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Post by rberman on Feb 13, 2019 9:04:13 GMT -5
The Falcon #1 “Winners and Losers” (November 1983)
 Creative Team: Jim Owsley script, Paul Smith pencils, Vince Colette inks The Story: The Falcon foils an alleyway rape, chastises young Miguel the perpetrator for not making more of his life, and convinces the girl’s father not to press charges. Not your typical superhero behavior!  Tensions run hot when a new high rise runs out of applications for its apartments. Social worker Sam Wilson spreads a report that the developer Mr. Kane is using shoddy materials. Supervillain Nemesis must agree; for unclear reasons, he starts tearing the half-finished skyscraper apart. He has Falcon on the ropes but flees approaching police. Kane arrives shortly after Nemesis departs, berating Falcon for not capturing him. Miguel gets fired from his job, gets drunk again, and wanders into the offices of Kane Construction. There, he stumbles upon Nemesis, who chains him to the construction site with a load of dynamite sticks. Falcon to the rescue! He saves the kid, nabs Nemesis, and unmasks him as Kane, who was trying to demolish the skyscrapers-in-progress for the insurance money.  My Two Cents: The letter column “Crib Notes” consists of an Owsley essay explaining the project’s incubation. He sold Jim Shooter on the idea of a Falcon one-shot in summer 1981, and Paul Smith drew this issue. Archie Goodwin approved it for a run in Marvel Fanfare early the following year, but that never happened. Near the end of 1982, this issue was re-imagined as the first of a four-issue limited series, but Paul Smith was busy on X-Men by then and would soon be moving to Doctor Strange. Smith’s distinctively clean pencils are easily discernible beneath Coletta’s ink here. Repeated captions about the summer heat in NYC remind me of Spike Lee’s 1989 film “Do the Right Thing,” in which the heat was shown to be one of the reasons for a riot. Police Sgt. Tork is a Serpico type, a longhair cop who uses an illegal shotgun to uphold the peace. But he doesn’t seem to be undercover, so I wonder how he gets away with his non-regulation styling. 
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Post by rberman on Feb 13, 2019 9:07:35 GMT -5
The Falcon #2 “Legion!” (December 1983) Creative Team: Jim Owsley script, Mark Bright pencils, Mike Gustovich inks The Story: The first six pages are random events in the life of the Falcon. First he inadvertently fouls the parachute of Rachel the skydiver, then rescues her. We see him awakened at 1pm the following day by Tork the cop, who apparently has accepted the job of being Sam Wilson’s alarm clock. Then Wilson heads to his job as a social worker for a few hours before changing back into his Falcon uniform. A local gang called Legion asks for his help. They have reformed their criminal ways and want to have a peaceful march. Rather than filling out a parade permit, they just want Falcon to get permission from Tork. Is that how it works?  Finally the action part of the story commences when a Sentinel attacks Falcon, accusing him of being a mutant. He’s knocked unconscious for hours, then escapes and leads the Sentinel on a chase through a U.S. Army live artillery exercise. But what ultimately brings the Sentinel down is Falcon’s bird sidekick Redwing pulling loose some wires inside the Sentinel’s noggin.  Meanwhile, Falcon’s absence means that Legion’s parade never got authorized. They conduct it without checking, the police get involved, and a riot breaks out, with Jimmy the gang member getting shot dead. Rachel chooses that importune moment to try to visit Falcon in the riot-torn ghetto, and a Legion member almost takes his rage out on her. Legion’s leader Xeon swears vengeance for Falcon failing to inform the cops about their peaceful intentions. Sgt. Tork is no help, first idly wondering when McDonald’s closes, and then mocking Falcon for failing to prevent the riot. What a jerk!  My Two Cents: The Sentinel appearance and the title “Legion” were likely an attempt to borrow some mojo from X-Men, who were white-hot at the moment, deservedly so. But really it could have been anybody attacking Falcon. The real heart of the story is the tense relationships between the street gang and the cops; their bad blood gives both side a low threshold for crossing into open aggression. It’s not the sort of problem that lends itself to super-heroic solutions. Tork suggests that the tardy Falcon may be fighting some super-villain such as The Penguin. Hey, it could happen. Marvel Bird vs DC Bird crossover, maybe in Birds of Prey?  When Falcon awakens as the Sentinel’s prisoner, he runs through an extended quotation from Hamlet to assure himself that his brain hasn’t been damaged. OK…  I’m not familiar with artists Bright or Ruskovich, but the combination looks great, almost like Tom Palmer in places.
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Post by rberman on Feb 13, 2019 9:09:51 GMT -5
The Falcon #3 “Faith!” (January 1984) Creative Team: Jim Owsley script, Mark Bright pencils, Mike Gustovich inks The Story: Falcon spends several pages helping with one of NYC’s frequent apartment building fires; he suspects arson by the Legion gang. When he gets home, he finds Tork there, and two Legionnaires (my name for them, not Owsley’s) tied up in the closet; Tork says they were trying to vandalize the apartment.  Tork and Falcon argue about justice vs mercy. Later, Falcon prevents the owner of the burned out grocery store from jumping off a ledge.  The police precinct is busy preparing for a neighborhood visit by the U.S. President, and Sam Wilson is not welcome there. When the president’s motorcade passes through the neighborhood, a Legion ambush erupts, and the President is kidnapped. Electro also happens to be around, a paranoid nutcase who assumes that Falcon must be after him. He zaps Falcon unconscious, then passes out beside him on the sidewalk outside the Legion hideout. 
Back at the jail, Sgt. Tork figures out that the two Legion members vandalizing Sam’s apartment were a diversion to keep Tork tied up. He interrogates them roughly and prepares to set out and find Sam, just as Captain America shows up looking for Sam as well. My Two Cents: Well, that escalated quickly! A routine-for-comics apartment fire turned into a hostaged President in just 22 pages. Falcon is an unusual hero in that both his secret identity and his own juvenile delinquency are well known in his neighborhood. The “Crib Notes” letter column” is dedicated to a FAQ explaining Sam Wilson’s convoluted back story, including the fact that this series takes place prior to then-current issues of Captain America in which Sam is running for Congress.
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Post by rberman on Feb 13, 2019 9:10:57 GMT -5
The Falcon #4 “Resurrection!” (February 1984) Creative Team: Jim Owsley script, Mark Bright pencils, Mike Gustovich inks The Story: Electro, Falcon, and the Captain America/Sgt. Tork team all separately follow Legion’s trail to a ruined building where “President Ron” is being held hostage by Legion leader Xeon. In two separate battles, Cap and Falcon finally put Electro down. Xeon has a gun to Ron’s head and tells about how government cutbacks forced Xeon out of college and back on the streets. Ron is surprisingly receptive to Xeon’s tale and holds a press conference, promising to sponsor “new legislation” to help the urban poor. Decamping back to Sam’s apartment, our heroes get a visit from Rachel the parachute; everybody goes out for beer. Happy ending!  My Two Cents: Including Captain America as a guest star runs the same challenge as with Superman. He’s a recognizable and popular face, but he’s also an overpowering presence. Owsley does a good job writing Cap in without either making falcon redundant in his own book, or making Cap look like a chump. Cap rolls his eyes when Tork warns that his shield will be no protection against gunfire. Hilarious!  Reagan was portrayed as a reasonable man, and younger than in real life at this time.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 13, 2019 9:55:20 GMT -5
Loved this series. It had excellent art and Priest's (Owsley) script convinced me Falcon deserved his own series. It showed how a Falcon series would be unique as a solo act not tied to Cap.
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Post by codystarbuck on Feb 13, 2019 14:53:30 GMT -5
Mark Bright built his name in the early 90s, with runs on Iron Man (the Armor Wars stories) and was the artist on Quantum & Woody, at Valiant/Acclaim. He also worked at Milestone, DC, and several others.
Gustovich started out doing his own work, his creator-owned Justice Machine, which he began at his own Noble Comics, before eventually taking it to Comico, where it had a bigger following. He eventually sold the property. He did some inking at First Comics and then did several jobs for Marvel, in the late 80s and early 90s. He eventually left comics and started teaching. His pencil work was never very strong; but, his inking was pretty good and he added some subtlety to things.
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Post by badwolf on Feb 13, 2019 15:32:56 GMT -5
I had the first issue of this. I think my friend had the rest, but I don't remember if I read them. Didn't know about its development history.
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Feb 13, 2019 17:06:15 GMT -5
God, you're done already! Slow down!
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Post by rberman on Feb 13, 2019 17:55:10 GMT -5
God, you're done already! Slow down! I thought about metering out these reviews over the course of four days, but I suspected that for a short series like this, people would just write one comment about the whole series rather than have different things to say about each issue, so I went ahead with all the reviews at once. Thinking about the structure of the series as a whole: The first issue was designed as a stand-alone. The Legion gang was a continuing thread in issues #2-4. It would have been nice to have a single super-villain threat as well, rather than one issue about the Sentinel and two with Electro. Better yet would have been for Falcon to find some way to bring back the Sentinel to defeat Electro during issue #4. Chekhov's Law and all that. |
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Post by tarkintino on Feb 13, 2019 22:03:41 GMT -5
The Falcon #1 “Winners and Losers” (November 1983)
Creative Team: Jim Owsley script, Paul Smith pencils, Vince Colette inks Thanks for reviewing this long-forgotten mini-series. It was a unique, breath of fresh, alternative air for a Marvel comic of that period, and helped to move the Falcon beyond the "I'm that gritty guy from the rough side of the city" image that was so much a part of his development since his September of '69 debut, & throughout the decade to follow. Not saying that a lot of it was bad (just the opposite--it worked so well in contrast to the traditional, yet changing Captain America), but the Falcon needed an updating for the times that was all his own. By 1983, that updating had to fit into a widely changed landscape for a black character than the environment comics writers placed them in during the explosion of black characters in the early 1970s...and a tendency to borrow from the worst of the Blaxpolitation film genre. This was a changed Falcon for an equally changed period of time. I only wish more solo adventures--perhaps a graphic novel or Baxter Paper special (remember how that was such a "prestige" format back in the early 80s?) focused on his solo life. |
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Post by rberman on Feb 13, 2019 22:10:38 GMT -5
The Falcon #1 “Winners and Losers” (November 1983)
Creative Team: Jim Owsley script, Paul Smith pencils, Vince Colette inks Thanks for reviewing this long-forgotten mini-series. It was a unique, breath of fresh, alternative air for a Marvel comic of that period, and helped to move the Falcon beyond the "I'm that gritty guy from the rough side of the city" image that was so much a part of his development since his September of '69 debut, & throughout the decade to follow. Not saying that a lot of it was bad (just the opposite--it worked so well in contrast to the traditional, yet changing Captain America), but the Falcon needed an updating for the times that was all his own. By 1983, that updating had to fit into a widely changed landscape for a black character than the environment comics writers placed them in during the explosion of black characters in the early 1970s...and a tendency to borrow from the worst of the Blaxpolitation film genre. This was a changed Falcon for an equally changed period of time. I only wish more solo adventures--perhaps a graphic novel or Baxter Paper special (remember how that was such a "prestige" format back in the early 80s?) focused on his solo life. My little contribution to "Black Superhero History Month"! I was intrigued that they made him a social worker wearing a three piece suit, in an uneasy alliance with an unorthodox cop. Very different from the soldier Sam Wilson seen in the MCU. |
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Post by Deleted on Feb 13, 2019 23:01:40 GMT -5
The Falcon #4 “Resurrection!” (February 1984)Creative Team: Jim Owsley script, Mark Bright pencils, Mike Gustovich inks The Story: Electro, Falcon, and the Captain America/Sgt. Tork team all separately follow Legion’s trail to a ruined building where “President Ron” is being held hostage by Legion leader Xeon. In two separate battles, Cap and Falcon finally put Electro down. Xeon has a gun to Ron’s head and tells about how government cutbacks forced Xeon out of college and back on the streets. Ron is surprisingly receptive to Xeon’s tale and holds a press conference, promising to sponsor “new legislation” to help the urban poor. Decamping back to Sam’s apartment, our heroes get a visit from Rachel the parachute; everybody goes out for beer. Happy ending! My Two Cents: Including Captain America as a guest star runs the same challenge as with Superman. He’s a recognizable and popular face, but he’s also an overpowering presence. Owsley does a good job writing Cap in without either making falcon redundant in his own book, or making Cap look like a chump. Cap rolls his eyes when Tork warns that his shield will be no protection against gunfire. Hilarious! Reagan was portrayed as a reasonable man, and younger than in real life at this time. This is one of my favorites ... and I did read these books and I really enjoyed the action and the art was decent too. This book helped me to realized that the Falcon is one of my favorite heroes at Marvel and that's why I put him in my top 100 characters in this avatar that I made a while back ...  Thanks for doing this .... |
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Post by chaykinstevens on Feb 14, 2019 12:20:46 GMT -5
I’m not familiar with artists Bright or Ruskovich, but the combination looks great, almost like Tom Palmer in places. I don't think anyone is familiar with Ruskovich. |
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Post by chaykinstevens on Feb 14, 2019 12:29:09 GMT -5
Mark Bright built his name in the early 90s, with runs on Iron Man (the Armor Wars stories) and was the artist on Quantum & Woody, at Valiant/Acclaim. He also worked at Milestone, DC, and several others. Bright's run on Iron Man, most issues between #200 and #231, was published between 1985 and 1988. In addition to reuniting with Owsley/Priest for Quantum and Woody, they also worked together on Power Man and Iron Fist #115-125 and Green Lantern (in Action Comics weekly, Secret Origins #36 and Emerald Dawn, although Owsley fell out with the editor and departed from the latter after the first issue). |
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Post by codystarbuck on Feb 14, 2019 12:39:54 GMT -5
Mark Bright built his name in the early 90s, with runs on Iron Man (the Armor Wars stories) and was the artist on Quantum & Woody, at Valiant/Acclaim. He also worked at Milestone, DC, and several others. Bright's run on Iron Man, most issues between #200 and #231, was published between 1985 and 1988. In addition to reuniting with Owsley/Priest for Quantum and Woody, they also worked together on Power Man and Iron Fist #115-125 and Green Lantern (in Action Comics weekly, Secret Origins #36 and Emerald Dawn, although Owsley fell out with the editor and departed from the latter after the first issue). I had the dates off on Iron Man; but, people were sitting up and taking notice, in the 90s. Some guys were instant superstars and others, like Bright, built up a reputation of good work, until the fans started to talk of them as a "star artist." |
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