This month, Rand Bellavia takes a look at his growing longbox, and reflects on comics released in June in 1979, 1984, 1989, 1994, 1999, 2004, 2009, and 2014! Rand Bellavia is back to share his fond memories of decades of comic collecting and reading in this month’s Random Access Memory.

June 1979

Avengers 187

So Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver, whose real names are Wanda and Pietro, meet their “real” father, whose (as far as I know, only) name is Django Maximoff. Django calls Wanda and Pietro by their “real” names, Ana and Mateo. He’s wrong about that. And, as it turns out later, he isn’t their real (or even “real”) father. Oh yeah, and Wanda is possessed by an elder god, whose real name is Chthon.*

*How to Know You are the Villain of the Story 1: Your name has four consonants in a row.

Immediately before having a heart attack, Django reveals that the wooden doll of Wanda he’s been carrying in his breast pocket for nearly 20 issues has become animated and given the power of speech.

As luck would have it, Quicksilver’s thoughts pick up Django’s exposition right where he left off, giving us an entirely reasonable BAS (Bronze Age Science) explanation for how this all came to be.

Lacking other options, Pietro grabs his sister’s soul and points it at Chthon.

If you hold hands and think clean thoughts, you too can defeat an elder god. The lack of cynicism on display here is admirable. This sort of prescriptive storytelling is what superhero stories are made for.

The Avengers’ combined will/souls/love causes the Wanda doll and the Chthon Wanda to swap places. Then Pietro (quick like a bunny) hurls the Chthon doll onto Mount Wundagore, and the Wanda Wanda hexes a massive rock slide onto the unsuspecting piece of wood.**

**How to Know You are the Villain of the Story 2: When confronted with your imminent demise, your last word is a prolonged shouting of your own name. Extra points if you hold out the only vowel and fail to enunciate the final consonant.

Comics I Read From June 1979

Captain America 237
Cerebus 10
Iron Man 126
Uncanny X-Men 125

June 1984

Saga of the Swamp Thing 28

Anyone out there watching the new Swamp Thing show on DC Universe? Against all odds, they found a way to film Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol run, and it looks like they’re going to try to film Alan Moore’s seminal Swamp Thing run. Exhibit A: Here’s the promo image they’re running for the second episode:

I’m sure you all know this by now, but it looks like Swamp Thing has already been cancelled. I’m writing this in the past, so while you folks in the future have known about this for a few weeks, for me it just happened in the time between when I wrote that last paragraph and this one. They can’t take the comic away from us, though.

This is one of two issues from Moore’s run that was illustrated by Shawn McManus, who is probably most known for illustrating Sandman’s A Game of You arc. The art is fantastic, if you can get past the notion that it is much more cartoony than the Bissette/Totleben issues that surround it.

“The Burial” functions as a coda to “The Anatomy Lesson” as well as a recap of Swamp Thing original origin story — though, because this is Alan Moore, the recap is much more clever and organic than it needs to be.

Of course Holland doesn’t wake up in time, and Swamp Thing has to watch him die horribly. Holland falls into the Swamp, and the Swamp Thing emerges (which is kind of how he got his name). But this “new” Swamp Thing from the past is somehow aware of the “old” Swamp Thing in the present. (Neither are aware of the Swamp Thing television show from the future, that was cancelled in the past, but that I’m just finding out about here in the present.)

Past Swamp Thing silently points to the swamp water from which he emerged, and disappears. Having learned that he is not Alec Holland, Present Swamp Thing knows what to do.

It’s a nice touch that Past and Present Swamp Thing work together to honor the man that they once thought they were.

Comics I Read From June 1984

Alpha Flight 14
Avengers 247
Cerebus 63
Coyote 7
Daredevil 211
Defenders 135
Dreadstar 12
Ka-Zar 34
Machine Man 1
Mage 3
Marvel Fanfare 16
Marvel Super-Hero Secret Wars 6
Marvel Team-Up 145, Annual 7
Peter Parker the Spectacular Spider-Man 94
Six from Sirius 1
Super Powers 3
Thriller 10
Uncanny X-Men 185
Vigilante 10
West Coast Avengers 2
Zot 4

June 1989

Animal Man 14

If you don’t already know, Not Very Brightly Colored Man, who appears mysteriously throughout Grant Morrison’s Animal Man run — with no seeming connection to the story or other characters — turns out to be Grant Morrison. These pages are really fun to reread, but they were pretty strange the first time through.

Honestly, I don’t recall my reaction to this page at the time — I probably just skipped over it, assuming (correctly, as it turned out) that it would eventually make sense.

Meanwhile, Animal Man’s son plays with a ouija board (clearly marked for your protection).

And his daughter knows all about Stranger Danger.

As Ellen is telling Buddy about Maxine’s encounter, they both see the same man standing outside their house. Buddy confronts him.

Buddy learns nothing. But we see a familiar series of numbers.

All of this makes perfect much later in the story, when Buddy “borrows” a time machine and haunts his past life. (And I, for one, would love to see a team-up book with Past Swamp Thing and Future Animal Man.)

All right. If you must know, 9/27 is the date of a tragic event that Future Buddy was hoping to prevent.

Doom Patrol 25

Shortly after beginning his run on Doom Patrol, Grant Morrison published an essay in the letters column that mentioned that he planned to make extensive use of his dream journal while writing the book. Something tells me that this is one of those pages.

Also, when people talk about how Grant Morrison is just weird for weirdness sake, this is probably the sort of page they’re talking about. I unabashedly love all things Grant Morrison, so don’t necessarily agree with them, but I’m not going to pretend that I have no idea what they might possibly be talking about.

June 1994

Alice Cooper: The Last Temptation 1

This comic tie-in (written by Neil Gaiman and co-plotted with Alice Cooper) was first released as a free comic packaged with the initial pressing of Cooper’s Last Temptation CD. It was the first release of what was meant to be a mighty new Marvel Music imprint, that never really amounted to much. (There was a very cool KRS-One comic/cassette package with story and art by Kyle Baker, but I don’t recall anything else.)

Two more issues were eventually released and the series has been collected many many times, with an alarming amount of coloring options. This issue has been released with the work of three different colorists, and was once even collected in black and white.

Here’s the first page, as colored by John Kalisz.

Issues two and three were colored by Bernie Mireault, so he recolored the first issue for the initial collection, presumably so the hues matches throughout the book. Note the completely different palette in play.

Finally, here we have the “remastered” coloring of the current digital version, by David Curiel.

As you can see, this brings a whole new meaning to the word “remastering,” as it looks nothing like John Kalisz’ original work, and even less like Bernie Mireault’s recoloring.

It should also be noted that while Curiel’s page is a digitization, Mirealt’s page is a photocopy from the original collection (so not as good image quality as the digitization), and Kalisz’s page is a photocopy from the original comic (which had a more porous paper quality, so didn’t photocopy as well).

Now let’s take a look at one of the issues’ double page spreads.

Here we have Kalisz’s work:

Bernie Mireault’s take is pretty different:

Mirealt’s colors seems less real. There’s no clear light source and the single red tone, while striking, seems out of place in such a dark environment.

Curiel’s work on these pages seems much more like a remastering, as you can see traces of both Kalisz and Mireault’s work.

The light work (light source from behind the figure and the stage spotlight) is taken directly from Kalisz’s pages, but the darkness on the lower right (where the rats are) seems more in line with Mireault’s version.

Coloring matters, people.

Comics I Read from June 1994

Amazing Spider-Man 392
Animal Man 74
Books of Magic 3
Break the Chain
Cerebus 183
Demon 50
Flash 93
Hellblazer 80
Hellboy: Seeds of Destruction 4
Hellstorm: Prince of Lies 17
Incredible Hulk 420, Annual 20
Madman Comics 2
Maxx 9
Sandman 62
Shade the Changing Man 50
Swamp Thing 145
Vertigo Voices: Dr. Occult 1
Violator 2
White Like She 2

June 1999

Preacher 52

Glenn Fabry’s original cover for this issue “didn’t work out.” Not sure if that means he didn’t like it or it was damaged or what, but the cover you’re looking at was produced by Fabry in an absurdly short period of time. It’s certainly looser than his other Preacher covers, but it still works.

The issue tells a story from Tulip and Amy’s past. While attending their first college party, Tulip begins to suspect that someone put something into Amy’s drink.

When Tulip returns, she finds Amy unconscious in a room with four guys preparing to assault her. She gets a gun from her truck.

Guns are dangerous and fun and scary and exciting and horrible and wonderful and they can kill your father or save your best friend.

Garth Ennis isn’t trying to win an argument here. He’s simply presenting the emotional reality of two characters he loves, and giving us one of the most honest conversations about guns I have ever read.

June 2004

Ex Machina 1

Over a decade later I’m not sure how I feel about how Ex Machina ended, but it came out of the blocks in an engaging manner. Like most of Brian K. Vaughan’s work, the concepts are unique, the plot and characters are solid, and the dialog is fantastic. If you think you’d enjoy the West Wing with magical realism, here’s your new favorite comic.

We open on Mitchell Hundred, the Mayor of New York, who is about to be assassinated.

Taking a page from Preacher, Hundred has the ability to “speak” to machinery. (Luckily, guns speak American English.) In the ensuing confusion, Hundred’s bodyguard whisks him into a waiting limo and off they go.

After flashing all the way back to Hundred’s origin story, we see him in the more recent past, as New York’s first real-life super-hero:

We learn that since becoming Mayor, Hundred has given up the life of a costumed hero, but not everyone associated with his super-heroic past has accepted that.

And we learn the easiest way to get elected Mayor of New York in 2002.

June 2009

Chew 1

Rarely have art style, story, and narrative voice come together so perfectly in comics as they do in John Layman and Rob Guillory’s Chew.

That’s a pretty crazy — and pretty wonderful — hook for a story. But this is only the tiniest tip of the insane idea iceberg.

The idea here is that Tony can solve any murder simply by eating a part of the victim and observing what happened to them. Kind of like the plot of Pushing Daisies but a lot more gross.

Just as Tony’s about to get fired, we meet Savoy, a man of substantial stature, girth, appetites, and vocabulary:

Yes, the FDA. Did I mention that a big part of Tony’s job is tracking down folks buying and selling black market chicken? (Did I mention that chicken is illegal because of bird flu? Did I mention that Tony’s brother is a celebrity chef who buys a lot of black market chicken?)

June 2014

Ms. Marvel 5

Ms. Marvel was a joy from issue one, page one, but this conversation between Kamala and her father was when I knew I was in love.

This sort of Peter Parker/Aunt May conversation is ground that Marvel has gone over many times, but G. Willow Wilson manages to find a lot of fertile soil. This father’s ability to honestly speak his fears to his daughter is shocking. And demonstrates the trust that he has in — and the respect that he has for — her.

The success of this comic created a lot of talk about representation in comics, and while I don’t expect to see anyone at a convention sporting Abu cosplay, a kind and loving Muslim father is a welcome addition to the Marvel Universe.

But he’s still a father.

And if you thought that this confrontation didn’t go the way you expected, wait until Kamala speaks with Shiekh Abdullah.

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RANDom Access Memory – June 2019

June 1979