Marvel-ous Mondays: "...And One Shall Die!" by Wolfman, Kane, and Nebres

Dig it, Groove-ophiles! With John Carter, Warlord of Mars #5 (July 1977) Marvel went all in with "truth in advertising" with their "Giant Battle Issue" cover blurb! Writer Marv Wolfman and artists Gil Kane and Rudy Nebres pack so much leaping, dueling, wrestling, and brawling into "...And One Shall Die!" that you might burn off some major calories just reading it! Can you dig it?

Greetings from Skartaris: "Trilogy" by Mike Grell

What it is, Groove-ophiles! We're back with another amazing episode of Mike Grell's Warlord! If ya dig barbarians, groovy chicks, unicorns, dinosaurs, and ballroom brawls, "Trilogy" from Warlord #12 (January 1978) is gonna rock your world!

Oh, yeah, Ol' Groove skipped Warlord #11 on purpose--it featured a reprint of Warlord's first appearance from 1st Issue Special #8--but here's the cover and the "new" framing sequence for you completists...

Who loves ya, baby?

Amazed by Aparo: "The Fastest Gun in De Wast" by O'Neil and Aparo

Saddle up, Side-winders! It's time Wander down the ol' dusty trail again for another chapter in the greatest sci-fi/western series ever produced by Denny O'Neil (under the pen name of Sergius O'Shaugnessey) and Jim Aparo! From Cheyenne Kid #70 (October 1968) here comes..."The Fastest Gun in De Wast"!

Bring on the Back-ups: "The World Within" by Wein and Weiss

What it is, Groove-ophiles! Let's kick off our next thousand-or-so posts with a classic back-up from the excellent creative team of Len Wein and Alan Weiss. It's the first episode of Pellucidar, "The World Within" from Korak #46 (February 1972). But first a bit of background...

When DC got the rights to Edgar Rice Burroughs' properties back in '72, they intended to get most all of ERB's popular characters in print. They started off with Tarzan and Korak in their own titles, with John Carter backing up Lord Greystoke and Korak getting both Carson of Venus and Pellucidar in his back pages. T'was a great time to be an ERB fan, what with talents like Joe Kubert, Marv Wolfman, Murphy Anderson, Len Wein, Frank Thorne, Mike Kaluta, and Alan Weiss behind those sensational strips. Check out David Innes and Abner Perry's maiden DC voyage right here!


The fates are tricky things, though, and no sooner did DC get those first 52 page issues out to the spinner-racks then the powers-that-were decided to cut their page counts back to the standard 36 pagers, leaving John Carter and Pellucidar without homes. DC quickly packaged those fab back-ups into their own mag and called it Weird Worlds. We'll check out some of those classics in future posts. Pax!