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Marvel Feature (1971) #12
Marvel Feature #12
Iron Man is attacked by the Blood Brothers! But the Thing is there to help!
- GenresMarvel
20 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 31, 1973
8 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
September 1, 2021
The origin story of Moon Dragon, and a cool team-up with Thing/Iron Man against the Blood Brothers.
July 4, 2024
At this point in time Marvel Feature was acting as a team-up book, following on the heels of Marvel Team-Up (now there's an original name for a book teaming up various Marvel heroes). Wheras the latter featured Spider-Man and assorted co-stars this title headlined The Thing. This specific issue teamed up The Thing and Iron Man. It was also part of the ongoing Thanos war that was happening in some of Marvel's books, but wasn't a total cross company effort. In this story Iron Man ends up being ambushed by The Blood Brothers, who have been ordered to destroy him by Thanos. The Thing, who has been chasing after Iron Man stumbles upon the battle and decides to give Iron Man a helping hand. Thus the rest of the book is basically your standard comic book super hero slugfest. Nothing wrong with that. We can use one of those from time to time. I admit this doesn't really advance the plot of the Thanos War that much, but I doubt it was meant to. The Fantastic Four wasn't part of that storyline so it wasn't really relevant to The Thing. Iron Man was part of it but I daresay this was merely an interlude in the larger story. It serves to explain why Thanos want Iron Man destroyed so that is something. Truth be told I am not sure that the story really deserves the rating I gave it but I am a sucker for a good oldfashioned slugfest involving super powered characters and this serves that bill to a T. Happy reading.
May 14, 2019
Iron man y la mole son engañados por Thanos y combaten entre sí.
April 24, 2021
IRON MAN #55, CAPTAIN MARVEL #25-34, MARVEL FEATURE #12, AVENGERS #125 (The Thanos War)
*Note: a nifty READING ORDER has been provided at the end of this review
It’s almost surreal that we now live in a world where Thanos’ name is common knowledge. You can tell from reading this storyline that he was clearly created in a vacuum, with the basic assumption that only a niche audience was still actively reading the Earth-616 mythology in the Bronze Age. Yet, it is precisely this vacuum mentality that encourages Jim Starlin — an incredible new voice — to fully explore as psychologically complex and developed a character as Thanos; fully unafraid to risk losing readers, given at that point there weren’t many readers to lose (certainly not as many as there were in the Silver Age).
I think it is because of this unapologetic experimentation and originality that allowed this character to endure to the point of becoming known universally, and certainly his emergence that triggered a new future for what might have otherwise been a dying mythology.
One of the most revolutionary decisions in comic book history, for instance, was Jim Starlin and Mike Friedrich’s publishing the storyline concurrently in multiple comic-book titles, each releasing simultaneously with one another. This leads to incredible narrative cross-cutting, such as when Iron Man and Captain Marvel decide to split up (in Captain Marvel #30); thus Iron Man goes on a side-quest explored in Marvel Feature #12, while Captain Marvel continues on the main-quest in Captain Marvel #31. This lays the ground work for the technique to come back in a powerful way in the final act of the story… which I won’t dare spoil. Needless to say, spanning the story across so many different comic books certainly helps expand the the scope of locations it encompasses; given the cosmic scale of the story, seeing the quantity of locations affected is appropriate.
It’s taken for granted now, but at the time this technique was unheard of. It set the precedent for the equally groundbreaking Avengers/Defenders War only a few months later… or earlier; the real world length of time these comic book storylines occupy can often cause them to overlap with other titles, which be confusing in the context of shared universes like this. This storyline, for instance, begins BEFORE The Avengers/Defenders War but ends AFTER it… begging the question as to whether you should read this story before or after that one. It’s certainly clear, nevertheless, this storyline practiced the technique of intercutting multiple different comic titles before that one did, to the point of inspiring that story’s even more radical use of it.
Regardless, the everlasting impact of this story cannot be stressed enough, which is likely the reason for its enduring legacy.
READING ORDER:
- Iron Man #55
- Captain Marvel #25-30
- Marvel Feature #12
- Captain Marvel #31-32
- Avengers #125
- Captain Marvel #33-34
*Note: a nifty READING ORDER has been provided at the end of this review
It’s almost surreal that we now live in a world where Thanos’ name is common knowledge. You can tell from reading this storyline that he was clearly created in a vacuum, with the basic assumption that only a niche audience was still actively reading the Earth-616 mythology in the Bronze Age. Yet, it is precisely this vacuum mentality that encourages Jim Starlin — an incredible new voice — to fully explore as psychologically complex and developed a character as Thanos; fully unafraid to risk losing readers, given at that point there weren’t many readers to lose (certainly not as many as there were in the Silver Age).
I think it is because of this unapologetic experimentation and originality that allowed this character to endure to the point of becoming known universally, and certainly his emergence that triggered a new future for what might have otherwise been a dying mythology.
One of the most revolutionary decisions in comic book history, for instance, was Jim Starlin and Mike Friedrich’s publishing the storyline concurrently in multiple comic-book titles, each releasing simultaneously with one another. This leads to incredible narrative cross-cutting, such as when Iron Man and Captain Marvel decide to split up (in Captain Marvel #30); thus Iron Man goes on a side-quest explored in Marvel Feature #12, while Captain Marvel continues on the main-quest in Captain Marvel #31. This lays the ground work for the technique to come back in a powerful way in the final act of the story… which I won’t dare spoil. Needless to say, spanning the story across so many different comic books certainly helps expand the the scope of locations it encompasses; given the cosmic scale of the story, seeing the quantity of locations affected is appropriate.
It’s taken for granted now, but at the time this technique was unheard of. It set the precedent for the equally groundbreaking Avengers/Defenders War only a few months later… or earlier; the real world length of time these comic book storylines occupy can often cause them to overlap with other titles, which be confusing in the context of shared universes like this. This storyline, for instance, begins BEFORE The Avengers/Defenders War but ends AFTER it… begging the question as to whether you should read this story before or after that one. It’s certainly clear, nevertheless, this storyline practiced the technique of intercutting multiple different comic titles before that one did, to the point of inspiring that story’s even more radical use of it.
Regardless, the everlasting impact of this story cannot be stressed enough, which is likely the reason for its enduring legacy.
READING ORDER:
- Iron Man #55
- Captain Marvel #25-30
- Marvel Feature #12
- Captain Marvel #31-32
- Avengers #125
- Captain Marvel #33-34
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews