The Grooviest Covers of All Time: Wings of the Vulture!

Check it out, Groove-ophiles! The latest cinematic revamp of Spider-Man hits the theaters today, and the thing that really has Ol' Groove curious is Michael Keaton's Vulture. Now, in the late 80s/early 90s, I thought Keaton made a great Batman ("eh" Bruce Wayne, but a great Batman). To think the world has turned in such a way that that same actor is now playing a winged villain in a Spidey movie is, to moi, mind-boggling. But hey, my mind is an easy thing to boggle. Anywho, I've made it a habit to stay away from previews, trailers, discussions, reviews, etc. of upcoming movies, so I don't know if Keaton is playing the Adrian Toomes Vulture, the Blackie Drago Vulture, or some other version (or combination thereof), but I am intrigued. What does all'a that have to do with Groovy Age comics? Nothin'. But these have a lot to do with our favorite subject: Vulture-centric covers from Groovy Age era issues of Amazing Spider-Man, Marvel Tales, and Spectacular Spider-Man! Art by Romita, Kane, Cockrum, Weiss, and a horde of inkers! Enjoy, baby!

Bring on the Back-ups/Thursday Triple-play: "From the Sky...Winged Wrath!", "...In the Den of the Dazzler!", "To Cage an Angel!" by Seigel, Tuska, and Ayers

 Hey, hey, hey, Groove-ophiles! Tomorrow is the U.S. premiere of X-Men: Apocalypse, and Ol' Groove's got his fingers crossed (which makes typing pretty excruciating) that this new entry into mutant movie-dom is as good as the last two! My fave original X-Man, the Avenging Angel, looks to have a much bigger part in the new flick than he had in the third X-Men installment, so now is as good a time as ever to look back at the Groovy Age Angel. So, whaddya say we dig on those rare Angel back-ups from Ka-Zar issues 2-3 (September, December 1970) and Marvel Tales #30 (January 1970), ugliest-superhero-threads-ever and all.

For an angel, Warren Worthington III had a devil of a time getting his solo-tales into print. In less than a year's time, he had two books cancelled out from under his three-part solo epic. Both the X-Men book itself (for which these stories could have been created as back-up features, but Ol' Groove and others think they might've been intended as an ish of X-Men during the "Death of Professor X" era) and the giant-sized Ka-Zar reprint mags bit the dust in 1969/70 (and yeah, X-Men was quickly revived as a reprint mag, but that's beside the point) before the complete tale could be told.

Still and all, this three-part saga is a pretty important turning point in WWIII's life (hey, was Stan trying to tell us something when he named our winged mutant?). Plus, it introduces us to the original Dazzler (blechh, okay, that one's more of a liability). It's the first solo X-Men story to appear outside the Merry Mutants' own title. Oh, and it's written by Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel (some extremely rare Groovy Age Marvel work) with powerful (if rushed-looking) art by the team of George Tuska and Dick Ayers.

"Groove, shaddup already and get on with the stories!"

Okay, okay. Sheesh.

Bring On the Back-Ups: Hawkeye and the Two-Gun Kid

T'wouldn't be right to follow up on a post about Bobbi (Mockingbird) Morse with anything but a post about her bow-slinging spouse, Hawkeye! Here's the closest he actually got to a solo-tale during the Groovy Age (whatever did happen to that much-rumored Marvel Spotlight story, anyway?)--a short-short co-featuring The Two-Gun Kid (who'd been brought to the present day near the end of Steve Englehart's Avengers run--see the footnote on page one for references). One thing about it, Marvel certainly assembled a top-notch team to create this mini-masterpiece: Scott Edelman, Mike Nasser (Michael Netzer), and Terry Austin. Scott seems to have written the majority Marvel's "back-up project" tales, while Michael and Terry had already shown us how cool a super-archer could look when they did the Green Arrow stories in the first three Dollar Size issues of DC's World's Finest--and Ol' Groove does believe they outdid themselves on our Avenging Archer's rootin', tootin' adventure.

How did these back-ups come to be? Why did this particular short wind up in the 100th anniversary issue of Marvel Tales--a Spider-Man reprint mag? For the answers to these questions, who better to answer than the editor of Marvel Tales #100 (November 1978), Roger Stern? (Lifted verbatim from Sterno's message board, natch!)

RS: Back around 1976, Marvel editorial started commissioning a number of short back-up-sized stories -- partly to audition new talent and partly to help ease some deadline crunches. Scott, Mike (Nasser), and Terry (Austin) had produced that Hawkeye and Two-Gun story and it was sitting on the shelf, when the decision came down in 1978 to make MARVEL TALES #100 a double-sized issue. I had more or less in been charge of the reprint line when I first came to work at Marvel, and at that time I was still overseeing MARVEL TALES.

Anyway, I decided to plug the story in there, before it became too dated. Plus, I really liked the idea of publishing a new story in what was otherwise a reprint comic. I remember it as being a nice little story, and placing it there helped make the hundredth issue of MARVEL TALES something special.

Cool, huh? What? Oh, ya wanna read the Hawkeye/Two-Gun Kid tale? Well, here ya go!