|
|
Post by Reptisaurus! on Oct 10, 2015 17:47:40 GMT -5
I rated it among my Top 5. I think its significant for being one of the first, and only, instances of later creators taking a Lee/Kirby concept and vastly improving it across the board. The only runs I'd put in front of it in terms of significance and influence are the first 100 issues or so of Fantastic Four and Amazing Spider-Man. I think the first few issues of Mad are by far the most important American comic books, but in terms of Silver-Age and up superhero comics I'd agree with you. I'd probably call the Seigel and Schuster Superman the most significant and influential superhero run, for obvious reasons. It does feel like "pure superhero" in a way that most newer and older comics don't - Like the Silver Age Julie Schwartz superhero books are put together by creators who (clearly) don't care much about superheroes per se, and are basically writing the kind of sci-fi and mystery stories they grew up on with a superhero gloss. Or the Gerber and Englehart superhero stories from the '70s are as much social psychology as pure superhero books. I see what you mean about 1977-1983. That's the only time period where most of the writers grew up on Stan and Kirby's Marvel but before Alan Moore completely rewrote the rules. S Again I agree, but I see this as a huge problem with the tone of Modern Superhero books. I think it's easier to write with Julie Schwartz or Stan Lee or Warren Ellis style tongue-in-cheek ironic distance from superheroes than Claremont/Busiek/Bendis (to pick 3 of the better writers) style completely serious narratives, and I think the genre lends itself to goofy humor - which has been lost over the last 40-or-so years. I don't think making superhero books less realistic and more goofy would make them any less adult or artistically viable - James Joyce and Stanley Kubrick and Andy Warhol and E. E. Cummings all have a strong goofy streak to their work, ferinstance - but I think this would open up a plethora of storytelling and tonal options. |
|
|
|
Post by berkley on Oct 10, 2015 21:39:16 GMT -5
I rate the Claremont/Byrne run among the highest defining series ever for me personally. And of course you have to understand this was the late 70's/1980 era, not a lot of variety at this point in terms of quality going on at Marvel. FF, ASM & Avengers were still ok, but the best runs of those series were already history. Uncanny X-Men stood out because it was different, the art was amazing, the writing was stellar, the characters were exciting and not just your typical average ALL AMERICAN super-team. No, we finally had characters who were more diverse in color and nationality & appealed to a more mass audience. Wolverine did not fit your typical mold of a classical super-hero, he was temperamental & prone to kill if necessary. The stories were epic, building gradually to the dark phoenix saga and then to days of future past. Ok, I have a confession to make...I was 14 years old & purchased X-Men #135 at the local drug store...this was my first X-Men experience & I did not understand it at all. So after I bought it, read it & discovered it was a continued story so I took it back to the drug store and asked to exchange it for a Batman comic book. LOL, it was another year before I discovered & understood how truly amazing X-Men really was at that time. Good point about the international personnel of the then-new team. That was a a big part of their appeal to me as well at the time, even though I never cared much for the one Canadian character, Wolverine, as it happened - and still don't, to this day. |
|
|
|
Post by berkley on Oct 10, 2015 21:58:44 GMT -5
I rated it among my Top 5. I think its significant for being one of the first, and only, instances of later creators taking a Lee/Kirby concept and vastly improving it across the board. The only runs I'd put in front of it in terms of significance and influence are the first 100 issues or so of Fantastic Four and Amazing Spider-Man. I think the first few issues of Mad are by far the most important American comic books, but in terms of Silver-Age and up superhero comics I'd agree with you. I'd probably call the Seigel and Schuster Superman the most significant and influential superhero run, for obvious reasons. Totally agree about the importance of MAD. Even within the seemingly unrelated genre of superhero comics I think it was hugely influential on Stan and was one of the main sources of what he brought to his superhero writing, what made it so different and fresh compared to what had gone before. [/quote] Excellent points all round, by Trebor as well. One problem I have with Marvel's more recent efforts at bringing "realism" (usually it's more a matter of bringing in conventions from other genres, themselves not actually realist but seen as such by the casual reader) to their superhero comics is that they're kind of namby-pamby - afraid to pursue the supposed real-world implications with any boldness. Compared with something like Ennis's The Boys, for example - not that The Boys itself isn't without its own lapses into some very unlikely scenarios, but it does attempt to explore the consequences of its premise with infinitely more courage and insight than anything from the Big Two and thus renders their efforts in that vein both superfluous and somewhat embarrassing. Re the colourful uniforms, I think they make sense within the contesxt of the genre and when you mess with that even a little the results are either aesthetically drab and displeasing (e.g.as with Wonder Man's safari jacket) or unintentionally ludicrous (e.g. giving the Sub-Mariner a beer gut). If you're writing superhero comics just accept that colourful, skin-tight costumes are part of the deal - not an embarrassment, but one of the appeals, like the colourful pageantry of the legends and romances of knights in armour, say. |
|
|
|
Post by Nowhere Man on Oct 11, 2015 0:36:45 GMT -5
To make it clear, I was talking about the significance of MARVEL series only. If we're sticking with the form over genre, I think it's hard to compete with Hal Fosters monolithic 40+ year run on Prince Valiant or Will Eisner's The Spirit. In terms of superhero comics, I do think that Marvel has the majority of historically important long runs, at least in terms of the superhero genre itself.
|
|
|
|
Post by berkley on Oct 11, 2015 0:56:20 GMT -5
To make it clear, I was talking about the significance of MARVEL series only. If we're sticking with the form over genre, I think it's hard to compete with Hal Fosters monolithic 40+ year run on Prince Valiant or Will Eisner's The Spirit. In terms of superhero comics, I do think that Marvel has the majority of historically important long runs, at least in terms of the superhero genre itself. As far as superhero comics are concerned I agree, but readily acknowledge that that may partly be due to the fact that I haven't read nearly as much as DC as I have Marvel. But then again, that's because I've never felt the appeal of most of the popular DC characters and series that are usually cited in various "top 100" or "all-time greatest" lists, and the exceptions would include a lot of things that arguably aren't part of the superhero genre, like Swamp Thing and pretty much all Kirby's DC stuff. |
|
|
|
Post by mikelmidnight on Apr 24, 2016 14:00:02 GMT -5
One of the classic and much superior runs on any team strip. However, a lot of Claremont's soap operatic flaws become evident in retrospect, which makes the issues difficult for me to reread.
|
|
|
|
Post by Roquefort Raider on Apr 24, 2016 17:38:42 GMT -5
3) Hugely over-rated, Claremont sucked until Sovereign Seven and John Byrne was a mere novice, certainly not equal to the titan of the industry who gave us Spider-Man: Year One.; All right, that made me laugh out loud for a good long while. Well played, sir! |
|
