The Trouble With Titan...

Book: Captain Marvel

Issue No.: 59

Published: August 22, 1978

Title: “The Trouble With Titan...”

Cover Price: 35¢

Format: Original paper copy

I try not to get too hung up on the science in science fiction stories. One of my favorite short stories, Ray Bradbury’s “The Long Rain,” is set on a Venus where it’s dark and rainy all the time. A rainy Venus would be cool, but if you know anything about earth’s sister planet, you know that the actual Venus is insanely hot. Like, the surface temperature is hot enough to melt lead. And if it does rain on Venus, it rains sulfuric acid.

I don’t think I’d encountered Marvel’s version of Saturn’s moon Titan before. I was vaguely aware that Thanos had some association with Titan, at least in the comic books. When Titan showed up in this issue of Captain Marvel, I was a little disappointed to see it looked kind of like earth’s airless, rocky moon, and not like the real Titan, which is famously covered in a thick, opaque atmosphere. (“Famously” if you are an astronomy nerd. I guess most people don’t give much thought to which moons in our solar system have atmospheres and which ones do not.)

The real Titan is also very cold (hundreds of degrees below zero), so it wouldn’t be particularly hospitable, even for a tough guy like Thanos. But it turns out that Marvel characters can live on Titan because there is a secret underground world there — it’s kind of an At the Earth’s Core situation. So it doesn’t matter whether or not Marvel’s Titan has an atmosphere, because whatever comic book action is happening there is happening beneath the surface.

You might know Captain Marvel and Drax the Destroyer from the modern Marvel movies. My assumption is the Guardians of the Galaxy Drax is loosely based on the Drax of 1978. And I know the movie Capatin Marvel, Carol Danvers, is still called Ms. Marvel in these 1978 books, so this Captain Marvel is not her, but he is a dude with similar abilities to the modern Captain Marvel and similar ties to the alien Kree race.

Anyway, Captain Marvel and Drax are on (in?) Titan to investigate something going on with Thanos’ followers. Thanos is dead at this point, but his followers are apparently seeking revenge. There’s a fair amount of plot in this issue, and I honestly found it hard to follow. It reminds me of some of the early Defenders books I read for Marvel Time Warp, like “Tyranny and Mutation.”

But as far as I can tell, there’s an sentient supercomputer called Isaac and some kind of troll-looking guy called Lord Gaea the Earth-God, and they’re sending a bunch of disgruntled Thanos followers to destroy earth while Captain Marvel and Drax are stuck underground on Titan.

I mean, I’d think that the Avengers or the Fantastic Four or some other super folks could step in and protect the earth from the Thanos fan club while the Captain and Drax are unavailable, but maybe Isaac and Lord Gaea have planned further ahead than I am realizing. I suppose we’ll find out more about their evil plan next issue.

Next time — Howard the Duck! (Probably!)