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Post by Deleted on Nov 6, 2023 21:41:15 GMT -5
There was a pilot made, Pryde of the X-Men, in 1989, by Marvel Productions. I still have the VHS tape! The second half of the 80's into the start of the 90's was a really barren time for superhero animation (thanks goodness for stuff like TMNT during that period!). The Super Friends finally ended in 1985 and that was it except for the short-lived Ruby-Spears Superman cartoon in 1988. Marvel had ended its superhero fare as well earlier in the decade. Batman TAS and X-Men both debuting in 1992 was such a glorious time. DCAU gets the biggest glory usually, but I love the Marvel stuff too, it was colorful and fun even though it could be cheesier at times than the DC stuff. I agree with your comments on Pryde of the X-Men, I actually would have liked to have seen that earlier incarnation become a series, though Aussie Wolverine really did seem weird! Back on comics, this era was kind of a reset for me. The 80's seemed great...until they weren't. Despite all the innovations being made to the medium throughout the decade, by the time the late 80's rolled around I remember thinking "why aren't regular old superhero comics quite as colorful and fun anymore?". So stuff like Jim Lee X-Men and McFarlane Spider-Man kind of had a cool vibe to me. Later the 2099 stuff kicking off I thought was a real high point for 90's Marvel. And I like Deadpool a lot, particularly earlier era, so another thing I associate as cool from this time. |
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Post by codystarbuck on Nov 6, 2023 23:57:57 GMT -5
Thundercats kind of bridged the gap for superhero-ish cartoons, plus Silver Hawks, as a copy of the same set-up. I thought the animation was okay; but, trying to animate the muscles of the characters showed why animation tends to have less detailed rendering than illustration, as you have to animate thos lines across many multiple cels. That is part of why Batman TAS and Superman TAS seemed more fluid than X-Men or Spider-Man. Even anime tend to keep it sleeker and when it was more detailed, like Golgo 13, the figures tended to be more static, in dramatic poses, while backgrounds were moved around.
It could have been worse, though.....
(I loved Space Angel, but mostly because the stories were so imaginative, rather than for the synchro-vox animation)
or....
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Post by jason on Nov 7, 2023 0:58:48 GMT -5
Re: Superhero animation
There was also Defenders of the Earth, which has a Marvel connection, as Marvel Productions made the show, but more importantly, Stan Lee himself wrote the lyrics to the theme song!
Re: What The?
I picked up a whole bunch of issues around 15 years ago. There are some funny segments, but there's also lots of jokes that are very "inside baseball" (ie, only relevant to people in the "know", but incomprehensible to casual fans), like the story where Ghost Rider shows Daredevil how his book would be if various writers and artists worked on it, I didnt get ANY of it as a kid.
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Post by commond on Nov 7, 2023 7:08:44 GMT -5
September & October 1988
Speedball is here~!
Someone quipped that Speedball should be looked at as a patronage program for Steve Ditko. DeFalco was fond of Marvel's Silver Age so I'm sure he was happy to give Ditko work.
Marvel Comics Presents debuts with a whimper. The lead feature is basically a lead in to Wolverine's solo series, but also the first step in the oversaturation of Wolverine appearances. Gerber doing a Man Thing serial and Moench returning to Master of Kung Fu ought to have brought some retro Bronze Age thrills, but the thrill has gone.
Uncanny X-Men #236 is out, which is one of the first comics I bought. Now the nostalgia is really kicking in! Kind of a strange jumping on point for a kid. The issue saw Rogue and Wolverine stripped of their powers and their clothes, and I'm not sure if the other X-Men even made any appearance. I think it was the Silvestri cover that appealed to me. He produced a number of striking covers at the time. I really liked his cover where Wolverine becomes one of the Brood. I read the first two issues of the Genosha storyline, but I missed out on the conclusion and didn't read it until years later. I wouldn't discover until much later on that people hated this era of the X-Men. You wouldn't know it from the sales as it was still going gangbusters. The thing is, I was quite happy to read Classic X-Men but the contrasting eras didn't put me off the latest issues. It just made me love the X-Men even more.
Excalibur's ongoing series launched in the same month and was arguably the strongest of Marvel's new offerings. Even as a kid, X-Terminators was too much X-Men for me. I'd be surprised if anyone thought Cloak and Dagger was going to last.
There was an X-Men annual out with Art Adams art. I'm sure that sold like hot cakes. The Beast turned back into the blue furball version. We get yet another Silver Surfer graphic novel since apparently Marvel likes to make graphic novels about the Silver Surfer, some kind of Elvria special with art by Ernie Colon, and then the true curiosity of the month -- an Epic series written by Tom Veitch and penciled by Cam Kennedy of 2000AD fame.
This is interesting to me as Marvel was clearly aware of the British invasion over at DC and the impact the Brits were having both critically and sales wise, and they clearly wanted to get a bit of the action but didn't want to go all the way with it. Instead of giving the Brits a low selling title and letting them go nuts with it, they bury them in an Epic line that is barely visible in the direct market. DeFalco is happy to flood the market with books, but when push comes to shove, he's not about to do anything daring.
On a positive note, one of my favorite parts of the Peter David Hulk run is about to begin with the Joe Fixit years and some great art from Jeff Purves. If only I could whisper in little commond's ear and tell him to buy more Hulks and Daredevils and less Evolutionary War annuals.
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Post by badwolf on Nov 7, 2023 11:07:48 GMT -5
Silvestri was a step up from JRJR, but I was losing interest in the stories.
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Post by MDG on Nov 7, 2023 11:12:19 GMT -5
What The--?? doesn't hold up. I'd say it depends more on the individual issue. Most of them, like other Marvel attempts at satire, were very hit and miss. Issue #19, which was a satire of the old Strange Tales issues, with half of it spoofing Dr Strange and half parodying Nick Fury, is still pretty damn funny. Both segments were done by Hilary Barta and Doug Rice, who knew how to do the stuff and were funny. I think like with Not Brand Ecch, it's hard for a company to pull off parody of their own characters, especially by "in-house" people, because there's not a drop vitriol--it's all "good-natured ribbing". Which may be why "outsiders" like Barta (horribly underappreciated) and Rice did OK.
Also, the original MAD--especially when parodying newspaper strips--was definitely punching up. The best a Marvel book could do was punch laterally.
It could have been worse, though..... (I loved Space Angel, but mostly because the stories were so imaginative, rather than for the synchro-vox animation) Any Toth is good Toth |
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Post by commond on Nov 7, 2023 17:51:55 GMT -5
Tom DeFalco Year One
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly:
There's an interesting dichotomy going on at the time with rising young artists being given the biggest selling titles, books which are still being written by older writers. Initially, that seems like the best of both worlds, but the young guys are ambitious and the marriages won't last. DeFalco is supportive of editorial, but is starting to give too much power to guys like Bob Harras and Mark Gruenwald. The fact that you have editors writing books themselves is a grey area and led to problems in the past. There's a lot of good stuff coming out -- Peter David's Hulk, Ann Nocenti/John Romita Jr's Daredevil, and the Michelinie/Layton Iron Man run being standouts. The X-Books, Spidey books, and Hama edited books are selling well. Jim Salicrup is doing an excellent job of returning the Spider-Man books to prominence.
DeFalco has no qualms about flooding the market. There don't appear to be any concerns over diluting the market. Popular titles are being milked for all they're worth with reprint magazines, spinoff titles, limited series, graphic novels, and trade paperback reprints, and it's about to get worse. There are a million Star Brand comics on the market and a ton of Marvel UK books, but little support for poor Archie Goodwin. At least he's permitted to release new books, as the Epic line was frozen during the New Universe roll out. Epic is still releasing some of the more interesting Marvel books, but it was always a battle for Archie to get the higher ups support. There's an effort from Howard Mackie and friends to revamp the New Universe line, but the writing is on the wall.
It almost feels like the calm before the storm in a sense. The speculator market is about to boom and Marvel will go bankrupt a few years later. Year one feels like smooth sailing in retrospect. I'm sure DeFalco was happy with how things were going no matter how much chaff there was.
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Post by spoon on Nov 7, 2023 18:52:53 GMT -5
There was a pilot made, Pryde of the X-Men, in 1989, by Marvel Productions. I still have the VHS tape! The second half of the 80's into the start of the 90's was a really barren time for superhero animation (thanks goodness for stuff like TMNT during that period!). The Super Friends finally ended in 1985 and that was it except for the short-lived Ruby-Spears Superman cartoon in 1988. Marvel had ended its superhero fare as well earlier in the decade. Batman TAS and X-Men both debuting in 1992 was such a glorious time. DCAU gets the biggest glory usually, but I love the Marvel stuff too, it was colorful and fun even though it could be cheesier at times than the DC stuff. I agree with your comments on Pryde of the X-Men, I actually would have liked to have seen that earlier incarnation become a series, though Aussie Wolverine really did seem weird! Back on comics, this era was kind of a reset for me. The 80's seemed great...until they weren't. Despite all the innovations being made to the medium throughout the decade, by the time the late 80's rolled around I remember thinking "why aren't regular old superhero comics quite as colorful and fun anymore?". So stuff like Jim Lee X-Men and McFarlane Spider-Man kind of had a cool vibe to me. Later the 2099 stuff kicking off I thought was a real high point for 90's Marvel. And I like Deadpool a lot, particularly earlier era, so another thing I associate as cool from this time. Count me in as another fan of Pryde of the X-Men who would've liked to have seen it become a series. Also of note, this cartoon was an inspiration of Konami X-Men arcade game, which used the same X-Men roster, many of the same villains, and story screens telling a similar story. Apparently, it also was a basis for a much less popular home video game. And a year or so later, it was adapted in graphic novel form as the X-Men Animation Special. Well, sort of. The comic is basically images from the cartoon in comic form rather than newly drawn art. Tracking my own personal X-Men fandom, my older brother bought the December 1987 cover-dated Uncanny X-Men #224. That was my first exposure to the current X-Men roster, previously being familiar to a more old-school roster from the Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends episodes where they showed up. I thought they were cool but weird, and I wouldn't buy any X-Men comics myself for a while. It was the point the thread is reaching now, around the time of the Brood or Genosha stories that I think I started to browse the X-Men comics that were in my school library. Also, per Mike's Amazing World of Comics, the Savage TPB reprinting the story from Marvel Fanfare #1-4 (featuring the Spider-Man in the first half, the X-Men in the second half, and Angel throughout) was published in early 1988. I don't think I bought it at that time, but maybe a year or so later when I was really getting in to X-Men. In an era before TPBs exploded, it was pretty cool. |
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Post by commond on Nov 8, 2023 7:18:28 GMT -5
November 1988
Wolverine finally got his own series, something the higher ups had wanted for a long time. Claremont was opposed to the idea, but was basically told that if he didn't write it then somebody else would. Some people claim that Claremont setting the series in Madripoor and doing a bunch of genre stories was his attempt to sabotage the series. Whether that's true or not, the fact it sold as well as it did was testament to the fact that people would buy just about anything if the character was hot enough. Claremont didn't last particularly long on the title, however, so it may have not been what the bigwigs expected.
If you thought Wolvie getting the lead feature in MCP and his own series was too much, look out, here comes The Punisher War Journal. For the life of me, I can't figure out why Baron's Punisher sold so well. Baron wrote the series like it was outside the Marvel continuity and the series went through a dozen different artists before finally gaining some stability when Badger artist, Bill Reinhold, came on board. PWJ was produced by Carl Potts, who was the editor on the Punisher mini and the ongoing series, but he wrote different types of Punisher stories. You basically had different titles doing different things similar to the Spider-Man books. Apparently, Marvel were anticipating the Dolph Lundgren movie to have a similar impact to the Tim Burton Batman film, but it wasn't released until 1991.
Strange Tales split off into separate Cloak and Dagger and Doctor Strange series. The Doctor Strange series was written by that man, Peter Gillis. He didn't last long, though, and Roy and Dann Thomas took over. In the meantime, they were producing a 12 issue limited series that presented the entire history of the Sub Mariner, complete with continuity fixes, as you'd expect from Roy.
DeFalco bringing Roy back into the fold was par for the course during the early part of his run as EiC. He welcomed back a bunch of talent that had left Marvel because of Shooter. At the same time, he wasn't afraid to make some tough calls. The way DeFalco describes it is that he paid close attention to the sales figures from both the newsstands and the direct market. If a book was doing well, he barely talked to the editor of the title. If there was a dip in sales, or a series wasn't doing well, he would work with that editor extensively to identify the problem. I don't think it's a surprise that Mantlo and Englehart are replaced on Alpha Flight and West Coast Avengers around this time, as those books were struggling.
One thing I haven't talked about is the Marvel Masterworks collections. DeFalco says that the Star Comics line and the Masterworks collections are the two things he's most proud of from his run as Editor in Chief. I could never afford those collections as a kid, though I did admire them in the comic stores. Star Comics should probably be viewed as a success as well. That said, DeFalco's big thing was put as many comics as you can out there and if most of them sell at a decent clip then business will be good.
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Post by codystarbuck on Nov 8, 2023 12:49:09 GMT -5
Just to clarify, the Punisher movie was released on video, in 1991. It did not get a theatrical release in the US, which was just as well, as it never rose above the level of direct-to-video action films. It did get a theatrical run in some foreign markets.
In your last paragraph, are you talking about the New Universe title, Star Brand or the Star line of comics? If the latter, I would agree that they had some hits (Peter Porker, Muppet Babies) but had a high percentage of forgettable material, generally in proportion to their regular line of comics (some hits, some steady material, some space filler for the stands). I don't think you can call it a success for original titles, as their success rate was far lower than the media tie-ins and that seemed to be the motivating factor as it progressed. DeFalco was a good choice for handling that material, with his Archie background, though banking on media tie-ins so heavily is always going to be an ebb and flow situation, depending on the popularity of the property and how the comic adapts it.
Wikipedia claims they had a title planned for Commander USA's Groovie Movies. I cannot begin to imagine what that would have looked like. Maybe if they used him to do bumpers for reprints of old horror comics or something.
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Post by commond on Nov 8, 2023 16:16:07 GMT -5
Sorry, I meant Star Comics.
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Post by commond on Nov 8, 2023 17:39:30 GMT -5
December 1988
Not getting enough Wolverine? How about a random Havok and Wolverine mini-series? Looking for some more Punisher? No sweat, Jo Duffy's got a new graphic novel out. Y'know, I reckon you could make the argument that this is where the 90s started.
Looking at the covers from this month, I definitely remember owning some of these books as a kid. I remember being particularly taken by Bret Blevin's cover for New Mutants #70 with the kids escaping from the month of some type of monster. Fantastic Four #321 is another one I clearly remember with Steve Englehart flipping Thing vs Hulk on its head by having She-Hulk fight She-Thing, and Surfer Silver #18 was my first encounter with Galactus, IIRC.
Apparently, Hama's "war books," for want of a better term, are doing so well that they can release a book about the Marine Corps. It has art by John Severin and a backup story by Sam Glanzman, so that's piqued my interest. It only ran for nine issues, but I'm more interested in this than another Wolvie story.
Ann Nocenti has an Inhumans graphic novel out that I imagine deals with similar topics from her Daredevil run. Considering that she used the Inhumans in that run, I wonder how much correlation there is between the two.
Over in the UK, they're making an effort to create a line of American format comic books. There's a character called Death's Head, who will go on to make a splash in the early 90s, at least for a while. Personally, he looks like a bit of a Nemesis the Warlock ripoff to me, but it's a cool character design.
I dismissed Marvel Comics Presents, but Marvel Age tells me that blighter sold. The first issue actually outside Uncanny X-Men for the month. Impressive. Marvel Age also has a preview for Stray Toasters, perhaps the most "out there" book Marvel published in 1988.
Oh, and Inferno is coming.
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Post by codystarbuck on Nov 8, 2023 21:24:05 GMT -5
Marvel Comics Presents sold pretty well, for the first year or so. Wolverine did most of the heavy lifting and that comic did present the Sam Keith story, with Logan as a sort of mountain man, and the later Barry Windsor Smith Weapon X storyline. Kirby knows that it wasn't the revived Master of Kung Fu feature propelling it. Aside from no Gulacy, it just seemed to go out of its way to mess with the characters. I didn't care for it. The later MOKF/Moon Knight special and the Max mini0series were better reunions with the chaarcter.
The Marine book is Semper Fi, with all stories written by Michael P Palladino, a Marine vet of Vietnam, and art by Andy Kubert & John Severin, Severin solo (in a couple of stories), Sam Glanzman and Wayne Vansant. The art it great and the bulk of the stories are pretty good; but, it kind of lacks the spark that The Nam had, at the beginning. One of the things that worked against it was that it was an anthology title, so your cast of characters changed. Timeframe also changed across stories, as Palladino tried to cover Marine history. The lead feature had a sort of continuity, as it was about the Whittier Family, who were Marines, from the Banana Wars and WW1, up through the peacekeeping mission in Lebanon, with a story set during the bombing of the Marine barracks, which killed over 200 Marines. It's at its best with Vietnam, as Palladino can draw on personal experiences and Glanzman was drawing a regular secondary feature, set during the Revolutionary War (he also drew a Pacific story and a couple in Korea). Severin drew one set during the Boxer Rebellion and the one in Lebanon, while inking Kubert on several. Had it been set in Vietnam, exclusively, I think it probably would have lasted longer, as you would have been able to build on the same characters. Don Lomax only used the POV character of Scott "Journal" Neithammer; but, he stayed within the one conflict (though he later did a Desert Storm Journal, with Neithammer covering the Gulf War). It was good while it lasted. More serious than Charlton's Fightin' Marines and better researched and drawn (well, Glanzman did work on that book; but Bill Molno, Bill Montes and Charles Nicholas was no John Severin, good as he was).
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Post by commond on Nov 9, 2023 7:18:46 GMT -5
January 1989
Inferno was the first crossover I experienced as a reader. Its purpose was to wrap up some of the plotlines in the Mutant books, but they dragged a bunch of other books into the mess as well. Whenever that happened, you'd have some writers who dealt with it creatively, others who shoehorned it in, and a handful whom weren't shy about expressing their resentment about having to tie their stories into another title's event. I doubt DeFalco was apologetic as the non-Mutant books that had tie-ins to Fall of the Mutants all received a bump in sales. It was actually a fairly big undertaking for the X-office, and Louise Simonson and Claremont were on record as saying never again. Sure enough, the next Mutant crossover was restricted to the X-books alone, but it would also mark the beginning of the end for the writers. X-Men continuity didn't mean much to me at the time, so I wasn't upset over what they did to Madelyne or Illyana. I was more like, "oh, this is what's happening."
Marvel Age is heralding John Byrne's return to Marvel and his work on Star Brand, West Coast Avengers and She-Hulk. I quickly became a John Byrne fan when he took over West Coast Avengers, and I was a fan of his Namor book and his run on Iron Man, but I feel that Marvel missed a trick by not giving him a bigger book upon his return. I dunno if he was trying to do a Kirby and asking for a book with lower sales, or if he genuinely wanted to work with the Vision and Scarlet Witch, but I don't think his career ever really recovered from him being the superstar writer-artist on Fantastic Four and Super-Man to being just another dude at Marvel. I wonder if DeFalco and Gruenwald were wary of how difficult Byrne could be and didn't want to give him too big an assignment in case he quit.
A few odds and ends -- Stan Lee kickstarted a new character named Solarman, whom we were promised we'd see more of if the book sold well. Mark Gruenwald still has a thing for the Squadron Supreme and released a graphic novel with Paul Ryan art. There's a Doctor Doom's Revenge special that reminds me that I owned that PC game. Stan Lee and Moebius created a Silver Surfer story together that's ok.
However, the biggest curiosity (and oddity) of the entire year is Marvel publishing Barbara Slate's Yuppies from Hell. If anyone can explain how Marvel come to publish this, I would greatly appreciate it.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Nov 9, 2023 8:46:03 GMT -5
December 1988Not getting enough Wolverine? How about a random Havok and Wolverine mini-series? Looking for some more Punisher? No sweat, Jo Duffy's got a new graphic novel out. Y'know, I reckon you could make the argument that this is where the 90s started. I never read that series, but I remember the painted art by Muth and Williams; it had the sort of half-realistic, half-oneiric look that was also present in Sienkiewicz' painted work. Wolverine's hair, for example, had extremely long spikes looking like the ears of some fantastic wolf. For some reason, Chris Claremont and Marc Silvestri decided to make this hairdo (which was obviously the product of artistic licence) canonical, as in an issue of X-Men we see Logan using gel to make these fantastic "ears" hold, then deciding that it looks silly and washing it off. I'm not sure this capillary oddity needed any kind of in-continuity explanation, but the nod to the mini-series was sort of funny. For political reasons, I was personally annoyed by all the military-flavoured comics that Marvel was putting out at the time. More fool I : Semper Fi was a pretty decent book! I didn't read the graphic novel, but as I understand it it explains how Medusa and Black Bolt's son could later show up on Earth for Daredevil and the Inhumans to interact. I've no idea what became of the kid in later years, though. He was an intriguing character. (Nocenti was really, really good in the '80s, writing the kind of stories that no one else was doing. Her DD run remains one of my favourite ones ever). I did buy the first year worth or so of MCP, convinced that it just HAD to be good! Wolverine written by Claremont? Shang-Chi written by Moench? Man-Thing written by Gerber? Be still my beating heart! Unfortunately, Wolverine would turn out to be some kind of Terry and the Pirates pastiche that wasn't particularly original, Shang-Chi would be a wet petard (or a wet something else that I can't mention here, this being a family-friendly site); Man-Thing had typical Gerber elements (mysticism, conspiracies, governmental corruption) but without the magic touch of the '70s. Despite the art by Tom Sutton, it, too, was a disappointment. I did enjoy the Ann Nocenti/Rick Leonardi and the Paul Gulacy-illustrated runs that came later, though. Gotta say, I love this thread, commond ! It brings back good memories, even if I didn't love all the comics from that era! |
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