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Post by Cei-U! on Nov 28, 2017 16:52:56 GMT -5
I hated Bill Everett's final run on Sub-Mariner at the time and so did a lot of other readers who, having been attracted to the book by Roy Thomas' pseudo sword-and-sorcery approach, found his retro style too campy. In fact, the title's sales plummeted after he took over and never recovered. These days I'm considerably fonder of those issues, primarily because of Everett's gorgeous art.
Cei-U! I summon the misfire!
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Post by Rob Allen on Nov 28, 2017 22:48:53 GMT -5
I guess I was out of the mainstream then; I LOVED Everett's run as it was coming out. I never had many classmates who were into comics but I found one around that time and we traded a few issues. I don't recall what I got from him, but he wanted several early Sub-Mariner issues to complete his run. I was flabbergasted when he told me that he stopped buying the book as of issue #50 because "50 issues is enough". I recall telling him that Bill Everett was doing some of the best work of his career and he was missing out. That didn't seem to matter to him. His family moved away a few months later.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 29, 2017 1:34:00 GMT -5
Read the first seven issues of the 2006 Ghost Rider series written by Daniel Way. Issues 1-5 featured art by Javier Saltares and Mark Texiera and issues 6 and 7 were a 2-parter with art by Richard Corben. I wasn't aware Corben had done any Ghost Rider until I stumbled on these. His work on these issues in interestig, typical Corben on one hand, but not quite what I expected of him on a Ghost Rider story on the other. Some samples... Haven't quite decided yet if I really like it or not. What I found I really did like was the coloring on the first arc, done by Dan Brown over breakdowns by Saltares and finishes by Mark Texiera. Some samples... it's a bit difficult to explain what I liked, but the texture and effects like the flames on GR and his bike, and some of the other bits almost felt like someone had taken the textured greytones of the Marvl b&w mags and colored them but kept that textured feel of the greytones. I just found it really pleasing to the eye and the texture just added a level of verisimilitude to the art for me, something that can be difficult with comics featuring this type of content. As an aside, the fight between Doc and GR in the cemetery has some nice touches with homages to creators on the headstones, including Alex Toth, JAcob Kurtzburg, Will Eisner, Robert Ervin Howard and Isaac Asimov. The premise for the series by Way is interesting, but I am not overly fond of Way's voice, so sometimes the execution is lacking, and the pacing is a little drawn out. Essentially Johnny Blaze was trapped in hell, continuously being tormented by Lucifer into thinking he could escape only to be caught at the last minute, in perpetuity, until one day he found a demon to help him escape, but the demon was Lucifer in disguise, and he used Blaze to escape from Hell himself, but in so doing his body was destroyed and his soul scattered into 666 pieces, each of which settled into and reanimated a corpse which Rider has to hunt down; the catch, each one Rider destroys consolidates Lucifer's power into the remaining corpses, making each one tougher and stronger as Rider destroys the others, until the final one will have Lucifer's full power in the flesh on earth completing his escape from Hell. It's an interesting premise, but it could get repetitive and bog down if drawn out too long, which is exactly what I find Way tends to do on other things I read by him, so we'll see how it plays out here. -M
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Post by dbutler69 on Nov 29, 2017 10:36:41 GMT -5
I read Journey into Mystery #125, and all I have to say is...Hercules is awesome! I don't understand why he never got his own title. Probably not enough angst for a Marvel superhero. Anyway, Thor easily dispatches the Demon and his army, then takes the Norn Stone back to Asgard. Upon his return, however, Odin is none too pleased that Thor revealed his secret ID to Jane Foster, so he has an army of Asgardians attack Thor to prevent his return to earth. However, Thor makes it through just the same and returns to find Herc putting the moves on Jane, and with no small success. Honestly, I don't understand what Thor sees in her anyway. Sif is way better.
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Post by Cei-U! on Nov 29, 2017 11:29:02 GMT -5
That Corben Ghost Rider art is gorgeous with a capital gorge. If the book had looked like that back in the '70s, I'da actually bought it.
Odin was right: Jane Foster was not worthy. The strip had outgrown her by then, but it took Lee and Kirby nearly another year to reaize it. I was so annoyed when somebody, Conway or Wein, brought her back and imprisoned Sif within her.
Cei-U! I summon the random reply!
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Nov 29, 2017 12:20:40 GMT -5
That Corben Ghost Rider art is gorgeous with a capital gorge. If the book had looked like that back in the '70s, I'da actually bought it. Odin was right: Jane Foster was not worthy. The strip had outgrown her by then, but it took Lee and Kirby nearly another year to reaize it. I was so annoyed when somebody, Conway or Wein, brought her back and imprisoned Sif within her. Cei-U! I summon the random reply! As I've said before Thor started out as a pretty blatant Superman rip-off complete with Jane Foster as Lois Lane. Fortunately the feature did grow (though I always preferred it in Asgard or in space rather than on Earth). Unfortunately Jane Foster didn't grow and hung around like a vestigial tail, worthless and unwanted.
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Post by Hoosier X on Nov 29, 2017 13:53:06 GMT -5
I read Journey into Mystery #125, and all I have to say is...Hercules is awesome! I don't understand why he never got his own title. Probably not enough angst for a Marvel superhero. Anyway, Thor easily dispatches the Demon and his army, then takes the Norn Stone back to Asgard. Upon his return, however, Odin is none too pleased that Thor revealed his secret ID to Jane Foster, so he has an army of Asgardians attack Thor to prevent his return to earth. However, Thor makes it through just the same and returns to find Herc putting the moves on Jane, and with no small success. Honestly, I don't understand what Thor sees in her anyway. Sif is way better. You're getting into my favorite run on Thor. That coming storyline where Thor has to save Hercules ... well, I'll just let you see for yourself. But the next five or so issues of Thor (after #125) are my favorite Thor storyline EVER! And I'm going to defend Jane a little bit here. The series had outgrown her and I think there was an attempt to let her grow a little bit. I love the bit where she goes to Wundagore and becomes the schoolmarm to a bunch of snake-men, pig-men, horse-men and whatever.
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Post by Hoosier X on Nov 30, 2017 1:13:05 GMT -5
I'm up to The Sub-mariner #65. This is the issue that, sadly, announces the death of Bill Everett. There's a very nice memorial page. Don Heck has been doing a nice job on the art for the last few issues. And Tales of Atlantis is starting to grow on me. The first two installments have weird art by Howard Chaykin and Joe Sinnott. I can stare at it for hours. But I wasn't really liking the feature too much. But I liked this issue quite a bit better. It was a little more focused with a single main character and some nice Jim Mooney art.
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Post by Jesse on Nov 30, 2017 2:02:23 GMT -5
Power Man #49"Seagate is a Lonely Place to Die!" by Chris Claremont and John Byrne Man, if that cover doesn't hook you I don't know what will. The conclusion to the last exciting issue did not disappoint. For the most part I'm enjoying the artwork and the story has been fantastic. There's also an interesting similarity between this story and another featuring Iron Fist in Marvel Team-Up. SummaryAfter a quick recap Luke Cage explains to Danny Rand, Misty Knight and Coleen Wing why he attacked them in the previous issue and after some discussion they decide to help him. They're off to Seagate an island prison where Bushmaster is holding Cage's friends hostage. Iron Fist and Misty Knight go to rescue the hostages while Cage confronts Bushmaster. They find that one of the hostages was forced to recreate the experiment that created Power Man giving Bushmaster powers that may be too much for Cage to handle. Their epic battle damages the lab to the point where they are both taken out as the labs wall explodes outwards. Iron Fist finds Cage who was thrown out of the prison by the explosion and they reunite with Misty who has found the evidence exonerating Cage.
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Post by EdoBosnar on Nov 30, 2017 5:06:32 GMT -5
I just read those IF (& Marvel Team-up) and then Power Man & IF issues pretty recently (late last year - have the Epic collections). I especially loved the issues that led into Danny and Luke teaming up, fun stories and gorgeous art.
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Post by dbutler69 on Nov 30, 2017 8:43:30 GMT -5
Does anybody else remember Hydro-Base, from Marvel's Bronze Age? I saw it in a few issues of Super-Villain Team-Up when I was buying comics as a kid, and then in a few old (but not THAT old) issues of The Sub-Mariner. (And maybe Hydro-Base was in an issue of Avengers when there was a cross-over with SVTU. I remember a few of the Sub-Mariner supporting cast showing up, but I can't recall if Hydro-Base was part of it.) When I was a kid, it just seemed like normal weird super-hero stuff. But I'm now reading the earliest Hydro-Base stories, most of which I've never seen before, and it strikes me that Hydro-Base is pretty weird and I'm not sure the whole Hydro-Base situation was ever cleared up. (I just looked it up and The Comic Book Database says they were eventually cured by the Thing and the Inhumans.) Hydro-Base was a floating island masterminded by Dr. Hydro. He was a crazed environmentalist who thought that the human race should go back to the sea. So his minions were hi-jacking airplanes and flying them to Hydro-Base where the passengers were subjected to a gas that turned them into green-scaled, water-breathing mer-people. And as they needed a place to live, Dr. Hydro decided they didn't need to build their own city; they would just conquer Atlantis and live there. Among the humans abducted by Dr. Hydro were Betty Dean Prentiss, Namor's 1940s girlfriend. She was much older and had become a mother figure to Namor's cousin Namorita. Dr. Hydro was eventually defeated, but there was no cure for the process by which he had turned the humans into water-breathers, called Hydro-Men. So there they were, the Hydro-Men, living on Hydro-Base (as I recall) and showing up here and there in the Marvel Universe for a few years. It looks pretty weird to me these days. A bunch of humans, thrown together by strange Marvel Universe fate, now green and scaly and breathing in the water, and every once in a while, Namor or the Thing shows up and says "Hey. How's it going? Have you seen Stingray? He seems to have disappeared." A little research reveals a Marvel-Two-In-One issue (#71) with title "The Cure!", so I'm guessing it was in this issue. The guest star is Mr. Fantastic, and he seems like a likely character to show up and help in a situation like this. I was reading Marvel Two-In-One sporadically at this point, so I might have read this and forgotten it. OK, so I took a look at my Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe last night, and it does say that Reed Richards and some Inhuman scientists were the ones to come up with a cure for the Hydro-Men.
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Post by dbutler69 on Nov 30, 2017 8:49:35 GMT -5
I read Thor #126 last night. What a jerk Odin is! He takes away Thor's powers right in the middle of a fight with Hercules, even though he knows it could result in his death, just to teach him a lesson. The "all-wise" one acting like a spoiled child once again. And, with Thor's strength now cut in half, he goes from being able to pick up a building to no longer even being able to pick up a car?! Is that car made of white dwarf matter? I was a bit annoyed that such a great fight between Thor and Herc got ended because Odin decided just then to take away Thor's powers. In the Tales of Asgard backup, Odin saves the day from afar (once again) then calls the Argonauts back to Asgard, which makes the quest they've been on the past several issues seem like a waste. Oh well.
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Post by Hoosier X on Dec 2, 2017 2:39:56 GMT -5
I got Detective Comics #348 in the mail today! Great Kubert cover! And some wonderfully whacky Sheldon Moldoff art on the Batman story. In the Elongated Man story, Sue thinks she's a witch! But the best thing was the house ads! By the time I was done reading Detective #348, I had come across the covers to three Silver Age DC comics that I want to read. So I decided to put aside the classic comics I've been reading for a few days to read these comics from 1966: Justice League of America #42 - "Metamorpho Says No!" The Brave and the Bold #64 - Batman and Eclipso! Wonder Woman #160 - The Cheetah and Dr. Psycho! I hardly know where to begin!
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Post by Icctrombone on Dec 2, 2017 6:11:06 GMT -5
I read Thor #126 last night. What a jerk Odin is! He takes away Thor's powers right in the middle of a fight with Hercules, even though he knows it could result in his death, just to teach him a lesson. The "all-wise" one acting like a spoiled child once again. And, with Thor's strength now cut in half, he goes from being able to pick up a building to no longer even being able to pick up a car?! Is that car made of white dwarf matter? I was a bit annoyed that such a great fight between Thor and Herc got ended because Odin decided just then to take away Thor's powers. In the Tales of Asgard backup, Odin saves the day from afar (once again) then calls the Argonauts back to Asgard, which makes the quest they've been on the past several issues seem like a waste. Oh well. I absolutely love this issue. The epic fight and the tragic way his victory over Hercules is stolen makes it one of my top ten stories of all time. Kirby and Lee were never better.
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Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 10,057
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Post by Confessor on Dec 2, 2017 12:09:46 GMT -5
Been enjoying the hell out of the Best of Little Nemo in Slumberland book that I picked up recently. Visually it's utterly stunning, being one part children's picture book and one part Salvador Dali painting. There's also something very Art Nouveau about Winsor McKay's work, which, of course, is to do with the pre-First World War era it was produced in.
The dialogue is clunky as all hell, poorly rendered and looks for all the world as if McKay really couldn't be bothered with it...but that hardly matters, since the meat of the strip is undoubtedly its phantasmagorical imagery. Nemo himself (and I always thought it was a little girl, to be honest) is a totally blank canvas, with almost no character at all to speak of. But that "blank canvas" works well in amongst the bizarre and surreal dreamscapes that the boy explores.
All in all, I'm glad I bought this book.
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