Every once in a while, I remember that Aerosmith appeared in a Valiant comic.
from Shadowman #19 (Nov. 1993) by Bob Hall & John Dixon
Well, it was no Howard the Duck meeting KISS, but it was certainly…something.
Shadowman, like many of the early Valiant superhero books, was an interesting title, with the main character finding out in the time-and-space-spanning epic crossover event Unity that he was fated to die in 1999, with that knowledge coloring his actions and emotions through the rest of the series. Of course, that series ended before actually reaching the year 1999, and I don’t know if that particular plot point was resolved or even addressed in any of the spin-off material, like the next two Shadowman series which featured new characters, or the halfway-completed mini Unity 2000 by Jim Shooter and Jim Starlin. But it was a clever twist on the superhero crossover event, in that for once something that happened in one of these events actually had a dramatic, serious, and more-or-less permanent impact on the character involved. No “Hulk breaks a leg!” here.*
So, Shadowman…another reason why I miss those initial Valiant Era comics. Even that goofy Aerosmith issue.
Shadowman’s 1999 death was complicated by the dissolution of the company. According to Bob Hall in some interview I read ages ago, he really would have killed off Jack Boniface in 1999, though there would have been some comic book shenanigans to keep the title going. (Not a “he died on the operating table for a minute then came back” sort of shenanigans, but a “now he’s dead but still active” sort.)
When Acclaim bought Valiant, the first issue of the new Shadowman took place after Boniface was murdered, and his reanimated corpse was a minor character in the origin of the new guy, Zero.
The Unity 2000 miniseries was going to kill Boniface over and over again, in parallel universes, because comics.
“Hulk breaks a leg”? Shooter involved? Please, explain! I have no clue what you’re talking about, but it sounds like there’s a good story behind it…
I’m with Alex on this one. What’s the story on the Hulk and Shooter? And are those “Chicken Little” lyrics real!! ? Having only heard various Top 10 hits by Aerosmith, I wouldn’t know. If they are,thank God I never became a fan.
“Living on the Edge,” baby! And it’s actually a pretty good song.
Ha. I _just_ re-read the “Hulk breaks his leg” sequence like 20 minutes ago…
Bought 11 of the 12 issues of Secret Wars for 50 cents each last weekend at the Baltimore Comiccon. It had been 20 years or so since I’d last read it, and I finished the last few this morning.
The whole series is pretty perfunctory, but that last issue goes off the charts in that regard as Shooter spends the last several pages hurriedly putting into place all of the post-SW “big changes” that it was supposed to set up (and spent practically no time at all doing so until then).
So: Hulk breaks his leg… sometime in the final battle sequence? I guess? It didn’t exactly get a big moment. But Shooter apparently saw in his notes that Hulk was supposed to break his leg, so there’s a panel toward
the end where Reed sets him up in a high-tech cast, and apologizes that he can’t use the “healing machines” they’ve been using, because, uh, like, your “Gamma levels” are too high right now. Sure, that’s it.
Still, I actually had fun with it. Amazingly, the whole enterprise seems sort of innocent today, despite being the thing that kicked off the culture of the mega-event. It wasn’t _quite_ as decadent as they are now…
Secret Wars II, however, I recall was an atrocity. (I, uh, bought those too. I’ll probably wait until next weekend to crack them…)
–Chris K
All that guy in the last panel needs is a guy who thinks he’s “becoming Joe Perry” to hip-check him off of that lighting rig.