Issue(s): Marvel Comics Presents #14 (Speedball & Nomad stories only)
Cover Date: Mar 89

Speedball
Title: "The feathered felon"
Credits:
Mary Jo Duffy - Script
Steve Ditko - Plot
Steve Ditko - Penciler
Steve Ditko - Inker

Nomad
Title: "Angel in the snow"
Credits:
Fabian Nicieza - Writer
Larry Alexander - Penciler
Carl Potts - Inker

Mike Rockwitz - Assistant Editor
Terry Kavanagh - Editor

Review/plot:
I guess it's worth observing that initially the Marvel Comics Presents series had three multi-part stories running at once along with a single issue story each issue. With the conclusion of Doug Moench's Master of Kung Fu story in issue #8, though, we've been down to only two ongoing stories along with two single issue stories per issues.

The first single-issue story in this issue is most likely a leftover from the cancelled Speedball series. I think this might have been my first realtime encounter with Speedball. I did not know what to make of it and i can't say i'm in a better position to do so today.

He fights the cousin of Birdbrain from the New Mutants.

The Nomad story is a little more serious.

Nomad hunts down the pimp-dealer that killed his informant-friend...

...but mark this guy down as yet another drug dealer being protected by the US government in the Marvel universe.

The story deliberately emphasizes the fact that Nomad is not like Captain America at least in the sense that he doesn't feel the need to hold back when fighting criminals. So you might think this would end in a kind of wish-fulfillment fantasy where Nomad kills the guy anyway. But he doesn't.

Quality Rating: C-

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: The Speedball story is context free and can fit anywhere among the other context free issues in his regular series. The Nomad story should take place after Captain America #345.

References:

• There's a quick flashback to Nomad as the 1950s Bucky, fighting the Falcon, which was part of Captain America #153-156.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

Umberto Safilios has a couple more appearances and this is the start of a plot that continues in a backup in Captain America Annual 9.

I'm not sure if it's definite that the Speedball story is left over from his cancelled solo series because that series still had several issues left to go at the time of this issue's release. Of course, it's possible that Steve Ditko had completed a bunch of stories in advance, they already knew the Speedball series would be getting cancelled before his stories were used up, and they had an empty spot in Marvel Comics Presents to fill so they just dropped this one in. Jo Duffy was scripting or co-scripting a lot of the stories after the first few issues. On the other hand, he never inked himself in the solo series.

(Side note: I wish there was a way to subscribe to threads so I'll get notified if someone replies, and I wish there was a way to subscribe to the site, so I'd be notified when new issues are added. Nit picks aside, great stuff!)

Corey - in regards to your query about new issues being added, you should look at the Forum section periodically. There's a topic called "Added today" that does exactly that.

http://www.supermegamonkey.net/chronocomic/phpBB3/viewforum.php?f=2

Except, confusingly, when i'm doing a back issue add - like right now - in which case it's better to look at the Recent Updates link. But at least when i'm not doing a back issue add you should be able to use the forum to get a push notification (i.e. email) when i've listed something in the Added today thread. If enough people are interested in me doing that for the Back Issue adds as well i can do that (please let me know in the forum instead of here to not clutter up this entry).

And yeah, i don't have a similar ability for comment responses. I'm using a system that at this point is pretty outdated for stuff like that, unfortunately.

Regarding Speedball, it's definitely the case that i can't confirm that the stories here and in the Marvel Super-Heroes specials were leftover from the Speedball series, but it seems a likely explanation for why the kept cropping up. We do know that Tom DeFalco spent the initial budget for the New Universe on Speedball, and from there it's been speculated here that the stories had already been drawn and paid for, and that the entire Speedball series was an attempt to recoup that "investment". You can check out the entries and especially comments on the various Speedball entries for more. But it is mostly speculation.

Thanks for the interest, Corey!