Issue(s): Captain Marvel #22, Captain Marvel #23
Cover Date: Sep-Nov 72
Title: "To live again!" / "Death at the end of the world!"
Credits:
Gerry Conway / Marv Wolfman - Writer
Wayne Boring - Penciler
Frank Giacoia / Frank McLaughlin - Inker

Review/plot:
Two years after the last revival, and with the same cover blurb saying "He's back! The hero who wouldn't die!", the Captain Marvel series begins again. This time it'll last better than before, perhaps thanks to Captain Marvel's role in the Kree-Skrull War and the direct lead-in from Avengers #103, or maybe since Marvel had been expanding it was more tolerant of lower selling books. In any event Jim Starlin is only a few issues away.

Issue #23 is written by Marv Wolfman in, i think, his first work at Marvel.

After freeing Captain Marvel from the Negative Zone, the Kree-Skrull War ended with Marv getting re-merged with Rick in a way that left things a little ambiguous about whether or not he was still really alive. And even though Rick Jones has been around in the Avengers, we haven't heard from Mar-vell until the beginning of this issue, something that Rick Jones rebukes him for.

However, Mar-vell says that "things have changed -- I've no freedom of action -- not even a will of my own". He then begs Rick to swap places with him, but Rick, already huffy after the fight in Avengers #103 and now mad that the friend he thought was dead has been holding out on him, refuses.

Rick winds up back at a music club, where he finds the agent Mordecai P. Boggs getting ready to work his charm on a new young talent, Lou-Ann Savannah.

Rick and Lou-Ann then bond while fighting some beatnik street thugs (nice to see Lou-Ann getting a hit in).

The bad guy of these two issues is Megaton ("the Atomic Assassin", "the Nuclear Man", and the "Living H-Bomb")...

...a scientist that was warped by a Kree Psycho-tron (compare and contrast to the Psyche-Magnetron seen in Captain Marvel #18; this is definitely a different Kree Outpost; it's the one that Ronan used in the Arctic during the Kree-Skrull War).

The Kree connection - added in CM #23 in an expanded version of Megaton's origin, as if the one given in #22 wasn't good enough - makes him marginally more interesting, but the real drama here is the re-emergence of Captain Marvel. Rick refuses to let him out, but there's some sort of build-up or other side effect related to keeping Mar-vell bottled up inside him for so long.

Lou-Ann brings Rick to her uncle, a mad scientist college professor type ("only a bath of positive charged photons can help him now").

When the photons turn Rick into Captain Marvel, Lou-Ann faints and her uncle promises her that he'll bring Rick back, but by next issue he's completely forgotten about him.

After learning that his opponent "absorbs the energy of the battle"...

...Mar-vell's initial fight with Megaton is ended prematurely with Marv turning back into Rick Jones; the unpredictable transformations almost seem to be setting up a Hulk-like situation, but it doesn't last. Rick soon gets a new pair of nega-bands from the Kree outpost and Cap and Mar-vell are back to their previous status quo. Megaton is hurled into space before he explodes.

Awkward art by Wayne Boring.

The story is at least as bad as the previous Captain Marvel revival so whatever reason the book didn't get immediately cancelled after two issues again, it wasn't thanks to the book's quality.

It's weird how for a while now Marvel has been trying to associate Rick Jones with the counter-culture but has refused to update his look. He's even called "longhair" by the villain...

...but compared to the thugs and club goers we saw, Rick is a clean cut kid.

Quality Rating: D+

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: Issue #22 begins with Rick leaving the Avengers mansion after getting left behind in Avengers #103. A period of "one week" passes while Rick and Lou Ann are getting to know each other.

References:

• A recap of Captain Mar-vell and Rick focuses on Captain Marvel #17 and Avengers #89-97.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

Lou Ann Savannah and her scientist uncle ring bells?

How about as unworthy analogues of the real Captain Marvel's Doctor SIVANA and daughter?

The first of a few little fiddles with the original and true Captain Marvel in which Marvel indulges.

Explaining what Mar-vell's powers are and how he got them is a mess. He's gone through...

* His original powers due to Kree technology and the high gravity on Hala (physical ability somewhat greater than human, flight suit, uni-beam).

* The powers granted by the godlike Zo (further enhanced strength, teleportation, illusions). Zo turns out to be a false front of Kree minister Zarek, but the powers are still real due to Zarek applying "some untried process" to Marv.

* The powers he gets from the Nega-Bands, which are said to supplant all prior ones (super strength, invulnerability, flight, switching atoms with Rick Jones).

* The powers from Professor Savannah's photon treatment these issues (absorption of sunlight to become stronger in daytime yet weaker at night).

* The powers granted by the godlike-for-real-this-time Eon (cosmic awareness, sparkly flight trail).

On another note, Nitro gets all the blame for Mar-vell's cancer, but the radiation from Megaton probably didn't do the captain any favors. It makes me think of how Bill Foster gets irradiated by both Atom-Smasher and Nuklo before revealing he has cancer.

Wayne Boring was the definitive Superman artist during the 1950s before he was let go from DC in 1967, along with Al Plastino and some other long time DC artists & writers. Boring got very little work from DC after he was replaced as the definitive Superman artist by Curt Swan in the late 50s or early 60s. Swan himself would eventually be discarded as a Superman artist in similar fashion by John Byrne around 1986. It's worth noting that all of the first 3 primary Superman artists were summarily dismissed in less than exemplary fashion by DC -- Joe Schuster, Wayne Boring, and Curt Swan.

Following his DC layoff, Boring did some work on newspaper strips before drawing Captain Marvel #22-24 and Creatures on the Loose #19 in 1972. From the scans here, it looks like he suppressed the signature style he used on Superman in favor of something closer to the Marvel house style, although that appearance might be partly attributable to the inkers; at DC his Superman stories had usually been inked by Stan Kaye. His next and last work for Marvel was in 1979, on Thor #280, which looks a little more like his "classic" Boring work on Superman.

Boring was also commissioned to draw the Marvel Handbook's Book of the Dead profile picture for Baron Zemo, probably as a nod to his Golden Age comics work.

Lou Ann Savannah and her scientist uncle ring bells?

How about as unworthy analogues of the real Captain Marvel's Doctor SIVANA and daughter?

For that matter, the next storyline will introduce a nod to Mister Mind -- Professor Mynde -- and this arc's Megaton could seen as an analogue to the Fawcett Captain Marvel's enemy Mister Atom. Marv Wolfman was all about the Shazam in-jokes on this series.

Thanks to Holt for his nice remembrance of Wayne Boring’s prominence in the history of comics (and for his sobering comment about the undeserved fates of the three definitive Superman artists). Let me add the following:

One of the truly admirable things Roy Thomas did as editor was to keep tabs on the forgotten creators of the elder generation and try to give them work when opportunities arose. A lot of them had been ill-used by the publishers, and their styles were no longer suitable for “modern” storytelling. But Thomas remembered the enjoyment he had received from their work, and he found occasions to give back to them (for example, the Thor issue Holt mentions involved Marvel’s Superman clone Hyperion, so it surely “looked like a job for” Wayne Boring). Thomas might get grief for his histrionic writing style, but he strikes me as a very decent fellow.

Thanks Chris Z, I agree about Thomas on both counts, although Alter Ego, his interviews, and his later work for DC have been quite a bit more fun for me to read than most of his Marvel work, and can be informative on many aspects of comic book publication history as well.

To correct my earlier comment, I didn't mean to say that Swan was discarded by John Byrne, but rather, he was displaced by Byrne, who became the next definitive Superman artist, and was more or less discarded by the powers that be at DC. Which is to say that he didn't get very much more work from them. He was dismissed from most or all Superman work. I remember he drew the 2-part pre-Byrne Superman send-off written by Alan Moore, at Moore's request, and that was his last regular Superman work. Maybe he was ready to more-or-less retire anyway, I'm unsure.

In Boring's case, however, after these 3 issues of Captain Marvel, wiki says Boring went to work as a bank security guard. This reminded me of Joe Shuster (corrected spelling) and the famous story of how Jerry Robinson once recognized Shuster working as a delivery man who was delivering a package to the DC corporate office building. The CEO brushed him off. This was according to Joe Simon in My Life in Comics. The lawsuits came much later. Much news was written about them.

In the Silver Age editor Mort Weisinger also oversaw the Superman newspaper strip. Curt Swan drew the dailies from 1956-60. Boring was the longtime artist of the Sundays. In 1960 Boring took over the dailies, and Swan replaced him as the main Superman artist in the comics. Boring returned to doing comics stories in 1966-67 because the strip ended, but Weisinger then dropped him.

Swan's run on the dailies started on 1956, so he was one of the main Superman artists for 30 years. He did have one more regular run on Superman's feature after Crisis: he drew two-page "Superman" instalments for Action Comics Weekly for most of its run.

I'm not a big DC reader, so I might be misremembering, but IIRC Swan hadn't been the artist on any Superman book for several years even before Crisis. He only got to work on the pre-Crisis "swan song", "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?", because Julius Schwartz insisted.

Swan's last run on Superman was #408-423. #423 in 1986 was the "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow" send-off story by Moore. Swan had worked regularly on Superman since issue #144 in 1960 with a few interruptions, probably for vacation time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curt_Swan#Bibliography

On #144 he only drew the cover, with Boring drawing the interior story, but Swan quickly took over the whole book. His work on Action comics was more sporadic, but he worked regularly on all of the Superman titles.

My recollection is that Moore requested Swan for the "Whatever Happened" story but I could be mistaken. I vaguely remember that from a Moore text piece or interview, but it stands to reason that Julius Schwartz would have wanted him too, for both sales reasons and fan service, and maybe also for personal reasons.

Thanks, Holt. You're probably thinking of the Paul Kupperberg intro to the story in DC Universe: The Stories of Alan Moore, which says the choice of artist was "never in question." Wikipedia says that it was Schwartz who actually made the decision. (FWIW, the same article says Swan first drew Superman way back in issue 51, in 1948!)

Swan was there all through my early impressionable childhood, but there were plenty of Wayne Boring story reprints in the annuals for me to enjoy. I remember that during the 80s Moore could usually get pretty much any artist he wanted, but this was a special case. At least Swan got some fanfare upon his departure -- during Boring's time in the 40s, 50s, & 60s, DC was not even in the practice of putting credits' legends on the splash pages. Stan Lee was the one who really got that practice started at Marvel, and it took some time before DC broke down and started imitating it.

I believe Alan Moore was only brought in because they couldn't get Jerry Siegel - Joe Shuster was blind and possibly dead by then, and no idea about Boring's availability. -So the idea behind using Swan wasn't about throwing him a bone, I wouldn't think.