Confessor
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Post by Confessor on Nov 24, 2019 0:14:39 GMT -5
Sandman question: I presume it's best to read the volumes in order, but can the first one be skipped? I read it a few years ago but don't recall much about it at this point, apart from finding it just OK. So I'd refer to skip ahead to the 2nd volume unless forgetting everything that happened in the 1st is likely to lessen my appreciation of the later books.
I think I asked this before and was told that the 1st book isn't really characteristic of Sandman as a whole but again, it's been so long I'm not sure how reliable that memory is either. Ummmmm...the first book, Preludes & Nocturnes, is certainly rather hit and miss. It feels as if Gaiman is throwing lots of elements at the wall to see what sticks. That said, bits of volume 1 are excellent (I'm thinking particularly the final issue of that story arc, "The Sound of Her Wings"). The early chapters also set up a lot of Morpheus's character and explain who he is. Could it be skipped? Maybe. But my feeling is that, even though it's the weakest volume of Sandman so far (I'm only up to volume 5 though), it is well worth reading, especially in the chapters where it's good. This is what I wrote about it earlier this year, having just read it for the first time... classiccomics.org/post/329275/threadOn a related matter, I'm seriously thinking of taking my reviews of the series so far, expanding on them, adding more pictures, and creating a dedicated Sandman review thread. My "short reviews" for the series have all ended up being much longer than I intended, and I sort of regret not starting a proper review thread for the series. But then, I guess I didn't know if I'd enjoy it enough to finish it when I started.
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bor
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Post by bor on Nov 24, 2019 2:48:48 GMT -5
Sandman question: I presume it's best to read the volumes in order, but can the first one be skipped? I read it a few years ago but don't recall much about it at this point, apart from finding it just OK. So I'd refer to skip ahead to the 2nd volume unless forgetting everything that happened in the 1st is likely to lessen my appreciation of the later books.
I think I asked this before and was told that the 1st book isn't really characteristic of Sandman as a whole but again, it's been so long I'm not sure how reliable that memory is either. Ummmmm...the first book, Preludes & Nocturnes, is certainly rather hit and miss. It feels as if Gaiman is throwing lots of elements at the wall to see what sticks. That said, bits of volume 1 are excellent (I'm thinking particularly the final issue of that story arc, "The Sound of Her Wings"). The early chapters also set up a lot of Morpheus's character and explain who he is. Could it be skipped? Maybe. But my feeling is that, even though it's the weakest volume of Sandman so far (I'm only up to volume 5 though), it is well worth reading, especially in the chapters where it's good. This is what I wrote about it earlier this year, having just read it for the first time... classiccomics.org/post/329275/threadOn a related matter, I'm seriously thinking of taking my reviews of the series so far, expanding on them, adding more pictures, and creating a dedicated Sandman review thread. My "short reviews" for the series have all ended up being much longer than I intended, and I sort of regret not starting a proper review thread for the series. But then, I guess I didn't know if I'd enjoy it enough to finish it when I started. Although I guess it could be skipped I dont think there is a reason to do it. As confessor says the final,issue is pretty good. I also think the volume introduces quite a few characters and plot points that comes back later on.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 24, 2019 8:53:38 GMT -5
Sandman question: I presume it's best to read the volumes in order, but can the first one be skipped? I read it a few years ago but don't recall much about it at this point, apart from finding it just OK. So I'd refer to skip ahead to the 2nd volume unless forgetting everything that happened in the 1st is likely to lessen my appreciation of the later books.
I think I asked this before and was told that the 1st book isn't really characteristic of Sandman as a whole but again, it's been so long I'm not sure how reliable that memory is either. If you have read it previously, there's no need to revisit it unless you want to. It certainly lays a foundation of what is to come and some of the future arcs, but as long as you have the gist of what is there (Morpheus imprisoned and finally escapes, three tools stolen that he needs to recover, his realm is chaos because of it and he is seeking to restore things) then you should be good to go with the remaining volumes. I happen to like the first volume despite its unevenness because so much of the foundation is laid there, but Gaiman is a strong enough storyteller to catch people up with what is needed as the series progresses. It was written in an era where trades were a rarity and not presumed (at least in the early part of it) so had to remain accessible to new readers throughout, so anything from the opening crucial to future stories is laid out for readers of that arc, but there is a bit of a bigger payoff for long time readers here and there as obscure bits get nods of come back into play unexpectedly, but not in such a way that someone who wasn't a longtime reader gets lost. -M
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Post by beccabear67 on Nov 24, 2019 14:26:26 GMT -5
I've read Seeker 3000 #1-4 cicra 1998 Marvels, and the Avengers-Thunderbolts (and Madame Masque) vs. Count Nefaria story in those comics circa 2000. I really enjoyed the latter and there were real things to think about in it too without obvious real-life 'dark' and gritty R rated anything thrown in! Kurt Busiek is now one of my favorite comic book writers! I liked him just for the Jean Grey is down there under Jamaica Bay idea to start with. This is such a positive and expansive contributor to the form compared to the users of it mostly set on showing how mature or how clever they can be (usually just because unlike their readers they have read great literature or at least the best sf). He leaves the toys in one piece for the next writer and reader (generation) as well as fixing the broken ones from someone before! What a treat to see George Perez back on the Avengers he was so good with in the '70s-early '80s as well... this may never hang in art galleries but nobody does it better. Mark Bagley is a solid artist, I liked the Thunderbolts when I think I see a Steve Leialoha influence sometimes, it counteracts that '90s tendency for Hulk proportion muscles on non-Hulk characters which also pokes through a little here and there, or the cartoony-anime trend that also got overdone in other hands... he's more than a mix of styles though, he's a solid storyteller, the most important thing for a comic artist to be I think. If only the letterers or colorists didn't screw things up sometimes (they even had to run a page over again in one Thunderbolts with the balloons as they were meant to be, and at the big dramatic Nefaria finale some colorist colored Wonder Man as Atlas and vice-versa, geez, that has got to hurt the other people who put so much work into this).
Up next for me 'Maximum Security' the 'event', but I am waiting for a few of it's pieces to show up before I can get to that. I don't have anything to say about Seeker 3000. Like the original one-shot Marvel Premiere, it neither stinks nor is quite as interesting as the old Starlost tv series (which I have on DVD).
I'm in a good mood thanks to 1998-2001 Marvels, I wonder if I'm ready for 19 issues of The Huntress? It looks a bit dark but not showily so... and they have the same creative team for the run, obviously they cared about what they were doing... and flipping through I don't get the aftermarket original art sales mindset to the pages being more individual posters. I remember an old interview with Joe Staton he got a lot of flack for through puncturing the Pre-Raphaelite fine arts influences approach of some other artists. I didn't agree with him on that though I understood his natural reaction to that kind of approach, but he had a lot of other things to say I thought were sensible and informed about monthly commercial superhero comics from a company interested in making money so they could keep publishing and employing writers and artists. These were the early direct days. So here he is working on what becomes a direct distribution superhero comic with a mature label on it... should be interesting just on that level! I have read other things by Joey Cavalieri I've liked and respected.
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Post by spoon on Nov 24, 2019 21:40:26 GMT -5
The mini is also where Hawkeye injures his hearing. I know that's been a subject in recent years in his solo series, but I can't ever recall reading anything about it in the period in-between. Did writers just ignore his hearing impairment after the mini, or did it come up in issues I haven't read or can't remember? There were occasional references to Hawkeye's deafness after the mini, notably in the David Letterman issue of Avengers where his hearing aids malfunction* with (allegedly) hilarious results, but for the most part it stayed in the background. Of course, my knowledge of the character's continuity ends at West Coast Avengers Annual #1 until the Busiek-Perez reboot twelve years later so, in this case, I'm not the most reliable source.
Cei-U! I summon the sounds of silence!
*Or he forgot 'em at home or didn't want to wear 'em on TV or some damn thing.
The Letterman issue is in my giant backlog of comics I bought but haven't read yet. Does not sound promising.
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Post by Icctrombone on Nov 24, 2019 22:38:19 GMT -5
There were occasional references to Hawkeye's deafness after the mini, notably in the David Letterman issue of Avengers where his hearing aids malfunction* with (allegedly) hilarious results, but for the most part it stayed in the background. Of course, my knowledge of the character's continuity ends at West Coast Avengers Annual #1 until the Busiek-Perez reboot twelve years later so, in this case, I'm not the most reliable source.
Cei-U! I summon the sounds of silence!
*Or he forgot 'em at home or didn't want to wear 'em on TV or some damn thing.
The Letterman issue is in my giant backlog of comics I bought but haven't read yet. Does not sound promising. After Liefeld and Jim Lee were called upon to make over the Avengers and FF in 1996, they were brought back to the Universe proper By a mini series that revealed that Franklin Richards had saved them from the onslaught threat by placing them in a pocket universe. Well, when they were brought back to earth 616, Richards powers restored them they way he remembered them. This includes " fixing " the wacky things that were visited on them by bad writing. So Hawkeye's hearing was restored along with the Wasp looking human again instead of the Wasp creature that she was transformed into by "The Crossing" mess. Whew !
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Post by Deleted on Nov 25, 2019 8:54:38 GMT -5
Action Comics #546 Action #546I have been busy and I haven't gotten around reading Action Comics #546 and matter of fact ... I acquired another copy for reading only and left the one from ebay not to be touched and this issue really pops and all the Justice Leaguers and the Teen Titans on hand helping Superman really blows me away and I found a link to this issue to be read online and it's one of my favorite Action Comics issues. I read it twice over the weekend and really have that appeal that many heroes made this issue shines and I really loved this issue. I give this issue an A for effort of getting both Titans and JLA together in one explosive issue.
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Post by dbutler69 on Nov 25, 2019 15:01:09 GMT -5
Action Comics #546 Action #546I have been busy and I haven't gotten around reading Action Comics #546 and matter of fact ... I acquired another copy for reading only and left the one from ebay not to be touched and this issue really pops and all the Justice Leaguers and the Teen Titans on hand helping Superman really blows me away and I found a link to this issue to be read online and it's one of my favorite Action Comics issues. I read it twice over the weekend and really have that appeal that many heroes made this issue shines and I really loved this issue. I give this issue an A for effort of getting both Titans and JLA together in one explosive issue. I read (or rather, re-read) that issue about a year ago. With the Justice League AND the Teen Titans AND Brainiac, I should have loved it, but to be honest, I was a bit disappointed, both in the writing and the art.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 25, 2019 15:48:46 GMT -5
dbutler69 ... I understand and there's a lot of people just like you even my friend Jeff didn't think highly of it too. I just love to read these kind of comic books and I just don't pay much attention to the art and the writing ... all I want to see a truckload of superheroes to tickle my fancy.
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Post by kirby101 on Nov 25, 2019 17:22:17 GMT -5
I always liked Gil Kane's Superman.
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Nov 26, 2019 9:10:46 GMT -5
Just wrapped up Fantastic Four #1-77, which is all of the Kirby/Lee collection that I own through collected editions and floppies. I have to say that this was some of the most uneven reading I've ever done. The first ten issues are an absolute inspiration -- so fresh, groundbreaking, and full of ideas, as well as rich and compelling characterization as genuinely good people fight and have conflicts of interest...something seldom seen in comics at the time. Kirby's early art is fresh and innovative too, of course. After that, we get mixed issues. Some feel like total filler, as Stan and Jack are now working to build a full comic book empire and can no longer give as much attention to this title, but the experimentation and characterization do continue in many issues, if not all of them. And the continuity this single creative team is building across all of these issues is impressive, in and of itself. By the time we get to the 40s, some stagnation is starting to set in, and so Lee and Kirby start looking outside of the team for new ideas. We meet The Black Panther, the Inhumans, Silver Surfer, Galactus, and The Kree, and experience The Negative Zone. By the time of the 50s, each of these new characters/concepts seems to be sharing regular space with the team, as if even Lee and Kirby are tired of the Four and would rather check in on Blackbolt, Silver Surfer, and whatever is brewing in the Negative Zone this month instead. By this point, Lee's dialogue has grown positively oppressive, as frames are drowning in dialogue bubbles that over-explain every character action and rehash character motivations twenty times in a single issue, so this is where I started following tolworthy's suggestion of skipping most of the dialogue and allowing Kirby's art to tell the story instead (which is STILL growing and getting more impressive with each issue). I stopped at #77 because it is the last issue I own, but it was also a great ending point because I could feel fatigue setting in but was still generally enjoying the series and was sorry to say goodbye to it. I have a feeling that continuing for a few more issues might have killed that for me. In the beginning it was a source of such wild, unbridled imagination. By the end, it was really just Kirby keeping me visually interested while the series seemed unsure of where else to go. Even the Silver Surfer and Galactus seemed a little tired by the end of my stretch. I'm curious to hear the impressions of others. For those of you who have read this series as adults and aren't just coming from a place of nostalgia, do our experiences align?
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Post by Deleted on Nov 26, 2019 9:28:24 GMT -5
I really enjoyed reading the 1st 50 issues of the Fantastic Four and also read about 40% of the books from 51 to 200 or so and those were graded C to C+ at its best and some of them were that good at all. I felt right around issue #40 things starting to slide and both Stan and Jack had other projects to do and did not put their best effort into the Fantastic Four and that's bothers me a lot. I felt that Jack Kirby puts in more effort than Stan Lee did and when 1972 rolls around when Stan became Publisher of Marvel Comics ... Fantastic Four kind of lost it's touch and stopped reading it.
I only read most of the issues until Terrax the Tamer came into play in issue #211.
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Post by dbutler69 on Nov 26, 2019 12:37:00 GMT -5
dbutler69 ... I understand and there's a lot of people just like you even my friend Jeff didn't think highly of it too. I just love to read these kind of comic books and I just don't pay much attention to the art and the writing ... all I want to see a truckload of superheroes to tickle my fancy. Usually, I would agree with you. The more superheroes the better!!
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Confessor
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Post by Confessor on Nov 26, 2019 13:30:23 GMT -5
I'm curious to hear the impressions of others. For those of you who have read this series as adults and aren't just coming from a place of nostalgia, do our experiences align? Aside from a couple of late '70s black and white reprint comics that I had as a kid, I came to the classic Silver Age Fantastic Four comics as an adult and I'd have to say that, yes, our experiences and opinions do basically align. I have the first three omnibus collections, which means I have issues #1-93 (1961-1969) and I've read through them all...some more than once. I totally agree that the run is uneven. It's also frequently utterly ridiculous, in terms of the plotting, character motivations, the science, and things like the Human Torch's "nova flame"... It probably seems especially ridiculous to someone like me who is a much bigger fan of Marvel's more street-level heroes like Spider-Man and Daredevil. I also have a bit of a love/hate relationship with Kirby's artwork: it's dynamic as all hell, but it's also frequently kinda ugly, and the guy just couldn't draw attractive women. But, the sheer imagination and world building that Kirby and Lee cram into the thing, plus the highly readable characterisation of the bickering foursome, and the great supporting cast of Alicia Masters, Black Panther, Wyatt Wingfoot, Crystal and the other Inhumans, frequently make for some great comics. My favourite period of the Silver Age Fantastic Four is probably from around #35 to around #70-ish, although it still suffers from being rather hit and miss even in that period. Edit: Oh, and I meant to say, I totally hear you regarding the verbose nature of Lee's dialogue. Even by his '60s standards, he really went overboard with word balloons in the Fantastic Four.
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Post by beccabear67 on Nov 26, 2019 13:34:01 GMT -5
I think Fantastic Four lost the input of Kirby creating new characters after 'Him' (Adam Warlock) circa #67-68, and possibly Pycho-Man in that year's Annual... but that's always just been a guess, though I think someone here confirmed it. When you think of all the great characters and memorable stories introduced in that 1961-1967 run it's definitely a World's Greatest. After that it's treading water on both counts until after Kirby, then I think there were some very strong issues with John Romita and John Buscema (#104, 107, 112, individual issues I remember vividly).
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