|
Post by Deleted on Feb 23, 2015 8:34:42 GMT -5
Read the Ironwolf collection DC did in '87 collecting the three Weird Worlds stories Chaykin did. I really liked it an in some ways it was well ahead of its time, but in other ways you could tell it was done by a creator who was still learning the chops of his craft. Lots of wonderful ideas, some very interesting designs, but also some very choppy storytelling from page to page and panel to panel.
Still working through ASM Masterworks, the Dr. Fate archives, REH's Conan and the early Claremont/Cockrum X-Men (just finished the Black Tom/Juggernaut 2 parter). It's been 20+ years since I read Lee/Ditko Spidey or early Claremont X-Men, so I am enjoying revisiting them, and I forgot how much I loved those early X-Men stories after so many years of bad and bloated X-universe books had curbed my interest in the property. I have the two Uncanny omnibi out from the library, so that is all of the run I will read (not digging out Amy's back issues from storage in the basement to keep reading the run). The Golden Age Dr. Fate stories have become a slog though. Every story is generic super-hero fare as Dr. Fate fights some crook and can't be harmed by bullets or knives because his body is made of energy, but he has to breathe, so every crook has gas or a lariat or something to choke him and take him out of the fight, take Inza as a hostage then have Fate recover once he gets fresh air (even slashing a tire to get the pure air he needs from it when trapped in a room filled with carbon monoxide...no I am serious) and beats the baddies. The only recurring foe is a criminal named Mr. Who (yep long before the BBC timelord), who created a chemical formula in a pill that give shim the ability to do anything (change size big or small, shape change, whatever the plot needs) but he seems to have a glass jaw and Fate defeats him each time with a sock to the jaw, he goes to prison and someone smuggle shim in some compound Z so he can escape and do it all over again....sigh. I've got 18 or so more Dr. Fate stories from the golden age to get through, and I will get through them, but after so much promise in the first dozen or so stories, the rest had been pretty bad repetitive Golden Age fodder. Substitute Superman for Fate, gas for kryptonite, and Lois for Inza and the story would read the same....the cool unique Fate was a victim of the success of super-heroes and the formula publishers felt they needed to sell them. Not sure how Fate fared in All Star Comics with the JSA, as I don't have those in collected form, but the More Fun stuff started strong and tailed way off.
I also picked up where I left off last year with my read through of Master of Kung Fu and am enjoying it quite a bit, plus the Yellow Claw stories by Maneely reprinted in the Giant Size issues are a real treat.
-M
|
|
|
Post by spoon on Feb 24, 2015 23:26:45 GMT -5
I've now read through #20 of Batman and the Outsiders. It's Jim Aparo's last issue of BATO. But as noted in the letter pages, he would be moving over to the Baxter series of The Outsiders later. Might do a more detailed write-up of the issues I've read later.
|
|
|
Post by dbutler69 on Feb 25, 2015 10:56:07 GMT -5
I've now read through #20 of Batman and the Outsiders. It's Jim Aparo's last issue of BATO. But as noted in the letter pages, he would be moving over to the Baxter series of The Outsiders later. Might do a more detailed write-up of the issues I've read later. Nice. I read my BATO last year. I think the art declined after Aparo left, but was still OK. I'll have to dig out my Baxter issues at some point and start reading them.
|
|
|
Post by spoon on Feb 26, 2015 7:44:35 GMT -5
I've now read through #20 of Batman and the Outsiders. It's Jim Aparo's last issue of BATO. But as noted in the letter pages, he would be moving over to the Baxter series of The Outsiders later. Might do a more detailed write-up of the issues I've read later. Nice. I read my BATO last year. I think the art declined after Aparo left, but was still OK. I'll have to dig out my Baxter issues at some point and start reading them. Yes, I'm right at the end of fill-ins before Alan Davis takes over. Aparo pencils, inks, and letters the early issues. When someone inks Aparo on one of the issues, the letter page notes it's the first time someone else has inked Aparo's pencils since 1968. Then, Aparo takes an issue off, supposedly to work on the annual. But he only inked the annual, and the fill-ins start to pile up. Aparo does come back for an issue or two. I like Steve Lightle, but his fill-in wasn't as good as I expected. Von Eeden's issue seemed rushed.
|
|
|
Post by dbutler69 on Feb 26, 2015 8:11:05 GMT -5
Nice. I read my BATO last year. I think the art declined after Aparo left, but was still OK. I'll have to dig out my Baxter issues at some point and start reading them. Yes, I'm right at the end of fill-ins before Alan Davis takes over. Aparo pencils, inks, and letters the early issues. When someone inks Aparo on one of the issues, the letter page notes it's the first time someone else has inked Aparo's pencils since 1968. Then, Aparo takes an issue off, supposedly to work on the annual. But he only inked the annual, and the fill-ins start to pile up. Aparo does come back for an issue or two. I like Steve Lightle, but his fill-in wasn't as good as I expected. Von Eeden's issue seemed rushed. Wow, that's remarkable. I like it when the penciller (a good one, anyway) inks his own work, but that doesn't seem to happen very often.
|
|
|
Post by gothos on Feb 26, 2015 18:23:15 GMT -5
I just re-read the Silver Age Hawkman's origin in BRAVE AND THE BOLD #43. I hadn't remembered several points in it: (1) that Thanagar, despite being technically advanced, was a paradise where people never stole from each other [Boy did that change later on!], (2) that the alien "Manhawks" introduced crime to the world and therefore spurred the creation of the crimefighting "Hawkmen," and (3) that Katar Hol himself was principally responsible for creating the Hawkmen corps.
My question is this: did later writers forget or dispense with this Gardner Fox continuity? I can't pin anything down, but it seems to me that some pre-Crisis Hawkman stories represented the Thanagarian police as having predated Katar Hol. The original story would make the police force younger than Katar himself, however old he was supposed to be.
|
|
|
Post by wildfire2099 on Feb 26, 2015 20:04:35 GMT -5
The ones I have read so far (not too many, mind you), Thanagar is pretty much whatever makes sense in the story at the time... I don't think there was a conscious effort to develop it as a culture past it being where the Hawks came from... at least not through the B&B stories and the first couple issues of Hawkman.
|
|
|
Post by dbutler69 on Feb 27, 2015 10:53:43 GMT -5
I just re-read the Silver Age Hawkman's origin in BRAVE AND THE BOLD #43. I hadn't remembered several points in it: (1) that Thanagar, despite being technically advanced, was a paradise where people never stole from each other [Boy did that change later on!], (2) that the alien "Manhawks" introduced crime to the world and therefore spurred the creation of the crimefighting "Hawkmen," and (3) that Katar Hol himself was principally responsible for creating the Hawkmen corps. My question is this: did later writers forget or dispense with this Gardner Fox continuity? I can't pin anything down, but it seems to me that some pre-Crisis Hawkman stories represented the Thanagarian police as having predated Katar Hol. The original story would make the police force younger than Katar himself, however old he was supposed to be. I think you're right, but didn't Tony Isabella resurrect some of that with his Shadow War stuff?
|
|
|
Post by gothos on Feb 27, 2015 16:21:48 GMT -5
I just re-read the Silver Age Hawkman's origin in BRAVE AND THE BOLD #43. I hadn't remembered several points in it: (1) that Thanagar, despite being technically advanced, was a paradise where people never stole from each other [Boy did that change later on!], (2) that the alien "Manhawks" introduced crime to the world and therefore spurred the creation of the crimefighting "Hawkmen," and (3) that Katar Hol himself was principally responsible for creating the Hawkmen corps. My question is this: did later writers forget or dispense with this Gardner Fox continuity? I can't pin anything down, but it seems to me that some pre-Crisis Hawkman stories represented the Thanagarian police as having predated Katar Hol. The original story would make the police force younger than Katar himself, however old he was supposed to be. I think you're right, but didn't Tony Isabella resurrect some of that with his Shadow War stuff? Isabella may be the first writer who really started building up the culture of Thanagar, so he *might* be the source of my impression that later writers assumed that the Hawk-police had been around for a while. I'm not in a hurry to reread SHADOW WAR, though: it was at best a so-so continuity, mostly recycling old characters and concepts and adding little if anything to the mix. An element of the Fox origin that didn't get recycled: I don't think pre-Crisis Hawkman is often if ever credited with having formulated the Hawk-corps, and of course HAWKWORLD writes a new origin for Thanagar's Hawkmen. I theorize that the idea of Hawkman as the progenitor of an entire world's police force put him in the position of a "Grey Eminence," which obviously made him seem older than he was. In practice Hawkman on Earth seems like an alien sheriff, not someone who conceptualized a whole police force.
|
|
|
Post by dbutler69 on Mar 2, 2015 10:48:23 GMT -5
I think you're right, but didn't Tony Isabella resurrect some of that with his Shadow War stuff? Isabella may be the first writer who really started building up the culture of Thanagar, so he *might* be the source of my impression that later writers assumed that the Hawk-police had been around for a while. I'm not in a hurry to reread SHADOW WAR, though: it was at best a so-so continuity, mostly recycling old characters and concepts and adding little if anything to the mix. An element of the Fox origin that didn't get recycled: I don't think pre-Crisis Hawkman is often if ever credited with having formulated the Hawk-corps, and of course HAWKWORLD writes a new origin for Thanagar's Hawkmen. I theorize that the idea of Hawkman as the progenitor of an entire world's police force put him in the position of a "Grey Eminence," which obviously made him seem older than he was. In practice Hawkman on Earth seems like an alien sheriff, not someone who conceptualized a whole police force. Boy, I get a headache just thinking about Hawkman's continuity! I do remember Isabella's Hawkman was over 100 years old, but it was mentioned that Thanagarians were extremely long lived. I don't know if the idea of Thanagarians being long lived is something he came up with, or Gardner Fox, though.
|
|
|
Post by gothos on Mar 3, 2015 17:19:11 GMT -5
Isabella may be the first writer who really started building up the culture of Thanagar, so he *might* be the source of my impression that later writers assumed that the Hawk-police had been around for a while. I'm not in a hurry to reread SHADOW WAR, though: it was at best a so-so continuity, mostly recycling old characters and concepts and adding little if anything to the mix. An element of the Fox origin that didn't get recycled: I don't think pre-Crisis Hawkman is often if ever credited with having formulated the Hawk-corps, and of course HAWKWORLD writes a new origin for Thanagar's Hawkmen. I theorize that the idea of Hawkman as the progenitor of an entire world's police force put him in the position of a "Grey Eminence," which obviously made him seem older than he was. In practice Hawkman on Earth seems like an alien sheriff, not someone who conceptualized a whole police force. Boy, I get a headache just thinking about Hawkman's continuity! I do remember Isabella's Hawkman was over 100 years old, but it was mentioned that Thanagarians were extremely long lived. I don't know if the idea of Thanagarians being long lived is something he came up with, or Gardner Fox, though. The 100-year-thing is definitely not in the particular issue I read, and it sounds more like something that a later writer might have devised to solve some continuity problem-- like the problem I have, with the idea that the Hawk-police had only been around for maybe ten years after Katar invented it, and that already they were doing things like sending their officers out on 'exchange programs'-- though I presume Earth is the only DC-planet ever visited by such a program.
|
|
|
Post by Phil Maurice on Mar 6, 2015 16:46:36 GMT -5
Wolverine: Old Man Logan by Mark Millar and Steve McNiven. Broadly speaking, this is Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven recast with Wolverine and Hawkeye. I noticed a little bit of Game of Death in there as well.
Basically, a half-century in the future after a large, well-organized coterie of super-villains commits some particularly heinous acts resulting in the deaths of most of the heroes of the MU, Wolverine has renounced his violent ways. He is now a pacifist raising a family on a small farm in the western US. The rest of the country has been split into territories controlled by various super-villains and/or their descendants/heirs.
Owing a large sum of money to his landlords, Wolverine accepts an offer from Hawkeye to accompany him on a cross-country road-trip to deliver a mysterious package. The journey brings them into conflict with the rulers of these territories and we gradually learn the details of the terrible night that changed Wolverine forever.
Despite a pacifist Wolverine, this was an incredibly violent book that exalts in blood and gore. The story moves along at a brisk pace with the crisp, staccato dialogue I've come to expect from Millar. McNiven is a fine artist, seemingly from the Jim Lee school. This is the first of his work I've seen, so I mean that as no slight.
Once again, I am baffled by Millar's treatment of The Hulk and Bruce Banner. Can anyone explain why he seems to have such disdain for the character? The Ultimates cast Banner in a very dim light, but this. . .well, I don't want to spoil it, but it makes his portrayal in The Ultimates seem positively fawning. I enjoyed the first half of the story, but the ending really had me shaking my head.
|
|
Crimebuster
CCF Podcast Guru
Making comics!
Posts: 3,949
|
Post by Crimebuster on Mar 6, 2015 18:09:29 GMT -5
Once again, I am baffled by Millar's treatment of The Hulk and Bruce Banner. Can anyone explain why he seems to have such disdain for the character? The Ultimates cast Banner is a very dim light, but this. . .well, I don't want to spoil it, but it makes his portrayal in The Ultimates seem positively fawning. I enjoyed the first half of the story, but the ending really had me shaking my head. It might be because Millar is a complete tool. Just spitballing.
|
|
|
Post by Phil Maurice on Mar 6, 2015 19:33:10 GMT -5
It might be because Millar is a complete tool. Just spitballing. Don't mince words, Scott. Give it to me straight .
Seriously, that may be the case. I simply cannot get on board with his take(s) on the Hulk.
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Mar 6, 2015 19:55:39 GMT -5
I started re-reading Lee and Kirby's X-Men. I can say I am honestly enjoying it far more than I did the first time around. But something is still slightly off about it. But it's still a lot of fun. But, my god, Professor X is so damn serious. ALLTHETIME.
|
|