The Avengers: Your Young Men Shall Slay Visions

Ok, firstly, that's a great title for a story.
Apparently there's a bit of kerfuffle around the ol' interweb involving some people insisting that comics shouldn't be political, which I take to mean, they shouldn't try to say anything.
I'm not sure where these people have been for the last 40 years. To quote Skunk Anansie: Yes, it's f**kin' political. Everything's political.
I'm sure Steve Englehart & Bob Brown would agree.
For instance herein, Wanda & Vision openly declare their love for each other to the world, and the world reacts in various ways. Some good, some very bad.
It's the little details that make this one, like the fact that the threatening note Cap opens up is obviously written by an illiterate, a small but telling point. As is Cap's reaction, and Wanda's line about hate for that matter.
It's also a classic pulp set-up, as The Avengers fight to stop the bad guys getting into the operating room where Viz lies at death's door.
Ok, considering they're The Avengers, they seem to have an inordinate amount of trouble fending off a few non-powered thugs with guns, but we'll let that one go.

The Kids From Rec. Road Meet Steve Englehart & Roy Thomas!

Just back from this years Portsmouth Comic Con, where we met the double legendary Steve Englehart AND Roy Thomas!!!
Read our exclusive con report, over at kidsfromrecroad.blogspot.com!

Steve Englehart & Marshall Rogers' Unpublished Dark Detective III

As you may've noticed, this month marks the 80th birthday of The Caped Crusader himself, so let's celebrate with something REALLY special.
Once again, we're indebted to that Master Of The Missing Arts, Mr. Mark Frazer for pointing me in the direction of this one:
Over at Steve Englehart's site ( http://www.steveenglehart.com natch ), The Stainless One has posted a free digital file of his work on The Batman with Marshall Rogers. This contains his & Marshall's classic Detective Comics run from 1978, the team's just as great sequel Dark Detective from 2005 AND ( and here's the best bit ) the full script for the never picked-up Dark Detective III, with pencilled art for the first issue from Marshall!
According to Mark: 'Rumour has it that after Rogers died, Simonson stepped up to finish the art for DDIII ( which would've been totally cool ) - however DC stopped taking Englehart's calls & quietly dropped the whole project, citing Rogers' death as an excuse.'
Bearing in mind, Steve also seemingly wasn't asked to contribute anything to the 1000th issue of Detective Comics, AND how much of the movies ripped off his stories without crediting him, then who can blame him for putting up this 'official bootleg'.
As I always do when coming across lost stuff, I emailed Steve to ask if it would be ok to post a few pages and direct everybody to his site, and ever the gent, here's what he came back with:

'Hey Pete, 
I hope you enjoyed your weekend with The Batman in London. You can absolutely point people toward the bootleg; my whole point is to let people read it, despite DC.'

Needless to say, Dark Detective III is absolutely brilliant, and although I really want to tell you all the best bits, I won't spoil a thing, except to say I got to the last page with a big grin on my face.
And as Steve would obviously prefer you to get this stuff direct from him, I'm just gonna put up the first 5 pages of the art. We're literally two minutes after the end of Dark Detective II: The Joker's hideout is in flames, and The Batman ( in makeshift mask ) has got Silver St.Cloud out but The Joker's missing. Now read on, and then go get the rest of it!

Doc Savage - In The Mighty Marvel Manner

Marvel's colour ( and black and white ) adaptations of Doc Savage never seem to get much love from tried and true Doc fans.
But those people forget that Marvel's Doc introduced a whole load of fans to The Man Of Bronze. Like the Spanish Warren being my Warren, Marvel's Doc Savage was my Doc Savage.
I may well have investigated Lester Dent's original stories without the comics existing, in fact I know I would've, I bought everything back then, but I'm not sure I would've been as interested.
And I still think the b/w Doc book was one of the best of the House Of Idea's magazine line.
The colour book, which came a couple of years before, is also a lot of fun, though a bit more problematic.
In the plus column, we have Steve Englehart adapting the original stories for most of the run, splitting each novel into two issues, and we also have Ross Andru, my fave Spidey artist ( I know, I know ) for nearly every issue.
The problem really, is that even with two issues for each tale, Englehart is still forced to cram, so that even for '70's Marvel, this is wordy stuff.
Also Andru seems teamed with a different inker almost every time out. Yes, those inkers include Jim Mooney, Ernie Chan, Frank Giacoia and Tom Palmer, but it does mean the book fails to settle into a solid team.
So you can see why Doc's initial excursion into The Mighty Marvel Manner didn't sell. And also why they needed the space the b/w books afforded.
But it's Doc. And The Fabulous Five. With Monk doing his best Ben Grimm. It's you, me and all our pals, with all the gadgets in the world and adventure waiting behind every corner. The ultimate boys' gang, in fact.  Who can resist?

Len Wein In Rutland

God, now we lost Len Wein as well. How is that even possible?
I really wanted to post that great clip from the Jack Kirby: Storyteller documentary, with Len & Marv becoming little kids again while talking about visiting Jack's house in their youth, but couldn't locate it sadly. The whole thing is on youtube tho', so watch it, if only to see how neither of these guys ever stopped being fans.
As well as creating two characters you may've heard of, Wein was also The Hulk's AND The JLA's best writer for my money and, as I say, a genuine fan right to the end.
So here's a classic fannish moment, an unofficial Marvel / DC crossover that Len cooked up with buddies Steve Englehart & Gerry Conway. It's the ultimate Rutland Halloween story, as The Beast fights The Juggernaut, the JLA face off against Felix Faust, and Thor battles Loki.
But those aren't the main story. The main story is the tale of how Len, Steve, Gerry & Glynis got to Rutland. And how everybody keeps trying to steal Englehart's car.
It'll make you smile. Which is what Len Wein spent his life making us do.