Monday, July 21, 2014

Groove's Faves: "Games Godlings Play!" by Gerber, Starlin, Wein, Adkins, Newton, and Mooney

Greetings, Groove-ophiles! Today we're gonna rap about an all-time fave from one of Ol' Groove's all-time fave formats--Marvel's Giant-Size line of 1974/1975. Those 68 page quarterlies were always something special, extra-long stories (a lot of times with guest-stars), superior art--almost like a Silver Age annual four times a year! Giant-Size Defenders was one of the best, and one of its best issues was G-SD #3 (October 1974)--"Games Godlings Play!" Co-plotted by Steve Gerber, Jim Starlin, and Len Wein, with lay-outs by Starlin and finishes/inks by Dan Adkins, Don Newton, and Jim Mooney, "Games..." is a tour de force for our fave non-team. It's cosmic,  it's lyrical, it's whimsical, and it's even brutal at times. It's also innovative (Gerber and Starlin's use of pictures and set-type prose blew me away) and it introduces Korvac, who seems like a neat throw-away character here, but will later become a major Avengers villain. Not only that, but it features one of the biggest boo-boo endings in comicbook history--part of the legendary "Gerber Curse"? Wow! So much cool stuff packed into one ish--no wonder it was Giant-Size!
Cover art by Ron Wilson and Joe Sinnott
































Oh, and that major boo-boo Ol' Groove alluded to above? Didja catch it? Here's the letters page from G-SD #4 in which fans point it out and Marvel responds. It's pretty funny. Oh, there's a minor boo-boo a sharp-eyed fan caught in "Gods...", too! Check it out...

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2 comments:

  1. Edo BosnarJuly 21, 2014 at 5:32 AM

    Wonderful. This one brings back memories of that wonderful summer of 1980, when the guy who would later become my brother-in-law let me borrow his big box of comics to read. It was filled with mainly Marvel stuff from around 1972 to 1975: pretty much the entirety of Gerber's Defenders run, the entire Avengers/Celestial Madonna saga and much more. I read and re-read all of those several times over that summer. And this Giant Size sticks in my mind in particular. It's such a great story, mistakes and all.

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  2. DanJuly 21, 2014 at 6:10 AM

    Thanks so much for your awesome blog of Bronze Age comics, I particularly enjoy the Atlas/Seaboard posts. Could you provide more details describing what was the "Gerber Curse"?

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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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