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Monday, January 22, 2018

"She Could Be You!"



That was the tagline on the later issues of the comic book based loosely on her adolescence and young adulthood that ran from when the actual Patsy Walker was barely in her teens until she was in her 30s. Her real life was far stranger than the fiction with time as a superhero, a second marriage to the literal son of the Devil (or a devil), mental illness, and then suicide (and then resurrection).

Viewed through the lens of the comics, Walker (who first appeared on the teen scene in the 40s) was a twenty-something when she and her best friend were at the front of the crowd to see Reed Richards and Susan Storm emerge as a married couple. In reality, she was in her early thirties, married, and dealing with an abusive husband. Buzz changed in Vietnam the comics said, but Vietnam was yet to come. Buzz's first war was Korea, and the truth is he didn't change much.

Buzz Baxter was mostly a nonentity in the Patsy Walker comics, but never one to let is girlfriend get the limelight ahead of him, Buzz had inked a deal for a comic based on him, too. Buzzy was even less truthful and only lasted half as long.

A chance meeting with the Beast would turn the abused housewife into a superhero, divorce Buzz Baxter, and expose corruption within the military contractor Brand Corporation. The early sixties were a different time.

3 comments:

  1. At the time it was announced, I had high hopes for Marvel's The Twelve series, which was an attempt to reintroduce a bunch of forgotten Golden Age characters. It started off okay. Then it went on a years-long hiatus, and while they did eventually complete it, I never did find out how it concluded, or if it ended up being as good as I was hoping it'd be. Did anybody else read that series?

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  2. I did. It's been so long, I don't remember the ending, but it was typical of Straczynski comic projects (Rising Stars and Supreme Power were like this, too, though at least The Twelve did end!), it starts off strong, then begins to meander a bit, then he seems to loose interest and there are delays. Then the ending comes out and it feels rushed.

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  3. trey causey That's what I was afraid of. Too bad.

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