The Sound of The 70s!!

It's open mic night!!

So pull up a chair, have a mochachino, and listen to the music stylings of Rick Jones:

The ladies love it, too!

But there's always a heckler...

Dude, maybe you shouldn't heckle a guy who was taught to fight by Captain America?!?

Make that--you definitely shouldn't heckle a guy who was taught to fight by Captain America!!

Later, Rick is a superstar on the rise!!

No doubt about it--

Rick Jones--better than Snapper Car in every possible way!!

From Captain Marvel #18 (1969) & #20 (1979)

I Am Not Namor

Rick Jones is taking Namor to a swinging nightclub, because Rick Jones knows everybody, and why the hell hasn't he been in a Marvel movie yet? Oh, yeah the nightclub is called the Electric Seaweed.

Checks out the scene, bro!

Trippy!!

But Namor discovers that it's not so easy to go incognito...

Or is it??

Wait wait wait. Namor is a folk hero to surface world eco-fans?!? And they wear "Namor-lobes" as a tribute/fashion statement?

Man, the Marvel Universe is one freaky place to live!!

Should we tell these guys that Namor's many, many attempts to destroy/conquer the surface world no doubt caused vast ecological damage?

Oh, and Rick's got a gig here. Let's groove along!

Ah, that karaoke favorite, The Feast Of The Atomic Beast. Strange, I can't find that song on YouTube...

From Sub-Mariner #30 (1970)

Mad Rick Jones--Fury Road!

Because on some rainy Sunday mornings...

...you need to see Rick Jones, Kang, and the Kree Supreme Intelligence swooping in to save the day, loaded for bear on a time-traveling, dimension hopping "Supreme-Cycle."

Because goddamn, I love comics.

BTW, I might have missed something...but I'm pretty sure that Rick Jones has never had his own comic book. Am I wrong, did I miss some one-shot title sometime?

I mean, even flipping Snapper Carr got his own dang one-shot, as leaser of The Blasters.

Rick Jones: There at the birth of the Hulk, and the birth of the Avengers; he was Captain America's partner; he kinda saved the whole universe during the Kree-Skrull War, and the several universes during the Destiny War; he hung out with ROM; he's been bonded with two different Captain Marvels; he hung with Hulks grey and green; he's run an organization for wayward teen super-heroes; he's actually been both a Hulk and an Abomination; he's had a successful career as author and rock star and TV talk show host. Plus, he rides a Supreme-Cycle with Kang and the Supreme Intelligence.

This is a dude who has touched virtually every corner of the Marvel Universe (and, conveniently for certain Marvel/Disney butthead executives, not too much interaction with the FF/X-Men/Spider-Man branches). Yet Rick Jones has had not one mention in an MCU film, and he's never had his own damned comic book.

Look, Marvel, when this whole Secret Wars square dance at done, you could do a lot worse than to give Rick Jones his own title as a Rosetta Stone for your new-fangled/refurbished/refreshed/don't-you-dare-say-rebooted universe.

From Avengers Forever #10 (1999)

Best. Prediction. Ever. (And, Where The Hell Is Rick?)

Let's take the Wayback Machine all the way back to 1965, and to letter column of Tales To Astonish #63:

"We all know that you're going to bring back Bucky..."

Slow applause for John P. Begley of Harlan, Kentucky (do you know Raylan Givens?). You called it, 40 years early!!

The response?

Oh, yes, play it coy, Stan. Marvel was planning this from the beginning, playing the long game, eh?

Still this does bring up the question, Where The Hell Is Rick Jones? Responsible for creation of the Hulk; responsible in part for bringing the Avengers together; partner of Captain America AND Captain Marvel AND Captain Marvel Jr AND ROM; saved THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE during the Kree/Skrull War; world-famous author and rock star; mentored the Runaways. His middle name is Milhouse!!

And yet, despite a Hulk movie and Captain America movie and Avengers movie, no Rick Jones. WTF?

And in the comics? As near as I can tell, since transforming into "A-Bomb" (sigh) and getting entangled with all the silly Hulk stuff, Rick hasn't been seen in Marvel-616 for well nigh unto 2 years. (I'm told he had a cameo in Hunger #1 last week...that merely highlights that Ultimate Rick Jones is getting for more time and attention than the real Rick Jones).

Marvel: Rick Jones. Now. Thank you.

Nobody Loves The Hulk (A Slight Reprise)

So, I'm skimming the back-up features in Hulk Annual #18 (1992)...because what else am I supposed to do when I'm illin'?

And what do I stumble across but this:

Wait a minute wait a minute WAIT A MINUTE!!!!!

As you may remember, a couple of months ago we examined what is unquestionably the greatest rock & roll song of all time, "Nobody Loves The Hulk." Go read about (and listen to it).

So what the hey? Well, aside from sharing a title, and some similarities in the chorus, the songs are pretty different. A coincidence? Or did Brevoort and/or Kanterovich know of the original song, and were just riffing on it?

Regardless, this little ditty...well, let's be polite, and just say that it's NOT the greatest rock & roll song of all time.

Let's listen in:

Here's a hint, Rick...don't give us 11 verses before getting to the the chorus...

Let's here what a more...prominent...critic has to say:

The end indeed...

Snapper Carr Is No Rick Jones

Snapper Carr--what a loser.

I say this not to be mean. But seriously, the guy sets the record for undeserved self-pity.

As a high school student, Snapper helped the Justice League Of America beat Starro. I mean, they make him an honorary member after that--a high school kid who gets to hang with the Justice League, for heaven's sake!! Dude ranked higher on the pecking order than most of the Teen Titans, is all I'm saying.

And yet he decides to throw it all away. Feeling unappreciated, Snapper allows the Joker (in disguise) to convince him that all super-heroes are dangerous, and gives Joker the JLA's secret HQ location.

Yes, that really happened. (And, if you were to ask me, I've decided that that event marks the end of the Silver Age...Not a hoax, not a dream, but the guy who has hung with the JLA since day one betrays them to DC's greatest villain because he buys into "heroes are bad for society". Definitely the beginning of the Bronze Age.)

After that? Well, let his sister Janet narrate for us:

I'll try not to get repetitive here, but after every one of these panels, do a mental comparison with Rick Jones, OK?

Fair enough. But those changes?

"Bull-ticky"?!?!?!

Wait.

Let's stop right here. Your fellow students ask you a few harmless and well-intentioned questions about the super-heroes you personally knew...and you "can't study" and "drop out"?!? I mean, sheesh, someone has the excuse machine cranked up to 11.

Back to the panel...
Really? You couldn't find any job? Not the Post Office? Not a dish washer? You couldn't, say, enlist in the military?? Mowing lawns? Anything?!?

Well, there's only one solution...

Seriously, Snapper Carr dropped out of school because someone asked him if Wonder Woman was hot, and then couldn't finds a job worthy of him...so he applies for welfare? But that wasn't quite down and out enough:

Maybe fame worked differently in the DC Universe.

Rick Jones, after all, wrote a bestselling book about being a sidekick, became a rock star, had his own TV talk show, became sponsor of a support group for former teenage super-heroes, etc, etc.

Snapper Carr, however, just became a loser...

Wait...his address was "disconnected"?!?

And then Carr went on to join The Key and became the super-villain Star-Tsar, which earns double demerits for the ridiculous stupidity of that name.

Over a decade later, they began to refurbish Snapper, giving him super-powers, having him mentor Hourman and Young Justice and join Checkmate and yada yada. And who knows when/if we get the nu52 Snapper Carr,

But man oh man, Snapper will always be that whiny betraying loser to me.

These panels were all from Justice League Of America #150 (1978)

Marvel 1964 Week--Avengers #8!!

Ladies and gentlemen, you're about to witness--the birth of continuity.

Well, not literally. But certainly, you will see continuity take a huge step forward here.

Previously, Silver Age books hadn't been so much serials as sitcoms. What happened in one issue/episode had little or no bearing on what happened in subsequent issues/episodes, and indeed was likely never to be mentioned again.

Comics were disposable entertainment, like sitcoms. No one back in the early 60s foresaw collections of comic book runs being published, any more than people saw DVD season sets for I Love Lucy. Unless you had a reprint issue or a clip show, past events were almost never referenced. If Jimmy Olson turned into a giant monkey, it was forgotten by the next issue. If you wanted to have Flash fight Mirror Master but you just threw him in jail and broke his mirrors two issues ago, no problem--just bring him back without explanation. If Carol Ferris almost tricked Green Lantern into proposing one issue, he doesn't throw that back in her face next issue--it's forgotten as if it were an imaginary story.

[Editor's note: I am, of course, exaggerating slightly here, as some Silver Age mags did have some kind of carry over. Just roll with me, OK?]

Which brings us to:

Damn, September 1964 was a rocking month. Kang's first appearance (sorta)?!?

We begin as the Avengers are summoned to a video conference with Pentagon officials! Gasp--how futuristic!!

And our creators:

Look, right there is one reason Marvel quickly became popular--sharing it's creators names, and being playful...it made them seem like friends, while DC was still years away from giving us any credits whatsoever...

Right off the bat, we see that Tony Stark, proto-fascist, is unclear on the concept of democracy:

Dear Iron Man: taking turns ≠ democracy. Thank you.

Meanwhile, it appears that Stark was planning to have couples in the Avengers from the start:

A love seat for Avengers meetings? Really?

The military briefs the Avengers on a mean flying saucer that has landed in Virginia:



Action time!!!

Wait a minute--the Avengers had to fly out of JFK?!? You're kidding me. Ahh, life before Quinjets...

When they finally get there (after sitting on the tarmac for 5 hours), Kang is chillin':

And the Wasp shows why Henry Pym went insane:

Iron Man asks the stupid question, and Kang gives the obvious answer:

Dude, if he's named "The Conqueror," he's not here for peace.

The Avengers attack, but Kang bumfuzzles even Thor...


But wait...the day is saved!!

An undersecretary from the Defense Department!! An undersecretary from the Defense Department!! Oh, my!! Shouldn't we have saved someone so powerful for Galactus?!?

Mr. Undersecretary gets Kang to reveal his origins...

BAM!! There it is...the birth of continuity.

Kang is not only a previous villain who has morphed into a new incarnation. Kang is a villain from another Marvel mag who has morphed into someone new!! We've even got a footnote referencing Fantastic Four Annual #2--which was just out that month!!

It's tough for modern readers to understand how radical this was at the time. Cameos aside, events from one comic almost never carried over in to other mags. Villains almost never crossed over to other heroes books (except for Joker/Luthor team-ups).

Yet here is Stan, asking you to accept events from the Fantastic Four as binding on the Avengers. Here is Stan, assuming that you might want to read these other referenced stories, giving you footnotes to those issues. Suddenly, here is Stan saying this really is a shared universe, and if you read other of our comics, you'll be rewarded.

Yeah, I'm way overhyping the significance here, as other comics had done some of this before. But for my purposes, I chose to view this as kind of a watershed moment, the point at which events in one title could have serious repercussions for another. Comics weren't just isolated sitcom episodes anymore...

Anyway, back to Kang's origin:

Fact: this next panel obviously inspired Idiocracy:


Very stable and not-at-all-crazy Hank Pym has heard enough, and decides to crack Kang open like a crayfish:


Oops. Next lesson: never piss off Thor:


Or Captain America:

Dogpile!!

D'oh!!

Time...for...Shatner...acting:

Kang's demands?

Dear Kang,
You left the 40th century because the men were more primitive and presented you no challenge. Yet you go to the 20th century, were you constantly tell the people how stupid they are, and boast how much more powerful your weapons are...and you expect them to immediately surrender. Where's the challenge?!? According to your rantings, the 40th century was much more of a challenge...
Love, snell.

Well, surely, the undersecretary from the Defense Department can resolve this...

Too big a decision for the undersecretary from the Department of Defense?!?!? That's mind-boggling!!

After the obligatory ethnically-stereotyped UN meeting...

...Rick Jones and the Teen Brigade decide to prove that Kang is a complete dumbass with the old "we want to work for you" ruse.

Rick's idea of a rescue: go around Kang's ship randomly pressing buttons.

Hey, what do you know? It worked!!

Meanwhile, the Wasp and allies have gone to fetch a cool gun.

A special Slay Monstrobot moment: The Very First Geico Commercial!!

Again, Kang, if these guys are no challenge, what's the deal?

Fact: Thor is much stronger than a caveman.


Which allows Giant-Man to get a shot off...


Yes, the key to beating Kang was to mess up his wardrobe!!

Sadly, he escapes...


Oh yes. We'll see him. Again. And again. And again. And again...ad infinitum.

On the letters page, David Calise of Chester, Pennsylvania, is really ticked off at Rick Jones:

Hung from tree? Now, if you had done that, Earth would have perished in the Kree/Skrull war, David. You have to look at these things long term...

ELSEWHERE IN THE MARVEL UNIVERSE:

Hard to believe that Giant-Man and the Wasp had their own long-running series, but it's true. Of course, it's also interesting to note that, technically, none of the Avengers at this point had their "own" books: Giant-Man and Wasp were a co-feature in Tales to Astonish; Iron Man was a co-feature in Tales of Suspense; Thor was appearing in Journey Into Mystery (although that was merely a fiction for the U.S. Postal Service, as the mag was now Thor wall to wall); and Cap didn't even have a series (although in two months he would start sharing TOS with Iron Man).

Tales to Astonish #59 saw the Hulk return, and this was the set-up for his run co-starring in TTA. Sadly, because this story technically wasn't part of his own series yet, GITCorp doesn't include this issue on the DVD-Rom set. Grrr.....