Doug: You can look to the bottom of this post for the inspiration for my posit: What if Scooby-Doo (and company) had comics produced by the House of Ideas in the Silver and Bronze Ages? So since Karen is unleashing a steady stream of monsters on our unwitting public, I thought I'd jump in with a playful look at a Saturday morning standard. The following covers come from Amazing Spider-Man, the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, and the X-Men. I'm sure there are plenty of others that evoke the denizens of the Mystery Machine -- maybe that's your job, O Faithful One!!Doug: As you can see by the accompanying image, one of the charming things about the various Scooby-Doo cartoons was the bad guys. Whether they were monsters or just misguided miners, there was never anything too scary that came before my elementary school-aged eyes. So with that in mind,
let's look at some Marvel Comics covers that, with a little imagination, could have been filled with Shaggy, Scoob, Daphne, Velma, and of course Freddy instead of our heroes. Doug: How about the Gibbon? There was many a'time when the Scooby crew was involved with some dude in an animal get-up? Couldn't you see Scooby getting tossed off some castle rampart, only to be saved by bumbling Shaggy?
Doug: The Mind-Worm. He might have scared me... I do recall being creeped out by the image of this cat sitting in the lotus position in his tank top, with weights scattered about his room. And how 'bout that mouth and hairline?? What do you suppose Ross Andru was thinking when he first drew this character? Ugh... Maybe the ugliest super-baddie ever? Got to be a contender.Doug: Let's head over and visit Avengers Mansion and check out the archives. Surely they've had some crazy adventures against some rather suspect lawbreakers.
Doug: The Growing Man, the Troglodytes, the Star-Stalker, the Legion of the Unliving, Black Talon, and the Monolith... Ooooohhh -- I'm shaking in my Cheerios!!
Doug: Fantastic Four? Gotta be something --
Doug: The Infant Terrible, Tomazooma, and the War-Head... Now why didn't Bill Hanna and Joseph Barbera think of this?
Doug: And so we come to the end, and I promised you the cover that inspired me --
Doug: Fantastic Four? Gotta be something --
Doug: The Infant Terrible, Tomazooma, and the War-Head... Now why didn't Bill Hanna and Joseph Barbera think of this?
Doug: And so we come to the end, and I promised you the cover that inspired me --
Doug: Can you just hear ol' Frank saying, "And I'd have won, if not for those meddling mutants!"
I have to admit, when I was a kid I thought the Star-Stalker was a cool villain. I always thought lizard men were cool. I read that story again a few years ago and it just feels like a filler issue so that the writers could catch a breath between the 4-part Zodiac story and the multi-part Celestial Madonna epic.
ReplyDeleteThe Star-Stalker wasn't one of Englehart's most intriguing characters but the overall story was yet another key chapter in the ongoing tragedy of the Swordsman. Oh, and I thought the Legion of the Unliving was cool! Of course, I'm not sure I would have gone with the same dead characters, but then good supervillains & heroes who were killed off and stayed dead long enough to join up such a group have always been relatively rare. Seems most of the members of this dead group were eventually brought back to life, except for the Ghost and poor old Heinrich Zemo who we now know didn't even really kill Bucky. Curses, foiled again!
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