Ken Aldred

In another thread, a boardie mentioned that it would be interesting to see Marvel / Disney and DC film crossovers, and imagine how confusing it would be if you had Star Wars and the New Gods in the same film?

He was hooded, like the Grim Reaper, like Death in Starlin's stories, but it was Red Skull.

That's really, really disappointing. I hadn't read about the cancellation. The Lemire / Deodato run was excellent; solid stories with some of Deodato's best ever artwork, expanding on the story of Thane, Thanos' son. The last Donny Cates storyline was extremely impressive, also with very nice art from a creator I'd never heard of before, Geoff Shaw.

Not too surprised that T'Challa was killed off, as for the duration of the current storyline he can easily be replaced by Shuri, who also becomes Black Panther in the comics.

Very interesting to see that Thor's replacement for Mjolnir is an axe. I've just read Jason Aaron's consistently-excellent run on Thor, in which he introduces Jarnbjorn, an axe that the Thunder God used when he was young and still unworthy to wield Mjolnir, whereas in the movie it's renamed Stormbreaker, and introduced after the hammer is destroyed. Works for me; one way or the other, it still sounds extremely metal.

The deep-fried kebab joke emphasises that it's set in Scotland. A fair reference to the shawarma scene in the first Avengers film.

A major problem is decompressed storytelling, which often spreads a story over maybe 6 issues. So, are many potential new readers, introduced via the super-hero films, going to be willing to drop $25 to read just one dragged-out story, and then be willing to commit to doing that on a frequent, long term, continuous basis with multiple titles? Very daunting.

It's too significant an example of the comics medium, applied to, describing experiences of this important topic, for the work to be left out of any such discussion : IMO, of course.

I was pretty much isolated from a wider community until I started reading the UK’s Fantasy Advertiser and BEM fanzines in the very late 70s, but I don’t know if they were published as early on as your paper there.

1950s Captain America, anyway.

Right from when I started reading comics in the 70s, Thanos was my favourite Marvel super-villain. I followed his stories loyally for over 40 years but, despite that, he still decided to annihilate me. There's gratitude for you. The lesson to be learned; in comics, as in real life, don't trust a sociopath.

It's from the classic Spider Super-Stories 39

I thought that they balanced Thanos' personality quite well to make it work for a mainstream audience, whereas, in the comics, it might get a little bit too deep, philosophical and psychological to simplify and translate fully into this format. In fact, I recently read Starlin's Infinity graphic novel trilogy, and the first in particular, Revelation, is terribly-overblown psychedelic, philosophical bollocks, and very disappointing compared to his comparatively reined-in series such as the classic Infinity Gauntlet.

I was slain. At the back of my mind, before clicking on the link, I suspected that I might be unlucky.

Having just watched Infinity War, I do feel that Starlin’s creator credit should’ve been more prominent, such as ‘Based on characters created by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Jim Starlin’, rather than being somewhat more buried away, much later on.

Stories with very heavyset versions of ordinarily slim or muscular super-heroes were quite popular in the Silver Age. As were covers: not quite as much as gorilla covers, but popular.

The sad ones are often quite memorable.

Yup. I like both characters and have one copy of each book.

Good either way; from a transitional period. I'll always see it as early Copper Age, but some have redefined it as very late Bronze. I wouldn't quibble about it.

Interesting. Never knew that John 5 was the guitarist on that album.

The cocoon (and Warlock actually being named) appears in an end credits scene in Guardians of the Galaxy 2.

I didn't continue beyond The Downward Spiral album.

Yup. In one of the other threads I suggested Thanos needs to be included in the Eternals film to make it more commercially viable. Also, as with The Eternals and Celestials, another of my all-time favourite characters. His background has been played around with by writers a bit, such as Jim Krueger in the Earth / Universe X series suggesting that his mother was a shapeshifted Skrull, in order to explain his facial appearance, but his heritage has generally gravitated back towards the What If? original series retcon that the inhabitants of Titan are Eternals, and Thanos is an Eternal with a mutable, Deviant-like gene or is otherwise an Eternal-Deviant hybrid, to likewise explain his anomalous appearance.

Yup. Very talented guy. Impressive going from a Depeche Mode influenced mainstream sound on his Pretty Hate Machine album to a much fuller industrial metal style on the EP.

It can be difficult with Trent Reznor songs. In one Water Cooler thread I'd considered posting the Broken EP, but some of the lyrics would've been 'problematic'.