BHOC: HUMAN FLY #19

It was the final issue of the magazine, but I dutifully purchased this issue of HUMAN FLY, having bought the prior one. I don’t think I even gave it much thought, I just went ahead and did it. I’d sometimes start following titles simply because I had some additional pocket money that week, and once I was on board, it would usually take some degree of sustained dissatisfaction before I would jump off of a book. Which is to say that, while the prior issue hadn’t especially impressed me, having bought it my reflex was to buy the next one as well. I expect that Marvel counted on consumers like me.

This was another series that was written by Bill Mantlo, who was wiling to take on absolutely anything if it meant another paying and published gig. Mantlo was all over the place in these days, his work remarkably uneven and often even unpolished. But he’d often get by on enthusiasm and charge–he wasn’t somebody whose name in the credits made me pause in any way, though looking back, I can see the weaknesses in what he often did. He grew more accomplished the longer he worked, and succeeded in turning a pair of similar licensed comics, ROM and MICRONAUTS, into bonafide hits. So the fact that he gave the same attention to the licensed books as he did the Marvel-owned material worked in his favor.

The story in this issue concerns the Human Fly–a stuntman and performer based on an actual real world person, hence the tagline “The Wildest Super-Hero Ever–Because He’s Real!”–is set to do a benefit show on behalf of the Hopi tribe of Las Cruces. But the performance is a set-up by local bigshot Frank Sturgis to swindle $10,000 from the Tribe’s treasury. And last issue, as he learned more about what was really going on in this region, the Fly and his friends were set upon by goons working for Sturgis. As this issue opens, the fight continues, with the Fly proving to be a match for the assailants.

This issue of HUMAN FLY had a strange quirk to it, one that I’d never encountered before. Thanks to some slip-up at the printing plant, an entire flat’s worth of pages–four in total–had been printed with their magenta and cyan plates swapped–resulting in people with blue skin and a bright green Human Fly. Because these pages were scattered throughout the issue, they would show up without warning–like the page above. And I found them a bit disturbing somehow. Like the foundations of my comic book reading world had been rattled. This sort of thing happened from time to time, and typically the misprinted pages would be discarded and redone. But with this being the last issue of HUMAN FLY, I wonder if people just shrugged and decided “Who cares?”

Returning to the Hopi Reservation after the fight, the Fly and his team meet with the Tribal Elders and learn a bit about the culture and beliefs of the tribe. I assumed at the time that these legends were accurate and researched by Mantlo, but today I’m not so sure. Comics didn’t tend to do representation all that well in those days. Anyway, the Fly has a plan to expose Sturgis and turn the tribe against him–but it’s going to require him going ahead with his stunt performance, in which he’ll ride his motorcycle across a high-wire above a massive canyon. Sturgis, meanwhile, has paid his men to see to it that the Fly doesn’t get to the other end of the canyon alive.

As the Fly begins his ride across the tensioned wire, Cha’tima, the girl he had met last issue, takes up a position with her projector and creates the image of the Gods of the Hopi tribe appearing on the clouds and mists, seemingly welcoming the Fly. This causes the Hopi spectators to pause in their condemnation of the Fly’s stunt–and also for Sturgis to signal his shooter. From the rocks, the sniper fires upon the wire, snapping it and sending the Fly plummeting into the canyon towards his death.

It would have been a hell of a thing if they had killed off the Human Fly in this last issue, but such was not the case. Thinking quickly, the Fly activates his bike’s rockets, which are used to provide him with extra thrust during long jump stunts. They’re able to break his fall just enough so that he survives the crash, even as the bike is totaled. In the aftermath, the Fly is able to unite the tribe against their oppressor Sturgis–they capture the would-be assassin and then go after Sturgis and his men as a group, their mob beating the absolute hell out of them as the Fly walks away, feeling pretty good about himself. I don’t know that this really counts as a heroic win, but it was what it was, and it’s always fun to see bigots get their comeuppance, so I let it slide. This final page also announced the winners of a now-moot contest to come up with a daring stunt for the Fly to perform.

Editor Al Milgrom had a bit of fun on the Fly Papers letters page in this final issue, covering it with tiny flies as though it had begun to decompose and was attracting them. Well, I thought it was funny.