I just got an ad email from a retailer that seems to specialize in a lot of graphic novels, collections, trades, etc.
While I haven't shopped these sorts of things in the past, I find they have good prices, and I have picked up a couple of things from them recently, with good results.
The latest ad features something that I wanted to call to the attention of all our silver age fans on this forum... not that West Coast Avengers will really make the grade as primo silver age Marvel comics, but there's a tie that you may enjoy. I know I did when the issues originally came out.
I never gave much attention to West Coast Avengers, until it turned into Avengers: West Coast with the great Vision Quest storyline.
But now a West Coast Avengers: Lost in Space Time graphic novel/trade collection reprints not only issues #17-24, but also the closely related Fantastic Four #20 and Dr. Strange #53.
The conneciton is a key event in classic silver age Marvel that seems to be a focal point of all time travel stories...and gets reinterpreted by different generations of writers...
We're talking about the FF's first interaction with Rama Tut, and the reason why they escaped his clutches...that the Thing transforms back into Ben Grimm, allowing him to escape his chains and free Sue and then the others. But the delight is in the shear desperation of the WCA as they recognise where they are, and their plight, as their time machine platform will only go backwards in time...further and further into the past...until their last hope is the FF/Rama Tut confrontation...where they desperately need to hitch a ride home, OR get some technical help on how to repair their platform.
I don't recall how they solve it, but found the method of sending a message back to the future a novel and clever twist... plus, the desperation of missing the FF by moments was a great moment for me.
If you enjoy long chapter driven epics, you might really like this retelling of early marvel history through the eyes of at least three different generations of writiers.
Plus, this tangenially plays into the classic Kang/Rama Tut/Scarlet Centurian/Dr. Doom quadrangle that Stan Lee set into play back in FF Annual #2...all those years ago. If he had any idea of how tangled continuity was going to become, I don't know if Stan would have penned those time travel stories way back when (FF#5 and #20) cause they just seemed so fun at the time!
What do you think?
Replies
Thanks for the suggestion, I'll check it out. It reminds of the fun two-part story in the final two issues of the most recent Brave & Bold run, #34-35, with the Legion teaming with the Doom Patrol and then the Inferior Five, telling the same time-travel story from two different perspectives. Tying it into the Rama Tut story would be fun, although I doubt I will take it as canon.
Someone suggested that, rather than pick up Tut's declaration that he was Doom, later writers (including Stan) should have gotten out of it by deciding that was just Tut messing with Doom's head. But Stan probably had not figured that little bit of business would continue to rear its head 40 years later.
Time travel stories are always problematic, so it's best not to think about them too hard. Time periods often are treated as if they are parallel universes on the same linear track as our Earth, not as a future that we can drop into at any moment and that is affected by what happened in the "present."
Alan Moore (of course) in his great Supreme run, and last season's Doctor Who episodes dealt with time-travel in the only way possible, by making the paradoxes so extreme that they're funny but plausible as a result.
-- MSA
No, no, no... that's backwards. it was Doom who suggested that maybe HE was Rama-Tut. For no apparent reason, Rama-Tut failed to dismiss it. I personally think Doom WAS messing with Rama-Tut, because HE wanted to tackle the FF, and he didn't want this time-travelling interloper getting in the way.
However, in a later AVENGERS issue, Doom is thinking about it as if it might be true... shame on Stan!
Well, I wouldn't dismiss it as non-cannon, but the continual descent by the WCA further and further back in time not only allows them to visit Marvel's western heroes and characters, but also to visit some of the key silver age marvel moments...like Rama Tut... but I think they also discuss how they have to keep out of sight as well, so that they witness some discussions and dialog taken right from the original issue, but then MISS their ticket home by moments...screaming "WAIT!" as they charge toward the departing FF...
There's a real sense of desperation that affects not only the time-lost WCA but also a despondent Hank Pym in a controversial suicide attempt as well! I won't say it's the most important story of the era, but it certainly was thought out beforehand, and planned out. As a result, the story advances by stages, and each issue advances the situation worse and worse. As it came out, I didn't care for the run... but it did capture my interest as I wondered just how they were going to get out of this seeming dilemma.
As for the Doctor Strange story, I bought that off the rack when I saw what a clever twist it was on the classic FF story, and how much more sense it made, explaining a miracle in Stan's story with an explanation.
As for Doom messing with Rama Tut's head, the exchange just seemed stilted back in FF Annual #2... and seems obvious that Stan was just having fun messing around with the grandfather paradox. (Was the further Doom musing about it actual in Avengers #25? I think that's the only place he crosses paths with the avengers, or was it in the Kang/Ramona two parter just an issue or two later?
When I re-read FF ANNUAL #2, one of my favorites, I thought the scene of Doom & Rama-Tut LOOKED great... but the dialogue screamed to me of "too many cups of coffee". Stan writing at all hours of the night, and probably not understanding what Jack set up, or misguidedly changing it just for fun (or ego, or whatever). A one-time bit, okay... but it should NEVER have been mentioned again.
Yeah, Doom fought the Avengers the very next issue after the 2-part Kang-Ravonna story.
I remember reading Englehart's WCA run after I read Byrne's run (things were very strange for me in the mid-late 80's). And when I got to the suicide attempt, I thought... WTF???? To me, that came completely out of left field, and seemed to contradict the assertion Roger Stern had made when he had Hank tell Jan that they "were NEVER right for each other." That whoe bit just screamed to me to be a Jim Shooter edict that Roger was folowing, since who's gonna argue with that guy if they wanna keep their jobs?
Anyone who's read ESSENTIAL ANT-MAN from cover-to-cover like I have (twice), plus the AVENGERS issues Stan dialogued (Kirby and Heck) would know that statement in Roger's issue was B***S*** of the highest order! And please understand... at the time, Stern had become my favorite Marvel writer. But he did a FEW things that still have me sdhaking my head in dismay (or disgust). Another one was discussed in excruitating detail the other day at MASTERWORKS, as if it was brilliance personified... when, to me, it felt like either Roger was following someone else's orders, or, he was just flipping out and not realizing it. (Let me put it this way... on Roger's watch, Pete & MJ did NOT get back together... Hank & Jan did NOT get back together... and Stephen & Clea BROKE UP!!!! I mean... WTF!!!)
Oh yeah... Stephen ALSO committed suicide. NOT attempted. Successful! But he'd been dead before... TWICE. So he got better. For the 3rd time. (Ask Peter Gillis... he had a LOT of psychological problems being worked out in his comics stories, I think... at least, it sure seemed that way to me!)
Actually, of the different series Gillis was writing at the same time, Doc was the only one who "got better". NEW DEFENDERS and MICRONAUTS weren't so lucky. How can you take that many issues to KILL your heroes off??? And why?
I was under the impression that Stan wrote that Doom/Rama Tut scene and that Jack drew art to match it. After all, it was Stan's facination with the Grandfather paradox that caused him to include it. I don't think that Jack came up with it, even though he may have understood it and been fine with it.
I'm pretty sure that Roger and his wife are still together.
The "Lost in Space-Time" collection (Premiere HC Vol. 86) was solicited for March 2012 release. A couple of years ago, I had planned to build a discussion [which I would have titled "A Busy Time (1200 B.C.)" (or whenever it took place)] around the very issues being collected, but I never got around to it. this is the very kind of collection I would put together if it were up to me.
There's also a reference in a Roger Stern Avengers story featuring Kang which postulates Doom was woozy from time travel and Kang was just humoring him when he appeared to entertain the notion that they were one and the same person. Something alone those lines, anyway. (We discussed it once on the old board.) I'll have to look it up.