Silver Surfer Vol. 3 #83-100, Annual #6-7 (August 1993 – January 1995)
Written by Ron Marz (#83-100, Annual #6-7)
Penciled by Cully Hamner (#83), Tom Grindberg (#84, 93-94, 100, Annual #7), Ernie Stiner (#85), Andy Smith (#86-88), Colleen Doran (#89), Bill Marimon (#90), Ron Lim (#91-92, Annual #7), Bart Sears (#93), Scot Eaton (#95, Annual #7), Jim Hall (#96-99, Annual #6), Joe Phillips (#100, Annual #6), Dale Eaglesham (Annual #6)
Inked by Tom Christopher (#83-85, 87-92, 97-98, 100, Annual #6-7), Maria Beccari (#85), Howard Shum (#85), Scott Koblish (#85), Bill Anderson (#86), Ray Kryssing (#93-94, Annual #7), Randy Elliott (#94), Mike Barreiro (#95), Mark McKenna (#96, Annual #6), Bob Almond (#99-100, Annual #6), Don Hudson (#100), Sam De La Rosa (Annual #6), Ariane Lenshoek (Annual #6), Michael Avon Oeming (Annual #6), Pat Redding (Annual #6), Ian Akin (Annual #6), Jim Sanders (Annual #7), Keith Aiken (Annual #7)
Coloured by Renee Witterstaetter (#83-87), Evelyn Stein (#88-90, Annual #6), Tom Vincent (#91-100, Annual #7), Ericka Moran (Annual #6), Joe Rosas (Annual #6), Mike Kenny (Annual #7)
Spoilers (from twenty-seven to twenty-nine years ago)
I closed off the last column about two-thirds of the way into writer Ron Marz’s run because artist Ron Lim, whose name has always been associated with the Silver Surfer, left at that point (except for a couple more issues later). The Surfer had faced off against Galactus over his new herald, Morg, although later Galactus had to rescue the Surfer from Tyrant, a powerful villain who ended up keeping Morg with him. The Surfer had lost his friend Nova, although in a miniseries that had him teaming up with Warlock and the Infinity Watch, he was able to aid in the resurrection of his love Shalla Bal.
Prior to this point, Marz wasn’t doing a lot of character work with the Surfer, focusing more on big battles and the gradual nineties-ization of the title. When we pick things up here, the Infinity Crusade event has just begun, and like with the first two chapters of that long story, the Surfer became involved through tie-in issues (and probably had a role in the main series – I’m not rereading it now, and might never get around to it).
By this point, I’d dropped the Surfer, and the majority of the other Marvel books I was still reading, so I’m reading these issues digitally. It takes away something from the experience, but I doubt these are worth hunting down now. I kind of want to keep reading this just as an exploration of how the trends of the nineties took what was a terrific title under writers Steve Englehart and Jim Starlin, and degraded it. Sounds like fun, right?
Let’s track who turned up in the title:
Let’s take a look at what happened in these books, with some commentary as we go:
After this, Marz plotted another two issues, but we’ve basically reached the end of his run. Marz probably has the longest run of any writer with this character, but I’m not sure that he accomplished a whole lot with the Surfer. The character is largely resistant to change, and it felt more and more like this title was largely subservient to other books (Starlin’s Warlock titles especially) and to launch and establish new characters (Legacy).
During this half of Marz’s run, there are only a few issues that are not connected to an event (Infinity Crusade), a tie-in (Blood and Thunder), or prominently feature other Marvel characters with books of their own (like the Down To Earth storyline, which has the Fantastic Four and, for some reason, the Hulk). Of those few remaining issues, they tend to focus on Legacy, or are the build up to the big fight with Mephisto. I think the only Surfer-focused stories in this run are the two-parter where he spends his time in Virtual Reality fighting anti-Science barbarians, and the Nova/Mephisto story. It’s like Marz knew there wasn’t much that can be done with the Surfer on his own.
And that makes sense to me. He has unlimited cosmic power that means he doesn’t need to eat or rest. He rides around space by himself, with no possessions or obligations to others. Sure, he wants to do good, or be good, but what does that really mean? For the most part, he just wanders around until someone he knows finds him and involves him in some drama.
The Thor/Warlock crossover was really a pretty terrible story that did not need twelve or thirteen chapters to tell. There was just generally a sense that Marz was spinning his wheels, and I figure that it was all part of the build-up to issue 100. That must be why it took the Surfer and the FF four issues to track down a “seismic disturbance”. And why Mephisto, posing as Nova, took a few more issues to keep tempting the Surfer with riches and power (this leaves me to wonder if Mephisto also manipulated Terrax into confronting the Surfer).
If anything, some of the most consequential parts of this run came from the Annuals, which introduced Genis-Vell, and also showed another fight with Morg. The main book was really just there through this run. Individually, with the exception of Blood and Thunder, none of these issues were terrible, but they did not add up to be more than the sum of their parts.
Part of the problem might be the lack of consistent artist on the title. I thought it was odd that they announced Bart Sears as the ongoing artist, but he didn’t even finish a single issue before he was replaced by a string of fill-in artists. Tom Grindberg, was the most consistently present artist in this run, but his style seemed to shift a lot, and was anything but consistent. I did like the issues drawn by Jim Hall, and have no idea what became of him, as his name is not familiar to me. This book suffered from the departure of Ron Lim, even though his work was not as compelling as it was during the height of this book.
I thought that the introduction of Legacy was interesting, but I didn’t much like him as an arrogant 90s anti-hero type. This did remind me that I’m interested in tracking down and reading Peter David’s run with Genis-Vell, as after Avengers Forever I started to really like the character. I should add that to my list of titles to hunt for…
Anyway, at this point, as 1995 begins and Marvel moves into its darkest period, quality-wise, I’m tempted to stop reading, or at least jump up to the JM DeMatteis run that I bought half of (Jon J Muth art drew me in), but I’m equally tempted to see how bad things got. I noticed that after Marz left the book, it was handled by a writer I am unfamiliar with. Maybe it got really good? Yeah, right…
If you’d like to see the archives of all of my retro review columns, click here.
Tags: Retro Reviews, Silver Surfer
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