LUDIC LOG

Hey, hey! It's time for the next (and, sadly, last, since I don't have any other issues) of the Ludic Log's little tour through the mid-'80s funnybook relic known as The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe. Today we're going to look at issue #5, also known as "the really crappy issue with no one good in it". This one, like issue #4, starts out with a super-geeky OHOTMU entry for three of the creators: inker Josef Rubenstein, colorist Andy Yanchus, and assistant editor Howard "Roon" Mackie. We learn from these overindulgent tit-bits that Rubenstein's real first name is Joszef, and he's some kind of East German commie; Yanchus is a member of the Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Scale Model Kit Collecting, and Mackie likes to call himself "The Mysterious Mr. H". Rather than spend any more time with these real-world losers, let's move right on to the fictional losers between the covers.

GARDENER. I don't know if the Elders of the Universe were one of Stan Lee's ideas, but if they were, it must have been on a day that he had gotton hold of a bad cigar. The Gardener was...well, he was a goddamn gardener. He carried a big crook and he planted things and gardened and shit. He was a cosmic outer space gardener, and still they acted like he had some chance of beating the Hulk. If you say so. He goes around carrying something called the "Soul-Gem", and we are assured that it contains the soul of "Gamora of Xen-Hoober".

GARGOYLE. Although I was kind of a fan of the Defenders, the backstory of Gargoyle (decrepit old Jesus-freak gets trapped in the body of ancient demon-thing) was always terribly confusing to me, so I don't really have much to say about him. According to his History section, the town of which he was the mayor "was tottering on the brink of economic ruin" and he "decided to use (the occult) to save the town", so he "contacted the demon Avarrish, a member of the Six-Fingered Hand". Most people would have just brought in legalized gambling.

GEE. Gee was a member of the pitiful Power Pack, along with his siblings Gosh, Wow and Shucks. HA! I kill me.

GHOST RIDER. No, this isn't the good Ghost Rider; this is the lame western hero. He had something to do with the cool, chopper-riding, flaming-skull-having, tattoo-inspiring, rapper-influencing Johnny Blaze Ghost Rider, but it's really too boring to go into. I don't remember ever having seen this guy anywhere, and that's probably for the best. At some point, "he joined with Red Wolf, Firebird, Shooting Star and Texas Twister to battle the Hulk", but strangely was not reduced to a slimy mash by the encounter. Sometimes I think the Marvel writers don't really think much of the Hulk.

GLADIATOR. Gladiator was an outer-space rip-off of Superman, who was himself an outer-space ripoff of Phillip Wylie's The Gladiator, so someone was trying to be cute with this one. In fact, all the incidental art in this panel came from a couple of great issues of The Fantastic Four and The Uncanny X-Men, where John Byrne presages his future cushy gig as the Man of Steel's primary artist/writer by making Gladiator look exactly like Superman. I mean exactly like him. Except with a big brushtop mohawk. The shot of Gladiator lifting the Baxter Building is one of my favorite panels in all of comics and once again reminds me of how far Byrne had to fall.

GRANDMASTER. Yes, I'm skipping a lot of entries here. You know why? They all suck, that's why. Do you really want to hear about Glamor, Glorian, and the least interesting of the nine people who were Goliath? These entries are dull enough as they are without having to find something funny to say about Gorgon lifing a Volkswagen. Anyway, yes! It's another Elder of the Universe. This one plays games. That's his gimmick. He's an immortal, all-powerful, godlike creature who has existed since the dawn of time, and he spends his days coming up with winning strategies for "Hi-Ho the Cherry-O". This is the guy responsible for the Contest of Champions, about which less said the better, unless you're funnier than I am. Like Jon Morris.

GRAPPLERS. This was essentially a super-powered version of the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling. The great thing about them is that they had this ridiculously stereotypical names: the punk one was called Gladiatrix! The hot one was called Vavavoom! The fat one was called Butterball! The Japanese one was named Sushi! This kind of brilliant characterization could only have come from the pen of Steve Englehart. Ask yourself this question: if you were strong enough to lift a goddamn car and tear a guy's head off with one hand, would you let people call you Butterball?

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY. Always a better idea in theory than in execution, the GoG were a team of intergalactic adventurers who had powers that stemmed from the unique properties of the planet they came from -- you know, like the Legion of Super-heroes, only less retarded. In practice, they ended up having massive flaws that distracted you from their characters; Charlie-27 was so wide and short he looked like he'd been badly PhotoShopped; Martinex sounded like a dry-cleaning service; and Nikki, while cute, had that ridiculous ghetto-fabulous hairdo that looked like, as the OHOTMU entry says, "a pompadour of flame". Luckily, these guys weren't around much.

GUARDSMAN. This entry is notable for two whole pages of ridiculous Eliot R. Brown technical drawings. The Guardsman's armor contains "magnetic pleat and overlapping-scale muscle articulation throughout". Sure, so did I until I started drinking.

HENRY PETER GYRICH. Gyrich was the carrot-topped NSC agent who was a thorn in the side of the X-Men for about a million and a half issues. The X-Men movie did the right thing by killing him off almost as an afterthought; he never really was that interesting despite having a bad-ass attitude a la Red Forman on "That '70s Show". At some point, he allied himself with a guy named Count Nefaria, and yet it all ended badly! Who would have figured that you could go wrong hooking up with a guy named Nefaria?

JUSTIN HAMMER. Justin Hammer was one of those characters Marvel screwed around with when they were feeling their most libelous, like the "Maggia". Hammer was, of course, a barely disguised version of financier Armand Hammer, although the art, by someone named Dwayne Turner, makes him look like a barely disguised version of Hugh Hefner.

HAVOK. Some people found Havok and Polaris interesting. I was not one of those people. Pretty good Dave Gibbons art, though, making some cigarette money while Moore was busting his balls over The Watchmen.

HAWKEYE. As befitting someone named Clint, Hawkeye always struck me as sort of a lunkheaded dimwit, thought it was always fun to watch the writers try and figure out ways to make it look like he belonged in the Avengers alongside bull-studs like Thor and Iron Man. In fact, the only interesting thing about him was how Hawkeye -- best described as a purple, impoverished version of Green Arrow -- slowly drained away and became probably the least fascinating major character in the Marvel Universe. Eventually they shipped him off to the West Coast Avengers (whose Al Milgrom art was a shining beacon to stay away, alerting you to the crappy stories within), where he and his boring wife Mockingbird (best described as a nearsided Jewish Black Canary) because the most dull super-couple in comics history.

HELA. The Norse death goddess was always poorly handled until the Walt Simonson era, when the great artist/writer showed up and made her interesting, just like he did with a ton of other Thor characters. Hel's entry wins the prize for most completely useless 'fact': "It takes nine days and nights riding by horseback, with stops for rest, to travel from the opening of Gnipa Cave to the bridge Gjallerbru over the river Gjoll, which serves as the entrance to Hel." You know that the second Sanderson started typing this, some poor schmuck got assigned the task of coming up with a story in which this mattered.

HELIOPOLIS. I ask again: why is the skin color used for Arabs in Marvel comics this weird shade of gray? Is this some kind of a political statement, or is there a technical reason for this, or is it a typo in the house style manual, or did Jim Shooter think that Arabs were some kind of crazy subterranean mole people?

HELLIONS. What the New Mutants were to the X-Men, the Hellions were to the Hellfire Club. (That is to say, they stank.) Like the X-Men, they were mutants; like the New Mutants, they were annoying teenagers; and like the Hellfire Club, they were all totally gay. There is an Arab in the Hellions, and, yes, he's gray. Check out this incomprehensible sentence from his origin story: "Jetstream is a Moor and a Berber who greatly enjoyed using his power to fly."

DAMION HELLSTROM. Check out the package on Damion Hellstrom! I guess the priapic depictions of Satan are not only accurate, they're hereditary.

HOWARD THE DUCK. Yes, I skipped a bunch more, including big-leaguers like Hercules, the High Evolutionary (Kirby magic!) and the Hobgoblin. Why? Because there is not a MODOK Bonus anywhere to be found. I was just too devastated to continue. Anyway, it's become very fashionable these days, in the wake of the disastrous movie version of the comic, to claim that Howard the Duck was a shitty, ridiculous character who never should have been created and never would have had his own magazine if some of the Marvel staffers didn't have regular access to a bong. But the fact is, Howard was a fascinating, subtle character who...naaah, I'm just fucking with you. Howard really did suck.

HULK. Nothing shows how problematic it was that John Byrne was such a big-shot in 1986 that they let him draw every character he wanted to more than does the Hulk entry. It...looks...just...terrible. John Byrne wasn't the best Hulk artist in the world, but he could do much better than this: the Hulk looks like a fucking thumb. He's stubby and blunt and tries to look like a Kirby drawing, but ends up looking like a Herb Trimpe drawing if Herb had some kind of major debilitating stroke. Remember how I said earlier I don't think the Marvel writers thought much of the Hulk? Here's your proof. Hulk smash puny artists, with his chunky toes.