I just listened to it. Pretty good for a group of emotionally arrested
fanboys man-boys. (Hey, you said it...)
A few things...
- I agree with practically everything Kurt said about
Crisis. I looked forward to each issue, and it was indeed exciting to read, but at the same time I
dreaded each new issue, because it seemed like DC was just needlessly throwing so much stuff in the trash, and it was getting worse every month.
- E. Nelson Bridwell did NOT die before
Crisis. He died in January 1987. However, the fact that he was taken off
Superman and DC pretty much throwing away everything he had worked on for over two decades, and (to my knowledge) being given nothing to replace his job... well, I'm speculating but I'm thinking it may not have had a positive effect on his mood and consequently his already-poor health. And yes, I realize I'm making note of the continuity of DC's continuity cop. Meta, right?
- Kurt was probably thinking of Craig Boldman, who wrote a number of Superman stories during the last couple years before the titles were rebooted. He didn't do much for DC after that except inking some
'Mazing Man stories (Boldman is an artist as well as a writer). He did do a comic called "Mr. Fixit" with Howard Bender, and then went on to working for Archie Comics.
(
Edited to add: Boldman also
co-wrote a book titled "Every Excuse in the Book: 714 Ways to Say 'It's Not My Fault!'") and according to
this did quite a bit of work in the greeting card industry.)
- The last few years of the
Superman titles were not unimaginably bad, although I will readily concede there was a lot of crap in there. Julius Schwartz was allowing more experimentation. It pretty much started with
DC Comics Presents by letting a couple of stories be continued non-linearly over a stretch of time, along with permitting a few less mainstream stories here and there. In the main titles, he was permitting things like Superman and Lois breaking up, Clark Kent dating Lana Lang, and the characters maturing and acknowledging that they had a history instead of being eternally frozen in time. It wasn't wild, throw-it-to-the-wind experimentation, and the stories often did stick to some semblance of formula a lot of the time, but it was there.
It's true that a lot of the stories were aimed at younger readers, but this doesn't automatically make them bad, and quite a few of them were pretty smart despite being written for that age level. And even then, this was primarily in
Action Comics while
Superman varied from month to month, and
DC Comics Presents didn't seem affected at all.
On a side note, the "Clark Kent - Fired" storyline written by Cary Bates was very well done, taking time to show the effects of Clark Kent's firing, both on him (and of course, Superman) as well as his friends at the Daily Planet. However, the story had an ending that was so far out, it wasn't from left field, it was air freighted in from the Bottle City of Kandor. But the reason I mention this is because Bates was probably stuck for coming up with an ending because of - you guessed it -
Crisis on Infinite Earths. He had to wrap up a multi-part story and get Luthor out of the scene so that he could show up in
Crisis right away. And it probably didn't help that Bates' story was interrupted after the first chapter by a surprise birthday issue secretly produced for Schwartz's 70th birthday, further delaying his story and adding pressure to the crunch time get Luthor from point A to point B in short order.
And finally, I don't remember who said this (I think it was Mark Waid), but reportedly Schwartz was also trying to help a lot of new talent break in by printing their first published work, or at least their first work at DC, one of those new talents being Mark Waid. Kind of works against the image of him as a rigid, inflexible stick-in-the-mud. (But I do have to admit for every good story, three others were crap. Happy now, Kurt?
)
Ok, long ramble about the
Superman comics over. It just bugs me to see the whole era so casually dismissed when there were a lot of hidden gems in there. Also, a lot of the art was by Curt Swan (who was producing some of his best work ever during this time) and inked by Al Williamson, and that alone sets it above 90% of other comics.
- Speaking of Schwartz, given that he started the revitalization the DC superhero line which was almost completely dead (of the few superhero features being published then, I believe only Superman was selling well) which DC coasted on for three decades, and that he introduced the concept of the multiverse which is popular enough that it's
still being used today, and has spread to countless other comics and even other media ("Spider-Verse" movie, anyone?)...he had to feel like DC was just giving him the world's biggest middle finger.
- Some of those tinfoil hats theories make a fair bit of sense.
- No offense guys, but drop the sound effects. Or if you
must use them, please lower the volume. By halfway through the episode, they had gone from being an annoyance to almost literally hurting my ears.
- "Nieves & Heller" sounds like a ever-so-reputable law firm whose offices consist of an answering machine connected to a pay phone.
Good stuff, guys.
)
