TALES FROM MY SPINNER RACK: Marvel Romance Comics of the late ‘60s!

Tales From My Spinner Rack! returns with Episode 16, a special Valentine’s Day episode featuring a look back at Marvel’s Romance titles from the late 1960s, titled “What’s Love Got to Do With It?”

At the end of the Silver Age, Marvel had a brand new distributor who didn’t care how many books it put out each month. Stan Lee and company introduced two new horror/mystery titles with Tower of Shadows and Chamber of Darkness and two new romance titles, My Love and Our Love Story, in the summer of 1969. All but forgotten today, these romance titles featured incredible art by the likes of John Romita, John Buscema, Gene Colan, and even Jim Steranko on one memorable story, My Heart Broke in Hollywood!. And all the stories were written by - or “as told to” - Stan Lee!

Tales From My Spinner Rack Episode 16 takes an in-depth look at some of these issues featuring new romance stories by some of Marvel’s greatest artists of the Silver Age. Even if romance comics aren’t your thing, you’ll want to see this artwork-filled new episode, which also features a look back at the surprising origin of the genre.

Visit www.innocent-bystander.com for over 35 Tales From My Spinner Rack! posts featuring nostalgic essays loaded with art and info about the comics I loved growing up in the 1960s and ‘70s!

Please like, comment, subscribe, and turn on notifications for more Tales From My Spinner Rack! videos here on YouTube!

Thanks to Gary Sassaman for this fascinating deep dive, part of his excellent on-going series of comic book history documentary features.

THROWBACK THURSDAY: It's A Tough Job, But...

Before I went to university, I did a two-year stint as news editor of a couple of trade magazines, one of which was Airports International.

As part of that job, in March 1994, a group of airport-related journalists were flown out to Al-Ain in the United Arab Emirates to report on the opening of a new airport.

The actual opening, and work-related tours etc, took up barely a day of our visit and for the rest of the time we were ferried around and spoiled rotten.

A particular highlight for many of us was being driven out into the desert - in four-by-fours - for a meal in a tented encampment, complete with camel rides and authentic belly dancers.

BEST. WORKS. OUTING. EVER.

Born To It: I love camel riding...

 

The Al-Ain International Airport: The reason we were in the UAE

The Dark Tower (2017)

I've only read the first three of Stephen King's Dark Tower books - and that was many, many years ago (pre-stroke), so don't have particularly enduring memories of any of them beyond the first, The Gunslinger, which I have returned to a few times.

But I thought that lack of investment in the source material might be a benefit when coming to the cinematic adaptation, as I understood this was to be a 'different take' on the story, possibly a sequel or an alternate world view of the epic events of the multi-book mythology.

While I really liked the occasional Easter Egg nods to other works of Stephen King, what I wasn't expecting was a very generic, stereotypical teen adventure (with shades of The Mortal Instruments, The Neverending Story, Maze Runner, Hunger Games, and even the Star Wars Prequels with their demystifying of The Force through the introduction of midi-chlorians).

Jake Chambers (Tom Taylor) is a troubled New York kid, living with his mum (Viking's Katheryn Winnick) and douche-bag step-dad (Nicholas Pauling), but plagued with dreams of an otherworldly Dark Tower and an ongoing battle between the Man In Black (True Detective's Matthew McConaughey) and the last of the gunslingers, Roland (The Wire's Idris Elba).

Jake runs away from home, to find a house he dreamed of, which contains a portal to Mid-World - a post-apocalyptic world-between-worlds.

There he discovers that not only were his dreams real and that he is gifted with something called The Shine (the same psychic power as evidence by little Danny in The Shining), but also that the magic-using Man In Black aka Walter O'Dim believes Jake's powers are strong enough to topple The Dark Tower.

Teaming up with Roland, Jake also learns that the Dark Tower is keeping the Multiverse safe from the demonic hordes that live on the outside, and Walter wants to bring the tower down and welcome in these murderous creatures.

The story jumps from Mid-World to our world, place to place, with the brevity of a CW hour-long drama, and even as it stands, The Dark Tower clocks in at less than an hour and a half duration - a fine length for a trashy, direct-to-DVD movie, but way short for a modern Hollywood blockbuster.

Going from zero to hero in no time at all, Jake manages to master The Shine (quicker than Luke Skywalker masters The Force in the Original Trilogy), and then is handed one of Roland's hefty pistols and appears to be a crack shot with that as well (again, with no background in firearms and, you know, being a kid and all).

It's as though all The Dark Tower's character development moments were trimmed down, or cut out completely, leaving just a framework of action-driven set pieces featuring people we know (or care) little about.

Although incidental characters are killed off (with no lasting emotional impact on the main characters), Roland is frequently injured (but seems to shake it off within a scene or two), and Jake does get captured by Walter, there's no real sense of jeopardy and grand scale in the goings-on.

There are moments where the action is quite thrilling, and Roland's various bullet tricks are neat, but the story never really engages beyond a superficial level, even with such talented and charismatic leads as Elba and McConaughey.

This is not the opening salvo of an epic to rival Lord Of The Rings or Star Wars that we were promised.

I understand that Mike Flanagan is currently pushing on with plans to develop an (unrelated) The Dark Tower series for Amazon Prime Video, but there's generally been tumbleweed on the news front as far as that's concerned lately.

At least, horror maven Flanagan has opted for a reboot, presumably learning from the mistakes of this movie, and returning to the source material that's held in such high esteem by legions of Stephen King fans.

Predators (2010)

The biggest surprise in this addition to the Predator franchise is how well Adrian Brody can pull off the 'hard man' act. Beyond that, no matter how exciting the film is, and it is, we've seen it all before.

Brody is Royce, a tough mercenary, who awakes in freefall over - what he soon discovers is - an alien jungle. He's been dropped in among a group of similarly bewildered and confused strangers, who all turn out to be soldiers, psychos, gangsters or criminals.

They have been snatched from Earth to be hunted by the Predator aliens on a planet-wide 'game reserve'... and that's about it as far as plot goes.

There's running, there's fighting, dodging traps, tangling with Predator-hounds and Predators, references to the original Predator movie, more running about, more fighting, a surprising cameo, some more running and finally some more fighting.

Of course, there's also a bit of crafty trickery along the way, but from the opening scenes it's pretty easy to single out which of the gang of hard nuts will survive until the final conflict and which will be fodder for the planet's killing machines.

Never dull, Predators is competently directed by Nimrod Antal, and the script by Alex Litvak and Michael Finch takes a stab at expanding the culture of the Predator aliens, while using them as dark mirrors for the 'predatory' nature of the humans, but it's simply not meaty enough to generate more than a shrug of passing interest.

Disappointingly forgettable, with no memorable set pieces, Predators - pedestrian as it may be - is perfect beer and pizza fodder for an undemanding audience who just want to wallow in some mindless, and ultimately pointless, sci-fi violence.

PROJECT 60: Border Teasers

After 50+ years of gaming: my first cavalry unit!

Ahead of their imminent arrival, my figure painter of choice these days, Matt, emailed me this collection of preview shots of my Border Reivers figures.

Primarily from Flags of Wars, there are a few Colonel Bills and The Assault Group figures in there as well as some Giants in Miniature from Wargames Illustrated magazine (I'm not sure Great Darcy of The Pale "the tallest man in Ireland" is totally compatible, but I might be to squeeze him in with a party of Fighting Irish/Gallowglass).

Going forward, I expect these will be the primary companies I draw upon as their products are all generally of a compatible size.

While there's probably enough figures here for a simple skirmish, I'm already looking at investing in a second "family", although I'm very tempted to go for The Broken Men faction, outlaws without the stability of a family name to call upon. The gentleman with eyepatch (see below) would make a grand Broken Man character (y'all know I have a soft spot for eyepatches!). 

And I'll need some more livestock and civilians, as well as buildings.

"I have a cunning plan, m'lord!"

Little Jock Elliot, Great Darcy of The Pale, and Lord Flash(heart)! 

I always like to include some livestock in my orders

The Burrowers (2008)

Two families of settlers are snatched in the Dakota Territories, the badlands beyond civilization in the 1879 wild west - including the sweetheart of ranch hand Fergus Coffey (Karl Geary).

The blame is immediately put upon hostile Indians and a posse sets out, led by veteran Indian fighters Will Parcher (Lost's William Mapother) and John Clay (Carnivàle's Clancy Brown). For a while they team up with a group of cavalrymen, but eventually strike out of their own when they hear that a tribe called "The Burrowers" are to blame.

Only, in time, they discover to their cost, that "The Burrowers" are not a tribe of Native Americans; they're not even human.

The Burrowers, written and directed by JT Petty, is a tense and engrossing Western horror, making use of the varied terrain and the circumstances - and prejudices - of the late 19th Century to sow the seeds of confusion and mistrust within the various groups.

The critters themselves are simply part of the natural food chain, driven to hunt fresh prey after the white men killed off their traditional source of food: the buffalo.

Slick cinematography, naturalistic performances and creepy monster effects (no CGI here - all puppets, model work and rubbery costumes, but the verisimilitude is never broken), help make this a top class creature feature with the added bonus of a period setting.

Venom - The Last Dance (2024)

Back from his brief sojourn on the MCU's Earth-616, Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) and his alien symbiote, Venom, find themselves pursued across America by both the military and extra-dimensional symbiote-hunting monsters called Xenophages.

The military want to study Venom in their underground base, concealed beneath Area 51 in the Nevada desert, while the monsters serve Knull (Andy Serkis, director of Venom: Let There Be Carnage), the god-like creator of the symbiotes.

With nebulous goals of universal suppression, Knull needs "the codex", part of Eddie and Venom's bond, to free himself from Klyntar, a space prison built for him by his rebellious symbiotes.

While on the run, Eddie meets up with a potentially-irritating family of hippies (Rhys Ifans is the alien-mad father, Martin Moon, and Alanna Ubach is his wife, Nova) whose aggravation quotient mellows as the story unfolds. Rather than being just amusing cameos, the Moon family ultimately prove pivotal in the film's third act.

Eddie eventually runs out of luck, is captured by General Rex Strickland (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and transported to the subterranean base, where Stephen Graham's presumed-dead Detective Patrick Mulligan is also being held.

But the Xenophages are still on Eddie's trail, leading to a final - grand scale - showdown at Area 51.

While the Venom trilogy peaked with its second chapter, The Last Dance has an easy-to-follow, straight-forward "chase-and-fight" plot that makes its 110-minute duration bounce along at an engaging pace.

Don't get me wrong, The Last Dance is a chaotic mess - full of extraneous, undeveloped characters - but it simultaneously manages to finely balance absolute silliness and existential cosmic horror.

The scenes featuring Knull look as though they were lifted direct from the comic book source material, and the fact that his menace is never fully realised only adds to the overwhelming sense of dread he exudes.

Although it seems certain that this film is the end of Tom Hardy/Eddie Brock's involvement with Venom, it does leave the door open for an MCU symbiote (just with a new host) and the potentially multiversal threat of Knull and his legions of Xenophages.

As dumb as it was, I actually really enjoyed Venom: The Last Dance, and was genuinely surprised by the main movie's downbeat ending.

There's (of course) a mid- and a post-credit scene, but neither really add much to the story (except to remind us that Knull still very much exists in the Sony'verse, and possibly leaving the door open for further adventures).

Until I discovered the movies, I was never really that interested in Venom as a comic book character, but it's been Tom Hardy's passion for the character and this trilogy that really sold me on it.

I'm not sure, as it stands, how bothered I'd be about future cinematic outings for the character if Tom Hardy wasn't playing the lead.

• Venom: The Last Dance is now available on Blu-Ray in the UK.

Venom - Let There Be Carnage (2021)

We first met serial killer Cletus Kasady (Woody Harrelson) in the mid-credit scene of 2018's Venom, but he steps into the spotlight for the sequel, Venom: Let There Be Carnage.

The imprisoned killer, now shorn of his fright wig hairdo from Venom, has a fascination with washed-up journalist Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy), little realising that Brock is host to the alien symbiote known as Venom.

However, Venom manages to unearth a clue in Kasady's cell that leads to the buried remains of many of his victims.

This development cements Kasady's fate and propels Brock's career back to its previous heights.

When Brock pays a final visit to Kasady in San Quentin, the killer manages to take a bite out of him... accidentally ingesting part of the alien symbiote.

Kasady's execution by lethal injection then stimulates the creature in his blood, transforming him into the brutal, tentacled monstrosity Carnage.

They break out of the prison in a grand set-piece of mass destruction and murder, and set about tracking down Kasady's childhood sweetheart, Frances, as part of a deal that would see them ultimately killing Carnage's "father", Venom.

Frances Barrison (Naomie Harris) is a mutant codenamed Shriek, with powerful sonic abilities, who is being held in a secret research facility, but Kasady makes short work of its defences and the couple slip away into the night.

However, the seeds of romantic disharmony are sown quite early on as symbiotes are extremely vulnerable to loud noises and so Carnage isn't at all impressed by his host's paramour.

Frances and Kasady immediately plan a wedding, which involves kidnapping police detective Mulligan (Stephen Graham), who cost Frances her eye during an earlier escape attempt, Eddie, and Venom.

To get to Eddie, the bad guys grab his former fiancée, Anne Weyling (Michelle Williams), who is now engaged to Dr Dan Lewis (Reid Scott).

Directed by Andy Serkis, from a script by Kelly Marcel and Tom Hardy, Venom: Let There Be Carnage tries to temper the potentially brutal reality of a character like Kasady bonding with an almost omnipotent creature like Carnage with a tsunami of screwball comedy antics and bizarre attempts at black humour.

In all honesty, it shouldn't work... but somehow it does, thanks in no small part of the hard-boiled charisma of Tom Hardy.

There are echoes of Woody Harrelson's earlier performance in the divisive Natural Born Killers in the romance between Kletus and Frances, but these characters, drawn with broad, pulpy, brushstrokes are nowhere near as well-developed as Mickey and Mallory Knox.

Upon first viewing the original Venom movie was a disaster, and yet there was something about it that drew me back to it on its home video release and I've not only found myself enjoying it more on repeat viewings, but have been drawn into the world of Venom in Marvel Comics as well.

This is something I never thought would happen, as the whole idea of a murderous anti-hero really turned me off the character.

But thanks to Tom Hardy's performance in that first movie and then Donny Cates's phenomenal run on the comics in recent years has really won be round to both the character and its potential... in the right hands.

An overview of the plot makes you realise that Venom: Let There Be Carnage is actually a surprisingly small, and contained, film with the antagonists only being free to sow chaos in the wider world for, seemingly, less than 24 hours.

There is no great hunt for Carnage and Shriek, as they tell Eddie where to find them soon after they've torched the abandoned reform school they were both held in as juvenile delinquents.

The grand finale in the cathedral where Kasady and Frances are getting married, is reminiscent of many similarly-staged climactic confrontations, from the Quatermass Experiment to 2003's Daredevil, but this has the added cachet of battling Lovecraftian abominations... and a surprise cameo by the League of Gentleman's Reece Shearsmith.

Talking of cameos, though, the biggest 'shock' and dollop of fanservice comes - once again - in the mid-credit scene, which sets up Venom's potential appearances going forward with a most exciting development.

This 'squee' moment is almost worth the price of admission alone.