The Golden Voyage Of Sinbad

Here's Marvel's version of perennial Bank Holiday movie The Golden Voyage Of Sinbad, a film that runs through the whole of the Bronze Age, alongside all those Doug McClure vehicles like The People That Time Forgot and Warlords Of Atlantis. 

Like I said, Golden Voyage seems to have been on British TV every single Bank Holiday since it's original release in 1974, and though it's more than a bit creaky now, it's always nice to see any Ray Harryhausen in place of endless CGI in our movies.
Plus, it has a cult cast list Alex Cox would weep over, starring as it does Danger Diabolik / Barbarella's John Phillip Law, Best Dr. Who ever Tom Baker, and The Professional's Martin Shaw, hilariously pretending to be an Arab seaman. And Caroline Munro, of course.

The movie adaptation is surprisingly faithful, with Len Wein lifting dialogue wholesale from the script, and splitting it over two issues gives it the room not to have to squeeze everything in, such as by comparison, House Of Hammer's otherwise excellent movie strips had to.
It's got a solid, unshowy art job from George Tuska & Vince Colletta, who even manage to catch both Baker & Shaw's likenesses in the occasional panel, and even a Romita opening splash, for no real reason.
Sinbad never really caught on in comics ( unless of course, Dynamite are doing a version. I don't know, are they? ) perhaps getting lost amongst all the other sword-swinging heroes of the time. Which is a shame, as he kind of precedes all of them.
It's nothing amazing, but it is a nice memento of a quintessential Bronze Age fantasy movie. It'll keep you going till next week anyway, when it'll be on TV again. Here's Part 1:

Fill-In Issues

Here's something we haven't talked about much: Fill-In issues. Victims of The Dreaded Deadline Doom. Those single editions that appeared, unannounced and unwelcome, right slap-bang in the middle of a story you were really enjoying and couldn't wait to read the next part of.
As much a part of the Bronze Age as those painful looking metal brassieres Conan's girlfriends habitually wore, they were often the result of lax editorial oversight, too much freedom given to creators or said creators' massive drugs intakes, depending on which chapter of Sean Howe's Marvel Comics The Untold Story you're reading.
All of those things were also, natch, responsible for some of the greatest comics ever done by anybody ever.
Probably the most well known, and most divisive, fill-in was Steve Gerber's Howard The Duck #16:

Which he wrote, as he says, while driving to Vegas. When this issue came out, I absolutely loathed it. Though to be fair to Steve, he knew we would...

Even as an adult, even as a massive Gerber fan, I still find this issue boring and pointless, though at least he didn't go reprint. ( Something that was even worse - generally a new Gil Kane cover, with a crap Silver Age reprint behind it )
Here's another one - X-Men #110:

Len Wein, Chris Claremont & Dave Cockrum had just brought the X-Men back from the dead, John Byrne and Terry Austin were now on board and the book was just about to become great. Then we get some completely random bad guy called Warhawk invading the X-Mansion, with Tony DeZuniga on art duties.
Don't get me wrong, Tony was of course one of the greats, but this was blatantly a story that had been sitting in someone's draw for a while. And I didn't want DeZuniga on X-Men, I wanted Byrne & Austin.

More? Here's Marv, Sal and Dave Hunt stepping in on Avengers #169:

Again, nothing wrong with this one. In fact, it's quite a fun adventure for Cap, T'Challa & Shellhead, But it didn't fit. It wasn't part of what we'd been reading. It was another fill-in.
And it sat there in your collection, being slightly irritating, but there was no way you could get rid of it. You couldn't couldn't swap it for something better, 'cos that would mean you didn't have the complete set!
But, but, but .... It was better than a reprint.
Interestingly, whenever the writer was so late they couldn't do an HTD #16, it nearly always seemed to be Bill Mantlo who filled in, like in these two examples. Maybe he was hanging out round the offices a lot.

And you can disagree with me about this one if you like, as it's an interim issue between Len Wein & Gerry Conway's runs on Werewolf By Night, but instead of Mike Ploog you get Werner Roth, and to me, it always smelt like a fill-in.
There were loads of these in the Bronze Age, not necessarily bad comics, just... unwelcome ones.
Maybe it's time for a Marvel Essential Fill-ins?

I Do My Own Thing!

Hey, remember when Mary Jane was briefly a go-go dancer? Ol' MJ was always a bit flighty but I'm not sure she was ever quite as mean to Petey as the protagonist of this Marvel romance tale is to her men.
Mind you, if I was drawn by John Buscema & John Romita, I'd probably do my own thing too...
No matter whom it hurts!
And it'd end just as badly as it does for Faye here.

The Son Of Satan: Dance With The Devil, My Red-Eyed Son!

Here's a lost masterpiece, one of the sadly few times the mighty Russ Heath worked for Marvel in the Bronze Age. Here, Russ is obviously, and spectacularly, channeling Hieronymus Bosch, the 14th century religious painter whose terrifying visions of Hell are still, hundreds of years later, the template for all ideas of the inferno. Which means that this is the best version of Hell in comics ever done by anyone.

We take a short break here, to show off what would've been the next page, but that was rejected by the Comics Code, and that I'm astounded anybody, from Bill, Russ and Archie upwards, ever thought they'd get away with.

And here's the hastily assembled replacement page, put together in an afternoon by Archie & Jazzy John.

That last page looks out of place too, looking a bit like Herb Trimpe inked by Al Milgrom, maybe. Was there another rejected page there?