This Man This Monster Secret Cover Monday

Gay Iceman has gotten enough attention so let´s travel back to the time when Marvel comics ruled the world and post some of my favorite covers from the INCREDIBLE HULK run by our pal Sal Buscema and Ernie Chan.
 

Okay, this is probably not what you expected - it´s a cover of the UK edition of THE INCREDIBLE HULK who shared his mag with the original commanding howler Sergeant Nicholas Fury ( the white one back then ).

It´s something I found while looking for material to finally finish my post on AVENGERS 300. As some of my readers may know I started to write about this anniversary issue a few times but I always got sidetracked by this and that and in the end never got around to really talk about issue 300. But what I did come around to was posting the cover of said issue.

It´s a policy at my blog that I try not to re - post the same pictures over and over again. Or even if I have to do a re - post because I´m talking about a particular issue to still deliver something different. Like with AVENGERS 300 where I have posted the covers to various foreign editions

So I was looking for another variation of the cover I could post in preparation for issue 300 ( which will probably go online way too long after AVENGERS 2 - AGE OF ULTRON ) when I came across these covers.

One of the things I´m writing about on this blog - although sadly not often enough - are the foreign editions of american comics, from Marvel or DC.

Or other companies. As someone who started reading comics in german and spanish editions I always found it interesting where they are alike and where they differ and from what I have read in the comment section I guess my readers do too. Now I´m no expert on british comics, in fact the only british comics I do own are all ten issues of DEATH´S HEAD which has some amazing art by Brian Hitch who still drew a lot like Alan Davis at that time. Like CAPTAIN BRITAIN this series was produced by Marvel UK for the british market but unlike said series it never had so much success that it was brought over to the american audiences even if it did have some impressive guest stars like Arno Stark the Iron Man of 2020.

Hmm, I wonder if Disney is going to introduce Iron Man 2020 into the proper Marvel universe, now that they are restarting the whole thing.

With all the parallel worlds stuff, alternate realities and convergence of different planes this would be a really good time for that. 2020  is only five years away and they could be planting seeds for that right now.

Anyway, the way things are at Marvel NOW there´s probably none left there who remembers Arno Stark so there is no chance of that happening.

Back to DEATH`S HEAD, his catchphrase - well kind of - was that he ended sentences with a " yes, questionmark ". Oh, and fans of the longest sci fi series on television might want to check out issue 8 where Death´s Head is crossing paths with a certain mad man from Gallifrey with a blue box.

Right now I have no idea where my issues of DEATH`S HEAD ended up so I can´t tell you if The Doctor has an actual appearance in the issue and if which Doctor it is. Back to the HULK run by Sal Buscema and Ernie Chan.

As most readers of the blog know it´s one of my favorite periods of the title which for some reason I have never understood has been ignored by the Marvel people where reprints are concerned. There are no trades, no hardcovers and no omnibuses from that period and I think the only place where Today´s readers can find the stuff - without buying expensive back issues is in the ESSENTIAL line. Which just was canceled this year. Now I would prefer to get a nice hardcover collection of the stuff but seeing as the MARVEL MASTERWORKS line has just done volume 9 of the Hulk which has issue 157 to 170 we still have 42 issues to go which may take a while.

Maybe it will be in an upcoming Epic Collection but the way the prices for them have gone up at amazon.de I´m not sure if I could afford it even if it did. I´m just glad I bought my three trades back when they were much cheaper. So for the time being I have to read the foreign editions I have of the comics. Some of the stories appeared in the back pages of german Spider - Man comic DIE SPINNE but there were some pages missing so it took me until my student exchange in France to read what happened in those pages thanks to COLOSSES EN FURIE from french publisher Artima.

As you can see it´s part of the Artima Color Marvel Super Star line which presented the Hulk comics under the GAMMA imprint - along with some other series of choice - in 1979 and the Color specials were printed on nice, glossy paper. The only problem was the glue that was used so that the cardboard cover separated very quickly from the rest of the comic.

Artima also had other editions of Hulk comics, this time under the name HULK from 1976 to 1983. Which confused me a bit because I found some other french covers from Editions Heritage ( I thought ) which released the series from 1968 to 1987 - until I found out they were Canadians.

Anyway, I´ll have to do another post on those french issues of Marvel comics in my comic collection if there is enough interest in that but initially I wanted to post some of the UK covers from this period, yes ?

As far as I can tell the stories were split in at least two issues because there are issues that have the same cover as the american issues and then there are some in - between which have different ones. I have quite a few foreign editions of Marvel comics and there are some instances where lesser qualified artists or people make the covers - I have posted a few of the really bad examples of german covers on the blog - but in the case of the UK version of the Hulk comic in THE MIGHTY WORLD OF MARVEL they were mostly done by none other than artist Pablo Marcos.

Compared to what other countries had going on coverwise I have to admit this is the part where I envy british readers. Now maybe Terry Hooper can give us a bit more info about the content - if it was in color or in black and white - but I just wanted to post a few of those fantastic covers.

I´m not posting them all but if you want to check out more ( or if another blogger wants to pick up the ball ) I found all of them at the GRAND COMICS DATABASE which has helped me out on countless occasions.

Once again, that finishes things for Today´s post. I really thought my next Hulk - centric post would be about Herb Trimpe´s Hulk run but as always something else came up. And speaking about upcoming things ( smooth segueway, eh ? ) one of them will be the penciled pages for that D - GRUPPE story we never got around to finish and as a small teaser here´s a sketch of Zauberin ( Sorceress ) who would have appeared in the comic.

As always I tried to find something related to the topic so since I already posted all 3 tv specials - and since neither Jack of Hearts nor Bi - Beast made an appearance on the show here´s a documentary about the show.



And speaking about appearances on the THE INCREDIBLE HULK tv show here´s a cameo of Jack Kirby playing the part of a police sketch artist.



As this is about Marvel comics here´s a cartoon that may be even worse than AVENGERS - UNITED THEY STAND : the infamous 1979 Thing cartoon.



Since one of the Hulk´s co - star in the UK comics was Nick Fury - and because I probably will not get around to do a post on this - this video explains the whole White Nick Fury / Black Nick Fury thing pretty good.



Another person mentioned in the post is Doctor Who and since I already posted a video for the tenth anniversary of New Who in my last post here´s another one. It´s a bit longer than the last one and yes, it´s also fan made. I still have no idea if the BBC plans anything special for it.



It´s been a while since I posted a music video so to smooth things out at the end here´s Dave Brubeck with the classic jazz song Take Five. Enjoy.



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