Tuesday 18 February 2014

BECAUSE YOU DEMANDED IT




It’s no coincidence that an anagram of comics is ‘cosmic’. Actually, it is a coincidence, but factual accuracy isn’t important here. Marvel comics always wrung every possible nuance they could out of astral planes, other dimensions, bizarre dream worlds and parallel universes, especially when the psychedelic era dawned and people started contemplating the infinite and saying ‘wow’ a lot. Indeed, in the Marvel universe, the Age of Aquarius kept dawning up until around 1980, and that's pretty far out. 

Here, in a comic from 1977, Dracula meets Doctor Stephen Strange (along with The Silver Surfer, THE psychedelic hero of the era) in an explosion of mind expanding light, which, luckily, is arresting enough that the reader doesn’t immediately notice that, apart from slightly different costumes and a rather small horse, the adversaries look more or less identical. A moustache will do that for you.

2 comments: