![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
icon_uk posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
scans_dailyWell, I'll say one thing for the Identity Crisis posts, it's making me want to post more NON Identity Crisis stuff.
"I'll bet the first comic I lay hands on in the cathedral-like vault which is my comic collection (ahem!) is more fun that that!" and by a weird coincidence (and it really was) the first comic I laid my hands on was actually one of the very very first American comics I ever bought with my own pocket money.
So from the dim and distant past of 1979... I bring you a story involving Ben Grimm taking a shower, a hero wearing a protagonist over his crotch, gratuitious authorial inserts and a shapeshifting alien with a low boredom threshold and a very short attention span.
Yup! It's the Thing and the Impossible Man in....
Happiness is a Warm Alien!
(Story by Mark Gruenwald and Raplh Macchio, art by George Perez)
We open with Ben preparing to go to a major event, the opening night of his long time girlfriend Alicia Master's first major art show. He's a little stressed about it (On Alicia's behalf, he REALLY wants it to be a big success for her) and, after Reed goads him into letting off some steam with a little harmless destruction of training equipment, he feels like a nice relaxing shower is a good place to start;
Ben declines, but after some wheedling Impy manages to talk his way into joining Ben for the evening, but since he doesn't have a ticket, he'll go in a shape that will fit right in, a top hat!
Ben insists he stays in the shape of a hat for the whole evening, which A) you KNOW isn't going to last and B) has that wording which allows a little more leeway than Ben probably intended....
Impy is a little confused by Alicia not noticing his antics, unaware that she is completely blind, but since there is so much about human nature he doesn't understand he doesn't comment on it.
Ben and Alicia head on to the opening, taking a turn down Ben's least favourite street in the Marvel Universe.... Yup, Yancy Street!
:)
They arrive at the show, which I wish I could show, but it's a double page spread and this is a 17 page story... Alicia's theme for the show appears to be "Homicidal threats my Boyfriend has beaten the shit out of" with statues of Doctor Doom, Sandman, Diablo, Blastaar (the living Bomb-Burst), the Wizard and even Ultron (not sure the FF had fought him at this point, but there might have been a crossover, Ultron got around).
Alicia's works are an instant hit with the critics and the art crowd (Ben's rather formal attire less so), who are praising her as "the First Lady of the neo-realistic movement in modern sculpture" and that her "genre of the superhuman misanthropy and megalomania is of particular importance to our egocentric society" which Alicia is pretty sure is a compliment....
There are some other creative folks around... too... including someone named George who is sketching...
The chef is part of the villainous plot of the issue which I am, with regret, trimming rather mercilessly.
Three of the catering crew are criminals, a trio who had first appeared way, way, waaaaay back in Fantastic Four #23 in 1964, as the Terrible Trio (no less) agents of Doctor Doom for a time, consisting of "Handsome" Harry, a smooth talking charismatic conman with enhanced hearing (thanks to Doom), "Bull" Brogan, the muscle of the team (increased to about 5 ton level by Doom), and Yogi Dakor, a mystic who started out being fireproof (which Doom enhanced so he could handle the Human Torch) and who has gained new powers with each appearance, in this case, a little variation on astral projection.
But whilst he starts a bit of a chant, I return to another little moment I wanted to include as there's another addition to the guest list.
I don't know how irredeemably creepy/evil the Puppet Masters is these days, but it's nice to be reminded that back in the day, he may have been a villain, but he DID love his step-daughter and want what was best for her.
And this is where I have to trim the inevitable fight scene. Yogi Dakor's power has shifted his and his allies minds inside three of the statues (Blaastar, Doom and Diablo), which they can now animate and move as if they were their own bodies.
There's a nice bit where Ben wonders who might be behind the attack (He hadn't recognised the Trio earlier, and they're hidden themselves behind the bases of the statues so they're not out in the open (and are zoned out in any case) and works through quite a list... Molecule Man (no, he'd animate the whole room), Diablo? No, not his style... and Puppet Master swears it's not him as he would never EVER do anything to ruin Alicia's big night.
Also, Ben REALLY doesn't want to damage any of Alicia's sculptures, so is prepared to let himself be pummelled, until Alcia realises what he's doing and tells him to forget about her feelings and that she's rather see all her statues shattered than risk him being harmed (Awww... sweet!) So Ben promptly does, and Harry and Brogan are shocked back into their unconscious bodies when their statues are smashed into each other with the Thing's full strength.
"Diablo" grabs Alicia to use as a hostage, and Ben instantly surrenders.
Impy, meanwhile, has noticed that there's one person missing all the excitement, the chap standing behind the Diablo statue who seems to be in some sort of a trance, so he helpfully turns into a water balloon to get his attention. The shock breaks Dakor's concentration and the statue returns to normal as Dakor's mind retursn to his own body. Ben, finally recognising Dakor, realises what's been going on (another idiot on a revenge trip) knocks him unconscious.
Off to one side, Impy is pondering... which isn't always a good thing. "Love" is something humans seem to value, but he doesn't understand himself. It appears to be some sort of shared happiness, though it's more complicated. Ben would rather let himself be hurt than damage something of Alicia's. And at the same time Alicia would rather see her work destroyed than Ben come to harm...
That's both very sweet, and just plain WEIRD.... I'm not even sure what that counts as... prokaryotic fission is asexual reproduction, but he's producing a she, not another he (not that those terms automatically mean what they might do to humans) and... Ah well, I'm an old softie at heart, and what does it really matter, he's produced an independtly minded she, and they seem happy, and that's more than many people get...
And so we leave our heroes.... and our villains too, who apparently have made another appearance since then, in the "Penance" miniseries in 2007, where they show up as Latverian agents of some sort, and Penance basically defeats them all and that's that.
"I'll bet the first comic I lay hands on in the cathedral-like vault which is my comic collection (ahem!) is more fun that that!" and by a weird coincidence (and it really was) the first comic I laid my hands on was actually one of the very very first American comics I ever bought with my own pocket money.
So from the dim and distant past of 1979... I bring you a story involving Ben Grimm taking a shower, a hero wearing a protagonist over his crotch, gratuitious authorial inserts and a shapeshifting alien with a low boredom threshold and a very short attention span.
Yup! It's the Thing and the Impossible Man in....
Happiness is a Warm Alien!
(Story by Mark Gruenwald and Raplh Macchio, art by George Perez)
We open with Ben preparing to go to a major event, the opening night of his long time girlfriend Alicia Master's first major art show. He's a little stressed about it (On Alicia's behalf, he REALLY wants it to be a big success for her) and, after Reed goads him into letting off some steam with a little harmless destruction of training equipment, he feels like a nice relaxing shower is a good place to start;
Ben declines, but after some wheedling Impy manages to talk his way into joining Ben for the evening, but since he doesn't have a ticket, he'll go in a shape that will fit right in, a top hat!
Ben insists he stays in the shape of a hat for the whole evening, which A) you KNOW isn't going to last and B) has that wording which allows a little more leeway than Ben probably intended....
Impy is a little confused by Alicia not noticing his antics, unaware that she is completely blind, but since there is so much about human nature he doesn't understand he doesn't comment on it.
Ben and Alicia head on to the opening, taking a turn down Ben's least favourite street in the Marvel Universe.... Yup, Yancy Street!
:)
They arrive at the show, which I wish I could show, but it's a double page spread and this is a 17 page story... Alicia's theme for the show appears to be "Homicidal threats my Boyfriend has beaten the shit out of" with statues of Doctor Doom, Sandman, Diablo, Blastaar (the living Bomb-Burst), the Wizard and even Ultron (not sure the FF had fought him at this point, but there might have been a crossover, Ultron got around).
Alicia's works are an instant hit with the critics and the art crowd (Ben's rather formal attire less so), who are praising her as "the First Lady of the neo-realistic movement in modern sculpture" and that her "genre of the superhuman misanthropy and megalomania is of particular importance to our egocentric society" which Alicia is pretty sure is a compliment....
There are some other creative folks around... too... including someone named George who is sketching...
The chef is part of the villainous plot of the issue which I am, with regret, trimming rather mercilessly.
Three of the catering crew are criminals, a trio who had first appeared way, way, waaaaay back in Fantastic Four #23 in 1964, as the Terrible Trio (no less) agents of Doctor Doom for a time, consisting of "Handsome" Harry, a smooth talking charismatic conman with enhanced hearing (thanks to Doom), "Bull" Brogan, the muscle of the team (increased to about 5 ton level by Doom), and Yogi Dakor, a mystic who started out being fireproof (which Doom enhanced so he could handle the Human Torch) and who has gained new powers with each appearance, in this case, a little variation on astral projection.
But whilst he starts a bit of a chant, I return to another little moment I wanted to include as there's another addition to the guest list.
I don't know how irredeemably creepy/evil the Puppet Masters is these days, but it's nice to be reminded that back in the day, he may have been a villain, but he DID love his step-daughter and want what was best for her.
And this is where I have to trim the inevitable fight scene. Yogi Dakor's power has shifted his and his allies minds inside three of the statues (Blaastar, Doom and Diablo), which they can now animate and move as if they were their own bodies.
There's a nice bit where Ben wonders who might be behind the attack (He hadn't recognised the Trio earlier, and they're hidden themselves behind the bases of the statues so they're not out in the open (and are zoned out in any case) and works through quite a list... Molecule Man (no, he'd animate the whole room), Diablo? No, not his style... and Puppet Master swears it's not him as he would never EVER do anything to ruin Alicia's big night.
Also, Ben REALLY doesn't want to damage any of Alicia's sculptures, so is prepared to let himself be pummelled, until Alcia realises what he's doing and tells him to forget about her feelings and that she's rather see all her statues shattered than risk him being harmed (Awww... sweet!) So Ben promptly does, and Harry and Brogan are shocked back into their unconscious bodies when their statues are smashed into each other with the Thing's full strength.
"Diablo" grabs Alicia to use as a hostage, and Ben instantly surrenders.
Impy, meanwhile, has noticed that there's one person missing all the excitement, the chap standing behind the Diablo statue who seems to be in some sort of a trance, so he helpfully turns into a water balloon to get his attention. The shock breaks Dakor's concentration and the statue returns to normal as Dakor's mind retursn to his own body. Ben, finally recognising Dakor, realises what's been going on (another idiot on a revenge trip) knocks him unconscious.
Off to one side, Impy is pondering... which isn't always a good thing. "Love" is something humans seem to value, but he doesn't understand himself. It appears to be some sort of shared happiness, though it's more complicated. Ben would rather let himself be hurt than damage something of Alicia's. And at the same time Alicia would rather see her work destroyed than Ben come to harm...
That's both very sweet, and just plain WEIRD.... I'm not even sure what that counts as... prokaryotic fission is asexual reproduction, but he's producing a she, not another he (not that those terms automatically mean what they might do to humans) and... Ah well, I'm an old softie at heart, and what does it really matter, he's produced an independtly minded she, and they seem happy, and that's more than many people get...
And so we leave our heroes.... and our villains too, who apparently have made another appearance since then, in the "Penance" miniseries in 2007, where they show up as Latverian agents of some sort, and Penance basically defeats them all and that's that.
no subject
Date: 2015-02-04 02:20 am (UTC)Until X-Men Annual (#5 I believe it was) where the Impossible Man finds out that having a family brings its own problems... So he (inadvertently) shares the misery.
no subject
Date: 2015-02-04 03:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-02-04 05:11 am (UTC)Which could be an interesting story, come to think of it. Imagine the Impossible Refugees coming to your world.
Anyway, a quick wiki check indicates that eating the Poppupians gave Galactus life-threatening indigestion. So there's that.
And the story looks like great fun.
no subject
Date: 2015-02-04 05:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-02-04 03:58 pm (UTC)