Here's another look at a few of my birthday books folks. From September 1969 the same as me!
Fantastic Four #90
Grade - VG+ (4.5)
Cover - Jack Kirby/Joe Sinnott
Story - Stan Lee
Story - Stan Lee
Art - Jack Kirby/Joe Sinnott
The Skrull Takes a Slave!
The Fantastic Four and Crystal of the Inhumans, (I think she is the Human Torch's girlfriend in this era, she also stood in for the team during Invisible Girl's recent pregnancy), have captured Mole Man and his Mole Ship in the last issue. They outnumber him 5 to 1 yet somehow he still manages to escape them and flee underground. He'd left traps around his base and Benjamin (The Thing) Grimm wanted to shake some info from him but Reed (Mr Fantastic) Richards intervenes admonishing Grimm for thinking to resort to their foes base tactics. Mole Man takes advantage of the heated debate to bowl the team over and bound into his anti-grav drop chute he escapes back down to the bowels of the Earth. It's revealed that Reed let him escape as "The police couldn't hold him! He's committed no crime! It's a strange paradoxical world we live in... a man can be arrested for illegal parking... but there's actually no law against trying to conquer the planet!" Which is a bit of what I like to call Silver Age madness as I am pretty sure they could do him for plenty of crimes but the supergenius Reed acts like a prize plumb and let's him go free!
Thinking the rest of the team don't appreciate him enough Ben skulks off to visit Alicia his blind girlfriend who is currently babysitting the as yet unnamed baby son of Reed and Sue Richards. (Hey Franklin Richards is older than me!! He debuted in Fantastic Four annual #6, November 1968. I don't have any details on how long Sue was pregnant for in comic book time)
Soon after Ben leaves the Mole Man's ship/house starts to self-destruct and the team members still examining the craft are forced to flee from it.
Meanwhile we see a Skrull is on Earth for a secret mission using his space tech and shape shifting abilities he plans on capturing The Thing. He arrives in New York using a scanner to find Ben, he then tells him of an alien invasion to lure him out to a remote location where his ship is hidden. He reveals himself to Grimm who tries to get to some clobbering but is felled instantly by a Nerve Gun.
The Witching Hour! #4
The Skrull Takes a Slave!
The Fantastic Four and Crystal of the Inhumans, (I think she is the Human Torch's girlfriend in this era, she also stood in for the team during Invisible Girl's recent pregnancy), have captured Mole Man and his Mole Ship in the last issue. They outnumber him 5 to 1 yet somehow he still manages to escape them and flee underground. He'd left traps around his base and Benjamin (The Thing) Grimm wanted to shake some info from him but Reed (Mr Fantastic) Richards intervenes admonishing Grimm for thinking to resort to their foes base tactics. Mole Man takes advantage of the heated debate to bowl the team over and bound into his anti-grav drop chute he escapes back down to the bowels of the Earth. It's revealed that Reed let him escape as "The police couldn't hold him! He's committed no crime! It's a strange paradoxical world we live in... a man can be arrested for illegal parking... but there's actually no law against trying to conquer the planet!" Which is a bit of what I like to call Silver Age madness as I am pretty sure they could do him for plenty of crimes but the supergenius Reed acts like a prize plumb and let's him go free!
Thinking the rest of the team don't appreciate him enough Ben skulks off to visit Alicia his blind girlfriend who is currently babysitting the as yet unnamed baby son of Reed and Sue Richards. (Hey Franklin Richards is older than me!! He debuted in Fantastic Four annual #6, November 1968. I don't have any details on how long Sue was pregnant for in comic book time)
Soon after Ben leaves the Mole Man's ship/house starts to self-destruct and the team members still examining the craft are forced to flee from it.
Meanwhile we see a Skrull is on Earth for a secret mission using his space tech and shape shifting abilities he plans on capturing The Thing. He arrives in New York using a scanner to find Ben, he then tells him of an alien invasion to lure him out to a remote location where his ship is hidden. He reveals himself to Grimm who tries to get to some clobbering but is felled instantly by a Nerve Gun.
The Witching Hour! #4
Grade - VG/FN (5.0)
Cover - Nick Cardy
The 3 witch hosts of this book Mordred, Mildred and Cynthia visit their new neighbours across the swamp and proceed to tell them scary tales, making a contest out of which is the creepiest.
A Matter of Conscience!
Story - ? (Mildred the Witch!)
The 3 witch hosts of this book Mordred, Mildred and Cynthia visit their new neighbours across the swamp and proceed to tell them scary tales, making a contest out of which is the creepiest.
A Matter of Conscience!
Story - ? (Mildred the Witch!)
Art - Win Mortimer/George Roussos
A man troubled by the fear that his house is trying to kill him with crockery flying around and hitting him visits an exorcist who takes him to the underworld to confront his demons. It turns out the journey was just hypnosis, the exorcist is a psychiatrist who says he has cured the man's guilty complex that festered after he felt responsibility for the death of his wife as he wasn't able to summon a doctor quickly enough. It was his own guilt that created a poltergeist and now all is well, until suddenly a vase flies across the room smashing into the wall.
I used this story for one of my 13 Nights of Halloween videos. Check it out and please sub my channel
Disaster in a Jar
Story - ? (Cynthia the witch)
Art - Pat Boyette
A door-to-door youth cream salesman has no luck selling his product so he decides to mess with the formula and then give it away for free. Everyone is fine with free samples of course and when it works miraculously they are all amazed and rush to buy it and are very happy, that is until all their hair falls out!! The crafty warlock who made the cream invested all his earning on cornering the wig market so now he becomes doubly as the now youthful women all require wigs to cover their smooth heads.
A Fistfull of Fire!
Story - ? (Mordred the witch)
Art - Jose Delbo
After the burning at the stake of a witch Judge Sewell and his friend Andrew take a short cut through the woods to make it home for dinner before a storm hits. Sewell say he doesn't believe in witches even though he executes young girls for allegedly being them but he believes in 'evil' and that is what he seeks to destroy. Meanwhile a coven of angry witches plot his demise and ambush the pair on the road planning to kill him with magic fire. Andrew reveals himself to be a powerful warlock and chases them off, his magic dwarfing their own. Angry that his secret is out because of these deluded fools with no real power of magic he turns to Judge Sewell and says "So tell me, Samuel, what will you do now... now that you're face to face with a real, live... ...warlock?!" I would guess that it does not end well for the judge.
After the 3 tell their tales the scared neighbours rush them out of the house, refusing to say which tale was the scariest, for this affront the witches cast the house and all within it up into space!!! Then Mordred turns to the reader to say that they can be the judge of which story was the most frightening but if they choose Cynthia's she'll curse them.
I love the 60's hippy patter that the witches use in this issue, the 2 ugly witches berate Cynthia for her 'with it' 'mod' tale and she accuses them of being 'out of it'!! There was another of my birthday books, The Unexpected, that featured the mad 'mod' witch another groovy gruesome hag and like her the 3 witches of this book later appear in Sandman of the Endless' Dreaming.
More recently Vertigo did a Witching Hour one-shot in 2013 and right now it's the title of an event in the Wonder Woman books.
The Avengers Annual #3
A man troubled by the fear that his house is trying to kill him with crockery flying around and hitting him visits an exorcist who takes him to the underworld to confront his demons. It turns out the journey was just hypnosis, the exorcist is a psychiatrist who says he has cured the man's guilty complex that festered after he felt responsibility for the death of his wife as he wasn't able to summon a doctor quickly enough. It was his own guilt that created a poltergeist and now all is well, until suddenly a vase flies across the room smashing into the wall.
I used this story for one of my 13 Nights of Halloween videos. Check it out and please sub my channel
Disaster in a Jar
Story - ? (Cynthia the witch)
Art - Pat Boyette
A door-to-door youth cream salesman has no luck selling his product so he decides to mess with the formula and then give it away for free. Everyone is fine with free samples of course and when it works miraculously they are all amazed and rush to buy it and are very happy, that is until all their hair falls out!! The crafty warlock who made the cream invested all his earning on cornering the wig market so now he becomes doubly as the now youthful women all require wigs to cover their smooth heads.
A Fistfull of Fire!
Story - ? (Mordred the witch)
Art - Jose Delbo
After the burning at the stake of a witch Judge Sewell and his friend Andrew take a short cut through the woods to make it home for dinner before a storm hits. Sewell say he doesn't believe in witches even though he executes young girls for allegedly being them but he believes in 'evil' and that is what he seeks to destroy. Meanwhile a coven of angry witches plot his demise and ambush the pair on the road planning to kill him with magic fire. Andrew reveals himself to be a powerful warlock and chases them off, his magic dwarfing their own. Angry that his secret is out because of these deluded fools with no real power of magic he turns to Judge Sewell and says "So tell me, Samuel, what will you do now... now that you're face to face with a real, live... ...warlock?!" I would guess that it does not end well for the judge.
After the 3 tell their tales the scared neighbours rush them out of the house, refusing to say which tale was the scariest, for this affront the witches cast the house and all within it up into space!!! Then Mordred turns to the reader to say that they can be the judge of which story was the most frightening but if they choose Cynthia's she'll curse them.
I love the 60's hippy patter that the witches use in this issue, the 2 ugly witches berate Cynthia for her 'with it' 'mod' tale and she accuses them of being 'out of it'!! There was another of my birthday books, The Unexpected, that featured the mad 'mod' witch another groovy gruesome hag and like her the 3 witches of this book later appear in Sandman of the Endless' Dreaming.
More recently Vertigo did a Witching Hour one-shot in 2013 and right now it's the title of an event in the Wonder Woman books.
The Avengers Annual #3
Grade -
Cover - John Buscema/Frank Giacoia/Sam Rosen
"Captain America Joins... The Avengers!"
"Captain America Joins... The Avengers!"
Story - Stan Lee
Art - Jack Kirby/George Roussos
This is a reprint of Avengers #4 from March 1964.
The story starts with The Avengers taking on Namor, the Sub-Mariner, in a lull in battle he storms off and encounters native Inuit people worshipping a man encased in a block of ice. In anger he tosses the block into the sea. It drifts off and melts and The Avengers find the man drifting under the water and pull him on board. Captain America (Steve Rogers) awakens from his long sleep and to be honest the whole man out of time thing is barely mentioned at all. They arrive back in the US and The Avengers get turned to stone by a villain posing as a reporter. Steve emerges from their craft after them and assumes the petrified Avengers are just statues. Later he meets Rick Jones, (who resembles his old partner Bucky), who comes to him looking for The Avengers and they piece together what happened and apprehend the villain and get him to change them back. The perpetrator was a D'bari alien named Vuk who's ship is stuck in mud under the sea, he attacked our heroes at Namor's orders who promised in return to free his ship.
The Avengers manage to free his ship and Namor and some of his men arrive and they battle. Captain America jumps into the fight when Rick is threatened. The ground starts to shake and Namor thinking it a massive Earthquake at sea leaves The Avengers to die but it turns out to just be the spaceship taking off. Captain America is welcomed to join The Avengers and Rick Jones spends the last two panels worrying that if he becomes Cap's new partner he'd feel like he was betraying The Hulk.
"The Fantastic Origin of the Red Skull"
This is a reprint of Avengers #4 from March 1964.
The story starts with The Avengers taking on Namor, the Sub-Mariner, in a lull in battle he storms off and encounters native Inuit people worshipping a man encased in a block of ice. In anger he tosses the block into the sea. It drifts off and melts and The Avengers find the man drifting under the water and pull him on board. Captain America (Steve Rogers) awakens from his long sleep and to be honest the whole man out of time thing is barely mentioned at all. They arrive back in the US and The Avengers get turned to stone by a villain posing as a reporter. Steve emerges from their craft after them and assumes the petrified Avengers are just statues. Later he meets Rick Jones, (who resembles his old partner Bucky), who comes to him looking for The Avengers and they piece together what happened and apprehend the villain and get him to change them back. The perpetrator was a D'bari alien named Vuk who's ship is stuck in mud under the sea, he attacked our heroes at Namor's orders who promised in return to free his ship.
The Avengers manage to free his ship and Namor and some of his men arrive and they battle. Captain America jumps into the fight when Rick is threatened. The ground starts to shake and Namor thinking it a massive Earthquake at sea leaves The Avengers to die but it turns out to just be the spaceship taking off. Captain America is welcomed to join The Avengers and Rick Jones spends the last two panels worrying that if he becomes Cap's new partner he'd feel like he was betraying The Hulk.
"The Fantastic Origin of the Red Skull"
Story - Stan Lee
Art - Jack Kirby/Chic Stone
"Lest Tyranny Triumph!"
"Lest Tyranny Triumph!"
Story - Stan Lee
Art - Jack Kirby/Frank Ray
"Sentinel and the Spy!"
Story - Stan Lee
Art - Jack Kirby/Frank Ray
The next three chapters of the annual are reprinted from Tales of Suspense #66 - 68 from 1965. We start off with Captain America and Bucky captured by the Red Skull. With Cap tied up Red Skull taunts him telling him his origin. He grew up poor and a victim on the streets, they when he grew up he was a hotel bellboy who Hitler decided on a whim to forge into the ultimate Aryan, a Nazi in his own image. Eventually he rose to the 2nd highest position of power in Germany. Cap tries to escape and is unbowed by the Nazi until a chemical he has been plied with suddenly overcomes his mind making him a mindless zombie for Skull to command.
Now with his will subjugated Cap prepares for a mission to go and kill leaders of the Allied high command. Red Skull takes Cap to see Hitler who is 1st scared then tries to hit Steve who instinctively blocks hurting poor old Adolph's hand. Bucky leads a break out and sneaks into Cap's Nazi commando unit after knocking out and stealing the uniform of one of the soldiers. Once they parachute into America and enter a base to assassinate a general Bucky leaps into action. He starts fighting the unit single-handed whilst Cap goes to do his murderous mission. Luckily his will kicks in at the moment of truth and he and Bucky mop up the Nazis.
After the failure of this mission Red Skull activates a sleeper in a POW camp, he escapes and steals Project Vanish which turns out to be a gun that literally makes things vanish!! He takes out a tank and holds the allies at bay until an injured Cap fools him into turning up the power to maximum as he knows the prototype device can not handle it. His gamble pays off as the gun explodes. Bucky is just able to get the injured Cap out of his costume and into uniform before their Sarge turns up.
Well that's it for this week, once again I ended up rushing it, I maybe shouldn't impose time deadlines on these but as only about 4 people read them it is only stubbornness keeping me doing it anyway 😝
The next three chapters of the annual are reprinted from Tales of Suspense #66 - 68 from 1965. We start off with Captain America and Bucky captured by the Red Skull. With Cap tied up Red Skull taunts him telling him his origin. He grew up poor and a victim on the streets, they when he grew up he was a hotel bellboy who Hitler decided on a whim to forge into the ultimate Aryan, a Nazi in his own image. Eventually he rose to the 2nd highest position of power in Germany. Cap tries to escape and is unbowed by the Nazi until a chemical he has been plied with suddenly overcomes his mind making him a mindless zombie for Skull to command.
Now with his will subjugated Cap prepares for a mission to go and kill leaders of the Allied high command. Red Skull takes Cap to see Hitler who is 1st scared then tries to hit Steve who instinctively blocks hurting poor old Adolph's hand. Bucky leads a break out and sneaks into Cap's Nazi commando unit after knocking out and stealing the uniform of one of the soldiers. Once they parachute into America and enter a base to assassinate a general Bucky leaps into action. He starts fighting the unit single-handed whilst Cap goes to do his murderous mission. Luckily his will kicks in at the moment of truth and he and Bucky mop up the Nazis.
After the failure of this mission Red Skull activates a sleeper in a POW camp, he escapes and steals Project Vanish which turns out to be a gun that literally makes things vanish!! He takes out a tank and holds the allies at bay until an injured Cap fools him into turning up the power to maximum as he knows the prototype device can not handle it. His gamble pays off as the gun explodes. Bucky is just able to get the injured Cap out of his costume and into uniform before their Sarge turns up.
Well that's it for this week, once again I ended up rushing it, I maybe shouldn't impose time deadlines on these but as only about 4 people read them it is only stubbornness keeping me doing it anyway 😝
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