Shogun Warriors #12

I picked this up at the Spring 2026 Brimfield Antiques Shows in Brimfield MA USA.

Title: Shogun Warriors
Issue: 12 
Date: 1979
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Writer: Doug Moench 
Artist: Herb Trimpe, Mike Esposito
Colorist: George Bell
Letterer: Jim Novak
Editor: Allen Milgrom

The Shogun Warrior pilots are summoned to prevent a worldwide disaster as a meteor hurtles toward Earth. So, this was a total blast of nostalgia for me, as Shogun Warriors was one of the first Marvel series I was into as a kid. The other series I loved at that time was Marvel's Godzilla, so I was very excited to find a bit of a crossover happening here.

The meteor proved to be not that much of a challenge for the team of giant robots and their pilots, but that was all just a setup to reveal the return of a major villain from the early issues of Marvel's Godzilla. Reading it now, I felt like the human elements of the story were handled well, especially the easy comradery of the three pilots. There's an early scene where Genji shows up looking for crash space at Richard Carson's house in Los Angeles, resulting in a bit of a jealous tiff from Carson's girlfriend, Deena, but even that gets tempered down a bit in a follow-up scene that has Deena acting a bit more real.

The battle with the  meteor is rather anticlimactic, and it's necessary to suspend disbelief a bit around the idea that this is all actually taking place in the regular Marvel Universe continuity, but that was typical for a lot of toy-licensed books in this era. This was a great reveal when I read it as a kid and it still holds up reasonably well.

Rating: 6/10

Captain America #233

From the Random Box of Unread Comics.

Title: Captain America
Issue: 233
Date: May, 1979
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Writer: Roger McKenzie
Artist: Sal Buscema, Don Perlin
Colorist: Nel Yomtov
Letterer: Rick Parker
Editor: Roger Stern

Steve Rogers is caught between Harlem mobsters and a gang of white supremacists wielding high-tech weaponry. To make matters worse, a mind-controlled Sharon Carter is leading the charge for the National Force.

The story quickly moves away from its political implications as the mind control aspect takes center stage and a villain gets a big reveal, followed by an extra bit of a twist to end things.

Steve shows some good emotion as he grapples with the possible fate of Sharon, but the use of generic villain tropes  (and traps!) detracts a bit in terms of keeping my interest.

Rating: 5.5/10

John Carter, Warlord of Mars #28

From the Random Stack of Unread Comics.

Title: John Carter, Warlord of Mars
Issue: 28
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Date: 1979
Writer: Peter Gillis
Artist: Larry Hama, Ricardo Villamonte
Colorist: Bob Sharen
Letterer: Diana Albers
Editor: Roger Stern

John Carter, on a surveying mission over unexplored areas of Barsoom with his friends Sasoom Thil and Kantos, discover an abandoned city, and are soon faced with a series of unexplained phenomena.

This was the final issue of this run, and this story was a self-contained tale that left a fair amount unanswered, with plenty of potential for further exploration. Because of the lack of follow-up, the ending was a bit unsatisfying, although it worked in a missed-connection sort of way.

Typical for its time, this was wordy compared to how the same story might be told today, and while some of the excess of text was useful in filling in details about the comicbook version of John Carter's Barsoom, a lot of it felt like it could have been cut.

It's too bad that the character introduced at the end of this story didn't get the chance to appear in further books in this series, and I wonder of some version of her has been brought back in the various reboots of John Carter that have some up since this was published.

Rating: 5.5/10