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Post by Cei-U! on Sept 26, 2020 21:31:00 GMT -5
These are some great Thor comics! The next issue (#150) is Hela’s first appearance. Thor #150 is actually Hela's third appearance. She was first seen in the "Tales of Asgard" portion of Journey into Mystery #102, then again in the ToA story in Thor #133. It is her first appearance in a story set in the present, however.
Cei-U! I summon the straightened record!
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Post by Hoosier X on Sept 26, 2020 22:45:26 GMT -5
These are some great Thor comics! The next issue (#150) is Hela’s first appearance. Thor #150 is actually Hela's third appearance. She was first seen in the "Tales of Asgard" portion of Journey into Mystery #102, then again in the ToA story in Thor #133. It is her first appearance in a story set in the present, however.
Cei-U! I summon the straightened record!
It’s been a very long time since I read JIM #102, but I read #133 just a few weeks ago! I should have remembered.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 27, 2020 8:11:18 GMT -5
Continuing to read my way through the Evanier DNAgents related tiles from Eclipse in the mid-80s. Finished the 4 issue Surge mini and Crossfire 1-9.
I didn't really enjoy the Surge mini. I just don't like the character. He is all about winning and his lack of impulse control as a dominant character trait is limiting and one note. It's like reading a character based on Charlie Sheen without Sheen's charm of charisma to make it occasionally palatable. The best bits were the parts featuring the other DNAgents and Crossfire in the background. In addition the new super-character introduced, Lancer, just didn't work for me either. Another mostly one-note character without any real depth despite attempts to give him seeming layers. But it was like peeling and onion to find it was hollow and all that work was for nothing. Sadly, the best part of the series, were the back ups each issue featuring the other DNAgents, and they were mostly pedestrian. Steve Rude did the art on the Rainbow back up in #4, which was good, but it was a story about Rainbow's hair she cut off and someone found and it now acted like an antennae for her powers if she was nearby and the woman who found it and made a wig out of it to help her modelling career was now suffering panic attacks because she was seeing Rainbow's illusions she was projecting when fighting criminals. So it was a somewhat silly premise that just didn't come off despite Rude's art, but it was still better than the main Surge story.
Crossfire, on the other hand has been a delight. Evanier is doing well developing Endicott's character and building the relationship dynamic between him and Rainbow. The plots are interesting and the stories well paced. Spiegle is a strong visual story teller. I look forward to reading more.
-M
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Post by earl on Sept 27, 2020 8:38:06 GMT -5
I'm reading the Kirby Thor really for the first time in entirety. Thor was never my character when I was a teenager and I pretty much only read the Simonson run and then the JMS run which I followed for a few years. I'm nearing the end of the second masterworks here (#120 last issue).
I saw the lines about Art Adams being a bit of a Colletta defender and looking at some of these early Thor/Asgard stories that Colletta inks do kind of have that fine line thing that Art Adams has in his style. It was a bit of an Aha moment where you could see the King's influence upon an artist. (I kinda think the first issue of Hulk really has some elements that Mike Mignola uses all the time in Hellboy, that's one place you can starkly see Kirby's influence on his artwork.)
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Post by beccabear67 on Sept 27, 2020 20:05:52 GMT -5
Spider-Girl #6-14 & An-1 arrived, on a Sunday. The postal worker said they are working to catch up after deliveries were suspended here during the heavy smoke week. I was expecting to ask if the sender knew anything tomorrow, so now I won't have to. I have a lotta fun reading to do, like who is this (below) going to be? I like the original Falcon colors already!
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Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2020 0:28:47 GMT -5
Finally got to read another of the Matt Baker books I picked up...Four Color #588-King Richard and the Crusaders from Dell, published in 1954. It is an adaptation of the film King Richard and the Crusaders (itself an adaptation of Sir Walter Scott's The Talisman) It's a fun, if historically inaccurate adventure set during the crusade led by King Richard the Lion Heart of England, featuring war, treachery, jousts, forbidden love, kings in disguise and other storytelling tropes all masterfully rendered by the talented hand of Matt Baker. The woman are beautiful, the staging is gorgeous, the action dynamic and the storytelling clear and engaging. In other words, typical Matt Baker fare. -M
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Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2020 2:54:07 GMT -5
Finished the first volume of Hal Foster's Tarzan (Tarzan in Color Vol. 1 published by NBM). The volume covers from when Foster took over the strip in September of 1931 through the middle of September 1932. I started the book last month and read the strips form '31, but hadn't got back to read the strips form '32 until this evening after work. I liked the '32 stuff much better. The strips from '31 were good, but you could tell Foster was still finding his footing on the strip and his earliest strips had to wrap up the uninspired mess Mason had left behind, which he did quickly, but the strip gets much better as it progresses. Here's a sample page from the Hulvia continuity, Hulvia being a white woman who was shipwrecked in Africa and became the High Priestess of a tribe of cannibals, but she is looking for a mate to be her equal... if you are not used to Foster's style of storytelling-there's no dialogue, it's all captions, it takes a little getting used to, but man do those visuals carry the story. -M
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Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 9,601
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Post by Confessor on Sept 29, 2020 9:23:55 GMT -5
I re-read the first three issues of Chuck Dixon's Marvel Knights series from 2000 the other evening. These first three issues form a complete story arc which shows the "non-team" of Daredevil, Punisher, Black Widow, Dagger, and Shang-Chi getting together for the first time to stop the troll Ulik from the Thor comics. This is probably the first time I've revisited this series in over a decade, but I really loved it back in the day. This time round though, I enjoyed reading these comics without being blown away by them. Dixon does a serviceable job of capturing each of the heroes' distinctive "voices" in the dialogue and Eduardo Barreto's pencils are really nice, but the plot seemed like the kind of thing I've read in lots of other Marvel comics. It just seemed a little...I dunno, humdrum. I may well continue to read on through the series and perhaps things will pick up a bit as it progresses. But my overriding feeling about these 3 issues was to wonder what I thought was so special about this series back in the early 2000s.
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Post by Cei-U! on Sept 29, 2020 9:57:31 GMT -5
I've begun rereading, for the first time in at least ten years, the "Panther's Rage" story from Jungle Action #6-18. I'm only allowing myself to read one issue a day. So far I'm four chapters in and I'm having a really good time. This was the series where Don McGregor really nailed the approach to comics he was looking for, in a way he didn't on Killraven or Power Man. He's criticized a lot for his verbosity but I think his prose makes for a richer reading experience. He rarely wastes space telling us what the art already shows us. Instead he gives us sound, smell, touch, emotion, and context to what we see, all expressed with deliberation and craftsmanship, I'm fascinated by his portrayal of Wakanda, a land that is both less and more than the vibranium-feuled paradise of the Lee-Kirby version. The only real disappointment so far is the big baddie. This Erik Killmonger is just another teeth-gnashing Marvel villain at this point, a far cry from Michael B. Jordan's nuanced MCU counterpart. His lieutenants--Venomm, Malice, Baron Macabre--are much more colorful. I remembered liking his two bumbling henchmen, Tayete and Kazibe, on previous readthroughs and was shoicked to realize they torture an old man to death in their first appearance. Not so funny after all. The art has been okay so far, though I'm not a huge Rich Buckler fan even when, as here, he's *not* filling his pages with Kirby, Adams, or Buscema swipes. Gil Kane draws #9, always splendid when paired with series inker Klais Janson. Tomorrow's chapter brings definitive artist Billy Graham on board. I'm looking forward to that, as I am to watching the rest of this classic saga unfold.
Cei-U! I summon King T'challa!
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Post by dbutler69 on Sept 29, 2020 10:04:54 GMT -5
I've begun rereading, for the first time in at least ten years, the "Panther's Rage" story from Jungle Action #6-18. I'm only allowing myself to read one issue a day. So far I'm four chapters in and I'm having a really good time. This was the series where Don McGregor really nailed the approach to comics he was looking for, in a way he didn't on Killraven or Power Man. He's criticized a lot for his verbosity but I think his prose makes for a richer reading experience. He rarely wastes space telling us what the art already shows us. Instead he gives us sound, smell, touch, emotion, and context to what we see, all expressed with deliberation and craftsmanship, I'm fascinated by his portrayal of Wakanda, a land that is both less and more than the vibranium-feuled paradise of the Lee-Kirby version. The only real disappointment so far is the big baddie. This Erik Killmonger is just another teeth-gnashing Marvel villain at this point, a far cry from Michael B. Jordan's nuanced MCU counterpart. His lieutenants--Venomm, Malice, Baron Macabre--are much more colorful. I remembered liking his two bumbling henchmen, Tayete and Kazibe, on previous readthroughs and was shoicked to realize they torture an old man to death in their first appearance. Not so funny after all. The art has been okay so far, though I'm not a huge Rich Buckler fan even when, as here, he's *not* filling his pages with Kirby, Adams, or Buscema swipes. Gil Kane draws #9, always splendid when paired with series inker Klais Janson. Tomorrow's chapter brings definitive artist Billy Graham on board. I'm looking forward to that, as I am to watching the rest of this classic saga unfold. Cei-U! I summon King T'challa! I read this a few years ago and enjoyed it a lot. I pretty much agree with your observations, though I enjoyed the Rich Buckler art more than you did. Billy Graham was good, too.
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Post by dbutler69 on Sept 29, 2020 12:59:53 GMT -5
I re-read the first three issues of Chuck Dixon's Marvel Knights series from 2000 the other evening. These first three issues form a complete story arc which shows the "non-team" of Daredevil, Punisher, Black Widow, Dagger, and Shang-Chi getting together for the first time to stop the troll Ulik from the Thor comics. This is probably the first time I've revisited this series in over a decade, but I really loved it back in the day. This time round though, I enjoyed reading these comics without being blown away by them. Dixon does a serviceable job of capturing each of the heroes' distinctive "voices" in the dialogue and Eduardo Barreto's pencils are really nice, but the plot seemed like the kind of thing I've read in lots of other Marvel comics. It just seemed a little...I dunno, humdrum. I may well continue to read on through the series and perhaps things will pick up a bit as it progresses. But my overriding feeling about these 3 issues was to wonder what I thought was so special about this series back in the early 2000s. I'm totally unfamiliar with this comic, but the lineup has me intrigued. Particularly Shang-Chi, as I loved his Bronze Age series.
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Post by brianf on Sept 29, 2020 13:51:21 GMT -5
I re-read the first three issues of Chuck Dixon's Marvel Knights series from 2000 the other evening. These first three issues form a complete story arc which shows the "non-team" of Daredevil, Punisher, Black Widow, Dagger, and Shang-Chi getting together for the first time to stop the troll Ulik from the Thor comics. This is probably the first time I've revisited this series in over a decade, but I really loved it back in the day. This time round though, I enjoyed reading these comics without being blown away by them. Dixon does a serviceable job of capturing each of the heroes' distinctive "voices" in the dialogue and Eduardo Barreto's pencils are really nice, but the plot seemed like the kind of thing I've read in lots of other Marvel comics. It just seemed a little...I dunno, humdrum. I may well continue to read on through the series and perhaps things will pick up a bit as it progresses. But my overriding feeling about these 3 issues was to wonder what I thought was so special about this series back in the early 2000s. I'm totally unfamiliar with this comic, but the lineup has me intrigued. Particularly Shang-Chi, as I loved his Bronze Age series. As a Shang-Chi fan #6 is my favorite issue of the series - there's a pretty epic fight between Shang-Chi & Zaran
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Post by Deleted on Oct 1, 2020 0:29:16 GMT -5
So I sat down and read Buried Treasure #1... packaged by Greg Theakston's Pure Imagination and dated from the Spring of 1986. The cover is a Kirby original, not surprising since Theakston was acting as his agent at the time. It opens with an editorial from Theakston on the danger of losing comics legacy because of the difficulties in preserving pre-1960s comics and art. State of the art technology circa 1986 wasn't quite good enough to make print-ready archival copies from printed comics, so either the original art or the original engravings were needed to preserve much of it at the time, and since, as Theakston details, so much of the original art was lost or destroyed there is a real concern at the time that much of comics legacy will be lost. And the purpose of this series will be to put as much of that legacy into print to preserve it as possible. Thankfully for us, scanning and digital photography tech have taken leaps and bounds since the mid-80s and it is much easier and affordable to make archival quality copies and new printings of pre-1960s material now than it was then, and the vast wealth of such material available in print or digital formats now is a testament to that. Now as to what is included in this issue.. -a bio/intro to Frank Frazetta and the following stories by Frazetta- -War of the Gladiators (5 pages) from Real Life Comics #50 (October 1949) an account of Sparticus and his slave revolt in ancient Rome -Adrift in a Rowboat (2 pages) from New Heroic Comics #66 (May, 1951) a based on a true story account of a pair of boys who rescue their friend who was trapped on a rowboat on the creek and who could not swim -Memorable Memorial Day (3 pages) from New Heroic Comics #69 (November '51) based on a true story of a group of young men whose boat capsizes on Memorial Day and their heroic struggle to save themselves and reach shore safely -a 1 page feature by Wally Wood form Police Line-Up #1 (August '51) The Inside Story of the Lives and Crimes of Famous Gangsters -an intro to Joe Kubert and one Kubert story from early in his career-Buddha was a Big Boy from Speed Comics #43 (May/June '46) which is essentially an anti-Japan WWII propaganda piece -another 1 page Wally Wood feature spotlighting Irene Schroeder from Murderous Gangsters #1 (July '51) -a bio/introduction to Mort Meskin -Return of the Conquerors featuring Golden Lad, an unpublished story from 1946 featuring Golden Lad a young boy who undergoes a Captain Marvel/Shazam-like transformation when he touches the Golden Heart and gains powers, in this story he battles Nazi war criminals who fled to Latin America impersonating immortal Spanish Conquistadors to terrorize the Aztec descendants and to try to find an ancent hidden city where they can escape pursuit by those seeking them for their war crimes. -a self portrait and autobiographical essay by Alex Toth -Rogue gallery-a showcase of characters appearing in Toth's work over the years all modeled off of Errol Flynn -Geronimo Joe; an 8 page war story from Exciting War #8 (May '53) about a unit of paratroopers and an infantry unit who don't like each other pressed into action together in Korea when a mission goes sour and they are trapped behind enemy lines and gaining a newfound respect for each other -Gift of Murder, a 2 page Alex Toth horror story originally intended for Adventures into Darkness #15 which never saw print -The Crushed Gardenia, an 8 page crime story by Toth from Who is Next #5 (Jan '53) -Red Cross' New Method of Artificial Respiration; a PSA drawn by Frazetta that appeared in the May '52 issue of Buster Crabbe (#4). the back cover is a then modern recreation by Mort Meskin of his cover for Golden Lad #5. I really enjoyed this. Lots of good stuff to chew on, even if some of the writing was uneven or uninspired, the visual storytelling was superb. I was not all that familiar with Meskin before this, I knew the name and some of the legacy, but hadn't seen/read a lot of his stuff. While Golden Lad was pure cheese (but not of the Big Red sort though it tried real hard), it was kind of fun and Meskin's art is very good. I'd like to check out the other two issues of the series if I could find them, but then I am on a bit of a 50s comic kick so the material is landing with me right now. Who knows where I will be in regards to that a few months down the road. -M
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Post by adamwarlock2099 on Oct 1, 2020 8:12:30 GMT -5
To chime in on two posts here Cei-U's about Hela and Confessor on the Marvel Knights ... This cover of Thor is what got me into the second volume of Thor. The first series, though I read it at the time, did not end in the best way. A lot of the 90's fads were prevelant towards the end, and so when the second series started I was hesitant to buy it. But this Hela cover amazed me. And I am not a big JRJ fan. I don't dislike his art per say just his style isn't really for me. But I bought it and #1 and then started reading it. I kept up through Jurgens/and JRJ's stint on it and enjoyed it. As for Marvel Knights, I didn't read the particular issues Confessor posted but I did enjoy the Spiderman Marvel Knights series for as long as Millar and Dodson were on it. Very enjoyable series. (I haven't gotten the rest of the series yet.) But then I am a Dodson fanboy so that may have influenced my appreciation of it. It was a well laid out story involving Aunt May. Probably the only one I have since I swore not to indulge Marvel since they retconned her death from Amazing Spiderman #400. But I told myself this was an okay exception since it seemed like an alternative timeline due to the Marvel Knights imprint. :-)
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Post by Hoosier X on Oct 1, 2020 8:32:31 GMT -5
I finished the Thor Epic Collection titled The Wrath of Odin over the last few days. I read Thor #150 to #153 a little more quickly than I usually stories in a reprint collection b cause it was just one crazy 1960s Marvel Age collection after another! The Wrecker is beating up an underpowered Thor! Hela shows up to take dead Thor to Valhalla ... but he’s not quite dead! Sif begs Karnilla the Norn Queen to come up with a plan to save Thor ... and Karnilla obliges her by putting her essence in the Destroyer! But Thor defeats the Wrecker just as Sif in the guise of the Destroyer shows up and she can’t talk, and she can’t control the Destroyer’s impulse to destroy! Oh no! What can possibly happen next?!
And then Ulik shows up, only to be thrown into a bottomless pit where, in the next Epic Collection, he will find where Mangog is imprisoned!
Some of the best comics of the Silver Age. A big plus for me is that I hadn’t read very much of this era of Thor (from around issue #130 up to #150 or so) until just a few years ago, so this is only the second time I’ve read most of these issues. So it’s still so fresh! It’s not like Silver Age Spider-Man and Fantastic Four that I’ve read so many times. I mean, they’re still great and all, but it’s still nice to have some classic comics to read that you know are great but you haven’t started to wear them out yet.
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