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Post by fanboystranger on Aug 25, 2014 18:19:04 GMT -5
America vs. the Justice Society, from the early 80s. I happened to see it when I was cleaning the attic and figured I'd enjoy rereading it. But, oh my gawd! Look, I respect Roy Thomas for all he has done for comics, for Conan and the Kree-Skrull War, and the All-Star Squadron (mostly), and his absolute mad love for the Golden Age, but here was poor OCD/anal/"must... explain... every... little... thing" Roy running amuck in his favorite playground, and he made quite the mud puddle of it. The plot (Batman accuses the JSA of being Fascist sympathizers) was ludicrous; the dialogue (too much of that "Easy, lad" style; and the art was at best mediocre. Though that and the awful 80s print job were not Roy's fault, I can't imagine the story being any more compelling or sensible had both those factors been improved. It was a chore to fight through to the end of the four issues. This is getting a collected edition in the next six months. Having never read it, I was looking forward to it. Thanks for the warning. Yeah, I was considering picking it up, too. At least I still have the Simonson Orion omnibus and Showcase Presents Blue Devil to look forward to. |
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Post by Deleted on Aug 25, 2014 18:36:10 GMT -5
Yeah, I want that Blue Devil too.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 25, 2014 19:57:01 GMT -5
It may be sacrilegious to some, but I like Watchmen less every time I reread it. It blew me away as it was coming out and the first time I sat down and read it in total afterwards, but every reread since has lowered my estimation of it. It's not a bad read, but it's not one I am eager to return to again because of this trend.
-M
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Post by Deleted on Aug 25, 2014 20:11:41 GMT -5
Shadowhawk came out right as I was losing my interest in comics, but as a kid it seemed pretty progressive and when I started reading comics again I wanted to read the series, at least through the three miniseries. So I bought them all from Milehigh and read them, and laughed at how bad it was.
Also, Grips from Silverwolf. As a kid I LOVED Silverwolf comics. Now they're barely readable. Something about the illustration still appeals to me though. It's rough and amateurish, but it's gritty in that 80's black and white way, like Kevin Eastman is.
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Post by Icctrombone on Aug 25, 2014 20:55:40 GMT -5
Zero Hour: crisis in time. I enjoyed the Event with Dan Jurgens art( he's massively underrated as an artist) but it's too dated. The last time I looked at it I need to have reference material to explain why certain people were Dead, missing or whatever.
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Post by Hoosier X on Aug 25, 2014 23:16:26 GMT -5
America vs. the Justice Society, from the early 80s. I happened to see it when I was cleaning the attic and figured I'd enjoy rereading it. But, oh my gawd! Look, I respect Roy Thomas for all he has done for comics, for Conan and the Kree-Skrull War, and the All-Star Squadron (mostly), and his absolute mad love for the Golden Age, but here was poor OCD/anal/"must... explain... every... little... thing" Roy running amuck in his favorite playground, and he made quite the mud puddle of it. The plot (Batman accuses the JSA of being Fascist sympathizers) was ludicrous; the dialogue (too much of that "Easy, lad" style; and the art was at best mediocre. Though that and the awful 80s print job were not Roy's fault, I can't imagine the story being any more compelling or sensible had both those factors been improved. It was a chore to fight through to the end of the four issues. This is getting a collected edition in the next six months. Having never read it, I was looking forward to it. Thanks for the warning. I'm sorry to see so much negativity directed at America vs. the Justice Society. I loved it when I first read it in the 1980s and I still love it when I read it once a year or so.
I'll admit, it's a bit unusual, but it's a nifty look back at the JSA's illustrious history combined with a weird time-travel mystery and a lot of bizarre late Bronze Age bedazzlery.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 26, 2014 12:10:48 GMT -5
I thought the original thing I read said omnibus, but if it's really just four issues I may still get it since it should be cheap.
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Post by Prince Hal on Aug 26, 2014 12:18:02 GMT -5
This is getting a collected edition in the next six months. Having never read it, I was looking forward to it. Thanks for the warning. I'm sorry to see so much negativity directed at America vs. the Justice Society. I loved it when I first read it in the 1980s and I still love it when I read it once a year or so.
I'll admit, it's a bit unusual, but it's a nifty look back at the JSA's illustrious history combined with a weird time-travel mystery and a lot of bizarre late Bronze Age bedazzlery.
Trust me, I wanted it to be good, and if any of it were half as good as the first issue's cover, I'd've been happy. I admire the effort that went into it on Roy's part, but it began to read more like an obsessive fanboy's fanfic than anything else.  |
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Aug 26, 2014 18:13:35 GMT -5
It may be sacrilegious to some, but I like Watchmen less every time I reread it. It blew me away as it was coming out and the first time I sat down and read it in total afterwards, but every reread since has lowered my estimation of it. It's not a bad read, but it's not one I am eager to return to again because of this trend. -M Okay, that is weird. Watchmen isn't my favorite thing ever, but I thought it held up really, really well to re-reads. There are so many background gags and formal tricks and subtle little plot things that you need to read it repeatedly to really get it. |
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Post by Hoosier X on Aug 26, 2014 19:03:57 GMT -5
Except for the Ditko Spider-Man issues, there is nothing that I have re-read as many times as I've read Watchmen. I bet I've read it twenty times over the years and I'm probably due to read it again. Since the movie came out, I've started reading the Mars scene with the voices of Crudup and Ackerman, and it just keeps getting better and better.
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Post by Icctrombone on Aug 26, 2014 19:08:49 GMT -5
Except for the Ditko Spider-Man issues, there is nothing that I have re-read as many times as I've read Watchmen. I bet I've read it twenty times over the years and I'm probably due to read it again. Since the movie came out, I've started reading the Mars scene with the voices of Crudup and Ackerman, and it just keeps getting better and better. I have to second this sentiment. Watchmen is almost bullet proof ( except for the giant space squid at the end ). It's funny but I read The Magus saga over the years and started to get a little bored by it but I recently read a masterworks version and it came off brilliant again. |
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Post by DubipR on Aug 26, 2014 19:34:40 GMT -5
This is getting a collected edition in the next six months. Having never read it, I was looking forward to it. Thanks for the warning. Yeah, I was considering picking it up, too. At least I still have the Simonson Orion omnibus and Showcase Presents Blue Devil to look forward to. Funny you mention Blue Devil, that's one run that doesn't hold up for me. Loved it as a kid, but now... wow, its very dated and corny. If you want, I'll sell you my run of BD if you like. |
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Post by benday-dot on Aug 26, 2014 20:06:44 GMT -5
I have to say, and it is a little difficult to do so, that most comics I read as a kid, don't quite hold the magic they once possessed. The hold they once had on me may still be there, but it's more the "idea" of the thing than the thing itself which will grip me now.
I think of all those Starlin works that once blew me away... Adam Warlock, Captain Marvel, Dreadstar... all the great runs of the Fantastic Four, X-Men, Avengers, Spider-man Doctor Strange, even the more "mature" works like Miller's Daredevil don't excite me like once they did.
They all, I think, remain great comics, with or without my say so, but they do seem to spark a little dimmer, seem to be a little less fun, a little less exciting than once they were. It's almost like "You can't Go Home Again", or "How Are You Going Keep 'Em Down on the Farm After Tthey've Seen Gay Paris"
I my case, I'm not quite sure what Gay Paris is, but I think it is something a little a little intangible, measured in phases of time, growing up, altered tastes, other views, experiences, the impossibility of recovering lost time. Childhood can be a state of holiness, but it is not meant to endure only to fade.
The comics I do find my self most drawn to today are those I actually might have scorned, or at least willfully overlooked, as a kid.
The simpler, the more absurd, inconsequential, outré, meaningless, improbable, the more having appeared fully formed out of nowhere, that is free of any great debt in the telling, are of the sort of things that these days draw me in. Thus, the non sequitur''s of the Golden Age, the grotesqueries of the underground, or the non-committals of the many anthologies that I am prone to dip into form the body of comics I seem to most like to read these days.
Other things work on me as well. The purity of some of the Silver Age, the innocence of it, the unassailable high concepts of Kirby and let me just throw this in there... Howard the Duck, much to my surprise, held up very well indeed, when I just reread it last year. Gerber's best parts of that run, seem to possess something of the timeless.
Great thread BTW.
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Post by fanboystranger on Aug 27, 2014 0:32:10 GMT -5
Yeah, I was considering picking it up, too. At least I still have the Simonson Orion omnibus and Showcase Presents Blue Devil to look forward to. Funny you mention Blue Devil, that's one run that doesn't hold up for me. Loved it as a kid, but now... wow, its very dated and corny. If you want, I'll sell you my run of BD if you like. I actually own it as issues. I'd like it as a collection. I re-read it a few years ago, and I still liked it. It is corny and dated, but I find it has a lot of charm, too. |
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Post by adamwarlock2099 on Aug 28, 2014 13:05:17 GMT -5
It may be sacrilegious to some, but I like Watchmen less every time I reread it. It blew me away as it was coming out and the first time I sat down and read it in total afterwards, but every reread since has lowered my estimation of it. It's not a bad read, but it's not one I am eager to return to again because of this trend. -M You're not alone, it seems to happen to me too. Granted I didn't read it off the stands when what was going on in the world reflected what the book was doing, I read it in the late 90's when the owner of lcs pointed it out to me. But I've probably read it maybe 5 times since then, the last being after I watched the movie. And each time, it seems to have less and less impact on me. I'm not sure what it is, but if I were to wager a guess, I would think that it seems a lot of it then was shock value, and in that span of time, what was done in Watchmen is norm in comics now. We've densitized ourselves to what shocks us. |
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