Wednesday, April 07, 2010

Before I was “famous”

As I toil away on the Captain America entries for Volume #2 of The Official Index to the Marvel Universe (or Avengers, Thor & Captain America: Official Index To The Marvel Universe — as Vol 2 is officially called), I suddenly recalled that I had a letter of mine published in Captain America issue # 208.

That issue was cited in an on-line essay (interestingly enough) entitled NOTES ON THE GILL-MAN OF THE UPPER AMAZON,which talks about some lizard creature that apparently wandered through that particular issue of Cap.

The quote from below is from the article cited.

1976- While in a running battle with South American prison warden Hector "the Swine" Santiago, Steve Rogers, aka Captain America, runs afoul of the Gill-Man. The amphibious being eventually slays Santiago and his guards. ("The River of Death!" by Jack Kirby, Captain America #208, April, 1977.) In an attempt to make the Gill-Man look like a "new" monster, Kirby draws him with bulbous eyes and bright red scales. [The Marvel Universe is not the same as the Wold-Newton Universe, so presumably a mainstream Marvel title like Cap should be excluded. However, artist/writer Kirby has known Cap/Rogers since 1941, and in the Newtoniverse Cap sometimes opens his files to comic book legend Kirby. In fact, a letter from Robert Sodaro in this very issue states: "Since Jack started writing for Marvel again, the plotlines of CAPTAIN AMERICA. . . have had little if anything to do with the rest of the Marvel Universe."]
The body of letter itself appears here:


It is really just one of numerous LOCs I got into print during those days, and well, I just thought I’d share.

4 comments:

Sol (Frederick) Badguy said...

You said that "King Kirby" wrote "Captain America" close enough to be in a universe of his own? And not associated with the events happening in the rest of the Universe?

At least it had some connection, now in "Hulk Books" the situation is quite similar: "Red Hulk Powers were absorbed and shot on every superhero and citizen in Manhattan". In "Incredible Hulk" we have Spider-Man, Wolverine, "War Machine" Hulking Out. in the book of the "Red Hulk" the Avengers, the X-Men & the "Fantastic Four" Hulked Out

At least the "Red Hulk" remains a Hulk, but reading other books, none of the characters have any memories of Hulking-Out here. "Red Hulk" book was disconnected even long ago when "Iron Man" was in Russia wearing the armor of "The Crimson Dynamo" and then it is lost in fire in a warehouse caused by "Madame Masque", at the same time Dimitri (the Crimson Dynamo) was in America to assist Rulk

rjsodaro said...

Yeah, Sol, I'm really not reading the Hulk books (and this is probably why, that it isn't really connected to anything else). The problem that I'm having is that there seem to be a couple Marvel Universe-wide stories going on (Fall of the Hulks, Siege, Brand New Day, whatever is happening to Iron Man, the death and resurrection of Cap), that don't have any connection to each other, and I don't know where in each other's timelines that they fit.

It is really all very confusing

Sol (Frederick) Badguy said...

Wolverine & Deadpool are two obvious proof on how the "Marvel Universe" is a mess of separate 616 earths for the characters the way the show in so many issues in one month

Marvel needs to get its work managed right

rjsodaro said...

You won't find me disagreeing with that, Sol.

Non “Funny” Funnybooks on the Rise

We’ve been reading comics since around 1961. It is — as we’ve often said — our preferred form of entertainment. In fact, the guy we’ve been ...