Hey, Comix Fans

[thebitterguy]

When did Bill Foster (Aka "Black Goliath") start re-appearing in the Marvel Universe?

He was always one of my favourite characters (as well as a charter member in the "When a black man takes a white man's superpowered identity, he'll end up dying from it" club). I really enjoyed the run of Marvel Team Up with him and the Thing fighting evil (and him dying from his superpowers).

I noticed him appearing twice recently, in a Spider book and in the new Thign series (which is worth buying only for the celebrity piss-taking, because I'm amused by that stuff).

Comments

[creativedv8tion.livejournal.com]

Yeah, he was a cool character.

Have they retconned his death or did they bring him back?

[thebitterguy]

I have no idea. I couldn't even remember if he had died; I just recall he was sick, and the Thing got ugly, and there was M.O.D.O.K.

[tfbretz.livejournal.com]

I think he got back in the game via the little-known but handy "Iron Fist Resurrection Clause", which states that a character who is obscure enough or forgotten enough that no one can actually remember whether or not he's dead is assumed to be alive.

Not that I consider Black Goliath, much less Iron Fist to be particularly obscure characters, but comics fandom is a weird and fickle bitch.

[thebitterguy]

Maaaan. I always thought IF's death was pretty darn definite.

I'm a fan of BG ("Why Black Goliath?" "Outreach program." "Right.") in that I can remember the character, but even I don't recall if he ever died or not.

But it's odd that he's suddenly started appearing again. "Weren't you dead, Bill?" "Yup. Got better."

[creativedv8tion.livejournal.com]

well, after doing a couple minutes of internet research, I haven't found much...

This page says: (http://www.fortunecity.com/tatooine/niven/142/profiles/pro13.html)

Marvel ultimately faded the character out. First they wrote stories where Black Goliath expected to die as a side effect of his powers or something that happened when he had used them; later on, a story stripped away the growing powers from all characters who used some form of "Pym particle" (including today's Hawkeye, Bill Foster, and Pym himself).

That sounds like he didn't die to me, but I could swear I seemed to recall that maybe he did... damn Swiss Cheese memory.

http://www.marveldirectory.com/ has no entries for "Black Goliath" or "Giant-Man", for that matter. Pretty sad.

On some random forum (http://members2.boardhost.com/comicbattles/msg/39284.html) it was said: After regaining his powers during The Evolutionary Wars,Bill Foster/Black Goliath/Giant Man II returns
to costumed adventuring.He appears in The Thing Volume 2 #1.

That sounds to me like he's had his powers for a while, b/c wasn't the Evolutionary Wars storyline an annual crossover from the 90's? Unless there was another one???

Wikipedia has very little to say, none of it touching on whether he died or no. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Goliath)

And I've got a headache, so that's all the looking I'm doing. Mystery continues...

[thebitterguy]

Thanks for the investigation, though. We may just never know.

[creativedv8tion.livejournal.com]

The truth is out there, somewhere.