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Post by Deleted on Jan 31, 2015 9:12:11 GMT -5
Oh, no. Lee's SS run get worse? When? In my opinion, Lee's SS run gets bad early on. It's one of those runs that fell short of my expectations. I can't into the supposed lofty story of the Surfer as a Christ and humanity as disappointingly close-minded. The Silver Surfer of that era is too whiny for me. If I recall correctly, there are certainly situations where he bemoans the distrust of humanity . . . when that distrust is totally justified. Like I think there was some illusion that made it seem like the Surfer was attacking innocent people. Don't remember exactly what it was, but I remember thinking that Surfer felt persecuted by people who were behaving rationally under the circumstances. But his overly dramatic woes and behavior are what keep me interested in this series. He goes on and on about how AWFUL humans are, and how he doesn't understand them, and how he doesn't trust them, but yet every single time he's tricked into helping them. And then there is your huge battle for the issue. Well, that and battling Mephisto. And, it's so hilarious to me, that I never grow tired of it. I mean, I may after a bit, but I'm 13-14 issues in, and it hasn't gotten old to me yet. It makes me chuckle. OH THE WOE OF THE SILVER SURFER. But he simply cannot ignore someone in need. But, dang it, he sure wishes he could. hahahaha.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jan 31, 2015 10:33:03 GMT -5
So, I decided to give the Digital Comic Museum a whirl, and read Captain Marvel Adventures #1... it's pretty good... definitely better than the Superman stuff I've read of the era, as far as plot goes. No supporting characters though (yet). What I find really interesting is they decided to just do every genre with Captain Marvel, instead of using various features... we have Captain Marvel Vs. Dr. Silvana, and a super-robot for your superhero story, then we have him busting cattle rustlers in a western story.... going to Saturn in a rocket and leading a slave rebellion against the dragon men in #3, and fighting a newly risen Vampire in the last one. The focus seems more on story than character, with Captain Marvel just being whatever the story needs, I'm not sure I need to read 150 issues of that, but it works well for this issue, if they can maintain interesting ideas, I'm sure I'll read some more
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fred2
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Post by fred2 on Jan 31, 2015 10:52:33 GMT -5
So, I decided to give the Digital Comic Museum a whirl, and read Captain Marvel Adventures #1... it's pretty good... definitely better than the Superman stuff I've read of the era, as far as plot goes. No supporting characters though (yet). What I find really interesting is they decided to just do every genre with Captain Marvel, instead of using various features... we have Captain Marvel Vs. Dr. Silvana, and a super-robot for your superhero story, then we have him busting cattle rustlers in a western story.... going to Saturn in a rocket and leading a slave rebellion against the dragon men in #3, and fighting a newly risen Vampire in the last one. The focus seems more on story than character, with Captain Marvel just being whatever the story needs, I'm not sure I need to read 150 issues of that, but it works well for this issue, if they can maintain interesting ideas, I'm sure I'll read some more
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fred2
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Post by fred2 on Jan 31, 2015 10:55:37 GMT -5
So, I decided to give the Digital Comic Museum a whirl, and read Captain Marvel Adventures #1... it's pretty good... definitely better than the Superman stuff I've read of the era, as far as plot goes. No supporting characters though (yet). What I find really interesting is they decided to just do every genre with Captain Marvel, instead of using various features... we have Captain Marvel Vs. Dr. Silvana, and a super-robot for your superhero story, then we have him busting cattle rustlers in a western story.... going to Saturn in a rocket and leading a slave rebellion against the dragon men in #3, and fighting a newly risen Vampire in the last one. The focus seems more on story than character, with Captain Marvel just being whatever the story needs, I'm not sure I need to read 150 issues of that, but it works well for this issue, if they can maintain interesting ideas, I'm sure I'll read some more I think the last story, is where Billy Batso fends off a vampire with a half eaten garlic sausage sandwich. Classic! ps: I double posted. oops!
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Post by Cei-U! on Jan 31, 2015 12:06:34 GMT -5
So, I decided to give the Digital Comic Museum a whirl, and read Captain Marvel Adventures #1... it's pretty good... definitely better than the Superman stuff I've read of the era, as far as plot goes. No supporting characters though (yet). What I find really interesting is they decided to just do every genre with Captain Marvel, instead of using various features... we have Captain Marvel Vs. Dr. Silvana, and a super-robot for your superhero story, then we have him busting cattle rustlers in a western story.... going to Saturn in a rocket and leading a slave rebellion against the dragon men in #3, and fighting a newly risen Vampire in the last one. The focus seems more on story than character, with Captain Marvel just being whatever the story needs, I'm not sure I need to read 150 issues of that, but it works well for this issue, if they can maintain interesting ideas, I'm sure I'll read some more Did you notice that the art in CMA #1 is by Joe Simon & Jack Kirby trying, not altogether successfully, to look like C. C. Beck? Cei-U! I summon the surprising credit!
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jan 31, 2015 12:56:13 GMT -5
Yes indeed, that's the one! It was pretty hilarious.
I had no idea about the credits (There weren't any that I saw)... that's crazy! That has to be as un-Kirby as you can get!
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Post by Deleted on Feb 2, 2015 2:01:08 GMT -5
Finished the first volume of the Essential Luke Cage, continuing with the '85 Baxter Deadman reprint series reprinting the Adams' Deadman stuff from Strange Adventures, finished the first GA Captain America Masterworks, started the first volume of the FF Epic collection, and continuing through the pile of random comics, mostly Bronze Age stuff consisting of stuff I picked up a the flea market last autumn and stuff I pulled out for the Long Halloween including a handful of House of Mystery issues, some Ghosts issues, the Millennium Edition of New Gods #1, and the Wrightson Swamp Thing issue guest starring Batman (#7).
-M
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Post by Hoosier X on Feb 2, 2015 22:03:19 GMT -5
I'm currently reading Showcase Presents: Hawkman, Volume One, and I'm having a blast reading one or two stories a night before going to bed. I hadn't read many of these before I got this at the library, just the one with the crocodile-headed men, and also the I.Q. Gang, which I read in various 1970s DC reprints. Mavis Trent is hilarious. There's a certain comfortable sameness to the stories, and you can sure see Gardner Fox's "It's science!" pseudoscience all over these stories.
I'm really enjoying the super-villains! Hawkman and Hawkgirl actually have a pretty interesting rogues gallery, with the Matter Master, Byth, the Shadow Thief, the Man-Hawks (The Man-Hawks are CRAZY!) and various other galactic menaces. (I haven't gotten to the winged gorilla! I keep thinking of skipping ahead because I've been curious about that story since the first time I saw the cover at a comic book store in the 1970s. I probably could have got it for $5 but I was spending my money on Daredevil and Tales of Suspense.)
Hawkman and Hawkgirl just didn't seem to have one main villain, like Dr. Doom or Sinestro. Even the Atom had Chronos!
A few nights ago, I was kind of creeped out by the bizarre cat-girl alien. Murphy Anderson did a great job making her weirdly creepy, but still sympathetic.
Yeah, the art is GREAT! Lots of Murphy Anderson and Joe Kubert. The Howard Purcell art in the Aquaman team-up was a nice change of pace, illustrating a Bob Haney story in The Brave and the Bold.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 3, 2015 0:05:50 GMT -5
The Man-Hawks, at least visually, are nightmare fuel.
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Confessor
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Post by Confessor on Feb 3, 2015 10:25:52 GMT -5
I'm reading the Spirit: Femmes Fatales TPB by Will Eisner currently and loving the hell out of it. It collects Spirit stories from the 1940s, with a special focus on those villainous, killer ladies that seemed to be forever tangling with the Spirit. I also have DC's previous The Best of the Spirit TPB from 2005 and although this volume features a few of the same stories, by and large the contents of Femmes Fatales is new to me. Something else I like about this book is that Denny Colt's racially offensive sidekick Ebony White pops up a lot in this volume. This is good because obviously he was a big part of the Spirit stories back in the '40s and I couldn't help feeling that he'd been airbrushed from history in the earlier The Best of the Spirit collection, by only including stories in which he doesn't appear. I don't like that kind of historical revisionism at all, so the regular appearance of Ebony here is welcome. Anyway, it's really good stuff and is, like the first volume, definitely recommended for those who maybe haven't read much of Will Eisner's The Spirit. Along with the Dick Tracy newspaper strip, the Spirit stories are pretty much the only Golden Age stuff I can enjoy as much as Silver or Bronze Age comics. Also, is it just me or is the window in Doctor Strange's sanctum sanctorum a clear case of Steve Ditko homaging Eisner and the window in the Spirit's Wildwood Cemetery hideout? It can't just be coincidence -- they're too similar looking.
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Post by badwolf on Feb 3, 2015 10:35:54 GMT -5
...the Man-Hawks (The Man-Hawks are CRAZY!) Are those the giant hawks that wore loose-fitting human face hoods? I think I read that story in a Secret Origins digest when I was a kid. They were a bit unsettling.
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Post by DE Sinclair on Feb 3, 2015 11:19:53 GMT -5
Something else I like about this book is that Denny Colt's racially offensive sidekick Ebony White pops up a lot in this volume. This is good because obviously he was a big part of the Spirit stories back in the '40s and I couldn't help feeling that he'd been airbrushed from history in the earlier The Best of the Spirit collection, by only including stories in which he doesn't appear. I don't like that kind of historical revisionism at all, so the regular appearance of Ebony here is welcome. Hope you don't mind my snipping out this paragraph. I just wanted to comment on this in particular. Being happy about a "racially offensive sidekick" showing up sounds odd out of context, but I know exactly what you mean. It's like one of the volumes of Looney Tunes Golden Collection of cartoons that had Whoopi Goldberg doing the introduction. She explained that some of the cartoons in the collection contained racially offensive material, but to leave them out or edit them would be to pretend that it never happened. Better to leave them in and be historically accurate and perhaps start conversations about how the times were different. And how things that were considered right and acceptable then weren't right and shouldn't have been acceptable, and aren't anymore.
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Confessor
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Post by Confessor on Feb 3, 2015 12:32:22 GMT -5
Something else I like about this book is that Denny Colt's racially offensive sidekick Ebony White pops up a lot in this volume. This is good because obviously he was a big part of the Spirit stories back in the '40s and I couldn't help feeling that he'd been airbrushed from history in the earlier The Best of the Spirit collection, by only including stories in which he doesn't appear. I don't like that kind of historical revisionism at all, so the regular appearance of Ebony here is welcome. Hope you don't mind my snipping out this paragraph. I just wanted to comment on this in particular. Being happy about a "racially offensive sidekick" showing up sounds odd out of context, but I know exactly what you mean. Yes, it does sound weird, but I'm saying that I'm happy with respect to an accurate representation of social history being presented when he is included in the book. Not happy because I actually like reading racially offensive depictions of African-Americans. ...and no, I don't mind you snipping that paragraph out. It did sound kind of odd and was probably worth clarifying on my part. It's like one of the volumes of Looney Tunes Golden Collection of cartoons that had Whoopi Goldberg doing the introduction. She explained that some of the cartoons in the collection contained racially offensive material, but to leave them out or edit them would be to pretend that it never happened. Better to leave them in and be historically accurate and perhaps start conversations about how the times were different. And how things that were considered right and acceptable then weren't right and shouldn't have been acceptable, and aren't anymore. I'm in 100% agreement with Whoopi on this. Pretending that racially offensive caricatures of black people (and not just African-Americans, mind you) never existed in western society is potentially a very dangerous thing in my view. History is what history was and attempts to sanitise it or censor it really rub me up the wrong way. As a censorship-related aside, I don't know if you've ever heard of the British DJ and TV presenter Jimmy Savile, but he was a mainstay of the BBC's Top of the Pops program from the '60s through to '80s. Following his death in 2004, it transpired that he was a serial sex offender and pedophile, with over 300 alleged victims coming forward in 2012, following a TV documentary that examined claims of his sexual abuse. The whole affair was utterly appalling and the fall out from it is still raining down, but I notice that the BBC has edited out all appearances of Savile from their re-runs of vintage episodes of Top of the Pops. That really annoys me because a) whitewashing history and pretending that Savile never presented those programs for the BBC is extremely disrespectful to his victims and b) I'm not a child...I don't need to be quasi-brainwashed into thinking that Jimmy Savile never existed. When you see footage of him, yes, it makes your skin crawl, but life and social history isn't all roses and cotton-candy. The truth is sometimes uncomfortable, but hiding the truth is even worse.
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Post by DE Sinclair on Feb 3, 2015 12:42:12 GMT -5
Hope you don't mind my snipping out this paragraph. I just wanted to comment on this in particular. Being happy about a "racially offensive sidekick" showing up sounds odd out of context, but I know exactly what you mean. Yes, it does sound weird, but I'm saying that I'm happy with respect to an accurate representation of social history being presented when he is included in the book. Not happy because I actually like reading racially offensive depictions of African-Americans. ...and no, I don't mind you snipping that paragraph out. It did sound kind of odd and was probably worth clarifying on my part. It's like one of the volumes of Looney Tunes Golden Collection of cartoons that had Whoopi Goldberg doing the introduction. She explained that some of the cartoons in the collection contained racially offensive material, but to leave them out or edit them would be to pretend that it never happened. Better to leave them in and be historically accurate and perhaps start conversations about how the times were different. And how things that were considered right and acceptable then weren't right and shouldn't have been acceptable, and aren't anymore. I'm in 100% agreement with Whoopi on this. Pretending that racially offensive caricatures of black people (and not just African-Americans, mind you) never existed in western society is potentially a very dangerous thing in my view. History is what history was and attempts to sanitise it or censor it really rub me up the wrong way. As a censorship-related aside, I don't know if you've ever heard of the British DJ and TV presenter Jimmy Savile, but he was a mainstay of the BBC's Top of the Pops program from the '60s through to '80s. Following his death in 2004, it transpired that he was a serial sex offender and pedophile, with over 300 alleged victims coming forward in 2012, following a TV documentary that examined claims of his sexual abuse. The whole affair was utterly appalling and the fall out from it is still raining down, but I notice that the BBC has edited out all appearances of Savile from their re-runs of vintage episodes of Top of the Pops. That really annoys me because a) whitewashing history and pretending that Savile never presented those programs for the BBC is extremely disrespectful to his victims and b) I'm not a child...I don't need to be quasi-brainwashed into thinking that Jimmy Savile never existed. When you see footage of him, yes, it makes your skin crawl, but life and social history isn't all roses and cotton-candy. The truth is sometimes uncomfortable, but the alternative to the truth is even worse. Just to be clear, I totally got what you meant about liking them including Ebony White and agree with it. I have heard of Savile and the tons of crimes he's been accused of. I can understand the viewpoint of the BBC not wanting to continue to associate themselves and their brand with these atrocities, but I agree with you that pretending he never existed on the show is wrong. If they want to cut ties, then they shouldn't rerun the shows at all. Scrubbing them of his presence is dishonest at best and bordering on cowardly.
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Confessor
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Post by Confessor on Feb 3, 2015 12:59:57 GMT -5
Just to be clear, I totally got what you meant about liking them including Ebony White and agree with it. Yeah, I know you did, but at least it gave me the opportunity to explain what I meant in a bit more detail.
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