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Post by wildfire2099 on Dec 25, 2023 9:07:33 GMT -5
This is the era I started with in comics, and I feel like Defalco doing his Stan Lee impressive on the Bullpen page with the self depreciating comic strip is pretty iconic for me. That said, there sure was alot of crap published then, but also alot of great stuff like 2099. Loved this thread and I'm interested what books you read!
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Post by commond on Dec 25, 2023 17:48:24 GMT -5
Strikeforce Morituri (1986-1990)
Strikeforce: Morituri #1-20
Strikeforce: Morituri #21-31
Strikeforce Morituri: Electric Undertow #1–5
The first twenty issues of Strikeforce: Morituri are excellent. I could have done without the superhero names and costumes but thought the book had an excellent premise. When I was a kid, other publishers would sometimes poke fun at the X-Men for being the "death book." Gillis presented us with a gruesome premise where characters could die in any given panel, and often did. Death book, indeed. He clearly had a strong personal vision for the series, however, and I have the greatest of respect for any comic book writer who was able to come up with a successful team book in the shadow of Claremont's X-Men. I wish he had stayed on the book for another five issues, or so, to wrap up his story completely instead of having it discarded by James Hudnall. Hudnall's run is readable, but it takes the series in an entirely different direction from the original premise and undoes almost everything Gillis created. A young Mark Bagley can't compete with Brent Anderson, though his pencils look better in the prestige format Electric Undertow series. Anderson's pencils are on the original run are fantastic, though his character design improved greatly while working on Astro City.
I would call the original series more of a Shooter book than a DeFalco one. The expensive prestige format book under DeFalco left the door open for more SF Morituri stories, but they never came to fruition. There was potential to keep the concept going in a similar format to the way Alien Legion kept rolling along, though Bagley was about to break through, and I doubt he would have been available for future stories.
Overall, I was glad I read this series and would definitely recommend the first 20 issues as an under-the-radar alternative to the mainstream Marvel books of the time.
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Post by rberman on Dec 26, 2023 8:26:25 GMT -5
Strikeforce Morituri (1986-1990)Strikeforce: Morituri #1-20 Strikeforce: Morituri #21-31 Strikeforce Morituri: Electric Undertow #1–5 The first twenty issues of Strikeforce: Morituri are excellent. I could have done without the superhero names and costumes but thought the book had an excellent premise. When I was a kid, other publishers would sometimes poke fun at the X-Men for being the "death book." Gillis presented us with a gruesome premise where characters could die in any given panel, and often did. Death book, indeed. He clearly had a strong personal vision for the series, however, and I have the greatest of respect for any comic book writer who was able to come up with a successful team book in the shadow of Claremont's X-Men. I wish he had stayed on the book for another five issues, or so, to wrap up his story completely instead of having it discarded by James Hudnall. Hudnall's run is readable, but it takes the series in an entirely different direction from the original premise and undoes almost everything Gillis created. A young Mark Bagley can't compete with Brent Anderson, though his pencils look better in the prestige format Electric Undertow series. Anderson's pencils are on the original run are fantastic, though his character design improved greatly while working on Astro City. I would call the original series more of a Shooter book than a DeFalco one. The expensive prestige format book under DeFalco left the door open for more SF Morituri stories, but they never came to fruition. There was potential to keep the concept going in a similar format to the way Alien Legion kept rolling along, though Bagley was about to break through, and I doubt he would have been available for future stories. Overall, I was glad I read this series and would definitely recommend the first 20 issues as an under-the-radar alternative to the mainstream Marvel books of the time. I agree. Here is our review thread covering the Gillis/Anderson run. |
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Post by commond on Dec 26, 2023 18:50:52 GMT -5
Strikeforce Morituri (1986-1990)Strikeforce: Morituri #1-20 Strikeforce: Morituri #21-31 Strikeforce Morituri: Electric Undertow #1–5 The first twenty issues of Strikeforce: Morituri are excellent. I could have done without the superhero names and costumes but thought the book had an excellent premise. When I was a kid, other publishers would sometimes poke fun at the X-Men for being the "death book." Gillis presented us with a gruesome premise where characters could die in any given panel, and often did. Death book, indeed. He clearly had a strong personal vision for the series, however, and I have the greatest of respect for any comic book writer who was able to come up with a successful team book in the shadow of Claremont's X-Men. I wish he had stayed on the book for another five issues, or so, to wrap up his story completely instead of having it discarded by James Hudnall. Hudnall's run is readable, but it takes the series in an entirely different direction from the original premise and undoes almost everything Gillis created. A young Mark Bagley can't compete with Brent Anderson, though his pencils look better in the prestige format Electric Undertow series. Anderson's pencils are on the original run are fantastic, though his character design improved greatly while working on Astro City. I would call the original series more of a Shooter book than a DeFalco one. The expensive prestige format book under DeFalco left the door open for more SF Morituri stories, but they never came to fruition. There was potential to keep the concept going in a similar format to the way Alien Legion kept rolling along, though Bagley was about to break through, and I doubt he would have been available for future stories. Overall, I was glad I read this series and would definitely recommend the first 20 issues as an under-the-radar alternative to the mainstream Marvel books of the time. I agree. Here is our review thread covering the Gillis/Anderson run. I actually followed along with your reviews as I read the comic. Thank you! |
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Post by commond on Dec 26, 2023 18:57:51 GMT -5
The Punisher Meets Archie (1994)
This was OK, but lacked that spark of genius I was looking for from the premise. I may have enjoyed it more if I were more familiar with Archie stories, but my main exposure to Archie has been Afterlife with Archie. I couldn't really understand the characterization of the Punisher. Some of that is because he was being played for laughs, but I'm telling you, the Punisher's characterization was a mess at this point with so many different writers putting their spin on him.
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Post by zaku on Dec 27, 2023 3:46:13 GMT -5
The Punisher Meets Archie (1994)
This was OK, but lacked that spark of genius I was looking for from the premise. I may have enjoyed it more if I were more familiar with Archie stories, but my main exposure to Archie has been Afterlife with Archie. I couldn't really understand the characterization of the Punisher. Some of that is because he was being played for laughs, but I'm telling you, the Punisher's characterization was a messy at this point with so many different writers putting their spin on him. Well, you're right, the Punisher at this point has been portrayed from psychotic mass murderer to superhero who happens to kill and everything in between. I remember a couple of Baron stories where he seemed more like a kind of cheerful secret agent. |
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Post by commond on Dec 29, 2023 18:15:02 GMT -5
The Punisher: Year One #1-4 (1994-1995)
DeFalco is credited as editor in chief on the first two issues. For the final two issues, Bobby Chase gets the editor in chief credit.
This limited series chronicles what happened in the days and hours after the Punisher's family was gunned down in Central Park. It mostly focuses on the emotional pain that Frank suffers while the mob, NYPD and press circle like vultures. It's written by a pair of British lads, Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning, so it's slightly grittier than your typical Marvel offering, albeit clearly influenced by American cop dramas (got to get your references from somewhere.) Dale Eaglesham's art wouldn't look out of place in a DC book from the same time period, though the book suffers from terrible 90s coloring and lettering. It's a brisk, fast-paced story that short changes the reader by being a regular 22 page comic in a more expensive format, and could have easily been run in the pages of the Punisher instead of being a limited series. However, I read the entire thing in a single sitting and was entertained for the most part. Considering how groan-inducing a Punisher Year One seemed, I'd have to say the creative team did a pretty good job.
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Post by tarkintino on Dec 30, 2023 6:48:18 GMT -5
The Punisher: Year One #1-4 (1994-1995)
DeFalco is credited as editor in chief on the first two issues. For the final two issues, Bobby Chase gets the editor in chief credit. This limited series chronicles what happened in the days and hours after the Punisher's family was gunned down in Central Park. It mostly focuses on the emotional pain that Frank suffers while the mob, NYPD and press circle like vultures. It's written by a pair of British lads, Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning, so it's slightly grittier than your typical Marvel offering, albeit clearly influenced by American cop dramas (got to get your references from somewhere.) Dale Eaglesham's art wouldn't look out of place in a DC book from the same time period, though the book suffers from terrible 90s coloring and lettering. It's a brisk, fast-paced story that short changes the reader by being a regular 22 page comic in a more expensive format, and could have easily been run in the pages of the Punisher instead of being a limited series. However, I read the entire thing in a single sitting and was entertained for the most part. Considering how groan-inducing a Punisher Year One seemed, I'd have to say the creative team did a pretty good job.
Expanded backstory comics rarely work--especially with characters several decades old, but in every category, there's the outlier not dragged down by the rule, and The Punisher: Year One was such an outlier comic. For anyone who actually read the character's origin story in 1975's Marvel Preview #2, and The Amazing Spider-Man debut which preceded it, they felt the grit and anger in dealing with early 1970s American crime and its uncontrolled victimization of the innocent captured in the body of The Punisher (especially if one lived in any large American city during that period). That said, he was not the kind of character who--at the time--was slated for some ongoing comic that would last 6,000 issues and get to take deep dives into his motives. The Punisher: Year One was a series which served its purpose well, and I still find it to be one of the very few publications that was not creatively bankrupt / insulting the intelligence of the reader like so much of 1990s Marvel.
The Punisher: Year One and the hands-down greatest Marvel book of the 1990s (and the publisher's last, truly classic book) in the form of Marvels (also from 1994) are just about the only 1990s Marvel comics worth revisiting / collecting.
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Post by commond on Dec 30, 2023 17:20:48 GMT -5
I had a dream this morning that I was visiting an old bookstore in my hometown, looking for the latest issue of Fantastic Four, when a costumer in the shop told me the bookstore had bought the vault of the previous owner and was selling off all these old comic books for cheap. They were mostly McFarlane Amazing Spider-Mans, Jim Lee's X-Men, and some random stuff like an Art Adams X-Men annual starring the X-Babies, but I got like 20 comics for 3 bucks. Great dream!
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Post by commond on Dec 30, 2023 20:07:40 GMT -5
Rio Rides Again (1990)
Rio stories feel like a labor of love for Doug Wildey, and that's particularly true for this edition where Wildey paints his colors directly over the inked art. That's an incredible feat of artistry when you think about it, since any mistake would require the entire page to be redrawn. Wildey was nothing if not a master illustrator. The pages of Rio riding to the rescue through a thunderstorm are absolutely breathtaking. Story-wise, Wildey's Rio stories are familiar if not cliched. They're stories you've encountered countless times in Westerns, though they do retain a certain amount of charm. It's the art that's the attraction. There weren't too many artists working for Marvel during the DeFalco era that had the ability of a Doug Wildey. Is it a Marvel book? Not really. Wildey took his work from publisher to publisher, and it was more of a creator-owned entity. In that respect, I can't give Marvel too much credit for the book. Kudos to them for publishing it, however.
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Post by codystarbuck on Dec 30, 2023 20:46:42 GMT -5
Rio Rides Again (1990)Rio stories feel like a labor of love for Doug Wildey, and that's particularly true for this edition where Wildey paints his colors directly over the inked art. That's an incredible feat of artistry when you think about it, since any mistake would require the entire page to be redrawn. Wildey was nothing if not a master illustrator. The pages of Rio riding to the rescue through a thunderstorm are absolutely breathtaking. Story-wise, Wildey's Rio stories are familiar if not cliched. They're stories you've encountered countless times in Westerns, though they do retain a certain amount of charm. It's the art that's the attraction. There weren't too many artists working for Marvel during the DeFalco era that had the ability of a Doug Wildey. Is it a Marvel book? Not really. Wildey took his work from publisher to publisher, and it was more of a creator-owned entity. In that respect, I can't give Marvel too much credit for the book. Kudos to them for publishing it, however. Had Comico not had financial problems it probably would have been done there. |
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Post by commond on Jan 2, 2024 18:58:14 GMT -5
Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser #1-4 (1990-1991)
This series holds up superbly and is without doubt one of the best books that Marvel put out during the DeFalco era. What stands out the most to me is the art. I'm not the biggest fan of Mignola's artwork -- to the extent that I prefer other artists' versions of Hellboy, most notably Richard Corben's Hellboy work -- but I was mesmerized by the artwork in this book. There's no doubt that this series, and Fritz Leiber's work in general, was a huge influence on Hellboy. Many of the supernatural settings in the series look like they could be straight out of a Hellboy story. The difference appears to be the inking. I'm a complete novice when it comes to understanding how inking works, but there appears to be a clear difference to me how Mignola's work looks when inked by Al Williamson and how it looks when it he inks himself. There seems to be far more detail in the Williamson pages, especially when it comes to facial expressions. Some of the background work is extraordinary as well, making me wonder if there were assistants involved, as Chaykin's assistants did exquisite background work on the work Chaykin did for Marvel during the same time period. In any case, the artwork is beautiful and the stories are highly entertaining.
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Post by Cei-U! on Jan 3, 2024 1:38:33 GMT -5
Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser #1-4 (1990-1991)This series holds up superbly and is without doubt one of the best books that Marvel put out during the DeFalco era. What stands out the most to me is the art. I'm not the biggest fan of Mignola's artwork -- to the extent that I prefer other artists' versions of Hellboy, most notably Richard Corben's Hellboy work -- but I was mesmerized by the artwork in this book. There's no doubt that this series, and Fritz Leiber's work in general, was a huge influence on Hellboy. Many of the supernatural settings in the series look like they could be straight out of a Hellboy story. The difference appears to be the inking. I'm a complete novice when it comes to understanding how inking works, but there appears to be a clear difference to me how Mignola's work looks when inked by Al Williamson and how it looks when it he inks himself. There seems to be far more detail in the Williamson pages, especially when it comes to facial expressions. Some of the background work is extraordinary as well, making me wonder if there were assistants involved, as Chaykin's assistants did exquisite background work on the work Chaykin did for Marvel during the same time period. In any case, the artwork is beautiful and the stories are highly entertaining. This came out during the period I wasn't buying comics but my cousin Michelle, who was then working at O'Leary's Books, knew I was a fan of the Lieber books and set the series aside for me. I loved it--it was a huge improvement on the DC adaptations--but sold it, along with a big chunk of my collection, a couple of years later. I should really recollect it.
Cei-U! I summon my funnybook regrets!
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Post by Chris on Jan 3, 2024 2:04:36 GMT -5
" I'm a complete novice when it comes to understanding how inking works, but there appears to be a clear difference to me how Mignola's work looks when inked by Al Williamson and how it looks when it he inks himself. There seems to be far more detail in the Williamson pages, especially when it comes to facial expressions. Some of the background work is extraordinary as well, making me wonder if there were assistants involved, as Chaykin's assistants did exquisite background work on the work Chaykin did for Marvel during the same time period. I can't say whether Williamson used assistants or not, but he drew science fiction comics for EC in the 50s. Also, Williamson was a fan of Alex Raymond and later drew Raymond's Flash Gordon. So detailed art is nothing new to him. Williamson inked over Curt Swan on Superman for a brief time in the 80s. When asked who his favorite inker was, Swan said, "since this one's for the history books, I'll have to say that my absolute favorite among all the inkers who ever worked on my stuff was Al Williamson, with whom I collaborated just before I officially retired. He was the best. A fine draftsman in his own right, an extremely talented artist, he could render even the little mechanical parts of vehicles. He had a very special flair the others didn't have." Swan also stated, "I have inked my own work, of course, back when I was working on Stars and Stripes, but my style of inking wasn't right for comic books - a little too ornamental. It would take me too much time, and inkers, as I've said, have to work fast to make any money. Fellows like Al Williamson and Murphy Anderson are all the more amazing when you remember that," meaning that artists like Williamson included a great amount of detail in their inking. |
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Post by MDG on Jan 3, 2024 10:56:25 GMT -5
" I'm a complete novice when it comes to understanding how inking works, but there appears to be a clear difference to me how Mignola's work looks when inked by Al Williamson and how it looks when it he inks himself. There seems to be far more detail in the Williamson pages, especially when it comes to facial expressions. Some of the background work is extraordinary as well, making me wonder if there were assistants involved, as Chaykin's assistants did exquisite background work on the work Chaykin did for Marvel during the same time period. I can't say whether Williamson used assistants or not, but he drew science fiction comics for EC in the 50s. Also, Williamson was a fan of Alex Raymond and later drew Raymond's Flash Gordon. So detailed art is nothing new to him.... It's less the "detail" thing than Williamson's traditional illustrative style over Mignola, who was more a stylist and more interested in mood than realism. I looked up a few pages and appreciated the way Williamson maintained the "black and white" design we'd expect from Mignola, but inked the faces pretty realistically.
I believe Williamson was using assistants periodically; I think Dan Green was one for a while, though I don't know if he used them with ink-only jobs.
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