Monday, June 10, 2013

GET MORE TONY: CAPTAIN UNIVERSE

Captain Universe: The Hero Who Could Be You #1 [Marvel; $7.99] collected over 100 pages of stories featuring the title character, including a short story written by yours truly.  Created by Bill Mantlo with Steve Ditko, Captain Universe is someone different in every story.  When danger arises, the Uni-Power selects a human being to thwart the menace of the moment, be it of earthly or supernatural origin.

IMPORTANT CORRECTION: Mike Golden was the original artist on Captain Universe, who made his first appearances in the Micronauts series.  I apologize for the error.

"Child Star" (5 pages) is by yours truly and, of all the stories I wrote for Marvel, this is very near the top of my own favorites.  Two yuppies living in Medina, Ohio conjure up demons to manipulate the stock market.  When the plan goes horribly awry, the Uni-Power selects toddler Eddie for its champion.  Eddie was based on my son and, indeed, most of his dialogue comes from things he was actually saying at that age,  To make things even better for me, the story was drawn by Ditko and I was able to work thinly-disguised versions of Gorgo and Konga into my script.

The original Mantlo/Ditko stories are the best stories in this issue, but "Child Star" will always have a place in my heart.  I think it's one of the best things I ever wrote for Marvel.

One quibble.  The "Marvel Universe" pages that are included in this one-shot have Eddie's name wrong.  "Price" was the name of the yuppie couple.  Eddie's last name was never given in my script.  If I thought I could have gotten away with it, I would have named him Eddie Isabella.

My thanks to Marvel for reprinting "Child Star" for the second time and, of course, to original editor Jim Salicrup for giving me the assignment.


1 comment:

  1. Did Ditko help create Captain Universe behind the scenes? The artist on the first Captain Universe appearance was Michael Golden. Even Wikipedia credits Golden as a co-creator, but I always take anything on that site with a grain of salt.

    Ty Keith

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