A friend recently turned me on to 70s fusion group Brand X, by way of their 1977 album Morrocan Roll. This is some intense stuff; I hear influences either given or received from Goblin (Morrocan Roll and the Suspiria OST were released two months apart in the spring of 1977), Genesis (according to my friend, Phil Collins was apparently Brand X's drummer for one album), and they definitely influenced one Les Claypool. The album starts a bit slow for my taste, but once we get to this, the fourth track, things really flip out, and it's pretty awesome to behold.
Man, there was so much interesting music happening on the fringes of Jazz and Prog at this time. Not all of it is to my liking, but it's definitely worth exploring.
All that aside, there is one other Cosmic Hulk era I began to latch onto (well after the fact) and never finished but have gone back to now. That is none other than Grep Pak's Planet Hulk.
Watch:
That time on Lettermen when Iggy Pop told the story of how he met David Bowie!
I've really been enjoying having the ability to comb through classic NBC Lettermen clips on the Lettermen YouTube channel. This is just another example of the treasure available there. Props to the historians who curate, clean up and catalogue this stuff.
Read:
Re-reading Imperial #1, I find I'm not quite done pontificating on "Cosmic Marvel,' because my connections to it actually go further back than I realized when I wrote Monday's entry.
While it's true that 1992's Infinity Gauntlet was my direct entry point to anything outside street-level Marvel,* I did get a more narrow taste of Cosmic Marvel with The Incredible Hulk.
I grew up as a big fan of Peter David's run on Marvel Comics' The Incredible Hulk. However, prior to David's run, series writer Bill Mantlo played considerably more with Cosmic stories for Marvel's green brute, and as a kid, I had a disparate number of these and they fascinated me to no end.
In fact, I've come to realize that, just as Imperial begins with Hulk as our entry into the larger Cosmic conspiracy, the character has long been associated with intergalactic elements of Marvel's continuity and often had a hand in piquing my interest in that direction.
These random issues from Mantlo's run did not make it out of my early childhood but were something I sought out in back issues later in life, so strong was the memory of them for me even into my adult comic book reading. And they hold up, especially the "Crossroads" stories from the late 290s-early300s of Incredible. They hold up so well, in fact, that Peter David returned to this era a few years ago with a Symbiote Spider-Man story that set Spidey in the Crossroads era with Hulk. A good time was had by all, I can tell you!
I bought the collected Planet Hulk back around five or six years ago, started it, but somehow ended up getting pulled away before getting very far. When the series was being published weekly, I was in an anti-Marvel/indie books-only turn, so I barely paid attention to it, despite the residual hype that coated the walls of the burgeoning online comic book community at the time. I'm not sure what prompted me to pick up the collection on Kindle when I did, but now that Imperial has captured me and spins somewhat directly out of the events of Planet Hulk, it's time.
This is total throwback, 70s Sci-Fi, and I think Bill Mantlo would be a super fan of this storyline. There are definite similarities, what with Hulk finding camaraderie with alien outsiders, similar to the Puffball Collective in Crossroads. The planet Sakaar serves as a melting pot for a number of alien races due to its proximity to the wormhole above it, and that adds a nice 70s Sci-Fi aesthetic, that kind of tribalism that is then mashed up with the rule of an evil Emperor. You can really see how Greg Pak designed this to be a timeless tale, and it does wonders for Hulk. This isn't the savage Hulk, or Joe Fixit, or Banner in a green body, but it sort of splits the difference between those first two iterations I mention and gives us a savage but brooding Hulk that can think as much as he can bash. This, too, is fun for everyone involved.
• Even Claremont's X-Men run stayed largely Earth-bound for most of my infatuation with it. I started Uncanny X-Men with the Mutant Massacre and from that point on, I don't think there were any Intergalactic stories until Lila Cheney showed up in issue 272 to pull the team into space to save Chuck. Hell, even the Brood made the trip to Earth (232-234)!
• Even Claremont's X-Men run stayed largely Earth-bound for most of my infatuation with it. I started Uncanny X-Men with the Mutant Massacre and from that point on, I don't think there were any Intergalactic stories until Lila Cheney showed up in issue 272 to pull the team into space to save Chuck. Hell, even the Brood made the trip to Earth (232-234)!
Playlist:
Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats - Nell' ora blu
The Clash - Sandinista!
Black Sabbath - Eponymous
Pink Floyd - Ummagumma (Disc 2)
Brand X - Morrocan Roll
Black Sabbath - Sabbath Bloody Sabbath
Black Sabbath - Master of Reality
SQÜRL - Live at Third Man Records
Turnstile - NEVER ENOUGH
Explode Into Color - Eyes Hands Mouth (single)
Blood Incantation - Absolute Everywhere
Ganser - Black Sand (pre-release single)
High on Fire - Live from the Relapse Contamination Festival
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
• Ace of Swords
• King of Wands
• XV: The Devil
A breakthrough in intellect leads to a strong alternate philosophy on how to achieve a goal.
