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Post by codystarbuck on Apr 5, 2019 20:30:26 GMT -5
My current fantasy reading is stuff like Gaiman, Pratchett and Kim Newman. ll have a sense of humor, all know how to craft a sentence and all have some interesting insight into the world, from a different angle. Plus, newman isn't afraid of his genre roots and just revels in his influences. Pratchett is both laugh-out-loud funny and deeply insightful. I really miss cracking open a new work from him.
I wish I connected more with Pratchett's humor, but I simply don't. I am fond of Gaiman and love Kim Newman's work, however.
Despite the rancidly overwrought conclusion to the series, I was fond of "depressing Donaldson" when his books came out in the 70s; they seemed more complex and contemporary and not slavishly imitative of Tolkien.
Le Guin is a favorite and I like that her magic has rules. I don't care for most tales of magic and the supernatural; because the magic or other forces rarely have rules or a logic to them, that sets up the climax. her stuff did and Glen Cook followed her example, with true names being the source of power. I could never get into Dr Strange because there was rarely a progression of learning the secret to defeat the evil and applying it. it usually seemed to be something out of the blue or his powers were useless, until they weren't.
I gravitated more to LeGuin's science fiction than her fantasy.
I completely agree re: Dr Strange. I can understand why it must have seemed revelatory and innovative in the 60s, but I'm a bit younger than that, and the complete arbitrariness of his spells always made the character uninspiring to me. That's another reason I loved Constantine; I had a sense of how his spells worked.
I recommend the Lovecraft pastiche Winters Tide by Ruthanna Emrys. It has its flaws but it's crystal clear about how its magic works and doesn't work in a manner I found refreshing (summarizing: magic works through drawing sigils, but sigil design is actually a mathematical function, so you have to work out extremely difficult geometric equations in order to achieve the goal you have in mind).
Pratchett's humor kind of depends on the specific work. I find the books that don't feature the recurring characters as the main cast tend to be more pure humor; things like Soul Music and that (though that one is technically a Death book). The City Watch books are great for both doses of humor and police procedural/mystery stories. The Three Witches have some of his best literary satire and some of the better psychology of things. The Wizards tend to be more pure humor though he will surprise you. The Death stuff varies a bit and get more philosophical. With Pratchett, I love the characters, find that his plots are usually entertaining and compelling, and I find that he has a way of making you look at things from a different angle that makes them even more profound. As a cat co-habitator (you never own them), I can say he KNOWS cats. The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents really captures this; but, so do many of his other works. I adore the Tiffany Aching novels and recommended those to anyone who came into Barnes & Noble, looking for something for a young reader, who liked Harry Potter. The City Watch books are my personal favorites, as I love the characters and can relate to the quasi-military aspects. His early Rincewind books, where he was spoofing traditional fantasy works, were very hit and miss, with the jokes (Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic, which really comprise one work). By the time he got to Equal Rites and Mort, I thought he had found his voice. Moorcock was one where I started with great enthusiasm, as I loved the concept of the Eternal Champion, having started with Silver Warriors/Phoenix in Obsidian, which is a great entry point. I then read all of the then-available Elrics. However, the more I tried the other stuff, the more I felt I was repeating stuff. I had some of the White Wolf collections and never got far with Erekose and same with Von beck. I also had some paperback Corum pomnibuses; but, couldn't seem to muster the desire to open them and eventually donated them to a library. Kane of Mars didn't do much for me, as Burroughs had a livelier pace (though I only read the first 3 of his Martian books). I found I liked Moorcock better whe I moved further away from the Eternal Champion cycle, though Jerry Cornelius was one where I would stall. i tried the Final Programme a few times; but, always seemed to stall, though I never had problems with those influenced by it, like Luther Arkwright. I like the Oswald Bastable books and the Metatemporal Detective far more than the EC books, as the alterante history and mystery elements seemed to work better for me than the Order and Chaos philosophies and the heroes with feet of clay routines. I tried the first Thomas Covenant and couldn't get past the rape. That stopped me cold and I threw the book aside and have never wanted to read it or any of his other works. Terry Brooks just looked too much like blatant Tolkien copies and I never tried David Eddings. Piers Anthony is one I have contemplated; but, never cracked open. |
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Post by mikelmidnight on Apr 8, 2019 11:41:06 GMT -5
Piers Anthony is an author I adored as a youngster in the 70s but I fear he's aged badly (particularly his approach to women), and can't recommend him.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Apr 8, 2019 13:17:09 GMT -5
Piers Anthony is an author I adored as a youngster in the 70s but I fear he's aged badly (particularly his approach to women), and can't recommend him. Anthony got to the point where he was more than a little creepy in the 80s and 90s. I can't imagine that he wouldn't be over-the-top creepy at this point. Robert Lynn Aspirin's early Myth books hold up decently well. I haven't read them in some time, but I did re-read the first book in the last 10 years or so. Pratchett I love, though there's a definite difference among the various lines of books. Big fan of the City Watch and the Witches. Less so of Death and the Wizards are by far the weakest. I didn't think I'd like Tiffany Aching (not into YA books), but they are very good. The stand-alones vary, but Small Gods is brilliant...one of best books on religion I've read. |
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Post by berkley on Apr 8, 2019 13:40:31 GMT -5
Piers Anthony is an author I adored as a youngster in the 70s but I fear he's aged badly (particularly his approach to women), and can't recommend him. Same here. I kept reading him up to the mid 80s - the first few of the "Incarnations of Immortality" books, which actually weren't that bad, though inconsistent and generally inferior to the best of his earlier stuff.
I couldn't get into Bio of a Space tyrant at all, that might have been the one stopped me reading his books. The creepiness factor was starting to be noticeable there, though from what I hear, nothing compared to how bad it became later on.
I really liked a lot of his earlier books: Omnivore, Macroscope, the Cluster series, and many others - even the first couple Xanth books were fun in a childish, silly kind of way. The sad thing is, I'm not sure I could go back and re-read any of those old favourites now: I'm afraid what seemed innocent fun back then might come across as creepy now, reading them in the knowledge of his later career. I might still try giving one of them a re-read one of these days, though.
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Post by badwolf on Apr 8, 2019 18:03:25 GMT -5
I really liked Anthony's first Incarnations novel, which I read in high school. Over the next few years I read a few more in the series and the worse the writing seemed to get. By the last one I tried I couldn't believe I had liked him at all. His writing does have a "leering" tone that is rather icky. Sometimes he has an interesting idea, like the story he wrote for Harlan Ellison's second Dangerous Visions, but the style ruins it.
Tried to read Brooks a year or two ago, and yeah, it's a pure Tolkien rip-off, poorly written and full of filler. Couldn't finish.
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Post by mikelmidnight on Apr 9, 2019 11:35:13 GMT -5
I really liked a lot of his earlier books: Omnivore, Macroscope, the Cluster series, and many others - even the first couple Xanth books were fun in a childish, silly kind of way. The sad thing is, I'm not sure I could go back and re-read any of those old favourites now: I'm afraid what seemed innocent fun back then might come across as creepy now, reading them in the knowledge of his later career. I might still try giving one of them a re-read one of these days, though.
I went back and re-read the first Xanth novel and there was one scene where the narrator spent like half a page ogling some woman's breasts. I put it down and have been afraid to pick up anything else since.
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Post by codystarbuck on Apr 9, 2019 12:24:14 GMT -5
Couldn't be much worse than John Norman's Gor series. I read the first one and thought it was a good Burroughs pastiche. The second was pretty good; but got a little kinky at the end. The third was kind of boring, as it was exploring the priest kings and got kind of esoteric, which sends me to sleep. The next one I read the kink had taken over the book and I wondered what was going on. I had picked up several at a used bookstore, based solely on skimming the first one. The next one I started was even more kinky and I just put it down and never read another. Then I saw the listing in one of the books for Norman's Imaginative Sex and figured out what this guy's interest was. That was high school/college. Some years later, when I was a bookseller, someone reissued the first few and Imaginative Sex and we got them at B&N. I glanced through Imaginative Sex and it was what I expected; a bunch of B&D fantasy scenarios, which are what the Gor books turned into. Once I had the internet and read more about the series and who the real fans were I wished someone had had that info widely available in the mid-80s and would have saved me time and money.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Apr 10, 2019 7:16:46 GMT -5
I really liked Anthony's first Incarnations novel, which I read in high school. Over the next few years I read a few more in the series and the worse the writing seemed to get. By the last one I tried I couldn't believe I had liked him at all. His writing does have a "leering" tone that is rather icky. Sometimes he has an interesting idea, like the story he wrote for Harlan Ellison's second Dangerous Visions, but the style ruins it. Tried to read Brooks a year or two ago, and yeah, it's a pure Tolkien rip-off, poorly written and full of filler. Couldn't finish. I never got into Anthony... diary of a Space Tyrant is the only one I got through, which I liked. I didn't notice anything too terrible, but I wasn't looking, either. I picked up one Gor book late in the series having no idea what it was other than the cover was cool... it was pretty horrific... there was a whole chapter on how women really WANTED to be sex slaves deep down. Not sure if the rest is any better, but I re-read Sword of Shannara not too long ago for a book club, and it was painful. I'd been mildly tempted to go back to Brooks to see how he's connected everything, but that slog changed my mind quickly. |
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Post by badwolf on Apr 10, 2019 8:56:09 GMT -5
I never got into Anthony... diary of a Space Tyrant is the only one I got through, which I liked. I didn't notice anything too terrible, but I wasn't looking, either. I picked up one Gor book late in the series having no idea what it was other than the cover was cool... it was pretty horrific... there was a whole chapter on how women really WANTED to be sex slaves deep down. Not sure if the rest is any better, but I re-read Sword of Shannara not too long ago for a book club, and it was painful. I'd been mildly tempted to go back to Brooks to see how he's connected everything, but that slog changed my mind quickly. I still remember the bit that made me throw Anthony down. It was in For Love of Evil, one of the later Incarnation books (I skipped a few because they were getting very repetitive). The protagonist is supposed to take on the role of Satan, but he's a pious man so he's having trouble with it, and a succubus is trying to "convert" him. At one point he gets angry with her and takes a swipe at her...and his hand gets caught in her crotch. How does that even happen? He even tells us "it was warm and furry." Anthony are you 12? Because you sound like you're 12.
My book club started with Elfstones because apparently Terry recommends that and it is also where the TV series started. He just took everything from LOTR and made superficial changes. Instead of the ring it's the stones. Instead of eagles it's...something else I forget but which serves the same function. And so on... And of course Gandalf, sorry, Al-Anon, is there. Plus he kept repeating things over and over again, sometimes not even a page later. Yes Terry, I know.
I was always curious about the Gor novels, because of the covers (the old ones by Boris and other real artists, not the recent reprints.)
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Post by mikelmidnight on Apr 10, 2019 11:36:03 GMT -5
Gor doesn't bother me in the same way because, while it doesn't interest me, I classify it as smut rather than high fantasy. Different genre.
Never read Elfstones, but what you describe was my impression of the first Shannara book.
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Post by codystarbuck on Apr 10, 2019 12:31:06 GMT -5
The first Gor novel, Tarnsman of Gor, is pretty good. It's a Burroughs Mars pastiche, as Tarl Cabot, an Earthman, is taken by a weird ship to a Counter Earth (same solar system, directly opposite side of the sun from Earth, as swiped from various sci-fi stories and the Gerry Anderson film), with a sort of Ancient Greece/Rome culture, with various city states. The Tarnsmen are warriors who ride giant hawks into battle, which sounded pretty cool and read well (and made for the great cover, from boris Vallejo. Slavery is practised on this world and mentioned in the first; but, the sexual angle isn't really there yet. The second, Outlaw of Gor, was nearly as good; but, the sexual angle enters into the story, though mostly at the end, when Cabot weds his love interest. The third, Priest Kings of Gor, explores the early non-human lords of this world and gets weird, in an alien race kind of way. After that, there is a lot of repetition of plot elements and increasing doses of dominance and submission. Cabot is taken slave in one of the novels; but, a later one has an Earth woman brought to Counter Earth and made a slave and, of course, finds its what she truly wanted. There is a whole group of people into BDSM lifestyles, who consider the novels and their themes as a sort of bible for their activities. I'd say the first two books are worth reading, as good fantasy/Burroughs pastiche. After that, I ave nothing to recommend, other than Vallejo's covers. I actually went to see the first movie, when it was released, out of curiosity and boredom. It was scrubbed clean of any of the kinky elements (some nudity; but, not much else) and didn't have a budget for FX; so, no tarns (the giant hawks). The lead was about as stiff as a plank (and about as intelligent) and it had an alcohol-soaked Oliver Reed slumming, with a tag at the end for Jack Palance sorta slumming (he did a lot of low budget European crap), which set up the sequel, Outlaw of Gor, as seen on MST3K. This stuff was as bad as, if not worse than Ator, except Mile O'Keefe had more charisma than the Gor lead, Urbano Barberini. So, imagine how bad Barberini was! Oliver Reed was just sad; but, at least he got to go out on top, in a major Hollywood film. Glen Cook's Black Company series was a refreshing take on the genre, from the 80s on. It features a mercenary company that comes into the employ of a sorceress and her forces, who are retaking their empire, after having been asleep for some decades. They are fighting rebels within their territory and the Company has been hired to help put it down. The original empire was ruled by a powerful sorcerer, The Dominator, and his queen, The Lady. They were served by ten other wizards, who were corrupted and became servants of the Dominator, known as the Ten Who Were Taken. Their names were things like The Limper, Soulcatcher, The Howler, The Hanged Man, The Shapeshifter, etc. They were defeated by the White Rose and imprisoned in mounds, on a plain. They were inadvertently released, except the Dominator, by a scholar and lesser wizard, who found the Lady, instead of the Dominator. She rebuilds things, without her husband. The Company operates like a medieval mercenary company, with their annals being recorded by their physician, Croaker (which gives you an idea of the black humor in this), who starts writing these romances, about The Lady, after they enter her service. It comes to her attention and she is fascinated by him and there is a flirtation that grows. The company has two minor hedge wizards, Goblin and One-Eye, who have a back and forth rivalry, where they prank each other with spells, trying to one-up each other (think of the battle between Merlin and the Witch, in TH White's The Once and Future King, in the Sword in the Stone section). There is another wizard, Silent, who never speaks (obviously). they meet a skilled killer, named Raven, who came from aristocracy, who joins the company after killing a man, in revenge. Raven ends up sheltering a young orphan girl, who turns out to be important, later. Cook's original trilogy introduces the Company and the Lady and her forces, then the White Rose, the foretold enemy of the Lady and her Empire. It climaxes in a battle with the Taken, who are attempting to revive the Dominator. After the original books, the survivors travel south, to find the place where the Company began and become enthralled in events and political rivalries in these states, with some connection to the shrouded past of the Company. The series features a lot of dark, character-based humor, plus some military-stye adventure, mixed with traditional fantasy tropes (minus unicorns and such). Great reading, though there was a big gap before the Glittering Stone books emerged and my interest had waned. I tried reading them and was lost to what was going on, as we switched narrators suddenly. The first book, The Black Company, featured an image that should look familiar to most comic fans...  (that is Soulcatcher) |
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Post by rberman on Apr 10, 2019 12:47:20 GMT -5
Never read Gor. Read a few Xanth and found them formulaic. Elfstones was an OK read before I appreciated Tolkien, but when I went back to it afterwords, its derivative nature was too obvious. David Eddings' Belgariad was a lot of fun for junior high me, his other stuff less so. Zelazny's Amber was way cool, and sometimes my wife and I quiz each other about the names of the princes and princesses. Black Company was a good read. I found Moorcock tedious. I liked Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising as a kid but found the protagonist too wooden on a re-read. I enjoyed Stephen Brust's books about Vlad the Assassin.
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Post by codystarbuck on Apr 10, 2019 13:01:01 GMT -5
Okay, getting back to comics... Marvel Premiere #38 Guess we won't be escaping fantasy after all. Creative Team: Doug Moench-writer, Mike Ploog & Alex Nino-art, Joe Rosen-letters, Glynis Wein-colors, Archie Goodwin-edits Synopsis: Tyndall of Klarn as been sent to find the Heart of Evil (try Washington DC) and is poking around spooky places, with big ol' webs. he finds a glowing egg and cuts the top off; but he has no toast soldiers to dip into the yolk. Instead, he finds a girl, Velanna, also of Klarn, who is strategically obscured. Tyndall was sent by nearby villagers, dwarves who hate Klarn and duped Tyndall into killing Velanna, because hewas different. Metaphor! They stumble around and run into a huge serpent, which nearly has a crush on Velanna, before Tyndall saves her. A wizard, Gristhane, spots them and hauls them in and tasks them to bring back dragon's blood, so he can be rejuvenated and win the hart of his captive girl, also from Klarn.  #MeTooKlarn! Tyndall heads off on his quest (it's always a quest!) and finds a small henge, with some worshippers around it. Wouldn't you know it but they have another Klarn cutie tied to a stake and are sacrificing her to a dragon!  Said reptile enters from stage left and Tyndall and the girl are about to run, when, suddenly, Tyndall is facing the serpent again, who is trying to eat him. In comes the dragon and it's barbecue time!  Tyndall gives the dragon of swordotomy and brings the blood back to Gristhane, only to find him devoured by another serpent, who was his chained cutie, leaving Velanna free to fill in Tyndall, as the snake slithers off. The elves smooch and we end. Thoughts: Pleasant little story from moench, with some metaphor, twist ending and some satire along the way. Ploog and Nino make a perfect pair for this and it is gorgeous to view. Velanna is useless and is mostly elven cheesecake, which looks a bit creepy, given the youthful appearance of the elves (something which got a comic shop raided, when they seized an issue of Frank Thorne's Ribbit, back in the early 90s). She gets a web bikini to cover her for the rest of the story. This is a Code comic, so no nudity, though plenty of damsels in distress. Women's Lib hasn't reached Weirdworld yet. This is 1977 and still predates Elfquest; so, aim any rip-off concerns at the Pinis (ask Colleen Doran about that subject and Richard Pini). Nice little diversion, though, outside of Conan, Marvel was never really able to make a go of high fantasy. To be fair, DC sucked at it too, other than Warlord (and that had sci-fi added, for good measure). The indes were the place for real fantasy material. Next up, a dude with a pointy head, instead of pointy ears! |
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Post by codystarbuck on Apr 10, 2019 13:12:59 GMT -5
Never read Gor. Read a few Xanth and found them formulaic. Elfstones was an OK read before I appreciated Tolkien, but when I went back to it afterwords, its derivative nature was too obvious. David Eddings' Belgariad was a lot of fun for junior high me, his other stuff less so. Zelazny's Amber was way cool, and sometimes my wife and I quiz each other about the names of the princes and princesses. Black Company was a good read. I found Moorcock tedious. I liked Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising as a kid but found the protagonist too wooden on a re-read. I enjoyed Stephen Brust's books about Vlad the Assassin. For Moorcock, I found Silver Warriors/Phoenix in Obsidian to be good reads, and about 2/3 of Elric (especially Sailor on the Seas of Fate). I find his proto-steampunk/pulp adventure stuff to be much better. Nomads of the Timestream features 3 novels: Warlord of the Air, The Land Leviathan and The Steel Tsar, all featuring hero Oswald Bastable. he's a lost British officer in an alternate world, where the European powers maintain their colonies, via airships. It is considered the granddaddy of steampunk and make for both good adventure and biting political and social commentary, which was a hallmark of the original wave of steampunk (now mostly lost to women in corsets and men in waistcoats, riding airships and fighting mechanical weapons and baddies). The Metatemporal Detective features pulp adventure with detective Sir Seaton Begg (a pastiche of Sexton Blake, who was a pastiche of Holmes) and his battles with the evil albino Monsieur Zenith, aka Count Von Beck, who is Elric, in alternate form (and sharing the name of the Von Beck family of that cycle of Moorcock EC books. Begg is part of the English end of the Von becks.) Good alternate history pulp adventure, with a Nazi murder mystery, a plot to start a war between the Republics of California and Texas, with the Navajo nation caught in between, another murder in Germany (with Otto Von Bismark as chief of police and Adolf Hitler a young police captain), and a visit to a Ruritanian kingdom, for ransom and double-crosses. The Nazi murder mystery first appeared in the excellent McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales, an anthology of pulpy tales, from people like Moorcock, Ellison, Glen David Gould and others. It was also reprinted in Tales of the Shadowmen, from Black Coat Books (which are excellent pulp anthologies, using French literary characters, like Fantomas, Arsene Lupin, the Nyctalope, and Madame Atomos). |
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Post by codystarbuck on Apr 10, 2019 15:52:03 GMT -5
Marvel Premiere #39-40  Torpedo!  No, not that Torpedo; this one...  Well, technically, it's this one...  Creative Team: Marv Wolfman-writer/editor, Bob brown-pencils, Al Milgrom-inks, Annette Kawecki-letters, Janice Cohen-colors Bill Mantlo wrote the script for #40, from Wolfman's plot, Milgrom had friends help ink, Gaspar Saladino-lettered, and Archie Goodwin edited that one Synopsis: Torpedo is out searching for the Rocketeers...  No, no; teers, plural. The green dudes on the cover.  Anyway, they ambush him,, talking about getting the suit for "the man." (Seriously, this is 1977; no one talked like that anymore). He causes major structural damage to a building, while avoiding their shots, then gets one of his boot jets knocked out, leaving one providing thrust. Marv, not being a pilot or engineer, thinks it's a good idea to cut off the other jet and use his hand jets to stop his fall. He survives and heads home to his suburban house and wife and kids. Torpedo is an ex-football player, Brock Jones, who is now an insurance exec, pulling down a big salary and bored as hell. he's married to an ex-model and has a bot and a girl, to whom he brings pet rocks.  Yes, people actually paid money for a rock. The 70s were a weird decade. He goes off to his den to mope and cosplay, trying on his suit and demonstrating the fold out turbines, for those who missed his appearance in Daredevil. He finishes up and goes to bed with his wife, in about as sexy a scene as the Code would allow, though the implication is pretty overt. Meanwhile, one of the Rocketters reports to the boss, who threatens his life if he doesn't get the suit. He is part of some foreign conspiracy to send powered soldiers marching into the US.  Great Shades of Operator 5! Brock gets bored with insurance matters and goes for a joyride in the suit and is spotted by the rocketeers. next thing you know, they have some aerial craft, with missiles and fire on him. He avoids the misiles and smashes through the ship, using his hand jets to blast through. He lands and gets pearl harbored by another goon and knocked through a dress shop window, for all kinds of sexist hijinks.  The goon runs away and Torpedo gets an earful from the proprietress and tells her to loosen her corset! He then tells her to file a claim, in triplicate, on form 1053-A, with addendum 23C, notarized; then spin a dead chicken over her head while rubbing her stomach, hopping on one leg, and then sacrifice three generations of children and the claim will be looked at and denied. He's been in the insurance game too long. The fight was a ploy to lure him into an ambush at a ConEd nuclear plant and the fight damages the reactor, causing a meltdown (this is post 3 Mile Island). Marv not being an engineer has the plant techs forget about scramming the reactor and New York is about to become Chernobyl (before Chernobyl became Chernobyl). Torpedo is out cold. Oh, and Lorraine Jones gets doubled over by abdominal pain, while vacuuming, but it's just pregnancy. Brock wakes up and thinks it's the 4th quarter, then applies football analogies to nuclear meltdown. The Rocketeers flee and Torpedo doesn't know squat about nuclear engineering (anymore than Marv) and just grabs some cables to complete a circuit, allowing the automatic safeties to shut down the reactor. Too bad no one thought to use the manual controls to scram it. The police show up (but not the NRC) and chase off Torpedo, as a saboteur. he goes back to suburbia to find his sister-in-law, who tells him his wife is at the doc. meanwhile, the mysterious "man" berates his subordinates and plans a trap. Next day, Brock Jones, ex-football hero, meets with Sen. Eugene Stivak, who wants him on his campaign. Brock doesn't like the guy, as he comes across as power hungry. he decides to go snooping in his safe. Stivak is our mysterious man, and is formerly known as Kligger, a villain in Kirby's Captain America. It was his nephew...  (Nope, that's Stivek)........who was the original Torpedo, who died after fighting Daredevil and who gave his suit to Brock. Brock finds the papers he left there, and Mantlo does an exposition dump...  Rocketeers burst in and they fight and Torpedo goes down. He wakes up to find himself strapped to some doohickey and gets the Randal P McMurphy treatment... (warning: not for the squeamish) He uses a hand jet to escape, smashes up some rocketeers, kicks Stivak around, and drops his house on him. Then back to the suburbs. his wife has the good news...  Stivak survives and returns as part of the Corporation, in Captain America and the Hulk. Thoughts: Not certain about the genesis of this; but, my suspicion is that Marv wrote a new Torpedo tale, as either a fill in or a team-up story (first page mentions hiring another hero to help find the rocketeers) and it got shoehorned here. marv's writer/editor deal meant know one could mess with it, without his okay. Part one must have been completed and part two in plot form only (or with finished art; but, no dialogue), bringing in Mantlo, mister last minute fill-in to do the scripting and others to aid Milgrom on inks (so, probably finished pencils, before things stopped). The story isn't much, an average action plot and not anything to build a series out of. Torpedo would have to cool his jets (Ba Dump Bump) until Rom, where he was added to the supporting cast. The Rocketeers and Stivak turned out to be Dire Wraiths, in a retcon, not foreign agents (well,still technically true, though foreign as in alien). Marv and everyone else seemed to be mixed up on what a torpedo is. Originally, it was a kind of mine (well, originally originally it was a fish), with a contact fuse. They were what Adm Farragut referred to, in the Battle of Mobile Bay, when he said "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!" The later torpedo was an explosive charge carried in a tube, that was propelled by a prop, at high speed, until it made contact with a ship. However, torpedoes aren't jet propelled. The US Navy later created rocket-thrown torpedoes, with rockets launching them over great distance, before the internal motor took over and the prop propelled the torpedo. Civilians! A nuclear reactor can be shut down by scramming it. What usually happens is that a kill switch causes control rods to be inserted and shut down the nuclear reaction. It is pretty reliable. In both the cases of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, it was not the failure of scram systems that caused the emergency but failures in other systems that released coolants and gasses to the atmosphere, though partial meltdowns occured before the reaction was stopped. That and training issues. Marv is using the recent 3 Mile Island incident and the fears it caused (some justly, some hysterical) to up the drama. The solution of using the body to connect power cablesis a bit much. That gets power to the systems; but, the systems still need to be activated. The jet emergency in part one, where one boot cuts out is another situation that is handled in a wonky fashion. Marv has Torp cut his remaining jet, then use hand jets to brake himself. He could still fly with one jet. he just needed to balance himself, just as a twin engine plane does when one engine goes out. You just compensate for the lapsed engine. That could have made for some excellent action and drama and make more sense than going into freefall and suddenly stopping yourself with reverse thrust, which would likely result in shoulder separation or outright ripping the arms off. But....comics! The are pretty decent issues, though nothing groundbreaking. However, that was the fun of this stretch of Premiere issues, and the later Spotlight issues. You could get different tales and different characters, which made for variety. Usually, they were trying to launch something, so they tried hard for a good story. A couple finished off other stories, for closure. I prefer that over some of the longer tryout runs for Dr Strange, Ghost Rider and Son of Satan. Ghost Rider was pretty good and Iron Fist was decent (if cliched); but, Dr Strange and Son of Satan didn't do much for me. Isay give them 3 issues and either greenlight a series or move on. Too bad no one was doing mini-series, at that time, as that would have been a better format for some of those stories. Once DC and Marvel did start using those formats, anthologies went the way of the dodo (for a while, at least). Now, for the nasty part. These stories and the previous Daredevil appearances of the Rocketeer were responsible for Marvel's suit against Dave Stevens and Disney, over the Rocketeer movie, claiming previous trademark and/or copyright. Stevens and Disney won; but, it caused delays in getting the film made and cost Stevens a lot of money. It was bogus as the term rocketeer had been used in rocketry development years before Marvel ever had characters using the name, not to mention use in sci-fi stories. Stevens character was derived from republic's Rocket Man serials, starting with King of the Rocket Men, Radar Men From the Moon, and Zombies of the Stratosphere. the character was originally Jeff King, but eventually became Commando Cody, which is how the Rocket Man is usually referred. The fact that Marvel was okay with the comic hurt them in the case, when they tried to go after the movie. Now, after this, we move on to Star Trek rip offs.
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