lenz cuts around her outline with a scissors. He then puts her in a steel box for "safekeeping" until he "collects a few more such ravishing beauties as you." What he intends to do with them we don't know; that's all we get.
It is a strange invention, and a pretty pointless scheme.
Venus escapes from the box, however, just before Hammond arrives looking for her. Lenz tells them that she left some time ago, but Hammond grows supicious when he sees her hat and jacket on a table nearby. He begins looking around the studio, is attention attracted by the unusual camera. Lenz rushes in front of it, just as Hammond snaps a picture. Lenz apparently "disappears" but his image has been captured on film. Hammond develops the negative, places it on the table, then leaves in confusion, taking the film with him.
No real explanation is given for why he was not restored; it's left a mystery. (Maybe Everett had planned to bring him back in a later issue...?)
That’s a thought. Maybe then we’d learn how he planned to profit off turning people two-dimensional.
This is another kind of nutty story that doesn't really hold up under close scrutiny, but it is, in Dr. Vassallo's words, "wacky." It is also significant to note that Hammond's role has been reduced to plot catalyst and the romantic triangle has been completely dispensed with, showing (in Vassallo's words) that "Everett is re-imagining the series in his own direction, trimming away superfluous earlier series plot points."
I noticed that Della was little more than an exposition device, with none of her usual cattiness. This is an improvement.
Della: “It sounds to me like the blinding flash put you to sleep, and you just dreamed it all!”
I could go with that.
Third Story: "The Living Dolls"
She dyes her hair black and, the next day is hired as a "cooch shill" for Zorsky's show.
I’ve only heard the word “cooch” in one context, as a slang term for a woman’s genitals. There had to be another meaning for Everett to use it so casually, so I looked it up. And sure enough, here’s what Merriam-Webster says:
“a dance performed by women that was once common in carnivals and fairs and marked by a sinuous and often suggestive twisting and shaking of the torso and limbs.”
But Zorosky recognizes her, hypnotizes her, and puts her in the show.
This is the second time Venus, a freaking goddess, is hypnotized by a lowly mortal. Her powers must be diminished in some way during this series.
"Looks like Zorsky took his secret to the grave, and we'll never know!"
That is sadly true.
Dr. Vassallo has this to say: "Everett's art is gorgeous, Venus is stunning, the plots are weird and this is Atlas horror at its finest. Stripping away 12 issues of of Venus backstory, Everett was doing great horror/fantasy and dropping Venus inside it for effect!"
Can’t disagree.
I’ve only heard the word “cooch” in one context, as a slang term for a woman’s genitals. There had to be another meaning for Everett to use it so casually, so I looked it up. And sure enough, here’s what Merriam-Webster says:
“a dance performed by women that was once common in carnivals and fairs and marked by a sinuous and often suggestive twisting and shaking of the torso and limbs.”
That sounds pretty much like it was the same meaning, used vulgarly to mean the entire woman, but perhaps common enough in the carnival context to pass. Carnivals regular had "cooch shows," usually quietly advertised, that were basically strip shows in men-only tents somewhere. Sometimes editors and writers miss the vulgar context, like Robert Browning using "twat" in his sentimental Victorian poem, "Pippa Passes," because he thought it was a part of a nun's outfit after reading and misunderstanding an old obscene poem.
On that note, singer/actress/comedienne Kate Micucci, who has done many things but may be most familiar to people at this board as the voice of Velma Dinkley for most of this century (she added some snark to her character) once had a one-woman show that had a lot of audience interaction. Naturally, she called it "Playing with Micucci."
Bwah-ha-ha! As a comedian, I'm sure she got a lot of mileage out of her surname.
The funny thing is, she has said that, as a younger girl, she just never used or heard that particular euphemism, so she was quite a bit older before she realized that her surname sounded funny to a lot of people.
Skip ahead to 3:10.
I found this the other day. Larry King asked Charo about the origins of her famous "cuchi-cuchi," which can be heard in a lot of old movies. She came up with a story about her dog.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WtaRSIEIr4
The name of the Baron's adversary was Azrael!" whom Hammond immediately recognizes as Judeo-Christianity's "Angel of Death."
What th--!? I’ve never heard this legend before, either. Once again, I think Everett is playing fast and loose for the sake of a story.
Apparently, Azrael is one of the named angels in Islam and also in the mystical Kabbalah practiced by some in the Jewish religion;
Azrael - Wikipedia
During the run of Lucifer on TV, I looked up angel names one night, and discovered to my surprise that there weren't that many. Taking into account the Old Testament, the Kabbalah and the Koran, there were maybe two dozen names.
One of them, from the Book of Enoch, is "Joel." I'm guessing he was the youngest, and they ran out of cool names.
JD DeLuzio said:
On that note, singer/actress/comedienne Kate Micucci, who has done many things but may be most familiar to people at this board as the voice of Velma Dinkley for most of this century (she added some snark to her character) once had a one-woman show that had a lot of audience interaction. Naturally, she called it "Playing with Micucci."
I didn’t know that Kate Micucci did so much voice acting. I first saw her in Raising Hope, the series Greg Garcia created after My Name is Earl. Both series were wonderfully irreverent comedies. Kate Micucci first shows up in the second episode of Raising Hope (she’s in about a third of the episodes), which is available for free on Prime. If you haven’t seen these shows, you should.
I first became aware of her early in the "Garfunkel and Oates" days with Riki Lindholme-- I know they still play and compose music together, but they're more focused on other things. I wish their TV show as themselves had lasted more than one season.
-
7
-
8
-
9
-
10
-
11
of 12 Next