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Post by rberman on Dec 28, 2019 9:34:01 GMT -5
So I recently stumbled into Phantom Force, an Image series that Kirby was involved with. I had no idea this existed, and the thought that there is a 90's polybagged comic with a (very cool) Kirby trading card amazes me. I bought the first couple of issues (dollar bin deals!). It's not Kirby at his peak of course, and probably only made worse by Liefeld and McFarlane inks (although Jim Lee does a great job) but it's still Kirby. If I were to recommend an issue definitely go with Phantom Force #2, which is 55 pages of Kirby pencils! Looks like this issue may have also been one of his last works before he died too. There is also lots of background info, interviews and more about Kirby working with Image. Also some great tribute stuff, down even to the eulogies given at Kirby's funeral. Cross-posted from the Original Art thread since it's germane here: One collecting goal I didn't think I'd easily achieve was to own a Kirby original. But I was able to get this late Kirby pin-up of the character Kublak from his Phantom Force published by Image Comics in 1994. The art seems better than Kirby's 80s output for DC; perhaps he spent more time on a pin-up. If anybody deserved the creator rights that Image offered, it's Kirby! Sadly, this issue was published posthumously in April 1994; Kirby had died in February. Here's the character in context (in Phantom Force #2), inked by Michael Thibodeaux, who took over pencils in issue #3 and returned the series to his own Genesis West imprint. Issue #1 contained tributes from Image's founders, with Rob Liefeld providing a lengthy explanation of the project's origins.
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Post by rberman on Dec 28, 2019 9:26:59 GMT -5
One collecting goal I didn't think I'd easily achieve was to own a Kirby original. But I was able to get this late Kirby pin-up of the character Kublak from his Phantom Force work for Image Comics in 1994. The art seems better than Kirby's 80s output for DC; perhaps he spent more time on a pin-up. If anybody deserved the creator rights that Image offered, it's Kirby! Sadly, this issue was published posthumously in April 1994; Kirby had died in February. Here's the character in context (in Phantom Force #2), inked by Michael Thibodeaux, who took over pencils in issue #3 and returned the series to his own Genesis West imprint. Issue #1 contained tributes from Image's founders, with Rob Liefeld providing a lengthy explanation of the project's origins.
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Post by rberman on Dec 28, 2019 8:59:48 GMT -5
I came to decide that the main purpose of the new trilogy was to be a stealth remake of the first trilogy, so that kids of today can watch a Star Wars that competes effects-wise with modern movies. A 40 year old film may have great story and characters but just won't hold their attention.This simply isn't true in my experience. I know of several young children (in the 6 and 12-year-old range) who have come to the original trilogy for the first time in recent years and they still find those films just as awesome and exciting as us older folks did back in the late '70s and early '80s. The fact that the effects are somewhat dated -- and, actually, they do still hold up extremely well -- doesn't matter to most kids. I mean, even thinking back to my own childhood, I loved old '60s episodes of Star Trek as a kid, even though I could see that the special effects were woefully dated compared to then-current space franchises like Star Wars or Battlestar Galactica, and so it is for kids today; they'll happily watch the SW original trilogy alongside newer fare, like the Harry Potter films or Guardians of the Galaxy or whatever, because those original SW films have a timeless magic to them. My own personal sample set of sci-fi loving children has had a different response.
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Post by rberman on Dec 27, 2019 16:22:51 GMT -5
That is a good point, but I suppose I could criticise it on many levels. I mean, I have little incentive to buy single issues now, not when they cost three or four quid. I'd rather wait for the trade because ten or twelve quid for a complete story is better than three or four quid for an incomplete tale. That's one other way of looking at it. I see little incentive to buy individual monthly issues. That distribution model is almost dead, and rightly so. I'd rather see a longer story with better art published less frequently.
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Post by rberman on Dec 27, 2019 16:18:13 GMT -5
What don't you like about it? I felt that the characters in TFA were lacking – Rey was just a Mary Sue who didn’t much interest me, Poe was boring (this was rectified in TLJ – he was cool in that one), Kylo Ren was an Emo, and BB-8 was just a R2-D2 rip-off. The only new character I liked was Finn. Well, I also found Maz Kanata interesting, but she was a relatively minor character. I came to decide that the main purpose of the new trilogy was to be a stealth remake of the first trilogy, so that kids of today can watch a Star Wars that competes effects-wise with modern movies. A 40 year old film may have great story and characters but just won't hold their attention. Finn=C3PO. He's cowardly, and fades into the background after the first 20 minutes show his escape from a Star Destroyer to a desert planet. Rey is Luke obviously; Poe is Han; Kylo is Vader; BB8 is R2. This is by design. Luke becomes Yoda. Chewie still gets to be Chewie. Yay! True, again by design. Those of us who grew up with fond memories of the original trilogy have no great need for the new trilogy. We're not the target audience for toy-buying. It could have been "blaze of glory" or "character moment." They went with the latter. It probably could have been better, though I don't have a brilliant idea how. Well, Luke does start TLJ as bitter, but he learns to fall in love with Star Wars again by the end of it. Mainly I regret the missed opportunity of seeing him fall out with Kylo in more than a thirty second flashback. It's true that the beginning of TFA does essentially reset the scenario to the beginning of ANH. Empire runs things, chasing rebels with Star Destroyers and TIE Fighters and Stormtroopers.
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Post by rberman on Dec 27, 2019 16:03:49 GMT -5
In the 1960s or early 1970s, a comic book could get by just facing Luke Cage (or whoever) up against a different foe every month. Strength-man. Jumping-man. Glue-man. Flying-man. Etc. But the aging audience wanted more character development. As the first season of the Luke Cage TV show demonstrated, there's a lot more to do with "strongman in Harlem" than have him rassle a different spandex foe in each installment. That's a good point - and one worthy of a future debate. I have to say that I am one of those ageing readers who actually prefers the era of standalone stories with occasional two-parters/three-parters. I'm reading the early Iron Fist stories thanks to picking up the "Essential" volume at a car boot sale, and while there is an arc, it's good to see a different opponent each month. I did enjoy the Luke Cage Netflix series, it's very compelling and engrossing. However, much like the Iron Fist series (which I also enjoyed), I can't help but think that fewer episodes might have worked. Or at least 3 3-parters with different opponents, perhaps tied into a larger arc. Both approaches can work, of course. But here's one thing I think about: as a kid, 12 Batman issues over a year meant 12 different opponents - or 11 if there was a two-parter. Today, with six-issue arcs being a 'thing', it means that in a calendar year, you're only really getting 2 stories/2 opponents. So if they published a Luke Cage comic today, and the first six-issue arc featured Bushmaster while the second six-issue arc featured Diamondback, we're only getting to see him battle two opponents in a year. It's part of the "writing for the trade" concept, I guess. I do think both approaches have their pros and cons. I was chatting about this recently with my brother (we were discussing classic TV vs. modern TV). The benefit of something like The A-Team and The Six Million Dollar Man is that, while you didn't really get character development/long arcs, you got lots of different stories in a season - and could watch them in any order. Today we get season-long arcs in a lot of shows, often featuring one antagonist. That does mean you have to watch every episode in order. The benefits are that you get a lot of character development and depth, but you are only really getting one story. I am happy for both TV and comic books to move into longer form storytelling. The opportunities of stand-alone stories were largely exhausted throughout the 20th century for both forms of media. If one wants to read self-contained comic book stories in which the hero punches until the villain falls down, a lifetime's worth of those already exist.
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Post by rberman on Dec 27, 2019 14:34:30 GMT -5
Superhero origins tend to grow more complex over time as writers look for new character hooks. Take Storm of the X-Men. Under Len Wein's pen, she started off as a member of an African tribe, a mutant who thought her powers were divine until she learned about the outside world. Simple! Chris Claremont made her backstory far more complicated in X-Men #102, giving her an American father, a "Kenyan princess" mother, a birth in Harlem, and a childhood tragedy linked to the 1956 war in which Israel (backed by the UK and France, against protests by the USA) seized the Suez Canal from Egypt. Ororo gained an Oliver Twist dimension to her backstory as a child prodigy thief on the streets of Cairo, and a weakness for enclosed spaces. But let's go back to Wein's original story. Better yet, let's go back to the late 19th century, when Aloysius Horn was an ivory trader in central Africa. Here he is later, in 1929, at the age of 78. Horn was the subject of a 1927 memoir 'Trader Horn; Being the Life and Works of Aloysius Horn, an "Old Visiter" ... the works written by himself at the age of seventy-three and the life, with such of his philosophy as is the gift of age and experience, taken down and here edited by Ethelreda Lewis." The book was quickly adapted into a film, the first non-documentary film shot by Americans in Africa, nominated for an Academy Award for best picture in 1931, starring Harry Carey as Horn. In order to add sex appeal to this pre-Hayes Code film, a fictional sub-plot was introduced in which Horn finds a crop-wielding young white woman living as a goddess in Sub-Saharan Africa. In the video clip below, she enters the scene around the 67:30 minute mark. Actress Edwina Booth contracted a tropical disease during filming and was unable to work for years afterward. Now, white "jungle queens" were not exactly rare in that era, whether in comic books, pulps, or cinema, as pretext for stories about uncovered female forms. But what caught my attention was this particular advertisement for the film, in which the "White Goddess" (as her character was called) looks more like a dark-skinned woman with white hair: Dave Cockrum had already been designing a black superhero for The Outsiders before using his work for the new X-Men series, but she looked more like actress Pam Grier. The flowing white hair and blue eyes came later. This made me wonder how much Wein's original Ororo idea was informed by jungle queen stories in general, and the film Trader Horn in particular, and perhaps even this very poster.
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Post by rberman on Dec 27, 2019 12:48:20 GMT -5
Am I the only one who despise The Force Awakens? I actually prefer the prequels to it. What don't you like about it?
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Post by rberman on Dec 27, 2019 11:23:19 GMT -5
It all depends how consistently the powers are being written. Someone like The Flash should be able to handle anything because of his instantaneous reactions, but he's rarely written so omnipotently. Likewise Superman, who has all that plus a whole lot more.
Q is not intended to be defeated physically. He's more of a Satan figure who shows up to tempt the heroes and then stalks off when they show their moral fiber.
Most superheroes should be susceptible to psychological attacks, blackmail, kidnapped loved ones, etc. Poison gas or oxygen deprivation. Heroes with melee attacks can be immobilized in midair by anti-grav, strong winds, forcefields...
Iron Fist would not fare well against beam weapons (lasers) or area weapons (grenades) or gas attacks.
In the 1960s or early 1970s, a comic book could get by just facing Luke Cage (or whoever) up against a different foe every month. Strength-man. Jumping-man. Glue-man. Flying-man. Etc. But the aging audience wanted more character development. As the first season of the Luke Cage TV show demonstrated, there's a lot more to do with "strongman in Harlem" than have him rassle a different spandex foe in each installment.
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Post by rberman on Dec 26, 2019 23:53:32 GMT -5
I got one more page from the following issue, in which The Wasp is under attack.
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Post by rberman on Dec 26, 2019 18:47:16 GMT -5
But a) he didn't mention his own perceptions, and b) just because the comics weren't reaching a wide enough audience doesn't make Batman a joke. Even if only, say, 310 people were buying the comics, they were still dark. Batman wasn't literally a joke. He was wrong to say what he did. I think we can assume that any given speaker is speaking from his own perception. If 80,000 people are reading moody Denny O'Neil Batman while 20 million people are watching goofy Batman on Super-Friends, then the predominant "Batman" of that day is goofy. Just as Star-Lord is now a comedy character thanks to the Guardians of the Galaxy movies.
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Post by rberman on Dec 26, 2019 17:57:51 GMT -5
There's something called Superheroes Decoded on the Blaze channel right now. I've got it on as "background noise". One person (I didn't get his name) claimed that Batman was literally a joke prior to Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns. First of all, incorrect use of literally. Secondly, if I have my Bat-history right, while the shadow of the Adam West series loomed large for years and years after the show, didn't Batman return to his dark roots long before Miller's story? I remember reading dark tales as a kid. And the 80s annuals I bought had reprints of 70s stories like "A Vow From The Grave" and "The Joker's Five-Way Revenge". They weren't a joke at all. Please correct me if I have my Bat-History wrong, but judging by what some say, you'd think Batman's camp exploits were taking place a day before Miller's The Dark Knight Returns was published. To my knowledge, the dystopian Batman resurfaced (in the comics) not that long after the West show had been cancelled. If Denny O'Neil's "Dark Detective" of the early 1970s was "literally a joke" then I'd hate to see what a serious Batman looks like! Sounds like somebody was speaking who knew 1960s Batman but not 1970s or late pre-Crisis Batman.
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Post by rberman on Dec 26, 2019 16:14:29 GMT -5
1. ANH 2. ESB 3. RO 4. RotJ 5. TFA 6. RoS 7. Solo 8. TLJ (the good parts) 9. TPM 10. AotC 11. RotS Dumb question, I'm sure, but assuming that #11 (RoTS) is Revenge of the Sith, what is #6 (RoS)? Rise of Skywalker.
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Post by rberman on Dec 26, 2019 15:53:06 GMT -5
1. ANH 2. ESB 3. RO 4. RotJ 5. TFA 6. RoS 7. Solo 8. TLJ (the good parts) 9. TPM 10. AotC 11. RotS
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Post by rberman on Dec 26, 2019 15:04:14 GMT -5
Robotman and the New Teen Titans (from issue #14-15) would have been a good one. Grant Morrison's Seaguy prominently featured a weird bearded parody of Red Sonja: Lots of team-ups got iced by the "no teams" rule and the "classic = 10 years" rule, including X-Men/Teen Titans and Legion of Three Worlds. Also Squirrel Girl/Howard the Duck: And Wolverine/Ms. Marvel:
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