As a fervent fan of Marvel Comics in my mid-teens, I had a list of books I would buy when they came out each month. How many I could actually get depended on how much spending money I had, which I'm sad to say was mainly financed through an allowance. Meaning, I didn't have much. I didn't really get a job until I was 19 and that was money was designated for other things.
Fortunately, back in the day, a single issue was relatively cheap, say, fifty cents, or a dollar for double-sized issues or annuals.
The one comic book series I never missed, no matter what, was The Uncanny X-Men. I got started during the Chris Claremont/John Byrne years, who I consider to be the finest writing/art duos of all time. After the merry mutants, I tried not to miss The Amazing Spider-Man. Then, The Fantastic Four.
Yes, I liked the Big Three. So sue me. I did enjoy Iron Man for a while, as well as some other comics, and since I collected the first Secret Wars series, Machine Man and ROM, I also had my fair share of C-D listers, too, okay?
Maybe even lower than that. Anyone remember The Micronauts ?
That said, I have some favorite story lines, of course, which I thought I'd start sharing here on HIVE. I won't commit to a weekly thing just yet, but that is the goal, to dedicate Wednesdays to a comic book story arc of some kind.
So, without further introduction, here's tonight's Comic Book Spotlight.
Straight Into Obscurity
Right out of the chute, I want to introduce one of my favorite of all time Fantastic Four stories. My guess is, very few will even remember it, let alone like it, but for me, it resonated when I was a 15 year old, so much that it has stuck with me all this time. It also has some additional personal relevance that I will share later.
Who Is This Guy?!
The story, The Man With The Power! debuted in September of 1981. Sometime prior to this John Byrne had stopped working on Uncanny X-Men and took over the reins of the FF. Not only was he the artist/inker, he was also the writer. I'd have to look up to see what his run is most noted for, but I know it wasn't this issue. Unless it's taken as the intro to a battle of epic proportions with a otherworldly villain.
More on that in a moment, too.
While the cover basically provides a blank silhouette and teases some kind of altercation between this mystery man and the FF, the first page introduces us immediately to none other than:
L. R. "Skip" Collins, who we're told...
...may be the most powerful man who ever lived!
What? Not getting that vibe from him? How come? Doesn't overweight middle aged male just scream of power? Some people seem to think so. But I digress.
Exposition And More Exposition
The first three pages contains quite a bit of third person narration. In fact, the whole story has it, something that more recent comic books have gotten away from. I'm not sure if I need as much as we get here, but since this is a completely new character, there's some explaining to do, especially since... well, I'll get to that later, as well.
Suffice it to say, Byrne wants us to know just how ordinary Skip is, and even more to the point, just how ordinary Skip thinks he is. He just happens to revel in anonymity. And yet, he seems to be able to wish away certain things, like his wife's penchant for untidiness, in a most magical fashion.
However, as we're told later, as he's confronting his deadbeat younger son, there appear to be limits to this ability of his, though it seems, he might be the one who limits them.
Mainly, because he's oblivious to the fact that he's actually causing things to happen.
Heading into the job he's held down for 20 years with the same company, he finds himself caught in traffic. Ruing the fact he hadn't left earlier, suddenly, he did, and the traffic disappears, allowing him to arrive on time. He gets there, only to find he's left his key to his office at home. The spare is sitting on a board inside the office. Realizing it's doing no good there, he wishes he'd just left the door unlocked.
Presto, the key unlocks the door, and none the wiser, Skip thinks he actually did leave the door open.
This is the point where things start to move along. Out of nowhere, his boss, Mr. Wilkins, asks Skip to cover a meeting the former has in New York City. Skip, despite his distaste for excitement or spontaneity, jumps at the opportunity, since he's always wanted to visit the Big Apple. Before he knows it, it's actually Saturday and he's on a plane, even though time is moving slower for everyone else.
Backstory
Obviously, every hero and villain must have an origin story, and it's while Skip's on the plane that he's taken back to his service in the military, and some experiments that he and others participated in. Of course, these were nuclear in nature (radiation is one of the leading causes of superheroes and supervillains, after all), and while Skip suffers no detectable side effects, he does wind up with this pesky buzzing in the back of his head that he decides to keep mum about.
Probably just as well.
Sightseeing And Celebrity Sighting
After checking into his hotel, he takes off to see the wonders of the city that never sleeps. He eventually finds himself in front of the Baxter Building where he stumbles upon none other than Reed and Susan Richards (aka, Mr. Fantastic and the Invisible Girl), out on a stroll together.
Skip decides to follow them, because, what else are you going to do for true entertainment but stalk some of your favorite superheroes? We don't really find out what the power couple are up to, though, as they come across a building ready for demolition and a girl whose managed to get into the building and go up several flights. The firemen can't get to her and the building starts falling apart.
Fortunately, Mr. Fantastic is able to save the young lady and the Invisible Girl uses her abilities to create force fields to save everyone else in the immediate vicinity from the lethal force of several tons of falling building, then clears the debris off the street.
The Plot Thickens
It's right about here that Reed realizes that something is off. He tells Sue that he felt some vertigo just before the building fell and she realizes she did, too. Just then, the surrounding skyscrapers begin to fall apart, struck by unseen energy waves.
As the duo head back to the Baxter Building to determine what's happening with the aid of Reed's amazing equipment, Skip tries to keep up. He gets there just in time to see three of them leaving again, as Sue, her brother Johnny Storm (Human Torch) and their longtime friend, Ben Grimm (The Thing) take off to help out rescue efforts throughout the city. Before that, they are told that the same devastation has been repeated all over the world, but with NYC taking the brunt of it.
While they do what they can where they can, Reed stays behind to determine the source.
Power Manifestations
Skip ends up following Grimm, who discovers that a freighter is stuck in a collapsing bridge. While his strength is formidable, he's at first outmatched by the immensity of the task, until, suddenly, the bridge becomes lighter. You guessed it, it's all thanks to Skip, who believes that if The Thing is as strong as he's heard, the superhero will have no problem keeping the bridge together long enough for the boat to pass below it.
Well, prophecy fulfilled, the freighter makes it out, but upon doing so, the full weight of the bridge comes back, and a large chunk of it is flung towards Skip. We see impact, but fortunately he's fast enough to blink himself out of harm's way in the nick of time.
After The Thing goes diving into the river in an attempt to save Skip, he resurfaces empty handed in time to see the FF signal calling the rest of the team back to the Baxter Building. Reed has indeed found the answer. The source of the destruction is gravity waves, coming from somewhere in near space. Like the heroes they are, they get into their own rocket ship to seek out and stop whoever or whatever is behind the deadly disturbance.
In the meantime Skip winds back once again at the Baxter Building, this time to see the FF shooting into space. He misinterprets it as basically the end of the world, because, why else would the superpowered team run away?
The Grand Finale
In that instant, Skip thinks the words that will not only make things right, but make it never was :
This is terrible! It should never have happened!
And so, it doesn't.
He literally bends reality to undo all of the catastrophic occurrences worldwide and leaves everything the way it was before the annihilation started. And apparently, that leaves no one with any recollection that anything was amiss, except for the FF, who are already in space and encountering even more bizarre events.
Oh, and the buzzing in his head. Gone. Forever. So, too, his memory of what just happened. Instead, he simply realizes he's going to be late for a show if he doesn't hurry and find a taxi.
Thus Ends The Tale of The Matchless Skip
The reason for all the narration? Bryne felt readers needed to know as much about the man who saved the Earth from unfathomable cataclysm with the mere thought because his accomplishments would be chronicled in but a single issue. And because of the nature of what he did, it didn't happen.
Skip, therefore, is the hero who no one will ever know.
But I do.
And now, you do, too.
My Affinity For This Unknown Tale
I think a lot of us, at one time or another, feel like we're just one person in a sea of humanity, incapable of affecting anything. We're lucky if we can exert any level of influence, let alone control, over our own lives. And yet, unbeknownst to us, somewhere within, there could well be lying greatness, if we were only self-aware enough to see it.
That's why often it's others who are able to see it in us. But too many times, there's no one else capable of noticing it, either.
This story is about a nobody who unwittingly rewrites history with a single thought.
There are very few beings in the Marvel Universe capable of such reality altering feats. Skip Collins, the everyman, was one of them.
The Personal Connection
The reason why X-Men and to a degree Spider-Man stories resonated with me was because I always felt like the outsider, the nobody, the person who had greatness within if only he was given a chance to let it out. No, I didn't have superpowers, and no, I really wasn't that much of a pariah, but in high school, it was so easy to feel that way, especially if you didn't really fit in anywhere. My problem, I had too many interests and likes to land in any particular group.
Plus, my parents were working class, so I couldn't just be automatically popular or cool because of money and my looks weren't going to get me much status, either.
So, while I was smart enough to hang with the eggheads, and athletic enough to make one of the basketball teams every year, and had a decent enough voice and acting ability to land parts in plays and musicals, I always felt like the odd man out.
Turns out, most of the rest of the students I knew most likely did, too. Too bad that's not a discovery I made until much later in life.
So, at the time, these comic book stories I bought and read voraciously, especially the ones with nobodies or outsiders, gave me hope.
So, Skip (which just happens to be the nickname of an uncle of mine—though I think of him as way cooler despite not having the reality bending powers, as far as I know), has a special place in the annals of Marvel history for me.
So much so...
...that he became the basis for one of my own characters, Thomas Kirkegaard. I've written two Kindle novels (neither are available at the moment), and Thomas is the grandfather of the main character, Paz Kirkegaard. While the books are about the adventures of the young girl, Thomas eventually has a big role to play. I just need to get the third book written.
I've also contemplated writing a solo book for him, or making it into a graphic novel of some kind. His abilities are reality bending in nature, but begin primarily with the manipulating the value of money. You can imagine how that might get him in trouble.
I haven't fleshed out his story completely, but I do have some backstory written and hope to get to it again, along with the other dozen or so projects I have competing for my attention in my head.
The Rest Of The Story
Now that I've told you the reason why I like The Man With The Power! so much, there's the matter of the other tease I made earlier, about where this story leads.
The bizarre experiences that the FF have at the end of this issue and throughout the next?
Well, it has to do with encountering the impossible, really, even though that's what superhero comics exist for—bringing the totally improbable to life.
The cause of the gravity waves and near destruction of Earth?
None other than that space traveling living planet, EGO.
For MCU Guardians Of The Galaxy fans, this is the OG version (and better one, in my opinion) of the second movie's antagonist.
I bet the next issue's story about EGO is more likely remembered by readers of The Fantastic Four then this one I've just shared.
That's okay. I'll just keep on remembering Skip Collins, The Hero That Never Was.
WandaVision Tie In
Okay, I don't mean it literally, but I found the telling of Skip's heroics now to be timely, given what's happened in the Disney+ limited run TV series now streaming. Episode 9 drops at midnight Pacific, 3 AM Eastern this Friday.
To avoid any potential WandaVision spoilers, I will say no more, only that reality bending is something that Skip and Wanda have in common.
Or had, since Skip no longer can.
As far as anyone knows, anyway.
First image courtesy of Glen Anthony Albrethsen. All others—Marvel Unlimited App