A "Force" Unreckoned With

I won't be a bit surprised if you don't recognize the super-folks depicted above.  Unless you were reading just the right book at just the right time, you may never have laid eyes on the team that was once being set up to serve as the Guardians of the Galaxy's nemeses.

Though I liked them from the moment I came across them, the supervillains collectively known by the rather uninspiring name "Force" are now largely forgotten.  Comicvine has a bare bones entry on them that really doesn't do much beyond telling you they appeared 11 times. They don't even merit a mention on Wikipedia's entry for Marvel Comics Supervillain Teams

In part, this neglect may have as much to do with who they fought as with who Force was.  Today, the Guardians of the Galaxy are one of the hottest Marvel properties around.  Everybody recognizes Star Lord, Gamora, Drax, Groot, and Rocket Racoon.

Now seriously, in what sane universe do the Guardians get
ignored, while Brute Force gets an entry?!

In the early 90s, though, the team looked considerably different. In fact, none of the current MCU members were part of the team at that time. Back in the day, the Guardians were much-less popular. It's pretty difficult to find stuff on the old crew-heck, even my reliable standby SuperMegaMonkey has nothing synopsizing the Guardians of the Galaxy for 1990 (though the site DOES have an entry for Brute Force?!).

But I digress...  Back to my original topic:  the under-utilized supervillain team Force. Created by Jim Valentino and appearing first in Guardians of the Galaxy #3 (AUG 1990), the seven-member team consisteof:  Interface (the leader), Tachyon, Eighty-Five, Broadside, Brahl, Scanner, and Photon.

What's that?  You want to know more?  You feel cheated?  Well tell ya what, dear reader.  Be back next week when we look at the first two appearances of Force as well as digging into the their enigmatic leader Interface.  See you in seven!

2nd Annual "State of the Blog" Post

Year 2: the rear-view mirror

Well, here we are--two full years into the Spring Road Super Review.  Some milestones of the past twelve months, include:

a name change  

The blog's name official changed from Spring Road Superhero Review to simply Spring Road Super Review.  I found the original title unnecessarily restrictive in scope.  It was becoming more challenging to identify heroes that I was interested in writing about who were of "sufficient" obscurity; and I wanted to leave the door open to profiling supervillains.  Some of them are equally compelling and--given that they so rarely have their own ongoing titles--it's a lot easier to come up with obscure villains. Finally, the name change simplified the title text...always a boon given my tendency toward verbosity.

blog face-lift

Associated with the name change, the blog also experienced a public face-lift. Beyond the colors and fonts, there were three substantive structural changes. I added gadgets highlighting comic blogs differentiated between those that are: (1) about specific characters/teams, (2) about comics-in-general, and (3) actual ongoing web comics. (This final group is denoted under the heading: My Virtual Spinner Rack.)

post popularity

The Heroes of Lallor: brief thoughts on some square peg superheroes became my first post to receive over 1,000 page views. (Thanks, readers!)

blog networking

The Review made its first appearance on a public blog list. Thanks, Peerless Power of Comics!

failure of the fight series

There were, of course, some failures in the year as well. The biggest, in my opinion, was my attempted fight series. It never got quite the reader participation levels I was hoping.  Additionally, I found the series more difficult to write than originally anticipated. In the end, it was simply too much work for too little pay-off.

failure of social media strategy 1.0

A second disappointment was the Spring Road Superhero Review Facebook Page.   
Part of the failure may have been poor judgment of a page type. I set it up as a business page...and I just wasn't ready for that.  Though I've gotten a lot of great readers through Facebook, very few of them have come via the blog's Facebook page.  While I still believe there is some potential for better utilizing Facebook, I'm thinking of shutting down the current page and launching a different type of page.

Year 2: the crystal ball

social media strategy 2.0

I will continue exploring new and alternative social media strategies. At this point I've not decided precisely where to begin, but Tumblr seems promising. (If you've got recommendations, dear reader, please feel free to share. I'm not too proud to crowdsource wisdom.)

post planning cycles

Last year, I planned out the entire year's posts.  In an attempt to respond more quickly to feedback and blog stats, I'll be adjusting posting plans on a much shorter timeline.  This should result in posts that are more responsive to reader interest.

farewell to the structured review

Another departure from the blog will be my attempts at regular, structured webcomic reviews.  These wound up taking way more time to produce than their resulting traffic justified. After a certain point, they stopped being fun and just became a sort of drudgery.  What I had intended to be "structure" felt more and more like a strait-jacket.

Instead, moving forward I will simply profile these characters and stories the same way I do print comics and characters.  I may write broad overviews of characters, or include synopses of selected stories.

Basically, my assumption is that those who felt they benefitted from the old webcomic reviews will equally benefit from these posts...they'll just be a whole lot easier to write!

defined policy for commenting

Through the first two years, one of my major goals was simply to generate readers and commenters. Consequently, the only formal restrictions I put in place was that all comments had to be approved before becoming publicly visible.  My near-exclusive intention in this was to weed out junk-comment marketers that go to pages and say things like: "This is all very good. Much interesting information here.  Follow this link for great prices on Japanese lamps."

Well, over the course of the past year I learned that there's another reason for me to moderate comments.  I had somebody who posted, but used some profanity. Now, I'm not really into restricting free speech or policing other people's words...but this really bothered me because my goal has been to make this blog what I consider a "kid-friendly"space.  I just couldn't approve that person's comment...but I still felt conflicted about that decision since I had never formally announced any standards for comments. That ends today. From this point forward, I'm announcing that (in order to be published) Spring Road standards are:

Keep the comments clean.  I moderate all comments on this blog, and if I deem one not in keeping with the spirit I want to promote here it won't be published. I'm not publicizing anything that:  contains profanity, contains sexual commentary such that I think it would be inappropriate for children, and nothing that I consider legitimately hate-filled. 

I recognize that last criteria can be especially subjective--especially given the highly polarized and charged political environment here in the U.S. I'm not claiming my standards constitute some universal metaphysic. This isn't meant to squelch disagreement or criticism; but I'm not going to give a platform to anything that I feel like makes me complicit in the dehumanization of other people.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I want to say "thank you" to everyone who's read anything on this blog.  Special thanks goes to those of you who've reached out and interacted with me either through commenting on this blog, or on Facebook.  Your engagement is what keeps my spirits up and helps me find the motivation to grind out posts week after week. Here's to an even bigger and better third year!🍷

Tower Comics' Dynamo: a heroic haiku

T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #1 (NOV 1965)

 

Powered belt bestowed

Metal-skinned woman fogs town

Story divided

Doin' my best Tony Stark

Well...this certainly isn't what I intended to be posting today; but then, I also didn't intend to have a heart attack. 

Rest assured, dear readers, your ole' blogger-in-chief is doing just fine.  I wound up having a very mild NSTEMI heart attack with no visible physical damage.  Bottom line, if ya gotta have a heart attack, this is definitely the kind you want to have. 

Now, I'm trying to adjust to new diet and manage the constant low-level anxiety that every gas bubble I feel is actually a blood clot that's about to move to my brain. If you're a praying person, I would much appreciate your solicitous intercessions. 

Currently, the plan is to be back to regular-style postings next week. 

With friends like this, who needs enemies? (Part 2)

Last week, we left the criminal trio of Brains Baroni, Stiletto, and Bruiser scampering for the hills after being persuaded (just why we're not sure) that the champion of justice, Midnight had proven himself bulletproof.

Dave and Sniffer resume their debate over superlative crime-fighting methods even as they hop in the car to pursue Dave's would-be killers.

Unfortunately, our heroes are nearly-flattened when the fleeing thugs block the road with their sedan.  With no time to brake, Sniffer is saved by another of Dave's last-minute-near-superhuman-heroics. Their car totalled, the latter-day paladins have naught recourse but to hoof it back to Dave's house...arguing all the way about whether Dave's "direct approach" was such a good idea after all.

When arrive home just in time to see Doc Wackey burst from his laboratory excitedly proclaiming the success of his latest invention:  Solution Z.

How enlightened of Wackey to be concerned about the sensitivities of
guinea pigs.  I gotta imagine that was pretty atypical  in 1943.

The story then flashes forward a few days as both the heroes and villains are independently perusing the newspaper when they run across this audacious classified ad.

Brains Baroni claims (again, for reasons that don't really make sense), "Our troubles are over."  Meanwhile, Dave notes (in his devil-may-care fashion), "Somebody else wants to kill me.  I must be disappointing a lot of people just by staying alive."  A suspiciously agreeable Sniffer Snoop merely replies, "Great detectives are bound to make enemies!" At this point the most annoying investigator proposes a toast to crime; because if there were no crime, there'd be no Midnight.

Instinctively suspicious of Sniffer's motives, Gabby rushes from the room to appraise Doc Wackey of the goings on.  Moments after the magnificent monkey departs, we see this!

That's right, dear reader!  Sniffer Snoop has drugged Midnight...but why?!

Sniffer dresses his unconscious host in the latter's signature fedora and domino mask before dragging him out to a waiting car and speeding out just before Wackey and Gabby are able to stop him.  At a nearby pier, Sniffer makes his ultimate destination explicit.

Meanwhile, on a lonely darkened houseboat, Brains Baroni and company are awaiting the arrival of a "little guy" who claims to know how to find Midnight.  Of course, it's only a moment before Sniffer and Hotfoot approach the houseboat in their little dinghy.  Brains asks Sniffer if he's sure Midnight is dead, when the detective-turned-deceiver responds, "Oh yes--he's quite dead! He drank enough poison to kill an elephant!"

Stiletto is (apparently) dispatched to haul Midnight's corpse around the city so that "every gang leader in town" can certify the crime-fighter's  demise.  As he climbs down into the dinghy to commence his macabre mission, Sniffer peppers Brains for assurance that he will be receiving the agreed-upon compensation for this betrayal.

Unfortunately for Mr. Stiletto, Gabby and Wackey show up as he's about to leave...and they're itching for a fight!

Though they take out Stiletto, Midnight's would-be rescuers are easily subdued by his partners.  Brains rejoices in showing off the dead Midnight to Wackey and Gabby.  The distraught Wackey threatens to "get" Sniffer for his Brutus-like back-stab.  However, upon turning to the lifeless form of his erstwhile savior, Wackey receives quite a shock!

Having picked up that there must be some sort of ruse in place, Wackey quickly changes his tune.

Don't you kind of this this change of demeanor is a bit much?  Ever hear
of not arousing suspicion, Doc?

At this, our hero springs into action and takes out Bruiser using one of his signature (and anatomically and kinesthetically impossible maneuvers).  Brains just sort of disappears from the final page.  (I guess we're supposed to understand that somebody took him out.)  Then we go into full-scale mad last-minute wrap up.

Wow.  Talk about your super-dysfunctional "family" dynamics