Welcome to Longbox Junk, the blog absolutely STUFFED with cheesy goodness and surrounded by a crunchy shell of delicious criticism!
And speaking of cheesy goodness, this time out we're taking a look at the single issue of a comic starring a hero that is canonically one of the most powerful individuals in the Marvel Universe! It's nacho average hero, it's COMBO MAN!
Wait. What's that? Who the hell is Combo Man, you ask?
Well, then. Let's take a moment to bite into some background, shall we?
WE SHALL!
Combo Man was the result of a tasty advertising deal between Marvel Comics and Eagle Snacks, the producers of Combos™ Baked Snacks. For those of you who haven't tried them, Combos™ are basically soft filling surrounded by crunch.
The filling in a wide variety from nacho and cheddar cheese to pepperoni pizza and buffalo ranch. The crunch is either cracker, tortilla, or pretzel. My personal favorite is nacho cheese and pretzel. . .BUT I DIGRESS!
The promotion lasted about a year, between 1995 - 1996. It involved a massive blast of advertising in pretty much every Marvel title. There was also plenty of Combo Man merchandise to be had including:
Trading Cards
Pre-Paid Phone Cards (Remember them? No? God, I'm old)
Hats
Shirts (This one from Ebay for ONE HUNDRED FIFTY DOLLAS!!)
And what I consider the BEST Combo Man swag. . .this awesome leather jacket!
And then there's the Combos™ themselves. Because Combos™ are awesome.
Seriously. I LOVE these things.
And then, of course, there's the comic at hand. A free giveaway that they must have made a LOT of because I regularly spot them in bargain bins when I go Longbox Junkin' and dollar box spelunkin'.
One of the major components of the promotion was a contest that went along with the comic ads where the comic readers could guess what 14 Marvel characters made up Combo Man. They sent in the attached form and had a chance to win some of that SWEET swag above!
I got into the spirit of writing this review and decided to try and take the Combo Man challenge myself. I guessed 12 of the 14 heroes before I got salty and headed to the internet. In case you're wondering (and I'm getting ahead of myself a bit here), the 14 Marvel characters Combo Man is made up of ARE:
Hulk, Cyclops, Iron Man, Magneto, Punisher, Captain America, Sabretooth, Carnage, Daredevil, Spider-Man, Century, Human Torch, Silver Surfer, and Gambit.
I missed Daredevil (because it was his new at the time 90s armored costume) and Century (Because, who?). ANYWAY. . .
Combo Man. An advertising gimmick that got his own comic book.
Let's check it out!
COMBO MAN
(Marvel - 1996)
COVER: John Statema
THE COVER:
This cover is actually pretty great! It's colorful and eye-catching. It's nicely-drawn, with the hero front and center. It's not the greatest comic cover I've ever seen, but if I were taking a class on comic book illustration, I'd think that something like this would be presented as one of the "baseline" type of superhero comic covers. Very nice!
Let's check out the story!
THE STORY:
The Incredible Origin of. . .Combo Man
SCRIPT: Mark Gruenwald
PENCILS: Hector Collazo
INKS: Greg Adams
Jumping right into the action, we're introduced to a brightly-colored superhero being shot at by A.I.M. His inner monologue gives us a bit of the old, classic "You might be wondering who I am and how I got into this mess." And also tells us his name is Rick Wilder.
We rewind back in time about ten minutes. It's night time outside of Danmark Laboratories. Rick is being pressured by a group of boys to break into the lab (where their High School Chemistry teacher works nights) and steal a copy of the midterm exam from their teacher's desk.
Rick reluctantly agrees, hoping that if he does what they want, the other boys will stop bullying him at school. After climbing in through an open window, Rick tries to calm his nerves by enjoying some delicious Combos™!
Rick makes some noise and gives away his hiding place! He's pursued through the halls of the lab by the costumed men until he's cornered at a door CLEARLY marked with warning signs to keep out. He goes in and is immediately hit with some sort of mysterious energy!
When the smoke clears, we see that Rick has been transformed! Where once stood weak and bullied teenager Rick Wilder, now stands a strange and powerful figure called. . .COMBO MAN!
DUN-DUN-DUUUUUUN!!!
We now pause the exciting origin of Combo Man to bring you a message from our sponsors, Combos™ Baked Snacks! The OFFICIAL cheese-filled snack of NASCAR! (No, really. According to the Combos™ information page and Wikipedia, they're the official cheese-filled snack of NASCAR. Accept no substitutes)
And NOW, back to our program!
Returning to the present, Rick/Combo Man finds himself under fire from the A.I.M. thugs.
He discovers to his astonishment that he can now fly, shoot webbing from his hand, and "sense" the gunmen behind him.
He ALSO realizes he can use the powers of magnetism, and yoinks their guns from their hands, crushing the weapons with his newfound amazing strength! The A.I.M. thugs are no match for his new powers! He tells the professor to call the police while he cleans things up.
But a strange, metallic voice interrupts!
It's the SUPER-ADAPTOID! An evil android that duplicates super powers! Combo Man suddenly realizes that it would NOT be a good thing if Super-Adaptoid were able to absorb all the powers of the heroes he's become a composite of. He needs to take the android down before it's too late!
But it's at THAT very desperate moment Combo Man suddenly reverts back to Rick Wilder! Professor Boyd is astounded to see that the strange superhero is actually one of his students.
Rick quickly explains that he was hit by some sort of energy in the experiment chamber. The professor doubts that his process could have made such drastic changes. But then Rick remembers the Combos™ he had eaten!
THAT must be the key! As the Super-Adaptoid moves in to attack, Rick desperately eats some Combos™ and transforms back into COMBO MAN!
Back at full strength, Combo Man blasts Super-Adaptoid with all of his new powers! After the evil android vanishes and his henchmen are webbed for the police, Professor Boyd asks what Rick was doing there in the first place.
Rick says that he was there learning a lesson. As he transforms back into Combo Man and blasts into the night sky, he lets the reader know what that lesson was:
If you've got to pretend to be something you're not to fit in, maybe you're trying to fit in with the wrong crowd. And with those words of wisdom, Combo Man flies into the night. A new hero has been born!
The End. Oh, wait. Hold on. Before you go, here's some awesome Combo Man merchandise you can send in for!
THE REVIEW:
Okay then. Combo Man. Let's break it on down!
Being a promotional giveaway, this was a pretty short comic, just twelve pages. Three of them full page ads for Combos™. The images I scanned and posted above are literally the entire comic book. So it's a short comic. But is it a good one?
Well. . .it's okay.
Mark Gruenwald must have lost some sort of bet, or maybe they drew straws to see who would be the writer on this and he pulled the short one. In any case, he gives this little comic story some serious Bronze Age Mighty Marvel Bombast, and that's a good thing for what it is.
This is from the middle of the grim-n-gritty 90s, but it reads like something written in 1978. I kind of like that. Don't get me wrong. This isn't a great story by any means. I'd say ANY competent comic book writer could script this out in about 30 minutes. It's a tried and true "Accidental Superhero" origin story. But its simplicity and throwback nature give it some charm.
On the other hand, it's a little TOO simple. It's rushed, with an abrupt start and finish. There's almost no filling in this pretzel. I guess Gruenwald did the best he could with only 9 pages to work with, but it just feels like a bit of a waste of time. Beyond the character design, there's just not anything memorable about this story. It's just another "Mysterious Rays Give A Dude Some Powers" comic story.
On the art side of things, it's solid. Like the story, not great. . .not bad. It does the job, but doesn't try to do anything special. The character design is interesting, but the interiors don't manage to capture the same kind of attention as the cover. The art here is just okay. The colors don't help much. They're a little brighter and more garish than they need to be.
So that's the story and the art. Before we wrap this up, let's talk a bit about Combo Man himself. The design of a combined character is actually a pretty cool idea, but when you take a closer look, it's sort of sketchy. The main thing that lifts MY eyebrow of questioning is where The Punisher comes into all of this. Is Organized Crime about to have a REAL problem?
I understand that Punisher was one of Marvel's hottest characters in 1995, but when you have the powers of Silver Surfer and Hulk (not to mention Spider-Man, Magneto, etc. . .) what are Punisher and Captain America bringing to the table?
I guess what I'm trying to say is that the character choices for Combo Man are a little weird. I mean, putting Punisher aside for a moment, who even knows Century? I'm not even sure there were that many comic fans at the time that knew who Century was. And then there's Carnage, who you would THINK would just take over the whole thing. When Combo Man is calm, does the Hulk hair go away? So on and so forth. There's a lot of questionable stuff going on with Combo Man.
But let's wrap this up before the review becomes longer than the comic itself (although I think it might be way too late for that).
CONCLUSION
When I threw out Combo Man as a suggestion for my small Reddit contest, I got comments from people who remembered the ads without being aware there WAS a comic along with them. If you were buying Marvel comics in 1995 - 1996 or have picked up any Marvel back issues during a bargain bin dive from that time, you have 100% seen a Combo Man ad.
The character is memorable. While writing this review and doing a bit of research (which is one of my favorite parts of doing Longbox Junk reviews), I discovered that not only is Combo Man canon to Marvel's main comic "Universe" (Or Universe 616 for the REAL comic nerds out there), but based on the characters he's made up of, Combo Man is actually one of the MOST powerful individuals in Marvel History.
And, despite just having this one issue, Combo Man is still out there! He still makes occasional appearances in Marvel comics through background cameos and easter eggs. Not bad for a character made to help sell delicious baked snacks while Marvel was going through a rough time financially.
The prices for Combo Man merch are surprisingly stout. If you scroll up, you'll see a shirt I found online for over a hundred bucks. And that's not even the highest-priced Combo Man item to be found. People REMEMBER Combo Man is what I'm saying.
The comic itself is a bit of fluff. Not bad for what it is, but not really that good, either. It has heavy Mighty Marvel Bronze Age Bombast going on, which is sort of cool, but other than that there's really not much more to it. There's not really a reason for me to recommend reading it.
BUT. . .
If you (like me) are the kind of comic collector that likes having weird little artifacts in their collection, then Combo Man is something you should definitely hunt down.
It's basically has no collector "value" to those who just place a dollar sign on comics, but if Longbox Junk is what you love, then you'll love this comic! Personally, I think it's cool that I have one in my collection. THIS comic is what Longbox Junkin' and bargain bin spelunkin' is all about.
Until next time, thanks for reading and remember. . .comics are worth more than money!
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