Retro Review---Black Goliath #1-5

[darius_dax1]

3063
Black Goliath #1 FEB 1976 - #5 NOV 1976

Bill Foster, a.k.a. Black Goliath, perfected Hank Pym's shrinking/growth serum and ingested it becoming Black Goliath. He was working for Tony Stark at Stark-West, an L.A. based operation for Stark International, as the director.

Black Goliath had a weak supporting cast that was never able to grow into anything else due to the short run of the book. There were a few plot lines laid out but nothing ever came of it.

There was a mysterious "evil" benefactor controling some of the early villains and an assassin working for him that was never revealed. There was an ominous box from a different Stark holding that was delivered to and stolen from Stark-West; the contents of which were never revealed.
Black Goliath and two of his supporting cast were stranded on an alien world and the book ended with them about to get transported back to Earth after a fight with an alien warlord's robot guardian. The story ended abruptly.

The biggest named villain that black Goliath fought was Stiltman. The rest were cast-away characters otr never fully revealed.

Some cameos of other Marvel characters were made but only Powerman and Giant Man (or was it Goliath's costume?) appeared in costume in a flashback scene. Hank Pym, Tony Stark, and Janet Van Dyne appeared as well.

Overall this book was probably written before it's time. Had it been penned today I think it would have been a very different situation. The meshing of Bill Foster as a scientist and a street-talking black man of the 70s was somewhat strained and out of place. Bill Foster wrestled with the idea of being a super-hero until it was a tired trait of the character. Many plot threads were dropped but never realized because the book was cancelled.

I like Bill Foster/Black Goliath as a character and I hope Marvel makes use of him again. Give him a modern day update and get him back in the Marvel Universe. I remember him being used as recently as Avengers volume one when they did those giant-sized flip books.

#M001 R Black Goliath
Team: Defenders
Range: 0 :bolt:
Points: 50
Keywords: Champions, Scientist
m-normala-normald-normalg-giant691511091729101639916269151KOKOKOKOKOKOKOKOKOKOKOKOKOKOKOKOKOKOKOKOKOKOKOKOKOKOKOKO

[flyingicarus]

He was a cool character actually. With all the giant-sized figures around in the next set maybe Black Goliath will be included. Anything could happen :).

[I Am The Game]

Whatever happened to Dr. Foster? Last I saw of him, he worked with Thing and Quasar at Project Pegasus in Marvel Two-In-One. He was dying of radiation poisoning from fighting a guy called Atom-Smasher. Was that ever resolved?

[darius_dax1]

Originally posted by I Am The Game
Whatever happened to Dr. Foster? Last I saw of him, he worked with Thing and Quasar at Project Pegasus in Marvel Two-In-One. He was dying of radiation poisoning from fighting a guy called Atom-Smasher. Was that ever resolved? He was in those few Avengers issues I mentioned.

[I Am The Game]

I haven't read the flip books, what did I miss?

[darius_dax1]

I can't remember the story so it must not have been very good.

[Rokk_Krinn]

It wasn't half bad, actually, but that's because I'm a Pym fan and it was a story centering on Hank (it was basically a Giant-Man LS :) ).

Basically it involved the foes from Jan's origin using the Pym Particles as a "bridge" to try and mass invade our dimension. It caused all of those that had been using the Pym Particles over the years - Bill, Clint, Jan, etc. - to start going wonky with their personality and powers. As the original user of the powers, Hank was fairly immune and it was up to him to clear the mess. It fixed the health problems he had with growing too large, fixed (until some other writer decided he didn't know what to do with the character) the relationship between Jan and Hank, cleaned up the other's powers, etc. Not too bad all things considered.

Bill's health was cleared up by the original Spider-Woman's transfusion. He also had a "starring" role in the West Coast Avenger's annual for "Atlantis Attacks".

[I Am The Game]

Thanks, more reading to do! ;)

[darius_dax1]

Just updated with a cover and a dial. Enjoy.

[SentryWill]

you sir, are possibly single handedly responsible for making Marvel remember they had this character , so they killed him off!!!!!!! THANKS ALOT! jk

[tom730]

I remember getting the first few issues when they came out. It was pretty disappointing. As you point out the writing was pretty lame and was one of those "Hey, we have BLACK super-heroes!" kind of books. That was unfortunate since he was actually around (as a supporting character) earlier than any other African-American comics character.
If they had the sense at the time to allow a Black scientist/super-hero to simply BE a Black scientist/super-hero, rather than shoe horning him into "Urban Lingo" that was not really appropriate they might have had a real breakthrough character.
I loved the 70's and the Silver Age in general but there were some instances like this of wasted potential.
I plan to have a re-paint of the the Goliath in SI done to the original costume colors - hear that Chris???

[gorillaboss]

Whatever happened to Dr. Foster? Was that ever resolved?


Foster was killed by the Clone-Thor in Civil War.

It caused quite the 'Net dust-up (with the issue being that comics have too few ethnic heroes to senselessly kill them off).

His nephew is running around as the new (sans-Black) Goliath.

[Hatut Zeraze]

Whatever happened to Dr. Foster? Last I saw of him, he worked with Thing and Quasar at Project Pegasus in Marvel Two-In-One. He was dying of radiation poisoning from fighting a guy called Atom-Smasher. Was that ever resolved?

For what its worth, long before his death in Civil War, he did get the radiation poisoning resolved.

As you remembered, he was featured in the Project Pegasus saga, which was MTIO #s 53-58. He was cured of the radiation poisoning in MTIO #85. I don't have the issue with me at my apartment, so I forget the details, but the slow dying was somehow eliminated in that issue, that had the Jessica Drew Spider-Woman as the issue's featured guest.

On a side note, I think a great case could be made that Bill Foster was one of Ben Grimm's best friends. I don't think they had met until the Project Pegasus saga. After the end of that story, though, there were only 42 more issues of Marvel Two-in-One and Bill Foster appeared in 8 of those. He was also featured in the first and last issue of the more recent Dan Slott Thing series. The story of his slow radiation poisoning went through a lot of those post-Pegasus appearances, becoming a pretty big sub-plot until it was resolved in #85. Ben and Bill were pretty close. He was also featured in the first and last issue of the more recent Dan Slott Thing series.

I wasn't reading Civil War, having lost my taste for Bendis/Millar-driven Avengers stuff long before that started, so I had to hear about their choice to kill him off second-hand. Having been a Marvel Two-in-One fanatic, that bugged me a lot more than it did most comics fans, considering the fact that Foster had always been a minor character. Needless to say, that didn't help my opinion of the Bendis/Millar reign on Marvel Comics that, unfortunately, continues to this day.