I'm plodding along through Tales of Astonish and I'm kinda ambivalent about it. The stories aren't great by a long-shot, but I'm not finding an abundant source of silliness like I did in other titles from the same era. But I do see things on occasion that perplex me, like here in Tales to Astonish # 80:
Okay, we have the Mole Man. He's an unfortunate-looking guy who lives underground where he won't be subjected to the jeers of people on the surface world. And I've got to say, the expressions on his minions' faces in that panel are hilarious.
Anyhoo, I kind of understand that he comes up with some devices on occasion to help him take on the entire Fantastic Four at once. I get that. But here, things get a little greedy:
Where in the heck did he get the technology to come up with this thing?
Yeah, it wasn't strong enough to hold the Hulk, but very few things or people are. I suppose I can forgive a mechanical person being constructed underground by a group of creatures with nothing better to do, but then there was this:
Random Ray Usage! (tm!)
See, I get it when the Mole Man recruits some sort of underground creature to do his bidding, but constructing a robot with "gravity rays" (whatever those are) is really straining my willing suspension of disbelief.
And there it is. More Random Ray Usage (tm!) that just doesn't make any sense considering the source.
But then I read this ad from a few issues prior and I'm all happy again:
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3 comments:
Didn't Moley steal his high-tech gear from Tyrannus or something? I forget. Anyways, without his minions and his gadgets, he's a functional blind guy with no other powers who can stick-fight well (a proto-Daredevil, if you will) so he needs all that stuff to be more than a one-panel fight for the Hulk.
You know, he may have stolen all that stuff. They didn't remind us of that, but I think you're right! Well, that makes more sense, but they WAY overestimated my feeble brain's ability to recall that detail!
Who's the artist on this one? Marie Severin maybe? But she's usually better than this. I poked around the interwebs and I could only find that Gene Colan was the artist on the Sub-Mariner half of the book!
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