|
Post by spoon on Jan 18, 2020 18:19:58 GMT -5
As I mentioned a couple weeks back, I've been reading the X-Men: Dissolution & Rebirth Epic Collection TPB (reprinting Uncanny X-Men #248-267). I finished the TPB recently, but remembered all the continuing plotlines as I was reading. I figured instead of stopping artificially. I'll continue to reading until just before adjectiveless X-Men #1 in 1991. I've read 268 & 269. I was starting with the X-Tinction Agenda TPB, but then I realized that some of the character met and assembled before that in the Days of Future Present event that crossed over in some annuals (X-books plus FF), so I'm reading the TPB reprinting that first.
This run is significant to me, because it's when I started reading X-Men regularly. When I first started reading comics, it wasn't a series that either of my brother or I bought often. My older brother bought #224 and an issue of classic from the Proteus arc. I had #195. That was it. Then, my school library started carrying Marvel Comics during the Australian Outback era of X-Men. Lots of kids stole the comics from the library, but I got a bit familiar with the series. One day, my evil twin brother bought #248 and I thought it was awesome. Shortly thereafter, I bought #249, #250, and #251 from a comic shop. X-Men was releasing multiple issues during summer months, so they came out fast & furious.
This is when Claremont was tearing the team apart and it was very stressful. You wouldn't see some characters for a while as the story switched between following different people. It's quite a difference reading these issues all together in a TPB. The dangling plotlines and hints make a lot more sense when you go from the start to the finish in just a few days of reading. A lot of the scheming by the Shadow King is clearer. As I mentioned in my prior post, Claremont's scripting is better than I remember it after all the years has past & he's been slammed as being wordy. I find his dialogue actually flows better and is clearer than dialogue in some contemporary comics.
These issues are all ones that I've read before (with a few caveats). I previously only had a reprint of #266 (Gambit's first appearance) that omitted a few pages, so this was my first time reading the full story. Also, there are a couple issues from the Morlocks story here that seemed unfamiliar to me. I bought those issues years later, so I'm wondering if I only skimmed them. Those issues have guests (Bill Jaaska and Michael Collins) rather than the regular pencillers (Silvestri and Lee), and I had long considered it one of the lowest points of Claremont's run. But they are better than I anticipated from what memories I had.
It's interesting to see Claremont assemble a bunch of fringe characters to make up the Muir Island X-Men. Who knew there so many of those folks who could be assembled? I remember the weird experience of seeing the Muir Island X-Men on the cover of #254 in previews of upcoming issues as a kid. Because I wasn't that familiar with all those minor characters, I had figured those would turn out to be the regular X-Men resurrected & changed by the Siege Perilous, but of course I was wrong.
One of the strangest issues is #256, where Psylocke is transformed to Lady Mandarin. Did the Hand somehow outsource her transformation to Mojo and Spiral (not sure how they'd contact them) or is that part pure hallucination. But reading #256 shows that Claremont put a good deal of planning into his long-term plot threads rather than making it up as he went along. As Psylocke defeats various X-Men in her hallucinations to get the Mandarin's rings, the encounters offer hints at events that happen with theses characters in later issues (sometimes many issues down the road). My interpretation is that some of the issues with different characters were supposed to be playing out simultaneously, and Psylocke was unconsciously making mental contact with the X-Men around the world & that informed her hallucinations.
I know the Epic Collections are published as part of master plans that chop up series into pre-planned numbered volumes even before they've been released. So obviously thought has gone into fixing the start and stop points to Epic TPBs based on arcs and page counts. However, #246 & #247 seem like they'd fit naturally into this TPB as part of the dissolution of the X-Men. I wonder if they were excluded because editors thought that would create a reason to include up to #269 (Rogue's return) and thus too many issues. In some ways, #244 would also fit in with this TPB as the intro of Jubilee. But #245 probably fits better with earlier issues in a separate Epic collection. Anyway, if I were to re-read this run again, I'd probably start at least with #246, if not even earlier.
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Jan 20, 2020 6:40:06 GMT -5
Via the first "Showcase" volume, Batman #167. The criminal organisation in that story are called Hydra - and they have a global reach. Marvel Comics' Hydra appeared a year later. So I can push my "shared Earth" agenda, maybe DC Comics' Hydra were an off-shoot. Or maybe, "off-screen", Red Skull was giving them orders to destroy Batman!
|
|
|
Post by dbutler69 on Jan 21, 2020 8:48:41 GMT -5
OK, so I'm reading the Brave and the Bold #113. The lead story is a new Batman story. In it, they reveal that Wayne Enterprises is worth $27.4 million. Converted to today's money, that's about $148 million. What? That's it?! I'd have thought Wayne Enterprises to be worth a lot more than that. Heck, they've got a 50 story building in downtown Gotham. Of course, this is a Bob Haney story, so it probably takes place on earth-H, where the dollar values are probably different.
|
|
|
Post by The Captain on Jan 21, 2020 18:00:58 GMT -5
I finished reading the complete run of Defenders/New Defenders last week. It was a decent read, never great, often good, sometimes awful, and usually a little weird. The New Defenders issues were obviously a last-ditch effort to save the title, as they had a very "Champions" feel to them, with Valkyrie and Gargoyle as leftovers from the original lineup, now combined with three of the five original X-Men, Moondragon, and Cloud (oof, the less said about this character, the better). None of it jelled, with the final 6-10 episodes being particularly bad.
Had to make a choice about which classic series to pick up after that one, and I went with Iron Man. I've read all of the Tales of Suspense issues previously, so I just started with issue #1 and am working my way up. I liked the Whitney Frost/Jasper Sitwell dynamic in the book in some of the early issues (before her accident and disfiguring), as they took the place of Pepper and Happy as the "sidekick couple", and the introduction of Janice Cord as Tony's rival/paramour went well while it lasted (although it, as was the case with Don Blake and Jane Foster, was stunted by the perpetual "how can I love a woman while I have this infirmity, which I exacerbate by suiting up as Iron Man and fighting villains instead of settling down, getting hitched, and popping out some kids" drama) until she was killed during his battle with the Crimson Dynamo and the Titanium Man in issue #22. Also, much as I am not a huge George Tuska fan, he did draw attractive women, so much more so than Kirby ever did.
Interested to see where it goes from here. I've read a few of the issues between #35 and #40 previously, and they weren't good, but I have not gone beyond that (except for the Starlin introduction of Thanos and Drax, which I picked up years ago for a fraction of its current value).
|
|
|
Post by beccabear67 on Jan 21, 2020 23:30:44 GMT -5
Domination Factor: Fantastic Four 1-4 (Complete) Domination Factor: Avengers 1-4 (Complete) These are read in order of FF 1.1 -> Avengers 1.2 -> FF 2.3 -> Avengers 2.4 -> until you get to Avengers 4.8 I don't think they ever did this kind of numbering before or since. I did read a run of Superman across four titles that has a sort of weekly number on each inside a triangle, but it was based on the year not one continuous story. Anyway, as someone who has read fairly widely of the Marvel history this was fun... eight past moments are visited in search of the slices of a golden apple. I haven't read it yet (as I'm waiting on issues to complete the run) but I think Avengers Forever is a more deluxe version of this which I'm really looking forward to. I like how the two #1s of this story fit together, would've been fun if they all did, but that was done before with those Marvel Universe issues. Top art by Jurgens and Ordway (finished/inked by McLeod and Janke respectively), and the writing by them is also solid.
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Jan 22, 2020 6:21:42 GMT -5
One thing I am enjoying about the first "Showcase" volume for Batman are the semi-regular appearances of The Mystery Analysts of Gotham City. Be nice to see them in live-action one day!
|
|
|
Post by dbutler69 on Jan 22, 2020 8:32:43 GMT -5
One thing I am enjoying about the first "Showcase" volume for Batman are the semi-regular appearances of The Mystery Analysts of Gotham City. Be nice to see them in live-action one day! Sounds cool! I've never heard of them, but having googled them, they sound interesting. That reminds me of a Brave & Bold issue (#92) with the Bat-Squad, a group of amateur detective who helped Batman with a mystery in London.
|
|
|
Post by Cei-U! on Jan 22, 2020 8:53:05 GMT -5
One thing I am enjoying about the first "Showcase" volume for Batman are the semi-regular appearances of The Mystery Analysts of Gotham City. Be nice to see them in live-action one day! FYI, the Mystery Analysts were the Earth-One counterparts of the Analysts, an “exclusive [Gotham City] club of amateur sleuths and crime dectection enthusiasts” that debuted in Green Lantern #28 (October-November 1947) and appeared twice more during the Golden Age. Both versions were created by John Broome with input from Julius Schwartz.
Cei-U! I summon the 411!
|
|
|
Post by tolworthy on Jan 22, 2020 17:34:13 GMT -5
Thanks for the tag! The first ten issues are an absolute inspiration -- so fresh, groundbreaking, and full of ideas, as well as rich and compelling I agree. They are very different from the issues that follow, in many ways. According to Ray Wyman, in The Art of Jack Kirby, the first ten issues were planned on a single day before the first issue launched. Wyman got his information from interviews with Kirby and others. After that, we get mixed issues. I think a very strong case can be made that a major disagreement took place when Kirby delivered the issue 8 pages, and that led to a big change in direction: from outcasts to celebrities, from horror to fun, etc. Issues 9 and 10 were already plotted, so were simply changed, but from 11 we see new plots in the new direction. 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. IIRC a big change was that Kirby's pay rate increased around the mid 40s, allowing a noticeable increase in the time he could devote to each title. I stopped at #77 because it is the last issue I own Very wise. Mike Gartland argues that Kirby began holding back his best ideas after #67. kirbymuseum.org/blogs/effect/2012/07/03/the-last-straw/ At this point he was already committed to the new baby, so we still get Franklin (and with him, Annihilus and Agatha Harkness) but apart from that the faucet turned off at that moment. Interestingly, when Kirby went to DC his very first story continued where he left off with FF 67: the DNA Project in Jimmy Olsen 133 is to all intents and purposes part of the Beehive project. 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 I definitely come from a position of nostalgia.
|
|
|
Post by berkley on Jan 23, 2020 0:05:21 GMT -5
I couldn't recommend stopping at #67 or #77, personally: the rest of the Kirby/Lee run still comprises a seminal work of superhero-team comics and are enormously entertaining. And the Kirby + Sinnott artwork becomes more and more polished, some of the best ever done in the genre.
Partly this is nostalgia: as a very young reader, the first FF issues - and some of the very first comics of any kind - I read actually came right after the most creative period ended around #67 - in fact I think (though I can't be positive after all this time and being so small at the time) they were GS #5, with the Panther and the Inhumans, and #68. So I feel a lot of nostalgia for that era, though of course I can see that the earlier stuff was objectively superior.
|
|
Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 10,081
|
Post by Confessor on Jan 23, 2020 2:18:08 GMT -5
I recently read the tenth Blake & Mortimer collection The Affair of the Necklace by Franco-Belgian writer/artist Edgar P. Jacobs. Overall, it was a decent adventure/detective thriller and beautifully drawn, as anyone familiar with the work of Jacobs would expect, but I'm not sure it was quite up to the standards of some of the earlier adventures. It's hard to say exactly what I didn't like about it, but it didn't completely grip me and, as a result, I found it a little harder to get through than is usual for this series -- It took me three sittings to finish, whereas I usually devour a new B&M book in one. This was a fairly late book in the series (it was published in 1967), and maybe Jacobs was running out of steam? He only wrote one other B&M story after this before he died, so that might be the case. Still, it was entertaining enough and, as I say, exsquisitely drawn. But yeah...not my favourite from the series.
|
|
|
Post by badwolf on Jan 23, 2020 13:51:11 GMT -5
Incredible Hulk Annual #11 (1982)
"The Day the Earth Turned Green!" by Bill Mantlo, Rich Buckler and Joe Sinnott
This story starts out great, with Banner being subject to some kind of painful treatment by a woman who keeps saying "HE" he trying to help him. It's very ominous if you haven't flipped through the book before buying and don't already know HE is the Leader. But he doesn't want to cure Banner out of kindness, only to keep him from interfering with his plans of world domination. (This is one of those stories were you have to believe that each hero exists in his own sub-universe... even though the Avengers also appear.) Meanwhile the Leader has put something in the water which is making everyone weak and green. Ultimately he intends to turn everyone into Hulks, Leaders, or Abominations depending on their role. This is where it starts to get silly. The Leader mutates his female assistant to look like him because that's what he finds attractive. Really? I guess his mutation affected his taste. Spider-Man and the Avengers appear to contend with the Hulk until they find the Leader's underground water treatment facility and destroy it. The Leader is washed away...
"Unus Unchained!" by Jo Duffy, Frank Miller and Steve Mitchell
For some reason Unus the Untouchable is being used in a lecture on mutants in society. Naturally he breaks free of his chains (it's not explained why anyone thought they would hold him in the first place) and gets into a fight with Doc Samson, who was attending the event, and who takes entirely too long to figure out Unus' power and weakness. But he finally does, and Unus loses his bravado and gives up. The end.
This was a file story that was apparently needed to fill in space in the annual. It features the first work Miller did for Marvel and though you can sort of see glimpses of what he'd evolve into, if I didn't know beforehand I wouldn't have guessed. The story, well barely a story really, is lightweight in the extreme. If it hadn't been used here, it no doubt would have appeared in Marvel Fanfare eventually.
Disappointing issue, and not up to the level of any of the Hulk annuals I'd read previously.
|
|
|
Post by dbutler69 on Jan 24, 2020 9:23:27 GMT -5
I gradually made my way through the whole Giffen/DeMatties JLA/JLI/JLE series, and then through the "Breakdowns" story arc where they hand off the reins of both titles to other creators. So, I'm now reading Justice League America (Dan Jurgens, also Rick Burchett) and Justice League Europe/Justice League International (Gerard Jones writer, Ron Randall pencils Randy Elliott inks) and I'm up to #77 on JLA and #51 on JLE/JLI and I have to say, I'm enjoying the JLE/JLI title quite a bit more than the JLA title. Aside from liking the art more (though the JLA art is decent) I'm liking the writing and the characters more. The JLE/JLI writing is more cerebral, with a bit of philosophy, history, and politics thrown in, but I'm finding the stories more interesting than the JLA. The characters might be another reason. As far as the JLA, I don't really care for Maxima at all, Superman (who's now dead) acted like a jerk, which is NOT how I expect Superman to act, while I liked Guy Gardner during Giffen/DeMatties, his act has worn thin for me, and he needs to mature a bit. Booster Gold isn't doing anything for me, either. On the other hand, they've made Blue Beetle a lot more useful. The humor is gone, but he's become the team's resident scientific genius, and he's back to the Ditko type agility. On the JLE/JLI characters side, I've always liked Elongated Man and Sue, and they've made Metamorpho into a deep and cultured character, quite a contrast to the crude fellow he was before. I'm a bit tired of Power Girl (whom I used to like) and think she needs to straighten up somehow, but overall I like the characters here. In fact, I liked this series enough to check out the Elongated Man miniseries from 1992, also written by Gerard Jones. I've only read #1, but I like it a lot. I love the interaction between Ralph and Sue, and I like the pencils, though not the inks so much (too thick for my taste).
|
|
|
Post by Cei-U! on Jan 24, 2020 9:51:46 GMT -5
IIn fact, I liked this series enough to check out the Elongated Man miniseries from 1992, also written by Gerard Jones. I've only read #1, but I like it a lot. I love the interaction between Ralph and Sue, and I like the pencils, though not the inks so much (too thick for my taste). Is that the one drawn by Mike Parobek? I've been meaning to track that down.
Cei-U! I summon the curiosity!
|
|
|
Post by dbutler69 on Jan 24, 2020 10:12:48 GMT -5
IIn fact, I liked this series enough to check out the Elongated Man miniseries from 1992, also written by Gerard Jones. I've only read #1, but I like it a lot. I love the interaction between Ralph and Sue, and I like the pencils, though not the inks so much (too thick for my taste). Is that the one drawn by Mike Parobek? I've been meaning to track that down.
Cei-U! I summon the curiosity!
Yup, that's the one. Based on #1, it's worth tracking down, I should say, and I would expect it's to be had cheaply - even better!
|
|