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Post by comicscube on Jul 7, 2014 22:26:03 GMT -5
Any time you see someone talk about a dated style, I think you have to assume they have fairly limited/specific tastes. Nothing wrong with that, but as a criticism "dated" is pretty weak for me. It's rarely about era, so much as just the person's style. Marv Wolfman gets the "dated" thing for a lot of his work, and I've seen Perez's 70s work called "less-dated" than his 80s, often enough. I always end up wondering, though, if there's a financial angle in it, too. I have to admit, much as I like stuff from all different eras, part of that's because buying older movies can be cheap, quarter bins were my go to at comics shops, the free stations on TV are usually rerun-happy. I loved 70s Detective Comics and Lois Lane when I was a kid, because they were often in the cheap bins and stuffed with reprints as well as then-new stories, but even the then-new were by the time I had them fifteen or twenty years old. If I could've afforded more new comics, if we didn't have old comics or old movies sitting around all the time at home, would I have felt this mysterious "it's dated" thing? Likely reading comics in a chronological order will do that to you. I read whatever I can get my hands on, and being dated in style wouldn't occur to me (it would for things like the portrayal of technology, politics, etc.). But I know people who are casual readers who just kind of read what's new. Even if they started reading in the 80s, for example, they can't read 80s comics now. Their tastes shifted along with the way comics storytelling developed. |
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Jul 8, 2014 0:40:27 GMT -5
I don't know. I find the original Teen Titans run "dated" because it specifically attempts to capture the zietgiest of that time period. The slang and references only make sense within the context of the Mod Scene.
Brother Power the Geek (you're welcome, Dan Bailey) is a similar example of this.
Additionally, there's an unmistakable silliness in Atom Age DC, and a campiness in early Silver Age Marvel, that can be appropriately attributed to a specific era. Just try retelling the plot of Fantastic Four #5 in a Modern Age comic.
I don't think it's automatically wrong to accuse a comic of feeling "dated," but it's certainly a label that gets overused by ignorant readers.
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Post by The Captain on Jul 8, 2014 7:23:40 GMT -5
I recently gave up on my read-through of Uncanny X-Men around issue #350, as I'd already read the issues starting with #281 and just got bored rereading the series. So, after going a couple of months reading random series and issues to cleanse my palate, I started a major project tonight. I'm going to read the entire Captain America series from late-Tales of Suspense up through the end of Brubaker's run, which I read as it was coming out but could stand to reread it. I started with Tales of Suspense #82 tonight (just the Cap portions, which I have in Cap's Masterworks #2) and got through #95. Really liked Kirby's art at this period, as most of my other experiences with him (Black Panther, Eternals) did nothing for me; the work in ToS was much more "normal" instead of the oddly-misshapen forms that I'd encountered in those later books. By the late 70's, Kirby was dealing with a degenerative eye condition. That's what caused the distortion in his later art. I did not know that, but I'm not the comics historian that some of you are; I collect and read, but I've never really dug into the people and personalities too deeply. This puts his later work in much better perspective for me. Thanks, Scott! |
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Post by bashbash99 on Jul 8, 2014 13:59:09 GMT -5
Well, in addition to continuing my sojourn thru the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers Omnibus (the trio just got back from a trip to Mexico), I finished the Stray Bullets omnibus I picked up last month. Its debatable whether Stray Bullets adheres to the 10-year rule for "classic" since El Capitan published the penultimate issue (40) in 2005 and the finale was only published this year!!
some SPOILERS below, I suppose.
In the late 90s/early 00's, I owned many of the floppies but lost some of them during a move. As a 20-something who really dug Pulp Fiction, I was really into this series for quite awhile but abandoned it towards the end when protagonist Virginia Applejack returned home and was going back to high school. I'm glad I quit reading because 9 years is an awfully long wait to finish reading the final story arc!! Anyway..
PROS: Having all the issues in one tome allowed me to connect some of the plot points I had missed when reading scattered floppies. For example, the 1st time around I had missed that a lot of man-child Joey's erratic (homicidal) behavior in # 1 stems from experiences he had when Spanish Scott "babysat" him in # 23. (I enjoyed the skipping-around-in-time aspect to the series) And while David Lapham is working on new issues, the last issue #41 seems to provide reasonable closure to Virginia's arc as she has come full circle, once again leaving home but this time more on her own terms and with more confidence in her ability to survive. The fate of other characters remains somewhat of a mystery, but ultimately the series focus is on Virginia, and issues without Virginia are focusing on characters whose lives intersect with Virginia's somewhere along the way.
CONS: First of all, the few issues originally published in color are in B & W here (no big deal), and the omnibus doesn't have any extras or bonus features (again, no big deal). While I spread out my reading over a few weeks, I started to pick up speed/ rush as I got closer to the end (somewhat of a bad habit I have when it comes to books), and the issues started to get a little repetitive. When I was picking up floppies once a month (or so), this wasn't as noticeable. Also when you read them back-to-back the over-the-top violence and plot coincidences increasingly strain suspension of disbelief (How it is that every coke dealer in the world connects back to the unseen Harry somehow?).
Overall, while I may have been reading with somewhat rose-tinted glasses due to nostalgia, I really enjoyed the omnibus and am looking forward to the new arc "Stray Bullets: Killers" which I'm hoping will move past Virginia Applejack to look more at other characters.
Any other stray bullets fans out there?
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Post by gothos on Jul 8, 2014 15:26:54 GMT -5
I've been leafing through my old BORIS KARLOFF titles, and wrote a short piece on a couple issues for my ARCHETYPAL ARCHIVE blog. Here's the piece, but I bet the illos don't reproduce.
_________________
Horror comics from the 1960s can't compare with the mad, bad comics of the 1950s, but Gold Key's BORIS KARLOFF'S TALES OF MYSTERY was one of the better titles of the sixties. In general it managed to project a good sense of creepiness, even with the limitations of the Comics Code, and often boasted striking painted covers.
Take issue #10, from 1965. The cover story dealt with a couple of American entrepreneurs trying to unearth treasure from a volcano in Peru. They dismiss the idea that the area may be haunted by "the Hill Barbarians," a vicious gang of cutthroats who were vanquished centuries ago when the volcano went off and encased them all in lava. Naturally, the undead warriors, horses and all, come back to life when one of the entrepreneurs tampers with their burial site. In keeping with the Code, no one is violently killed by the spectres, but there's a creepy moment when one of the locals observes that the barbarians are wasting away to skeletons even as they ride against their old enemies.
The most puzzling aspect of the tale is that the uniforms of the warriors are clearly modeled on the Spanish conquistadors. Yet at first the writer refers to them as "the Hill Barbarians of Peru," as if they are native to the realm. Then later, the characters referring to the warriors as "the Spanish barbarians," though there's no still no acknowledgement that they're literal conquistadors. Maybe the unknown writer started out using conquistadors, but decided that he wanted them to be local bandits, who would be more likely to plunder Peruvian villages on a regular basis, rather than stealing from them legally, through taxation, as the conquistadors did.
A more satisfying refutation of European imperialism appears in BKTOM #24, from 1968. Suffice to say that the evil, red-bearded fellow on the cover ends up getting his from the magical "demon masks" of a tribe of Asian headhunters, and that his own head rests less than easy by story's end.
This issue, however, is more interesting for the story "The Guardians," which although it is narrated by Boris Karloff, contains references to "The Twilight Zone" in Boris' ruminations. Most probably this was an inventory story done for Gold Key's TWILIGHT ZONE title. Someone decided to adapt it to BKTOM by simply re-drawing Rod Serling to look like Karloff, but the editor didn't bother to correct the text. I expect horror-stories in comic books to be rather thinly plotted, but these two issues don't exact speak highly for the skills of the Gold Key editorial staff.
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Post by gothos on Jul 8, 2014 15:38:40 GMT -5
I quite enjoyed Secret Origins #4 that Gerry did with Al Milgrom. Now that's a good comic. I also liked his run on Sub-Mariner run where we got Tiger Shark, Dr. Doom and Modok in quick succession. Stan and Roy also liked him enough to give him most of the superhero line in 1972 over Gary Friedrich who I think was a pretty good writer. But I always look at it this way: Englehart had Dr. Strange and Avengers, Starlin had Warlock, Moench had Master of Kung Fu, Roy had Conan, Gerber had Defenders and Howard. Where did Gerry push the envelope? Well, he killed Gwen Stacy. That was pushing the envelope. Not sure where he would have gone with everything if he hadn't been forced to bring her back in the first clone saga. I also wonder what kind of effect it might have had on him that his most ambitious story ended up eventually being mucked with by editorial, and when he was still a very young writer. Have to think that had an effect on his later writing. The nail that sticks up is the one that gets the hammer, so he may have found it more prudent to just play it safe after that. Not that I am qualified to psychoanalyze Gerry Conway. I'd place more credence in the idea that Conway had some big ambitions for his comics-work, and that he later played it safe, except that his earliest Marvel stuff shows a lot of the same weaknesses discussed here, particularly in terms of plots that make no sense. I read his early work on DAREDEVIL, SUB-MARINER, and IRON MAN, and disliked it heartily even before he ever worked on SPIDER-MAN. A few of his SPIDEYs were decent but most of them I found irritating and pretentious. But then, it all mattered when you read things: I've seen one website whose owner grew up with Conway's Spidey, and he said he couldn't understand all the fuss about Ditko and Romita, because Conway/Andru was HIS Spidey. - |
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Post by Icctrombone on Jul 8, 2014 16:14:08 GMT -5
Last night I read Thor #337-340. The start of the Simonson run. I'd forgotten how good that arc was. Thor is challenged to duel for the right to posess the hammer AND LOSES. I don't remember a better depiction of Odin than in this arc. I have the other issues to about 355 or so and I don't remember a thing about them.
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Crimebuster
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Post by Crimebuster on Jul 8, 2014 17:17:50 GMT -5
Last night I read Thor #337-340. The start of the Simonson run. I'd forgotten how good that arc was. Thor is challenged to duel for the right to posess the hammer AND LOSES. I don't remember a better depiction of Odin than in this arc. I have the other issues to about 355 or so and I don't remember a thing about them. You should read them all immediately! Up through 355 is the whole Ragnarok epic; 355 is the epilogue. There's some excellent, excellent stuff after this in Simonson's run, but #337-355 is maybe the best of it. |
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Post by fanboystranger on Jul 8, 2014 18:46:01 GMT -5
Conway did Atari Force. Nuff said. True, but to be honest when I think about how good Atari Force was, the name that comes to mind is José Luis Garcia-López! Speaking of Conway and Garcia-Lopez, my copy of the Cinder and Ashe tpb just showed up. |
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Post by The Captain on Jul 8, 2014 20:19:18 GMT -5
Didn't know where else to put this (and I didn't want to create another thread), but I made the decision to start collecting Conan the Barbarian ('70's Marvel) and was wondering how far into the series I should look to get. There are a lot of folks talking this up in another thread, but is there a particular point where the quality of the book drops off, as I'm not sure if I want to try to get all 275 issues unless it is absolutely worth it. Thanks in advance!
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Crimebuster
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Post by Crimebuster on Jul 8, 2014 21:10:04 GMT -5
Didn't know where else to put this (and I didn't want to create another thread), but I made the decision to start collecting Conan the Barbarian ('70's Marvel) and was wondering how far into the series I should look to get. There are a lot of folks talking this up in another thread, but is there a particular point where the quality of the book drops off, as I'm not sure if I want to try to get all 275 issues unless it is absolutely worth it. Thanks in advance! Roy Thomas leaves the book after #115. I haven't read that far myself, but it's my understanding you can basically read Roy's run as one continuous saga, since he was very careful about his chronology and continuity. Subsequent writers just sort of shrugged and wrote whatever they felt like without necessarily paying attention to Howard's canon. One of the reasons Conan was so good for so long was the consistency in the creative team. Roy wrote #1-115 and other than a couple guest appearances, he had just two regular artists for the entire run: Barry Windsor-Smith for #1-24 and John Buscema for #25-115. The creative teams start getting a lot more random after that, and while Buscema stays on board for a long time, his heart doesn't seem to really be in it later on, as it's not very inspired stuff. |
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Post by Icctrombone on Jul 9, 2014 8:08:46 GMT -5
How long did Buscema stay on Conan for ?
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Post by The Captain on Jul 9, 2014 9:13:43 GMT -5
Didn't know where else to put this (and I didn't want to create another thread), but I made the decision to start collecting Conan the Barbarian ('70's Marvel) and was wondering how far into the series I should look to get. There are a lot of folks talking this up in another thread, but is there a particular point where the quality of the book drops off, as I'm not sure if I want to try to get all 275 issues unless it is absolutely worth it. Thanks in advance! Roy Thomas leaves the book after #115. I haven't read that far myself, but it's my understanding you can basically read Roy's run as one continuous saga, since he was very careful about his chronology and continuity. Subsequent writers just sort of shrugged and wrote whatever they felt like without necessarily paying attention to Howard's canon. One of the reasons Conan was so good for so long was the consistency in the creative team. Roy wrote #1-115 and other than a couple guest appearances, he had just two regular artists for the entire run: Barry Windsor-Smith for #1-24 and John Buscema for #25-115. The creative teams start getting a lot more random after that, and while Buscema stays on board for a long time, his heart doesn't seem to really be in it later on, as it's not very inspired stuff. It's responses like this that make me grateful for this forum and make me thankful it survived the unpleasantness of our former home. There is such vast knowledge about and love for classic comics here that it makes finding new things to read and understanding the history of comics so easy. Thanks as always, Scott. |
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Post by hondobrode on Jul 9, 2014 9:38:36 GMT -5
Last night I read Thor #337-340. The start of the Simonson run. I'd forgotten how good that arc was. Thor is challenged to duel for the right to posess the hammer AND LOSES. I don't remember a better depiction of Odin than in this arc. I have the other issues to about 355 or so and I don't remember a thing about them. Well, those issues came out 30 years ago !
I remember they were super-charged but being shocked about Beta Ray Bill, and yeah, Thorski losing !
The rest of it I vaguely remember but really need to go back and re-read them again.
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Post by bashbash99 on Jul 9, 2014 10:16:24 GMT -5
Last night I read Thor #337-340. The start of the Simonson run. I'd forgotten how good that arc was. Thor is challenged to duel for the right to posess the hammer AND LOSES. I don't remember a better depiction of Odin than in this arc. I have the other issues to about 355 or so and I don't remember a thing about them. Well, those issues came out 30 years ago !
I remember they were super-charged but being shocked about Beta Ray Bill, and yeah, Thorski losing !
The rest of it I vaguely remember but really need to go back and re-read them again.
Yeah that whole run is pretty much full of awesome... the last viking/battle with Fafnir, Malekith and the Dark Elves, Lorelei, Thor's silly secret ID, and of course ragnarok & roll... I enjoyed the issues after 355 also, like the frog issues and the Fafnir battle that's all splash pages. Yesterday I got the TPB for Legion Lost by Abnett , Lanning, and Coipel so I read the 1st three issues. I wasn't sure how much I would like it as DnA are hit and miss for me ... liked most of their cosmic Marvel work (with the big exception of Annihilators), tried Resurrection Man but wasn't as much of a fan (altho I haven't finished my vol 1 trade- I'll give it another shot later) So far the plot and writing are fairly enjoyable! I know Oliver Coipel is a popular artist but his work isn't doing much for me here.. its adequate though. |
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