{"id":391,"date":"2010-06-11T06:17:22","date_gmt":"2010-06-11T13:17:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cyberspacecomics.com\/blog\/?p=391"},"modified":"2010-06-14T20:50:22","modified_gmt":"2010-06-15T03:50:22","slug":"retro-read-10-black-goliath","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cyberspacecomics.com\/blog\/2010\/06\/retro-read-10-black-goliath\/","title":{"rendered":"Retro-Read #10 Black Goliath"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"b18d58\">With years spent reading single issues here and there, juggling storylines of dozens of titles, I decided it was time to find a better way to read comics. So, it was off to the back issue bins armed with the longest want list you&#8217;ve ever seen! Putting together series after series and reading them in their complete goodness, I was reborn as the <strong>Retro-Reader<\/strong>!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/cyberspacecomics.com\/blogimages\/black-goliath-1.jpg\" align=\"left\"><b><u>Publisher<\/u><\/b>: <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/stores.ebay.com\/CyberspaceComics_Marvel-Comics_W0QQ_fsubZ19879011QQ_sidZ13296653QQ_trksidZp4634Q2ec0Q2em322\">Marvel Comics<\/a><br \/><b><u>Number of Issues<\/u><\/b>: 5<br \/><b><u>First Issue<\/u><\/b>: February 1976 (25\u00a2)<br \/><b><u>Last Issue<\/u><\/b>: November 1976 (30\u00a2)<br \/><b><u>Writer<\/u><\/b>:  <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.worldfamouscomics.com\/tony\/\">Tony Isabella<\/a> (#1); <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.chrisclaremont.com\/\">Chris Claremont<\/a> <br \/><b><u>Artist<\/u><\/b>: George Tuska (#1-3) and others <\/p>\n<p><center><strong>*Warning! Plot Spoilers Below*<\/strong><\/center><\/p>\n<p>After fifteen years away, <strong>Dr. William Barrett Foster <\/strong>moved back to his hometown of Los Angeles after accepting a job to head up a Californian <strong>Stark In<\/strong>dustries facility. Unknown to Stark, or anyone else for that matter, Foster recently acquired Pym particles that allow him to grow to 15&#8242;, donned a costume and adopted the super-hero name of <strong>Black Goliath <\/strong>(see <em>Power Man <\/em>#24). But, it works out well for Stark, since Black Goliath has moved to L.A. just in time to stop <strong>Atom-Smasher <\/strong>from stealing a new supply of radium from the warehouse!<\/p>\n<p>The book continues to follow Foster&#8217;s new career as a crime-fighter, as he learns the ropes &#8230; and even meets a nice lady named Celia Jackson who&#8217;s clearly attracted to his costumed alter-ego (even though she&#8217;s unaware of his secret identity). And, while attempting to disrupt a crime-spree by the <strong>Stilt-Man<\/strong>, Goliath along with Celia and her nephew are transported to a new world by the criminal&#8217;s Z-Ray! In the final issue, the trio meet a kindly alien named Derath who helps them escape the planet, Kirgar, to which they&#8217;ve been unwillingly trapped on.<\/p>\n<p><b>The Bad<\/b>:  It&#8217;s obvious that Marvel gave this book little to no help to allow it to flourish. This results in a bunch of unresolved sub-plots: <strong>(1) <\/strong>How will Talia Kruma&#8217;s mysterious past affect her co-worker, Dr. Foster? <strong>(2) <\/strong>Who is the shadowed sniper who wounded Black Goliath? <strong>(3)<\/strong> Who is the shadowed boss-man who hired the sniper? [It appears to be the Kingpin] Aside from heightened racial conflicts in the 1970s, here are a few other noticeable things that led to the title&#8217;s early demise due to low sales:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Creative Team Change <\/strong>&#8211; The book switched writers after only one issue! Fortunately, the series doesn&#8217;t suffer from a noticeable shift in tone but, it&#8217;s certainly a strange move to leave the book so early in its life.<\/li>\n<li><strong>No Guest Stars <\/strong>&#8211; Marvel often includes mainstream guest-stars in the first few issues of a series to gather interest in a new hero. Occasionally, Tony Stark makes a cameo on a view screen to talk with Foster or his co-workers but his alter-ego, <strong>Iron Man<\/strong>, never makes an appearance &#8211; nor do any other big-name heroes.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Lame Villains <\/strong>&#8211; If a series doesn&#8217;t include famous heroes, then often the other solution is to pit the new hero up against a well-known villain to gather some interest. In this case, Black Goliath is pitted up against new villains: <strong>Atom-Smasher <\/strong>and <strong>Vulcan<\/strong>. And, when he is given a &#8220;name-brand&#8221; villain it&#8217;s Stilt-Man. Stilt-Man! C&#8217;mon! It&#8217;s a guy on stilts &#8230; with a ray gun.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<br \/>\n<b>the Good<\/b>: I&#8217;m often intrigued by characters that are or can grow to larger than life proportions. This guy&#8217;s no different and I was instantly drawn into his story and the great, dynamic art. It was fun to follow a new hero who has significant ties to existing Marvel characters (he first appeared in a very early issue of <em>the Avengers<\/em>; he uses an improved-upon Pym Particles formula; he made his costumed debut in <em>Power Man<\/em>). And, placing a super-hero on the West Coast was a novel idea for Marvel at a time when all of its heroes were based out of NYC. Continuing with my praise of &#8220;novel&#8221; premises: this is Marvel&#8217;s second series starring a black character. Certainly a noteworthy character in terms of diversifying the super-hero population.<\/p>\n<p><b>The Verdict<\/b>:  Although I was quickly drawn into the series, the unresolved plot-lines left a poor taste in my mouth. No one wants to end a story with so many strings left hanging. If the series was able to come to a natural conclusion, I&#8217;d be able to recommend it more &#8230; alas, that was not the case! As an interesting note here, the alien that Claremont created in issue five belongs to the <strong>A&#8217;askvarii <\/strong>race. I think you&#8217;ll notice that it&#8217;s very close to the spelling of the Askani, which he later linked to the X-Men&#8217;s future.<\/p>\n<p><center><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/cyberspacecomics.com\/blogimages\/recommendometer2.gif\" \/><\/center><\/p>\n<p><u>On Ebay<\/u>: <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/stores.ebay.com\/CyberspaceComics__W0QQ_sacatZCyberspaceComicsQQ_sidZ13296653?_nkw=%22marvel+comics%22&#038;submit=Search&#038;LH_TitleDesc=1\">Marvel Comics<\/a> | <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/stores.ebay.com\/CyberspaceComics__W0QQ_sacatZCyberspaceComicsQQ_sidZ13296653?_nkw=%22black+goliath%22&#038;submit=Search&#038;LH_TitleDesc=1\">Black Goliath<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With years spent reading single issues here and there, juggling storylines of dozens of titles, I decided it was time to find a better way to read comics. So, it was off to the back issue bins armed with the longest want list you&#8217;ve ever seen! Putting together series after series and reading them in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-retro-read"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyberspacecomics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyberspacecomics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyberspacecomics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyberspacecomics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyberspacecomics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=391"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/cyberspacecomics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":698,"href":"https:\/\/cyberspacecomics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391\/revisions\/698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyberspacecomics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyberspacecomics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyberspacecomics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}