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Post by codystarbuck on Nov 9, 2023 13:36:49 GMT -5
Barbara Slate was a cartoonist, whose work had appeared in the women's magazine, Cosmopolitan. She produced comics for greeting cards and then came to do Angel Love, for DC Comics. She had also worked on Strip AIDS, for Last Gasp, which was an AIDS benefit book. Bobbie Chase is editor on Yuppies From Hell and she was one of several female writers & editors working for Marvel, in the period. Chase was an assistant editor on special projects, before becoming a full editor, on GI Joe. She was also Peter David's editor on The Incredible Hulk. I suspect the connection is through her. It helped that DC had a lot of cache with the mainstream media on their more adult projects, especially the proto-Vertigo material. You also had a lot of indie darlings who were getting mainstream attention, like Love & Rockets, Raw magazine and Maus, Eightball, Chris Ware's projects, etc. Marvel hadn't benefitted too greatly from such attention, but got some with some of their non-superhero titles, like Moonshadow. The book was excerpted in Cosmopolitan, probably because they knew Slate's previous work and the subject matter, which is far more than the Punisher ever got. Plus, yuppies were a media buzzword and topic; so, it was an easy sell. Others were experimenting in similar worlds, like the aforementioned bunch, plus stuff like Ginger Fox, at Comico. It was kind of in the air, at the time.
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Post by adamwarlock2099 on Nov 9, 2023 16:18:52 GMT -5
I know I am late to the conversation, but as MCP goes, the only ones that really stands out is a Typhoid Mary story called Typhoid's Kiss. I really only bought that first issue (#109 I believe) because there was a Thanos story in it. then they did a four part Thanos story tied into Infinity Gauntlet. Neither of which I have any memory of. Once I actually started reading the other stories I started buying more. I think the Steve Lighle art really grabbed my attention initially for the Typhoid story. And then by the mid 90's when I started buying comics, MCP was usually dollar bid fodder so it was very affordable reading. I probably have 50 issues or so sporadically throughout the whole series.
I feel like, at least at that time, that the only issues of MCP that got any attention were the Weapon X issues. Those were the only issues I paid more than the original cover price for. I had already been reading Wolverine's solo series so for me that was a big reveal. So I wasn't disappointed with the price I paid for them.
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Post by commond on Nov 9, 2023 18:37:21 GMT -5
February 1989
This was a big anniversary month, though I confess to not buying any of the issues off the racks.
Captain America #350 was the big showdown between Captain America and The Captain with Steve Rogers assuming the mantle of Captain America again.
Avengers #300 is the debut of the new Avengers team -- Captain America, Thor, Reed and Sue Richards, and Gilgamesh. Walt Simonson and John Buscema leave the book with this issue and the book goes through a lean trot (that's putting it nicely.) The new lineup gets overhauled by Gruenwald and Byrne in the five issues that followed rendering the anniversary issue completely redundant.
Thor #400 is the conclusion to a story that began in #396 that focuses on a war between gods. Thor has a big battle with Surtur in the anniversary issue. The DeFalco/Frenz run was basically a love letter to Kirby's Thor. Some people dislike it because it followed on from Simonson's groundbreaking run. Others find it to be one of the more entertaining runs on the book from the 70s and 80s, and as we know, Thor went through some roughly times in the 90s. Some day I'll get around to reading the DeFalco/Frenz run as I enjoyed their work on Amazing Spider-Man.
Don McGregor and Gene Colan begin their looooong Black Panther story in MCP. I've ever read the entire thing. They would have been better off releasing it as a limited series or a graphic novel. 25 issues of MCP is way too long for a book most people read casually. Still, it's another example of DeFalco reaching backwards while moving forward at the same time.
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Post by berkley on Nov 9, 2023 20:28:01 GMT -5
February 1989This was a big anniversary month, though I confess to not buying any of the issues off the racks. Captain America #350 was the big showdown between Captain America and The Captain with Steve Rogers assuming the mantle of Captain America again. Avengers #300 is the debut of the new Avengers team -- Captain America, Thor, Reed and Sue Richards, and Gilgamesh. Walt Simonson and John Buscema leave the book with this issue and the book goes through a lean trot (that's putting it nicely.) The new lineup gets overhauled by Gruenwald and Byrne in the five issues that followed rendering the anniversary issue completely redundant. Thor #400 is the conclusion to a story that began in #396 that focuses on a war between gods. Thor has a big battle with Surtur in the anniversary issue. The DeFalco/Frenz run was basically a love letter to Kirby's Thor. Some people dislike it because it followed on from Simonson's groundbreaking run. Others find it to be one of the more entertaining runs on the book from the 70s and 80s, and as we know, Thor went through some roughly times in the 90s. Some day I'll get around to reading the DeFalco/Frenz run as I enjoyed their work on Amazing Spider-Man. Don McGregor and Gene Colan begin their looooong Black Panther story in MCP. I've ever read the entire thing. They would have been better off releasing it as a limited series or a graphic novel. 25 issues of MCP is way too long for a book most people read casually. Still, it's another example of DeFalco reaching backwards while moving forward at the same time.
I've bought some of the MCP back-issues for a few specific stories, including the McGregor/Colan Panther. The only one I've read so far was a multi-part Man-Thing story by Steve Gerber and Tom Sutton, which I thought was very good. I would say it deserves to be collected and printed as a standalone, but they'd probably screw up the colours. Not sure if it was ever included in any of the Man-Thing collections but if so I'd recommend it to anyone who likes Gerber's work. Or just get the MCP back-issues like I did - I think they're still fairly cheap.
I might try the DeFalco/Frenz Thor sometime as I have nothing against a nostalgia-driven take on the character, depending on how or how well that concept was executed. I don't think I've read anything by either creator but I've seen online samples of Ron Frenz's art and while it doesn't really wow me, it's a style I'm comfortable with, hearkening back as it does (or seems to from what I've seen) to '70s Marvel.
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Post by spoon on Nov 9, 2023 21:20:09 GMT -5
February 1989This was a big anniversary month, though I confess to not buying any of the issues off the racks. Captain America #350 was the big showdown between Captain America and The Captain with Steve Rogers assuming the mantle of Captain America again. Avengers #300 is the debut of the new Avengers team -- Captain America, Thor, Reed and Sue Richards, and Gilgamesh. Walt Simonson and John Buscema leave the book with this issue and the book goes through a lean trot (that's putting it nicely.) The new lineup gets overhauled by Gruenwald and Byrne in the five issues that followed rendering the anniversary issue completely redundant. Thor #400 is the conclusion to a story that began in #396 that focuses on a war between gods. Thor has a big battle with Surtur in the anniversary issue. The DeFalco/Frenz run was basically a love letter to Kirby's Thor. Some people dislike it because it followed on from Simonson's groundbreaking run. Others find it to be one of the more entertaining runs on the book from the 70s and 80s, and as we know, Thor went through some roughly times in the 90s. Some day I'll get around to reading the DeFalco/Frenz run as I enjoyed their work on Amazing Spider-Man. Don McGregor and Gene Colan begin their looooong Black Panther story in MCP. I've ever read the entire thing. They would have been better off releasing it as a limited series or a graphic novel. 25 issues of MCP is way too long for a book most people read casually. Still, it's another example of DeFalco reaching backwards while moving forward at the same time. I thought Captain America #350 was really awesome, and Avengers #300 was kind of cool, too. Both for their special features, but Cap also for the culmination of a big story. As a kid who didn't own and couldn't afford a lot of back issues, it was exciting to see the two-page spreads that featured the various Captain Americas, Cap's sidekicks, and Cap's love interests. Avengers had a list of all the members and which issues they appeared in. At this point, my purchases of MCP (or most any series) were often sporadic rather than stringing together a bunch of consecutive issues. So I only got the Black Panther serial in bits and pieces. A few years back I complete the run that include all 25 parts of Black Panther and read it all the way through. It didn't live up to my expectations. It didn't feel like a well-planned epic that took advantage of that huge scope. It was more meandering. |
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Post by commond on Nov 10, 2023 7:05:09 GMT -5
March 1989
Madelyne Pryor is dead and Illyana is a little girl again. I've gotta say I sided with Alex Summers during the crossover. Scott bailing on his wife and son was a dick move. I liked the Magik character, so I was sorry to see her written out of the books.
Uncanny X-Men would take a strange turn after Inferno. After the team passed through the Siege Perilous, the book became a series of solo adventures chronicling the characters' new lives. For about two years, there's no real team. It's hard to understand what was fueling Claremont at the time. Did he think that the book was selling so well he could tell any type of story he wanted, or was he pushing back against market pressures? After all, the action adventure genre stuff in Wolverine and the hijinks in Excalibur were hardly the type of thing that would sell hotcakes for other publishers. IIRC, when Jim Lee got hot, there was a lot of pressure on Claremont to return to the staple John Byrne era stuff. Lee may have been pushing to plot the stuff, I can't remember. Harras obviously sided with the artist. It seems he wanted a commercial X-Men line and was growing tired of Claremont's scripts.
John Byrne started his run on West Coast Avengers. I know people have strong feelings about what he did to Vision and the Scarlet Witch, but I ate this run up as a kid. I didn't have any attachment to the characters. It was the art that caught my eye. Byrne quickly became the first penciler whose work I recognized. I thought he was fantastic. The run was short due to Byrne quitting in protest over editorial interference, but I followed Byrne from one book to another up until his Wonder Woman run. To me, it would have made more sense if Byrne had taken over the main Avengers title since it desperately needed a new creative team, but when they got him to write it at the same time as working on WCA, he didn't show a ton of enthusiasm for book.
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Post by commond on Nov 11, 2023 5:45:45 GMT -5
April & May 1989
April was a bit quiet as it was Christmas.
May brought in the New Year with John Byrne's new She-Hulk book. I didn't buy it because it was too expensive. From memory, the $1.50 books cost over NZ $4.00 at the time, or close to it. Also making its debut was Dwayne McDuffie and Ernie Colon's Damage Control. I thoroughly enjoyed this limited series as a kid and have no plans to shatter any illusions.
I had no idea that John Byrne penciled New Mutants #75. I haven't read it, but apparently Byrne didn't want to do it at first, but Harras told him that Magneto was turning evil again so Byrne agreed, presumably because Byrne thought Magneto should always be a villain or simply to mess with Claremont. Apparently, Claremont later wrote a fix to this issue and Magneto's involvement in Acts of Vengeance. It's all very petty. Some folks say Byrne did a rush job on the New Mutants issue and it's mostly Bob McLeod doing finishes.
What I do remember is Rob Liefeld penciling X-Factor #40. The art isn't bad. Rob draws plenty of feet. It's the hair that's the killer. Jean's hair is out of control.
Web of Spider-Man #50 and Spectacular Spider-Man #150 fly under the radar, but Gerry Conway was chipping away at his own Spider-Man story where Joe Robertson ends up in jail. That pales in comparison, however, to his retcon in the Spider-Man graphic novel, Parallel Lives. Conway was fond of a good Spidey retcon during this era. He did a number of retcons to his own Clone Saga, and then he dropped a whopper in Parallel Lives. Tom DeFalco had revealed during his Amazing Spider-Man run that Mary Jane already knew that Peter was Spider-Man, however it was heavily implied that it was something she had pieced during the past few years. Conway took it a step further, however, and declared that Mary Jane had known Peter was Spider-Man before their first meeting. This became canon, though fans like me were no doubt unaware of it at the time.
There's not a lot else going on, tbh. There was an attempt to sexy up Alpha Flight a bit. I liked the house ad for the storyline, but it was a mando book.
Marvel Tales went back to reprinting classic Spider-Man stories after a period of reprinting every Spidey-Punisher story known to man. They got Todd to do covers, which was clever.
Uncanny X-Men sees the debut of Jubilee. After all these years, I still don't know whether I like Jubliee or hate Jubliee.
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Post by spoon on Nov 11, 2023 17:30:02 GMT -5
April & May 1989I had no idea that John Byrne penciled New Mutants #75. I haven't read it, but apparently Byrne didn't want to do it at first, but Harras told him that Magneto was turning evil again so Byrne agreed, presumably because Byrne thought Magneto should always be a villain or simply to mess with Claremont. Apparently, Claremont later wrote a fix to this issue and Magneto's involvement in Acts of Vengeance. It's all very petty. Some folks say Byrne did a rush job on the New Mutants issue and it's mostly Bob McLeod doing finishes. I have read New Mutants #75 having binged my way through New Mutants in early 2023. I'm assuming Claremont's fix must be some dialogue from #274 or #275 I can't remember. On one hand, I feel like Magneto's thought process in NM #75 isn't spelled out clearly, so it feels a bit abrupt despite Magneto getting closer to the Hellfire Club in preceding issues. On the hand, I feel that while Magneto was nominally reformed in the pages of New Mutants, Claremont was unintentionally writing him with villainous traits. Louise Simonson to some extent continued along those lines. What I mean is that the way Claremont likes to write his faves sometimes makes them crappy people. He likes heroes who kill. He likes when Wolverine and Storm lecture and put down their teammates. Magneto forms an alliance with the Hellfire Club on behalf of Xavier's School, because that's what he thinks that's what cool badass heroes would do. But the Hellfire Club includes several murderers and Selene has killed a lot of people, so by reasonable standards it's villainy. When New Mutants object, they get lectured. Also, Magneto is a very negligent headmasters. The roster suffers death, deterioration, and tragedy under his watch. I think a lot of that would've been preventable if he was doing his job. I don't know if I bought this new off the racks, but I may have bought it as a relatively recent back issue. This was probably one of the first issues of X-Factor I ever read. I think it's actually relatively good Liefeld. Jubilee is awesome. She's three-dimensional. She's irreverent. She has the metafictional Robin tribute costume colors, although not yet in #244 as far as I can remember. |
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Post by commond on Nov 11, 2023 20:07:48 GMT -5
Claremont's fix was in Uncanny X-Men #253 which has a scene where Magneto visits Moira MacTaggert on Muir Island.
June 1989
Rob Liefeld pencils Uncanny X-Men #245, which is a fun parody of DC's Invasion crossover. Again the art is decent. Perhaps due to Dan Green wielding some measure of control over it, or because Liefeld was still in full Art Adams imitator mode. It was actually a pretty big gig for young Rob. I was a fan of this issue as a kid and a fan of Liefeld's art. I guess that makes me part of the problem.
Speaking of Art Adams, he did a two-partner on X-Factor that I bought as a kid. After that, X-Factor went into a long storyline penciled by Paul Smith that I have absolutely zero recollection of. In fact, I didn't really piece together what was happening across the X-books. The X-Men jumped through the Siege Perilous, Excalibur went on a Cross-Time Caper, the New Mutants went to Asgard, and X-Factor went into space. Was this to avoid having to participate in the Acts of Vengeance crossover? That seems petty considering how many other books were dragged into Fall of the Mutants and Inferno. Perhaps it had something to do with Claremont's storyline in Uncanny X-Men necessitating that the other teams were out of the picture.
Venom is back in Amazing Spider-Man. If you listen closely, you can still hear the cash registers ringing.
Steve Grant and Mike Zeck drop a Punisher graphic novel. It might be worth checking out for the Zeck art.
Ironman is running a storyline where Tony Stark is shot and paralyzed. For some reason, I loved these issues a kid and snatched them up whenever I could find them at secondhand bookstores.
There's a new Moon Knight series out, as DeFalco continues to relaunch books that were cancelled in the past. Not sure why he expected them to reach a wider audience this time round, but it's more content.
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Post by codystarbuck on Nov 11, 2023 21:29:41 GMT -5
I didn't read Damage Control until I was well into my adult years (and I was an adult, when it debuted) and it's pretty damn funny.
I tried this Moon Knight series and it started well, harkening back to the older stuff; but then either it just fizzled or my interest did. I don't recall which.
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Post by spoon on Nov 11, 2023 21:44:29 GMT -5
Claremont's fix was in Uncanny X-Men #253 which has a scene where Magneto visits Moira MacTaggert on Muir Island. Ah, okay. Yeah, I think I remember it was something like he's doing in to protect the kids somehow. Moira gets angry and Banshee is more chilled out talking to Magneto. And it's maybe some Shadow King foreshadowing with how Moira is edgy and combative. I do think the right inker helps with Liefeld. I think Karl Kesel did a good job fixing up whatever Liefeld did with the Hawk & Dove miniseries. My theory would be the latter. Now that the other teams know the X-Men are alive, how can Claremont do the Dissolution & Rebirth/Shattered Star storyline if the other teams are available for backup? The X-Men have to be on their own to disintegrate. Also, Inferno was the culmination of a bunch of long-term plot threads that linked the X-books together. So all the creative teams may have wanted to finally to get a chance for independent storylines. Also, the New Mutants quite rationally went to stay with X-Factor after the Mansion was destroyed in Inferno and Magneto had his heel turn. For the kids to continue to get into trouble and eventually find a new mentor (Cable), circumstances had to separate them from X-Factor. Uncanny, X-Factor, and New Mutants did have Acts of Vengeance labeled covers, although the tie-ins weren't that strong. I think X-Factor just had a back-up story where Loki met Apocalypse. New Mutants had Rusty versus the Vulture, although I don't think the Vulture was part of a hero-swapping plot. The same with the Asgard stuff. The X-Factor in space arc (Judgment War) was crucial in my own personal collecting history. That's when I started collecting X-Factor regularly. I got interested in assembling the X-Factor back issues, but it was also a factor (along with starting to get new issues of Uncanny) that got me interested in getting more X-Men back issues and learning about their history. I bought a few sporadic issues of Iron Man around this time. I remember when I got the double-sized issue after Tony was shot new of the shelves. |
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Post by commond on Nov 12, 2023 17:12:27 GMT -5
July & August 1989
DeFalco brings back What If? There's also Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe updates, and a Fred Hembeck Destroys the Marvel Universe special. All of which I'd describe as ties to the past.
He also starts a new series, Nth Man by Larry Hama and Ron Wager. I quite enjoyed the stories I read, which no doubt were in those grab bags they sold at supermarkets where you'd get four or five random comics per bag. I used to love those, especially fiddling about trying to figure out what was in the bag. You can't go wrong with an American ninja fighting in World War III, or can you? Nth Man was supposed to run for 24 issues but was cancelled after 16. Its creators blamed the fact that it was set outside the Marvel Universe for its poor sales, but I feel like they were trying to get some rub from G.I. Joe sales but Hasbro was already scaling back production on G.I. Joe and kids had moved on to other fads.
Mike Mignola's Doctor Strange & Doctor Doom graphic novel and Archie Goodwin and Howard Chaykin's Nick Fury & Wolverine graphic novels are released to the public. I'm not the biggest Mike Mignola fan, but if you like his work then this graphic novel was a huge step forward in his career. The Nick Fury/Wolverine graphic novel isn't Goodwin or Chaykin's best work, but it has some nice nods to Steranko and Chaykin's assistants draw some gorgeous backgrounds. People complain about Chaykin's Wolverine, but I kind of like the way he looks.
Atlantis Attacks runs through the annuals and strikes me as a cash grab. Speaking of cash grabs, even more titles are about to go bi-weekly over the summer.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Nov 12, 2023 17:20:47 GMT -5
March 1989Madelyne Pryor is dead and Illyana is a little girl again. I've gotta say I sided with Alex Summers during the crossover. Scott bailing on his wife and son was a dick move. I liked the Magik character, so I was sorry to see her written out of the books. Uncanny X-Men would take a strange turn after Inferno. After the team passed through the Siege Perilous, the book became a series of solo adventures chronicling the characters' new lives. For about two years, there's no real team. It's hard to understand what was fueling Claremont at the time. Did he think that the book was selling so well he could tell any type of story he wanted, or was he pushing back against market pressures? After all, the action adventure genre stuff in Wolverine and the hijinks in Excalibur were hardly the type of thing that would sell hotcakes for other publishers. IIRC, when Jim Lee got hot, there was a lot of pressure on Claremont to return to the staple John Byrne era stuff. Lee may have been pushing to plot the stuff, I can't remember. Harras obviously sided with the artist. It seems he wanted a commercial X-Men line and was growing tired of Claremont's scripts. John Byrne started his run on West Coast Avengers. I know people have strong feelings about what he did to Vision and the Scarlet Witch, but I ate this run up as a kid. I didn't have any attachment to the characters. It was the art that caught my eye. Byrne quickly became the first penciler whose work I recognized. I thought he was fantastic. The run was short due to Byrne quitting in protest over editorial interference, but I followed Byrne from one book to another up until his Wonder Woman run. To me, it would have made more sense if Byrne had taken over the main Avengers title since it desperately needed a new creative team, but when they got him to write it at the same time as working on WCA, he didn't show a ton of enthusiasm for book. I read it later in back issues, but I thought John Byrne's run was the beginning of the end for WCA, even though it lasted a while after. White vision just did nothing for me at all. |
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Post by commond on Nov 12, 2023 17:26:33 GMT -5
Fittingly, I overlooked the cancellation of the New Universe line. Marvel releases a four issue series called The War that wraps up all of the loose ends, but there's a lengthy delay on the final issue.
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Post by codystarbuck on Nov 12, 2023 20:19:10 GMT -5
Fittingly, I overlooked the cancellation of the New Universe line. Marvel releases a four issue series called The War that wraps up all of the loose ends, but there's a lengthy delay on the final issue. Well, it was a little bigger than that. First, there was the one-shot, The Pitt, where Pittsburgh is destroyed....  The story goes that John Byrne insisted he be the writer on that, so he could both destroy the New Universe and blow up Jim Shooter's hometown, as an act of revenge. It was childish and petty,; but, it amused me, at the time. That was followed by another one-shot, The Draft.....  Then, The War....     Interestingly, Doug Murray, the writer of The Nam, handled The War. Guess they figured he'd add some authenticity to things. |
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