Peter B. Gillis Big Comics Readthrough

Here begins the middle act of the New Voyages saga, where it ratchets up a notch into something truly special. Following their new adventures into the unknown, the Micronauts began to get pulled back into the familiar, with various concepts from the first series making a reappearance. Micronauts: The New Voyages #9-10 (1985) Pencils: Kelley Jones Inks: Bruce Patterson Picking up on Mantlo and Guice's final panel, ex Micronaut Devil finds himself reborn on a desolate ruined Homeworld. Essentially a pink version of the furry Beast, he shares a neverending life cycle with the pixie like Fireflyte, reborn once the other dies. The terrified Devil gets twisted in a transporter tube, psychically broadcasting a distress signal to Commander Rann. Devil's matrix ends up in the latest incarnation of Biotron (yes, Gillis brought the annoying droids back again, presumably chiefly for this plot device). Rann, feeling his thousand year age and full of self doubt over recent errors in judgemen...

Micronauts: The New Voyages #5 (1985) Pencils: Kelley Jones Inks: Pat Redding Following the peril and deathtraps of the opening issues, the Micronauts take advantage of the hospitality of small, friendly, shapeshifting aliens (known as the Children of the Dreaming Star) they met on the mirror world.  Jones draws fantastic alien tech. The impossible science of the Microverse bothered Gillis; Homeworld looks like a model of a molecule, with dowels connecting spheres. So who exactly made this crazy thing became a driving force of the storyline. Here the big cosmic revelation is that from a distance, their galaxy resembles a DNA spiral. Overall this issue is a welcome respite with nice, gentle character building. Each of the Micronauts bear emotional scars from their long battles, and must learn how to live again in times of peace. Micronauts: The New Voyages #6 (1985) Pencils: Kelley Jones Inks: Bruce Patterson Bill Mantlo established a love triangle of sorts between Rann, Mari a...

To reintroduce Micronauts and Moon Knight to newsstand distribution, Marvel relaunched both books from #1, with added subtitles. Nowadays titles often get relaunched on a yearly basis, but at the time it was practically unheard of. Sales wise this gambit didn't meet with success: Moon Knight: Fist of Khonshu only lasted 6 issues. Thankfully  Micronauts: The New Voyages  fared somewhat better... Micronauts: The New Voyages #1-2 (1984) Pencils: Kelley Jones Inks: Bruce Patterson The opening scene introducing a sentient asteroid, absorbing periodic energy from its cepheid variable star, immediately establishes that New Voyages is going to be proper science fiction. Some might argue that it's Star Trek level, backed up by the space suited 'nauts and a "Ship's log" recap, but it's still at a level rarely seen in mainstream US comics. The Micros jet off in their shiny new Endeavor starship, seeking new worlds to relax in. A convenient hyperspace malfunction qui...

Following the success of their Star Wars comic in the late 70's, Marvel licensed several short lived toy lines, searching for a similar mass market hit. Bill Mantlo developed Mego's Micronauts action figures into a hit series, alongside the inspired pencils of Michael Golden. This sci-fantasy title clearly riffed on Star Wars, although as Peter Gillis pointed out, the model for the series was closer to George Lucas' inspiration, Flash Gordon (or if you want to travel further back to the root, John Carter). All the archetypes are present; the otherworld hero, the feisty princess, the dashing rogue, the stoic warrior king, and of course the bickering robot servants. Following Golden's departure after the first year, The Micronauts became stuck in a cycle of repeating story arcs and diminishing returns. The title was only saved from cancellation by a pioneering move to direct sales only, along with fellow strugglers Ka-Zar and Moon Knight . The microscopic heroes would p...

The Black Flame , according to Peter Gillis, arose from two impulses: he wanted to work again with one of his all time favourite artists, Tom Sutton; and Bruce Patterson suggested creating a Lovecraft inspired series. Gillis pointed out that Lovecraftian heroes tend to not survive for very long. However, his solution to this problem was simple: make the monster the hero. Mars #2-8 (1984) - The Black Flame Pencils: Tom Sutton, Don Lomax Inks & Colours: Bruce Patterson Imagine the realm of nightmares is real (not hard for Doctor Strange fans), where the Nightmare Lord trains and despatches boogeymen to torment children (not hard for, er, Monsters Inc. fans). One of these fear spreading boogeymen, The Black Flame, rebels and escapes to the mortal world to save children and romantics alike from the clutches of their nightmares. The Flame cuts an imposing figure, wielding a lance and riding a black nightmare steed, which can conveniently disguise itself as a motorcycle. This isn't...

In addition to the regular Warp series, there were 3 standalone specials, plus 4 back up strips. The first 2 backups ( Faceless Ones and Sargon ) had no Peter Gillis involvement, so I'll round up the rest here. Warp Special #1 (1983) Pencils: Howard Chaykin Inks: George Freeman The origin of Warp's most charming character, Prince Chaos , is basically a Superman parody. It still fails to explain why Chaos and Cumulus are related, as they appear to be born in different centuries on different planets to different parents. Maybe I'm missing something, or maybe it's just cosmic reasons. Although I never really got how Sargon and Valaria are meant to be estranged sisters either.  Anyhow, this special features the original heroic Cumulus, rather than his whiny rebirth David. It's the tale of how Chaos and Valaria got together and how Chaos killed the first Cumulus. It's also notable for introducing First's nexus of worlds Cynosure, which became the backdrop for Gr...

Mike Gold, a fellow comics industry resident of Chicago, had been approached by Rick Obadiah about adapting cult science fiction 70's play Warp into a comic book. After meetings with DC and Marvel, the pair decided to go it alone and publish the comic themselves. Warp would become the launch title for new company First Comics . Neil Adams had done promotional art for the play, but was busy, so instead Gold coaxed Frank Brunner out of comics retirement to plot and pencil the three part adaptation. He then recruited Peter Gillis to script, whom he'd been friends with since the mid 70's fanzine days.  The height of 70's fashion. On the surface, Stuart Gordon and Bury St. Edmund's Warp is an odd choice for adaptation; a campy, scantily clad, tongue in cheek play inspired by classic comic books. Gillis goes into detail on the problematic tone of the series in Amazing Heroes: "Making it a little straighter was an editorial decision on the part of First Comics. I was...

What If was a unique comic that required an endless supply of ideas and creators, plus an innate knowledge of Marvel history. No surprise then that Peter Gillis, a fount of Marvel knowledge, loved contributing to What If, effectively making the title his own by its final year. In total, he penned a quarter of the original 48 stories (including the special). Later in his Marvel career, Gillis would mostly find himself pigeonholed writing odder C-list characters, but What If was his opportunity to work with A-list heavy hitters and revisit some of his favourite childhood stories. Gillis' first two What Ifs share a common theme: Stephen Strange and Peter Parker both started out as jerks. What if they continued down that path?  What if Dr. Strange Had Been a Disciple of Dormammu? #18 (1979) Pencils: Tom Sutton Inks: Bruce Patterson Doctor Strange was Gillis' favourite comics character, so no surprise he wrote Dr S whenever the opportunity arose. Here the not so good doctor's ha...

One Peter Gillis bugbear as fan and writer was the Cosmic Cube, a deus ex machina too all powerful to exist. He and Mark Gruenwald hatched a plan to get rid of it, which took a few years to come to fruition... Super-Villain Team-Up #16-17 (1979-80) Pencils: Carmine Infantino, Arvell Jones Inks: Bruce Patterson Inside his first year at Marvel, Peter Gillis was handed a regular title. Unfortunately it was regular in the sense that it only came out once a year, and the sole reason for its continued existence was to thwart DC's attempts to copyright the word supervillain. Gillis wound up penning what turned out to be the final two issues of Super-Villain Team-Up , lumbered with the Red Skull and a Hate Monger pretending not to be Hitler. The plot revolves around them creating a new cosmic cube, which they vie for control of. A neat twist sees the Hate Monger thinking he's won, not realising the Skull has trapped him inside the cube. These issues are a bit of a slog and smack heavil...

During his first couple of years at Marvel, Peter Gillis submitted an assortment of fill ins for Marvel's big guns, learning on the job as he went... Marvel Two-In-One #45 (1978) Pencils: Alan Kupperberg Inks: Mike Esposito A Skrull gangster from an early Fantastic Four lands in New York, impersonating the Thing. Captain Marvel makes a bemused, needless, contractually obliged appearance. Then it all ends in a rushed Scooby Doo fashion. This was presumably aiming for comedic or at least light hearted, but the end result is unremarkable, not aided by some workmanlike artwork. However the script at least shows some personality. Marvel Two-In-One #51 (1979) Pencils: Frank Miller Inks : Bob McLeod A big improvement on the previous fill-in, featuring the fun debut of Ben Grimm's poker game with Nick Fury and lesser Avengers. In the less memorable second half, they fight some faceless goons atop of SHIELD's Helicarrier. At 17 pages, there's not a great deal to the story, but i...