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Post by Hoosier X on Feb 1, 2023 21:32:17 GMT -5
I just finished Avengers #55. It’s been a while since I read the two-part story that introduced Ultron. It’s always been one of my favorites.
I’d forgotten how very little of it makes any sense at all.
It remains one of my favorites anyway. I have a soft spot for all these B-list and C-list villains banding together to take out the Avengers. They couldn’t even handle the Wasp, Hawkeye, Goliath and the Black Panther. What would they do if Thor, Iron Man, the Hulk or Hercules was still around?
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Post by Hoosier X on Feb 1, 2023 20:42:47 GMT -5
I am up to Avengers #54. This is one of my favorite versions of the Masters of Evil. But, wow, this subplot with Jarvis betraying the Avengers is so dang dumb.
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Post by Hoosier X on Feb 1, 2023 17:09:42 GMT -5
1974 is a year that has so many great movies that I could easily see having a four- or five-way tie.
But there is one film from 1974 that I love so much, I’ve seen it over and over again through the years, it really sticks out for me, even in the same year with Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles, etc.
My pick for 1974 is Chinatown.
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Post by Hoosier X on Feb 1, 2023 11:23:29 GMT -5
I’m still reading the Avengers. I’m up to #52.
It’s a totally different comic from what it was a few issues previously!
Wanda and Pietro have run off with Magneto. Hercules has gone back to Olympus. Captain America has left the Avengers and he’s sent the Black Panther to take his place.
For a few issues, the regular membership was down to three - Wasp, Goliath and Hawkeye. They were captured by the Collector in #51, and he had already harvested Thor, so the thunder god was able to join in after he snapped out of his trance.
The inker on #52 is Vince Colletta. He’s pretty good here. I’ve been familiar with this story since the 1970s when it was reprinted in Marvel Treasury Edition #7, and this is the first time I noticed that Colletta was the inker. I don’t remember ever thinking that the art in #52 looked bad.
I sure wish they had done more with the Black Widow in this period. After the Red Guardian storyline, she shows up for a few panels here and there, recovering in the hospital, announcing she’s giving up super-heroing, being Hawkeye’s girlfriend. In #52, she freaks out because she thinks Hawkeye is dead. She collapses in Jasper Sitwell’s arms when she should be putting on the suit and finding the real killer.
Still, this is a great period for the Avengers. Coming up, we have Ultron, the return of the Masters of Evil, the Vision, Yellowjacket, and Hawkeye taking on the Goliath role.
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Post by Hoosier X on Feb 1, 2023 1:34:58 GMT -5
I’m watching Lover Come Back (1961). I love Doris Day. But she made some really bad movies. And this is one of them.
I don't have a good impression of her, but it's more to do with the squeaky clean image than her look or her singing. Also, I've never really liked Rock Hudson much and many of her most successful movies were done with him. I love the song Que Sera Sera, though, as cheesy as it may seem.
Pillow Talk is really awful too. The Doris Day movies I like are: Calamity Jane Julie Midnight Lace The Man Who Knew Too Much The Glass-Bottom Boat
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Post by Hoosier X on Feb 1, 2023 0:32:28 GMT -5
I’m watching Lover Come Back (1961).
I love Doris Day. But she made some really bad movies. And this is one of them.
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Post by Hoosier X on Jan 31, 2023 19:05:11 GMT -5
Golden Age for me. (Big surprise, right?) The character in his purest form, before he became a big ol' boring demi-god. If you need to know what all the fuss was about, check out the "Powerstone" two-parter by Jerry Siegel and Jon Sikela (Joe Shuster's bestest ghost) reprinted in my all-time favorite comic book, the 80-page Superman #252. Second place would go to the Superman Adventures version of the '90s, based on the WB animated series. Cei-U! I summon the original! Yeah. The two-part Powerstone story is my favorite Superman story. But in general, my favorite period for Superman is the late 1950s to the mid 1960s.
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Post by Hoosier X on Jan 31, 2023 14:58:25 GMT -5
Is Flippy the gigantic prehistoric walrus from the Golden Age or the Silver Age?
Because I’m gonna pick that.
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Post by Hoosier X on Jan 28, 2023 18:57:27 GMT -5
In the Hulk series, I’m up to Tales to Astonish #96.
These last few issues are the start of one of my favorite long runs in all comics. It starts in Tales to Astonish #89 (with the Stranger) and then continues into Hulk #102 when old Jade-Jaws takes over the whole book and the run doesn’t end until Hulk #200.
In the late 1970s, I was buying old issues of Tales to Astonish (any issue after #75 only cost $1) and also picking up the reprints in Marvel Super-Heroes here and there. Between these two titles, I had almost every issue of Tales to Astonish from #80 to #101. I haven’t read them in a long time, but I read them over and over when I was a kid.
They are still very familiar to me. These images are imprinted on my brain!
Like the Stranger deciding the human race is not worthy, so he decides to use the Hulk to purge the human scourge. Ulp! And then the two-issue story that introduced the Abomination! And the great Gil Kane art!
Then here comes Marie Severin! And almost as amazing as Marie ... the Silver Surfer!
Which leaves the Hulk yearning for the stars. Soon he’s traveling through space to New Earth where everybody is animal men and they are rebelling against the High Evolutionary ... BECAUSE REASONS! The High Evolutionary somehow turns himself into a god and sends Hulk back to Earth.
That’s where we are now. Next issue is Tales to Astonish #97 and the first part of Hulk’s battle with the Legion of the Living Lightning! (Which is a special storyline to me because my first issue of the Hulk was Marvel Super-Heroes #54, reprinting TTA #99, the big showdown between the Hulk and the Living Lightning. It’s so great!)
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Post by Hoosier X on Jan 28, 2023 15:30:55 GMT -5
I have a hard time picking a favorite artist from the first fifteen to twenty years of Spider-Man. Let’s just be thankful that for almost 200 issues, Spidey had great artists, from Ditko to Romita to Jim Mooney (I started buying Marvel Tales when it was reprinting the Mooney issues) to Kane to Andru.
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Post by Hoosier X on Jan 28, 2023 15:27:55 GMT -5
Just about finished making my way through all the Lee/Kirby Thor comics in my collection. I was partially inspired by Icctrombone's passion for collecting the full run, and partially inspired when I found a few issues dirt cheap in a discount bin ($5 a piece), read them, and found them far more entertaining than I expected. In the earliest issues, Kirby's art on Thor is so much more kinetic and dynamic than his work anywhere else. I wonder if it could be argued that Thor was his favorite of the early Marvel heroes. He certainly seems to give it the most energy, and then the Tale of Asgard backups get even more beautiful. In the later Lee/Kirby stories, you can tell that Kirby is doing more of the plotting as it gets far more out there, cosmic and fantastic high imagination to the extreme. I just read Thor #141, which seems like a perfect balance of Lee and Kirby. Kirby's art is absolutely on fire during a staggering fight between Thor and Replicus, he draws a brilliant Xanadu in the Tales of Asgard backup, and Lee amps up the complex human factor, as a notorious mobster sacrifices himself to save the human race, and a thief with a heart of gold finds himself an unwilling agent of a total fiend. It's rare to find a book or issue where Lee and Kirby's efforts are both so equally clear and both so brilliantly strong. I really enjoyed this one. Oh, and it contains Mark Evanier's first published letter, where he suggests rank designations for MMMS members! Yeah, Kirby’s Thor is just about as good as comics get. I was going to say the best period is from about #125 to about #155, but the truth is that I love #101 to #124 as well, the Chic Stone inking, the Cobra and Hyde over and over, the Grey Gargoyle, Crusher Creel, the Trial of the Gods. It’s been a while since I read the Kirby issues after #155, so I’m having trouble remembering them. I think it’s still quite good up until the last few issues.
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Post by Hoosier X on Jan 28, 2023 11:07:36 GMT -5
I’m up to Avengers #46. This is the one where Whirlwind attacks, and Hank and Jan are trapped in an anthill.
And Hercules shaves off all his facial hair!
The roster has been getting more and more full, and everybody is bringing their own subplots.
Hank is stuck at the height of ten feet for a while, so he has to work on regulating his biogenetics. Then after that’s fixed, he thinks of going back to being Ant-Man again.
Jan has come into her full inheritance!
The Black Widow goes on a secret mission as a double agent, and Hawkeye is worried about her.
Hercules becomes a pawn of the Enchantress and then gets banished to Earth by Zeus. So he’s hanging around the mansion eating grapes.
Cap is a new phase of his 20-year identity crisis.
So that doesn’t leave much room for Wanda and Pietro. We haven’t heard Wanda say she wants to be an actress for a while, and Pietro is no longer talking about running away and joining the circus.
I miss the days when their nighttime entertainment plans were part of the story. When they would praise Carol Channing in Hello, Dolly!
Over the last ten issues or so, we’ve seen the Enchantress, Namor, Diablo, Dragon Man, the Red Guardian, various other rascally Reds, the Mandarin, the Executioner, the Living Laser, Power Man, the Swordsman, Ultimo and Whirlwind.
John Buscema has taken over the art chores! I bet he was real excited that Vince Colletta was the inker on the latest issue! (To be fair, Vinnie does a pretty good job here.)
It’s been a while since I read these issues, but I seem to remember that we’re at the end of an era here. Hercules, Pietro and Wanda will be leaving, and we’ll be getting some new Avengers soon. I think we’re at the end of my favorite era of the Avengers.
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Post by Hoosier X on Jan 26, 2023 19:44:09 GMT -5
I’d forgotten about the Spirit of the Beehive, which I’ve seen three or four times over the years. Another great film from 1973.
It just makes it harder to pick one!
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Post by Hoosier X on Jan 26, 2023 14:53:01 GMT -5
I can show off my Detective Comics #235. This issue has the story where Bruce recovers a memory from his childhood where his father wore a bat costume to a masquerade. This is also the first story where the death of the Waynes becomes a conspiracy instead of the work of a lone gunman.
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Post by Hoosier X on Jan 26, 2023 13:24:13 GMT -5
Paper Moon is my pick for 1973.
But yeah, The Sting is great. I’ve seen it a bunch of times.
When I was a kid, I thought Charlton Heston was the greatest actor ever! And one of the reasons was Soylent Green!
There’s a lot of great movies mentioned so far. I especially love Badlands and F for Fake. To be honest, if I was going to pick my favorite based on how many times I’ve watched it in the last ten years, F for Fake would win.
Looking at Japanese films, we have Lady Snowblood; Sex and Fury; two films from the Yakuza Papers film series; and Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart in the Land of Demons, my favorite film in the Lone Wolf and Cub series.
I’m still going to stick with Paper Moon. I’ve been watching it since I was a kid when it was still a fairly recent film. And I still love it.
But, wow, 1973 has a lot of great films. It would be very hard to pick a favorite if I seriously started trying to rank the films I’ve mentioned.
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