Daily Comic Book Mission #003: Mark Hazzard MERC #3

Alright, is everyone ready for some fun?

I got my sweet Costco readers on, I can't see anymore. So I can read the date on this one...

January 1987. Alright, this is the third ComicBook.Beer Daily Comic Book Mission. And your assignment today is to read one of my favorites. Can you tell these are unscripted? Mark Hazzard, MERC issue number three. The title of the comic book is Mark, spelled properly with a K.

And the Mark Hazard is on fire, literally on fire. The title is in flames.

You don't hear anything about the Mark Hazzard MERC series anymore, and that's a shame. These are like the comic book equivalent of 1980s action movies. In fact, Mark Hazzard basically calls Rambo a giant pussy at the end of this issue. It's great. I'm not even making that up. It's really good. The whole series is super cheap to collect. It's a lot of fun. There's only 12 issues and an annual. I'm picking number three because this is the third daily comic book mission, but also because issue number three of Mark Hazzard Merc has one of the best comic book covers ever. Check it out on the ComicBook.beer website. That's right, I got the dot beer extension because of course I did. And this is the only thing, the only redeeming comic book series in Marvel's New Universe. Remember that? No? Yeah, neither does anybody else. For good reason because most of it sucked, but Mark Hazzard MERC is great, really gritty action-packed comic book and the first page opens... I love the first
page on this one...

So I think I did a video of this a while ago for the 80s comics stuff but I'm hoping that, well, I'm not hoping I know that you're gonna read this because I'm telling you to, you know the issue is gonna be good when Mark Hazzard starts the book just disassembling and reassembling a machine gun at his kitchen table while smoking.

And that's like, pretty much sets the stage for the whole series. And definitely this issue. Mark Hazard has to provide security for some politician during the Israeli Day Parade in Philadelphia. And of course there's an attack, and uh, they launch a missile at the car. Car blows up, bunch of people get blown up and shot and machine gunned. And Mark Hazard gets into a fight with, I guess his handlers or whatever,  thrown in jail, sprung from jail.

Let's just say that a literal wrecking ball is used. People might be eaten by dogs and it's just, it's awesome. And somehow this ended up in Marvel's new universe. I think it should have been in their Star imprint instead. In fact, there's an ad for Star at the end, right after the dogs. There's an ad with Lion-O and He-Man and Heathcliff and R2-D2 and Spider-Ham. Remember Spider-Ham? Reach for a star! All your favorite friends every month in their own Star Comics. uh... No, I'm recommending that you head over to Marvel's new universe and check out MERC issue number three.

This one's drawn by Alan Kupperberg, whose art I really like. He's got a really nice gritty style, most of the artists who worked on MERC were really good. I think Gray Morrow did a lot of them, not sure what other work these guys did, but, it doesn't have like your normal superhero kind of look. Kupperberg did an issue of King Conan I read recently too. But this one's even better. think he's really good at these like realistic-ish kind of comics. And I think you want to have that kind of nice touch when you're killing people with a wrecking ball. You know, don't want to get that one wrong, so... The Mark Hazzard series is not one that you necessarily have to read in order, but I like the first couple issues the best. Introducing Mark Hazzard, who's just like a "give no F's" kind of guy. Smokin', drinkin', disassembling, reassembling machine guns. And uh he even shoots a bunch of bad guys • during a little league game in issue number two. No kids though. Mark Hazzard loves kids. The fact that he has a kid. He's nice to children, not so much to bad guys.

So check this one out. Mark Hazzard, issue number three here on ComicBook.Beer, your daily comic book mission.

Live your life like Mark Hazzard. Like in any situation, just look at the cover of this issue, of issue number three. Mark Hazzard just looks pissed off, he's got a scar across his face, and he's smoking. Like, what would Mark Hazzard do? You're stuck in traffic. What would Mark Hazzard do? Literally destroy everything in a half-mile radius, at which point there would be no more traffic. That's what Mark Hazzard would do. So live your life like Mark, with your name on fire. See you next time.