Thursday, April 1, 2010

April Fool: The Scorpion Faces the "Night of the Golden Fuhrer!"

It's the first day of April, Groove-ophiles, but this is no laughing matter: Atlas/Seaboard tried to pull perhaps the ultimate April Fool's joke on fandom back in April 1975 when they turned Howard Chaykin's sensational Scorpion into a rip-off of Marvel's Spider-Man and Daredevil. Gabe Levy was a fine writer and Jim Craig (with uncredited inks by Jim Mooney) does a serviceable job with the art, but this incarnation of the Scorpion is nowhere near the level of fun, originality, or quality of Chaykin's first two issues. (I've never been able to figure out why they moved the Scorpion to 1975--only to have him fight neo-Nazis...and a Golem!?!) Thankfully, ish #3 would be the title's final issue.

Just goes to show that you couldn't fool Groovy Age comics fandom--not even in April!
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4 comments:

  1. joe ackermanApril 1, 2010 at 5:09 PM

    God, yes, I remember this. bloody awful. wonder what Howie thought of it. . .

    ReplyDelete
  2. Chris NyeApril 2, 2010 at 4:21 PM

    Ha! As if the character itself wasn't enough of a swipe, take a look at the figure of The Scorpion on this cover. And then take a look at the cover of Amazing Spider-Man #84. You'll see the Scorpion figure is a direct swipe of the Spidey figure......but the image of the figure has simply been flipped. (Interesting to note that at the time of Spidey #84, Jim Mooney was Spidey's regular inker!).

    Still, the Atlas line was always fun.....definite product of my childhood. I was never a big Chaykin fan, so I didn't mind that he left. But some of Atlas' efforts beyond The Destructor and a couple of other characters were pretty bad, no doubt.

    ReplyDelete
  3. The Groovy AgentApril 13, 2010 at 10:53 AM

    Hey Joe, if you read the first Bizarre Adventures issue of Marvel Preview, I think you totally got what Howard thought of the new Scorpion...

    ReplyDelete
  4. Doc ThompsonMay 29, 2013 at 3:54 PM

    pretty much all the third issues of Atlas comics stunk

    ReplyDelete

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Special thanks to Mike's Amazing World of Comics and Grand Comics Database for being such fantastic resources for covers, dates, creator info, etc. Thou art treasures true!


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