MARVEL FANFARE #24-26 (1986): Weirdworld

dave sim howard the duck

Okay, I like Mike Ploog (co-creator of Ghost Rider, who does the art for #24) and Pat Broderick (who draws #25 and 26), and I love Doug Moench (writer of Moon Knight, Master of Kung Fu, and many more), but Weird World? Not so much. Swords, sandals, elf and fantasy have never been my thing. So the three-part story here doesn’t rock my world—but fans of WW seem to like it.

What I did like was the back-up features.

In #24, Chris Claremont writes (art by David Ross) an in-continuity story about how Carol Danvers (who at that time was Binary) learned about the death of Mar-Vell. It’s a nice character piece, and he weaves in Thing’s famous moving poker game.

She also meets the new Captain Marvel (Monica Rambeau) for the first time.

Issue #26 has a decent Captain America feature by a writer/artist who apparently died right before Marvel signed him—Will Jungkuntz. I’m sure he wasn’t teased much about his name in grade school

But the cream of the crop is above. From #25: A series of full-page, full-color drawing by the great Dave “Cerebus the Aardvark” Sims of Marvel characters. In addition to Howard the Duck (above) and Shang Chi (below), we get Tony Stark, a terrific Cyclops, and Moon Knight. It’s a rare example of a time he worked with the big two—but he’s still offering the names of creators who Marvel screwed, even while getting paid by Marvel for his art. Classic Sims. Dave Sims was famous for never selling the rights to his self-published book to any of the bigger publishers, even though he could have gotten quite a bit of dough to do so.

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