Killraven: 'Amazing Adventures' No. 26 (September 1974)

 

Issue 26 (September 1974) of ‘Amazing Adventures’ features the ‘War of the Worlds’ storyline; this time Killraven and his band of rebels are involved in ‘Something Worth Dying For’, written by Don McGregor and illustrated by Gene (‘The Dean’) Colan.

The locale is Battle Creek, Michigan, and the comic features more than a few references to cereals and junk foods in the speech balloons and text narrative; presumably in a hip and snarky post-modern sort of way.

There is some cheesecake provided for the fans when Carmilla Frost, the shapely molecular biologist who has joined the Killraven crew, decides to take a bath in a nearby stream despite the chill winter weather (a trooper, that Carmilla !). 

Some local perverts take too close an interest in her ablutions, and some mayhem occurs…..

The story culminates in a confrontation with the villain on the book’s cover, one ‘Pstun-Rage’ (?!).

This is another underwhelming issue in the series. Signs of tiredness were beginning to show in the writing and the art, no doubt occasioned by Stan Lee’s misguided insistence on expanding the Marvel product line without much regard to whether the company could handle the workload.

In his Soapbox Lee crows about the advent of ‘Spidey’ stories, a new comic produced in partnership with Sesame Street spinoff ‘The Electric Company’. In keeping with the Sesame Street ethos, Spidey was aimed at grade-school kids whose reading comprehension had been severely downgraded  by over-exposure to TV.

Needless to say, Lee saw the partnership as a signal opportunity to present comic books as an Aid to Learning (as opposed to their historical perception as vehicles for juvenile delinquency and stunted personal growth).