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Post by brutalis on Feb 6, 2017 8:35:08 GMT -5
Ross Andru is awesome! My first brand-new issue of Spider-Man just off the spinner rack was #152. So in a way, visually, Andru's Spider-Man is my Spider-Man.
But I fell in love with Ditko's work very early on, when I picked up the over-sized Marvel Special Edition #1, with reprints of the first Spidey Annual, Spider-Man #6 and Spider-Man #35. Interesting how that works. I considered Don Heck as my favorite Avengers artist for many years. I guess you never forget " your first". Too true. Can even say the same about your "second" as well. off the top of my head: George Tuska was my first Iron Man artist followed by Don Heck. John Buscema and Don Heck were my first Avengers artists. Ross Andru and John Romita Sr for Spidey. Jack Kirby and John Buscema for Thor. Gene Colan and Sal Buscema for Captain America. Gene Colan and Bob Bob Brown for DD. Dick Dillin and Mike Sekowksy for Justice League. Carmine Infantino and Ross Andru for the Flash. Curt Swan and Wayne Boring for Superman. Jim Aparo and Irv Novick for Batman. Gene Colan and Jim Starlin for Captain Marvel. Gil Kane and Jim Starlin for Warlock. Dave Cockrum and Mike Grell for Legion of Superheroes. Jack Kirby and John Buscema for FF. All so memorable and iconic.
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Post by Hoosier X on Feb 7, 2017 12:43:24 GMT -5
I had about 45 minutes before going to pick up my nephew, so I thought I'd read some digital comics. I figured I could get through two or three old comics in the time I had. I took a break from Silver Age Spider-Man because there's a couple of key Golden Age comics I now have access to, stuff I've been wanting to read for DECADES. So I picked out Green Lantern #10, from 1943, with the first appearance of Vandal Savage! Geez, it's weird! It's two chapters, so I think it's probably between 25 and 30 pages long. And so dense! So many word balloons! It has its moments. Vandal Savage is pretty scary. But the art's not that great and the first chapter is kind of hard to read through because it's kind of dull. Things pick up when Vandal Savage explains his origin. (Perhaps I'm being a bit pedantic when I point out that the narrative has one big glaring historical problem as Vandal places Genghis Khan before the Battle of Hastings. It makes me wonder if Vandal Savage isn't just a big fraud.) But far, far more scary than Vandal Savage is Doiby Dickles. The chubby Hackman is ubiquitous in old Green Lantern stories, and I like him in small doses. (His Silver Age appearances are good.) I remember the first time I saw him, in a reprint of All-Star Comics #33, and I thought "What is that?" but liked him. He's very colorful and amusing. But when you read enough Golden Age Green Lantern, you see that he wasn't a supporting character, he was the co-star! And he gets on your nerves! (Well, mine anyway.) It doesn't help a bit that Golden Age Green Lantern was ... let us say, rather indifferently drawn, at times. (And I'll say this for Doiby: He wasn't nearly as bad as Percival Popp.) After the Vandal Savage story, there are a few pages of Mutt and Jeff. I've read enough Mutt and Jeff that it's kind of grown on me, and you have to respect DC for pioneering alternative depictions of gay couples. I skipped Hop Harrigan and the text story and decided to read the next (and last) Green Lantern story, but I looked at the time and ... it was time to get my nephew from school. So I didn't read two or three comics. I read about two-thirds of a Golden Age comic in 40 minutes. Man, those Golden Age comic books were a freaking bargain! Hours of reading for a dime! No wonder kids loved them so much. I bet even the crappy Golden Age comics looked like Mr. Wonderful's Technicolor Fightfest Circus Parade in the 1940s.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 7, 2017 13:30:09 GMT -5
Finished the John Byrne Batman/Captain America book from 1997.
So good, I wish I'd read it years ago. Almost makes me want to pick up some Captain America comics.
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Golddragon71
Full Member
Immortal avatar of the Dragon Race The Golden Dragon
Posts: 343
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Post by Golddragon71 on Feb 7, 2017 14:01:29 GMT -5
just read Flash #270 featuring the Clown I'm currently going Backward in time collecting and reading Barry's original Run (1956-1985) I've Had some of Barry's run for the last twenty-five years (Mostly, his trial and the Archives as wel as the Greatest flash stories ever told.) so I knew a fair amount about Barry's career (the Bare-Bones Basics at least.) Prior to the New 52 starting I had begun seriously combing the local comic shops and online sites for Barry's run prior to the Trial. However, with New52's start-up and DC's unceremonious dismissal of Wally West, I fell off and concentrated on boosting pro-Wally support. I'm getting back into the collecting again however and as of today i have every issue from 265-350. My New Year's resolution is to try and get every issue between where I am now and #151 (It helps that I've collected various "chunks" and now my current efforts involve filling in the gaps)
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Post by Cei-U! on Feb 7, 2017 15:42:33 GMT -5
After a month's delay, my shipment from InStockTrades finally arrived over the weekend. Five new books competing for my attention all at once! What's an addict to do?
The answer, of course, is to read them all at once. And so, in the last few days I've read the first two stories out of four of the five collections. I started with the Sea Devils Showcase, if only because of all the luscious Russ Heath artwork (seen to its best advantage here in black and white). The title characters are essentially a non-powered Fantastic Four in scuba diver drag, their adventures bringing them into conflict with the same mix of monsters, aliens, and weird villains that permeates the Silver Age DC line. Much the same can be said for Rip Hunter and his crew of chrononauts. Anyone with even an ounce of historical awareness will roll their eyes at the howlers posited in this time travel series. Ruben Moreira illustrated the first episode, followed by Mike Sekowsky and Joe Giella. Volume Two of the Wonder Woman Showcase has so far been a bit harder to slog through. Robert Kanigher's contempt for the character and her readers is telegraphed on every page. Even though I'm a Ross Andru fan, this is far from his best work. Still, this volume completes my set of WW Showcases. Tack on the four volumes of the Diana Prince Sekowsky-era collections and I have every Silver Age issue of Wonder Woman in one print format or another. My favorite reading, though, has to be the Essential Rawhide Kid by Lee and Kirby. Consciously over-the-top, the creators riff on the standard western clichés with tongues firmly in cheek, all while faithfully adhering to the absurd restrictions imposed by the CCA. The Kid's incredulously non-lethal gunplay, breathtaking skill with a lariat, and seemingly psychic connection with his horse are depicted with a straight-faced absurdity that foreshadows Stan and Jack's similarly knowing workaround on war comics in Sgt. Fury. A really fun comic enhanced by expressively grungy art by Kirby and Dick Ayers.
And now, having cleansed my palate, it's back to the Golden Age for your humble correspondent.
Cei-U! I summon the busman's holiday!
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Post by Deleted on Feb 7, 2017 17:22:46 GMT -5
I finished up the first trade paperback of Mike Grell's Green Arrow run. I've been dying to read it for years and really liked it. Do you have The Longbow Hunters? 😺 The GA annuals (written by Denny O'Neil) that crossover with O'Neil and Cowans The Question are good too; they are optional though. You don't need to read them to enjoy the 80 issues of Grell's Green Arrow. Ollie shows up in The Question monthly too. The Question does not appear in GA's monthly, but Warlord, Hal Jordan and Roy Harper (as Arsenal) do. Shado's 4 issue mini series Song of the Dragon (written by Grell) is good and if you love her as much as I do; you will need it. 😸 Black Canary had a four issue mini written by Sarah Bynam that is worth checking out, because it is referenced in Grell's GA if I recall. I still need to get Grell's GA: The Wonder Years, which is a flashback to Ollie's younger days I believe. Pretty much all of this is on my reading goals for 2017. I finished reading the Longbow Hunters before I started the Grell GA ongoing.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Feb 7, 2017 23:04:14 GMT -5
So I was reading a bit of the tail end of the 'triangle' era (Emperor Joker, and a bit after)... man, it is scary how much Lex's run for president predicted real life.
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Post by Hoosier X on Feb 7, 2017 23:10:35 GMT -5
Another Golden Age story I've been wanting to read is the first appearance of Solomon Grundy in the Green Lantern story in All-American Comics #61. It's much much better than the Vandal Savage story! If you like the really crude but sometimes creepy stories that were spawned by the Golden Age, the origin of Solomon Grundy is must-read. He's a giant, very pale humanoid amnesiac who wanders out of the swamp and falls in with a bunch of crooks who start taking him along on their crimes. Eventually Green Lantern shows up to put a stop to the gang's predations. Imagine Green Lanterns surprise when his magic ring doesn't work on Grundy! You should see the look on his face when Grundy grabs him! The bad guys say "Kill him!" but neophyte Grundy doesn't know what "to kill" means. So they explain it and Grundy hurls the Lantern to his death. (He gets better pretty quick.) But Grundy is so excited by this concept of killing that he grabs one of the members of his gang and kills him while the others are watching! It's quite chilling. Made even more chilling by the raw and primitive and ham-fisted nature of the art. They get him under control so he doesn't just massacre his "buddies." Lantern survives and attacks Grundy with his fists and somehow manages to knock Grundy in front of a train. WHAMMO! so that's how Grundy was killed in his first appearance. he was knocked in front of a train by Green Lantern without his powers. Sheesh! Doiby could do that! I decided to read the rest of All-American #16, but I'm doing it bit by bit because, aside from the Solomon Grundy story, it looks kind of dull. A few pages of mutt And Jeff isn't so hard to get through, but after that is a Golden Age Atom story. Golden Age Atom is the worst! It was only six or seven pages and it's about a safecracker who keeps his tools in a special box and his name is Van Dorra. So the title of the story is Van Dorra's Box. Get it? Because instead of Pandora, it's Van Dorra. I don't know what I'd do if I ever read a good Golden Age Atom story. (Which is not to say I didn't like the way Roy Thomas wrote the Atom in All-Star Squadron in the 1980s. I'm just saying that the Atom stories from the Golden Age are (in my experience) uniformly awful.)
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Post by Hoosier X on Feb 8, 2017 13:39:21 GMT -5
I finished All-American Comics #61 this morning. I've already forgotten the Dr. Mid-Nite story.
There was also a Red, White and Blue story that wasn't too bad for a Red, White and Blue story. Red, White and Blue are American servicemen, fighting the Japanese in China. (I think one is in the Army, one is in the Navy and one is a Marine, but that isn't mentioned in this story.) They are captured by the Japanese and they say "Jap" and "Nip" a lot, but they are rescued by Chinese guerrillas. One of the Chinese speaks English with a Brooklyn accent because he lived in Flatbush for a while. (He wants to know how the Dodgers are doing.) It's that bad Golden Age type of art that is so action-packed and whack that I like it.
And then there was a Hop Harrigan story! I'm not sure I've ever read a Hop Harrigan story. I know the name, I think it was a regular text feature in either Flash Comics or All-Star, but I so seldom read the text stories. He's a World War II pilot (Army Air Corps, I presume) flying over enemy territory, and he hears over the radio that he has a letter from home! So for the next 7 or 8 pages, he gets in dogfights and gets shot down and is captured and fights with the Chinese partisans. And he finally gets back to base to read the letter ... and it's an advertising handout saying that the war is practically over and everybody should cash in their war bonds and go to a sale at Wanamakers (or whatever) department store! Yeah. Hop is not pleased. (I should add that every page of this comic has one of those rhyming wartime slogans across the bottom, like "Tin cans in the garbage pile are just the same as saying "Heil!" or "Save your scrap and beat the Jap!"
And I went back to reading Spider-Man. I read #59 this morning. And at the very end, the behind-the-scenes villain is ...!
You'll have to wait!
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Crimebuster
CCF Podcast Guru
Making comics!
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Post by Crimebuster on Feb 8, 2017 14:49:22 GMT -5
And I went back to reading Spider-Man. I read #59 this morning. And at the very end, the behind-the-scenes villain is ...! You'll have to wait! Is it Hop Harrigan?!
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Post by dbutler69 on Feb 8, 2017 15:22:04 GMT -5
Man, those Golden Age comic books were a freaking bargain! Hours of reading for a dime! No wonder kids loved them so much. I bet even the crappy Golden Age comics looked like Mr. Wonderful's Technicolor Fightfest Circus Parade in the 1940s. Yeah, I guess the reason that comics stayed at 10 cents for so long was that, rather than increasing the price, they would decrease the page count. So, those older comics do have a lot of pages!
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Post by dbutler69 on Feb 8, 2017 15:28:35 GMT -5
Lantern survives and attacks Grundy with his fists and somehow manages to knock Grundy in front of a train. WHAMMO! so that's how Grundy was killed in his first appearance. he was knocked in front of a train by Green Lantern without his powers. Sheesh! Doiby could do that! I've read a handful of Golden Age stories with the Green Lantern, and it seems to me that he uses his fists an awful lot. Hey, dude, you've got a power ring! Perhaps the most powerful weapon in the world. What are you doing? He must like giving baddies the "personal touch".
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Post by Deleted on Feb 8, 2017 15:54:21 GMT -5
Lantern survives and attacks Grundy with his fists and somehow manages to knock Grundy in front of a train. WHAMMO! so that's how Grundy was killed in his first appearance. he was knocked in front of a train by Green Lantern without his powers. Sheesh! Doiby could do that! I've read a handful of Golden Age stories with the Green Lantern, and it seems to me that he uses his fists an awful lot. Hey, dude, you've got a power ring! Perhaps the most powerful weapon in the world. What are you doing? He must like giving baddies the "personal touch". Worse is Dr. Fate handed out knuckle sandwiches and not using magic at all for most of the last half of the run of More Fun. Except when villains gassed him, which happened every issue. -M
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Post by dbutler69 on Feb 8, 2017 15:59:57 GMT -5
I've read a handful of Golden Age stories with the Green Lantern, and it seems to me that he uses his fists an awful lot. Hey, dude, you've got a power ring! Perhaps the most powerful weapon in the world. What are you doing? He must like giving baddies the "personal touch". Worse is Dr. Fate handed out knuckle sandwiches and not using magic at all for most of the last half of the run of More Fun. Except when villains gassed him, which happened every issue. -M LOL It's a wonder the JSA ever survived.
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Post by Hoosier X on Feb 10, 2017 11:55:40 GMT -5
Worse is Dr. Fate handed out knuckle sandwiches and not using magic at all for most of the last half of the run of More Fun. Except when villains gassed him, which happened every issue. -M LOL It's a wonder the JSA ever survived. Are you kidding? They had Johnny Thunder!
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