Spécial Strange #10
Spécial Strange #10 marks the first French-language appearance of Black Tom Cassidy — introduced in its lead story as a shadowy figure ambushing a lawyer in rural Ireland — making it the debut of one of the X-Men's most enduring personal antagonists on the Franco-Belgian market. The issue delivers three distinct supernatural or aquatic team-up genres in a single package: the Claremont/Cockrum space-station siege that would lead directly into the Phoenix Saga, a Len Wein-scripted Ghost Rider/Spider-Man pairing, and Bill Mantlo's occult-tinged Thing-and-Son-of-Satan adventure, giving French readers a concentrated sampler of Marvel's early-Bronze-Age horror turn. As the tenth installment of a quarterly anthology born from the collapse of Lug's Giant-Size reprint strategy, it also illustrates how Éditions Lug adapted its programming to track the new Claremont-era X-Men as the series was hitting its creative stride.
In "Sous une mauvaise étoile !", les X-Men lancent une mission périlleuse pour sauver leurs camarades capturés par Lang, mais leur course vers la plate-forme orbitale du SHIELD les plonge dans une confrontation inattendue avec des Sentinelles aux visages troublants — dont certains ressemblent étrangement aux premiers X-Men.
In "La ville fantôme," Red sends the Chose to the abandoned desert town of Lawless, where he encounters the Son of Satan and must face the ghost of Ravenstorm, the city’s long-dead founder. A tense, atmospheric showdown unfolds in a place haunted by its own past.
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Spécial Strange launched on 10 July 1975, conceived initially by Éditions Lug as a vehicle for reprinting Marvel's quarterly Giant-Size specials; when Marvel discontinued that format in 1975, Lug retooled the anthology around a rotating line-up of X-Men, Marvel Team-Up, and Marvel Two-in-One stories. The magazine ran quarterly for roughly a decade before shifting to a bimonthly schedule in January 1986 with issue #43, then monthly from September 1995 onward; after Lug was purchased by Semic, the magazine's look was overhauled in January 1989 alongside the rest of the publisher's line. Issue #10 falls squarely in the early quarterly run and was subsequently collected in the Lug reprint album Spécial Strange intégrale N°4 (issues #10–12), released February 1978.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Contains the French-language reprint of Uncanny X-Men #99 (June 1976, Claremont/Cockrum/Chiaramonte), titled 'Sous une mauvaise étoile !' — the issue that carries the shadowy cameo debut of Black Tom Cassidy, Banshee's Irish criminal cousin, created by Chris Claremont and Dave Cockrum.
- Uncanny X-Men #99 also introduces the X-Sentinels, android duplicates of the original five X-Men, and features Dr. Peter Corbeau facilitating the rescue shuttle launch that drives the X-Men into space — key story beats in the lead-up to the Phoenix transformation.
- Contains the French-language reprint of Marvel Team-Up #14 (Oct. 1973, Len Wein/Gil Kane/Wayne Howard), pairing Spider-Man with Sub-Mariner against Tiger Shark and the first appearance of the Aquanoids (Men-Fish); Llyra and the Hulk appear in flashback recap.
- Contains the French-language reprint of Marvel Team-Up #15 (Nov. 1973, Len Wein/Ross Andru/Don Perlin), pairing Spider-Man with Ghost Rider (Johnny Blaze) and featuring supporting characters Crash Simpson, Roxanne Simpson, and the Orb (Drake Shannon) as antagonist.
- Contains the French-language reprint of Marvel Two-in-One #14 (March 1976, Bill Mantlo/Herb Trimpe/John Tartaglione), teaming the Thing with Son of Satan (Daimon Hellstrom) in a story titled 'Ghost Town!' — one of Hellstrom's earliest team-up appearances following his solo Marvel Spotlight run.
- Published December 1977 by Éditions Lug (Lyon, France) as part of the quarterly Spécial Strange anthology series, which launched in July 1975 and ran until issue #115 under Semic.
- The issue was subsequently collected in the Lug reprint album Spécial Strange intégrale N°4, which grouped issues #10 through #12, released February 1978.
- Spécial Strange was originally designed to reprint Marvel's Giant-Size specials; after Marvel ended that format in 1975, Lug reformatted the title around the ongoing X-Men, Marvel Team-Up, and Marvel Two-in-One series, giving French readers a three-strand superhero anthology that ran for two decades.
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Reprints
↩ Reprints Marvel Team-Up #14 (1973), Marvel Team-Up #15 (1973), Marvel Two-in-One #14 (1976), The X-Men #99 (1976), Strange #95 (1977), Une Aventure de Conan #5 (1977), Planète des Singes #11 (1977), Strange #96 (1977), Une Aventure des Fantastiques #14 (1977), Titans #12 (1978), Spécial Strange #11 (1978)
Reprinted in Strange #96 (1977), Titans #12 (1978)
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