All Hail the Lizard King
The Amazing Spider-Man #688
Morbius the Living Vampire thinks he’s finally figured out a way to change the Lizard back into Dr. Curt Connors permanently — Spider-Man has his doubts, because after his last transformation, the Lizard had declared that he’d finally killed Connors’ personality, and capped off that claim by murdering his own son, Billy. And Spidey isn’t real happy with Morbius anyway, because he discovered that the vampire discovered his potential cure by digging up and experimenting on Billy Connors’ corpse. But the Wall-Crawler is also upset with himself for letting Silver Sable die last issue, and the Lizard has killed too many people while hiding out in New York’s sewers. Can Spider-Man and Morbius really cure the Lizard once and for all?
Verdict: Thumbs up. Excellent action, plenty of Spider-Angst — it’s been a while since Peter Parker was as unhappy as he’s traditionally been — and a nice little twist to wrap things up.
Fatale #6
In the present day, Nicolas Lash wonders what happened to the beautiful Jo, he meets up with a private eye who tells him there’s a safe deposit box with his name on it. If Lash claims it, the private eye wants a ten percent finders fee. But when they check out the box, it’s empty — and the bank manager remembers the private eye being here before with Jo. And then the supernatural hitman comes after Lash. And people, that’s just the prologue!
In the main story, our timeline is focused on Los Angeles in 1978, where our protagonist is Miles, a B-movie actor hoping to score some coke and an invite to a hot party that may get him some better roles. He goes looking for one of his dealers, a girl named Suzy Scream, at a sleazy party sponsored by a sleazy debauchery cult. And when he finds Suzy, she’s just killed the cult leader because he’d been trying to stab her to death — and there’s some oddly horrific home movie playing in the basement, too. Miles sneaks Suzy out of the party and crosses paths with Josephine, now living as a recluse to avoid accidentally ensnaring the innocent with her supernatural powers. But what is Josephine going to say when she sees the movie Miles smuggled out of the party?
Verdict: Thumbs up. Outstandingly creepy, especially the sequence from the ’70s. I mean, everything from the ’70s. I think sometimes we forget what a very unusual decade the 1970s were — cults were out and proud, sex was kinky, drugs were everywhere, sideburns were long, fashion was awful, film was brilliant, and Marvel Comics had multiple comics for sale that had the awesomeness of Satanism as a selling point. The violence and supernatural elements added on here merely increase the creepiness of the setting by a few degrees…
Today’s Cool Links:
- A friend of mine wrote this, and he’s a really great guy. And I think it’s worth asking ourselves: Why do our soldiers need to rely on a guy working on his off-time to get them the counseling help many of them need?
- Short video on what probably happened when DC told Alan Moore about “Before Watchmen.”
- Sometimes, you have to feed the trolls. Sometimes, you have to feed them the barrel of a gun.