Why Johnny Storm had COPD

[dochermes]

From THE FANTASTIC FOUR# 8, November 1962.

Comments

[skjam]

Have you ever read "The Death of Captain Marvel?" While that's still in continuity, it's taboo in Marvel Comics to mention the five or six cancer cures the genius scientist superheroes developed. (None worked on Mar-Vell because of his powers.)

[dochermes]

I think I still have that paperback in the back room. In some ways, it was excellent, but as a whole I wasn't smitten by it.

That bit about cancer cures in the Marvel Universe opens a can of worms. Reed Richards and Tony Stark between them should have changed society so much with their inventions that Marvel Earth would like like the 30th Century or something.

[skjam]

There was one miniseries that had the premise of all the Marvel sperscience actually being applied to the world and the changes it would cause. One of the villains was a man who was convinced humanity was advancing too fast technologically, but remaining unprogressive socially. He had a bit of a point.

[dochermes]

Doc Savage used to appropriate all the wild gadgets invented by defeated Mad Scientists and store them safely in the Fortress of Solitude. Well, safely until that John Sunlight dude came along.

[calzephyr77]

LOLl

[dochermes]

Standards were so different then. We often saw Reed Richards with a pipe, Tony Stark with a cigarette, Ben Grimm and Nick Fury with cigars. And none of them got lectured.

[skjam]

Comedy bit with Iron Man at one point after the "Demon in a Bottle" storyline. "Let's see, I gave up smoking, I gave up drinking, only thing left is--nope, not giving that up!"

[skjam]

The current version of the Dick Tracy comic strip allows its smokers to smoke on not get bugged about it, something the commenters on GoComics frequently remark on. In particular, everyone in the Apparatus (strip version of the Mafia) smokes extremely heavily. ("Maybe Dick should just wait till they all die of lung cancer!")