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Post by rberman on Dec 26, 2023 8:26:25 GMT -5
Strikeforce Morituri (1986-1990)Strikeforce: Morituri #1-20 Strikeforce: Morituri #21-31 Strikeforce Morituri: Electric Undertow #1–5 The first twenty issues of Strikeforce: Morituri are excellent. I could have done without the superhero names and costumes but thought the book had an excellent premise. When I was a kid, other publishers would sometimes poke fun at the X-Men for being the "death book." Gillis presented us with a gruesome premise where characters could die in any given panel, and often did. Death book, indeed. He clearly had a strong personal vision for the series, however, and I have the greatest of respect for any comic book writer who was able to come up with a successful team book in the shadow of Claremont's X-Men. I wish he had stayed on the book for another five issues, or so, to wrap up his story completely instead of having it discarded by James Hudnall. Hudnall's run is readable, but it takes the series in an entirely different direction from the original premise and undoes almost everything Gillis created. A young Mark Bagley can't compete with Brent Anderson, though his pencils look better in the prestige format Electric Undertow series. Anderson's pencils are on the original run are fantastic, though his character design improved greatly while working on Astro City. I would call the original series more of a Shooter book than a DeFalco one. The expensive prestige format book under DeFalco left the door open for more SF Morituri stories, but they never came to fruition. There was potential to keep the concept going in a similar format to the way Alien Legion kept rolling along, though Bagley was about to break through, and I doubt he would have been available for future stories. Overall, I was glad I read this series and would definitely recommend the first 20 issues as an under-the-radar alternative to the mainstream Marvel books of the time. I agree. Here is our review thread covering the Gillis/Anderson run.
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Post by rberman on Dec 26, 2023 8:13:48 GMT -5
Regarding the whole vigilante with guns crime fighter, I don't think anyone mentioned The Shadow. Or another character based in part on the Shadow. His villains regularly fell to their deaths while fighting him, and he was not at all sorry when they died. Thus in his first story: He was still throwing villains to their deaths, then mocking them, in the early Bronze Age. On the splash page of Detective Comics #35, he brandished a gun, though he only punched in the story itself. He did use silver bullets to execute a pair of sleeping vampires in issue #34 though.
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Post by rberman on Dec 24, 2023 10:37:09 GMT -5
Thank you for this survey! You gave good context for this pivotal era in American comics.
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Post by rberman on Dec 1, 2023 12:53:46 GMT -5
January & February 1990
Betsy Braddock has been turned into an Asian ninja assassin, which I thought was completely badass as a kid but now wonder what the hell Claremont was thinking. On the other hand, Asian Psylocke was more interesting than the Psylocke that ran around in that purple cloak. Claremont was thinking, "If I'm not allowed to use Elektra, I'll make my own Psylektra!" And people ate it up (and still do), so I guess he was right.
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Post by rberman on Dec 1, 2023 12:19:46 GMT -5
September & October 1991Byrne returns to She-Hulk and pokes fun at himself on the cover by trying to replace the issue number with #9. Probably wasn't as cute if you were a Marvel editor. I don't think I mentioned the prestige format She-Hulk book that forced Byrne to quit in protest, largely because I didn't notice it when I was going through the monthly releases. Is that the "Ceremony" graphic novel by Dwayne McDuffie and Robin Chaplik? Knowing Byrne, he objected 50% to the concept of someone else writing a character that he was writing, and 50% to something they had that character do.
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Post by rberman on Nov 29, 2023 16:11:17 GMT -5
Speaking of Transformers and "There, I said it".... I just rewatched all the seasons of the G1 cartoon this week plus the movie. It struck me how GOOD the storytelling could be at times, and how gorgeous the visuals were. Cybertron stuff is like straight-up Sci-Fi, forget the "oh, it's just a toy commercial" nonsense. I'd put some of the best story arcs up there as better than most 60's comics. There, I said it...fire away at me haha!! I watched S1 and part of S2 with my boys recently, and it held up much better than He-Man. S2 is so astonishingly long so that they could rapidly hit the syndication threshold.
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Post by rberman on Nov 29, 2023 8:44:13 GMT -5
Promethea #1Oh, wait, that's the 5 Neat Guys. These are the swell guys... Leaving behind the esoteric, we get the fairly common supernatural tale of an innocent pulled into a world with powerful, unseen forces and a mantle is thrust upon them. They must take it up and fight against evil. Standard archetype. Meanwhile, it would seem that this world is technologically advanced, relative to our own, matching similar things in both Tom Strong and the future Top Ten. It is a world of science heroes, as witnessed by the 5 Swell Guys. American readers will tend to identify the 5 Swell Guys with the Fantastic Four and/or Challengers of the Unknown. True enough, but I suspect Moore is mashing them up with a British vigilante group not as well known to Americans. The Four Just Men were the protagonists of a series of six British novels by Edgar Wallace (co-author of King Kong) between 1905 and 1928. They were wealthy men who dedicated their leisure time to crimefighting, a la Bruce Wayne. There was no particular science fiction element, however. Films were made of their exploits in 1921 and 1939, plus the 1959 TV series seen above. Alan Moore would have been six years old when it aired.
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Post by rberman on Nov 25, 2023 18:28:09 GMT -5
As a kid I only liked color superhero comics. Now I appreciate how black and white titles often had much more detail, which I enjoy. Also, superheroes are fine, but I wish the American market had more successful non-superhero titles. In both senses of "more" -- more titles having more success. Though these days, I really just hope for any title having more success.
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Post by rberman on Nov 25, 2023 13:22:33 GMT -5
The rape aspect of Avengers #200 has become deservedly infamous over time. It's puzzling that Michelinie added that element at all. It's not even suggested by the art, just a caption. Two captions really: once for Immortus courting a woman he rescued from the Titanic, and once for Marcus courting Carol Danvers. The mention of the "subtle" effect of Immortus' machines is completely unnecessary in either case. Why not just say that both men practiced successful seduction, or even sincere courtship? It's the Marvel Method gone awry, a few extra words needlessly damaging the story. Was this an editorial emendation by Jim Salicrup, on grounds that Carol never would have fallen for Marcus?
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Post by rberman on Nov 12, 2023 14:56:26 GMT -5
Howard Chaykin had very nice things to say about Dorothy Woolfolk in this interview today on Comic Art Live. He talks about Gil Kane making amends with the industry, and the problems of decompressed narrative. He makes an interesting observation that modern comics writers and artists read comics, but not novels written for adults.
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Post by rberman on Nov 12, 2023 8:18:24 GMT -5
I was wrong about Denny O'Neil; it's Len Wein who was the inspiration for Cain. He also appeared in the Rutland party scene in Batman #237. Note that Abel (Joe Orlando's assistant Mark Hanerfeld) is just above Cain in the top panel.
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Post by rberman on Nov 9, 2023 23:25:11 GMT -5
In our "mod Wonder Woman" thread, we discussed how Mike Sekowsky put DC staff in his books. So I'm wondering who the distinctive folks in this scene ( Adventure Comics #421, page 3) are. The bald guy could be Carmine Infantino. The hippie with the beard looks like Denny O'Neil, who was also the model for Cain in House of Mystery. Any guesses for the other three?
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Post by rberman on Oct 22, 2023 12:25:44 GMT -5
Logically, supervillains wearing masks makes no sense, once their identities become public knowledge. If Electro has spent time in jail, he’s known to the world. So in a real-world sense, it is illogical that they’d continue to hide their faces. However, this is why I try to remember that comicbook logic and real-world logic must often be separated, because while there’s no real-world logic to someone like Electro keeping a mask, it does look great from a visual perspective.
I just think of the mask as part of the costume, whether to hide an identity or just as a decoration.
Agree with @supercat2099 about Electro's mask.
In the recent Spider-Man film, it was a halo of actual electricity crackling off of his head, which made more sense than a distinctive but unwieldy mask. They got to have their cake and eat it too.
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Post by rberman on Oct 17, 2023 21:07:36 GMT -5
I like Liefeld, which is not the same as liking all his art. He'll never be my favorite artist, but he does have a fun energy. And he has a real and unabashed enthusiasm for comics. He also doesn't mind a laugh at his own expense, including the infamous Cap piece which he agrees is not his best work. Energy spent hating on him would be better directed elsewhere.
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Post by rberman on Oct 17, 2023 11:50:37 GMT -5
Here's one I found heartwarming. There was a little boy with Down Syndrome who was obsessed with superheroes and refused to wear his hearing aid because "Superheroes don't wear hearing aids." His family contacted Marvel Comics. Marvel sent him some comics in which Hawkeye talked about wearing his hearing aid. They also created a new hero for him, Blue Ear, who used his hearing aid to fight crime. Sometime later, Blue Ear reappeared as a character in a one-shot comic book that Marvel produced for the Children's Hearing Institute, an NYC-area nonprofit which helps children with hearing aids and cochlear implants. In it, Blue Ear gained a secret identity as Doctor Pedro Perez, who works with Tony Stark. In the comic book, a tween girl with a cochlear implant has an adventure alongside Blue Ear and Iron Man, in the process gaining Solid Light powers like the ones Kamala Khan used later on the Ms. Marvel TV show.
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