Bring On the Back-ups: "Battle Cry" by Starlin and Tanghal

Check it out, Groove-ophiles! The final chapter of Jim Starlin's OMAC revival from Warlord #39 (August 1980)! "Battle Cry" (with finishes/inks by Romeo Tanghal) is an all-out action epic with two full-page splashes of piled-up and piled-upon warriors.

Is it just me, or did Hitler and The Whizzer cameo on page 3?

Bring On the Back-ups: "The Decision!" by Starlin and Tanghal

Hey, hey, hey, Groove-ophiles! We're back with the third chapter of Jim Starlin's OMAC revival! "The Decision!" from Warlord #38 (July 1980) was written and laid out by Judo Jim, the finishes and inks were provided by future New Teen Titans super-star inker Romeo Tanghal. (Tanghal gives Starlin a very different look, to say the least--and his style would change a lot over George Perez's pencils in NTT.) Things are getting ready to get even wilder (and just look at how cram-packed this 8 pager is--no wonder us Groovy Agers have such a hard time with today's glacially paced comics), so let's up, up, and aw--wait, wrong mag. Er, um, Dig it, baby!

Bring On the Back-ups: "For This Is the New Origin of OMAC!" by Starlin and Rubinstein

Hey, hey, hey, Groove-ophiles! Just like Ol' Groove promised ya last Thursday, here's part two of Jim Starlin's turn at revamping OMAC. "For This Is the New Origin of OMAC!" (inked by Joe Rubinstein) finally appeared in Warlord #37 (June 1980), and man, was Teen Groove thrilled! Starlin was making OMAC his own by giving him new twists to his origin and the Global Peace Agency, plus a new set of far-out threads! Dig it!

Bring On the Back-ups: "The Return of OMAC!" by Starlin and Rubinstein

Dig it, Groove-ophiles! One of the most potentially cool-yet-ultimately-disappointing things about the DC ExImplosion was the glimpse of Jim Starlin's revamp of Jack Kirby's OMAC in the back of Kamandi #59 (June 1978). Potentially cool 'cause, hey, it was Jim-freakin'-Starlin (finished and inked by a young Joe Rubinstein) picking up the dangling threads and cliff-hanger ending from OMAC's long-deceased mag. Ultimately disappointing because that one 8 pager was all we got, 'cause that was the final ish of Kamandi. Sigh. It was a pretty amazing back-up feature, though, don'tcha think...?

Starlin did complete four OMAC back-ups that would eventually see the light of day in Warlord a couple years later (in issues 37-40, to be exact). And yep, Ol' Groove'll have 'em for you over the course of the next few Thursdays. Who loves ya, baby?

Bring on the Back-ups: "The Longest Block in the World!" by Maggin and Giordano

Greetings, Groove-ophiles! Let's kick the week off with a far-out back-up featuring Captain Marvel, Jr.! This one's a bit of fun fluff, with writer Elliot S! Maggin giving us a little bit of a morality play (guest-starring the Earth-S version of Henry Kissinger), while artist Dick Giordano keeps the spirit of Mac Raboy going with some very stylized CMJr. poses! From Shazam! #12 (February 1974), here's "The Longest Block in the World!"

Bring on the Back-ups/Thursday Triple-play: "From the Sky...Winged Wrath!", "...In the Den of the Dazzler!", "To Cage an Angel!" by Seigel, Tuska, and Ayers

 Hey, hey, hey, Groove-ophiles! Tomorrow is the U.S. premiere of X-Men: Apocalypse, and Ol' Groove's got his fingers crossed (which makes typing pretty excruciating) that this new entry into mutant movie-dom is as good as the last two! My fave original X-Man, the Avenging Angel, looks to have a much bigger part in the new flick than he had in the third X-Men installment, so now is as good a time as ever to look back at the Groovy Age Angel. So, whaddya say we dig on those rare Angel back-ups from Ka-Zar issues 2-3 (September, December 1970) and Marvel Tales #30 (January 1970), ugliest-superhero-threads-ever and all.

For an angel, Warren Worthington III had a devil of a time getting his solo-tales into print. In less than a year's time, he had two books cancelled out from under his three-part solo epic. Both the X-Men book itself (for which these stories could have been created as back-up features, but Ol' Groove and others think they might've been intended as an ish of X-Men during the "Death of Professor X" era) and the giant-sized Ka-Zar reprint mags bit the dust in 1969/70 (and yeah, X-Men was quickly revived as a reprint mag, but that's beside the point) before the complete tale could be told.

Still and all, this three-part saga is a pretty important turning point in WWIII's life (hey, was Stan trying to tell us something when he named our winged mutant?). Plus, it introduces us to the original Dazzler (blechh, okay, that one's more of a liability). It's the first solo X-Men story to appear outside the Merry Mutants' own title. Oh, and it's written by Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel (some extremely rare Groovy Age Marvel work) with powerful (if rushed-looking) art by the team of George Tuska and Dick Ayers.

"Groove, shaddup already and get on with the stories!"

Okay, okay. Sheesh.