Jack Of Hearts

Jack Of Hearts is another one of those characters that never really caught on, despite Marvel pushing him at us at every available opportunity.
Ok, he wasn't as annoying as The Torpedo, but he was strangely bland, being a square jawed nice guy without much of an edge to him. He was also the character no artist wanted as an assignment, his costume being infinitely more time-consuming than, say, Daredevil or The Punisher.
He also stole The White Tiger's series out from under him in the pages of Deadly Hands Of Kung Fu, something I never forgave him for.
And yet, we demanded him blasting into solo action, apparently.
Actually, this try-out in Marvel Premiere  is pretty good. Sure, you have to wade through the obligatory flashback to the origin, and the shoehorned 'Hi, I'm the supporting cast'  you get in every intro story, but Keith Giffen & Rudy Nebres make a lush art team, and the excruciatingly camp villain is a hoot. Give him his own book.

Monark Starstalker

This right here is my all-time favourite Howard Chaykin comic. Ever.
In The Art Of Howard Chaykin, Howie talks about his early work, and says a couple of times that he doesn't feel he got good until American Flagg. At least.
Ok, let me just get in a car, drive to John O' Groats, in disguise, and whisper that I might possibly dare to disagree with Howard Chaykin.
You're wrong, Howie.
Monark Starstalker is a fantastic character, and it astonished me when I read an interview with Chaykin recently where he said that Monark was only ever designed as a one-off appearance. If anyone had potential in The Bronze Age, it was this guy.
He's so cool he even sneaked in an appearance in Disney's latest, Big Hero 6:

I'm not saying Chaykin hasn't done better stories, of course he has. But Monark Starstalker is just one of those comics, y'know?

The Torpedo

Have you ever taken so completely against a new character, that you can't ever get past it? I HATED The Torpedo.
The Torpedo was introduced in Daredevil #126 and I loathed him completely, for reasons I struggle to recall now. Maybe it was the fact that he was 'Busting Loose!' and felt the need to announce it to the world. And sure, the helmet's goofy, but no worse than Iron Fist's collar, to pick one costume choice at random that we all accept happily.

The Torpedo was Brock Jones, an ex-jock turned frustrated insurance salesman, who basically stole his costume and powers from a dying man, fought DD for no apparent reason, and subsequently made a struggling lower income family homeless by destroying their house during the subsequent brouhaha. So there's that.

But I think it was more that he was just so average, pointless and bland, and yet the Marvel armadillo's kept pushing him at us like he was The Next Big Thing. He got two issues of Marvel Premiere of his own to impress us, and completely failed to do so.

I don't even think he appeared in that many comics really, but it felt like he was everywhere, and there was just something about him and the way he KEPT popping up and holding his hand out for a series of his very own. Desperation is never sexy.

But that's the exact same route every new character travelled back in The Bronze Age. You get a guest slot in somebody else's book, you get a try-out in Premiere or Spotlight, then if you're lucky you get your own series, with Spidey guest-starring in the first issue.

That's more or less the way it worked with Moon Knight and Howard The Duck for instance.
So what was it about this guy that irked me so much? Dunno. Let's find out...