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Post by Deleted on Jul 12, 2020 2:07:42 GMT -5
Beginning to dabble in reading a couple of classic series/runs as time allows, not sure how deep I will go into each, but dipped my toe after work tonight. These were rereads, but it has been years since I revisited some of this stuff... Brave & the Bold #28-the first Justice League of America story as the League faces Starro the Conqueror Posting the pages of Perez's Fourth World x-over issues in another thread remindedme I had picked up all these collected editions of JLA to read and hadn't gotten to them yet, so decided to read the first story again. It all reads well until Snapper Carr shows up. I find in curious with all the names the League had to offer, they opened with Aquaman, whom I like very much but it seems an odd choice to lead off that line up with, in the opening sequence. I am not always a fan of Sekowsky's stuff, but that is an iconic cover and there are some wow panels in the book too. Pretty standard silver Age DC fare though, which is enjoyable, but not in large chunks. Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen #133 & 134 Kirby is Here! (even though Neal Adams does the second cover). Been wanting to revisit the Fourth World stuff, and again posting those pages triggered it (not to mention recently getting a bunch of Mr. Miracle issues) but decided to start with the Jimmy Olsen stuff, which I remember enjoying immensely when I first read the Fourth World but cannot recall many details of, and is the stuff I have yet to revisit after my initial read back in the mid-to-late-80s even though I have reread all the other stuff on multiple occasions. Lots of big Kirby ideas throughout, as well continuing to experiment with collage on some of the pages. Really enjoyed the first story over these two issues with the Wild Area and the Hairies, and looking forward to diving deeper. -M
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Post by Icctrombone on Jul 12, 2020 7:03:49 GMT -5
Armageddon 2001 # 2 This mini series/ Event was infamous for the switched ending. The plot is basically that one of the DC heroes turns evil after an traumatic event and becomes a world conquering villain. A another person called Waverider is charged with examining the past of Dc's heroes to see who is the person who becomes Monarch. The various look into possible futures of the DC universe is detailed in all the Annuals for the year of 1991. I really liked the Annuals associated with the Event, which were basically Elsewhere takes on the characters. The actual 2 issue mini was a mess and It ended in a continuation into another miniseries. No real conclusion. I understand that the ID of Monarch was supposed to be Captain Atom but it was hastily switched to being Hawk from Hawk and Dove fame. What a mess.
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Post by Batflunkie on Jul 12, 2020 7:56:29 GMT -5
Beginning to dabble in reading a couple of classic series/runs as time allows, not sure how deep I will go into each, but dipped my toe after work tonight. These were rereads, but it has been years since I revisited some of this stuff... Brave & the Bold #28-the first Justice League of America story as the League faces Starro the Conqueror My mom had the Millennium Edition of this issue, it's what started my love affair with Green Lantern. Starro is such a great villain
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Post by Hoosier X on Jul 12, 2020 10:30:11 GMT -5
Armageddon 2001 # 2 This mini series/ Event was infamous for the switched ending. The plot is basically that one of the DC heroes turns evil after an traumatic event and becomes a world conquering villain. A another person called Waverider is charged with examining the past of Dc's heroes to see who is the person who becomes Monarch. The various look into possible futures of the DC universe is detailed in all the Annuals for the year of 1991. I really liked the Annuals associated with the Event, which were basically Elsewhere takes on the characters. The actual 2 issue mini was a mess and It ended in a continuation into another miniseries. No real conclusion. I understand that the ID of Monarch was supposed to be Captain Atom but it was hastily switched to being Hawk from Hawk and Dove fame. What a mess. I only have vague memories of this cross-over event. This might have come out when I was only reading Detective Comics and maybe one or two other DC comics. My memories though vague are highly unfavorable.
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Post by renfri on Jul 12, 2020 16:41:18 GMT -5
I have lately been rotating between three omnibuses, Fantastic four vol 1 (Kirby and Stan), Amazing spiderman vol 1 (Ditko and Stan), Savage sword of Conan vol 1. (Roy Thomas, et al.) Savage Sword is different enough to be a nice "palate cleanser" from the awesome FF and Spiderman stories.
Today I read one issue out of each of them.
The Amazing Spider-Man #25. Captured by J.Jonah Jameson.
This one was interesting. Spiderman fights a robot controlled by J.J and spiderman doesn't stand a chance! His most powerful foe yet!
Fantastic Four #24. The Infant Terrible.
Quite an unusual "villain", who actually turns out to be an alien child rather than an evil person. According to the letters pages, this was a story they were close to missing the deadline on and managed to come up with in the last minute. Kirby and Stan had a hectic schedule back then!
Savage Sword of Conan #6. This issue containted two stories:
The Sleeper Beneath the sands. This was a cool setting with Conan in the desert arriving at a temple for an age-old creature who sleeps beneath the sands. The Creature was badass! So many of the creature designs of these Conan stories are jaw-droppinly awesome.
People of the Dark. This story felt different from some of the other stuff. Teenage Conan runs after a girl he pines for and they end up in an ancient cave with old goblin-like creatures. The art and paneling is unusual and had its own beautiful style. Coupled with the narration from Roy Thomas and the setting of an ancient cave system, it felt very atmospheric. Great writing and art!
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Post by spoon on Jul 12, 2020 18:17:39 GMT -5
Continuing on my Doom Patrol binge read, since last time I've read Doom Patrol #86-97. The series gets retitled from My Greatest Adventure. The Brotherhood of Evil is introduced in #86. I looked it up and saw that it was released the same month as X-Men #4, which introduced the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. X-Men was bimonthly at the time, so the Doom Patrol was getting through more stories. The Brotherhood starts out as the Brain, Monsieur Mallah, Madame Rouge (who lacks her powers in her first appearance), and Mr. Morden & his giant robot Rog as potential recruits. Rouge works behind the scenes in that appearance, so she is able to interfere with the DP in disguise very easily the following issue. The Brotherhood is quite a mix of the surreal and the ordinary. Rouge has a day job/cover as a girls' school teacher in Paris, and at one point she tells the girls she's glad they didn't believe smears against her.
In the inter-team dynamic, we move from slight hints of Cliff & Larry competing over Rita to Larry being into Rita (& maybe she might be into him a bit). But then Mento (Steve Dayton) show ups. It's an atypical Silver Age dynamic. First, Steve is more into Rita. She kind of likes him a bit, but is cautious. Larry is totally jealous. Cliff dislikes Steve at first, but then tries to nudge him along if it makes Rita happy. There's a lot of ribbing, as Cliff mocks Mento by calling him Psycho instead. A few issues later, even the Chief calls him that.
There's a family bond in the team. They celebrate the Chief's birthday. And I noted in my previous post that they tend to use each other's real names, and how that emphasizes their humanity. That actually ends up being a crucial plot point in one issue.
Speaking of the Chief, we finally get his origin and real name in #88. We get flashbacks that tie his origin to General Immortus and also show us the evolution of his facial hair over time!
There have also been 3 back-up stories in various issues that focus on one member (so far Robotman, Elasti-Girl, and the Chief), with the other members playing minor roles. The ones with Cliff and Rita are really good. Cliff sacrifices his body piece by piece to hunt down a fugitive on a desert isles. Being able to endure physical damage without pain to complete a task is one of Cliff's key roles on the team, because Rita also provides strength when she's in giant form. In Rita's solo story, she helps reunite a Korean War veteran with PTSD and amnesia with his adopted Korean son.
A couple other recurring villains get added to the rogue's gallery in these issues. The Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man (or A-V-M Man for short) is a Swedish scientist who can transform himself into any of those three categories. Chief, who has a soft spot for fellow scientist, says after A-V-M Man's capture that he hopes he gets psychological help instead of prison time. Rita and Larry also switch from their green outfits to the more famous red and white DP uniforms in A-V-M Man's first appearance. Then, there's Garguax, an overweight green alien who is aided by an army of Plastic Men.
I just finished reading a story that takes place over 2 issues that brings just about every together as the DP faces a scheme uniting the Brother, General Immortus, and Garguax. Mento also appears in the story to lend some aid.
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Post by brutalis on Jul 12, 2020 18:39:08 GMT -5
Those early DP really plays off the family dynamic very strongly like FF did. I much prefer this to the later love/hate of the team with the high handed calculatingly cold Chief being the cause of their becoming freaks.
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Post by berkley on Jul 12, 2020 19:49:50 GMT -5
I like Grant Morrison's comics, but there are a few of these. I know Alan Moore and Michael Moorcock think it is a bit more than a nod or homage. The whole thrown back through time while everything thinks they are dead element of Batman RIP is pretty much what happens to Captain America in Brubaker's run. There are quite a few elements of Annhilator that seem pretty much similar to the whole thing that happened to Philip K Dick that informed a couple of his novels (and a cool story done by Robert Crumb about the episode). Or the "Jenny Quantum" story in which the bad guys (Avengers stand-ins) destroy an entire maternity ward just to kill one super-baby that holds the key to the future? Missed this earlier, but this seems to support my impression that for some reason Ellis and/or the other Brit writers (don't know who wrote this one) tend to portray Marvel's characters as bad guys while the DC analoques ususally remain heroic. This impression is based on very incomplete and haphazard exposure to the material, so it could be I'm being misled by some unrepresentative examples, but I keep seeing it every now and then.
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Post by rberman on Jul 12, 2020 19:50:49 GMT -5
Continuing on my Doom Patrol binge read, since last time I've read Doom Patrol #86-97. The series gets retitled from My Greatest Adventure. The Brotherhood of Evil is introduced in #86. I looked it up and saw that it was released the same month as X-Men #4, which introduced the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. X-Men was bimonthly at the time, so the Doom Patrol was getting through more stories. The Brotherhood starts out as the Brain, Monsieur Mallah, Madame Rouge (who lacks her powers in her first appearance), and Mr. Morden & his giant robot Rog as potential recruits. Rouge works behind the scenes in that appearance, so she is able to interfere with the DP in disguise very easily the following issue. The Brotherhood is quite a mix of the surreal and the ordinary. Rouge has a day job/cover as a girls' school teacher in Paris, and at one point she tells the girls she's glad they didn't believe smears against her. A guy could get dizzy thinking about all the story connections in the issue you mentioned. Not just backwards to Fantastic Four and other giant robot stories and sideways to X-Men. The name "Mr. Morden" was picked up by JMS for one of Babylon 5's most interesting ongoing villains. I've never heard him acknowledge Doom Patrol, which he surely read but possibly forgot. The part where the giant lady fights a robot on a bridge was a key sequence in the film "Monsters vs Aliens," with the heroine re-christined Ginormica. While the name Elasti-Girl shows up in the Fantastic Four homage film series "The Incredibles." Mr. Morden's bid to join the Brotherhood of Evil is echoed in Dr. Horrible's aspirations to join the Evil League of Evil in Joss Whedon's "Doctor Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog" short film. And so on.
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Post by spoon on Jul 12, 2020 19:54:58 GMT -5
Those early DP really plays off the family dynamic very strongly like FF did. I much prefer this to the later love/hate of the team with the high handed calculatingly cold Chief being the cause of their becoming freaks. I've heard that becomes a Morrison plot point. I can't remember whether that was in the Kupperberg issues I've read in the past. I really think it's more of an accomplishment and much more satisfying to write the family dynamic given the premise of a team of "freaks." It's true that Chief performed Cliff's surgery without consent, but there wasn't an opportunity to ask. Aside from that aberration, everything in these early issues points to someone who really cares.
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Post by rberman on Jul 12, 2020 20:03:40 GMT -5
Or the "Jenny Quantum" story in which the bad guys (Avengers stand-ins) destroy an entire maternity ward just to kill one super-baby that holds the key to the future? Missed this earlier, but this seems to support my impression that for some reason Ellis and/or the other Brit writers (don't know who wrote this one) tend to portray Marvel's characters as bad guys while the DC analoques ususally remain heroic. This impression is based on very incomplete and haphazard exposure to the material, so it could be I'm being misled by some unrepresentative examples, but I keep seeing it every now and then. And in fact, the overall villain of the piece is "Jacob Krigstein," an octagenarian on life support, and a stand-in for Jack Kirby, re-invisioned as a Nazi scientist who creates super-heroes by the hundreds to support an illegitimate American regime. Krigstein wants to kill or subvert all new super-heroes so that his old-fashioned, mid-twentieth century approach can continue to dominate the scene. It's a self-conscious blow against Marvel's perceived hegemony. The whole story is full of very meta dialogue about Marvel trying to squelch DC and indie comics. Very similar to what happened in Planetary with the Fantastic Four. I've been pondering an Authority review thread but thought maybe I should wait for the Planetary thread to conclude, unless people are clamoring to discuss them in parallel.
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bor
Full Member
Posts: 238
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Post by bor on Jul 12, 2020 23:20:23 GMT -5
Currently I am reading through a couple of different series. Asterix is being published in Danish again in big hardcovers with two stories pr book. My grilfriend gave me the first two for christmas and another just as a random gift a couple of weeks ago. I am really enjoying reading these. Some of them I have read before but some of them are brand new to me. Besides that I am reading Akira for the first time. And lastly I am reading through the big complete collections of Elf Quest. I am on volume 5 of these. Good stuff.
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Post by berkley on Jul 12, 2020 23:43:47 GMT -5
Missed this earlier, but this seems to support my impression that for some reason Ellis and/or the other Brit writers (don't know who wrote this one) tend to portray Marvel's characters as bad guys while the DC analoques ususally remain heroic. This impression is based on very incomplete and haphazard exposure to the material, so it could be I'm being misled by some unrepresentative examples, but I keep seeing it every now and then. And in fact, the overall villain of the piece is "Jacob Krigstein," an octagenarian on life support, and a stand-in for Jack Kirby, re-invisioned as a Nazi scientist who creates super-heroes by the hundreds to support an illegitimate American regime. Krigstein wants to kill or subvert all new super-heroes so that his old-fashioned, mid-twentieth century approach can continue to dominate the scene. It's a self-conscious blow against Marvel's perceived hegemony. The whole story is full of very meta dialogue about Marvel trying to squelch DC and indie comics. Very similar to what happened in Planetary with the Fantastic Four. I've been pondering an Authority review thread but thought maybe I should wait for the Planetary thread to conclude, unless people are clamoring to discuss them in parallel. OK, that makes sense. I've read Planetary but not The Authority. The whole Marvel vs DC thing strikes me as odd because I see the Big 2 of the last 30 or 40 years as an amalgam, very much two of a kind as far as their product is concerned. And any difference I saw in the earlier period would mostly be in Marvel's favour, so the idea of DC's iconic characters being held up as heroic models while Marvel's are made into villains strikes me as rather strange. All or none, would be my view - more like what Ennis did in The Boys, with superheroes in general held up to scrutiny.
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Post by rberman on Jul 13, 2020 5:24:06 GMT -5
And in fact, the overall villain of the piece is "Jacob Krigstein," an octagenarian on life support, and a stand-in for Jack Kirby, re-invisioned as a Nazi scientist who creates super-heroes by the hundreds to support an illegitimate American regime. Krigstein wants to kill or subvert all new super-heroes so that his old-fashioned, mid-twentieth century approach can continue to dominate the scene. It's a self-conscious blow against Marvel's perceived hegemony. The whole story is full of very meta dialogue about Marvel trying to squelch DC and indie comics. Very similar to what happened in Planetary with the Fantastic Four. I've been pondering an Authority review thread but thought maybe I should wait for the Planetary thread to conclude, unless people are clamoring to discuss them in parallel. OK, that makes sense. I've read Planetary but not The Authority. The whole Marvel vs DC thing strikes me as odd because I see the Big 2 of the last 30 or 40 years as an amalgam, very much two of a kind as far as their product is concerned. And any difference I saw in the earlier period would mostly be in Marvel's favour, so the idea of DC's iconic characters being held up as heroic models while Marvel's are made into villains strikes me as rather strange. All or none, would be my view - more like what Ennis did in The Boys, with superheroes in general held up to scrutiny. There's equivocation at work regarding since: 1) Warren Ellis turned Stormwatch (and thus The Authority) into analogues of the JLA, which seems pro-DC; 2) On a creative level, DC in the 90s was mired in the same rut that Marvel was in, and against which WildStorm was reacting; 3) On a corporate level, Marvel was crushing everybody else, including DC, with stunts like the purchase of the Hero's World distribution chain. It wouldn't surprise me if that in particular is what this story dramatizes, with Marvel seeing "the spirit of the 21st century" as a threat. Maybe DC did too, but they were weaker and thus not able to exercise "bad guy" effect.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 15, 2020 1:42:39 GMT -5
Donald Duck Adventures #14 from Gladstone... reprinting Carl Barks' The Mummy's Ring form 1943's Four Color #29. This is just a fun romp of an adventure that takes Donald and his nephews all the way to Egypt afte rthey come into the possession of a ring withthe mark of three serpents. Classic Bark stuff and a wonderful sense of high adventure and humor. I also continued on with the JLA in B&B reading #29 and Jimmy Olsen #135. -M
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