A Heroes Death

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I've known for a little while about the death of  The Jack of Hearts in Avenger 491 and I'm sure most of you know about it too so I'm not going to go into a recap of it. A Google search with key words "Jack of Hearts Avengers" will send you to sources for the synopsis and more clip art easily enough. And speaking of clip art in regards to his death I only came across what you see here fairly recently. As a hero who's father (who loved playing cards) was murdered and had led a life of torment due to the unstable nature of his powers I can't think of a better bit of writing in regards to Jack's final words. Now I can't say if Bill Mantlo would have approved or disapproved of his creation being killed off but I'm willing to bet if he were to be ok with it he would have been really happy about the way it was handled in Avengers 491.

After all Mantlo killed off The Torpedo who didn't exactly go out in a blaze of glory but at least he went down swinging. Although created by Marv Wolfman The Torpedo had his longest notoriety in the Rom spackenight series. Now I've heard, but don't quote me on this that Jack has appeared since then in the Marvel Universe. If you know anything about that please do share with the rest of us. In closing I just wanted to say that I really love the costume that Jack was sporting by the time of his death and the art here is amazing. Do you have any idea how hard it is to draw a face from that perspective? Moving on to more Mantlo inspired work . . .

This tribute page comes from the 1997 Bug 1 shot. Of course you can't list the greats of the Marvel 80s with out including The Boisterous one. On the flip side I can think of at least one name here I would have left off however.

Bill Mantlo stacking the deck

Today I was looking at a back issue review of Avengers 76 vol.3 (2004) at Mr. Morbids House of Fun http://dbsuniverse.blogspot.com/2013/03/back-issue-spotlight-avengersvol376.html It turns out this is the issue where the Jack of Hearts dies. I'd heard a while back that he had been killed off but I always wondered how exactly that happened so this was a cool find. I hopefully I'll come across the issue in a back issue bin some day. I have to say I really like the updated look he had at the time. I really prefer the more streamlined less detailed costume/armor design and I also think he looks cooler with out his head being covered too. I wonder if Bill Mantlo ever saw the new look and if so what he thought of it?
 http://diversionsofthegroovykind.blogspot.com/2012/11/grooves-faves-jack-of-hearts-by-mantlo.html

So look what I found from a photo of some of the wall art at Floating Worlds Comics for the Bill Mantlo benefit auctions. Unfortunately this is the best I can do as far as pulling a decent image off the net but as you can see this is one nice piece of art. It really sucks how so much of the good stuff from those auctions is no where to be found except in poor formats like this where as many of the less then stellar pieces seem to be every where.

Speaking of which I finally finished reading Bill Mantlo A Lifetime In Comics. Boy that was good! I especially liked the behind the scenes information about why some of the projects he worked on like The Human Fly didn't last as long as others such as Rom and The Micronuats. I was a bit saddening to find out that it was creative differences with Sal Buscema and Bill that prompted Sal to leave Rom giving way to the Ditko era which displeased me to say the least. And then of course there was the Micronauts and all the artists that came and went during it's 58 issue run because of again creative differences with Bill. In some ways that was the most interesting part of the book. But let's not forget about his rather tenuous relationship with Jim Shooter. It seems Jim Shooter may have been as big of a dick as the rumors suggest.