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Post by Icctrombone on Jan 4, 2019 15:01:54 GMT -5
Also, shaxper, I'm so happy to see you on the forum. |
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Jan 4, 2019 15:23:32 GMT -5
shaxper , the only complaint I keep hearing is about the black skins scene. It's always that one page of that one issue and never about turning Nixon into an eight year old girl. |
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Post by Icctrombone on Jan 4, 2019 15:45:05 GMT -5
shaxper , the only complaint I keep hearing is about the black skins scene. It's always that one page of that one issue and never about turning Nixon into an eight year old girl. I think you won the internet today with that line. |
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Post by codystarbuck on Jan 5, 2019 0:29:56 GMT -5
shaxper , the only complaint I keep hearing is about the black skins scene. It's always that one page of that one issue and never about turning Nixon into an eight year old girl. Well, the pseudo-Jesus guy, who gets crucified on airplane props, is brought up quite a bit. The Chicago 7 gets a bit more positive notation. |
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Post by Icctrombone on Jan 5, 2019 8:35:49 GMT -5
I never heard any beef about the Airplane cruxifixction, unless you mean in 2018, when everyone became offended over everything.
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Post by codystarbuck on Jan 5, 2019 22:59:19 GMT -5
I never heard any beef about the Airplane cruxifixction, unless you mean in 2018, when everyone became offended over everything. I've seen it brought up in discussions of the series, over the years. Sales on the entire series were never massive; so, I don't think it raised that much of a stink, at the time. It's one I've seen in commentary, when referring to the heavy-handed metaphor. |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 7, 2019 11:11:49 GMT -5
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Post by Prince Hal on Jan 7, 2019 13:25:01 GMT -5
md62, I get what you said here about GL/ GA 77, but I'm curious if that was your experience reading it off the stands way back when it came out. I have to say that I didn't, because I couldn't find it on the stands. Finally caught up with it years later, and just reread it so it'd be fresh in my mind. Yes, O'Neil's dialogue often emerges bass-ackwards and there are aspects of the plot that make you cringe, like the ex-Nazis freed "from a war crimes prison," the mine field and the depiction of Soames as the half-brother of Strother Martin from Cool Hand Luke. But, really, are the melodrama, hyperbolic situations and broad caricatures all that much different from other superhero comics of that time? The big difference, and it really was a big difference, is that the bad guys int he GL/GA series weren't cosmic planet-swallowers and costumed bank robbers. They were analogues of actual, real-life villains. Look at how the original Star Trek incorporated social commentary; it may be that it and other similarly minded TV shows provided a model for O'Neil. And company towns, abject poverty in America, and allusions to inspirational musicians like Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan (I'm betting the town's name owes something to "Desolation Row") just didn't appear in DC Comics in 1970. I do wish O'Neil had been a better storyteller, but I think the "issue of the month" was the format that he probably had to follow, since the comic was close to cancellation anyway. It would have been great to see this be a two-parter, with better developed characters, etcetera, but I'm guessing that the search for America shtik was enough of a "to be continued" aspect of the title for Schwartz et al. Continued stories weren't exactly the norm at DC. One might argue that O'Neil's style worked against the causes he wanted to trumpet and draw attention to, and I get that, but I give him points for trying to do something entirely different in this issue and in the series in general.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 7, 2019 13:39:51 GMT -5
md62 , I get what you said here about GL/ GA 77, but I'm curious if that was your experience reading it off the stands way back when it came out. I have to say that I didn't, because I couldn't find it on the stands. Finally caught up with it years later, and just reread it so it'd be fresh in my mind. Yes, O'Neil's dialogue often emerges bass-ackwards and there are aspects of the plot that make you cringe, like the ex-Nazis freed "from a war crimes prison," the mine field and the depiction of Soames as the half-brother of Strother Martin from Cool Hand Luke. But, really, are the melodrama, hyperbolic situations and broad caricatures all that much different from other superhero comics of that time? The big difference, and it really was a big difference, is that the bad guys int he GL/GA series weren't cosmic planet-swallowers and costumed bank robbers. They were analogues of actual, real-life villains. Look at how the original Star Trek incorporated social commentary; it may be that it and other similarly minded TV shows provided a model for O'Neil. And company towns, abject poverty in America, and allusions to inspirational musicians like Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan (I'm betting the town's name owes something to "Desolation Row") just didn't appear in DC Comics in 1970. I do wish O'Neil had been a better storyteller, but I think the "issue of the month" was the format that he probably had to follow, since the comic was close to cancellation anyway. It would have been great to see this be a two-parter, with better developed characters, etcetera, but I'm guessing that the search for America shtik was enough of a "to be continued" aspect of the title for Schwartz et al. Continued stories weren't exactly the norm at DC. One might argue that O'Neil's style worked against the causes he wanted to trumpet and draw attention to, and I get that, but I give him points for trying to do something entirely different in this issue and in the series in general. Unfortunately I didn't read when it first came out in the 70's. I was more interested in the "big guys" like Superman, Batman, Spider-Man and the Hulk at that time. I finally got to read this run for the first time in the early 80's 10-12 years after the series was published.
You make great and valid points. I do agree O'Neil was writing social issues similar to stories on TV at that time. However his style "lacked" some of the charm at least IMO. Hence my statement that it read like bad TV.
And you are right. It was better than most comics on the stands at that time in dealing with real world problems. For me comics were/are escapism and I don't mind the fantasy elements or inherent silliness. I feel some disconnect when comics try to be too "real" even today.
Overall this series is good. Some issues just weren't as good as the others. This was one of them (at least for me). Over the next few weeks you will see which ones I thought were the really good ones.
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Jan 7, 2019 13:54:35 GMT -5
What I like about this run is that it's serious in a way that most comics of that era (say, between the end of EC and the early '80s) weren't, but it's also un-selfconcsiously goofy and cheerfully over-the-top.
I can see these books being insufferable if they were published twenty years later, but since they came from an era where nobody took superheroes all that seriously there's still a sense of tongue-in-cheek fun to 'em.
This balancing act "Serious social issues" plus "driving the goofy van to see the mayor of crazy town" is pulled off pretty well through almost the whole run... it doesn't seem like an easy thing to do. I'm not sure anyone else in comics has ever hit quite the same tone.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 7, 2019 14:06:22 GMT -5
What I like about this run is that it's serious in a way that most comics of that era (say, between the end of EC and the early '80s) weren't, but it's also un-selfconcsiously goofy and cheerfully over-the-top. I can see these books being insufferable if they were published twenty years later, but since they came from an era where nobody took superheroes all that seriously there's still a sense of tongue-in-cheek fun to 'em. This balancing act "Serious social issues" plus "driving the goofy van to see the mayor of crazy town" is pulled off pretty well through almost the whole run... it doesn't seem like an easy thing to do. I'm not sure anyone else in comics has ever hit quite the same tone. That is an interesting viewpoint. This is why I like going thru a series like this on this forum. I get to see things a little differently and I learn some new stuff along the way. |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 7, 2019 14:11:00 GMT -5
Prince Hal I think you are a few years older than me... so I have a question. Did teens in the 60's think music could really change people's views or cause social change like in this issue? I always felt social changes influenced the music not the other way.
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Post by Prince Hal on Jan 7, 2019 14:34:49 GMT -5
Prince Hal I think you are a few years older than me... so I have a question. Did teens in the 60's think music could really change people's views or cause social change like in this issue? I always felt social changes influenced the music not the other way. Short answer: yes, I do. However hopelessly naive it all might seem now, I think many of us (certainly not all) did think that music could make a difference and change people's views. When I was in high school, the difference in the way kids wore their hair and dressed changed dramatically after the summer of '68. When i started high school in 1967 (an all-boys -- 2500 of us -- in an urban Catholic school), almost everyone had either short hair or what used to be called DA's. Despite our school's very strict dress code, September of '68 saw a radical change in styles. Hair was longer, sideburns appeared, and the "hippie" look in fashion was in. And the thinking changed, too. I can't tell you how many kids swung from right to left politically , and music played a key role in that change. (Pot had a lot to do with it, I have to be honest.) Remember, there really was no "niche" market for music. Everybody listened to lots of different styles of music because of the way radio stations were programmed. It was not odd to hear Marvin Gaye, Dylan, CSNY, Sly and the Family Stone and the Partridge Family on a powerhouse AM station like WABC (New York). Now I can only speak for my experience, but based on what we saw and heard about on TV, radio, and the movies in urban areas in particular, music had a profound impact, at least for a while. The long hot summers of 1965-67, with riots everywhere, including where I went to school, Woodstock and Kent State were watershed moments accompanied by an increasingly socially aware soundtrack. And Vietnam scared the spit out of everybody. Like so much about that time, nostalgia clouds the memory. The golden age aspect wore off very quickly. By the early 70s, cynicism had replaced idealism. The Nixon years and Watergate had a lot to do with that, as did our exit from Vietnam. But yes, I do think that in those days, for reasons both ephemeral and ageless, we were often led to think about things by the music we listened to. |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 7, 2019 14:46:08 GMT -5
Prince Hal I think you are a few years older than me... so I have a question. Did teens in the 60's think music could really change people's views or cause social change like in this issue? I always felt social changes influenced the music not the other way. Short answer: yes, I do. Like so much about that time, nostalgia clouds the memory. The golden age aspect wore off very quickly. By the early 70s, cynicism had replaced idealism. The Nixon years and Watergate had a lot to do with that, as did our exit from Vietnam. But yes, I do think that in those days, for reasons both ephemeral and ageless, we were often led to think about things by the music we listened to. You are about 8 years older than me. So I was a teen in the cynical 70's. The idealism you spoke of was definitely not there during my teen years. The gas embargo. The ending of the Apollo missions. Disco (ha!). Ugly cars. Leisure suits. It was not a hopeful decade.
Thanks for your answer.
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Post by Prince Hal on Jan 7, 2019 15:06:45 GMT -5
Short answer: yes, I do. Like so much about that time, nostalgia clouds the memory. The golden age aspect wore off very quickly. By the early 70s, cynicism had replaced idealism. The Nixon years and Watergate had a lot to do with that, as did our exit from Vietnam. But yes, I do think that in those days, for reasons both ephemeral and ageless, we were often led to think about things by the music we listened to. You are about 8 years older than me. So I was a teen in the cynical 70's. The idealism you spoke of was definitely not there during my teen years. The gas embargo. The ending of the Apollo missions. Disco (ha!). Ugly cars. Leisure suits. It was not a hopeful decade.
Thanks for your answer.
You're welcome, and I agree completely. I first taught high school in 1975 and it was striking how dispirited kids were about the future. Head-banging, beer-drinking, pot-smoking mindlessness predominated. And that was on every academic level, every economic level. |
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