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Post by brutalis on Aug 14, 2017 13:51:06 GMT -5
Gardner F. Fox along with Kubert and Anderson's Hawkman 1-21. Set the standard for the couple of love birds which lasted throughout most of their Silver age adventures and still influences newer incarnations. The scientific alien policeman utilizing antique Earth weaponry against villainy whenever criminals arise.
Katar-Hol is the alien Indiana Jones (NOT Conan the barbarian as some current writers think) using brains over brawn. The thinking man's archaeologist and detective!
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bran
Full Member
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Post by bran on Aug 14, 2017 14:24:59 GMT -5
First example: The Flash. I know he was commercially successful at many points in comic history, but (volume 2 #123 aside) I wouldn't have the slightest idea where to look for the truly great Flash stuff. This is nostalgia talking - I remember from my childhood Flash comics that stood out. According to GCD it's Cary Bates/Irv Novick run. It often had a puzzle-like feature on the cover, and resolution is inside...  |
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Aug 14, 2017 14:47:49 GMT -5
First example: The Flash. I know he was commercially successful at many points in comic history, but (volume 2 #123 aside) I wouldn't have the slightest idea where to look for the truly great Flash stuff. This is nostalgia talking - I remember from my childhood Flash comics that stood out. According to GCD it's Cary Bates/Irv Novick run. It often had a puzzle-like feature on the cover, and resolution is inside... I remember those books with great nostalgia as well. I bought a lot of Flash from that era. I also haven't read them in close to forty years and suspect they would not hold up terribly well. |
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Post by kirby101 on Aug 14, 2017 18:13:02 GMT -5
Is this the all time definitive run, no matter when, like FF 1-100. Or the revitalizing run like Frank Miller's DD?
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Post by Icctrombone on Aug 14, 2017 19:37:34 GMT -5
Marvel Two-In-One - the only set of stories that really stand out is the Project Pegasus storyline. Other than those issues, the series doesn't really have any memorable "run" due to its nature of being designed to be episodic (the best single issue is toward the end of the series, where Ben sits down for drinks with Sandman). There was a 3 parter by Mark Greunwald and Jerry Bingham involving Starhawk, Moondragon and " Her "and the search for the deceased Adam Warlock. I enjoyed it. Besides that, the Project Pegasus storyline was pretty good. |
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Post by Icctrombone on Aug 14, 2017 19:44:35 GMT -5
The team-up titles are hard to pin down. Many of them had different creative teams and, done in one, stories.
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Aug 14, 2017 19:51:06 GMT -5
Unsurprisingly, I've written about team-up book runs at length. Mike Barr's Brave and the Bold really should have made the list. Scholly Fisch's "Batman, the Brave and the Bold" came out after I wrote that article, but it is a solid top 3. |
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Post by String on Aug 14, 2017 21:32:02 GMT -5
First example: The Flash. I know he was commercially successful at many points in comic history, but (volume 2 #123 aside) I wouldn't have the slightest idea where to look for the truly great Flash stuff. This is nostalgia talking - I remember from my childhood Flash comics that stood out. According to GCD it's Cary Bates/Irv Novick run. It often had a puzzle-like feature on the cover, and resolution is inside... Cary Bates became the lead writer on Flash with #209 and lasted till the series' end with #350, an uninterrupted run of 137 issues spanning 14 years, one of the most criminally underrated and underappreciated runs in comic memory. He had the good fortune of having Irv Novick and Carmine Infantino on art throughout his run. He made noteworthy contributions to Flash's Rogues Gallery with the addition of Golden Glider and the Rainbow Raider. His most notable storylines are the Barry/Reverse-Flash/Iris saga (which included the death of Iris and the death of Reverse-Flash), a saga spread out over nearly 100 issues and the Trial of Flash, which while padded in the middle, was the first ever serious examination of a hero's culpability in the eyes of the law when a hero crosses the line. Nobody had a better handle on Barry Allen than Bates. Next up, Mark Waid's run which went from (Vol 2) #62-129, #142-159. With art by Greg LaRocque, Mike Wieringo, Oscar Jimenz, and others, Waid helped cement Wally by becoming a hero in his own right, unveiled the Speed Force, laid the foundation for the one of the strongest concepts of legacy anywhere in the DCU, and lead Wally to love and marriage with Linda Park. Mention was made before and I'll second it heartily, Geoff Johns' run from #164-200 (Johns lasted beyond that but generally I stop at #200 with the end of the Zoom saga, the peak of his run for me). Scott Kolins for the majority of the art (with beautiful covers by Brian Bolland), Johns set up Wally as a blue-collar worker's hero, re-energized the Rogues with his fresh perspectives on their lives and relationships and gave Wally his own true arch-enemy in Zoom whose first act against Wally was truly monstrous. |
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Post by codystarbuck on Aug 14, 2017 22:08:00 GMT -5
DC Comics presents has a pretty good string of stories for the first year, plus art from JLGL.
Marvel 2-in-1 has been mentioned, but, Project Pegasus is probably the best storyline that ran through a team-up book, in my opinion. It logically brought in new characters with each episode, built on what had come before, and reached an exciting climax. For Marvel Team-up, I am partial to the run of #82-85, featuring Black Widow, Nick Fury and Shang Chi (and Spidey) battling the schemes of Viper and Silver Samurai, as they take over the SHIELD Helicarrier and try to launch a kamikaze attack on a joint session of Congress (20 years before Tom Clancy or Al Qaeda). It's not necessarily definitive; but, it is a very strong storyline.
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Post by EdoBosnar on Aug 15, 2017 2:47:03 GMT -5
Hmm, guess my comment at the bottom of the first page is invisible...
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Post by Icctrombone on Aug 15, 2017 5:28:35 GMT -5
On those team-up books, it's kind of hard to pick out a specific run and call it definitive, because so many different writers and artists move through them, and people's tastes vary. For Marvel Team-up, others mentioned the Claremont/Byrne issues, but I'd expand that to Claremont's entire tenure on the title, which ran from issue #s 57 through 89 (although there was a few in there he didn't write). That includes all of the issues drawn by Byrne, but also the excellent 4-parter that revolves around Black Widow suffering from amnesia (#s 82-85). And I know I'm probably an outlier on this, but I also liked the 20 or so issues preceding that (sort-of) Claremont run, when most of the stories were written by Bill Mantlo (and most of the art is by Sal Buscema). Marvel 2-in-1: the first 10 or so issues written by Steve Gerber are pretty good. After that, I'd say the sweep from #50 (the Thing meets the Thing story by Byrne) through #70 is probably the best run of back-to-back issues on that title. It includes the much-lauded Project: Pegasus story, plus the Her/space opera 3-parter that segues into the Serpent Crown 3-parter and some really good individual stories sprinkled in there (like #51, featuring the Thing, Nick Fury and a few Avengers saving the Helicarrier from a siege by sky pirates, or #60, a funny team-up with the Impossible Man); most of the stories are by Mark Gruenwald and Ralph Macchio, and you've got art by Perez, Byrne, Bingham, Gene Day, Frank Miller, Ron Wilson and Mike Nasser. On DC Comics Presents, while I agree with Mikelmidnight and Slam Bradley that the issues Starlin participated in are quite good (and to be fair, the Mongul 3-parter was written by Len Wein, the Starman story in #36 was written by Paul Levitz, and the story in #37 was co-written by Roy Thomas), I liked most of the initial run of that series. By that I mean everything from #1 through #37 - I recall losing interest in the series after that, with only a few worth picking up (e.g. #59, featuring the Legion of Substitute Heroes, or #61, the action-packed Omac team-up with art by Perez). That initial run, though, had some solid stories, and mostly really nice art, with the issues drawn by Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez (PBHN) standing out in particular.I quite liked the DC presents books that featured Starlins artwork. He wasn't the writer but I'm sure he influenced the similarity between Mongul and Thanos. Like many of these series, they have good talent at the beginning and later it becomes almost like inventory stories. |
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Aug 15, 2017 15:44:08 GMT -5
Len Wein says that Mongul was his idea, but the visual design was 100% Starlin.
Starlin was definitely involved in the plotting of some of his DC Comics Presents issues, though - # 37 (with Hawkgirl) was totally conceived by Starlin with Roy Thomas just filling in the dialog.
(DC considered Roy a major "get" and they wanted comics with Thomas' name on the stands quickly.)
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Post by Icctrombone on Aug 15, 2017 17:06:13 GMT -5
Len Wein says that Mongul was his idea, but the visual design was 100% Starlin. Starlin was definitely involved in the plotting of some of his DC Comics Presents issues, though - # 37 (with Hawkgirl) was totally conceived by Starlin with Roy Thomas just filling in the dialog. (DC considered Roy a major "get" and they wanted comics with Thomas' name on the stands quickly.) Thomas was a great acquisition. You always win with an artist that can write as well, when doing a story. |
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