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Post by Nowhere Man on Oct 22, 2019 15:11:29 GMT -5
Just to be clear...you consider THE HULK to be a C-List hero? No, not at all. I was referring more to Ewing's Ultimates and Royals. But I can understand how it might have sounded that way Just curious. The whole A/B/C list thing is I’ll defined as it is and you might be surprised how some fans perceive things. 😉
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Post by Nowhere Man on Oct 22, 2019 8:11:24 GMT -5
Immortal Hulk #1-#3 I've never been interested in The Hulk in my entire life, but I'll be damned if Ewing can't pen an intriguing story of melancholy horror. Hopefully this will lead to him getting more high profile work instead of working with just C-list heroes. I get the feeling that he'd do a pretty good run on Captain America, maybe even rivaling Gruenwald's Just to be clear...you consider THE HULK to be a C-List hero?
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Post by Nowhere Man on Sept 27, 2019 21:14:04 GMT -5
Super Powers all the way. I’ve always been more of a Marvel guy than DC, but since I was still a big DC fan as a kid, it was no contest. The DC line was superior in every way. They were basically Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez art in physical form. The biggest knock on Secret Wars for me was the lack of a Hulk figure. Clearly it was a cost cutting issue since all the Marvel figures were from the same mold but it’s still unthinkable. It’s akin to Super Powers skipping Batman given that the Hulk was easily Marvels second most popular hero next to Spider-Man. After all, Kenner produced Darkseid which was at a larger scale and separate mold.
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Post by Nowhere Man on Sept 9, 2019 5:43:43 GMT -5
John Romita Jr Jim Aparo John Byrne Is that true? That can't be true. In the case of Byrne, not true at all. Most of Byrne's contributions have been minor additions, redesigns and supporting characters, true, but he created or co-created: Ant-Man (Scott Lang), Kitty Pryde, Emma Frost and Sabretooth. Those four have been very lucrative for Marvel, particularly of late. Not to mention great yet less prominent creations like Alpha Flight, The Hellfire Club, Terrax, Omega Red and Proteus.
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Post by Nowhere Man on Aug 16, 2019 5:42:21 GMT -5
Didio expanded on his thoughts about the current market in an interview with ICv2Didio seems to understand that they need to expand the customer base and it's not going to come form the current direct market customer base if they continue the strategies that have been in lace by direct market publishers for the past (two) decade(s). Now whether he can actually successfully implement anything to address that is another matter altogether. -M It’s heartening that he’s willing to be honest about many of the flaws in the current model. That said, it’s interesting how he avoids outright naming things like over-reliance on events and decompressed storytelling in a serialized format.
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Post by Nowhere Man on Jul 19, 2019 9:24:21 GMT -5
Detective Comics #475 & 476... the Joker 'Laughing Fish' two-part story. Pretty good if not earth-shakingly historic (not that I want that) and it seems Steve Englehart stopped writing comics for awhile after this. I like the subplot about Silver St.Cloud and even imagined a scenario where she decides to become a protector of Batman as 'The Silver Shadow' with a light gun that can be deployed on his foes from a distance at crucial moments. Finally he would recognize who this mystery assistant is and they'd become more formally a team and she wouldn't have to wear an overcoat and big floppy hat to disguise herself from him but wear a grey and black outfit and get some Bats-designed gadgets perhaps. Something that didn't fit so well though was the ghost business. It's one thing that the guilty Rupert Thorne sees and hears him, but for Hugo Strange in ghost form to lead Batman to something he will later need is a bit more than the 'hint of a ghost' in one person's mind... I re-read this recently as I was gearing up for my massive--probably till I'm 60+ years old to finish since I have so much on my reading plate--Batman 1979-1992 readathon. Still love this story. Though it was fun to get to read the actual issue this time as opposed to the Strange Apparitions trade. I loved how BTAS combined this story with the classic Denny O'Neil/Neal Adams story "The Joker's Five Way Revenge!"
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Post by Nowhere Man on Jul 18, 2019 16:32:21 GMT -5
Yeah, that Hulk figure might be my favorite design yet. The Thor figure is really nice as well. I have to say that I like all of them, save for Iron Man's mask, though it might just be how the photo came out. I have a few of the older Legend's figures: Hulk, Thor, Dr. Doom, Dr. Strange, Silver Surfer and the Thing. Overall, I think this is Marvel's most impressive line of figures.
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Post by Nowhere Man on Jul 18, 2019 16:23:51 GMT -5
At the end of the day, Star Trek dropped the ball with the Borg by missing out on a clear, no-brainer connection: That's right. I know I'm on an island with this, but when the Federation finally infiltrated the Borg cube, that man should have been at the center of it all.
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Post by Nowhere Man on Jul 18, 2019 14:42:35 GMT -5
Steve Rude doing a Marvel series might have gotten me try out a new Marvel book outside of Conan and Star Wars. I get where hondo is coming from with his "this is what's wrong with Marvel" comment. It seems like the newer creator's (usually artists) I'm interested in are always wasted on crappy event's, teamed with mediocre modern writers or just not prolific enough.
When a "classic" creator is in talks with Marvel, it always seems to end badly. I'm guessing it has more to do with page rates and the creator's feeling that they're too established to put up with the BS of the modern corporate structure of the Big Two. The way Jim Starlin was treated recently was disgraceful.
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Post by Nowhere Man on Jul 18, 2019 4:59:42 GMT -5
I bought the first trade on Comixology (along with Monstress Vol.1) during a sale awhile back but its still in my Image to read list. I was on a strong Image kick a few years ago, mainly because of Saga, Autumnlands and Five Ghosts, but I've shifted to reading primarily classic material of late. I've come to the conclusion that I have to read modern series in trade/arc format or I'll lose interest in the individual issues if I take too long of a break.
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Post by Nowhere Man on Jul 17, 2019 21:49:09 GMT -5
Re-reading the Lee / Ditko original run of Amazing Spider-Man. The older I get the harder they are to read; sad to think that if Ditko hit the market now he wouldn't make it in this business. I still really love the Ditko art, but seriously, not just here but in most of Lee's dialogue, it's got some real painful spots that are hard to swallow. I respect what he did, which hadn't been done the Marvel way before, and I like Stan and all, and yet, I'm kind of looking forward to finally getting through the series. Weird ? Not weird. As far as Ditko goes, I'm a huge fan of his 60's work but my main interest is his endlessly inventive designs on Dr. Strange. As great as he was on Spider-Man, I think the series took off visually when Romita Sr. arrived. Of the original three Marvel Age founding father artists, I think it's fair to say that only Kirby evolved and got better over time. Ditko and Heck were both surpassed in talent and dynamism by Buscema and Romita. I agree with other members who think that Lee's best and most readable work was on Amazing Spider-Man. Lee's writing was strongest the more he had the opportunity to be glib and humorous, and seeing as how he knew the publishing business so well, it was magnified anytime he got to write J.J. Jameson and Spidey's Daily Bugle supporting cast. I just finished reading Avengers #10 today and it's plain to see that it was pure generic hack-work compared to his work on FF and Spider-Man. That being said, I think I underrated his writing on X-Men the first time I read those early Lee/Kirby issues. Honestly, most pre-70's writing is an acquired taste that has to be accepted for the fun, often absurd, approach that it took. I'm also reading the Roy Thomas Conan series (currently on #13) and it's very interesting how modern the writing is on that series as early as 1972. In my opinion the dialog, or most of it, would hold up today. Obviously a lot of this had to do with the genre and Thomas not feeling constrained by superhero tropes.
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Post by Nowhere Man on Jul 16, 2019 18:18:20 GMT -5
This thread made me think of the first series of Marvel trading cards that came out in 1990. Each hero/villain had a win percentage based on wins, losses and ties. I'm 99.9% certain that these numbers were completely fabricated for the set, but I wouldn't have put it past Mark Gruenwald to have done the research...
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Post by Nowhere Man on Jul 16, 2019 17:55:25 GMT -5
What is it about modern superhero/villian team names that irritates me? The Intelligencia, The Illuminati, etc. I think it's the intentional avoidance of joyfully preposterous adjectives in favor of bland modernity. Well, that's the point: since the 1970s, and real intelligence agencies and their activities came to the forefront (including those we were not supposed to know existed), fiction has tried to move away--slowly but surely--from the stereotypical "comic booky", Bond-ian type group names, which some believe sound childish to today's ears. Names don't matter as long as their purpose is believable and well written. Clearly I'm aware of the real-world implications and trends. My point is that those old names were joyfully bombastic, which is part of the reason many of them are so well remembered. I'm of the camp that's perfectly okay with some aspects of superhero comics being intentionally absurd (while some aspects are topical, tragic, etc.)
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Post by Nowhere Man on Jul 14, 2019 17:26:27 GMT -5
I think Batman was much more popular then among fans than Superman. We read all the O'Neill/Adams books and the Englehart/Rodgers. They were innovative and not same old,same old like Superman. While Miller's work did great things for Batman's profile, he was already popular and discussed with the fans. You could not say the same for Supes until Byrne. I agree. I think the stratospheric ascendance of Batman post-1989 confuses the issue. It took a few years for DKR's to permeate the collective conscious of fandom. Really around 1989 and the movie. I'm currently reading Batman 1979 on, and he was heavily promoted in the DC comics, if that says anything. He also starred in just as many series as Superman, even before the movie and at the height of Superman's movie popularity. Batman always seemed to be the DC character that even dieheard Marvel Zombies thought was cool.
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Post by Nowhere Man on Jul 14, 2019 17:18:26 GMT -5
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