|
Post by Reptisaurus! on Mar 17, 2015 19:02:34 GMT -5
It is interpreting the secret identity trope in a way that hasn't been used before or since. Points for originality!
|
|
|
Post by paulie on Mar 17, 2015 20:52:10 GMT -5
It sounds like a must-read! It is! It is!
|
|
|
Post by Hoosier X on Mar 17, 2015 22:27:07 GMT -5
It sounds like a must-read! Hell's yeah, it is!
But it wasn't the Executioner. I think it was the Eliminator!
And after that, the great multi-story saga of the Jester! And then - Starr Saxon and Barry Smith!
(And then - after about Daredevil #53, Daredevil sucked for about 30 issues. Tragic!)
|
|
shaxper
CCF Site Custodian
Posts: 22,762
|
Post by shaxper on Mar 17, 2015 22:42:05 GMT -5
Finally got around to reading all of Usagi Yojimbo: Senso tonight. Though not as powerful as I'd hoped (there were big moments, to be sure, but it somehow didn't hit me in as powerful a way as Space Usagi did), it was a lot of fun, and any concern I had about the series and its impact upon continuity was addressed by the incredibly clever ending. Considering all that Stan Sakai was going through while producing this series, it's frankly amazing it turned out as good as it did.
|
|
|
Post by berkley on Mar 18, 2015 1:30:33 GMT -5
It sounds like a must-read! Hell's yeah, it is!
But it wasn't the Executioner. I think it was the Eliminator!
And after that, the great multi-story saga of the Jester! And then - Starr Saxon and Barry Smith!
(And then - after about Daredevil #53, Daredevil sucked for about 30 issues. Tragic!)
Was that the Roy Thomas run? My reading of those later issues was patchy, but from what I remember I didn't think they were so bad. Still lots of nice artwork from Gene Colan, though the stories weren't as fun or exciting as Stan Lee's, and DD's wisecracking wasn't as enjoyable. I've read even less from the Gerry Conway and Steve Gerber eras, but have slowly been accumulating all the DD issues through to the end of Gerber's run, so I look forward to reading them all in order one of these days to see what I think of them now.
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Mar 18, 2015 3:42:41 GMT -5
Been a few weeks since I listed what I read... for RaGN week I read Yossel by Joe Kubert, , Minor Miracles by Will Eisner, Shadow Hero by Gene Lung Yang and Sonny Liew, Chaos Lone Sloane by Philippe Druillet, and The Price by Jim Starlin-you can readmy reactions to those in the RaGN week thread
continuing slowly through the Claremont X-Men, up to 109 now, but took a bit of a break from it.
also continuing through Master of Kung Fu, up through #44 now and read the Annual with the Iron Fist team up White enjoying it, but the non-Gulacy issues seem to spin their wheels a bit. On the cusp of the big return of Fu Manchu storlyine that culminates in #50, having just read the prologue for it in the #44.
checked out the first issue (the only one I had) of the '97 Weirdoverse Challengers of the Unknown series to see if it was worth tracking down the rest-the John Paul Leon/Shawn Martinbrough art is excellent and the premise seems interesting enough for me to check out the rest.
read a couple more Howard Conan tales-Xulthul of the Dusk, Black Colossus and Pool of the Black One
about 3/4 of the way through Burroughs the return of Tarzan now too
read Michelinie's Star Hunters series (includiing the debut in DC Super Stars #16-started with gorgeous Don Newton art, finished with Rich Buckler with a few fill ins in between, so mostly looked good and read very well, a shame it ended inthe DC Implosiion with no ending, but Michelinie was leaving and Conway taking over if the next issue had been published, so it wouldn't have been the same anyways. Loved the implication that Donovan Flint (the lead of the series) was an eternal champion in the vein of Moorcock, and that Claw the Unconquered and Starfire I (both characters Michelinie had worked on prior to this series) were also such champions. Would have liked to see where he went with that, but alas, was not to be.
read Truman's 3 issue Hawkworld prestige mini and enjoyed it quite a bit. I was lukewarm on it when I read it when it came out, but I have become a much bigger Hawkman and Truman fan since then, and dug it a lot more this time around
also reading my way through the Scare Tactics title form DCs late 90s Weirdoverse line-I had read a handful as they came out but one of my hiatus cut off my readingbefore the series finished, so am reading the latter half for the first time. I am up to the scattering of the team and the stories in the various Plus books that DC did at the time too. Really like the characters and the concept of this series, and gaining a new appreciation for Kaminski and Anthony Williams reading this.
only other comic related thing I have read is the two current issues of Heavy Metal (272/273) and I posted thoughts on them in the new comics thread.
I have taken a break from the ASM Masterworks and Golden Age Dr. Fate archives, but intend to get back and finish them off here soon too...
-M
|
|
|
Post by dbutler69 on Mar 18, 2015 7:01:03 GMT -5
Been a few weeks since I listed what I read... for RaGN week I read Yossel by Joe Kubert, , Minor Miracles by Will Eisner, Shadow Hero by Gene Lung Yang and Sonny Liew, Chaos Lone Sloane by Philippe Druillet, and The Price by Jim Starlin-you can readmy reactions to those in the RaGN week thread continuing slowly through the Claremont X-Men, up to 109 now, but took a bit of a break from it. also continuing through Master of Kung Fu, up through #44 now and read the Annual with the Iron Fist team up White enjoying it, but the non-Gulacy issues seem to spin their wheels a bit. On the cusp of the big return of Fu Manchu storlyine that culminates in #50, having just read the prologue for it in the #44. checked out the first issue (the only one I had) of the '97 Weirdoverse Challengers of the Unknown series to see if it was worth tracking down the rest-the John Paul Leon/Shawn Martinbrough art is excellent and the premise seems interesting enough for me to check out the rest. read a couple more Howard Conan tales-Xulthul of the Dusk, Black Colossus and Pool of the Black One about 3/4 of the way through Burroughs the return of Tarzan now too read Michelinie's Star Hunters series (includiing the debut in DC Super Stars #16-started with gorgeous Don Newton art, finished with Rich Buckler with a few fill ins in between, so mostly looked good and read very well, a shame it ended inthe DC Implosiion with no ending, but Michelinie was leaving and Conway taking over if the next issue had been published, so it wouldn't have been the same anyways. Loved the implication that Donovan Flint (the lead of the series) was an eternal champion in the vein of Moorcock, and that Claw the Unconquered and Starfire I (both characters Michelinie had worked on prior to this series) were also such champions. Would have liked to see where he went with that, but alas, was not to be. read Truman's 3 issue Hawkworld prestige mini and enjoyed it quite a bit. I was lukewarm on it when I read it when it came out, but I have become a much bigger Hawkman and Truman fan since then, and dug it a lot more this time around also reading my way through the Scare Tactics title form DCs late 90s Weirdoverse line-I had read a handful as they came out but one of my hiatus cut off my readingbefore the series finished, so am reading the latter half for the first time. I am up to the scattering of the team and the stories in the various Plus books that DC did at the time too. Really like the characters and the concept of this series, and gaining a new appreciation for Kaminski and Anthony Williams reading this. only other comic related thing I have read is the two current issues of Heavy Metal (272/273) and I posted thoughts on them in the new comics thread. I have taken a break from the ASM Masterworks and Golden Age Dr. Fate archives, but intend to get back and finish them off here soon too... -M I read the first couple issues of Star Hunters (I picked them up in a dollar bin) and thought they were some very good science fiction action stories! I didn't realize that Michelenie was about to leave the title, though. Still, I agree that it's a shame that it got imploded.
|
|
Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 10,085
|
Post by Confessor on Mar 18, 2015 7:54:09 GMT -5
Some of the early Daredevils are among the comics I've recently repurchased via eBay. The Lee/Romita run, especially no.s 15 to 19, are some of my favourite Silver Age Marvels. Yep, DD had some lame and goofy villains. You cite the Matador, but what about Leap Frog???!!!. And of course, the Wally Wood issues are outstanding. The lee/Colan run started out well but got a little tedious for me. Daredevil #1 is a cracking issue too, with its gorgeous Bill Everett artwork. Pity it has one of the butt-ugliest covers ever to grace a Silver Age Marvel comic, but man, the story and art in that comic are great. Mike Murdock just had the best taste in sunglasses. The guy was snazzy and jazzy and he is Stan Lee's Hamlet, his Leopold Bloom, his Mrs. Dalloway. Or not... Yeah...I'm gonna go with "not". ... So Matt frequently pretended he was Mike for a little over a year (I think it was from Daredevil #25 to #41). But it felt more like 100 years. The Mike Murdock plot element was incredibly lame, even by Silver Age comic standards, but worse than that was the fact that it just went on...and on...and on...and on. ...and then it went on some more. When he was finally killed off and done away with, I was so relieved. I can honestly say that I've never been so happy to see a character bite the dust as I was when Mike Murdock finally "died". They were stupid, but it was great! In a way that only Silver Age comics could be great and dumb at the same time. I have to disagree, I'm afraid. I love Silver Age comics and can certainly embrace their silliness to an extent, but the whole Mike Murdock thing was just utterly terrible. It is interpreting the secret identity trope in a way that hasn't been used before or since. Points for originality! Proof that originality isn't always a good thing?
|
|
|
Post by dbutler69 on Mar 23, 2015 9:30:05 GMT -5
I read Marvel Treasury Edition #3 over the weekend. It reprints Thor #125-130. Sure it has flaws (Hercules didn't recognize Pluto because he was wearing sunglasses? The mixing of Greek and Roman names for the gods, Pluto gave up kinda easy at the end) but overall, it was pretty awesome having a 100 page Lee/Kirby Thor tale in glorious oversized format!
|
|
|
Post by fanboystranger on Mar 23, 2015 10:24:42 GMT -5
checked out the first issue (the only one I had) of the '97 Weirdoverse Challengers of the Unknown series to see if it was worth tracking down the rest-the John Paul Leon/Shawn Martinbrough art is excellent and the premise seems interesting enough for me to check out the rest. -M This is a really good series that gets slept on a lot. I'd argue that it gets better as it progresses, too, although JP Leon and Martinbrough will leave early in its second year. (Jill Thompson does a few issues with Bill Reinhold, and they're very different from her usual work. It has a very nice Leon feel, and gives a sense of visual continuity with the rest of the series.) If you're into urban legends or conspiracies, this is a great series to read as it's essentially X-Files in the DCU.
Honestly, all of the "Weirdoverse" books were quite good. Challengers was the best, but the Giffen Book of Fate was a very good book, too, especially once he took over on art. (People sneer at it because it was Jared Stevens, but Giffen was clearly having a good time delineating the Order/Chaos stalemate and undermining the idea of what a superhero book should be.) Night Force wasn't as good as it's earlier Colan volume, but it was still probably Marv Wolfman's best later stage book with a dark sense of humor that you didn't often see in his work. (For example, check out the identity of the soulless Eleventh Man that brings balance to the world.) And Scare Tactics was a fun book.
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Mar 23, 2015 10:52:56 GMT -5
checked out the first issue (the only one I had) of the '97 Weirdoverse Challengers of the Unknown series to see if it was worth tracking down the rest-the John Paul Leon/Shawn Martinbrough art is excellent and the premise seems interesting enough for me to check out the rest. -M This is a really good series that gets slept on a lot. I'd argue that it gets better as it progresses, too, although JP Leon and Martinbrough will leave early in its second year. (Jill Thompson does a few issues with Bill Reinhold, and they're very different from her usual work. It has a very nice Leon feel, and gives a sense of visual continuity with the rest of the series.) If you're into urban legends or conspiracies, this is a great series to read as it's essentially X-Files in the DCU.
Honestly, all of the "Weirdoverse" books were quite good. Challengers was the best, but the Giffen Book of Fate was a very good book, too, especially once he took over on art. (People sneer at it because it was Jared Stevens, but Giffen was clearly having a good time delineating the Order/Chaos stalemate and undermining the idea of what a superhero book should be.) Night Force wasn't as good as it's earlier Colan volume, but it was still probably Marv Wolfman's best later stage book with a dark sense of humor that you didn't often see in his work. (For example, check out the identity of the soulless Eleventh Man that brings balance to the world.) And Scare Tactics was a fun book.
I just read the Scare Tactics run (including the 4 team up issues), and I like it but felt it never quite lived up to its potential. In part because I think it got chasing its own tail because of the efforts to chase sales. The early issues showed what it could be, but once it moved to Gotham to court Batman and the sales exposure that might garner (and didn't) and moved into the team up books ot bring wider exposure, it felt like the book lost its momentum and its identity, and floundered to an end. Still a good read, but I just felt it had the potential to be so much more. -M
|
|
|
Post by fanboystranger on Mar 23, 2015 12:04:18 GMT -5
This is a really good series that gets slept on a lot. I'd argue that it gets better as it progresses, too, although JP Leon and Martinbrough will leave early in its second year. (Jill Thompson does a few issues with Bill Reinhold, and they're very different from her usual work. It has a very nice Leon feel, and gives a sense of visual continuity with the rest of the series.) If you're into urban legends or conspiracies, this is a great series to read as it's essentially X-Files in the DCU.
Honestly, all of the "Weirdoverse" books were quite good. Challengers was the best, but the Giffen Book of Fate was a very good book, too, especially once he took over on art. (People sneer at it because it was Jared Stevens, but Giffen was clearly having a good time delineating the Order/Chaos stalemate and undermining the idea of what a superhero book should be.) Night Force wasn't as good as it's earlier Colan volume, but it was still probably Marv Wolfman's best later stage book with a dark sense of humor that you didn't often see in his work. (For example, check out the identity of the soulless Eleventh Man that brings balance to the world.) And Scare Tactics was a fun book.
I just read the Scare Tactics run (including the 4 team up issues), and I like it but felt it never quite lived up to its potential. In part because I think it got chasing its own tail because of the efforts to chase sales. The early issues showed what it could be, but once it moved to Gotham to court Batman and the sales exposure that might garner (and didn't) and moved into the team up books ot bring wider exposure, it felt like the book lost its momentum and its identity, and floundered to an end. Still a good read, but I just felt it had the potential to be so much more. -M I agree. I have to admit that I resisted the book for the longest time because the whole band concept screamed "old guy not knowing what's going on", but after picking up the run in quarter bins, I found I enjoyed the goofy nature of that aspect. It did run out of steam and the art was all over the place, but it was still a pretty fun book. I'd rather re-read Scare Tactics than a lot of books that were on the stands at the time.
|
|
|
Post by Hoosier X on Mar 23, 2015 14:17:13 GMT -5
I read Marvel Treasury Edition #3 over the weekend. It reprints Thor #125-130. Sure it has flaws (Hercules didn't recognize Pluto because he was wearing sunglasses? The mixing of Greek and Roman names for the gods, Pluto gave up kinda easy at the end) but overall, it was pretty awesome having a 100 page Lee/Kirby Thor tale in glorious oversized format! I love Marvel Treasury Edition #3! I had a bunch of the Treasury Editions in the 1970s but I wasn't that much into Thor so I missed this one. But I bought one in the 1990s and it's become my favorite Thor epic!
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Mar 23, 2015 22:29:49 GMT -5
Star Hunters triggered a need for some Eternal Champion material Moorcock style, so I broke out and finally read Michael Moorcock's Elric: The Making of a Sorcerer (it's sort of qualifies as a classic, it started in 2004 but took until 2006 for the final (4th issue) to appear) by Michael Moorcock and Walt Simonson.
The Simonson art is gorgeous. The structure of he series is excellent as well. Young Elric must prove his worthiness to inherit the throne of Melnibone to his father and undergoes four dream quests (one each issue) opposed at every turn by Yrkoon who seeks to be named heir instead of the weakling Elric. Each dream takes young Elric to an era of Melnibone's past revealing how the empire was forged, the nature of the struggle between Law and Chaos, a history of the black blade, etc. etc. all rendered with style and aplomb by Simonson. This is original material adding tot he Elric saga by Moorcock, not an adaptation of previous prose stories as many of the other Elric comics were.
Fans of Elric, Moorcock, Simonson, sword and sorcery, or just great fantasy adventure comics should check this out.
-M
|
|
|
Post by Nowhere Man on Mar 24, 2015 0:43:10 GMT -5
As far as classic material, I'm still focused solely on reading Hal Foster's Prince Valiant (currently almost done with Vol.4) and Carl Bark's Duck comics (I finished the first three Donald Duck volumes and the first Uncle Scrooge. About to start on the next Uncle Scrooge.) I'm still in awe at home good Prince Valiant is. Its been a long time since something exceeded my expectations. Ditto for Carl Barks. At this point I want to move on to other works by the great masters. I'm thinking Milton Caniff might be next.
|
|