I know people buy Marvel superhero comics in Marvel comics. Still, when a kid’s floppies get knocked from his hands during Sarnak the evil sound engineer’s attack on Century City, and the kid wishes Spider-Man or Thor were here… it feels like he’s talking about his comic book heroes. Otherwise, wouldn’t someone just be whining about how L.A. doesn’t have any good superheroes?
It’s a pretty good issue. Tom Sutton’s art is slightly better this time. Last time he made an excellent first impression, this time, he opens with some of his weakest stuff—not sure what’s going on with Lissa Russell’s head, but it looks painful—and then mostly improves. The Century City attack sequence is goofy—pissed off Jack escapes, Sarnak unleashes his army of mind-controlled sewer men on the citizenry. It doesn’t really play into the main plot, but I guess writer Gerry Conway thought any set piece would do.
While that attack’s happening, Lissa’s presumably passed out in her sewer pit jail, while Jack goes to Venice Beach to get help from Buck, who doesn’t wonder why Jack’s shirtless and smelly. Weird norm.
At the same time, copper Lou Hackett wants to question Phillip Russell, but the bad guys from the Committee show up and—literally—karate chop Russell into submission before kidnapping him. Lots going on at once, but none of it for this issue. We met the Committee earlier during Sarnak’s origin flashback; he was once a great sound engineer, but he started bootlegging records. Apparently, the label guys burned him alive for it. But he still knows his stuff, so he can create a mind-control device and do the Committee’s bidding.
Their bidding in this case? Capture Jack and Lissa; the Committee knows Jack’s a werewolf and suspects Lissa will be one too. They want to control the werewolf siblings, and Sarnak’s just the man to do it, right after he organizes a brainwashed sewer army.
It’s all extremely contrived, but it also makes the story much stranger than it would be without such a silly series of events.
The finale’s good—Sutton obviously enjoys doing the werewolf scenes—and it’s nice to see Jack and Lissa on the same page about his lycanthropy. Even if she only plays damsel in distress when she was actually the Committee’s primary target.
The Larry Talbots… I have it, my father had it, my sister has it.
Conway and Sutton pull it off, rescuing the two-parter.
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