SUPERHERO REUNION
It’s a big chill for the gang at Marvel
I went to a reunion
the other day. All my old
friends were there,
Spider-Man, Daredevil,
Ironman, Thor, the Hulk,
the Avengers, The
Defenders, the Fantastic
Four and the Thing. It
was a superheroes’
reunion.
Not that I’m a superhero myself,
although I have been known to
bound around in tights now and
again. Somehow my inability to fly,
bend steel or shoot laser beams out
of my naval never bothered my
costumed friends while we were
growing up together. Snobbery was
for supervillains and seventh
graders.
Besides. I got the distinct impression that
they needed me as much as I needed them.
After ail. if a Hulk smashes in a forest does it
make a noise? What adventures we had! Many
were the lost weekends we’d fly off to Latveria
to thwart Dr. Doom's latest evil scheme. But as
old friends are wont to do with the passage of
the years, we eventually lost contact.
I looked up my old friends at a local comic
book shop the other day, thinking I’d find them,
save for the occasional wrinkle and gray hair,
more or less the same as I had left them.
Whoever said "you can't go home again" must
have been from Gotham City.
I didn't expect miracles. I know I’ve aged
quite a bit since Spider-Man and I last took on
Dr. Octopus (and. by the way. cleaned his clock).
I at least expected Reed Richards (alias “Mr.
Fantastic,” the leader of the Fantasic Four) to
have more gray hair than just the silver-streaked
temples he’s sported since the early '60s. I was
sure he was retired by now. too arthritic to use
his amazing stretching powers without having a
primal scream.
To my suprise. however, neither Reed nor
any of my other old friends had aged a day since
the early '70s. But they were not the same guys I
remember.
Ironman, I found out, was no longer
millionaire industrialist Tony Stark, but a black
test pilot named James Rhodes. It seems Tony
had to give up his ironclad alter ego after he fell
prey to alcoholism.
If that weren’t bad enough. Yellowjacket
was court-martialed and thrown out of the
Avengers after suffering a nervous breakdown,
and Spider-Man revealed that he was sexually
molested as child. What's next? Is the Hulk a
bed-wetter? And, if he is, who will save
mankind?
Speaking about the Hulk, he's not speaking.
Granted, with a vocabularly that didn't extend far
beyond "Hulk will smash,” he never was one of
the world's great conversationalists. But now he
just grunts, growls and smashes. I ran into him a
few months ago and he had somehow retained
the brilliant mind of his alter ego, Bruce Banner.
God knows how he was reduced to grunts. I
guess he's been hanging around Lou Ferrigno
too much.
Between Tony Stark's alcoholism. Yellow
jacket’s neurosis, Spidey’s tortured past and the
Hulk's laryngitis, superheroes’ problems have
gotten too complex. When I used to hang around
the Avengers, the biggest crisis was Captain
America's disillusionment with the government.
After nine issues, he got a grip on himself and
realized there was no reason to give up a swell
set of tights.
Back then, no problem was so big that it
couldn't be solved by beating the Mole Man to a
bloody pulp. As the Falcon once put it: "Man.
this is where it’s at! Thumpin' on crazies is my
thing!”
One of the biggest changes from the old
days is that Ben Grimm, the rocky orange
bruiser known to the world as the Thing, has
quit the Fantastic Four and started his own com
ic book. How can one have the Fantastic Four
without the Thing? It’s like having the Old Testa
ment without Moses.
The Thing gave us so much. His deathless
battle cry. "It’s clobberin’ time!.” became an
overture to many of my childhood tantrums. Ben
has been replaced in the Fantastic Four by a
large green woman named She-Hulk. Unlike her
male counterpart. She-Hulk is quite intelligent
and doesn't grunt (at least not in Comics Code
approved stories).
Aside from suddenly recalling a traumatic
childhood, Spider-Man has undergone several
other changes since I last saw him. He’s now
wearing a different costume, discarding his
classic red and blue fighting togs for a sleek
new black outfit. Actually, he hasn t quite
discarded the old costume. From what I could
tell, he's having some problem deciding what
outfit he likes better and is currently alternating
between the two.
The new costume had some major problems
at first. Before Spidey's ex-girlfriend the Black
Cat. made him a duplicate pair of the black un
dies, the original pair had somehow come to life
and attacked the ol’ wallcrawler. I could have
told Spidey from experience that if you don't do
your laundry, it takes on a life of its own
At any rate, at least Peter Parker (Spidey s
secret identity) finally got out of college After
spending some 15 years getting his bachelor's
degree (which is about average for comic book
heroes and University students). Peter decided
he couldn't be a superhero, free-lance
photographer and graduate student all at the
same time. He is now a full time photographer
for the New York Daily Bugle, earning most of
his money taking pictures of himself as Spider
Man. It’s a living.
The most tragic news I received was that
Captain Marvel had died of cancer. It seems he
was exposed to some carcinogenic nerve gas
while battling a guy named Agent Nitro and,
after a long illness, passed away a few years
ago. I'm so ashamed. I didn’t even go to the
funeral. Still it's not my fault No one told me. I
don t even hear from Daredevil at Christmas
anymore. I
Captain Marvel has been replaced by a new /
Captain Marvel, a black woman who can turn her r'
body into light or sound waves. She’s more at- § *
tractive than the old Captain Marvel. I suppose, K*
but I still mourn his passing. I remember how
full of optimism he was when he was finally ^p(
freed from the dread Negative Zone.
These two Captain Marvels should not be
confused, however, with the Captain Marvel who
flys around in red underwear yelling "Shazam?”
By the early '70s. he was working over at D C.
Comics, the company that employed Batman,
Superman. Wonder Woman. Green Lantern and
that crowd. I only hung around with the Marvel
Comics Group as a kid. Oh. I d run into Wonder
Woman or the Flash at a party now and then, but
i was a die hard Marvel loyalist
I must admit I had a crush on Wonder
Woman at one time, but I never had the affec
tion for her that I had for the Wasp. The Wasp
was a winsome little nymph who could shrink to
a height of six inches and sting the hell out of
the bad guys. God was she cute! I think I liked
her so much because she reminded me of my
first love. Tinkerbell. Unfortunately, she was mar
ried to Yellowjacket at the time.
I understand, however, she divorced him
after his breakdown and is now looking for a
new man Perhaps I should start hanging out at
the comic book store more often
On the other hand, superheroes have chang
ed too much since the days of my youth. In
many ways, they've lost a sense of tradition and.
in the pursuit of sophistication, gotten too in
volved m soap opera plot twists. How I long to
hear just one superhero say "take that, you rat!
and oh. so you want to play, huh?'
W////M
By Thomas Henderson
Superheroes courtesy of Marvel
Comics
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PWIP! You’re Dead!
Pow! Bam! What’s comic book action without
the appropriate onomatopoeia? Below are
some of the more colorful terms and their
definition.
Pwip: A common noise heard around the
house when you ’re using your web-shooters.
Bwak: The sound heard when boarding-up a
window.
Brr-inng: The phone, as in “Honey, the phone
is “brr-innging.”
Swak: A hard right to the jaw.
Pwam: A hard left to the jaw.
Blangg: The sound of one of New York’s
Finest service revolvers.
Kaspwatt: The sound you make when you
beat up several bad guys at once.
Fwak: Another hard right to the jaw.
Pop, Flash, Pop: The sound of obnoxious
photojournalists taking a picture of a reluctant
superhero.
Knock: Someone’s at the door, have to hide
my costume!
Bzzt: Emergency signal! Dr. Doom has blown
up the Humane Society!
i Wham: Someone is pissed.
fWrok: An uppercut.
Frak: Ooo, a kick in the face!
Bkak: Hope he’s got a dental plan.
Wham: An oldy, but a goody.
Kratham: The familiar sound a mutant makes
when thrown against your computer console.
Krak: Don’t worry, it’s paid for.
Zzak: It going to be a bad day for this alien.
Zowk: There goes the Neutronium P-Q-31
Space Modulator
Zark: Back to the shop!
Choom: Oh, so that’s what it sounds like when
you blast a Venusian.
Smengg: That’ll teach you to point.
Splengg: One more hard left to the jaw.
Splam: We used to eat that in the Army.
Scam: Right in da kisser!
Smeed: The sound resulting from getting hit
on the side of the head with a kitchen table.
Tramb: It never sounds like that when I’m
kicked in the face.
Ptom: Pass the Anacin, please.
Slamm: Neanderthal version of the Heimlich
Manuever.
Kong: Beetle Bailey in Southeast Asia.
Thok: The sound of a friendly giant hitting a
bad guv
Tha-Kow: The Final Blow.
Ba-Da-Da-Doom!: The End.
The Friday Edition, Page 5B