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Post by berkley on Jun 10, 2023 22:17:46 GMT -5
I wonder why they never did an Eastern Gunfighters, like the West Coast Avengers only in the opposite direction?
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Post by berkley on Jun 10, 2023 16:02:26 GMT -5
MDG , I might not go so far as abomination, 'cause as a superhero costume, that looked cool to me when I was a 14-year-old kid. But it was way inappropriate for Dr. Strange. I'm guessing the title was in trouble and they figured if they made him look more like a superhero, it might help. I guess it didn't.
Yeah, I think it's a cool design ' just not right for the character.
I've never liked Doctor Strange in superhero comics too much - even when written by a favourite writer like Steve Gerber in the Defenders. So it suddenly occurs to me that they might have made use of this re-design for the superhero appearances and keep the old one for Doctor Strange's own series set in its own universe. Of course that would mean having two separate characters with separate storylines, even perhaps separate fictional universes, something Marvel would never have gone for.
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Post by berkley on Jun 10, 2023 0:45:34 GMT -5
I remember it as a bit of an anticlimax with Galactus winning easily but it's been a lot of years so maybe I should try it again.
You might be right that the final result was a blowout but that’s the first time I think, that Galactus physically fight’s someone. It’s cool just for that.
It just occurred to me that I might be mixing it up a little with the FF story where Galactus and the High Evolutionary face off against each other, which I think also turned out to be not much of a contest for Galactus.
Meanwhile, by this time he must about 0-100 against the FF, for no apparent reason ...
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Post by berkley on Jun 10, 2023 0:23:31 GMT -5
I thought DC editorial was crazy to rush to get rid of this costume: ... That Aquaman miniseries seemed to be a hot seller, and the radically different outfit must have been a key part of that. I thought it was terrific. For iconic looks I don't like... ... I thought the original look, with the big bare hands and feet, was way cooler than the animal look, but the animal look is the one that stuck. I've never liked Aquaman or read this series or any other Aquaman comics that's by far the best version of the character I've ever seen as far as the visual design goes. I also agree about the Beast: the "new" look - yes, I still think of it as an unwise new innovation - is too much like a werewolf. IOW the imagery is more in tune with the horror genre than than superheroes. My guess is that whoever came up with the idea (was it Englehart? his instincts were usually more reliable) was misled by the character's name, "The Beast": I think the better response would have been to change the name, not to change the character's visual design to fit the name, which is what I imagine was the basic motivation behind it.
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Post by berkley on Jun 9, 2023 21:30:00 GMT -5
After a quick run-through of the list I'll say The Killer: my first John Woo and my first Chow Yun-Fat, so an important movie for me as a fan. I probably saw it a year or two later, whenever it was released in North America. It was playing at the same cinema where I still see a lot of foreign and independent films to this day. Back then I lived around a 20-25 minute walk away and I remember making a last minute decision to go see it, having to jog part of the way to get there in time. I had read about it in a movie magazine that mentioned Martin Scorsese's praise of it so I was intrigued in spite of knowing nothing further about the film-makers. BTW, this is one of the classic action movies that I think was referenced in the recent John Wick IV - specifically, the visual of the candles in the church.
Other favourites this year would include God of Gamblers (which I didn't see until 1995 or so, at a guess) and the two Jean-Claude Van Damme movies that came out. Cameron's The Abyss I saw only on video, I should try it again some time. I thought I saw Mystery Train but find I can't recall a thing about it so maybe I haven't. I know I missed Johnny Handsome because I was always interested in a new Mickey Rourke movie and failed to get to this one.
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Post by berkley on Jun 9, 2023 19:58:22 GMT -5
Michael Moorcock's The Final Programme
So I've had the Cornelius Quartet for a while, but struggled to get passed the first "Phase" (Ocean's 11 style heists aren't my bag baby). After that however, the book greatly opens up. The novel feels lived in, with a great sense of debauchery in the wake of the Kali Yuga. The ending however felt kind of thrown together compared to the rest, even if the entire book was kind of building up to it
I liked The Final Programme but I think the other books of the Quartet are far superior - though also more challenging at times. From memory, I thought while reading that the heist section contained a bit of self-commentary, with some of the goings-on having parallels to other bits of Moorcock work, e.g. Elric, but I'd have to read it all over again now to see exactly what struck me that way.
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Post by berkley on Jun 9, 2023 19:16:45 GMT -5
Another favorite: If Batman had aged like the rest of us... So Bruce Wayne was a red herring all along and Batman's true secret identity was either Walt Whitman or the Ayatollah Khomeini.
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Post by berkley on Jun 9, 2023 19:05:33 GMT -5
Excellent point. Those sites are indeed better organized. Ever since Internet Archive changed their search algorithms and interface a few years back, it's often difficult to find exactly what you want.
I’ve read from that digital site and found most of the books crap. Sorry.
There's only a small fraction of it that appeals to me - but then that's the same with most things. I think if you look around there's a good chance you'll find something. Fir me, they have Simon & Kirby's Black magic, which I've always wanted to read. And the other night I came across something with artwok by Murphy Anderson while scanning through titles at random.
Many thanks to Tartanphantom and EdoBosnar for the suggestions. I've looked at a few old comics online in the past but this reminds me to make more use of these resources.
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Post by berkley on Jun 9, 2023 18:51:20 GMT -5
If you decide to take tartanphantom 's suggestion, then I would recommend going to either the Digital Comic Museum or Comic Book Plus; both sites have pretty much everything you'll find at the link he provided, except they're both far better organized, i.e., they're broken down by publisher, which each separate series listed alphabetically and stored in separate, easy-to-consult folders, etc.
Excellent point. Those sites are indeed better organized. Ever since Internet Archive changed their search algorithms and interface a few years back, it's often difficult to find exactly what you want.
When searching for movies I often find it's more efficient to use duckduckgo (or your favourite equivalent) and search for the title of the movie plus archive.org, rather than going to archive.org and using their own search function.
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Post by berkley on Jun 8, 2023 21:02:42 GMT -5
What's Doomsday Clock, BTW? All I get when I search for it is that Watchmen prequel thing.
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Post by berkley on Jun 6, 2023 23:52:24 GMT -5
Detective Comics #1, March 1937, cover by Vin Sullivan. This issue features the debut of an obscure character named Slam Bradley. I am pretty obscure.
You look totally different from the way I pictured you.
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Post by berkley on Jun 6, 2023 23:49:44 GMT -5
I haven't received one vote for an excellent Bolland cover. Next time I'm going to post a Liefeld cover...
Maybe everyone's just voting for their favourite hat, never mind how good the rest of the cover is.
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Post by berkley on Jun 6, 2023 19:13:40 GMT -5
Saw Dario Argento's The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970) last night at a local cinema. Was this his first movie as a director? If so, pretty impressive, because it's already very accomplished and stylish, visually. He had a great eye for interesting-looking settings - buildings, backgrounds, city-scapes, etc. I saw Profondo Rosso (Deep red) last year and it's interesting to compare these two. The same theatre is also showing Argento's Cat o' Nine Tails soon, so I'm looking forward to seeing that one.
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Post by berkley on Jun 6, 2023 18:56:53 GMT -5
mrp
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Post by berkley on Jun 6, 2023 18:47:11 GMT -5
June 1973:
Dracula Lives #3: I grabbed every issue of this series I could get, which I think ended up being only around half of them. This was one of them. The contents of the various issues are mixed up in mmy memory, so can't recall exactly which stories were in this one. Great Neal Adams cover - I always find his style so much better suited to this kind of thing than to the superheroes that made him a fan-favourite.
Fear #16 (Man-Thing): as a kid I was fascinated by many of the new horror series of the early 1970s and this was one of my favourites, even though I think I only managed to read 5 or 6 issues when they were new on the stands - but that was the case with all the others as well. Another great cover, this time by Frank Brunner, not that I knew the name at the time - I didn't see his Doctor Strange until a few years later.
Plop #1: fun humour comic with lots of good art. I remember this series staying very consistent for the few issues I read at the time.
Swamp Thing #6: I remember the impression this comic made on me pretty vividly, especially, for some reason, detective Matt Cable - the shot of his office desk with the various clues and newspaper-clippings, etc was for many years my mental image of what a detective's desk was supposed to look like, no matter what the context, whatever detective book I was reading, etc.
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