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Post by jtrw2024 on Aug 2, 2024 15:51:09 GMT -5
Been reading my newly acquired Taschen Marvel Comics Library: Spider-Man Vol. 1 - 1962–1964 oversized hardcover. This thing is gorgeous – pictures really don't do it justice – but it weighs a tonne!  Forget the Omnibuses, this book is seriously heavy. The book has great production values and very nice paper stock throughout. It really is a thing of beauty. I've found that the most comfortable way to read it is to have it flat on my bed, with me sitting upright in front of it looking down. With the combination of my glasses and the book's huge size, I can easily see the artwork details and read the word balloons from that position. So far, I've re-read Amazing fantasy #15 and Amazing Spider-Man #1 and #2, and it's fascinating to see how these stories initially appeared, when compared to the re-prints that we've all seen. Especially so with the colouring! I mean, I knew about things like the spider symbol on Peter's back being blue instead of red early on, but much more surprisingly, the blue in Spider-Man's costume is reproduced in a very different purply hue for the first 4 issues or so. Of course, the Lee/Ditko stories in this volume are all fantastic, but I must say that it's great to have them reproduced so faithfully and at such a large size. I can't see my old copies of Marvel Tales featuring these stories getting too much use from now on; this Taschen hardcover is sure to become my go-to version of these classic comics. Around 2005 or so Marvel, in partnership with Gitcorp, starting releasing CD and DVD-Rom collections with scans of their original comics. The Amazing Spider-man collection came out at the perfect time as I had completed my complete collection of Spider-man stories, either through reprints or originals as far back as I could go without going bankrupt, and was getting ready to read them all in the best order I could determine based on the release dates. I prefer hard copies, and had never really read entire comics on a computer before, but having scans of the first 40 years of Amazing Spider-man issues was the best $50.00 I ever spent and it was definitely better than the black and white Essential collections which I head initially planned to read from. It took me about 10 months to read all the way from the first appearance up until I caught up with the current issues. I'm not to keen on Omnibus and any other heavy collections, but those images from the Taschen hardcovers look pretty cool. |
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Post by kirby101 on Aug 2, 2024 16:06:17 GMT -5
I just picked up the Eternals by Jack Kirby collection at Ollies... which I have wanted for a while, now. Man, I just don't know.... It is really a slog to get through it. It's all bombast, shouting, THE STAKES WERE NEVER HIGHER!, explosions, fighting, grimacing, etc. I am 4 issues in, and it bothers me there are no "home base" type locations... just people fighting and shouting for seemingly no reason. The only story I can suss out so far is that man, the eternals, and the deviants were placed here by THE GODS, and they are COMING BACK. That's it. No one has a personality. No one has a motivation. It's all just bombast and shrapnel. I am really disappointed, so far, and don't know if I will even attempt to finish it. The art is great, of course... and Kirby sure wrote a LOT of words... but jeez. Wow, we certainly have a different reaction. I re-read it last year and thought it much better than when I originally read it. I thought it was a grand operatic dram writ large. Their was some really great characterizations with neither the Eternals or Deviants being one dimensional good or evil. Reject and Karkas were particularly interesting. This really should have been a stand alone series, not part of the MU. It also becomes apparent in the second year that the Marvel Editors are interfering more and more. Too bad, because there is only a hint at what Kirby intended as far as the Celestials. |
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Post by Batflunkie on Aug 2, 2024 17:09:40 GMT -5
I'm not to keen on Omnibus and any other heavy collections, but those images from the Taschen hardcovers look pretty cool. I have a Man-Thing and Howard The Duck Omni and the only reason I bought them was because, at the time, they were cheaper than buying them in the "complete collection" trade format. And with how large Man-Thing was (and with how much real estate it takes up on my bookshelf), it's a hard "no" to any future ones. The only exceptions were the Darkhorse compendium of Usagi Yojimbo and Elf Quest and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't at least considering the one for DC's Nightwing But hey, if Taschen does a library edition of Captain America, who am I to say no? |
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Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 10,201 
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Post by Confessor on Aug 2, 2024 18:49:16 GMT -5
Thanks to Dark Horse's very affordable EC Archives softcovers, I recently read Weird Science-Fantasy #27-29 and Incredible Science Fiction #30. They're found in the book Incredible Science-Fiction. Really nice stuff. The art is absolutely beautiful, with people like Wood, Williamson, Crandall (and even Joe Orlando, whose work in more recent comics I didn't especially enjoy). There's even a Frazetta cover in there (pencils and inks, not a painting). The stories are a bit formulaic, in that many hang on a twist ending... but taken in moderate doses, it's quite all right. It's pretty much par for course with such anthology titles anyway. It was interesting to see how influences vary over the decades; while many stories in DC's Time Warp had a strong Star Wars and Star Trek influence, EC's SF stories are mostly set in worlds familiar to readers of the old pulps. (Every representation of Mars seems to use Bradbury's work as a model!) Letter pages and house ads are included, for which I am very grateful... and now I am very curious about a comic book titled Psychoanalysis! Was it some kind of jab at Fredrick Wertham? (The GCD says that it lasted only four issues, but it's definitely an unexpected subject for a comic-book!) I'd be really interested in your thoughts on Psychoanalysis!, RR. It's a series that has long intrigued me. I'm a big fan of EC's Piracy, which was another of those post-Wertham New Direction anthology titles. |
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Post by berkley on Aug 2, 2024 19:06:50 GMT -5
I just picked up the Eternals by Jack Kirby collection at Ollies... which I have wanted for a while, now. Man, I just don't know.... It is really a slog to get through it. It's all bombast, shouting, THE STAKES WERE NEVER HIGHER!, explosions, fighting, grimacing, etc. I am 4 issues in, and it bothers me there are no "home base" type locations... just people fighting and shouting for seemingly no reason. The only story I can suss out so far is that man, the eternals, and the deviants were placed here by THE GODS, and they are COMING BACK. That's it. No one has a personality. No one has a motivation. It's all just bombast and shrapnel. I am really disappointed, so far, and don't know if I will even attempt to finish it. The art is great, of course... and Kirby sure wrote a LOT of words... but jeez. Wow, we certainly have a different reaction. I re-read it last year and thought it much better than when I originally read it. I thought it was a grand operatic dram writ large. Their was some really great characterizations with neither the Eternals or Deviants being one dimensional good or evil. Reject and Karkas were particularly interesting. This really should have been a stand alone series, not part of the MU. It also becomes apparent in the second year that the Marvel Editors are interfering more and more. Too bad, because there is only a hint at what Kirby intended as far as the Celestials. Yeah I think it's a masterpiece. It starts off with an extended action sequence that lasts over several issues and only then pulls back to give more background details, so some patience is required on the reader's part - unfortunately it seems, more than was possessed by many superhero fans. Different pieces of the puzzle are released only at intervals, and not in a linear fashion of first this happened, then this happened, and then etc, etc.
There are some very strong characters, but once again, they are revealed only gradually and some reading between the lines is required. I agree that the Reject and Karkas are stand-outs, along with their mentor Thena - and in fact I believe this trio is crucial to the thematic underpinnings of series and where it was heading before its untimely cancellation. |
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Post by Ricky Jackson on Aug 2, 2024 22:31:30 GMT -5
Thanks to Dark Horse's very affordable EC Archives softcovers, I recently read Weird Science-Fantasy #27-29 and Incredible Science Fiction #30. They're found in the book Incredible Science-Fiction. Really nice stuff. The art is absolutely beautiful, with people like Wood, Williamson, Crandall (and even Joe Orlando, whose work in more recent comics I didn't especially enjoy). There's even a Frazetta cover in there (pencils and inks, not a painting). The stories are a bit formulaic, in that many hang on a twist ending... but taken in moderate doses, it's quite all right. It's pretty much par for course with such anthology titles anyway. It was interesting to see how influences vary over the decades; while many stories in DC's Time Warp had a strong Star Wars and Star Trek influence, EC's SF stories are mostly set in worlds familiar to readers of the old pulps. (Every representation of Mars seems to use Bradbury's work as a model!) Letter pages and house ads are included, for which I am very grateful... and now I am very curious about a comic book titled Psychoanalysis! Was it some kind of jab at Fredrick Wertham? (The GCD says that it lasted only four issues, but it's definitely an unexpected subject for a comic-book!) I'd be really interested in your thoughts on Psychoanalysis!, RR. It's a series that has long intrigued me. I'm a big fan of EC's Piracy, which was another of those post-Wertham New Direction anthology titles. I have a 90s reprint collecting Psychoanalysis and read it nearly 25 years ago when I was on a big EC kick. The art by Jack Kamen (who illustrated the whole series) is top notch. It is very wordy, even by EC standards. But it is worth the read, truly a unique comic book |
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Post by Cei-U! on Aug 2, 2024 23:46:55 GMT -5
I just picked up the Eternals by Jack Kirby collection at Ollies... which I have wanted for a while, now. Man, I just don't know.... It is really a slog to get through it. It's all bombast, shouting, THE STAKES WERE NEVER HIGHER!, explosions, fighting, grimacing, etc. I am 4 issues in, and it bothers me there are no "home base" type locations... just people fighting and shouting for seemingly no reason. The only story I can suss out so far is that man, the eternals, and the deviants were placed here by THE GODS, and they are COMING BACK. That's it. No one has a personality. No one has a motivation. It's all just bombast and shrapnel. I am really disappointed, so far, and don't know if I will even attempt to finish it. The art is great, of course... and Kirby sure wrote a LOT of words... but jeez. Wow, we certainly have a different reaction. I re-read it last year and thought it much better than when I originally read it. I thought it was a grand operatic dram writ large. Their was some really great characterizations with neither the Eternals or Deviants being one dimensional good or evil. Reject and Karkas were particularly interesting. This really should have been a stand alone series, not part of the MU. It also becomes apparent in the second year that the Marvel Editors are interfering more and more. Too bad, because there is only a hint at what Kirby intended as far as the Celestials. Yeah, I'm with kirby on this one. Eternals is my favorite title from Jack's '70s Marvel comeback, though again like kirby I abhor what editorial interference did to the book. It absolutely should've been allowed to stand apart from the Marvel Universe.
Cei-U!
And Karkas is one of my all-time favorite Kirby Kreations! |
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Post by commond on Aug 3, 2024 18:02:17 GMT -5
I've been working my way through the pre-superhero Atlas comics. I've finally reached the issues where they plug The Fantastic Four and Amazing Adult Fantasy at the end of the stories. The monster stories evolve over time. Pretty quickly, they struggle to come up with new ideas, and I can't blame them since it's a of monsters to whip up each month. They start doing workarounds like having the monsters reappear, introducing the offspring of monsters, having stories continue in the next issue, and even an experiment where the entire issue was a monster story. Eventually, they start focusing on a human protagonist with the monster being a secondary figure, and the stories improve.
The sweet spot for me was when they'd have a quartet of stories from Kirby, Heck, Reinman and Ditko. Unfortunately, when Kirby's stories expand to two-partners, you lose a Heck or Reinman story and the books are worse for it. The Ditko stories become weaker as well. I'm not sure if that's because Stan was becoming more heavily involved or because he was being stretched thin but the art isn't as good as it was in the late 50s. Kirby is stretched even thinner and barely does any backgrounds.
I couldn't really find any natural progression towards doing superheroes. That makes me believe in the Justice League story. There are plenty of elements they'd already used. For example, Ditko had done a lot of the groundwork for Dr. Strange already. However, there was no magic switching of the light bulb. Stan was already a good scripter before the superhero stories began even if his work from that era isn't well-remembered. Amusingly, there is a story penciled by Jack Kirby where the editor of Tales to Astonish gives a writer an assignment and the writer gives his script to the artist to draw. I got a chuckle out of that.
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Post by kirby101 on Aug 3, 2024 19:48:28 GMT -5
I don't think there was some progression to Superheroes. It was a decision to change format. Kirby cut his eye teeth on Superheroes 20 years before. And Ditko was already doing Captain Atom. It wasn't like Goodman needing convincing they were capable. He just looked at the Competition and saw it was worth trying. The Justice League story doesn't hold up. And those involved have said it didn't happen. You had Flash, Green Lantern and Challengers already showing him they sold.
You had Kirby pushing for it. Goodman could make quick decision, look at how 2 years before he switched to monster books once he had Ditko and Kirby.
I agree that those monster books, as fun as they were, fall into repetition. It's hard to constantly come up with new monster stories with twist endings.
The only thing that probably came easy were the Monster designs, which Kirby and Ditko did throughout their careers.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Aug 3, 2024 20:41:21 GMT -5
I don't think there was some progression to Superheroes. It was a decision to change format. Kirby cut his eye teeth on Superheroes 20 years before. And Ditko was already doing Captain Atom. It wasn't like Goodman needing convincing they were capable. He just looked at the Competition and saw it was worth trying. The Justice League story doesn't hold up. And those involved have said it didn't happen. You had Flash, Green Lantern and Challengers already showing him they sold. You had Kirby pushing for it. Goodman could make quick decision, look at how 2 years before he switched to monster books once he had Ditko and Kirby. I agree that those monster books, as fun as they were, fall into repetition. It's hard to constantly come up with new monster stories with twist endings. The only thing that probably came easy were the Monster designs, which Kirby and Ditko did throughout their careers. It’s not as if other comics didn’t also fall into repetition. DC’s war books, pretty as they usually are, are a super tough read if you start binging a title. Because the basic stories and the tropes get used over and over again. The same was true of the mystery books and, really, the super-hero books. Over time, they got somewhat better. But during the period when the expectation was that you were completely turning over your readership every few years there was no incentive not to recycle stories. |
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Post by commond on Aug 4, 2024 4:55:39 GMT -5
The DC war books are repetitive, but their storytelling and characterization are leagues above the Atlas/MC books. It's not really a fair comparison, however, as the DC war books were character features while the Atlas books were anthology titles.
I find the Tom Brevoort version of the Justice League story to be plausible. It fits the timeline and matches the content of the stories at the time. It may be false, but there's not much in the comics themselves to disprove it. I don't know where the accepted belief that Kirby was pushing for superheroes comes from, but in real time, it took from 1958-61 to convince Goodman to pull the trigger, which is a mighty long time. I also can't discount the fact that Kirby may have been pushing for superheroes AND the Justice League story actually happened. I also like Brevoort's theory about Amazing Adult Fantasy being the book where Stan tried to do something new ala the whole wife story, and that Fantastic Four didn't become much more than a monster title until issue #8.
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Post by EdoBosnar on Aug 4, 2024 14:13:30 GMT -5
Nausicaä of the Valley of the WindHayao Miyazaki, 2012 (box set edition) original title: Kaze no Tani no Naushika, published in Japan in serialized form from 1982 to 1994 English translation by: Dana Lewis, Toren Smith and Rachel Thorn, 1988-late 1990s  Just got through reading the 1,000-plus pages collected in these two volumes, and I can now easily say that it’s my favorite manga (not that I’ve read all that much). The story takes place about a millennium after the catastrophic collapse of industrial civilization, with most of the world’s land and oceans heavily polluted. Humanity survives, but lives on the fringes of what is called the ‘Sea of Corruption’ (a vast forest of toxic fungal life-forms and huge insects) in small, relatively uncontaminated areas that are mainly organized into kingdoms, with two larger empires to which they owe allegiance. The technology is mostly primitive; people do have firearms but also use swords and aircraft – either motorized or gliders – are the only sophisticated transportation technology. At the outset, the two empires, Dorok and Torumekia, go to war, and this draws in their vassal states. One of these is the Valley of the Wind, a small kingdom of a few hundred people, whose teenage princess, Nausicaä, has to lead its small contingent of troops to aid Torumekia in place of her ailing father. Nausicaä, who’s generally more interested in donning a gasmask and conducting investigations in the Sea of Corruption, thinks the war is folly, esp. once it becomes apparent that the Dorok empire is using biological weapons, i.e., genetically motified molds, which eventually sets off a major environmental disaster. As the story progresses, Nausicaä learns much about the nature of the Sea of Corruption and the life-forms that thrive there, and emerges as a key figure in preventing humankind from destroying itself completely.  Miyazaki’s story is complex and fascinating, an engrossing fantasy-style epic that’s inverwoven with commentary on environmental devastation and warfare. And his art is wonderful throughout, as he excels at depicting ornate, fantastical settings like the one above or pitched scenes of battles...  ...and everything in between, including some rather grotesque imagery involving genetically modified creatures and whatnot. Two thumbs up from me.
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Post by commond on Aug 4, 2024 16:02:09 GMT -5
Nausicaä is my favorite Miyazaki move and always chokes me up. I've never read the manga, though. Thanks for sharing!
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Post by wildfire2099 on Aug 4, 2024 16:42:53 GMT -5
Nausicaa is great... love the art style and a great story to boot!
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Post by Deleted on Aug 4, 2024 17:58:04 GMT -5
Just read the Avengers Epic Collection Judgment Day volume which covers the end of Stern's 80's run on the title (#278-285), plus the X-Men vs. The Avengers mini, the Emperor Doom GN, and a crossover event with Avengers Annual #16 and West Coast Avengers Annual #2.
The Stern issues from the main title are a battle in Olympus and Hades, it's the storyline where Zeus blames the Avengers for Hercules being in a coma (even though it was actually Herc's fault, but Zeus has a mad-on and won't listen to anyone on the matter). The Avengers are already out power classed taking on the pantheon, with their own resident godling Thor not at full strength due to a curse Hela put on him that has him weakened.
It's a decent read with plenty of action, though it's kind of a repetitive "Zeus is angry" kind of story. Pluto and Ares are nogoodniks as well also creating issues. What I like most is the Avengers form alliances to overcome what they can't solve with power alone.
I also like the Avengers line-up at this point. I'm a big Monica Rambeau CM fan, and seeing her elevated to leadership with Cap's endorsement when the Wasp quits was such a great moment. I think they kind of ruined it after Stern left with the whole "Dr. Druid is trying to undermine CM's confidence" to make the power grab himself (I actually kind of like Druid's character during these early appearances as well). She-Hulk is also back on the team after wrapping up her FF stint, she's always fun.
X-Men versus The Avengers reexamines the character of Magneto who is leading the X-Men in Charles' absence, and still wanted for many prior crimes. Parts of his Asteriod M crash on Earth and Magneto sneaks away from the X-Men to go investigate for reasons not immediately apparent. The X-Men are suspicious and follow him, plus the Avengers are charged with recovering Magneto since he is sighted and again wanted. The X-Men and Avengers mix it up for a bit (Avengers feel empowered, X-Men feel like it is their business), plus Russian superheroes show up as well to take in Magneto making it even more conflicted. Long story short, Magneto eludes everyone and eventually recovers what he is looking for, and it is tech that allows him to mind control others. He meets a mutant underground of sorts in another country who revere him, and it reignites his questions on if he should this newfound power at his hands to end humanity's freewill to attack mutants.
It doesn't really go anywhere, he eventually goes back to trial, ambiguous implications of the outcome, nothing really resolved. For me it was more enjoyable for all of the character appearances.
Emperor Doom is a fun little read where Doom taps into the Purple Man's mind control powers and basically takes over the world. It's the old theme of be careful of what you wish for, Doom doesn't find it as satisfying as he thought it would be. Wonder Man is conveniently "out of pocket" when the takeover happens and is able to start to "reawaken" some of the heroes to resist Doom. Doom kind of embraces having a challenge again and of course it all eventually falls apart for him.
The annuals crossover is basically a continuation of the original Contest of Champions, you've got the Grandmaster pitting the East and West Coast teams against each other. It's a nice little ending though as Hawkeye basically saves the day (the universe in fact) by cheating at a simple game of chance he comes up with.
Nice collection overall, fun if not essential.
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Forget the Omnibuses, this book is seriously heavy.
