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Post by Hoosier X on Jul 27, 2018 13:04:21 GMT -5
I love the Detroit era JLA. (Although I could do without those scenes with Zatanna and Vixen going after Dale Gunn.)
My favorite storyline is the three-parter with Amazo and the George Tuska art.
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Post by EdoBosnar on Jul 27, 2018 13:06:34 GMT -5
I liked every story I've read in which the Great Lakes Avengers appear. As codystarbuck noted, they are supposed to be incompetent and a bit pathetic. To the extent that they can be considered a super team (and as it turned out, they were mutants), my own nomination for this is Team America:  The series followed the adventures of an unlikely cycling race team, consisting of an ex-CIA agent (yeah, right), a tough loner type (called Lobo, kind of like Wolverine without the claws), and a spoiled rich kid, later joined by a good old boy who calls himself Cowboy and a master mechanic. As they travel throughout the country on the race circuit, they solve crimes and sometimes take down nefarious criminal organizations. And when they most need it, a mysterious, silent rider all dressed in black (who they called the Marauder) appears to help them out of jams and whatnot. I had all twelve issues of this series, which I dutifully bought as it was coming out, and to this day I don't really know why. I wasn't into motorcycles or any type of vehicle racing; the stories were bland and mostly uninteresting and the art, by a rotating roster of pencilers but pretty much always inked by Vince Colletta, was uninspired. |
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Post by Prince Hal on Jul 27, 2018 14:16:59 GMT -5
Nuff said...    <iframe width="9.600000000000023" height="13.799999999999955" style="position: absolute; width: 9.600000000000023px; height: 13.799999999999955px; z-index: -9999; border-style: none;left: 5px; top: 77px;" id="MoatPxIOPT0_46549552" scrolling="no"></iframe> <iframe width="9.600000000000023" height="13.799999999999955" style="position: absolute; width: 9.6px; height: 13.8px; z-index: -9999; border-style: none; left: 424px; top: 77px;" id="MoatPxIOPT0_72538380" scrolling="no"></iframe> <iframe width="9.600000000000023" height="13.799999999999955" style="position: absolute; width: 9.6px; height: 13.8px; z-index: -9999; border-style: none; left: 5px; top: 703px;" id="MoatPxIOPT0_99323543" scrolling="no"></iframe> <iframe width="9.600000000000023" height="13.799999999999955" style="position: absolute; width: 9.6px; height: 13.8px; z-index: -9999; border-style: none; left: 424px; top: 703px;" id="MoatPxIOPT0_93425337" scrolling="no"></iframe> That guy in mid-air is Going-Through-a-Hole-in-the-Ceiling Man. The official team posing position is the squat-thrust. |
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Jul 27, 2018 15:07:28 GMT -5
Gerry Conway, in the 80s (especially the late 80s) was not the Gerry Conway of the 70s. Oh good. And I gotta say nothing here strikes me as quite as bad as early '90s X-Force. Give me the super Blackhawks in all their wrong-headed glory or even... *gulp*... the Mighty Crusaders any day. |
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Post by rberman on Jul 27, 2018 16:01:16 GMT -5
At the time, the story hook was there was an emergency and Aquaman summoned the League; but, the big guns didn't make it. So, he basically fired anyone not willing to make a full-time commitment and started with a young team and under-represented characters. I have never heard whether that was precipitated by the Superman and Batman offices or whether Conway initiated that. He was, as Cei-U points out, trying to emulate Marvel's X-Men and the Wolfman & Perez Teen Titans (which was DC's number 1 comic). Problem was, nobody cared about these characters. Steel was a new version of a fairly mediocre knock-off (created by Conway and swiping from Captain America and the Six Million Dollar Man). That was about all he had going for him. Gypsy's powers were hardly spectacular, though her relationship with J'onn was one of the better points. Vibe was pure stereotype and people hated him, with a passion. Zatanna was poorly handled throughout Conway's run, though there was a brief, interesting moment, where there is an attraction between her and Barry Allen. Conway really just did't make them an interesting group, though it has its fans. From what I remember reading this series as a kid, it was immediately preceded by a big "Our satellite is too aloof. We need to go live among the people, followed by the periodic urge (which the Avengers also face) to purge the roster of big name characters who can't undergo any meaningful arc, and bring in a bunch of newbies/third stringers whose stories can be told in a more unfettered way. This series screams early 80s. Gypsy was an homage to the Salvation Army thrift store chic of Cyndi Lauper and "Like a Virgin" era Madonna. Vibe was all about the early 80s NYC breakdancing fad. Great Lakes Avengers on the other hand were always very clearly a terrible team, whose plot purpose was to show how low Hawkeye had sunk professionally. They did however birth a great song by the nerd-pop band Kirby Krackle: |
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Post by rberman on Jul 27, 2018 16:11:59 GMT -5
I liked every story I've read in which the Great Lakes Avengers appear. As codystarbuck noted, they are supposed to be incompetent and a bit pathetic. To the extent that they can be considered a super team (and as it turned out, they were mutants), my own nomination for this is Team America: This was my nomination as well. They also wasted two perfectly good issues of The New Mutants. |
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Post by Prince Hal on Jul 27, 2018 16:22:04 GMT -5
Gerry Conway, in the 80s (especially the late 80s) was not the Gerry Conway of the 70s. Oh good. And I gotta say nothing here strikes me as quite as bad as early '90s X-Force. Give me the super Blackhawks in all their wrong-headed glory or even... *gulp*... the Mighty Crusaders any day. Goes without saying that any group that looks like this /cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/10175383/IMG_13BB5F186017_1.jpeg) has to be far worse than the Junk-Heap Heroes on their worst day. Even the Listener has a better costume than these guys. I had severed my ties with Marvel before the invasion of the scratchy-faced, no-footed, pouch-festooned 'roiders.  |
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Post by Hoosier X on Jul 27, 2018 17:46:10 GMT -5
Oh good. And I gotta say nothing here strikes me as quite as bad as early '90s X-Force. Give me the super Blackhawks in all their wrong-headed glory or even... *gulp*... the Mighty Crusaders any day. Goes without saying that any group that looks like this has to be far worse than the Junk-Heap Heroes on their worst day. Even the Listener has a better costume than these guys. I had long before severed my ties with Marvel before the invasion of the scratchy-faced, no-footed, pouch-festooned 'roiders. Every 1990s team had a huge guy with 10-foot-wide shoulders and a tiny head. (And you gotta love the way they are standing in low-hanging fog or whipped cream or buttery mashed potatoes or something so Liefeld didn't have to draw their feet.) |
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Post by codystarbuck on Jul 27, 2018 22:59:57 GMT -5
They also needed to see an optometrist; I think they needed glasses, which is why they are always squinting.
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Post by Prince Hal on Jul 27, 2018 23:02:38 GMT -5
They also needed to see an optometrist; I think they needed glasses, which is why they are always squinting. And or they're constipated. |
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Post by codystarbuck on Jul 27, 2018 23:05:40 GMT -5
They also needed to see an optometrist; I think they needed glasses, which is why they are always squinting. And or they're constipated. Probably from all of the steroids... |
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Post by dbutler69 on Jul 28, 2018 8:50:09 GMT -5
The Detroit-era Justice League only existed because A) Gerry Conway had run out of plot ideas for the real JLA, B) the book's then-editor lacked the cojones to tell him "Time to move on then, Ger, and let someone else have a crack at it" like Julius Schwartz would've done, and C) they were hoping fans would take to the new team like they'd taken to the new X-Men and new Teen Titans. A + B + C = one of the biggest miscalculations--and thus biggest bombs--in DC history. Cei-U! I summon the colossal clusterf*** of a comic! I suspect, though I don't have any proof for this, that Conway wanted a lineup of characters without their own ongoing series so that he could actually do something status quo changing and interesting with them, which he obviously couldn't do with Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern, et. al. (If I'm not mistaken, Aquaman left Detroit JLA right before his miniseries started, which I think was supposed to launch an ongoing, came out - not a coincidence, I suspect.) Not a bad idea (let's not forget that Cap's Kooky Quartet worked out all right) but unfortunately, as codystarbuck pointed out, the characters in general weren't terribly interesting and apparently nobody really cared about them. Having said that, I'm not as down on the Detroit JLA as most other people, in fact I kinda liked it, though it certainly wasn't the good old JLA I had grown up loving; and I did find Gypsy mildly interesting. |
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Post by MWGallaher on Jul 28, 2018 9:15:24 GMT -5
The Freedom Fighters, DC's 1970's revival of Golden Age Quality characters as a team.
Sure, there were some fun and interesting characters, but their fatal flaw was that they made for incredibly awkward visuals. When a team of superheroes can't look cool on the printed page, they're doomed.
Consider:
The leader of the team is Uncle Sam. An old man going into battle with a top hat. That alone spoils the verisimilitude of action scenes, since that hat should be falling off every panel.
The Human Bomb has to pause to take off his glove every time he wants to use his power. Not exactly a riveting visual in the middle of a big fight scene.
Doll Man is too tiny to see in team shots.
Black Condor's gimmick is flying, but he's got a costume that not only screams "air resistance" but is such a snag hazard that Condor could be defeated by an inconvenient tree.
The team had no cool transportation, so when they had to get somewhere fast, readers were treated to the clumsy sight of Black Condor and the Ray carrying non-flyers like Human Bomb and Phantom Lady around. Not as cool as having Green Lantern tote you around in a green bubble. Uncle Sam, as I recall, couldn't fly, so he would leap like the Hulk. Not nearly as impressively or convincingly.
The Ray, I'll grant, looked pretty cool, although the monochrome color scheme was a bit boring by the standards of the 70's.
Firebrand...eh, pink was never a very popular color for male super-heroes.
These problems could be worked around in solo stories, as Quality Comics demonstrated in the characters' original runs. But sharing the page, it was a mess.
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Post by codystarbuck on Jul 28, 2018 10:27:26 GMT -5
The Freedom Fighters were a nice concept; but, with multiple creative changes, they never really developed, as a series. They had a great intro, in JLA, on Earth X. Quite frankly, they should have left them there, fighting a world controlled by the Nazis. In the series, they come to Earth 1, are framed by the Silver Ghost and play fish-out-of-water and fugitive. No, the visuals of the comic weren't spectacular, in no small part ddue to artist changes. Rich Buckler gave them a nice cover or two, during the unofficial "crossover," with the Invaders.
Thos characters really work best in a WW2 setting and Uncle Sam worked best as a sort of living spirit. His Quality Comics stories were great; very imaginative; but, DC never really got it right, other than the Alex Ross Vertigo thing and when Roy set up how they went to Earth X, in All-Star Squadron.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Jul 28, 2018 11:31:35 GMT -5
I liked every story I've read in which the Great Lakes Avengers appear. As codystarbuck noted, they are supposed to be incompetent and a bit pathetic. To the extent that they can be considered a super team (and as it turned out, they were mutants), my own nomination for this is Team America: The series followed the adventures of an unlikely cycling race team, consisting of an ex-CIA agent (yeah, right), a tough loner type (called Lobo, kind of like Wolverine without the claws), and a spoiled rich kid, later joined by a good old boy who calls himself Cowboy and a master mechanic. As they travel throughout the country on the race circuit, they solve crimes and sometimes take down nefarious criminal organizations. And when they most need it, a mysterious, silent rider all dressed in black (who they called the Marauder) appears to help them out of jams and whatnot. I had all twelve issues of this series, which I dutifully bought as it was coming out, and to this day I don't really know why. I wasn't into motorcycles or any type of vehicle racing; the stories were bland and mostly uninteresting and the art, by a rotating roster of pencilers but pretty much always inked by Vince Colletta, was uninspired. That series has one redeeming virtue, though: it’s the first one to mention Hydra’s great medical coverage for its cowl-wearing employees! |
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