Happy Halloween everyone!
Uh, right, Roy...
These are strong female characters (by this time -- certainly not as Stan Lee had written them years earlier), and they just seemed to be going along with the whole "male chauvinism" deal a bit too easily. But Valkyrie proves to be a master propagandist, and the ladies set off on whatever mission she has.
Party guests Roy and Jeannie Thomas make a cameo, and Fagan invites the Avengers to ride on a parade float.
As the Masters move, they are immediately found out by our heroes and a melee ensues. However, as powerful as this group of Avengers is, they are overwhelmed somewhat easily. The Vision, in particular, is taken out of the fight quickly by being enveloped in melting tar -- he fears that to turn intangible would damage his circuitry. The most intriguing battle is Quicksilver vs. Whirlwind, and I wish we'd seen more of it!
In the fastest transition ever, the very next panel (not page, mind you) shows the assembled heroes in the professor's laboratory and Valkyrie draped all over the machine. She quickly begins to glow and then change before everyone's eyes, and emerges from all of the commotion as the Enchantress!
Wanda's hex sphere (see, no one really knows how her power works!!) turned the Enchantress' spells upon herself, seemingly disintegrating her. And that was that. Until, of course, Clint had to shoot off his mouth about women's lib!
Her people, the "Femizons" had genetically enhanced Thundra, granting her incredible strength. Originally she traveled to our time to battle Ben, whom the Femizons believed to be the strongest man of all time. They did fight, again and again, and Thundra became interested in Ben romantically, although this was never reciprocated by Ben.
However, once she and her team have placed the device, the lady wrestlers take off deeper into the complex, stating they have other orders!
It just goes to show that anyone with talent can write any character -- sometimes we complain about certain writers not finding a character's "voice"; that just isn't the case here with scribes Macchio and Gruenwald. It looks like they've done their research, and stretched what they found just enough to make it their own.
The aptly named Screaming Mimi then cuts loose with a super-powered howl that causes Quasar's vision to distort - Perez' art here is very effective in getting across the feeling of disorientation. Eventually he overcomes his concerns about hurting the two and lets loose with a blast that drops them. 
As a side note, Screaming Mimi would go on to become Songbird of the Thunderbolts. It's a much better look in my opinion!
Thundra has Ben on the floor, twisting his head, and yet proclaiming how the two are destined for each other!
With it, he will have all the components he needs to make the Nth projector, which certainly sounds ominous!
Karen: With the loosening of the Comics Code in the 70s, Marvel went bananas and flooded the market with a ton of monster comics and magazines - there was Tomb of Dracula, Werewolf By Night, The Frankenstein Monster, The Living Mummy, Man-Thing, Dracula Lives, Monsters Unleashed - and on and on. While many of these titles eventually fell to the wayside, some had a fairly decent run, and Tomb of Dracula in particular is well-regarded.
Today we have a double-feature for you, but Marvel's Greatest Comics actually contained three thrilling adventures! We'll be looking at the first two entries -- the third was a reprint of Strange Tales #130, when the Torch and the Thing met the Beatles!
Of course, these were the days when every woman in the MU was not only needy, but dumb! And Stan never let us forget it. After the usual in-house strife, Johnny gets ticked off and heads downstairs for his Stingray. He's surprised that he left it on the street unlocked. As he drives off, he's knocked off-course by a shockwave, followed abruptly by a woman's voice and a gun to his head! Now wait a second... Even though Medusa compliments Johnny for installing a jump seat, have you ever seen a 1965 Stingray? 
Her hair, let alone her body, wouldn't have fit in any back seat.
Well even if I'd wondered, I wouldn't have associated that with a dude sportin' shockwave hooves! Dragon Man's sort of the wild card in all of this -- he thinks Medusa reminds him of Sue, then Sue shows up, then Ben's move to protect them is misinterpreted so DM wallops Benjie, then Gorgon whoops DM... It's Kirby at his frenetic finest! The opening act ends with DM grabbing the girls ('cause that's how Stan writes them) and flying away, while Gorgon crushes the building on which the boys were standing.
Whatever. This blinds Dragon Man and gets him to drop Sue. Then we get a series of interludes:
he goes for a walk (?).
She introduces herself as Crystal, and says that Johnny must be "one of us".
another wall explodes to reveal... Black Bolt!
Karen: The next day, the Werewolf has reverted to Jack Russell and he and Topaz manage to unlock his father's diary. He reads it and discovers that one of his ancestors had actually staked Dracula! But the man was then bitten by a werewolf at the Castle, so Jack's lycanthropic curse is in some sense due to Dracula. 
This seemed pretty interesting, tying the characters together this way. Unfortunately I don't have many issues of WBN so I'm not sure if anything else was ever done with it.
e chopper in bat form, leaving Topaz and the Werewolf looking on.
Doug: Back before htmlcomics.com got really well-acquainted with the FBI, it had been my slithering intent to do some Tarzan reviews from the very excellent Joe Kubert years over at DC. I, however, made myself an honest man during a visit this summer to Geppi's Entertainment Museum while on vacation in Baltimore. In the museum store I spied the three volumes of the Tarzan Archives (now published by Dark Horse Comics). They were on the scratch-and-dent table for -- get this -- $10 apiece!! Yep, $150 worth of books at 80% off! Dumb luck -- that's me! By the way, I would most strongly recommend that if at all possible a visit to the Geppi Museum (and all of the other attractions near it) would be time incredibly well-spent!
Kubert, sensing that many a superhero movie takes 2/3 of the picture just to get the guy in the suit, opens with Jane and a guide (plus some porters -- you just have to have African porters!) on a voyage through the jungle in search of Jane's missing father. Suddenly, a black leopard bursts through the foliage, only to be intercepted by a white blur of fury. Tarzan descends from above, saving the life of the guide while at the same time engaging the big cat. As quickly as it began it is over, and Tarzan vanishes. Jane tries to catch her breath, and the guide tells her what he thinks the man was.
Later in the voyage, as the crew mutinies, the Claytons are protected by Black Michael; however, stating that he could never protect them forever, Black Michael forces the Claytons to disembark amidst the African jungles. Leaving only a rifle and ammunition, and an axe, the crew leaves.
However, the trauma left Alice homebound, and a year later she died. 
It is only then, when he was about 13 years old, that he discovered that there were others who looked like him. And it was also on that first voyage to the "nest" that he found and appropriated his father's hunting knife. Sensing the moonlight and the need to return to the tribe, Tarzan left -- only to be confronted by Bolgani the gorilla. With self-defense as his sole option, Tarzan engaged the huge gorilla and plunged his new blade into the beast's hide again and again and again. And as the two of them collapsed -- Bolgani in death and Tarzan in exhaustion, it was this singular event that would start the Ape-Man on the path to leader of his people, and toward becoming a legend.
These are fantastic stories, and Kubert's writing and art seems a perfect fit for them. While John Buscema would add his own interpretation to the jungle lord later, Kubert's interpretation is perhaps more fitting -- the length, the grace, yet again the power kept are fine attributes of this Tarzan, and make these stories Bronze Age classics!
Doug: OK, maybe the title is a bit harsh. But, are there characters who you really just don't care about? Maybe you've never read anything about them, or even a book they were in? Is there someone out there that you keep asking yourself, "What's the big deal?" 
Thundra rasslin', a strange version of Deathlok, and a mole named Lightner who is trying to throw a big monkey wrench into our heroes' lives. So let's hit the ground running with this one, as we open with a super-hero poker game!
As Ben, Quasar, and the other operatives make their move, Ben falls in with resident big brain Bill Foster.
I just assumed it took him a few moments to do it. That's funny how we interpreted this scene so differently!
The guy really got a raw deal pretty much his entire career!
Remember when they tried that with Ms. Marvel as well? It was, after all, the Swingin' '70's!!
However, I was never sure if either Ben or Giant-Man really knew that Nuklo was mentally handicapped. I liked the fact that Ben was canny enough to make the lead gloves for Foster. He's an old vet and should know stuff like that. Foster's eagerness to make his mark seems excessive, but makes more sense by next issue. I actually felt a little sorry for him when Ben sends Nuklo flying. Compared to the power Ben possesses, Giant-Man is strictly minor leagues.
And it's a lucky one, as Nuklo ends up in a sort of anti-grav stasis ring. Giant-Man gets introspective in a self-pity-party, and then the boys get their butts chewed by Nuklo's scientist-guardian. Lastly, we get a recap of Wundarr's origin and backstory, and then the mystery really deepens as Wundarr suddenly snaps awake to the sound of voices in his head, telling him that when he awakens for good -- nothing will stop him!
