Doug: Occasionally a comic book cover would be so freaking awesome that 10-year old me could not avert mine eyes. Morbius going at the throat of Bashful Benjy? What the heck is not to love? That is, until adult you ponders the physical, nay the universal order, ramifications of the power of the Living Eraser. Then I'm left with "that's just dumb".
Doug: If you didn't know, the Living Swipe-meister has been around for awhile:
25 comments:
I never encountered the Living Eraser anywhere, and I have to say that even the young me probably would have had a bit of a "yeah, right" reaction to him. He seems like a villain more suited to Spidey Super Stories.
However, both covers are quite good (and Marvel 2-in-1 is particularly eye-grabbing), and if I had encountered either of those on the spinner rack as a young lad, I probably would have pulled them off just to see if the Living Eraser is as silly and outlandish as he seems.
The Eraser sure bulked up over the years. He must've worked out in prison with Doc Oc. I've never read a comic with the Eraser in it; does he just make parts of the characters invisible? Not sure exactly what his power set entails.
The Ron Wilson Two-In-One cover is really great. So many of Wilson's covers from this time period are great; he did a near perfect Thing in my eyes.
First thing that comes to my mind upon seeing this cover was: how does Morbius expect his fangs to penetrate Ben's rocky hide? Good way to break a tooth, and he might have trouble finding a dentist willing to help him out...
Yeah, Wilson drew a great Ben Grimm. No wonder he was on that title so long.
I like the Living Eraser. Do you wonder if little kids were playing superheros in the schoolyard and one kid had to be the Eraser? Running around swiping at the other kids with one of those big pink erasers we used to have?
I'm still waiting for the action figure.
By the way,
"IT'S ACTION AS YOU NEVER THOUGHT YOU'D SEE IT!"
But you knew that.
Doug
Gents..,
As for Morbius sucking blood from Ben, he encountered a similar attack from one of the Blood Brothers back in Marvel Feature 12. It apparently must be possible for fangs to somehow drill down between the rocky plates.
"..Hey, by this point if a college professor could somehow clone Gwen Stacy.., is this reeeeally a stretch..?" LOL.
Hahaha -- great parting shot, David! But of course...
Doug
Hey, from the Marketing Dept. here at the BAB:
For those of you who've been interested or even enjoyed my reports on the selling of my comics and art, I have a very special (well, to me at least) post scheduled for Saturday. Drop by in the midst of your weekend if you can.
Also, Monday will feature a return to comic book reviews to start off your week. And not just one week, kids -- three Mondays in a row here in November! Your reading list is Action Comics #267 (Supergirl story), Invaders #12, and Detective Comics #492 (featuring the art of Don Newton, a penciler Edo has long recommended). I hope it's fun!
Doug
Great topic, but I can do "better" when it comes to buying a comic based on its cover. I bought the infamous "Mr. Fish" issue of Power Man:
http://www.comics.org/issue/29567/
Of course Mr. Fish looked better on the cover, but that's no excuse.
As for Living Eraser (or "LE" as the kids call him), looks like he resurfaced in the 1990s:
http://www.marvunapp.com/Appendix/liverase.htm
In the category of dumb I give you Mr. Myxlplyx and the Impossible Man. If a story featured one of those guys, even 10 year old me would have a rough time getting into it.
Tom
Oh, I don't know about Impossible Man, Tom. I rather like that issue of Marvel 2-in-1 (#60) in which he was the guest star.
But J.A., the cover says Mr. Fish is "The Most Frightful Villain Ever!" Are you saying that's not true?! (Actually, I bet he could be the nastiest villain ever, as I'm sure he started to smell pretty bad if he stayed out of the water too long.)
Okay, here's the thing with the Living Eraser (who I remember particularly from his being mentioned in the older Checklist bullets): his power seems to only be portrayable two-dimensionally--! If you think about what you're looking at, at ALL, this "erasing" only happens from the perspective of it happening on a flat page, regardless of the action going on to indicate otherwise. There's NO depth or dimensionality to any of the body parts being erased! And we can't possibly be looking at all of them from a dead-straight-on viewpoint ALL the time--!
Nah, he was immediately stupid to me because of that very fact. Where are the visible ends of bone and sinew? Where are the cross-sections that should be revealed?
HB (ohhh, having a rough load-in this week. . . )
I don't think I've ever heard of the Living Eraser, or if I did, I erased him from my memory. Anyway, those covers are just a bit freaky. It looks like some kid (Doug?) actually erased part of the covers.
HB- well noted about the Eraser's one-dimensionality. Somehow that never struck me before ( not that I sit up at night sleeplessly contemplating grade B supervillains), but you're quite right!
Tom- like Edo, I share some love for Impy. He had a hilarious appearance in an X- Men Annual. The look on Empress Lilandra's face when Impy shows up as Galactus is priceless...
Didn't there turn out to be a whole bunch of Living Erasers? Like, a whole dimension full of them? Or did I just dream that?
Mike Wilson
OK guys. I guess a small part of me has a soft spot for ol' Impy. It's just that, again, 10 year old me took his superhero comics very seriously. I mean, these guys are capable of saving the world!!! Leave those ridiculous characters to Archie or Harvey comics.
Come to think of it, a Living Eraser sounds like something that would be invented at a Richie Rich factory out of one of the oodles of books you are always counting Edo. :-)
Tom
Oooh, yeah, Redartz, totally agreed on that X-men Annual. I loved that one - a few years later, there was a similar New Mutants Annual, in which Impy and Warlock had that competition to see who could shape-shift better.
Tom, re: Living Eraser and Richie Rich. Quite possible - and he then, in the early '80s, erased Harvey comics out of existence to conceal his lowly origins...
If you click on the Marvel Two-In-One linked at the bottom of today's post, you'll find that MTIO #7 featured "The Pulse-Pounding POWER of the Executioner!"
I about got woozy just thinking about it.
Doug
I remember reading an interview with one of the creators of the first Living Eraser story - writer or artist, who said that they were trying desperately to figure out the next villain, and saw a mechanical eraser on a desk. They thought to themselves, "that would really be a problem for drawn characters," and figured out the dimensional schtick to make the character.
sometimes, out of desperation comes great art. other times, out of desperation on a floundering strip featuring not very interesting characters comes The Living Eraser!
Wouldja believe I have that very issue of MTIO right now, somewhere ... OK, I admit I have it but it's buried underneath all the junk,er, stuff, in my room!
Yeah, like Jim said above, I'm not sure who exactly created the character of the Living Eraser but he definitely looks like he was created purely out of coincidence - somebody saw an eraser lying around, looked at all the drawn pages around him and said 'hmm it'd be neat if we had a villain whose power was the ability to literally erase these heroes!'.
- Mike 'using a shovel to try to dig up said copy of MTIO now' from Trinidad & Tobago.
I didn't realize that Hank and Jan had met a Living Eraser, as did Batman and Robin in Batman #188! Was there ever a White-out? Deleter? I need to look them up!
I have that Giant-man issue. I'm sorry to say I don't remember a thing about the story other than I'm sure Don Heck drew if. And Giant- man grew out of a house and exploded it when he got too big. but that shouldn't count since I remember that panel from a reprint which made me buy the original comic in the first place.
Phil, I also at one time owned that Tales to Astonish. And like you, I don't recall a single thing. But it's a great cover, and certainly a significant book in the whole Hank Pym scheme of things.
Doug
Duh! Your memory has been erased! ;)
P.S. I have a post on MTiO #40& #41 (and to a degree #37, #38 & #39 as well) coming up on my blog.
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