So yes, this is what happened to the AMERICAN FLAGG post I hinted at last week. As the saying goes life is what happens while you are making other plans and one of the things that I take comfort in is that I already did a plethora of posts celebrating the wonderful works of Sal Buscema - at Marvel Comics and DC Comics - during his lifetime so it does not come off as I'm jumping onto the bandwagon now that he is no more among us.
In fact I have done so many posts about our pal Sal ( and I was reminded of how many there are even if the latest ones are not finished while compiling the art for this post ) that I won't even bother including the usual links because that could be an entire post of its own. And maybe I am going to make one once this is finished. Speaking of assembling the material for this post that is what I have been doing the last four days.
Initially I was going to do a series of posts on Sal Buscema ( and I'm still going to do that but on a larger scale ) starting with material of series he is not that associated with which I have not gotten around to use.
But as my longtime followers know only too well I can be a perfectionist sometimes ( not that many things in life are perfect ) so I always do one final internet search before starting a post and after just a few minutes I decided that idea was not going to cut it. So we start off SAL BUSCEMA MONTH as we have a lot of ground to cover and not much time for it.
Now I did find the complete artwork for a few issues by Sal Buscema and those will get their own post and it would have been easy to start with one of these issues but we kick this thing off with some of my personal favourite Sal Buscema stuff even if I don't have a lot of original art for it.
Okay, for the generation who has not grown up with the comics by Sal - or at least buying them on a monthly basis because I don't think there is any comicbook reading generation who has not encountered his work in one form or another - he was one of the less popular comicbook artists and always overshadowed by the work of his big brother John Buscema .
As someone who had an older brother I can relate to that. Maybe that was one of the reasons why I wrote so many posts on him or maybe it was because if there's one thing I like to do at this blog is to showcase those underappreciated, overlooked or outright forgotten comicbook creators. And Sal Buscema certainly does fit the bill in that category.
Or maybe it was because he did a lot of comics or series I enjoyed.
Sal Buscema was one of those artists that was solid instead of flashy, competent instead of flavour of the month and always delivered on time. So you got to see a lot of fill in issues or issues done at the last minute. What you also got to see - at least I did - was every fragging new character that Marvel Comics ever created in the pages of MARVEL TEAM - UP ( and we'll get to see some of them right here on this very blog ).
So for me the definite look of those characters was Sal Buscema's look and I saw the Marvel universe through his lens. He helped to convey the idea that all of these characters are living in the same universe, planet, country, heck, city and could run across each other at any moment while battling the villain of the week. Which back in the days did not happen that often so it was always a big deal. Now reading all of this I make it sound like Sal Buscema's career happened mostly in the shadows and the c - list titles but nothing could be farther from the truth because while he was not always connected to the biggest projects he has definitely worked on quite a number of titles where he left an unforgettable mark.
The first I want to mention is ROM, SPACEKNIGHT where Bill Mantlo created an entire universe around a toy that didn't sell that good and which Marvel Comics has finally reprinted. Currently I have only bought the first omnibus - for money and other reasons - but I plan to get them all and we will be speaking more about ROM in another upcoming post.
Working at Marvel Comics Sal Buscema also lent his artistic prowess to the Spider - Man titles with the most exceptional contribution being his unprecedented eight year run on SPECTACULAR SPIDER - MAN and his collaboration with Ron Frenz ( another of my favourite artists ) on the SPIDER - GIRL books and the entire MC2 universe. He also had quite the runs on CAPTAIN AMERICA and THE DEFENDERS ( we already covered the latter ) but what is my favourite run by Sal Buscema is his 10 year stint of THE INCREDIBLE HULK where he was inked by many talented comic creators including Ernie Chan who is another favourite artist of mine.
I already did a number of posts on his work on the Batman books , THE JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA or CONAN THE BARBARIAN and keeping that in mind you might think that is the Hulk period we would start off with.
Instead Today's post is from the period when the great late Joe Sinnott provided the inks for the golly green giant of the Marvel universe as we have another slobberknocker with the now intelligent Hulk taking of a sick and twisted dark mirror version of the Fantastic Four : the U - Foes.
One of the hallmarks of THE INCREDIBLE HULK have always been these pulse pounding fights between fantastic creatures even if some people might try to convince you it is the deep psychological meaning or the tragedy of a mild humanist and philanthropist trapped in the body of a berserking rage monster. And nobody did draw fights like Sal Buscema.
You have fists flying, big monsters smashing and also the signature Sal Buscema " bad guy sent flying after being punched " moments others tried to emulate. There have been a number of times where the Hulk has been imbued by some sort of intelligence - it happens twice during Sal Buscema's run - but it seems that the writers don't know what to do with that idea in the long term as they always return to the usual status quo.
Now to put those out there who are not familiar with the books history in the right context the Hulk has been intelligent for a while now - ever since issue 272 - but the general public isn't yet aware of it. Betty Ross and Rick Jones have been traveling with the alien sexbomb Bereet - who will become quite thirsty for Bruce - trying to catch up with the Hulkster.
That was another aspect of the Hulk that made his series so great, since he could leap tall buildings in a single bound he travelled all over the world and encountered a lot of Marvel Comics character in fact a lot of them made their debut in this title. Now while jumping across country the massive form of the incredible Hulk impacted with great force on the ground and in a previous issue - issue 274 to be exact - one such impact unleashed Ironclad who together with the rest of the reunited U - Foes - Vapor, Vector and X - Ray - are off to get revenge on the mean, green monstrosity that defeated them last time and this is ultimately where the new intelligent Hulk makes his debut on the world stage.
godspeed
to be continued
