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Post by Icctrombone on Jun 15, 2019 21:54:11 GMT -5
I think I remember reading about Starlin, Englehart, and I think Milgrom and Gerber all doing drugs together. Something about all of them churning out stories about God in their books during the same time period or something.
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Post by profh0011 on Oct 8, 2019 9:16:18 GMT -5
My favorite bad idea "fixed" may involved Dian Belmont.
In SECRET ORIGINS (I think), Golden Age fanboy Roy Thomas-- who has this unfortunate bad habit of killing off other people's characters-- explained that Wesley Dodds (THE SANDMAN) switched from trenchcoat to brightly-colored tights, and having a teenage sidekick, after his girlfriend Dian Belmont had gotten KILLED.
But some years later (not that many years later, either)... James Robinson (in STARMAN, I think) gave Thomas the finger by showing a much-older Wesley Dodds still happily married to Dian Belmont.
That was so much nicer.
I forget if this was before, during or after most of the run of SANDMAN MYSTERY THEATRE, whose entire run focused on the "early" Golden Age ewxploits of The Sandman and his sidekick... Dian Belmont.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Oct 8, 2019 9:48:03 GMT -5
My favorite bad idea "fixed" may involved Dian Belmont. In SECRET ORIGINS (I think), Golden Age fanboy Roy Thomas-- who has this unfortunate bad habit of killing off other people's characters-- explained that Wesley Dodds ( THE SANDMAN) switched from trenchcoat to brightly-colored tights, and having a teenage sidekick, after his girlfriend Dian Belmont had gotten KILLED. But some years later (not that many years later, either)... James Robinson (in STARMAN, I think) gave Thomas the finger by showing a much-older Wesley Dodds still happily married to Dian Belmont. That was so much nicer. I forget if this was before, during or after most of the run of SANDMAN MYSTERY THEATRE, whose entire run focused on the "early" Golden Age ewxploits of The Sandman and his sidekick... Dian Belmont. I had forgotten the death of Dian Belmont as the impetus for Wes Dodds' costume switch. I don't think that I thought much of it at the time but in retrospect I'm glad that the death was overruled because Dian Belmont is easily one of my five favorite comic book characters. Did they actually get married though? It's been a long time since I've read Starman or the very early issues of JSA, but Wes was vehemently against marriage so I'm wondering if they were just partners for all those years. |
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Post by Deleted on Oct 8, 2019 11:28:11 GMT -5
They never did end up getting married.
Man, I need to revisit both Starman and Sandman Mystery Theatre.
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Post by mikelmidnight on Oct 8, 2019 12:09:02 GMT -5
My favorite bad idea "fixed" may involved Dian Belmont. In SECRET ORIGINS (I think), Golden Age fanboy Roy Thomas-- who has this unfortunate bad habit of killing off other people's characters-- explained that Wesley Dodds ( THE SANDMAN) switched from trenchcoat to brightly-colored tights, and having a teenage sidekick, after his girlfriend Dian Belmont had gotten KILLED. But some years later (not that many years later, either)... James Robinson (in STARMAN, I think) gave Thomas the finger by showing a much-older Wesley Dodds still happily married to Dian Belmont. That was so much nicer. I forget if this was before, during or after most of the run of SANDMAN MYSTERY THEATRE, whose entire run focused on the "early" Golden Age ewxploits of The Sandman and his sidekick... Dian Belmont.
SMT came before the Starman appearance, I believe. That was very much the post-SMT Dodds.
Roy Thomas' story annoyed me for all sorts of ways. First off, killing an important character simply to justify a costume change is atrocious.
Secondly, "Sandman's girlfriend" appeared in the 'All Girl JSA' story after the costume change. Granted, she was unnamed, but it was plainly intended to be Diane.
The most offensive aspect however is that the context of the story made Diane look incompetent. There was an existing tale from the 1940s run in which Wesley had been kidnapped, and Diane dressed as the Sandman in order to rescue him! So she already knew what it was like to be the Sandman, and she was good at it.
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Post by berkley on Oct 8, 2019 20:25:30 GMT -5
To my mind Englehart was one of the top 2 or 3 writers in comics through the 70s and I think his independent work like Coyote or his novel, The Point Man, was still interesting in the 80s but the Marvel/DC stuff from that decade doesn't attract me at all.
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Post by Cei-U! on Oct 8, 2019 21:04:57 GMT -5
My favorite bad idea "fixed" may involved Dian Belmont. In SECRET ORIGINS (I think), Golden Age fanboy Roy Thomas-- who has this unfortunate bad habit of killing off other people's characters-- explained that Wesley Dodds ( THE SANDMAN) switched from trenchcoat to brightly-colored tights, and having a teenage sidekick, after his girlfriend Dian Belmont had gotten KILLED. But some years later (not that many years later, either)... James Robinson (in STARMAN, I think) gave Thomas the finger by showing a much-older Wesley Dodds still happily married to Dian Belmont. That was so much nicer. I forget if this was before, during or after most of the run of SANDMAN MYSTERY THEATRE, whose entire run focused on the "early" Golden Age ewxploits of The Sandman and his sidekick... Dian Belmont. Roy Thomas killed off Dian Belmont in a flashback sequence of All-Star Squadron #18. The death--and Sandman's costume switch--were said to occur in late June of 1941, four months before the costume change actually occurred in Adventure Comics #69 (dated December '41 but on the stands in October). It never bothered me that Roy did that, bor did it bother me that later creators reversed it, especially given the high quality of SMT.
Cei-U! I summon the do-over!
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Post by Icctrombone on Oct 8, 2019 21:09:18 GMT -5
My favorite bad idea "fixed" may involved Dian Belmont. In SECRET ORIGINS (I think), Golden Age fanboy Roy Thomas-- who has this unfortunate bad habit of killing off other people's characters-- explained that Wesley Dodds ( THE SANDMAN) switched from trenchcoat to brightly-colored tights, and having a teenage sidekick, after his girlfriend Dian Belmont had gotten KILLED. But some years later (not that many years later, either)... James Robinson (in STARMAN, I think) gave Thomas the finger by showing a much-older Wesley Dodds still happily married to Dian Belmont. That was so much nicer. I forget if this was before, during or after most of the run of SANDMAN MYSTERY THEATRE, whose entire run focused on the "early" Golden Age ewxploits of The Sandman and his sidekick... Dian Belmont. Roy Thomas killed off Dian Belmont in a flashback sequence of All-Star Squadron #18. The death--and Sandman's costume switch--were said to occur in late June of 1941, four months before the costume change actually occurred in Adventure Comics #69 (dated December '41 but on the stands in October). It never bothered me that Roy did that, bor did it bother me that later creators reversed it, especially given the high quality of SMT.
Cei-U! I summon the do-over!
These days resurrections are just reset buttons. Hal Jordan coming back after killing many of the Corps has been largely forgotten and it seems the fans don't care. |
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Post by profh0011 on Oct 8, 2019 21:23:24 GMT -5
Roy Thomas' story annoyed me for all sorts of ways. First off, killing an important character simply to justify a costume change is atrocious.
That's Roy all over!!!
Anyone remember how the driving plot point of INVADERS ANNUAL #1 was explaining why Sub-Mariner wore the wrong-colored swim trunks in that AVENGERS issue where the team went back in time and fought The Invaders before anyone ever thought of calling them that?
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Post by profh0011 on Oct 8, 2019 21:40:45 GMT -5
These days resurrections are just reset buttons. Hal Jordan coming back after killing many of the Corps has been largely forgotten and it seems the fans don't care. I tend to think of that as a special case. Probably because, at the time "Emerald Twilight" happened, I wrote a 40-page long GREEN LANTERN retrospective for the KLORDNY a.p.a., in which I tore the book's long history of alternating between good runs and really awful, pathetic runs a new one.
Many were involved-- but I put MOST of the blame squarely on Denny "drag 'em thru the mud" O'Neil (my nick-name for him, a guy who was anti-establishment and hated cops and authority figures, yet kept finding himself writing or editing a series about a space cop), who just KEPT screwing over Hal Jordan every time he got on the book.
Steve Englehart actually read every single GL episode published before he wrote his first, and actually had help from someone else just to compile all his research, so he could make sense of some of the mess. Apparently-- and I believe him-- when he took over GL, sales DOUBLED.
But when GL was yanked out of his own book and shoved into ACTION COMICS WEEKLY, he bailed, O'Neil came back as editor, and in the first 8 pages Gil "ultra violence" Kane BRUTALLY MURDERERED John Stewart's wife and had him blamed for it. And then things went downhill from there, perhaps culminating in the classic Oliver Queen "GET A LIFE, HAL!" scene.
By the time ACW ended, GL was virtually in the toilet. Incoming writer Gerard Jones wanted to introduce a new GL, the way Roger Stern introduced a new STARMAN.... but returning editor Andy Helfer (who'd overseen Englehart's run) talked him out of it. Together they planned out a 4-year storyline leading to "Emerald Twilight", in which Hal would find he'd been lied to by the Guardians for decades.
But halfway thru, Helfer left, his assistant Kevin Dooley took over, and within a year decided to needlessly turn the series-- STILL on somewhat shaky ground-- into a "franchise". 1 book became 4, not counting Hal appearing regularly in JLE and guest-starring in multiple other books, all at the same time. All this over-exposure led to tanking sales... and Dooley preferred to blame his writers (and the fans) rather than HIMSELF.
So then he FIRED Gerard Jones-- the exact same way Mark Gruenwald had fired Roger Stern off AVENGERS-- and for pretty much the identical reason-- hired "yes man" Ron Marz who was happy to do what he was told-- and had him do a 3-parter that was in COMPLETE violation of the character's entire history... while INSISTING "Hal had ALWAYS been heading this way."
I like Kyle Rayner. But the way he was introduced was a crime against writing, having a long-time hero's memory DESECRATED like that. And inexplicably, DC editorial INSISTED they were sticking with what happened, no matter what, while GL fandom was polarized violently right down the middle. And in the 2nd Silver Age GL Archive book, Dooley had the NERVE to claim he was "Green Lantern's Number One Fan". LIKE HELL.
DC finally "fixed" this atrocity-- and shockingly, quite well-- only after Dooley was no longer in comics at all. I know. THAT story I read. It was "only" 15 years overdue when they did it.
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Oct 9, 2019 6:09:36 GMT -5
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Oct 9, 2019 6:11:22 GMT -5
I think I remember reading about Starlin, Englehart, and I think Milgrom and Gerber all doing drugs together. Something about all of them churning out stories about God in their books during the same time period or something. Gerber never did drugs, and he was the weirdest one! (Also my favorite comic scripter ever, natch!) |
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Crimebuster
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Post by Crimebuster on Oct 9, 2019 8:35:46 GMT -5
Did they actually get married though? It's been a long time since I've read Starman or the very early issues of JSA, but Wes was vehemently against marriage so I'm wondering if they were just partners for all those years. They never did end up getting married. Well, it depends on what you mean. In the last issue of Sandman Mystery Theatre, Wes says that it's simply the institution of marriage he objects to, not the idea of being married. So he asks Dian to marry him "in the eyes of the universe." He gives her a ring and they exchange vows, and he refers to her as his wife later in the issue. It's clear that they consider themselves married, even though they legally aren't. |
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Post by profh0011 on Oct 9, 2019 12:11:32 GMT -5
I'm glad so many people liked the Dian Belmont thing. A question nagging in the back of my mind, however, is... "Earth-2", "New DCU", "other"? I mentione this because... it sure as hell seemed like Matt Wagner during his run of SMT was determined that "Sandy The Golden Boy" NEVER existed in his continuity... not even after he left the book. And yet, Sandy came back in " JSA". So, was Wagner wrong, or was his run in a DIFFERENT universe continuity from everything else ever done by DC ? It makes you wonder sometimes....
I mean... it is easy to say that what Roy Thomas wrote was "Earth-2" and what James Robinson wrote was "New DCU". But somehow, that still leaves "SMT" on questionable ground.
By the way, I always thought if I were ever in a position to become "LEGION" editor, I would have followed Wagner's SMT story structure, instead of the non-stop "soap-opera" one. MUCH more "organized", as far as story-telling goes.
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Post by MWGallaher on Oct 9, 2019 17:46:43 GMT -5
Sandy coming back in JSA was a "Bad Idea -corrected...then repeated".
Aside from the names "Wesley Dodds" and "Sandman", there's pretty much nothing in common between the two series, and since it's been clear since the 70's that gas-mask Sandman was the one readers found the coolest, they should have resigned the yellow-and-purple version to some backwater alternate Earth, but as it stands, I guess we have to assign Wagner's Sandman to the vaguely-defined "Earth-Vertigo" (one of the three--or was it four?--universes that merged into the "New 52" universe).
I just re-read the debut of Sandman with Sandy, and it's just too weird to try to reconcile with the well-thought-out world that Wagner developed. Sandy McGann is just some random kid in the country who's running around in his own home-made costume because he's--somehow--a big fan of the Sandman (who, as of this story, has no recorded adventures in the costume that inspired Sandy). Next issue, Sandy has apparently moved in with Wesley and for a couple of issues they're traveling around adventuring together. Then Simon and Kirby take over, and Sandy McGann has either been replaced by another boy or changed his name to Sandy Hawkins to cover the tracks of what appears to be a legally dubious guardianship.
If I were in charge, I suppose I'd assign the S&K version to whatever Earth Kirby's New Gods are on (along with Manhunter, Boy Commandos, and Newsboy Legion), and write off the in-between period (done very deliberately in an art style evoking the contemporary Batman and Robin stories) as...I don't know...some nightmare Wesley experienced, caused by bleed-through between the Earths and Morpheus' predicament?
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