Heroes and Hillbillies

The Age of the Sentry #3

The Sentry meets up with the Mountain Man, a superpowered hillbilly! But putting the smackdown on the irritated irradiated inbred idjit isn’t the toughest challenge the Sentry will have to deal with. There’s also — GASP! — a shotgun wedding! Can the Sentry escape this baleful backwoods brouhaha? Meanwhile, in the backup story by Paul Tobin and Colleen Coover, the Sentry and Millie the Model have to help a lovesick space monster named Manoo figure out how to win the love of a tentacled space-hottie.

Verdict: Thumbs up for Silver Age ROFLtastic fun.

Adam: Legend of the Blue Marvel #1

And lo and behold, Marvel has cooked up another megapowerful but somehow forgotten superhero from the Silver Age, just like the Sentry. This one is the Blue Marvel, and the twist here is that when his mask gets ripped in the early 1960s, everyone finds out that the most powerful man on the planet… isn’t a white guy. Everyone freaks out, the Blue Marvel gets hounded by threats and hatred, and he’s finally persuaded to retire to quiet anonymity. But why is his nemesis now showing up in the modern-day Marvel Universe threatening to kill everyone?

Verdict: Thumbs up, so far. Interesting story, nice characters, decent twist, and a little reminder that, no, everything wasn’t actually perfect just ’cause it happened in the ’50s and ’60s. Hope the story doesn’t fall apart now that the twist is out of the bag.