I gave up on my live-tweeting all of Doctor Who from the beginning – pausing every few seconds to tweet something was kind of a drag. So instead I’m making quick ranked lists as I finish each season. Who doesn’t love ranked lists? So here’s season 1, ranked from least-best to best. (I have a hard time thinking of any Doctor Who as “worst”.) Feel free to comment with your own opinion, but I assure you my Doctor Who opinions are always 100% correct.
The Daleks – There’s a reason these things caught on! Plus Barbara gets it on with a hot blond.
An Unearthly Child – And I didn’t rank it so high just for the incredible first episode! I will die on the hill that the cave people story in episodes 2-4 is a lot better than people think.
Marco Polo – The missing episodes bum me out, and I hate watching reconstructions, BUT I’ve been watching the Loose Cannon recons while listening to the BBC Audio narrated soundtracks, and the extra narration has me appreciating Marco Polo more than I did on my last rewatch. It’s really a gripping story, if a little drawn out.
The Keys of Marinus – Everybody hates this except me. Everybody except me is wrong. The end drags but the McGuffin-chasing through the first few parts is great!
The Edge of Destruction – Part 2 loses its way a bit, but Part 1 is unsettlingly weird and intriguing. Carole Ann Ford is great.
The Aztecs – A Barbara showcase story! I love Barbara even more than I dislike the strict historicals!
The Reign of Terror – Suffers from the capture-escape-repeat padding, and Susan is done dirty by the writing, but all the Doctor’s bits are terrific.
The Sensorites – The first two episodes are marvelously spooky but the Sensorite threat is deflated once they start talking.
New sketch! It’s from 15 Minutes Away’s Christmas show so it’s super timely here in late January. I wrote it and I play a male escort (typecasting myself again). It features me, Kevin Delano, and Andrew Warner. It’s pretty dirty and a little gross. Enjoy!
“I’ve been watching since I was seven,” is what I always say when my love for Doctor Who comes up in conversation. “My dad got me into it.”
It’s possible I wasn’t seven. I didn’t make a note of it or anything. But that’s the age that’s stuck in my memory, and I’ve said it aloud enough times that it may as well be true. Seven years old, so it could have been late 1979, but I’m pretty sure it was 1980.
My father had been trying to get me to watch for ages, insisting I’d love it, but on WGBH, Boston’s public television station, Doctor Who aired weekdays at 7pm, and that was prime playing-outside time.
But one night, for whatever reason – maybe it was raining, maybe none of the other kids on the street were around, or maybe my dad was just particularly insistent – I sat down in the back room of our house, a small room at the end of the hall that served as my dad’s TV room (mom’s was the living room). The back room had a couch and a chair, both of which he ignored, preferring to sit on the floor, eye level with the television, which was housed in a low cabinet. And sitting on the floor together, my father and I watched the third episode of “The Hand of Fear,” a Tom Baker story, the last to feature Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith.
I thought it was fine, I guess?
It probably didn’t help that I had no idea what was going on. I’m not sure I came back for the fourth and final episode.
A little detective work now. The website broadwcast.org features an encyclopedic listing of international air dates for Doctor Who. A quick perusing of the page for WGBH gives a couple of possible days on which this underwhelming start to my journeys with the Doctor might have begun.
The only possible air date where I’m 7 is Tuesday, September 16, 1980, but that doesn’t seem quite right to me. The next story they showed was an out-of-sequence “The Robots of Death,” and I’m sure that “The Deadly Assassin” was shown in its rightful place after “The Hand of Fear” when I watched. I know because I remember thinking I was just intrigued enough by what I had seen, and, probably subconsciously, enjoying the idea of a show my father and I could watch together, that I gave it another try, and was even more baffled by the cryptic political nightmarescapes of “Assassin.” It’s a great story, but perhaps not the best introduction to the show for a 7-year-old.
December 19 is the next possible date. But that doesn’t sound right, either, and not just because I’d have turned 8 by then. I remember being torn between watching and playing because it was nice outside. Not that I didn’t play outside in winter, but my memory tells me it was sunny when the show aired. My memory lies to me constantly, but it’s all I have to go on.
That brings me to the following spring – Monday, May 11. So it was 1981, not 1980, and I was 8, not 7.
I don’t know why that makes me a little sad. It doesn’t change anything, except one small detail about the story I tell whenever I have reason to talk about how long I’ve been a fan.
Anyway, this date feels right because “The Deadly Assassin” aired next, followed by “The Face of Evil.” Despite “Assassin” failing to catch my interest, I gave the show a third and final chance by watching the first episode of “Face,” and that’s where it got me. I came in at the start of a new story, a story introducing a new character who had as much to learn about the Doctor as I did, and the show no longer felt confusing or unwelcoming.
If Tom Baker was my Doctor, Louise Jameson as Leela was my companion. My father was a Leela fan too, and watching her run of stories with him fixed my attachment to the show. He had seen them all before and was eager for me to appreciate them, and happy that his certainty that I’d love them was proving correct. We watched “The Talons of Weng-Chiang,” a favorite of my father’s due to the similarities to his greater love, Sherlock Holmes. I remember sitting at his side transfixed by the creepiness of “Horror of Fang Rock.” He knew I’d love K-9, the robot dog introduced in “The Invisible Enemy” (and what 8-year-old wouldn’t?). Dad explained Gallifrey, the Doctor’s home planet, to me when we got there in “The Invasion of Time,” Leela’s final story.
The next episode to air was the first part of “Robot,” Tom Baker’s debut story, as WGBH had run out of new episodes. I got to meet Sarah Jane properly this time. Watching “The Hand of Fear” from the beginning, with the approaching-encyclopedic knowledge of any child with a new obsession, I couldn’t believe I’d been so dismissive of it the first time around. As for “The Deadly Assassin” – well, it would take a couple more years to really get that one. (Honestly, I’m still not sure I do.) And then Leela was back, and I watched her stories the second time as eagerly as I’d watched them the first.
My father, however, slowly lost interest as the limited episodes available for the US to license got repeated, and repeated, and repeated again. Whenever the opening titles revealed that we had once again looped back to the first episode of “Robot” he would express his disappointment, and before long I was watching without him, on one of the other TVs in the house. I’m not sure exactly when that happened. I know we were still watching together when WGBH finally moved past Leela in October of 1982. I think we finished out that first airing of Tom Baker’s final seasons, his departure happening in January of 1983. But after the last episode of “Logopolis” it was back to the first episode of “Robot,” and I can almost hear my father crying out in annoyance at yet another rerun. So that was probably it. Maybe we watched another story or two here or there after that but certainly by July of 1984, when the popularity of the show in the US had grown enough that PBS began showing the newest episodes, starring Peter Davison, Dad was done.
Which was fine, really. My brother and my cousin had long since joined me in my fandom, so I still had someone to talk to about it, to pick up issues of Doctor Who Magazine for me, to introduce me to the burgeoning Doctor Who convention scene. (I met Tom Baker in person! I was too stunned to speak but he grinned at me and said something nice I can no longer remember.)
My love for the Doctor has only deepened over the years since my dad introduced us. I stayed with it through the final years of its original run, through the end of the 80s, when I had to watch on my sisters’ TV, for some reason the only set in the house that could pick up the New Hampshire PBS station showing Sylvester McCoy’s episodes. I stayed faithful through the wilderness years of the 90s, through the disappointment of the Fox TV-movie, through the show’s renewal and reemergence into the popular consciousness in 2005. And I’m still very much faithful to it today.
I’ve tried to get my father back into it, here and there. I gave him a bootleg VHS copy of “The Curse of Fatal Death,” a 1999 parody starring Rowan Atkinson, whom I knew he liked. He watched it once, politely, but the tape eventually made its way in with my own, and now sits in my closet. I thought the new show would interest him, but it wasn’t much to his taste. He watched an episode or two, but he doesn’t care for the ongoing arcs and deeper characterization of modern science fiction. Most recently, I tried to get him to watch “Legend of the Sea Devils” with me. It was the Easter 2022 special, and it sounded like it would be a fun one-off action piece. (And it was!) I was staying with him and my mom for a few weeks at the time. When I brought it up that morning he was interested, but by the time it aired that night, bed held more appeal. He’s over 90 now, I can hardly blame him.
So my dad’s relationship with the Doctor ended a long time ago, and that’s okay. Dad’s done a lot for me over the years, but making me sit down and watch Doctor Who with him all those decades ago is still the best gift he ever gave me. And even though we’ll probably never watch another episode together, it’ll always be something we share.
I’ve been watching Doctor Who since I was eight years old. My dad got me into it.
I wrote a sketch about what a stereotypical gay man I am. This is from 15 Minutes Away‘s live show in November at the Pit Loft in NYC. It features me, TD, Sidell, and Kate Gauthier. This was my birthday show, so I had a lot of friends in the house. I’m very happy I got to queer things up for them. (Even more than I normally do.)
This article was originally published in three parts on the Geeks Out site in 2016. That’s been taken down, so I’m republishing it here so that the magic of Steelgrip Starkey may never be forgotten. It’s been edited and updated oh so slightly, mostly to combine the original three parts into one article.
In 1986, Marvel’s “Epic” line of creator-owned comics published Alan Weiss’s seminal masterpiece Steelgrip Starkey and the All-Purpose Power Tool, a six-issue limited series that is every bit as gay as you thought it was when you read that title a half a second ago. I don’t think the lovingly detailed portrayals of the muscled masculine form or the simmering sexual tension between the male leads was intentional…but I can’t swear it wasn’t. Either way, it’s worth a look, and since the series has never been collected or reprinted, I’ll just have to show it to you myself. Grab your tool and let’s go!
Our story starts with Miss Shari Barrett, who is of Filipino descent – this will be important momentarily – searching a construction site, looking for a man. Been there.
She stops to talk to the foreman, who is racist. This point is hammered home quite a bit, starting when he asks an Asian woman out for sushi and getting worse from there. The other guy talking is Flynn G. Ryan, aka “Flyin’ Ryan”. He’s a good guy – we know this because the racist guy throws him in a mud pit, then attacks him with a wrench for no particular reason. Shari fails to stop the attack, but our hero comes to the rescue!
Here’s our Adonis, looking all set to star in Bob the Builder: The XXX Gay Porn Parody. “They don’t call him Steelgrip fa nothin!”
Racist foreman fires Steelgrip and Ryan for not letting him murder them. I’m not sure that’s just cause, but New York is an “at-will employment” state. Shari’s got a better offer for them both, but before she can explain…
You may not have known this, but construction workers all specialize in one tool, each of which they are named after! It’s very convenient when you need to assign tasks in a hurry. Now Steelgrip and Ryan, please go see Stapler Susan in accounting to pick up your last paycheck. The security guard, Gun Gary, will walk you out.
You might assume that since the writer has taken pains to introduce Steelgrip’s construction worker pals and give them each a unique and memorable moniker that they will be important to the story. You would be mistaken.
Our protagonistic trio walk the streets of New York while Shari fills her new partners in on her back story. She has degrees in math and computers but was working as a humble secretary, fetching coffee and fielding unwanted sexual advances, when she met the other two recurring cast members of this series. The first is a mysterious old man, Mr. Pilgrim, as played by Quentin Crisp.
And his psychiatrist, Doctor Giant Rick James. Temptations sing! Pilgrim has invented the All-Purpose Power Tool using the advanced magic / science / handwave of “technalchemy”. He’s chosen Shari to be the programmer of the tool, and Steelgrip to be its operator.
All without uttering a word! Remember that for later. It won’t be important and it will never be explained. A mysterious plot point introduced as if it’s a major clue and then ignored? Lost fans, if you only read one comic this year…!
Ooh, gurrrl, you so crazy! There’s a famous artist that Weiss reminds me of whenever he’s drawing Steelgrip – you can see it in close-ups of his face, like here, and especially in his full body dramatic poses. Now let me see, who can it be…
Oh, right, erotic gay artist Tom of Finland! Anyway, Shari leads our hot and heavy duo to a vacant lot, where she promises a demonstration. She programs the tool, then tells Steelgrip to…uh, well, to…grab hold of the…uh…
Shari never said the tool needed to be straddled to operate, but whatever works for ya, Steelgrip. Try tickling the buttons!
The tool unfolds itself, forming a colossal machine out of thin air, building a one-twentieth scale replica of the Empire State Building in ten minutes (exactly what that vacant lot was screaming for), and then folding itself back into its toolbox. Shari explains that Mr. Pilgrim wants them to form “Star Key Enterprises,” putting themselves out to hire for corporations, and that he’ll front all costs for one year as part of an experiment to test the tool. Shari will program the tool, Steelgrip will operate it, and Ryan will do everything else.
Shari leads them to their new base of operations – a penthouse apartment on the top floor of the main branch of the New York Public Library! Because why not?
The green walls really complement the lavender carpet and white ceiling and blue bedspread and yellow and red furniture.
Mr. Pilgrim has hired Steelgrip partly because he fits the physical ideal of the American working man – seriously, he goes on and on about it, you’d almost think the writer old man had a fetish for construction workers or something. He’s even designed a special costume just for his special little guy!
“Rebel colors! The south shall rise again — and so shall I!” It’s certainly…snug. In aaaaalllll the right places.
Before too long they’ve got their first mission: a meteor is going to crash into Chicago, and they’ve got to use the tool to catch it! They board their private jet and head for the Windy City, where they’re greeted by a barrage of press and enthusiastic citizens. They haven’t even done a single job yet – Pilgrim’s got a great PR firm, I guess.
“And Ryan’s lady is back in New York. I mean, Canada. She lives in Canada. You wouldn’t know her.”
Also, “technotary”? Really? It sounds like a nickname that stuck when your three-year-old brother couldn’t pronounce “secretary.”
Turns out the meteor is going to miss the city of Chicago itself. Instead, it’s going to hit somewhere in the boonies. The trio hurry to save the non-fabulous.
Remember, if you’re too anxious, your tool might not work.
They land on a farm on the outskirts of Chicago. Steelgrip plants himself and gets ready to operate his tool.
Why isn’t every panel from this comic a meme? This pose can’t be accidental on the part of the artist. It just can’t. It happens too often. Anyway, they save the day, and in appreciation, the poor but kindhearted citizens of nowhere give Steelgrip a homemade apple pie as thanks.
Ryan is sleepy, glowing, and smoking a cigarette. The pie he’s talking about is NOT apple. No time to bask in the afterglow – an explosion rocks their secret public library headquarters. Terrorists are setting off bombs at the UN, planning to blast it into the East River! I’ve already gone into too much detail and we’re only on issue two, so let’s just take another look at Steelgrip using his tool…
Business as usual. The tool saves the UN and captures the terrorists. Hooray! Ryan uses a bunch of racist slurs to describe the terrorists, and the comic’s narrative doesn’t have a problem with this. Boo.
Steelgrip recovers from his bullet wounds in their luxurious library annex.
Look at Steelgrip, acting like he doesn’t care! What a brave little soldier. Don’t worry, Steelgrip. This is the second and final reference to Ryan’s mysterious girlfriend. She is never seen at all nor is she ever mentioned again. I don’t think you have much competition to worry about.
Steelgrip recounts Ryan’s history: he was a chopper pilot in Viet Nam. (Thus, “Flyin’” Ryan. Soldiers are named after their job, just like construction workers.) After being shot down and captured, he carved that “R” in his forehead as a sign of resistance (okay…), got rescued by Marines, spent seven years traveling in the East learning the mystic secrets of the Orient (no, seriously), and finally met Steelgrip on a construction site in 1980.
“Scotty Bell and his looney crew”, eh? Sounds like we’ll be hearing more about them! Oh, we won’t? Okay.
Steelgrip is once again dressing for the job he wants, which is 70s gay porn star. I mean, I love the outfit, it’s totally hot, and I’d be looking where Ryan’s looking too. But he’s working with a group of artists who are also construction workers, and he’s wearing the tightest outfit of any of them. He knows exactly what he’s doing.
So how would you describe your relationship with your new best friend, Steelgrip?
Master and…oh, come on, you’re making this too easy for me! Where would you say Ryan’s right hand is in this picture? I’m pretty sure it’s a few minutes after this that Mr. Starkey earned the name “Steelgrip” for the first time.
But enough of the past, time to live in the present! Get out of bed and back to work, Steelgrip!
Hello, Nurse! I once saw those exact shorts on a dancer at the Fairytale Lounge. Let’s move on. Doctor Giant Rick James arrives and gives them their next mission, involving cleaning up an oil spill and stopping Ecuador from being destroyed by an undersea earthquake.
I’m skipping that. It’s awesome but not particularly gay, beyond the mere presence of Steelgrip himself. Let’s look at another hot pic of tool-gripping action instead.
Hang on tight, we’re on to issue 3!
The Star Key team is propositioned by Globelock Industries, which doesn’t sound evil at all. They want to hire the trio and the tool for a construction job in the isolated village of Riverbend, Alaska.
LOOK OUT FOR THAT BEAR MISTER STERLING IT’S RIGHT BEHIND YOU!!! They have good taxidermists in Alaska. Really captured nature’s loathing for all human life. Even the reindeer looks pissed.
There’s lots of drama at the construction site, but whatever, Steelgrip gets the job done and goes to a gay bar. I mean, they don’t call it a gay bar, but…
Ryan stays out all night talking with local sculptor / crazy person Moosehead Murphy (no quotation marks, so I assume Moosehead is his given name). When Steelgrip wakes up, he’s obviously missing Ryan a whole hell of a lot…
…although maybe that’s his knee?
The tool is stolen from the hotel by persons unknown, as part of an extremely complicated plot involving Moosehead and a Native chief posing as a demon called a Tupsalik. The whole story is way too complicated to go into. “The white man is poisoning the land” is the gist of it. Steelgrip doesn’t care.
Moosehead Murphy has seriously overestimated Steelgrip Starkey’s concern for the plight of the indigenous peoples of Alaska.
The co-writer for this issue, by the way, is an “M. Murphy,” which has me desperately hoping that Steelgrip Starkey is based on a true story, as told to Alan Weiss by a white liberal Alaskan wilderness survivalist.
The kidnappers insist that Steelgrip show them how to operate the power tool so that they can destroy an evil dam that is evil. Steelgrip, to everyone’s surprise, agrees. But when Tupsalik grabs the shaft of Steelgrip’s tool…
Actually, it’s because the tool is programmed to only work for Steelgrip, but why give a logical explanation when a racist taunt will do? Enraged, Tupsalik attacks Steelgrip with a tomahawk and a wooden dildo!
No flared base? That’s asking for trouble. He doesn’t know Steelgrip if he thinks THAT little thing is going to scare him. The two fight pointlessly for a page or two, while Steelgrip’s shirt is ripped off piece by piece. I’m not complaining.
Steelgrip suddenly decides he does care about Native American affairs after all, and uses his tool to destroy the evil dam that is evil. Happy ending, apart from all the casual racism from the main cast. I spared you most of it, but it’s pretty painful. Lots of “noble savage” comments.
In fact, the series as a whole has far too many “all in good fun” racist comments from the lead trio. It’s gross, and “1986” isn’t an excuse.
If you can put that aside (and I don’t blame you if you can’t), let’s move on to issue four, where our heroes are accepting another job from Globelock Industries. I know, they’re so obviously evil, but Steelgrip has bills to pay. Poppers aren’t free.
The moon, huh? Hopefully a mission in space will steer this comic away from the pitfalls of more racist stereotyping. So who is mining the moon?
Oh dear. This doesn’t bode well at all. So these two survived whatever 80s Stallone movie they escaped from and have teamed up to mine some unknown substance from the moon, with the stated purpose of seeking revenge on the world superpowers. You’d think the US military would respond, or maybe the UN, but no. Globelock is taking charge, and they’re sending a private construction company to deal with it. I’d like to make a joke about how in the 80s private corporations could do whatever they wanted and the government would just roll over, but that would assume it isn’t still true today…
Ryan will be sitting out the moon launch. Instead, Mr. Pilgrim, their mysterious benefactor, is sending him and Dr. Sartorius on a secret mission to Bazililand. Ryan is far and away the most racist out of our fun-loving crew, so I’m sure his antics in Africa will be delightful.
Hmm…we haven’t had a double entendre in a while…
You and me both! Now how about a gratuitous shot of Steelgrip in his tighty reddies?
That’s the stuff! I’d feel more vital in contact with his power tool, too.
Steelgrip and Shari finish their training and bang, zoom, to the moon! They’re accompanied by two characters from a throwaway panel in issue one, “Drill Bit” Diaz and “Cutaway” Crabbe, because what this vital secret mission to space really needed was two more construction workers.
Meanwhile, in Uganda Bazililand, Ryan and Dr. Sartorius have infiltrated the palace of General Amin Kingu. Dr. Sartorius warns Ryan to be careful. In addition to being cruel and bloodthirsty beyond all reason, Kingu is devoted to the myths, deities, and rituals of his ancestors. Because…Africa, I guess?
Head-shrinking was strictly a South American thing, but whatever. Details!
Their plan involves… Well, you probably need to see it…
Ryan puts on a lion suit he had lying around to scare information out of the general. And it works, because non-white non-Americans criminals are a superstitious, cowardly lot. Turns out Globelock misunderstood their intel. The bad guys are mining the moon all right, but not in the sense of digging for ore. They’re planting mines on the lunar surface! What a comical misunderstanding! It’s like Three’s Company in space, but with even more gay jokes.
It’s all pointless, of course. There’s never any particular reason given for why these two teamed up to mine the moon. In both our world and the Starkeyverse (and oh, how I wish they were the same), nobody was doing anything up there anymore. They do it to “spread terror,” but it seems like they would have gotten a lot more terror out of their enormous space mines by planting them someplace with people.
Ryan’s warning gets to Steelgrip too late, rendering the whole racist furry thing pointless too, but the construction crew makes short work of the mines anyway, and the day is saved, I guess, even though there weren’t really any lives at risk. Hooray?
I haven’t mentioned it yet, but the inside front cover of every issue of this series features some stirring tribute to a famous piece of Americana. I bring it up now simply because we’re up to issue five, which features an image of the hottest version of folkloric steel-driving man John Henry that has ever existed.
This guy can drive his steel wherever he wants.
Ahem. But on to our story! Last time, Steelgrip and company made enemies of the sinister Globelock Inc. This time, Globelock has challenged Star Key Enterprises to an Around the World Super Construction Race! You know, a construction race. You’ve heard of those, right? Everybody loves a good construction race.
Steelgrip will be facing his equal and opposite number, an oil rig operator and part-time actor by the name of Ironarm Gantry.
Whoo! Dig those spiked leather bracelets! And the black clothes, and that chain… I do love the bad boys. Since Globelock doesn’t have access to the “technalchemy” that created the All-Purpose Power Tool, Gantry will be driving the Worldbeater, a modular construction vehicle. Watch out, Steelgrip! Ironarm looks like he might have a trick or two up his sleeve. Not that he’d wear sleeves and cover up those magnificent pythons.
Babyface! Flirting already, and the race hasn’t even started. I like where this is going.
The race gets underway, with both teams performing amazing feats of construction in countries all over the world. It’s mostly a bunch of pictures of the A.P.P.T. and the Worldbeater in action, like here, where the tool is helping out with a pesky but conveniently-timed volcanic eruption.
Steelgrip’s team pulls ahead in the race, and Ironarm Gantry does not take it well.
Pansy? Pansy?!? Oh, no you didn’t, you self-loathing closet queen! I take back everything nice I said about you. Except about the chain. I still like the chain.
Ironarm has a plan to take the lead…
He’s going to roofie him! Steelgrip, don’t swallow Gantry’s special mix! Not even if he says he loves you!
Ironarm’s plan works, sort of. Steelgrip is all loopy in the morning, but Shari slaps him awake. He’s still a little groggy, but…
I’ll feel better once you’re in contact with the tool, too.
Something that feels so right can’t be wrong! Steelgrip continues to crush the Globelock team in the race, and Ironarm snaps, seething with anger and resentment.
Steelgrip’s a nice guy, Ironarm. I’m sure he’d let you work his tool if you asked politely. Instead, Ironarm tries, and fails, to destroy the tool, then tries, and fails, to murder Steelgrip by running him over with the Worldbeater. Steelgrip jumps aboard to take control.
They’re not even trying to be subtle about it, are they? The source of power is the big phallic symbol between his legs, and the two dudes are wrestling for it. You don’t need to put a whole lot of effort into deconstructing this text.
Steelgrip wins the phallus-manhandling contest but Ironarm elbows him, knocking him to the ground. The Worldbeater drives off a cliff into the sea, taking Ironarm and all his 80s metal glory with it. So sad, what internalized homophobia can do to someone.
The next issue is, sadly, the last, but I have a good feeling about it, if for no other reason than that the cover is straight up techno-tentacle porn.
Steelgrip was greatly disturbed by Ironarm’s death, and demanded to meet Star Key Enterprises’s benefactor, Mr. Pilgrim, in person. Pilgrim comes to their secret library headquarters and spins a yarn about how wonderful Steelgrip had done wielding the tool and showing America a renewed vision of a can-do American working man hero.
Accompanied, of course, by some gratuitous beefcake shots of other can-do American working man heroes. Unfortunately, it’s all a ruse. That night, Steelgrip overhears Ryan and Dr. Sartorius talking with the actor they hired to play Pilgrim. Steelgrip is hurt and betrayed and wanders out into the night, feeling all alone in the world.
He’s never that alone, ladies. Ryan and Sartorius finally come clean with Steelgrip and Shari in a fairly long flashback sequence that’s completely bonkers. It turns out that Ryan is Pilgrim. He invented the power tool and the secret of “technalchemy” after years of meditation, achieving some sort of transcendence, and, to top it all off, being contacted by a group called the White Brotherhood, who are apparently a collection of spiritually enlightened men who fund Star Key Enterprises, and not, as one would assume, a neo-Nazi organization.
Steelgrip forgives Ryan, and a good thing too, as the Earth’s electromagnetic field is shifting and only the All-Purpose Power Tool can stop the resulting apocalypse! Hey, we haven’t had a gratuitous phallic shot yet this issue. Fix that, pronto!
Thanks. They save the Earth, of course, but let’s skip all that and get to the next job, which involves preventing a meltdown at a nuclear power plant. The reactor is too far gone, but Steelgrip stays until the last possible minute and beyond, trying to save it. However, his tool has something else in mind…
Get your mind out of the gutter, this isn’t hentai! Shari programmed a failsafe into the tool in order to save Steelgrip’s life. They have a really nice moment where Steelgrip thanks her. In all seriousness, I like Steelgrip and Shari’s relationship. There’s never the slightest hint of any romantic interest between them, which not only bolsters my argument that Steelgrip should be brought back to the mainstream Marvel universe as its first openly gay construction worker super-hero, but also gives us a strong platonic friendship between a man and a woman and avoids the cliché of an action story requiring a romantic element. (A heterosexual romantic element, that is. Steelgrip and Ryan’s love will burn for all eternity.)
And there, sadly, is where we leave Steelgrip and company. Which is a shame. Apart from the casual racism (and yes, I know, that’s a pretty massive qualifier), Steelgrip Starkey and the All-Purpose Power Tool is a fun series, and not just because of the truly astonishing level of homoeroticism. The A.P.P.T. is a clever conceit, and I honestly think a modern, slightly tongue-in-cheek take on the series would work. Think Damage Control, but gayer. But a reboot seems unlikely, so we’ll leave Steelgrip here, and remember him how he’d want to be remembered. Gripping his tool.
Steelgrip Starkey and the All-Purpose Power Tool
Issue One Creator / Writer / Penciler: Alan Weiss Inker: James Sherman Colorist: Elaine Lee, Jeff Raum, James Sherman Letterer: Kevin Nowlan
Issue Two Creator / Writer / Penciler: Alan Weiss Inker: James Sherman Colorist: Elaine Lee Letterer: Phil Felix
Issue Three Creator / Writer: Alan Weiss Co-Writer: M. Murphy Artist: James Sherman Colorist: Elaine Lee, Richard Case Letterer: Phil Felix
Issue Four Creator / Writer: Alan Weiss Penciler: Val Mayerik Inker: Sam DeLaRosa Colorist: Petra Scotese Letterer: Phil Felix
Issue Five Creator / Writer: Alan Weiss Penciler: Val Mayerik Inker: Sam DeLaRosa Colorist: Petra Scotese Letterer: Jim Novak
Issue Six Creator / Writer / Penciler: Alan Weiss Inker: Josef Rubinstein Colorist: Ross Garnet Letterer: Phil Felix
