Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 10,069
|
Post by Confessor on Mar 27, 2024 19:42:56 GMT -5
In a reprint or trade or maybe the actual issue in your collection? Sorry, I probably should've specified that it was in the UK Classic Marvel Graphic Novel Collection edition of the "Second Genesis" hardcover. No way I'd be able to afford the original issue!
|
|
|
Post by james on Mar 27, 2024 19:50:35 GMT -5
In a reprint or trade or maybe the actual issue in your collection? Sorry, I probably should've specified that it was in the UK Classic Marvel Graphic Novel Collection edition of the "Second Genesis" hardcover. No way I'd be able to afford the original issue! lol. Me either
|
|
|
Post by spoon on Mar 27, 2024 20:12:39 GMT -5
Jean's death wasn't Shooter's idea. He wanted her to be taken to a prison asteroid to be eternally tortured, prompting Byrne to say, "F**k that, I'd rather kill her!" Byrne said he plotted DOFP months before "The Fate of the Phoenix", with Rachel as Scott and Jean's daughter. When #137 was altered, she was too central to the story to eliminate, so Byrne retained her as a generic telepath, assuming Claremont would no longer connect her to Scott and Jean. Correct me if I’m wrong but really the only difference was the ending? This makes me wonder how would the last 45 years have been affected? The ending is main difference is the ending. It was totally redrawn with a different plot (Jean defeated and depowered versus killing herself). It's not the only difference. There's one panel earlier in the story where Angel was drawn in place of Gladiator and the dialogue consequently changes. There are also various rewritten dialogue earlier in the issue that doesn't really change the meaning much, but there are a couple places earlier in the issues where there are significant dialogue changes. First, as I mentioned in my original post on #137, the 2 or 3 pages dealing with each of the individual X-Men in turn on the night before the battle on the moon have significantly altered dialogue. Originally, most of the characters were thinking about themselves. In the rewritten version, their thoughts are more focused on Jean, and specifically how they feel morally about fighting on her behalf. The other part earlier in the issue where scripting significantly changed things was when Lilandra tells Beast and Angel that they aren't X-Men so they're free to go rather than participating the duel. In the published version in that moment they both confidently want to stay and fight. But in the Untold Story version, Beast has dialogue where he is going to take Lilandra up on her offer before Angel cuts him off. In thought balloons, Beast reflects that Angel foiled his plan. He was hoping to go back to Earth, so he could get the Avengers or other Earth heroes as reinforcements.
|
|
|
Post by james on Mar 27, 2024 20:21:49 GMT -5
Correct me if I’m wrong but really the only difference was the ending? This makes me wonder how would the last 45 years have been affected? The ending is main difference is the ending. It was totally redrawn with a different plot (Jean defeated and depowered versus killing herself). It's not the only difference. There's one panel earlier in the story where Angel was drawn in place of Gladiator and the dialogue consequently changes. There are also various rewritten dialogue earlier in the issue that doesn't really change the meaning much, but there are a couple places earlier in the issues where there are significant dialogue changes. First, as I mentioned in my original post on #137, the 2 or 3 pages dealing with each of the individual X-Men in turn on the night before the battle on the moon have significantly altered dialogue. Originally, most of the characters were thinking about themselves. In the rewritten version, their thoughts are more focused on Jean, and specifically how they feel morally about fighting on her behalf. The other part earlier in the issue where scripting significantly changed things was when Lilandra tells Beast and Angel that they aren't X-Men so they're free to go rather than participating the duel. In the published version in that moment they both confidently want to stay and fight. But in the Untold Story version, Beast has dialogue where he is going to take Lilandra up on her offer before Angel cuts him off. In thought balloons, Beast reflects that Angel foiled his plan. He was hoping to go back to Earth, so he could get the Avengers or other Earth heroes as reinforcements. Thank you for the reminder. I haven’t read the Untold probably since it came out.
|
|
|
Post by spoon on Mar 27, 2024 20:22:34 GMT -5
The Epic Collection actually has a disclaimer about stereotypes. I'm guessing Xavier trash-talking the Apache to goad Thunderbird to join is part of that. Oh really?! Wow...I'm not sure it really needs that, but I guess Marvel/Disney need to cover their arse. To me, it just seems very much like usual Silver or Bronze Age comic characterisation of non-white Americans. I mean, every time they feature an English guy he either lives in a castle, is a Lord, or talks like a stereotypical cockney! But I suppose as older readers who are well versed in comic book storytelling conventions of the 60s and 70s we tend to just accept this aspect of old comics. But if you were, say, 14 nowadays and were reading Giant-Size X-Men #1 for the first time because you liked the X-Men movies you might think, "what the hell is this offensive stereotyping?!" Yeah, I was curious, because I don't think I've seen that in another Epic Collection. Like what in that specific volume goes beyond the typical level of stereotyping of the era? Speaking of stereotyping, Banshee's appearance in GSX #1 is much improved over his earlier appearances. His face in his first appearance in X-Men #28 really evokes bigoted newspaper/magazine cartooning of the 19th century where Irish people are given ape-like faces. What was Werner Roth thinking?
|
|
shaxper
CCF Site Custodian
Posts: 22,755
|
Post by shaxper on Mar 30, 2024 10:58:53 GMT -5
Read a handful of SA Adventure Comics issues last night that I grabbed from a bargain bin back in November. I'm always a sucker for classic Superboy, and yet most of the SA Superboy stories I've read up to this point were from his eponymous title. Without even having to check (which I've now done to confirm), I could immediately tell they had different writers on Adventure. I vastly prefer the Superboy stories, as Siegel, Bernstein, Coleman, and Hamilton (among others) seemed to be writing a more sympathetic Superboy who earned the reader's loyalty through good deeds and strong relationships, whereas the Adventure issues I picked up were largely dominated by Otto Binder, who finds conflict in repeatedly making Lana Lang as much of a sociopath as possible while Superboy gets pissed and makes sure she gets a "just" reward.
What I do find fascinating about this brief pocket of Adventure issues is how hard it tried to win over readers with plot concepts. The Superboy issues I read were more about strong characterization, and when Pete Ross or Mon-El would get introduced, it was a genuine effort to add someone meaningful to the supporting cast, but Adventure is pulling all out stunts, and it's really interesting -- the first time young Lois Lane met Superboy, the origin of how young Lex Luthor went from good guy to arch fiend, as well as the explosion of sidekick characters in the b-stories; in just six issues, I got the origin of Speedy (in the Green Arrow backup), the introduction of the first Aquagirl (proto-sidekick for Aquaman?) and the first appearance of Aqualad. Pretty exciting stuff to a Teen Titans fan like myself.
|
|
|
Post by spoon on Mar 30, 2024 19:05:16 GMT -5
I finished the Action Heroes Archives vol. 2, reading the stories from Captain Atom #89, Blue Beetle #3-6 (#6 went unpublished for years until it was published in Charlton Portfolio), Mysterious Suspense #1, and Charlton Bullseye #1-2, 5. Since the Archives doesn't reprint Nightshade back-up stories, I also read the back-up from the copy of Captain Atom #89 I own.
We start with some fun, interesting stories like Blue Beetle battling the Madmen in #3 and Captain Atom dealing the trippy, enigmatic Thirteen and his cat sidekick stepping in between his battle with Ghost. The Nightshade story is drawn by Jim Aparo. He's not yet as skilled as he'll later become (& it doesn't look so distinctively like his style), but it's an improvement over Ditko's rendering of the character. Nightcrawler faces off against Jewelee (without the imprisoned Punch) and her minions. Also, in a flashback we learn that Tiger, the former sidekick of Judomaster, trained Nightshade in the martial arts.
The scripts in Blue Beetle (both the lead and the Question back-ups) are credited to D.C. Glanzman, but all involved agree that Ditko was the actual scripter. I've read differing stories about the reasons for the false credits. There's a gap of almost a year between Blue Beetle #4 and the swan song of the Action Heroes in Mysterious Suspense #1 starring the Question and Blue Beetle #5. I read that there was a lot of editorial freedom in Charlton's comics views. That makes these comics unusual reads, as Ditko pours into the "objectivist" infused socio-political commentary. I phrased it "unusual reads" rather than interesting, because I don't think it's particularly effective. His commentary reads like one-note screeds more than thoughtful, engaging commentary.
MS #1 features a story about Vic Sage suspecting one of network's sponsors of being a criminal because he sees him through a window with a happy exchange of cash with a disreputable (but not convicted figure). He doesn't actually overhear anything, but since Sage/The Question is an ethical superman, of course he's right. There's an inherent conflict in the Question stories between Sage making bold, often insulting ethical statements before he has the evidence to back them up, but then insisting that others have to make their ethical judgment and not rely on what he says. It's a have your cake and eat it too scenario of Sage placing his words as the ultimate appeal to authority, but washing his hands of the consequences. He actually has the temerity to lecture a member of his staff for being a sad sack after Sage has to bail him out of jail. Said employee is in jail because he got framed for a crime after investigating a lead based on Sage's insistence that the sponsor is corrupt. Sage reminds me of a politician who portrays himself as anti-corruption, but has repeatedly flouts ethical safeguards and gets himself into ethical messes. His followers ignore the evidence and regarding him as anti-corruption because he spews his BS with an air of confidence. Sage will call people out before he has evidence, but his reputation is supposed to make his views convincing in lieu of evidence. Unfortunately, I feel like the storytelling is neglected, because at the climax of the action it's not clear what happened.
BB #5 has interrelated Blue Beetle and Question stories that deal with a snobbish art critics and some angry hippies who disdained artwork that celebrates great achievers (like some Randian thing) in lieu of art about the fallibility of human beings. It feels very much like a strawman (the critic's preferred art is about how powerless and awful humanity is and how people can't achieve anything), but I guess I'd know better if I knew what it was actually satirizes. The problem is that it doesn't feel like incisive satire as much as a screed. I think the target might be an early reference to poverty in the art critic's commentary, although Ditko doesn't really go back to that point. It seems like Ditko is dancing around his dislike for art that attributes conditions of the downtrodden to harms the rich and powerful have done to them. They be great if they pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
BB #6 is more like a conventional superhero story, but the moral is that the average person hates scientists and reason too much. While I think that's probably true, Ditko isn't very effective at making the point. The Charlton Bullseye stories include a Ditko Captain Atom/Nightshade story that wraps up the Ghost's story. Ditko's penciled art from the Charlton archives is completed with a Roger Stern script and John Byrne inks. Finally, there a Michael Uslan/Alex Toth Question story that seems to have been created for Bullseye rather than from the Archives. The art is great although the commentary about government being too soft on crime feels superficial.
I also read Alien Worlds #5. All four short stories are scripted by Bruce Jones, but with different artists. "Lip Service" drawn by John Bolton is pretty-looking and has an interesting central metaphor. On the other hand, I feel like Bolton's feathery touch gives some panels a lack of clarity, and the twist ending doesn't quite make sense to me. "Gamewars" by Ken Steacy is very brief and makes commentary based on a single irreverent gag. "Plastic" by Adolpho Buylla is a very effective portrait of a meaningless war with a vividly disturbing ending. I think it's my favorite story of the issue. "Wasteland" feels like a Twilight Zone episode. I don't think it imbues its twist with deeper meaning, but it's quite an odd trip.
|
|
|
Post by MDG on Mar 31, 2024 10:39:20 GMT -5
I’m reading ARRGH! 5 and surprised to see it’s all reprints from Andre and Esposito’s 50s book GET LOST! Checking GCD, looks like every issue had at least one 50s reprint.
|
|
|
Post by spoon on Mar 31, 2024 14:27:17 GMT -5
I re-read the Batman: Ten Nights of the Beast TPB reprinting Batman #417-420 by Jim Starlin, Jim Aparo, and Mike DeCarlo. What I like is that the action sequences are done very well (props to Aparo), a fearsome foe is built up very quickly, and there's a great ending. Also, the Mike Zeck covers are excellent I'm not a fan of the plot-induced stupidity, like when people make themselves easy targets. On the other hand, that may be a function of how times change. I feel like there would be a pre-emptive cancellation of the fundraiser nowadays. Also, holy Hatch Act Batman! A presidential advisor at the campaign fundraiser. One of the characters asks why an Iranian operative would aiding a Soviet agent. Ditto. I guess it's because that was just a Starlin bugaboo.
I'm going to have to read Bane stories sometime to see how much the character owes to KG Beast from this arc and the Bonecrusher character from Detective Comics #598-600.
|
|
|
Post by berkley on Mar 31, 2024 16:47:27 GMT -5
I also read Alien Worlds #5. All four short stories are scripted by Bruce Jones, but with different artists. "Lip Service" drawn by John Bolton is pretty-looking and has an interesting central metaphor. On the other hand, I feel like Bolton's feathery touch gives some panels a lack of clarity, and the twist ending doesn't quite make sense to me. "Gamewars" by Ken Steacy is very brief and makes commentary based on a single irreverent gag. "Plastic" by Adolpho Buylla is a very effective portrait of a meaningless war with a vividly disturbing ending. I think it's my favorite story of the issue. "Wasteland" feels like a Twilight Zone episode. I don't think it imbues its twist with deeper meaning, but it's quite an odd trip. I recently dug out my Alien Worlds issues along with a few other '80s and '90s comics that I plan to read soon. I don't have a complete run so not sure if I have #5 or not but I look forward to reading the ones I do have, if only for the artwork from people such as Bolton.
|
|
Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 10,069
|
Post by Confessor on Mar 31, 2024 16:47:34 GMT -5
I re-read the Batman: Ten Nights of the Beast TPB reprinting Batman #417-420 by Jim Starlin, Jim Aparo, and Mike DeCarlo. What I like is that the action sequences are done very well (props to Aparo), a fearsome foe is built up very quickly, and there's a great ending. Also, the Mike Zeck covers are excellent I'm not a fan of the plot-induced stupidity, like when people make themselves easy targets. On the other hand, that may be a function of how times change. I feel like there would be a pre-emptive cancellation of the fundraiser nowadays. Also, holy Hatch Act Batman! A presidential advisor at the campaign fundraiser. One of the characters asks why an Iranian operative would aiding a Soviet agent. Ditto. I guess it's because that was just a Starlin bugaboo. I loved "Ten Nights of the Beast" when it came out and bought each issue off of the newsagent shelves at the time. I agree completely about how skilkfully the threat was built up; KG Beast was a proper sh*t scary villain at the time. I have re-read this arc a few times, but probably not since the late 90s, so I've no idea how it would hold up now. But back in 1988, I felt that this was a really outstanding Batman storyline.
|
|
|
Post by berkley on Mar 31, 2024 17:10:58 GMT -5
My most recent classic comic was the first 4 months or so of Secret Agent X-9, by Dashiell Hammett and Alex Raymond. This was a re-read, but it's been a long time, so I was hoping I might like it better this time around than I did when I first read it, probably back in the early to mid 90s. Unfortunately, that didn't happen: I found it much the same as I did then, pretty much a by-the-numbers crime story with forgettable character. Not terrible - there's enough action to keep the story moving along at a good clip - but given the talent involved, it's disappointing that this wasn't more special. The intro says Hammett lost interest towards the end of his stint on the strip but I think he was phoning it in right from the beginning as his writing here shows none of the originality or talent for characterisation, scene-setting, and atmosphere seen in his best prose work.
Oh well, at least there's the Raymond artwork, right? Well, not really, I'm sorry to say - though part of the problem here is in the format design and poor-quality reproductuions of the art. They have two days to a page, broken into four strips: so one day's installment is broken into two strips, one on top of the other. That looks wrong and interrupts the panel-to-panel flow but would probably be bearable if the reproduction were sharper. As it is, the art is quite blurry and muddy and it's hard to appreciate what Raymond is doing much of the time.
However, I'd still say this is worth reading if this is the only way to do it. I may be making it sound worse than it is - my original expectations were pretty high, based on my experience with the work of each creator separately.
|
|
|
Post by spoon on Mar 31, 2024 19:59:42 GMT -5
I re-read the Batman: Ten Nights of the Beast TPB reprinting Batman #417-420 by Jim Starlin, Jim Aparo, and Mike DeCarlo. What I like is that the action sequences are done very well (props to Aparo), a fearsome foe is built up very quickly, and there's a great ending. Also, the Mike Zeck covers are excellent I'm not a fan of the plot-induced stupidity, like when people make themselves easy targets. On the other hand, that may be a function of how times change. I feel like there would be a pre-emptive cancellation of the fundraiser nowadays. Also, holy Hatch Act Batman! A presidential advisor at the campaign fundraiser. One of the characters asks why an Iranian operative would aiding a Soviet agent. Ditto. I guess it's because that was just a Starlin bugaboo. I loved "Ten Nights of the Beast" when it came out and bought each issue off of the newsagent shelves at the time. I agree completely about how skilkfully the threat was built up; KG Beast was a proper sh*t scary villain at the time. I have re-read this arc a few times, but probably not since the late 90s, so I've no idea how it would hold up now. But back in 1988, I felt that this was a really outstanding Batman storyline. It holds up reasonably well. It just faces the paradox, if that's the right word, that the grittier and more framed in reality a story is, the more nitpicky I am about whether aspects of the story are realistic.
|
|
|
Post by Hoosier X on Mar 31, 2024 22:47:54 GMT -5
I loved "Ten Nights of the Beast" when it came out and bought each issue off of the newsagent shelves at the time. I agree completely about how skilkfully the threat was built up; KG Beast was a proper sh*t scary villain at the time. I have re-read this arc a few times, but probably not since the late 90s, so I've no idea how it would hold up now. But back in 1988, I felt that this was a really outstanding Batman storyline. It holds up reasonably well. It just faces the paradox, if that's the right word, that the grittier and more framed in reality a story is, the more nitpicky I am about whether aspects of the story are realistic. If you’re gonna take it seriously, you have to take it ALL seriously. This is my big problem with the Christopher Nolan movies. The screenplays have too many idiotic moments to be taking themselves so seriously. The Dark Knight is the least bad. But it’s still pretty bad. I wouldn’t call it a paradox. I just call it lazy writing.
|
|
|
Post by EdoBosnar on Apr 1, 2024 7:52:30 GMT -5
Radioactive Man: Radioactive Repository Volume One (2012) Finally got around to finishing this over the long Easter weekend, after a really long pause (I started reading it back in November, but then set it aside to read other things – mainly re-reading stuff for the 12 days of Classic Comics Xmas – and honestly sort of forgot about it). Anyway, this very nice and hefty HC is a collection of the first six-issue Radioactive Man mini-series published by Bongo Comics in the 1990s, i.e., it collects the issues that were numbered 1, 88, 216, 412, 679 and 1000; it also includes all of the stories from Radioactive Man 80-page Colossal as well as the four Radioactive Man back-up stories from Simpsons Comics #s 36-39, which are notable for the back-covers, as they are all homages to Steranko covers: Most of the stories were written and/or drawn by Steve Vance and Bill Morrison and I won’t bother summarizing any of them; I’ll just say that these are all entertaining stories on their own, but like so many of the other Simpsons comics, they are also very much comics about comics, i.e., they riff off of or satirize superhero comics from all eras, both in terms of overall stories but also in little details like this: So there are stories that reference Wertham and the comic book scare of the early ‘50s, the ‘relevant’ late ‘60s/early ‘70s stories, esp. Green Lantern/Green Arrow, as well as Watchmen and the Dark Knight Returns. However, they’re never mean-spirited, and like those Sterankoesque mock covers above, they’re just as much homages to the stories and creators. I highly recommend reading these, esp. if you can find a reasonably priced copy of this collected volume. It’s too bad the second Radioactive Man mini-series and some of the later RM material didn’t get collected into a second volume.
|
|