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Marvel Comics In The 1980s

An Issue by Issue Field Guide to a Pop Culture Phenomenon

Written by Pierre Comtois Edited by John Morrow Designed by Richard J. Fowlks Proofreading by Scott Peters and Rob Smentek

TwoMorrows Publishing 10407 Bedfordtown Drive Raleigh, North Carolina 27614 www.twomorrows.com • e-mail: store@twomorrows.com © 2014 Pierre Comtois and TwoMorrows Publishing First Printing • December 2014 • Printed in the USA Softcover ISBN: 978-1-60549-059-5

The views expressed in this book are solely those of the author, and do not necessarily relect those of TwoMorrows Publishing or its employees. Also available: Marvel Comics in the 1960s and Marvel Comics in the 1970s.

Dedication

Dedicated to those last editors, writers, artists, inkers, colorists, and letterers who worked to hold up the Marvel Comics standard even as the darkness descended.

Mar vel Comics in the 1980s

Contents Introduction

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

The Dark Ages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Creator Spotlights: Roy Thomas

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Gene Colan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Stan Lee

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

Mike Zeck . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 Herb Trimpe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110 John Buscema

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117

Don Heck . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .223

Key Marvel Moments: The New Universe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169 The Wedding of Spidey and Mary Jane . . . . . . . . . . . . .187

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Introduction

n the two previous volumes of this series, Marvel Comics in the 1960s and Marvel Comics in the 1970s, the development of the company was traced through four successive phases: the Early Years, the Years of Consolidation, the Grandiose Years, and the Twilight Years with the latter phase assumed to have concluded at the end of the 1970s. That ending however, was always considered somewhat arbitrary as the Twilight Years, like the Grandiose Years before them, did not conclude with an easily identified marker, let alone the too convenient year of 1970. There was a lengthy petering-out period extending through the following decade with some top-flight comics intermingling with a good many more of lesser quality until the former eventually dwindled away. By the end of the 1980s then, it was easier to tell that the Twilight Years as a definitive phase was coming to an end, and another beginning. For the purposes of this volume that next phase has been designated as the “Dark Ages,” a period extending to the present where the content of comics was geared more to the adult reader than readers of every age and where creators and Marvel editorial seemed determined to squander the heritage bequeathed them by their peers in earlier phases. Also marking the 1980s or the later Twilight Years, was the start of Marvel’s becoming a corporate football. It all began in 1968 when Magazine Management, owned by Marvel’s founder Martin Goodman, was sold to Perfect Film & Chemical Corp. Renaming itself Cadence Industries, Perfect Film then sold its Marvel Entertainment Group to New World Pictures in 1986. Three years later, New World sold Marvel to McAndrews & Forbes owned by Ron Perelman who then steered Marvel Entertainment into bankruptcy 6

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and a tangle of corporate infighting that ultimately resulted in Marvel being bought by the Walt Disney Company in 2009. While all that was going on, the Marvel bullpen was also in flux, running through a succession of editors-inchief until finally settling on Jim Shooter, who took the job in 1978. At the time, Marvel’s offices were in turmoil with little editorial leadership. Books shipped late, reprints were used when deadlines were missed, and a maze of editors and editor/writers led to confusion that was often reflected in sloppy or selfindulgent scripting. Shooter managed to sort out the mess but at the cost of alienating many employees and freelancers. As the 1980s advanced, more and more of

Jim Shooter in the bullpen. His success at course-correcting the editorial office was followed by an exodus of talent that invigorated the competition.

them would quit Marvel for the competition with the result that a moribund DC became resurgent and once again began to rival Marvel in sales and the quality of its product. Meanwhile, Shooter fought with the company’s corporate bosses for better working conditions for employees, such as sharing in royalties and ownership of characters published under a separate imprint than Marvel Comics. But despite his efforts, Shooter eventually found himself with few friends both in the bullpen and in the corporate offices and he was forced out in 1987. He was succeeded by his deputy, Tom DeFalco. More insidiously, a streak of darkness began to infiltrate itself into the comics themselves. Writers like Frank Miller and even Shooter himself

This illustration of a family friendly Marvel Comics by artist Michael Golden belies the creeping darkness and negativity that infiltrated many of the company’s titles in the 1980s. The infection would spread in the following decade until, in the new century, little would remain that anyone who had once loved comics would recognize.

infused characters, such as Daredevil and Star Brand, with broad strains of cynicism, negativity, and “mature” themes that were completely out of keeping with the spirit of the Comics Code Authority, which began to lose ground as the decade progressed. As creators began to write more for each other than for their readers, unit sales of individual comics slipped; at first slowly, then more precipitously, following a “bubble” that grew in the late 1980s until bursting later in the 1990s. The aftermath would not be a pretty sight, leaving behind a moonscape of anemic sales and comics the general public just had no interest in reading. But there was no hint of that as the 1980s began. At that time, Stan Lee and the great artists who had propelled Marvel’s success in the 1960s were mostly gone from the scene and many of their 1970s acolytes, the fans turned pros, had either moved on to a growing independent market or defected to DC. Although there remained a few holdouts from the past, such as Roy Thomas, John and Sal Buscema and Herb Trimpe (and later Steve Ditko), they were replaced by new faces such as writers Roger Stern, Bill Mantlo, and Chris Claremont, and a pair of writer/artists who would come to dominate the later Twilight Years, each attracting their share of fans and casting their influence over two distinctive wings of up-andcomers. First on the scene was John Byrne, who broke in with a story in Giant-Size Dracula #5 (1975). Byrne’s slick, detailed, exciting, perfect-for-super-heroes art style quickly caught the attention of readers as he moved from title to title until finally settling on the X-Men in 1977 just as that book was taking off on its rise to pop culture icon. Byrne’s star rose with that of the X-Men (to mix a Introduction

robot that took the place of the Human Torch in the 1978 FF cartoon show, is finally destroyed in this issue! It’s true! Early on Byrne and writer Marv Wolfman consternated fans by including the character in the former’s earlier run on the title. That was bad enough, but when Byrne brought the robot back for his solo run as writer/artist, it was too much. That said, in H.E.R.B.I.E.’s role as babysitter for Franklin Richards, Byrne seemed to have found the perfect solution for keeping it around. H.E.R.B.I.E. however, met its end this issue when its circuits were overloaded after a burst of energy turned Franklin into an adult. Unfortunately, one of the things that would make the Dark Age a little darker would be the return of H.E.R.B.I.E.....about which the less said the better!

Wolverine Limited Series #1 John Byrne effectively lampooned celebrity interviewer Barbara Walters in FF #245 as Sue Storm’s values were called into question by “Barbara Walker” who represented the era’s brand of increasingly intolerant feminism.

although much of it had the ring of someone who was trying too hard to join the liberal club.) Anyway, as this issue moves along, Sue returns to a strangely quiet Baxter Building (in the process of being rebuilt into one of the most unique architectural designs ever seen in comics...and one guaranteed to give headaches to any artist who took over the strip after Byrne left). There, she finds her teammates unconscious with a long-haired galoot with super powers raging in their headquarters. The requisite action follows until Sue realizes that the guy is her own son, a grown up Franklin Richards! It seemed that readers’ speculations had finally been answered: Franklin would have super powers at some point. It was disappointing news in a way, as a normal member of the FF family would have offered much potential for character development and personal conflict in the future. Alas, it was not to be! Meanwhile, before reverting himself back into a child, Franklin attempts to cure the Thing and turn him back to human form permanently but for some reason fails (instead, the Thing is transformed from his original slagged rock look that Byrne had reinstituted in an earlier issue, to his later, more famous plated rock look). In the final few panels of the issue, Reed (and thus Byrne) finally explains why all the attempts to cure the Thing failed in the past: because subconsciously fearing that it’s the Thing that girlfriend Alicia really digs and not the bland Ben Grimm, he himself did not want to be cured! Fun Fact: H.E.R.B.I.E. (Humanoid Experimental Robot, B-type, Integrated Electronics), the much reviled 60

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“I’m Wolverine” Chris Claremont (script); Frank Miller (pencils); Josef Rubinstein (inks) Chalk it up as one of the biggest disappointments of the Twilight Years. On the face of it, the math looked good: take the hottest character in the Marvel stable, the writer of the most popular comic book on the market teamed up with the most exciting rising star on the art scene, and the total should have added up to the coolest project this side of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby coming together again to do an original Silver Surfer graphic novel...except we know how that turned out! The format was to be one of Marvel’s earliest attempts at the limited series concept and it was going to star Wolverine, the breakout character from the wildly popular X-Men book. Further guaranteeing that the feature would be one of the most eagerly awaited series of all time was the fact that it would be scripted by X-Men scribe Chris Claremont and drawn by Daredevil guiding genius Frank Miller. How could a combination like that fail? Unfortunately, the reality is that it did, as both men came to the project not with their strengths but with their weaknesses. What resulted was a story out of character for Wolverine and uninteresting to boot. Over the years since his throwaway appearance in Incredible Hulk #181, the character of Wolverine had been built up, slowly at first under Claremont and Cockrum on the X-Men where his personality was largely confined to smoking cigars, calling people “bub,” and being short (resulting in a compensatory feistiness). It wasn’t until artist John Byrne replaced Cockrum that the cool factor really began to attach itself to Wolverine. Due in no small measure to Byrne’s more dynamic art style, the character suddenly became more vicious than feisty with hints, not only of representing real danger to his opponents, but of a background dealing with government experimentation,

action shifts to Japan where our hero has gone in search of the missing woman. Mariko, as it turns out, has since married which doesn’t please Wolverine. He ends up fighting her father and is surprisingly, defeated and dumped in an alley. There, he’s saved from local thugs by a mysterious woman who also hints of a past relationship between them... ho hum. What makes the whole thing even more dreary is Claremont’s

the Canadian secret service, a mutant healing factor that might have extended his lifespan to over a 100 years, and even a kinship with another similarly vicious villain named Sabretooth (which Byrne suggested might be his father!) A controversial scene in X-Men #115 that suggested Wolverine was not bound by the super-hero code against killing, cemented his reputation for coolness among fans. Thus, all the ingredients were in place for a Wolverine solo outing that many hoped would address his tantalizing backstory. But it was not to be. First, Byrne was to be nowhere in sight having by that time left the X-Men for the Fantastic Four, and second, Claremont chose to ignore ideas championed by hix ex-partner, instead creating for Wolverine a virtually unsuspected history in Japan. Add to that, a growing fascination by Miller for all things Japanese martial arts and in particular those of samurai, senseis, and shoguns, and what eager fans ended up with was four issues of Wolverine fighting hordes of sword-wielding ninjas while fending off the specter of past romantic encounters. Where was the secret Canadian project that gave him his adamantium skeleton? Where was the showdown with his “father,” Sabretooth? Where was the backstory between himself and Alpha Flight? Where was the origin of his mutant ability to heal quickly? None of it was present in Wolverine Limited Series #1 (Sept. 1982), instead fans got cliched closeups of the “feisty” Wolverine on the cover and again on the opening splash page along with rather heavy-handed metaphor for his bestial nature as he pits his fighting skills against a grizzly bear. A nice half-page portrait of Mariko Yashida, Wolverine’s lost love, dominates page 8 before the

The worst of both worlds? The Wolverine Limited Series included both writer Chris Claremont’s by now overly familiar literary tropes as well as artist Frank Miller’s already tiresome infatuation with ninjas and the martial arts in general.

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shaped panel showing our hero crashing through a busy supermarket. Now that’s the way to get a comic book started! Meanwhile, Johnny Storm is showing friend Sharon around his cockroach-infested loft. Then, just as the plain-looking girl puts the moves on him, that old FF signal lights up the sky...just in the nick of time! Then, even as the Torch speeds to the Thing’s rescue, the Invisible Girl is intercepted on her way home by Dr. Doom, whose flying craft is hidden in a cloud bank over the city. What follows is a brief exchange that prefigures Byrne’s slow build up of the Invisible Girl’s powers, culminating down the road with a symbolic name change to the “Invisible Woman.” “Do I have to come after you?” Sue threatens Doom. “Do I have to take this whole ship apart to find you?” “I applaud you Susan Richards,” replies the villain. “You have become a true warrior in your own right!” It was Byrne’s response to former partner Chris Claremont’s reputation in the small pond of comics fandom for being a “women’s writer” due to such up-powered female characters as Storm, Phoenix, the White Queen, Colleen Wing, and even Ms Marvel. Ironically, though, it would be Byrne who would end up portraying more believable empowered women whose characters remained largely feminine and genuine while those of Claremont’s were contrived. But back at the supermarket, the battle rages on even as, in space, the Silver Surfer, sensing the use of cosmic power like his own, decides to check things out for himself...

Fantastic Four #260

“When Titans Clash” John Byrne (script/pencils/inks) Beneath a rather nicely composed cover by Byrne (evocatively colored with a light green background contrasting nicely against the FF’s flashy blue and white uniforms), it’s action all the way in Fantastic Four #260 (Nov. 1983). The real action starts on page 4 as the Thing, Torch, and Invisible Girl face off with a cosmically powered Terrax nee Tyros. Convinced that they can’t defeat Tyros by themselves, Sue sends a signal for Mr. Fantastic, not realizing that he’d been kidnapped a couple issues before! Meanwhile, Dr. Doom is waiting in the wings for Reed’s arrival too. But (dare we say it?) doomed to disappointment, he takes the field himself to stop Tyros from killing the other members of the FF. Seems Doom wants a complete set or none at all and steps in to stop the former herald of Galactus but ends up fused in his armor even as a deus ex machina in the form of the big G’s other former herald makes the scene! Grabbing Tyros by the beard (!), the Silver Surfer hauls him off and throws him aside like a sack of potatoes. Meanwhile, Doom gets out of his predicament 84

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In the real world, space travel was hardly less dangerous than in the comics as the Challenger disaster of 1986 proved. Riding the spaceways like the Silver Surfer did would have to wait until the shuttle program was restarted in 1988.

by transferring his mind to that of a bystander’s (where readers are treated to another big time Marvel guest-star crossover as Aunt May scolds a punk rocktype dropout). Then everybody’s bacon is saved when Tyros self-destructs thanks to a built-in flaw in the cosmic power given him by Doom. And what of the not so good doctor? Seems he was blown to smithereens along with Tyros with only his mask remaining! “The greatest evil the world has ever known is...dead!” declares Sue. But if anyone really believed that, there was a bridge in Brooklyn they could buy! And even though everyone breathes a sigh of relief over the fate of Dr. Doom, one thing still nags at Sue: Mr. Fantastic never responded to her emergency signal. What happened to him? The amazing answer to that question would have to wait till the following issue (and a side trip for the Invisible Girl to Alpha Flight #4) before readers were treated to one of the greatest comic stories of the late Twilight Years!

The Mighty Thor #337 “Doom!” Walter Simonson (script/pencils); John Workman (letters) It’s hard to believe now that so many years have passed since the excitement that greeted artist Walt Simonson’s arrival on Thor. It was a testament perhaps to how moribund the book had become since the Grandiose Years when Stan Lee and Jack Kirby guided its destiny (and to a lesser extent when John Buscema took over the art after Kirby left Marvel for DC) that

carte blanche,” said Simonson in an interview.) Of course that approach had been done before, most notably in a short run by Roy Thomas, John Buscema, and Tom Palmer, but enough water had gone under the bridge since those issues for readers to have forgotten all about them. In any case, Simonson tries it again here and by all accounts did it successfully as his run on the strip proved. (Simonson stayed on the book quite a longtime extending to issue #382, by which time he’d handed over the penciling

even a second- or third-rank artistic talent like Simonson could make such a big splash. (Not in the same ranks as Frank Miller or John Byrne, Simonson’s peers were more like Gene Day or Mike Zeck). Oh, Simonson had had his moments, but they were rare with very little to show since. (His early work with Archie Goodwin on DC’s Manhunter showed promise and his later efforts on Marvel’s licensed Battlestar Galactica property were even better, although that time, most of the credit might have been due to inker Klaus Janson). The problem was due to the artist’s style, which mostly appeared half finished as though he was satisfied with laying out his books with partial pencils and then in the inking stage, never added anything else to them. This final, unfinished look would be exacerbated over much of his career when he teamed with inkers like Bob Wiacek who tended to play up his weaknesses (as opposed to strong inkers like Janson who could make even Simonson’s pencils something to behold) or, worse yet, when he inked himself as he does here in Mighty Thor #337 (Nov. 1983). The secret of Simonson’s popularity among some fans was likely due to his layouts that were often bold if somewhat undermined by weak penciling. (“When he first started out, his work was extremely meticulous and very slow,” said editor Len Wein in an interview. “By the time he was doing Thor, he could pencil the entire book in four days.”) That approach is much in evidence this issue as Simonson (who both writes and pencils) attempts to take the Thor strip back to its basics in the Norse myths. (“Basically, I had

Thor #337, page 3: Artist Walt Simonson at his most pretentious; but simple page layouts like this somehow caused fans’ hearts to pitter-pat and their blood to pulse wildly.

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ever since. Like Rom, Mantlo found himself trapped in a situation that appeared to have no solution. But hopefully, like the hero upon which he lavished so much effort, his spirit may yet remain free. Free to roam the infinite byways of time and space until finally, some day, finding peace at last.

Fantastic Four #278

“True Lies” John Byrne (script/pencils); Jerry Ordway (inks) All good things must end and so, eventually, did Byrne’s run on the FF. With the high-water mark having been reached with the trial of Galactus, the book began on the down slope soon after with the first visible sign being Byrne’s forfeiture of the inking chores, handing them off to the likes of Jerry Ordway who does a serviceable job here on Fantastic Four #278 (May 1985). Serviceable in that, though good, the inker seemed to be reluctant to spot blacks. Instead, he relied more on cross hatching and feathering, preferring a lighter touch on the pencils that gave the art an overall look of being washed out. This may have been due to Byrne himself easing back on the pencils and providing the inker with little to work with in terms of visionary direction. Indeed, panels have the look of being mostly Ordway and less of Byrne. This was also the period when Byrne’s take on the strip veered most wildly from the Lee/Kirby source material he originally drew inspiration from, with dire results. In this issue for instance, Victor von Doom is declared dead and a new Dr. Doom replaces him, based on the mind of the child he rescued back in issue #247. Meanwhile, the long-standing relationship between the Thing and Alicia Masters has been sundered, the She-Hulk is still on the team, and the Invisible Woman is about to be remade into a feminist nightmare. Not good. By the time it all came to an end with issue #295, many readers who’d first rejoiced at Byrne’s advent on the strip, would breathe a sigh of relief that he was leaving. And whatever the reason, whether rumored editorial interference or as Byrne himself once said of being burned out on the strip (which would not be hard to believe by the time the end came), none of it could take away from the triumph of those first couple of years’-worth of stories Fantastic Four #278, page 1: A good example of how John Byrne’s pencils (like those of Kirby’s before him) were strong enough to survive under most any inker. Not that Jerry Ordway does a bad job here, but his reluctance to spot blacks leaves the art too open and airy, lacking weight and restricting it to a twodimensional frame; a fate this striking image of Dr. Doom cries out to avoid.

Jerry Ordway (left) began his career as a penciler for DC with, among other things, Roy Thomas’ All Star Squadron before moonlighting at Marvel to ink John Byrne on the FF. He traveled back to DC in the 1990s and was picked to write and draw a Captain Marvel graphic novel that was followed by the launch of a regular series also masterminded by Ordway.

when the writer/artist singlehandedly restored a flagship title back to vibrancy and demonstrated that any book, no matter how long-running, could be revitalized by the simple expedient of going back to the Lee/Kirby/Ditko/Heck toolbox and pulling out whatever was needed to do the job.

Fantastic Four #279 “Crack of Doom!” John Byrne (script/pencils); Jerry Ordway (inks) The slide downward continues in Fantastic Four #279 (June 1985) as Ordway again inks over Byrne’s pencils and a revived Dr. Doom destroys the Baxter Building. But even as the energy of his FF run began to ebb, Byrne could still throw some interesting curveballs at the reader, including the revelation here that Doom isn’t back after all, but he turns out to be the child Kristoff whose life he saved and had since been raising in his castle. Seems Doom’s robots, acting on pre-programmed instructions, have instilled their master’s memories in Kristoff, who now believes he really is Doom and thirsts for the FF’s blood! Then, on top of that, with the Baxter Building gone, a new tower must be built in its place, and here Byrne would outdo himself in upcoming issues, designing a truly unique headquarters skyscraper topped with a fourway numeral four that must have been a nightmare for future artists to draw! It would prove to be Byrne’s final legacy for his successors on the strip as fandom The Dark Ages

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Avengers #286 “The Fix is On!” Roger Stern (plot); Ralph Macchio (script); John Buscema (breakdowns); Tom Palmer (finished art) The Stern/Buscema/Palmer Avengers run kept the spirit of previous phases alive almost to the end of the late Twilight Years when the era of grim and gritty would become the new norm chasing out every other

than Spider-Man. Later, after Spidey is free again, Kraven declares himself the winner in their contest and shoots himself by the simple expedient of placing a rifle under his chin and pulling the trigger. Again, in case readers didn’t get it, the blood-spattered corpse is shown lying in a prepared coffin. Nice! (And for nitpickers, yes, this issue, the fifth chapter in the arc, sports the Comics Code Authority stamp on the cover!) A bone is thrown to traditionalists who still needed characterization with their comics stories with a few brief scenes of Mary Jane worried about new husband Peter Parker, who is out on the prowl. (Mary Jane gets to star in such exciting scenes as chasing a rat in her apartment and running from some unwanted admirers). Clearly, with little else to recommend them, the main point of these six issues is exploitation of the story’s darker elements: being buried alive, cannibalism, potential rape, and finally suicide. Adding to the shallowness of it all, DeMatteis anticipates one of the major faults with comics of the Dark Ages when he subordinates words to pictures. That is, whole pages fly by with hardly a dozen words of text or dialogue and when words do appear, they’re minimal. In coming years, such bare bones storytelling would convince many that writers weren’t necessary to good comics, that artists alone could do it all. It was a belief that would lead to the highest percentage of unreadable, disposable junk ever cranked out by the comics industry. And here, in Amazing Spider-Man #294 (Nov. 1987), DeMatteis was leading the way. Fun Fact: Although DeMatteis never did produce much in the way of comics that was interesting, he did manage to find his niche back at DC when he teamed with writer/artist Keith Giffen for a humorous and quite successful revamp of the Justice League.

Losing the kids: Artist Mike Zeck’s intense cover for Amazing Spider-Man #286 was just the sort of family unfriendly look that fans (whose median age was getting older) were looking for in the late Twilight Years.

adjective for his first name!) When the dust clears, the android is knocked out, Marina (the aquatic alien former member of Alpha Flight whom somebody had the bright idea of marrying off to Subby in a quickie wedding) is captured, and Dr. Druid is showing disturbing signs of a power grab from team leader Captain Marvel. And to top it all off,

kind of reader (what few of them were left by that time) leaving room only for the arrested but aging adolescent who thrived on senseless action; as few words to read as possible; and big, brash illustrations with busty babes to match. Their desires would lead comics deeper and deeper into a Dark Age from which, even at this writing, it has yet to emerge. But for now, readers could savor the last golden days of a classic run whose end was almost in sight. The beginning of the end starts in Avengers #286 (Dec 1987) with the start of Roger Stern’s final story arc, one that would feature the hallmarks of his approach to writing Marvel comics: good character interaction, making use of some of the thousands of characters that the Marvel Universe had lying around in abundance, and telling a story deriving from past Marvel history. More to the point: this issue brings back the Awesome Android that made its first appearance way, way back in FF #15 and the Fixer who first showed up in Strange Tales #142! As the story unfolds in upcoming issues, those two stalwarts would be joined by Mentallo, the Super Adaptoid, and the Sentinel (we won’t count Machine Man because the less said about someone with a worse moniker than Paste Pot Pete, the better!) Anyway, our story opens with the Fixer ’s mysterious plan to “triumph over his human enemies...” Huh? What does he mean by that? The answer of course, will come in upcoming issues. Meanwhile, the Avengers find themselves drawn to the midwest where they encounter a revived Awesome Android (you gotta love a bad guy with an

Avengers #286, page 2: The Heavy Metal arc would be the last in writer Roger Stern’s long string of triumphs on the Avengers. but even though scripter Ralph Macchio took over on this ish, there was no sign that Stern would have lost steam if he had stayed with the title. Note the empty space at the top of the page; a colored image of Druid’s face sans holding lines would be placed there on publication.

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