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Post by Rob Allen on Dec 22, 2023 19:24:36 GMT -5
Almost caught up...
4. Black Panther
In case you hadn't heard, that Jungle Action series by McGregor & Graham et al. was really good.
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Post by Farrar on Dec 23, 2023 17:33:41 GMT -5
Day 9/Selection #4: Black Widow (1970 series)
First appearance: Natasha first appeared in the Iron Man story "The Crimson Dynamo Strikes Again!" in Tales of Suspense #52 Favorite Spin-Off Series: Her own series in Amazing Adventures #1-8 I'm so glad to see Natasha the Black Widow getting some love here; I'll just add that my favorite series is the one she had in Amazing Adventures. Of course it's not as sophisticated or nuanced as any of her many subsequent series over the years; but despite that, Natasha's inaugural feature remains a sentimental favorite of mine. It preceded the Thorn's solo feature (my #5 selection) by a few months and as with the Thorn, it was great to see a superhero series starring a strong, take-no-prisoners female lead. Storywise this series floundered a bit as it focused on flavor-of-the-day "relevance" (see: Green Lantern/Green Arrow and others back then); and I would have preferred to see Natasha working with SHIELD, but there was some beautiful art by John Buscema and some sublime art by the Gene Colan and Bill Everett team. I was sorry when this series ended, but as we know Natasha has gone on to bigger and better things over the years. John Buscema's splash from Amazing Adventures #2 and a page from AA #1  From AAs #4 and #5: Gene Colan, inked by Bill Everett, were the perfect art team for Natasha IMO. 
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Post by Pól Rua on Dec 26, 2023 0:25:33 GMT -5
4.The Legion of SuperheroesAs a youngster, I'd frequently be given some money and sent off to the newsagents' to grab a comic. The money was usually not enough to buy ALL the comics I wanted, so I developed something of a methodology to help me make my selection. #1. If there was so much as a sniff of Earth-2, grab it. #2. The more heroes, the better the value. #3. Heroes you haven't seen before get priority. #4. Heroes you have seen before, but don't have their own TV series get priority (which eliminated Lynda Carter's Wonder Woman, Adam West's Batman, George Reeves' Superman, Bill Bixby/Lou Ferrigno's Hulk, the Fantastic Four cartoon, the Spider-Man cartoon or the core five members of the Super-Friends). So one day, I'm visiting a friend of mine and his older brother showed me a copy of the 'Legion of Superheroes' Treasury Edition. TWENTY-THREE Heroes, almost all ones I'd never seen before (except Superboy)? From then on, I became a fiend for The Legion. One of the nice things about the Australian reprints was that they'd mix up the content. You'd grab a comic which featured one or two stories featuring the modern Legion, but they'd throw in a bunch of older stories with them in their original costumes, so you could catch up on the group's history. Plus, as a baby continuity fiend, it was a way to keep track of an extensive history, almost all of which was contained in a single title with very few exceptions. While I'm still a fool for the Legion, I've long since given up on the title. Around the 'Legion Lost' series in the early 2000s, it started to feel like the series was trapped in an endless cycle of 'reboot, tell the same stories again with slight variations on a theme, repeat' but I'll always treasure the classic stuff. 
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