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Post by codystarbuck on Mar 29, 2019 22:00:39 GMT -5
Didn't get to read this for some years, as the price shot up pretty quickly on that issue and I missed it on the stands. When I did finally read it, I didn't really feel like I missed anything important. It does give you a good taste of the series; but, I don't think it acts as strongly as a "must have" lead in to the series, as the All-Star Squadron preview did. That one told me I had to get that first issue and I did. Being in JLA (with Perez art in the JLA story) it was a bit more accessible.
I kind of likened the mystery of it (though there were enough references to what occurs in that first issue and subsequent ones; plus the Tales of the NTT mini) to the deleted opening sequence to Escape From New York. I read the novelization, before I ever saw that movie, and had read in Starlog about the deleted scenes; but, beyond one brief shot, never got to see the footage, until they released the special edition dvd, with the footage in the extras (though I think Laser disc had included it, there). Seeing the footage was nice; but, you could see how missing it didn't really affect the rest of the movie. Same deal here. If you missed it, you aren't lost; but, if you did see it, it was like and extra treat.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Mar 29, 2019 22:13:22 GMT -5
That tarnished reputation thing is a bit of a puzzler, aside from being standard Fantagraphics editorializing. Perez had good runs on Avengers and FF, plus a whole bunch of things here and there and was a fan favorite. he and Simonson were kind of utility, go-to guys, until finally getting a chance to really make their mark, in the 80s; Perez on Titans and Simonson on Thor. The tarnished reputation thing was ridiculous and untrue. Perez didn’t leave Marvel under any cloud. According to Pérez he stopped doing much for Marvel because Dick Dillin died and JLA became available. He still did sporadic work for Marvel (the Black Widow in Marvel Fanfare, Iceman story in Bizarre Adventures) until Shooter blew up the JLA/Avengers crossover. |
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Mar 29, 2019 22:57:50 GMT -5
I'm curious though as to what you think about Starfire. You touched upon it earlier in your brief character bios but how she is drawn typically by Perez, she can be looked upon as an overt sexual symbol. Her nascent understanding of Earth's culture and it's repressions can bolster this image as well. Fortunately, Wolfman leads her down a better character path (unlike her fan-brutalized Nu52 return in Red Hood) and her relationship with Dick is one of the better comic relationships that I've enjoyed over the years. Was this done on purpose? It seems so. The creative duo appear to be playing against type for dramatizing a strong female superhero beyond being a mere sex symbol. A unique challenge I face in doing this thread is that, while I read this run countless times as a kid, I haven't revisited it in almost twenty years. I read comics a lot less carefully back then, so my perceptions then may not reflect how I will feel this time around. All that being said, I never liked Starfire. I always felt she was flat, and that her internal conflicts felt forcibly stapled to a character that lacked its own depth. I truly hope I'll feel differently this time around. Funny, you're before my time, and yet you have a far more modern take on the character. Holy missed opportunity, Batman! |
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Post by shaxper on Mar 29, 2019 22:58:59 GMT -5
As far as the name change goes for Beast Boy... he talks about it in the Doom Patrol cross over IIRC.. he was trying to move past being a 'superhero child star' and be a hero in his own right... I'm sure we'll discuss when you get there  Oh, I recall that explanation in-universe. I'm more confused as to why Wolfman felt the need to do it. Robin stayed Robin...at least for the first 38 issues. |
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Post by shaxper on Mar 29, 2019 23:04:41 GMT -5
I think Raven comes across as the most interesting new character in this story; I think that was my impression for the series as a whole. I concur. You can tell Wolfman and Perez are most proud of her. She gets the primary attention of the preview issue, for sure. That's a really good point. Both battles occur in New York because both end up at STAR Labs. Perhaps Robin is just too confused to recognize that when he makes the comment. This has always bothered me, and it is what initially led me to my theory that Cyborg is really just an updated Mal with new window dressing. |
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Post by codystarbuck on Mar 29, 2019 23:15:58 GMT -5
I'm curious though as to what you think about Starfire. You touched upon it earlier in your brief character bios but how she is drawn typically by Perez, she can be looked upon as an overt sexual symbol. Her nascent understanding of Earth's culture and it's repressions can bolster this image as well. Fortunately, Wolfman leads her down a better character path (unlike her fan-brutalized Nu52 return in Red Hood) and her relationship with Dick is one of the better comic relationships that I've enjoyed over the years. Was this done on purpose? It seems so. The creative duo appear to be playing against type for dramatizing a strong female superhero beyond being a mere sex symbol. A unique challenge I face in doing this thread is that, while I read this run countless times as a kid, I haven't revisited it in almost twenty years. I read comics a lot less carefully back then, so my perceptions then may not reflect how I will feel this time around. All that being said, I never liked Starfire. I always felt she was flat, We must have been looking at two different characters.  |
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Mar 29, 2019 23:19:20 GMT -5
A unique challenge I face in doing this thread is that, while I read this run countless times as a kid, I haven't revisited it in almost twenty years. I read comics a lot less carefully back then, so my perceptions then may not reflect how I will feel this time around. All that being said, I never liked Starfire. I always felt she was flat, We must have been looking at two different characters.  |
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Post by tarkintino on Mar 30, 2019 0:26:27 GMT -5
That tarnished reputation thing is a bit of a puzzler, aside from being standard Fantagraphics editorializing. That "tarnished reputation" probably refers to:
"The flashes of genius he had displayed had failed to blossom fully"
...meaning whatever gems he created while at Marvel, he had reached a sort of artistic ceiling he could not break through. As the article explains, when he moved to DC, he had not yet streamlined his work, still drawing stocky bodies and interchangeable faces on some characters. It must have come down to inkers, since his earlier, arguably best work at Marvel--Logan's Run, inked by Klaus Janson and the Avengers mainly inked by Pablo Marcos--brought out Perez's strengths in a way not necessarily common for his Marvel work. Once at DC, a good deal of early NTT was inked by Romeo Tanghal, who was not really doing for Perez what Syd Shores did for Kirby--in other words, "taming" the rougher tendencies to give the work a polished appearance. Inker or not, Perez himself was changing, and one wonders if environment had much to do fueling new artistic goals/standards to keep pushing the envelope.
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Post by Chris on Mar 30, 2019 1:59:11 GMT -5
DC Comics Presents #26 (October 1980) - So why DC Comics Presents? I love the old ten page previews DC was doing at this time, but I could never understand the logic of which previews got placed in which comics. Was the New Teen Titans preview placed here because DC had reason to suspect these readers would especially enjoy the feature, was it an effort to boost sales of DC Comics Presents, or was it something else entirely? If i had to take a guess, I would say it's because the main story was by two fan favorites. It was plotted and drawn by Jim Starlin, with dialogue by...Marv Wolfman. P.S. DC Comics Presents #26 featured a team-up of Superman and Green Lantern. Guess who started writing Green Lantern that month? Marv Wolfman. P.P.S. That same issue of Green Lantern had a Jim Starlin cover. It all loops around on itself! |
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Post by rberman on Mar 30, 2019 7:43:22 GMT -5
That tarnished reputation thing is a bit of a puzzler, aside from being standard Fantagraphics editorializing. Perez had good runs on Avengers and FF, plus a whole bunch of things here and there and was a fan favorite. he and Simonson were kind of utility, go-to guys, until finally getting a chance to really make their mark, in the 80s; Perez on Titans and Simonson on Thor. My thought exactly. Even as a kid who didn't pay attention to the credits, work that I later realized was Perez always stood out in my mind. Also, Deathstroke the Terminator bears more than a passing resemblance to The Taskmaster that Perez had drawn in Avengers. |
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Post by tarkintino on Mar 30, 2019 9:31:22 GMT -5
More on the genesis of Perez's involvement (beig approached by Wolfman) while he was working at Marvel--
From The Titans Companion (Volume One) by Glen Cadigan
George Perez: "At that point I was interested in trying to break in and do some work at DC [because] I I'd been doing work only for Marvel. I think I even recall at one point I wanted to show my portfolio at DC, and [it] felt like starting over again because I didn't know any if them even knew who I was, but Marv provided me the entry in this case. I said "Yes," because the one book I wanted to do at DC comics was the Justice League of America after doing the Avengers over at Marvel, and if they could get me at least an issue or two of Justice League, I'd consider doing the Titans."
On the relationship with Marv Wolfman:
TTC: "When would you say that you and Marv became good friends?"
GP: "I think Marv and I started developing a friendship pretty soon after we started doing the Titans, particularly when I started being more actively involved in the co-plotting. Since Marv I lived near each other, it meant a bunch of phone calls, or getting together and discussing it, then he would write the plot. We would eventually start doing it issue by issue and then he would type up the plot, but in order to keep our relationship constant, he would invite me over to his place and vice versa, and we just got to be friends because of not only working together, but proximity."
"At that time, he and I lived less than a mile away from each other by sheer coincidence. When I first met him, I was still living in the Bronx, but when I moved to Queens, I ended up moving only a mile away from where he lived, and we just started developing a friendship there that came out of the fact that we were both genuinely in love with what we were doing. We had a mutual respect for each other, and seemed to bring out the best in each other."
"One thing that many people don't even realize is team books were not something Marv was all that experienced in until Titans. Most of his books were single characters, or very small casts, so this was a big challenge for him, and here he was working with a guy whose career was pretty much defined by team books, so we did bring out the best in each other. His strength in characterization, and just plain ideas, formed so much of some of the best Titans stories, and I like characterization, and I was very good at keeping the team dynamic and having characters interact with each other realistically. I would develop an even stronger reputation of differentiating characters visually with facial details and body types* as well as body language, so that around issue eight I was able to draw the characters bald and still have their faces different from each other. You'd be able to tell who Wally West was and who Dick Grayson was just by looking at their faces even if I didn't draw their hair, which would be dead giveaways. I developed a certain style for each character so they became alive to me."
"Marv and I come from different backgrounds. I came from the south Bronx in a poor neighborhood, Marv was a Jewish kid from Brooklyn, and we had our own different experiences that we were putting in. One of the greatest things in working with Marv was an incredible generosity and his encouragement in my providing story material. He didn't just want me to draw the book, he wanted me to be involved. The improvement I made as a plotter, and later on as a writer, are all thanks to the encouragement of Marv Wolfman. He was one of the most incredibly generous persons when it came to working, and to this day, the man I consider the gold standard when it comes to working relationships between writer and artist." **
*So, as in the Focus on George Perez book, Perez points to the fact he would develop the ability to make characters distinctive, but it took time (at least by issue #8), when in the earlier period, characters' bodies had not been as refined as what readers would come to see as his definitive style.
**As true an example of a comics title being an organic process as one would find in comic history. After the artistic and commercial disaster that was the Titans's late 70s revival, next to no one had faith in a third round, so Wolfman (and Wein) were pretty much on their own with every decision that brought the elements of this gamble together. This could not have happened as a project born of "too many cooks" (i.e., administrative) making chess moves, since this was a game (so to speak) that had not been played before. Its so nice to know how accommodating Wolfman was to a young Perez, who needed that boost as he felt DC did not know who he was, strange as that might sound today.
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Post by tarkintino on Mar 30, 2019 9:48:56 GMT -5
Even as a kid who didn't pay attention to the credits, work that I later realized was Perez always stood out in my mind. Also, Deathstroke the Terminator bears more than a passing resemblance to The Taskmaster that Perez had drawn in Avengers.I think that depends on how one defines being a well-known or go-to artist. In the 70s, true go-to guys whose work was everywhere--from main to fill-in covers & interiors at Marvel were Romita (of course, and that's not counting TPB covers, licensing art, etc.), Sal Buscema, Gil Kane (to a lesser degree), to name a few. There was a time when a reader could not get away from Sal Buscema's work popping up somewhere, but for Perez, he had his dedicated runs ( Avengers, Fantastic Four), popular special projects ( Logan's Run), I believe 5 issues of Creatures on the Loose, a handful of Marvel Two-In-One (more covers than interiors) and other assignments, but you could find other artists with as much or more of a profile during 1970s Marvel. |
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Post by rberman on Mar 30, 2019 11:16:38 GMT -5
Even as a kid who didn't pay attention to the credits, work that I later realized was Perez always stood out in my mind. Also, Deathstroke the Terminator bears more than a passing resemblance to The Taskmaster that Perez had drawn in Avengers.I think that depends on how one defines being a well-known or go-to artist. In the 70s, true go-to guys whose work was everywhere--from main to fill-in covers & interiors at Marvel were Romita (of course, and that's not counting TPB covers, licensing art, etc.), Sal Buscema, Gil Kane (to a lesser degree), to name a few. There was a time when a reader could not get away from Sal Buscema's work popping up somewhere, but for Perez, he had his dedicated runs ( Avengers, Fantastic Four), popular special projects ( Logan's Run), I believe 5 issues of Creatures on the Loose, a handful of Marvel Two-In-One (more covers than interiors) and other assignments, but you could find other artists with as much or more of a profile during 1970s Marvel. I know what you mean about Sal Buscema being everywhere -- and by 1980, it was looking very rote everywhere, with the same basic figures appearing over and over. He could clearly handle the volume and the deadlines, which is a valuable sort of employee, but once I started paying attention to who was doing what, never did I open a book and see his name and think, "Oooh, goodie." Perez seems to have been a slower worker, but with more pleasing results. Like on that Avengers group shot a few comments up, where he gives each of them a different pose. You'll see the same care in every multi-figure shot he does, even if it has a dozen characters in it.  |
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Post by wildfire2099 on Mar 30, 2019 12:22:01 GMT -5
That tarnished reputation thing is a bit of a puzzler, aside from being standard Fantagraphics editorializing. Perez had good runs on Avengers and FF, plus a whole bunch of things here and there and was a fan favorite. he and Simonson were kind of utility, go-to guys, until finally getting a chance to really make their mark, in the 80s; Perez on Titans and Simonson on Thor. My thought exactly. Even as a kid who didn't pay attention to the credits, work that I later realized was Perez always stood out in my mind. Also, Deathstroke the Terminator bears more than a passing resemblance to The Taskmaster that Perez had drawn in Avengers.Whoa! I never made this connect before, but that's awfully similar to my favorite splash page of all time (which I always love an excuse to post:  |
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Post by Icctrombone on Mar 30, 2019 12:58:28 GMT -5
I think that depends on how one defines being a well-known or go-to artist. In the 70s, true go-to guys whose work was everywhere--from main to fill-in covers & interiors at Marvel were Romita (of course, and that's not counting TPB covers, licensing art, etc.), Sal Buscema, Gil Kane (to a lesser degree), to name a few. There was a time when a reader could not get away from Sal Buscema's work popping up somewhere, but for Perez, he had his dedicated runs ( Avengers, Fantastic Four), popular special projects ( Logan's Run), I believe 5 issues of Creatures on the Loose, a handful of Marvel Two-In-One (more covers than interiors) and other assignments, but you could find other artists with as much or more of a profile during 1970s Marvel.
I have to take some issue with your opinion about Sal Buscema. He was in the Industry about 40-50 years and although maybe he used the same figures ( who wouldn't after all that time) You would never get confused as to what was happening on the page. He wasn't Neal Adams, Jack Kirby or Even his brother John , but I would rate him above all the second tier workhorse types that could meet a deadline. I dare say that if he had done the JLA instead of Dillin, that run might have been regarded much better by comic fans. |
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