Thor #383–384, 386–400 (1987-1989)

I thought it would be appropriate to check out what Da Chief was working on when he took over as Editor-in-Chief. As we all know, DeFalco was an unabashed fan of Stan Lee & Jack Kirby, and Silver Age Marvel comics, and so he immediately sets out to pay homage to the Thor of the 1960s. That means that the overall tone of the book is somewhat regressive compared to work that Simonson had done on the book, but it is a loving tribute to the source material and wears its heart on its sleeve. DeFalco and Frenz had originally petitioned editor Ralph Macchio to take over Daredevil, and thank Christ they didn't get the job otherwise we would have never have gotten the flawed yet fascinating Ann Nocenti run with the amazing artwork by John Romita Jr and Al Williamson that was one of the reasons why yours truly became a comic book fan. Instead, we would have probably gotten a bunch of Silver Age Daredevil villains and Mike Murdock. 

Marvel was actually in a funny place in 1987-89. You had a bunch of writers doing what I'd described as edgier, direct-market focused stories that pushed the line as far as Marvel was willing to go. That was the popular stuff. Then you had a core group of titles like Thor, Fantastic Four and The Avengers that were quintessential Marvel titles that were steadily losing their appeal. In part that was because it was very difficult to replace Walt Simonson, John Byrne and Roger Stern on those books, but nevertheless, the books weren't doing well and the future looked pretty bleak for the non-Mutant, non-Spider-Man books in the late 80s. On the surface, these DeFalco/Frenz comics are fairly mediocre. I feel that's especially true whenever they try to introduce new characters. However, every now and again you'll get an amazing Frenz spread showing the scale and grandeur of a Celestial. I tried asking myself whether this would have appealed to me if I'd pick up Thor as a kid. As it happened, Thor was a book I ignored even though I bought a ton of mediocre Fantastic Four and Avengers issues around this time. It's possible that I could have been hooked and picked up a bunch of back issues from secondhand book stores. That happened to me with the second Michelinie/Layton run on Iron Man. If there had been an entry point, it would have been the War of the Gods storyline that leads into issue #400. It takes a while to get cooking, but once it does, I couldn't help but get a little excited by the big splash pages and the Kirby homages. There were a lot of moving parts in the storyline and to DeFalco's credit he handled things fairly well. 

Mostly, this run represented a different path for me. What if I hadn't picked up X-Men and Spider-Man on that fateful day in '88 and instead bought a Thor book and an issue of Captain America. Makes you wonder. 

Conan the Barbarian #240-275 (1991-1993)

This Conan run represents Roy Thomas' return to the book after a nine year gap. It's rare that a writer as synonymous with a character as Roy was returns to a title after such a long interval. Naturally, expectations are high. I've expressed my disappointment with the early part of this run in the past. It takes a while to get used to the fact that it's not Bronze Age Conan. It looks like a 90s Marvel comic with covers from Image artists (and wannabe Image artists), awful fonts, garish Bullpen Bulletin pages, and 30th Anniversary images plastered in the barcode boxes. It's a Roy Thomas Conan book, which automatically makes it one of Marvel's better ongoing titles, but you get the sense it's fighting to stay relevant in the early 90s market place (a battle it ultimately loses.) Apparently, Roy does some solid tinkering with the Conan continuity, but that type of thing is lost on me. The most impressive thing about the run, in my eyes, is the growth and development of Mike Docherty as an artist. He never really has a consistent inker, but he starts off rough as guts and ends up being an excellent Conan artist by the end of the run. I particularly like his gorgeous double spreads in the later issues. The peak of the run is Conan's return to Cimmeria. The final few pages of Conan the Barbarian #258, where Conan discovers the fate of his village are amongst the most powerful images in the entire 275 issue run. The book's cancellation is announced ahead of time and it gets a big sendoff. I enjoyed the splash page in the final issue where Conan cries, "What do you mean I'm finished?" Roy is honest about the sales in the final issue, though he seems a tad hopeful when he continuously mentions that once upon a time people thought the X-Men were finished. The Thomas/Docherty run continues as a backup feature in Savage Sword of Conan, but it's sad to see a chunk of history crumble. That said, 275 issues is nothing to sneeze at, especially when Thomas wasn't sure if it would last past the first few issues. In fact, he wrote the first issue with the intent to hand it off to another writer with issue two, as he'd done with several other titles. His final run on the book is uneven, but worth reading as a coda to the Bronze Age stuff. I'm glad Roy was onboard to see the title through to its end. 

I have three Docherty pages which you can see here. They were an inventory story whose plot had evolved into the “Conan the Destroyer” film. The pages were eventually published as a Marvel Graphic Novel, “The Horn of Azoth.”

Ah, did he do the cover? I saw the next cover was done by Jim Lee.