3 out of 5

It’s pretty dumb.  “But that’s the point…!”  …Mm, not this time, I think.  No, if we’re to believe the editorial that kicks off this ‘landmark’ rock mag, writer Steve Gerber – the reason I picked up this thing, not really being a KISS fan otherwise – wanted to legitimize the format in the hopes of kicking off a shift that would draw non-comic readers into the world, and make the glossy format a profitable thing.  I mean, it certainly worked to a certain extent, as I believe this issue sold quite well, but business model aside, if we look at it as a bid to show the world that comics weren’t just for kids, then the silly story driving the Super Special is a silly attempt.

Although perhaps I’m not taking the nature of KISS fans into account, which I have to believe is why Steve laced the writing with a surprising amount of sexuality (a little odd, given how the story plays out), which gets even more explicit in some of the other text sections.  It’s nothing to make a modern reader balk, but had I been a kid reading this, I think I would’ve been surprised to read references to orgies and orgasms.  But again again, within the context of KISS, I suppose ’twas par for the course.

Blanyhoo: Gene, Paul, Stanley and Ace are teens in New York, rallying against the man, when they come in possession of ‘The Box of Khyscz’ (which I pronounced ‘kitsch’ in my head, which is a funny Gerber joke, unless it really was supposed to be pronounced ‘kiss,’ as revealed – uh, spoiler – on the final page, and the ambiguousness of this should’ve been what I asked him about before he died instead of wasting my letter writing time on Howard the Duck questions that had been asked elsewhere ad nauseum CURSE MY UNAWARENESS OF THIS COMIC AT THE TIME), which turns them into painted, powered beings (a la their stage presences – demon, star-child, etc.).  Alas, the box is also sought after by Doctor Doom, so cue some shenanigans.

The teen / adult mash-up is a little strange, and I suppose was done to bridge the generational gap, but, as alluded above, it makes the sex talk stand out even more (‘Cause teens don’t do that stuff…!  …But you know what I mean.), and, overall, the story is pretty generic hero/villain stuff, with some very slight Gerberisms via a hobo-lookin’ wizard and some of the randomness experienced when our Kiss-erheroes go dimension jumping by way of crazy Star powers, but otherwise the Box is just a MacGuffin for a battle.  Some points for the Doom defeat (…spoiler 2?), interestingly echoing the conversation tactic Squirrel Girl used in her current run, which I recently read, though it’s a bit more sober here and thus less convincing.

The art in the book is either classic or boring, depending on your views of the 70s Marvel “house” style; I definitely think the big names on this title (Buscema, Milgrom and more) can deliver the thrills, but the all-hands-on-deck approach for this mag – like four or five guys helping with different chapters due to time constraints – ends up making the whole thing look blasé.

Thus: average all around, but, admittedly, an impressive amount of effort for what you could see as a “licensed” book – the kind of thing you’d roll your eyes at on the racks today but was a noteworthy push from Marvel back then – and thus worth reading for its historical significance.