|
Post by Batflunkie on Mar 26, 2017 12:47:34 GMT -5
Ah, Swarm. I name I haven't heard in a while. Fritz von Meyer was born in Leipzig, Germany and became one of Adolf Hitler's top scientists. Escaping capture after World War II, he became a beekeeper or apiarist in South America and discovered a colony of mutated bees. Intrigued by their intelligence and passive nature, von Meyer attempted to enslave the queen bee, but failed and the bees devoured him, leaving only his skeleton. The unique qualities of the bees caused his consciousness to be absorbed into them, allowing von Meyer to manipulate the hive to do his will, although some of his skeletal remains are inside the swarm itself. His consciousness merged with the swarm to the extent that they become one being, calling himself/their-self "Swarm".That is some serious H.P. Lovecraft level horror right there
|
|
|
Post by Spike-X on Mar 26, 2017 20:44:11 GMT -5
A Nazi swarm of bees.
Damn, I love comics!
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Mar 27, 2017 7:52:52 GMT -5
I do recall watching a Cartoon on the Amazing Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends that featured Swarm and I just can't find the You Tube of it. It was a fantastic cartoon and it's done just masterfully. It was one of my favorites on that animated cartoon show back then.
|
|
|
Post by badwolf on Mar 27, 2017 9:44:53 GMT -5
I do recall watching a Cartoon on the Amazing Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends that featured Swarm and I just can't find the You Tube of it. It was a fantastic cartoon and it's done just masterfully. It was one of my favorites on that animated cartoon show back then. That was the first time I saw him. At the time, I had no idea he was ever in the comics. I thought he was one of the ones made up for the show.
|
|
|
Post by Hoosier X on Mar 27, 2017 10:17:34 GMT -5
I read a new reprint of old Champions stories called No Time For Losers... It reprints the first few issues, a nonsensical story involving the forced marriages of Hercules and golden age heroine Venus and an assault on Olympus a few years before the Avengers did it. Slightly better are a couple issues from later in the run where they fight Swarm, a Nazi made of bees. Early John Byrne art on those. Not a great book but at least I sated my curiosity about it. I bought The Champions when it first came out in the 1970s, but I didn't start until #4. (I later got #2 at a used-book store for 12 1/2 cents.) So it was nice to get this volume and see the issues I missed way back when. That Don Heck art gives it a really think Bronze Age feeling. It wasn't a classic of the Bronze Age, but I've always had quite a fondness for the Champs.
|
|
|
Post by The Captain on Mar 27, 2017 11:17:17 GMT -5
I read a new reprint of old Champions stories called No Time For Losers... It reprints the first few issues, a nonsensical story involving the forced marriages of Hercules and golden age heroine Venus and an assault on Olympus a few years before the Avengers did it. Slightly better are a couple issues from later in the run where they fight Swarm, a Nazi made of bees. Early John Byrne art on those. Not a great book but at least I sated my curiosity about it. I bought The Champions when it first came out in the 1970s, but I didn't start until #4. (I later got #2 at a used-book store for 12 1/2 cents.) So it was nice to get this volume and see the issues I missed way back when. That Don Heck art gives it a really think Bronze Age feeling. It wasn't a classic of the Bronze Age, but I've always had quite a fondness for the Champs. Such a bad, misfired series. Take five characters that have zero in common (except for Bobby and Warren), put them on a team together, and watch hijinx ensue. This is one of the few series I've read that made me really question why I went to the trouble to collect it. In other reading news, I quit on Crisis on Infinite Earths after six issues. I realized I just didn't know or care enough about any of the characters to keep pushing through. No emotional attachment to them made it hard to be upset when someone died or another world got destroyed.
|
|
|
Post by dbutler69 on Mar 27, 2017 12:15:14 GMT -5
I do recall watching a Cartoon on the Amazing Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends that featured Swarm and I just can't find the You Tube of it. It was a fantastic cartoon and it's done just masterfully. It was one of my favorites on that animated cartoon show back then. Yes, I remember that episode! I agree, it was a classic.
|
|
|
Post by Hoosier X on Mar 27, 2017 13:01:20 GMT -5
I bought The Champions when it first came out in the 1970s, but I didn't start until #4. (I later got #2 at a used-book store for 12 1/2 cents.) So it was nice to get this volume and see the issues I missed way back when. That Don Heck art gives it a really think Bronze Age feeling. It wasn't a classic of the Bronze Age, but I've always had quite a fondness for the Champs. Such a bad, misfired series. Take five characters that have zero in common (except for Bobby and Warren), put them on a team together, and watch hijinx ensue. This is one of the few series I've read that made me really question why I went to the trouble to collect it. In other reading news, I quit on Crisis on Infinite Earths after six issues. I realized I just didn't know or care enough about any of the characters to keep pushing through. No emotional attachment to them made it hard to be upset when someone died or another world got destroyed. Another team book from roughly the same time period that I like a lot is The Freedom Fighters. It's a bit of an acquired taste. If you didn't think much of the Champs, you probably won't think much of The Freedom Fighters. I didn't read DC's FF series when it came out, I acquired them one by one over several years, finishing off the series a couple of years ago.
|
|
|
Post by Hoosier X on Mar 27, 2017 13:24:18 GMT -5
After all these years, I've finally read all the O'Neil/Adams stories of Green Lantern/Green Arrow! As I mentioned elsewhere on this thread, I was reading Green Lantern #90 to #100 digitally, but I only got to the third or fourth issue before I found myself neglecting that little project to read the Avengers and Sgt. Fury. Not that mid-Bronze Age Green Lantern is bad, not a bit, it's just hard to compete with Silver Age Avengers and Silver Age Sgt. Fury. My short-term solution was to back up a few issues. I realized that I've never read all the O'Neil/Adams issues of Green Lantern. I used to have Hard-Traveling Heroes, Volume One, but I never got the second volume. So I backed up to Green Lantern #84 and then read #85 to #87, #89 (#88 is all-reprint) and then I read the O'Neil/Adams Green Lantern backups in Flash (#217 to #219, I think. I also read the Flash stories. Some awesome early Bronze Age fun! Several of the Rogues are in one story. And also the return of ... the Turtle! I love the Turtle! Especially his sweater.). Yeah. These stories can keep up very well with the Avengers. (I fell behind on Sgt. Fury after I read #13.) The art is GREAT! You can just flip through and look at the art and you know you're looking at some awesome comics. And now we get to Denny O'Neil. I'm going to have a lot to say about Denny O'Neil over the next few months when (or if) I start my plan to read Detective Comics #393 to the current issues (they're at #953 now, but who knows where they'll be by the time I get to the end. I'm getting the last few issues I need, and I've been reading Denny O'Neil Batman stories that I never read before. (A few nights ago, I read Detective #410, the issue with Batman trying to save the seal boy from being thrown from a tower.) I think Denny O'Neil is a bit over-rated. Oh, he's good! His Green Lantern/Green Arrow run with Neal Adams is great Bronze Age comics, in many ways, it's one of the series that changes the landscape enough that you can look back and see (roughly) where the Bronze Age began. It was ground-breaking and influential and innovative. And I can certainly see why many people love those books. Heck, I love those books! But I don't love them as much as a lot of people do. If I had read them when I was younger, maybe if I had come across some back issues or reprints in the late 1970s when I was 13 or 14, I'd love then as much as I should. But I was close to 30 when I read Hard-Traveling Heroes, Volume One, and I'm a heckuva lot older now. I don't want to go into a lot of details about the things that bug me about the worshipful attitude towards Dennis O'Neil. I'll just name a couple of things. And maybe I'll go into more detail in the near-future, when I'm making comments on Detective Comics in the early Bronze Age. He's a good writer. Maybe even a great comic book writer. When I read mid-1970s issues of Batman and Detective, I frequently see his name on a lot of my favorite stories from the era, like the Penguin story in Batman #257 or the Catwoman story in #266. But I also see stories by other writers that I like just as much! Like David V. Reed. From an earlier period of Batman and Detective, I see a lot of Frank Robbins stories that I like just as much as anything that Dennis O'Neil wrote. (When I read those early 1970s Detective Comics, I'm planning on comparing the quality of O'Neil's output with Robbins's.) So from my perspective he's one of a number of really good Batman writers. To make a few comments a little more specifically about Green Lantern ... it frequently comes off as a little too blatantly preachy, and the positions of the liberal GA vs. conservative GL is both very stereotypical and often contrived. I understand a lot of why it's written that way. O'Neil had a limited amount of space and a viewpoint that required some heavy-handedness to fit it into the space allowed with these characters. Another thing that bugs me about O'Neil's GL/GA: The way they handled Black Canary. She gets beaten up by bikers, and when Ollie and Hal track her down, she's been brainwashed by a cult. That's not the Black Canary I know. And she shows up again in her civilian guise to take care of Speedy in his time as a junkie. That was nice of her, and I liked seeing it. She doesn't have to be a kick-ass super-hero all the time. The last thing I want to talk about regarding O'Neil's GL/GA run is the heroin issues. I like them a lot. They may not be my favorites. But I think they suffer when compared with the Spider-Man drug issues published a few months later. For one thing, Speedy as a heroin addict is out of left field. There's a bit of an emotional disconnect when Speedy turns out to be a junkie. I admit it probably happens like that in real life sometimes. But I think the story in Spider-Man #96 to #98 is a lot more powerful because we've been watching Harry stumbling through life and coping with his problems for years! (Well, I didn't read these issues when they first came out, but I had been reading Marvel Tales since they reprinted #84 and I had amassed a bunch of issues of Marvel Tales at that point.) Harry on drugs seems like a likely storyline; I wouldn't be surprised to find out Harry had been on some kind of trendy prescription drugs of some kind going back to his childhood. I do like the issues with Appa Ali Apsa a lot. I think that storyline is O'Neil at his best. I haven't read if or a long time though. I'll have to see if I can find Hard-Traveling Heroes. It's been in storage for a while.
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Mar 28, 2017 0:42:20 GMT -5
In my FF reading I just finished issue 55.
|
|
Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 10,069
Member is Online
|
Post by Confessor on Mar 28, 2017 6:48:38 GMT -5
I read Alan Moore's Nemo: Rose of Berlin last night. It was more enjoyable than Nemo: Heart of Ice, but still not up to the standards I've come to expect from the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen series. I hope the third part of the Nemo trilogy is better.
|
|
|
Post by Batflunkie on Mar 28, 2017 9:35:53 GMT -5
And now we get to Denny O'Neil. I'm going to have a lot to say about Denny O'Neil over the next few months when (or if) I start my plan to read Detective Comics #393 to the current issues (they're at #953 now, but who knows where they'll be by the time I get to the end. I'm getting the last few issues I need, and I've been reading Denny O'Neil Batman stories that I never read before. (A few nights ago, I read Detective #410, the issue with Batman trying to save the seal boy from being thrown from a tower.) I think Denny O'Neil is a bit over-rated. Oh, he's good! His Green Lantern/Green Arrow run with Neal Adams is great Bronze Age comics, in many ways, it's one of the series that changes the landscape enough that you can look back and see (roughly) where the Bronze Age began. It was ground-breaking and influential and innovative. And I can certainly see why many people love those books. Heck, I love those books! But I don't love them as much as a lot of people do. If I had read them when I was younger, maybe if I had come across some back issues or reprints in the late 1970s when I was 13 or 14, I'd love then as much as I should. But I was close to 30 when I read Hard-Traveling Heroes, Volume One, and I'm a heckuva lot older now. I don't want to go into a lot of details about the things that bug me about the worshipful attitude towards Dennis O'Neil. I'll just name a couple of things. And maybe I'll go into more detail in the near-future, when I'm making comments on Detective Comics in the early Bronze Age. He's a good writer. Maybe even a great comic book writer. When I read mid-1970s issues of Batman and Detective, I frequently see his name on a lot of my favorite stories from the era, like the Penguin story in Batman #257 or the Catwoman story in #266. But I also see stories by other writers that I like just as much! Like David V. Reed. From an earlier period of Batman and Detective, I see a lot of Frank Robbins stories that I like just as much as anything that Dennis O'Neil wrote. (When I read those early 1970s Detective Comics, I'm planning on comparing the quality of O'Neil's output with Robbins's.) So from my perspective he's one of a number of really good Batman writers. To make a few comments a little more specifically about Green Lantern ... it frequently comes off as a little too blatantly preachy, and the positions of the liberal GA vs. conservative GL is both very stereotypical and often contrived. I understand a lot of why it's written that way. O'Neil had a limited amount of space and a viewpoint that required some heavy-handedness to fit it into the space allowed with these characters. I agree. Subtlety, at least as far as GL/GA is concerned, was never Denny's strong suit. I mean there was one issue about "If Jesus was alive today, would we recognize him?" and of course the drokkin' cover had the guy on a makeshift crucifix on an airplane runway While I think the books most certainly are important not only to the foundation of Hal, Ollie, and comicdom in general, they haven't aged all that well
|
|
|
Post by Slam_Bradley on Mar 28, 2017 9:37:02 GMT -5
I read Alan Moore's Nemo: Rose of Berlin last night. It was more enjoyable than Nemo: Heart of Ice, but still not up to the standards I've come to expect from the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen series. I hope the third part of the Nemo trilogy is better. I definitely thought it was a weak series as a whole.
|
|
|
Post by Spike-X on Mar 30, 2017 19:27:41 GMT -5
I just read Orbiter, by Warren Ellis and Colleen Doran.
Ten years after it disappeared from orbit, the Space Shuttle Venture returns to Earth, having been drastically changed, with only the captain still remaining from the original seven-member crew. A team of Highly Competent People are assembled to find out what happened to the shuttle, and where it's been (spoiler: they do).
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Mar 30, 2017 19:41:38 GMT -5
Completed Fantastic Four Masterworks #1 to #6, and starting on #7 Tomorrow!
I hope to have the Entire Series #1 to #18 done by the end of April.
|
|