|
|
Post by tartanphantom on Dec 3, 2019 22:35:31 GMT -5
Thanks for these synopsis reviews, beccabear. Your takes had me chuckling at times.  It just reminds me how incredibly "bad" some of the 80's drek really was... but then again, comic creators have never been shy about throwing absolute crap against a wall just to see if it will stick. And from what I've seen of current books, the practice hasn't dwindled. If anything, it's accelerated.
I confess that I did buy all of these back in the day when they were originally released, and I did like the artwork in the Catwoman series... not so much in the other two.
|
|
|
|
Post by beccabear67 on Dec 4, 2019 1:01:47 GMT -5
I'm not sure I would want to re-read any of these in future though I've only just begun on The Huntress. I looked up the 1993 Black Canary comic, and she starts wearing a crewcut, dark blue color, and I'm not sure I'd want to witness that transformation. I think she turns into the Axis woman from the old Invaders comics somehow. Ooh, edgy! I also like how Catwoman is empowered by cutting all her hair off... after a man tells her to. Oops. By edgy I mean dopey, and by like I mean... don't like. Wonder Woman didn't have to flatten out her chest, but Storm, Catwoman and Black Canary have to chop their hair down to be empowered or serious? Thor must be a big sissy then?
I guess my ideal for a superheroine is still going to be Supergirl, somebody with as much power as you could want but will rescue a kitten even if nobody but a small child would know of it, a basically good person not excited by the dark song within her but wanting to make things better because she can. The '70s Power Girl was more empowered by purposely not emulating Superman at all, and while it was different it could also be corny. I remember she clashed with Wildcat a lot. Maybe Supergirl and Batgirl were boring to some, but seeing Batgirl on her batcycle on tv as a kid was empowering to me. I think the original Huntress and maybe the 1989 one are cool, but the bat symbol proper has a kind of status, as if Batgirl had to be all that and a bag of chips to dare to wear it, and the same with the Kryptonian 'S', not just anyone gets to wear those!
|
|
|
|
Post by zaku on Dec 4, 2019 1:23:36 GMT -5
Just for the record, in JSA Classified 1-4 Power Girl was reconnected as the last survivor of Earth 2 Krypton again.  |
|
shaxper
CCF Site Custodian
Posts: 22,878
|
Post by shaxper on Dec 4, 2019 5:51:00 GMT -5
I guess my ideal for a superheroine is still going to be Supergirl, somebody with as much power as you could want but will rescue a kitten even if nobody but a small child would know of it, a basically good person not excited by the dark song within her but wanting to make things better because she can. You have my vote for DC EIC Agreed. I think true empowerment is when the writers don't need to throw it in your face. I'd love to see you incorporate George Perez's Wonder Woman into this thread, even just for contrast. There was a character who was empowered, and yet neither she nor the writer ever felt the need to say or prove it. She was the boss, and she could stop to rescue a kitten even if nobody but a small child would know. Totally. Even as a male, I felt that. I think we can all relate to being underestimated or even excluded by others and wanting to prove to them you are just as good or better. That Batgirl had none of the resources of Batman -- no Batcave, no wealth, no Batmobile, no Commissioner Gordon nor Alfred helping, no Robin -- and she STILL rescued him from peril numerous times felt really good. In hindsight as an adult, it's very forced, but as a kid, it was brilliant. |
|
|
|
Post by codystarbuck on Dec 4, 2019 18:17:54 GMT -5
Well, with the lace edging to the Batgirl cycle removed, yeah. I couldn't see Batgirl as a lacy kind of gal.  Power Girl, I always felt, was better written in the JSA stories than by Kupperberg. They did go overboard with the militant feminist thing, with Wildcat; but, that had toned down by the time Levitz was writing the series and she and Batgirl made a nice pair of gal-pals. Both were confident, capable women who went out and kicked butt. Their solo stuff was a different matter, though, again, I think levitz was more consistent with Huntress, before she was written out of existence, in Crisis. For the era, I always felt the Legion had more liberated female characters, though in varying degrees. Again, you get Levitz' involvement, in the early 80s. I'll take the 70s "tweener" Catwoman to the post-Crisis version any day, apart from maybe Darwyn Cooke's take on the character. 70s Catwoman was pretty independent and capable and was flirting with being a hero, but never fully escaping her past. Kind of fit nicely with Alan Brennert's take on the original Earth-2 Catwoman. It's too bad Brennert wasn't doing more comic writing, in the 80s, as he handled the female characters well, as he demonstrated in the Deadman Christmas story, where he meets a woman named Kara. |
|
|
|
Post by beccabear67 on Dec 4, 2019 20:00:10 GMT -5
I have one Perez era Wonder Woman, Annual #1 circa 1988. As I haven't read it yet maybe I'll add that at some point. I also have Action Comics #600 from the same year and it co-stars WW in the main story. I should've named this DC Heroines 1988-1990.
|
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Dec 4, 2019 20:10:15 GMT -5
I have one Perez era Wonder Woman, Annual #1 circa 1988. As I haven't read it yet maybe I'll add that at some point. I also have Action Comics #600 from the same year and it co-stars WW in the main story. I should've named this DC Heroines 1988-1990. If you go back and edit the first post, you can change the title of the thread... -M |
|
|
|
Post by beccabear67 on Dec 4, 2019 20:16:45 GMT -5
I should've named this DC Heroines 1988-1990. If you go back and edit the first post, you can change the title of the thread...  |
|
|
|
Post by Calidore on Dec 4, 2019 20:24:40 GMT -5
One note-penciller J.J. Birch was a pen name for Joseph (Joe) Brozowski who had started in comics at Charlton in the mid-70s, and had worked for Marvel and DC previously, but started using the JJ Birch moniker in the late 80s, and I remember a lot of comic press at the time thinking it was a newcomer pencilling this series, but it was just a veteran switching out the name he used. Not sure why he decided to switch his name in the credits. He had previously signed a few things J.J. Brozozowski, too so there seemed to be some variance in hw he put his name on the credits. -M If I'm remembering right, when Brozowski was Firestorm's penciller (during John Ostrander's run), he first used the J.J. Birch name for at least one issue because he was also trying a different drawing style. |
|
|
|
Post by berkley on Dec 4, 2019 21:05:18 GMT -5
That's crazy, He-Man would never cut off someone's head, let alone a helpless woman's! |
|
|
|
Post by beccabear67 on Dec 5, 2019 13:55:16 GMT -5
 The Zatanna Special from 1987 isn't a restart for this character, more of a refresher. I can't seem to find a writer credit but the art, cover, inside cover and "Quest To Find The Place Where Magic Begins" 64 page story, is all Gray Morrow. Zatanna (and soon her manager Jeff Sloane as well) starts seeing the image of her departed mother who was not a human but a member of a magical race who exist apart from the rest of us in a secret city. On stage in traditional top hat, tux and fishnet stockings (what, you never saw Harry Houdini's fishnets?) 'Zee' is surprised by serious attacks of real magic. She casts her spells with backwards english and saves herself and a volunteer from the audience.  After making it through her stage magic act she and Jeff are attacked on the drive back to the hotel by even more serious magic assault which knocks Jeff out. Relationship drama ensues the next day between Jeff and Zee and she lets him in on family secrets and they plan a visit to the estate of her also departed father (and golden age DC magician character) Zatara. There they meet up with Sikh valet and caretaker Kasim who acts as a sounding board, and two horses from the magic secret city are saddled up for a ride to breach the barrier between it and our less magical world. Zatanna appears in her Justice League super outfit. Kasim wishes them well with a "may Allah guide you" and they are up and off into the wild yonder. As they near the magic land Zatanna finds her magic stronger and able to fight off many attacks, and she stops trying to deny that is her mother somehow guiding them. They find the people of the secret city in a bad way, but ther eis this prophesy of a chosen one, which Zatanna fits the description to a Z... a magical stone and a crown added in the 'temple of hope' she undoes the curse that has been cast on all as only she, her mother's daughter, could. The magic city people want her to stay, but first she has to find out more about the attacker behind all this and the reason for her mother's restless spirit.  Oh no, it's Allura... another magic lady in kinky boots! Jealous, evil, lustful of power, and just mean. She has thrown Zee into an illusion that her father is alive and well and that she can come home and live with him and Kasim... but a tree that looks like her mother in the yard snaps her out of it to see it was all Allura's spell. Finally able to communicate with her mother she is taught that (SPOILER) one must overcome despair to see that life is the source of all magic; the cycle of life including death. Accept that and be truly empowered. Yay!. Allura and the negative aspects of Zee herself get put in their places and newly empowered Zatanna, with Jeff, er, takes a stroll in a park (with the ghostly apparitions of Zee's mother and father watching from above). A complete stand-alone story in one book! Well done. What, a positive moral in a late '80s 'dark age' comic? Yes, but the kind of bad influence a school I once attended would definitely have considered a portal for the influence of evil because it shows magic powers, amulets and crowns, that don't come from 'The Lord'. Any good seeming message about accepting your part in the continual cycle of life, birth, death and rebirth, is twisted and corrupt. The moral does seem a bit wishy-washy. Once again a woman learns her humble place in a greater universe and accepts she doesn't know everything, and to let a man help her. This makes it okay for her to come out of it with stronger than ever powers. Of course they aren't exactly going to hand over all the real secrets of magical spell casting in a comic book, DC keeps them for staff only, so this is what you get. I would say the late '80s dark and gritty factor to this book is pretty minimal, but then perhaps as there is some evidence to believe it was in inventory or limbo for awhile before publication? |
|
|
|
Post by berkley on Dec 5, 2019 14:29:07 GMT -5
Love Gray Morrrow and bought this back-issue not too long ago - within the last 5 years - after hearing about it here in some thread. haven't read it yet, though.
|
|
|
|
Post by rberman on Dec 5, 2019 15:24:57 GMT -5
The Huntress re-launched with a writer, Joey Cavalieri, who worked on her earlier when she was the back-up feature in Wonder Woman, and the artist who drew her first, Joe Staton. But it's a new era... and out comes the pebble board for a truly gritty look! The first issue bears the same cover date as Catwoman #3 but not the mature readers tag just yet. I think maybe inker Bruce Patterson had some kind of issue with the slightly bumpy duo-shade pebble board; his lone issue after his name appearing in all the launch publicity for the series is co-credited to Dick Giordano, who had to do some extra finishing, or just plain finishing. As of #2 it's Staton's old mate Bob Smith on inks for the duration.  I was several years gone from comics when this series came out and never heard of it before now. Thumbing through it digitally, a few things stand out. First is that although this series was marketed "for mature readers" and ditched the Comics Code a few issues in, it doesn't dive into the cesspool much. There are some drug references, but other than that it seems pretty Code-friendly. Despite the first panel of the heroine being a reverse crotch shot...  ... it's as tasteful as such an angle can be, without any attempt to delineate buttocks as many artists would do. Huntress is all business; no sex or even romance. I didn't see any gratuitous "changing into/out of my costume" scenes like those which seemed to be the main excuse for Rose/Thorn backups in early 70s Lois Lane. The second thing I noticed was the grainy effect, which you say was made by "pebble board." How does that work exactly? It seems like a duotone/zipatone substitute. Do they physically press the paper against a grained backing and then rub it with charcoal? The comic book art paper I've seen is thick enough stock that I wouldn't have expected that technique the work. Obviously they're trying to achieve a dark mood without having an actual darker color palette available. I don't know how it seemed at the time, but it seems way overdone to me today. The third thing is Huntress' cross necklace, which is present from the get-go...  Except that it's occasionally omitted...  Was this a feature of pre-Crisis Huntress also? |
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Dec 5, 2019 15:48:06 GMT -5
|
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Dec 5, 2019 15:50:10 GMT -5
I can't seem to find a writer credit but the art, cover, inside cover and "Quest To Find The Place Where Magic Begins" 64 page story, is all Gray Morrow. It's Gerry Conway, who was writing Zee in JLA at the time too. -M |
|
