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Post by Batflunkie on Oct 10, 2021 9:34:42 GMT -5
But besides all that, for me Gerber, even though he wasn't the original creator, had made Man-Thing his own book to such a degree that I wasn't much interested in seeing someone else's take on it. Maybe if it had been a different writer - e.g. Englehart or Wolfman or Moench or McGregor - I would have taken a chance on it, as I did Wolfman and later Starlin on Doctor Strange after Englehart left, but certainly not Claremont who, though I liked, I thought completely unsuited to the series. Gerber just approached the book in such an interesting way that it was hard to see it differently from another perspective. It's sad that we lost him so soon.
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Post by spoon on Oct 10, 2021 10:42:57 GMT -5
It's Gray Morrow, not Gray Marrow. I don't want to nitpick, but I think a person's name is worth it.
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Post by profh0011 on Oct 10, 2021 12:53:15 GMT -5
It's Gray Morrow, not Gray Marrow. I don't want to nitpick, but I think a person's name is worth it. My younger home care client drives be nuts by saying how names are mis-pronounced doesn't bother him.
But names do matter.
I couldn't believe it when back in the late 70s, the actress who played "Glory Grant" on the Spider-Man show consistently MIS-pronounced her boss' name as "Jamison" (Jay-mi-son) instead of "Jameson" (James-son).
JJJ was such an out-of-control lunatic ego-maniac, he probably would have fired her on the spot for that.
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Post by chaykinstevens on Oct 10, 2021 13:39:01 GMT -5
I couldn't believe it when back in the late 70s, the actress who played "Glory Grant" on the Spider-Man show consistently MIS-pronounced her boss' name as "Jamison" (Jay-mi-son) instead of "Jameson" (James-son). I would also pronounce it Jay-mi-son. Did the comics ever establish how JJJ pronounces his surname?
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Post by Cei-U! on Oct 10, 2021 16:36:32 GMT -5
I couldn't believe it when back in the late 70s, the actress who played "Glory Grant" on the Spider-Man show consistently MIS-pronounced her boss' name as "Jamison" (Jay-mi-son) instead of "Jameson" (James-son). I would also pronounce it Jay-mi-son. Me, too. I went to church as a kid with a jameson family who pronounced it "Jay-mi-son," plus it's how they said it on the '60s Spider-Man cartoon.
Cei-U! I summon the real world precedent!
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Post by tartanphantom on Oct 10, 2021 18:35:12 GMT -5
If the Irish pronounce it "Jay-mi-son," then I'd say that is the correct pronunciation... 5 million Irish can't be wrong... it's an Irish surname in Norse patronymic form-- which is no surprise given how long the Vikings inhabited Ireland alongside the Celts.
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Post by Calidore on Oct 10, 2021 19:14:39 GMT -5
It's Gray Morrow, not Gray Marrow. I don't want to nitpick, but I think a person's name is worth it.
Can't help thinking that Gray Marrow looks like an autocorrect whoops. Names are pretty vulnerable to being "fixed" that way.
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Post by profh0011 on Oct 11, 2021 16:27:57 GMT -5
Me, too. I went to church as a kid with a jameson family who pronounced it "Jay-mi-son," plus it's how they said it on the '60s Spider-Man cartoon. I've never watched any of the later cartoons... but in the 52 episodes done between 1967-1970, both the Grantray-Lawrence and Krantz Films episodes, nobody EVER pronounced it "Ja-mi-son". And I've watched these cartoons probably a hundred times apiece.
2:47 in...
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Post by spoon on Oct 12, 2021 20:31:07 GMT -5
I read Uncanny X-Men #162-167 (all except #166 via Class reprints). This is the resumption and conclusion of the Brood storyline. The first are drawn by Dave Cockrum and the latter three start Paul Smith run, with Bob Wiacek ably inking them both. Lynn Varley colors #165, and even though she does some interesting coloring with outer space, ironically for a famous colorist she often messes up Scott's hair color.
This is a really great epic. After the stunning ending of #161, with the Brood knocking out the X-Men, #162 begins in medias res, with Wolverine escaping. It flashes back to the events that unfolded after the previous issue. It's a very creepy arc, with some body horror, looming fatalistic dread, and the X-Men's perception of reality warmed at first. However, it's also a period where some negative Claremont tropes grows. Specifically, he's really getting into focusing on Wolverine and Storm, and trying to beat readers over the head with how awesome they are. Even when they're wrong, they're right. For instance, Wolvering and Storm will sort of lecture other characters. But if either of them makes mistakes, Claremont just elides over it. Like there's no point when another character gets to tell them they were wrong, or where they are apologetic to their teammates for their mistake. Wolverine hides from the other X-Men that they are hosts from Brood eggs, and despite it being a jerky thing to do that backfires in some ways, there are no consequences for him. Wolvering wants to kill the Brood Queen because she implanted the eggs, but he doesn't tell Cyclops that, and then he gets mad at Cyclops for not helping him kill the Queen when one of the causes of Cyke not being on-board is that Wolvie hid that info!!! Realistically, the whole team should be telling Logan what an asshole he is. I wish Nightcrawler, Colossus, and Kitty (who has become less prominent over the course of a year) received a more equal share of "screentime."
But I love the space opera, the Acanti backstory, and the writing and visuals of the Brood (albeit riffing off of Alien). #166 is one of my favorite special issues of X-Men (it's double-sized). As essential as Dave Cockrum is to X-Men, when Paul Smith shows up, a bunch of new creative energy is released. There's a great page introducing Lockheed where Smith plays with the artistic possibilities, and deceptiveness, of the medium. He mixes panels of Lockheed in close-up (including a panel that extends the full height of the page) with panels of the Brood fleeing from and being destroyed by Lockheed's flame breath. It creates the false impression that Lockheed is a big, imposing monster. But the first panel on the next page is a two-shot with Lockheed and Kitty, and it reveals how comparatively tiny Lockheed is.
In yet more examples of how Claremont keeps going back to the Phoenix well, both Binary and Storm have arcs that bring them in touch with immense cosmic power.
After the climax in #166, the X-Men's return to Earth and a hinted, dangling plot thread about Xavier wrap up the Brood story in #167. It's also the first meeting between the X-Men and the New Mutants. And while Illyana isn't a member of the New Mutants yet, her story has been developing in the interludes on Earth while the X-Men are in space. Illyana asks Professor X with a mischievous grin if she might be a mutant do because she can do "things."
I could've gone on to #168, which is a bit of a postscript to the Brood storyline, as it ties up loose ends with both Lockheed and the Sidri, but I decided to stop here. So concludes my binge read of Uncanny X-Men #139-167: the entirety of the second Cockrum run, bookended by the post-Dark Phoenix John Byrne issues that set the stage for the Cockrum run and the Paul Smith issues that completed the Brood story started by Cockrum.
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Post by badwolf on Oct 12, 2021 21:12:38 GMT -5
I may be less enamoured of Claremont's scripting than I used to be, but I always thought he wrote interesting stories. The ones here just weren't.
Admittedly, Man-Thing must be a difficult character to keep a series going around. He is mindless and reactive, so there's not much to go on there. It's surprising that they gave him his own series... twice.
My favorite Man-Thing story is the Gray Morrow story from Savage Tales. I would have preferred Man-Thing to be more a horror story. Yeah, up until the peak of Gerber's run I thought the B&W magazine stories were the best.
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Post by badwolf on Oct 12, 2021 21:20:42 GMT -5
I liked Claremont as a superhero writer on things like X-Men and Marvel Team-up, but always thought he was the wrong kind of writer for Man-Thing and therefore avoided the revived series that came out in the late 70s or early 80s. I think they should have given him and Byrne the Avengers at some point, but I suppose that partnership had already broken up anyway. Basically, I think he was really good at his own particular variation of the traditional Marvel-style superhero soap-opera originated by Stan Lee and carried on by people like Roy Thomas, and that's what he should have stuck with - but perhaps would have been better served by moving on to other characters instead of staying with the X-Men so long. But besides all that, for me Gerber, even though he wasn't the original creator, had made Man-Thing his own book to such a degree that I wasn't much interested in seeing someone else's take on it. Maybe if it had been a different writer - e.g. Englehart or Wolfman or Moench or McGregor - I would have taken a chance on it, as I did Wolfman and later Starlin on Doctor Strange after Englehart left, but certainly not Claremont who, though I liked, I thought completely unsuited to the series. Marv Wolfman wrote one of the stories in GSMT #5, but it was my least favorite of the three.
Doug Moench got his start in horror at Warren and continued to use elements of it even in his modern superhero comics, so I think he would have been great.
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Post by berkley on Oct 12, 2021 23:28:51 GMT -5
I liked Claremont as a superhero writer on things like X-Men and Marvel Team-up, but always thought he was the wrong kind of writer for Man-Thing and therefore avoided the revived series that came out in the late 70s or early 80s. I think they should have given him and Byrne the Avengers at some point, but I suppose that partnership had already broken up anyway. Basically, I think he was really good at his own particular variation of the traditional Marvel-style superhero soap-opera originated by Stan Lee and carried on by people like Roy Thomas, and that's what he should have stuck with - but perhaps would have been better served by moving on to other characters instead of staying with the X-Men so long. But besides all that, for me Gerber, even though he wasn't the original creator, had made Man-Thing his own book to such a degree that I wasn't much interested in seeing someone else's take on it. Maybe if it had been a different writer - e.g. Englehart or Wolfman or Moench or McGregor - I would have taken a chance on it, as I did Wolfman and later Starlin on Doctor Strange after Englehart left, but certainly not Claremont who, though I liked, I thought completely unsuited to the series. Marv Wolfman wrote one of the stories in GSMT #5, but it was my least favorite of the three.
Doug Moench got his start in horror at Warren and continued to use elements of it even in his modern superhero comics, so I think he would have been great.
Moench for me was one of the most dependable writers around - maybe THE most in the sense that he seemed to be able to take on any sort of assignment and do a better than average job with it. But when I said I might have given those writers a chance on the new Man-Thing book where I didn't give Claremont one, I meant just that: it's still quite likely I wouldn't have been able to enjoy the series, just as I wasn't able to enjoy the Wolfman or Starlin Doctor Strange runs much, even though they were two of my favourite writers at the time (granted, that series had other problems besides the writing in its post-Englehart era).
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Post by tartanphantom on Oct 13, 2021 7:44:49 GMT -5
Marv Wolfman wrote one of the stories in GSMT #5, but it was my least favorite of the three.
Doug Moench got his start in horror at Warren and continued to use elements of it even in his modern superhero comics, so I think he would have been great.
Moench for me was one of the most dependable writers around - maybe THE most in the sense that he seemed to be able to take on any sort of assignment and do a better than average job with it. But when I said I might have given those writers a chance on the new Man-Thing book where I didn't give Claremont one, I meant just that: it's still quite likely I wouldn't have been able to enjoy the series, just as I wasn't able to enjoy the Wolfman or Starlin Doctor Strange runs much, even though they were two of my favourite writers at the time (granted, that series had other problems besides the writing in its post-Englehart era).
I think Moench's run on the DC Spectre series from the mid -80's is quite underrated... especially on the issues illustrated with Gray Morrow art. If you can find these books, you can usually pick them up for a song-- an extremely undervalued series IMHO.
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Post by tingramretro on Oct 13, 2021 18:12:02 GMT -5
Marv Wolfman wrote one of the stories in GSMT #5, but it was my least favorite of the three.
Doug Moench got his start in horror at Warren and continued to use elements of it even in his modern superhero comics, so I think he would have been great.
Moench for me was one of the most dependable writers around - maybe THE most in the sense that he seemed to be able to take on any sort of assignment and do a better than average job with it.
Moench's early eighties run on Batman is still my favourite ever era of the Dark Knight.
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Post by berkley on Oct 13, 2021 19:19:36 GMT -5
Moench for me was one of the most dependable writers around - maybe THE most in the sense that he seemed to be able to take on any sort of assignment and do a better than average job with it. But when I said I might have given those writers a chance on the new Man-Thing book where I didn't give Claremont one, I meant just that: it's still quite likely I wouldn't have been able to enjoy the series, just as I wasn't able to enjoy the Wolfman or Starlin Doctor Strange runs much, even though they were two of my favourite writers at the time (granted, that series had other problems besides the writing in its post-Englehart era).
I think Moench's run on the DC Spectre series from the mid -80's is quite underrated... especially on the issues illustrated with Gray Morrow art. If you can find these books, you can usually pick them up for a song-- an extremely undervalued series IMHO.
Thanks, I'll have a look for those. The Morrow art alone is enough for me, I'm trying to find everything I can by him, though I haven't gotten round to working at it systematically yet, making a list of the comics he drew, etc..
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