Sometimes you find a random issue in a garage sale, slightly worn and only a dollar. Sometimes that issue starts you on a journey into a series you never would have found or tried otherwise. It’s a revelation, a wonder, a true hidden gem.
This is not one of those comics.
Cover by Sam KeithWritten by Scott Lobdell, Gerry Conway, Howard Mackie and Gary Barnum
Pencilled by Gene Colan, Tom Sutton, Rick Leonardi, and Dave Hoover
Inked by Al Williamson, Tom Sutton, Jimmy Palmioti, and Dave Hoover
Colored by Kelly Corvese, Tom Smith, Fred Mendez, and Pat Garrahy
Lettered by Michael Higgins, Phil Felix, and Janice Chiang
There are many reasons entering “Marvel Comics Presents” #102 cold doesn’t work. For one thing, I have to flip the damn thing over to read the whole issue. Why? What’s the point? It feels less like a clever solution to a problem, i.e. highlighting more of the characters inside on a cover, and instead like a gimmick. It interrupts the flow of stories, of which there are four, creating a disjointed reading experience rather than an anthology feel. For a comic that already has to cut down on pages per story, since this is a regular sized comic, that’s not the feeling you want when closing the covers.
As for the shorter page counts per story, that’s not necessarily a bad thing — see the 2000AD progs and “Weekly Shonen Jump.” Unfortunately in “MCP’s” case, it is a huge detriment to the stories. There’s barely enough time to build momentum, especially in the Wolverine/Nightcrawler story, and with each story being billed as 6 to 9 parts, the comic leaves the distinct impression that instead of getting 8-9 page stories, it’s one story that’s been arbitrarily split into 7 to 9 sections.
The exception to this is the Phantom Rider story ‘Stunt Show,’ which is a done-in-one story. Of all four stories, this one was the most cohesive and compressed, even if it is the second most generic one of the bunch. It’s a solid example of classic superhero work, straddling the line between the genre’s pulp roots and the then modern standards of the late 80s/early 90s. What sells the story Hoover’s clean inks, confident pencils & uncomplicated paneling. The simple plot is merely a vehicle for the art in this story, and that’s exactly what’s needed for a story of this length: crisp art, an easy arc, and larger than life characters that stick with you long after the story is finished.
I also found myself enjoying ‘Doorway to Darkness,’ the Doctor Strange x Ghost Rider story. I knew I was missing some context from part one but it almost didn’t matter. There was just enough exposition to get the gist, and Mackie’s plot progressed forward just enough to keep me engaged while not leaving us on an overblown cliffhanger. Leonardi’s pencils are fine. Facial expressions are minimalist but expression, though when it comes to full figures, correct anatomy becomes more of a guideline than a rule.
Look, Ghost Rider may look cool, and Janice Chiang’s lettering for him may be full of sweet flames without sacrificing readability, but Doctor Strange has four fingers on each hand in one panel and then his leg looks like it’s actually his cape, bent and broken and flapping in the wind. It’s fine but far less solid than Hoover’s.
The “title” story (remember, two covers) is about as forgettable as things get, with neither the art nor the story doing anything to set itself apart from the pack. It’s one long fight scene, and not a particularly engaging one thanks to Lobdell’s generic, redundant dialog and Colan’s preference for mono-colored backgrounds that do a poor job of framing the fight. It’s a decompressed fight that would be fine for a longer issue but, again, this is part two of EIGHT and clocks in at eight pages long.
There’s nothing in this story that makes me want to come back. Both Nightcrawler and Wolverine are written without a hint of personality, save for Wolvie being smug, and Colan’s pencils, and Williamson’s inks, do little to help. If there was a bit more consistency in the art, especially with our “villain,” that may also have helped but as is, it’s the weakest story. . .which sucks because Sam Keith’s cover sold me on the issue and made me excited to read this one in particular.
Continued belowThe final story is of the Young Gods, which suffers from being a high-concept, space operatic, sci-fi tale in a paired down anthology series and thus has to spend much of its time overloading us with techno-babble, which swallows up most of the panels. Sutton’s art and Smith’s coloring sells the grandiosity of the tale, even if they don’t quite push it far enough in the ways Ditko or Kirby would have. I couldn’t tell you what happened on the first six pages but the last two have made me curious as to where this story is going. That said, I have no better grasp on who any of these twelve are than at the start but I can’t fault the story too much since there really aren’t enough pages for a cast that big.
It’s a fine enough installment and were the other stories stronger, I would have been satisfied with this being a dense but promising addition. Instead, it’s just another poorly paced story that clearly was written to be full length and then chopped up and fluffed.
All in all, “Marvel Comics Presents” #102 is a very mixed bag, leaning more bad than good, but it remains a concept that I wish had survived. I had never read a Young Gods or Phantom Rider story before this issue and all it took was a gripping cover with familiar faces to get me in the door. Sure, the stories are mostly empty and the art is nothing to write home about, and clearly half these writers didn’t know how to write a short chapter to save their life, but it’s an idea with legs. Or whatever passes for legs with Doctor Strange.
Final Score: 5.5 – For four stories that range from densely boring to pretty engaging, it could’ve been worse. I’d stick to trade collections of the individual stories for a slightly better experience though.
