Marvel Comics Presents ran for 175 issues from 1988 until 1995. Each issue included four eight-page stories with typically two or three on-going features (and no ads). It spotlighted some of the leading creators of mainstream comics over a period of precipitous economic growth and even more rapid decline. Reading through it is an opportunity to revisit any number of weird aspects of 90s superhero comics. This blog is a primitive, oddly regimented, manifestly scattershot crawl through an often disappointing but occasionally splendid comic. All image copyrights are Marvel's. Issue credits linked below. Updated on Wednesdays. Marvel Comics Presents #6: November 1988(10.30.19) Credits: comicbookdb This cover opts for a kind of jam piece model with each of the contributing art teams pitching in. Sutton's Man-Thing dominates handily with lovely mossy textures and a fun but not-wholly-successful overgrown, asymmetrical title header effect. Grindberg gets some more vibrant colors here which is some evidence that Scotese is deserving of more blame for missing the mark in the Shang-Chi feature. A. Wolverine, "Save the Tiger" [6/10] An installment that puts this typically zippy story on hold to rehash some X-Men background of uncertain relevance. Jessan is (unsurprisingly) outed as the titular "Tyger" and some conflict is manufactured as she sets out her plan to assume dominance of the Madripoor underworld. Logan is now, I suppose, "Patch" with the eyepatch featured on both cover and interior. Buscema and Janson offer up a few notable action panels with Jessan's combat generating massive, angular inked spaces. B. Man-Thing, "Elements of Terror" [6/12] Gerber and Sutton are capably juggling a lot here with a spooky sequence featuring the witch, Marea, entering Man-Thing's figurative soul. The textures bounce nicely off of some cleaver, disorienting layouts and somehow Sutton's style merges the radically different story contexts. Glynis Oliver also does a nice job letting some of the panels breathe with pastel flat backgrounds. The grotesque blending with the satirical military industrial complex riff reminds here of the darker suburban moments in Morrison and Case's Doom Patrol. C. Shang-Chi, "Crossing Lines" [6/8] It's approaching laughable that Shang-Chi and the Cat are sharing panel and page without any meaningful martial pyrotechnics. Instead, the byzantine details of the crime conspiracy expand at a stupefying rate. Apparently this drug conspiracy requires dealing with prior to getting down to the business of saving Leiko, but perhaps actually featuring her would do something to induce either coherence or palpable narrative stakes. The coloring here remains tepid with numerous blown opportunities to capture the accents from the old series. Consider that the image below is the core element of Shang-Chi and Cat parachuting in to bust a drug ring. *sigh* D. Hulk, "Risky Business" Seemingly excised from a Hulk issue, this Mr. Fixit era story is an anecdotal piece about the Hulk being set upon and then smashing up a casino. There's no developed narrative here, but there's a subdued, exceptionally open, MacGuire-ish/clear line vibe to the proceedings punctuated by some bizarrely bimodal onomatopoeia from Joe Rosen. Jeff Purves' Hulk looks more like a pugilist than a monster in profile, but it befits the reworking of the character as he's deployed in the relevant chunks of the Peter David run. Apart from a gleefully bonkers splash page, there's little to see here apart from the distinctively light touch inks. Power Ranking: Man-Thing (A-), Wolverine (B), The Hulk (C+), Shang-Chi (F)