Like most normal people with their heads screwed on tight, I like to enjoy a comic book during those long lulls in the day between one tee-vee show and whenever the next tee-vee show I wanna watch is gonna be on, and as it is with my listening and viewing habits I'm mighty particular as to whatever comic book reading is gonna be poured into my senses THAT'S for sure!
That means no relatively "recent" (that means post mid-seventies at the latest) artzy-gooey precocious works with heavily distorted art (such as the kind seen in the eighties-vintage SPIDER-MAN) nor the early-seventies DC relevance cash in unless I'm really hard up, not including those horrid TEEN TITANS efforts that read as if Denny O'Neill wrote 'em after listening to SOME TIME IN NEW YORK CITY either! Just about any good ol' ragged comic from the bottom of the pile will do such as this find, a tattered but true effort not only based on a novella by Theodore Sturgeon but the inspiration not only for the tee-vee moom pitcher this was based on but two under-the-underground late-eighties rock bands, one who eventually changed their name to Sharkey's Machine to avoid confusion.
Considering just how gloppy Marvel coulda gotten at the time they sure did a better'n usual job translating this from the cathode to pulp. This tale about a possessed bulldozer was custom-made for a Marvel title created right at the tail end of that company's truly Golden Age what with Dick Ayers' art keeping up on the hallowed tradition that his former partner Jack Kirby begat while Gerry Conway fortunately doesn't fall into that Glade air freshener prosody that often befalls these efforts in that "hey, us comic book writers ain't as illiterate as you make us out to be Dr. Wertham!" style which pretty much ruined things for me during the late-comic seriousness days of my mid-adolescence.
And it is a keep you enthralled 'n no peeking at the Johnson Smith ad tale too! I mean sport, it's got a murderous machine killing the inhabitants of an atoll who are clearing space for a plane runway, doing a pretty good job of not only splattering people across the land but turning the survivors against each other in a way that woulda made for a pretty hefty good episode of OUTER LIMITS. Or at least good a one that woulda sent my turdler self screaming bloody murder outta the room while dad made one of his funny comments like he did when Warren Oates took off his goggles exposing his radioactive eyes saying "Hey Chris, it's MICKEY MOUSE!!!"
All in a "lesser" Marvel title that I don't think anyone remembers fortysome years down the road. Whatever, it gave me that good half hour of funtime thrills in the here and now the same way it woulda in the there and then, and the only thing that saves this 'un from being a TOP NOTCH effort is that, being one of those off-titles an' all, Marvel didn't include some old Sci-Fi/fantasy reprint featuring one of those giant monsters like Googam and Fin-Fang-Foom to pad it out! That woulda been a hoot...a seventies comic paired with a sixties one featuring the same artist from a different age. The mere thought of it makes me feel all warm and toasty inside.
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2 comments:
This one looks exciting. The movie itself is kind of comic-booky (in the best way), so doing a comic book adaptation was a natural.
Your write-up reminds me to keep an eye out for the two WORLDS UNKNOWN issues that are adaptations of the early 70's GOLDEN VOYAGE OF SINBAD film. There's also an adaptation of THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL which I haven't read. Fortunately, none of them are high-priced rarities.
BILL
I hated it when it came out because of the googly-eyes they gave the Killdozer. The AS SEEN ON TV blurb didn't help. And why was the cover dude really the Rawhide Kid?
But the BIG problem here is that it took you a half hour to read it. Come on.
All in all, it was no Son of Satan.
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