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Post by Deleted on Nov 8, 2019 10:22:31 GMT -5
I always thought Sheldon Moldoff was competent but his art looked rather stiff and I much preferred Dick Sprang. With a few exceptions I was not impressed with 1980's Batman, although it fares much better than the 1990's. I grew up reading comics in the 1970's so that is my most memorable Batman, but the 1950's were also very fun as I read those wonderful 80 page giant reprints (coverless copies from Garage Sales) and fell in love with the goofier depictions...so maybe for me the 1950's and 1970's are tied for my personal "Golden Age". I liked Moldoff art very much and I do admire Dick Sprang too and reading Batman; the books in the 50's were my preferred choices and I did enjoy reading stuff in the 70's too; but they did not impact the way Moldoff did to me. My Batman reading was basically these two books 1950 to 1969 ... Batman Books 1950 to 1989 ... Detective Comics After 1989 ... I read a very few of them based on my friends recommendations and they were "selected". I do like the 70's ... just for the Detective Comics alone. 1950's Batman was fun and enjoyable...pure JOY! Comics will never go back to this as everything now is ultra serious!
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Post by Deleted on Nov 8, 2019 10:25:20 GMT -5
I think Finger and Moore were probably dealing with the idea of "canon" the way most fiction does... By not thinking about it at all. I'd guess they were trying to tell a story, and not "establish a mythos" or whatever. It was "canon" until we think of something better or write something else. Finger's work, especially, drew a lot from surrealism and expressionism so I doubt the idea of telling an "in continuity" story was in any way interesting to him. I attended a panel in September with folks like Mike Grell, Marv Wolfman, and Keith Giffen. They were unanimous in their belief that canon/continuity should only be expected within a given author, and not across authors or titles. There might be two Batman books at once, but only one author showing Robin present. Arkham Prison might be exploded in one title and visited in another. Etc. Good point. Ian Fleming couldn't always get things consistent in his Bond novels. If one author can't do it in books released every year or so, multiple writers on multiple books have no chance.
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Post by rberman on Nov 8, 2019 11:22:28 GMT -5
I attended a panel in September with folks like Mike Grell, Marv Wolfman, and Keith Giffen. They were unanimous in their belief that canon/continuity should only be expected within a given author, and not across authors or titles. There might be two Batman books at once, but only one author showing Robin present. Arkham Prison might be exploded in one title and visited in another. Etc. Good point. Ian Fleming couldn't always get things consistent in his Bond novels. If one author can't do it in books released every year or so, multiple writers on multiple books have no chance. Fans and writers experience the material differently. I went to a concert last night by a musician I've followed since the 80s. I knew songs that he had forgotten he had even written, because I listened to those albums repeatedly during a formative time in my life, whereas for him it was just one of many projects in a long career. When I was a kid, I had no idea who was drawing. I just wondered why the Micronauts looked so cool (under Pat Broderick, I now know) and then got all weird and angular on the annuals (under Steve Ditko, I now know). It never dawned on me to notice who was writing. What I did know was that the Legion had clearly gotten some new costumes since their days in Adventure Comics. It's natural for readers to treat all stories with a given character as being episodes in one bigger story we call "continuity." But the more continuity there is for a given character, it can become not just a deep well for later writers to exploit, but also a straitjacket. It's one of the reasons DC purges continuity every so often.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 8, 2019 11:31:33 GMT -5
The straitjacket comparison is a good one. You mentioned music. I have seen interviews with wrestlers who can't remember certain matches. Sure, they remember the really big ones, but ask them about a match they had 25 years ago on a syndicated show - and you may well get a blank expression. Which is absolutely fine. Slavish devotion to continuity can be a barrier. I mean, if I watched every Bond film from Doctor No to Spectre, I am sure I could find anomalies, contradictions and so much else. But although it is meant to be a cohesive journey, one has to really take each film on its own merits. True, it's good to see some continuity, e.g. Roger Moore's Bond putting flowers on his wife's grave (George Lazenby's Bond got married) or Pierce Brosnan's Bond recognising some equipment that Connery's Bond had used in Thunderball. Little touches like that are nice. But get too bogged down in continuity and it becomes a straitjacket. Plus, one can have a laugh at times. I believe James Bond in the novels was born in 1920, yet a later book talks about him buying his first car (a Bentley) in 1929.
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Post by rberman on Nov 8, 2019 11:58:52 GMT -5
Slavish devotion to continuity can be a barrier. I mean, if I watched every Bond film from Doctor No to Spectre, I am sure I could find anomalies, contradictions and so much else. But although it is meant to be a cohesive journey, one has to really take each film on its own merits. True, it's good to see some continuity, e.g. Roger Moore's Bond putting flowers on his wife's grave (George Lazenby's Bond got married) or Pierce Brosnan's Bond recognising some equipment that Connery's Bond had used in Thunderball. Little touches like that are nice. But get too bogged down in continuity and it becomes a straitjacket. Plus, one can have a laugh at times. I believe James Bond in the novels was born in 1920, yet a later book talks about him buying his first car (a Bentley) in 1929. I only know James Bond through the movies. I never thought of them as having any continuity. Each one for me was just a variation on the same themes, an excuse to see some gunfights and explosions. If one of them referred to another one, it went over my head. Didn't Dalton's Bond get married at the end of one of the movies? But it's always a new girl.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 8, 2019 12:10:21 GMT -5
Lazenby's Bond got married. Dalton's Bond mentioned it (or, rather, his associate Felix did). The continuity is and should be very tenuous.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Nov 8, 2019 13:25:43 GMT -5
Good point. Ian Fleming couldn't always get things consistent in his Bond novels. If one author can't do it in books released every year or so, multiple writers on multiple books have no chance. Fans and writers experience the material differently. I went to a concert last night by a musician I've followed since the 80s. I knew songs that he had forgotten he had even written, because I listened to those albums repeatedly during a formative time in my life, whereas for him it was just one of many projects in a long career. I experienced this recently when I saw Junior Brown in concert. There was a fairly insistent fan that was yelling out for some pretty deep cuts from his early albums. I recognized them but they were more than a bit obscure. Eventually Junior pointed out that he vaguely remembered writing the songs but hadn't played them in decades and couldn't remember how if he really wanted to try.
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Post by chadwilliam on Nov 8, 2019 14:43:49 GMT -5
I'd actually rank Shelly Moldoff as my third favorite Batman artist. Just below Jim Aparo and Norm Breyfogle. He seemed to be the ghost who copied Bob Kane most accurately but got right all the things that Kane got wrong. Kane's Batman (after 1940 anyway) looked squat, stiff, musclebound, and neckless. Moldoff fixed the proportions, retained Batman's physique without compromising his agility, and could transition from sombre and moody to bright and colorful as he knew that comics look best when they pop!
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Post by Cei-U! on Nov 8, 2019 17:40:55 GMT -5
I'd actually rank Shelly Moldoff as my third favorite Batman artist. Just below Jim Aparo and Norm Breyfogle. He seemed to be the ghost who copied Bob Kane most accurately but got right all the things that Kane got wrong. Kane's Batman (after 1940 anyway) looked squat, stiff, musclebound, and neckless. Moldoff fixed the proportions, retained Batman's physique without compromising his agility, and could transition from sombre and moody to bright and colorful as he knew that comics look best when they pop! Honestly, that sounds more like Dick Sprang than Sheldon Moldoff. In my estimation, Moldoff is to Sprang what Sal Buscema is to his brother John: competent and hard-working but coming up short in terms of draftsmanship and polish.
Cei-U! I summon the heirarchy!
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Post by chadwilliam on Nov 9, 2019 0:50:18 GMT -5
I'd actually rank Shelly Moldoff as my third favorite Batman artist. Just below Jim Aparo and Norm Breyfogle. He seemed to be the ghost who copied Bob Kane most accurately but got right all the things that Kane got wrong. Kane's Batman (after 1940 anyway) looked squat, stiff, musclebound, and neckless. Moldoff fixed the proportions, retained Batman's physique without compromising his agility, and could transition from sombre and moody to bright and colorful as he knew that comics look best when they pop! Honestly, that sounds more like Dick Sprang than Sheldon Moldoff. In my estimation, Moldoff is to Sprang what Sal Buscema is to his brother John: competent and hard-working but coming up short in terms of draftsmanship and polish.
Cei-U! I summon the heirarchy!
I can't argue any of this - Sprang, of course, was known as "the good Batman artist" at the time when only Kane got credit for anything and fans were confused by the variation in quality of "Bob Kane's" work- but Sprang was also too good of an artist for his work to ever be confused with Kane's in my opinion. It's easy for me to say now, but no way could something as polished as Sprang's work be confused with Kane's. With Moldoff however, I could see people making that mistake. "Hey, maybe Kane's wearing his glasses for this story" or "I guess Kane isn't feeling really angry today at us and is trying his best with this tale". Of course, by the time Moldoff had become the main artist, I can't imagine that there were too many readers who had even seen real Bob Kane's work. As to why I would rank Moldoff above Sprang (and Robinson and Adams and Infantino and Newton and Rogers and...) I really can't say. Likely a confluence of reasons; some possibly sentimental, some quirky, some based on an unbiased assessment of his work. Most probably, it's due to the fact that I simply love that period and he defines it.
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Nov 9, 2019 3:08:18 GMT -5
Dick Sprang is, shockingly, my favorite Batman artist. Everything is bright and heroes are square jawed but there's also always something off-kilter about the panel design or the angle that figures interact or just some teeny small thing. It's very subtle - the kind of subtlety that was lost after everyone started copying Kirby and Adams - but it lends a sense of tension to his work I'm not sure anyone else captured.
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Post by tarkintino on Nov 9, 2019 10:37:43 GMT -5
I'm really impressed that you've managed to narrow the start of your Golden Age so precisely to 1968. I suspect that it's easier to establish a start date for these periods than an end, but too often, people tend to veer to the start of O Neil and Adams run or the beginning of The New Look of 1964 while overlooking the fact that O Neil and Adams didn't materialize out of thin air and The New Look was a work in progress still needing to establish just what worked and what didn't after it began. Agreed, which is why I cite 1968, and the end of the Fox and/or Friedrich stories; they were part of a conscious decision to honor fans' numerous requests (printed in the letters pages of the period) to keep moving Batman back to his darker roots; although the New Look period restored the detective styled stories to the Batman titles, they were still light enough for dips into the kind of silly material still hobbling a few select DC titles of the early-to-mid 60s. ...but it was nothing more than the kind of imaginary stories that they were considered--especially as the 60s moved forward. I suppose it was fine to throw main characters into fanciful, wild stories, as long as it was understood (in the grand schemes of the then-future) that its not who Batman was meant to be. In 1939, no one was trying to insert Batman in the equivalent of Raymond's Flash Gordon strip, because Batman was never meant to be some "one character fits all genres" creation. The titles did briefly suffer from enough of an influence of the TV series for readers to send in letters such as: ..and here's a reader asking for what was well on its way: So, no matter the level of the TV series' influence, it was not at all welcome, whether the read was old enough to remember the early, serious years, or the younger set who were discovering the reprinted stories in the 80-PG.Giant specials. That was just plain common sense. There is no logical reason to either invite and/or tease the resident superheroes into hunting you down, unless someone has an inherent defeatist attitude in life. Oh, yes. it is undeniable that he (with or without Anderson) created some of the greatest covers of the 1960s, or any era. His level of artistry knew exactly how to tell so much of a story with just one image. Brilliant. For a couple of examples, take "Operation: Blindfold!" ( Batman #204, 8/1968), with the rather grim idea of blind man being murdered, set up with the criminal's evidence to lead authorities think Batman was the murderer, or "Batman Walks the Last Mile!" from #206 (November, 1968), where The Planner--after finally being sentenced to death in the electric chair, has his request to be executed in a Batman costume honored. For a moment, Batman wonders if the man was feigning insanity to avoid capital punishment (and be committed to an asylum), but he was considered sane when he was committing his crimes, so... This kind of grim, borderline morbid character piece was the polar opposite of what had come in the previous 20+ years of Batman in the comics; it was a seismic shift to realign the character with its true roots and were also found in cinematic detective/noir/crime dramas of the 40s and 50s...and ironically enough, not in his own titles in that same period. The dawning of Batman's true published Golden Age launched as it had in 1939, only this time, there were more freedoms to explore subjects that could not be touched in the historic Golden Age of comics. The overuse of the biggest members of the Rogue's Gallery during the 60s (and additional overexposure on the 20th Century Fox live action show as well as Filmation's 1968-70 animated series) was the reason a choice had to be made--give them a rest, since Batman was not just about the same four or five villains popping up every issue. This kicked the creative doors open to successfully explore everything from common to organized criminals, those passing themselves off as "respectable" (a problem Bruce Wayne announced his intention to tackle in 1969's final main title story, "One Bullet Too Many", and Robin would also face in his solo Detective Comics run of the period) to the mystical/espionage-infused adversaries such as Ra's al Ghul, Talia and the League of Assassins, and others. Typical of the 70s at DC, Batman even ended up facing gothic or more traditional horror archetypes (the ever-tragic Man-Bat, werewolves, et al.) Batman was always more than "Big Four" of his Rogue's Gallery, and in facing other kinds of enemies, he (and his associates) were elevated to the larger stage of mythic comic characters not weighed down by one, mass-marketed idea of the character--in other words, "POW!--take that, Joker!" or bust. He--and the decade of the 70s were richer for the change, and forever cemented it all as his true Golden Age.
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Post by String on Nov 9, 2019 21:08:15 GMT -5
Hm, based on a initial search, it seems that Moench's first run on Batman/Detective has yet to be collected in this so-called Golden Age of Reprints.
A shame for I only have an issue or two from that run that I bought originally back then.
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Post by chadwilliam on Nov 10, 2019 1:34:55 GMT -5
The titles did briefly suffer from enough of an influence of the TV series for readers to send in letters such as: ..and here's a reader asking for what was well on its way: So, no matter the level of the TV series' influence, it was not at all welcome, whether the read was old enough to remember the early, serious years, or the younger set who were discovering the reprinted stories in the 80-PG.Giant specials. This was definitely the Golden Age of letter pages. I've read many, many letters from the silver age and the discourse is fascinating. It's clear that something was going on to educate readers about Batman's earliest years which seemed clearer to the readers of the late 60's than any previous period. The Great Comic Book Heroes by Jules Feiffer, Biljo White's Batmania fan publication, and a few other books and publications surely must account for some of it, but for a medium which thought they could introduce a new Flash, Green Lantern, Atom, etc without anyone remembering the originals because five to ten years had already passed since those guys last appeared, it's kind of amazing to see them receiving letters commenting upon the ambience of comics from 25-30 years prior. Those initial 80-Page Giants almost never dipped further back in time than the early 50's and for the most part, stuck with the late 50's. How did these readers know that Batman was meant to be a "frightening, ghost-like avenger"? Were they just parroting what Feiffer was saying or were there really enough people around sharing their memories of 30 year old Batman comics that the average reader had heard how great that period was?
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Post by chadwilliam on Nov 10, 2019 1:38:12 GMT -5
Dick Sprang is, shockingly, my favorite Batman artist. Everything is bright and heroes are square jawed but there's also always something off-kilter about the panel design or the angle that figures interact or just some teeny small thing. It's very subtle - the kind of subtlety that was lost after everyone started copying Kirby and Adams - but it lends a sense of tension to his work I'm not sure anyone else captured. "Tension" - that's a really good observation. I don't see why anyone should be shocked that Dick Sprang is your favorite Batman artist. Come on - he's Dick Sprang!
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