Marvel-ous Monday: "Dead Reckoning!" by Moench, Buckler, and Marcos

Greetings, Groove-ophiles! All of Groove City knows what a huge fan of Rich Buckler and Deathlok Ol' Groove is (you can read my thoughts along with the first two Deathlok tales here and here, by the by). I'm in the mood to re-read a classic Deathlok adventure--one of my faves, in fact. "Dead Reckoning!" from Astonishing Tales #27 (September 1974) was actually the second Deathlok story Young Groove ever got to read. Somehow, during our move from Ohio to Kentucky, I s'pose, I missed ish 26 (traded a friend for it later, never fear!), so was I ever thrilled to find ish #27. Creator/plotter Buckler was doing things Young Groove had never seen in comics before. His layouts were cinematic to the extreme, his themes of war, death, and authority were admittedly beyond my eleven year old grasp, and the violence truly shocked me, but it was a world that was so different from any I'd seen in comics before, it just grabbed me and held onto my imagination. Moench's script was grim and gritty before the term ever applied to comics--coarse and realistic. Perhaps it was good for a young kid to see that the world of the future was going to be a much rougher and tougher place. All I knew then, though, was that I was reading some ground-breaking, exciting comics!