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Post by codystarbuck on Jul 19, 2024 21:15:42 GMT -5
I remember, at the time, I though KGBeast was a pretty good name. Then, we got the NKVDemon. I started waiting for the GRUesome, but was glad not to see the CCCPedophile. Of course, the naming convention doesn't work in Russian: Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopaznosti-east. Doesn't have the same zing.
I wish that had been Ambush Bug emerging from that pod. Would have made that whole storyline far more interesting than a big slugfest.
I have no memory of Tell Me Dark and Streets. I was usually at least aware of the books I skipped; but, that rings no bells.
The Blackhawk Special followed on the heels of the short-lived series, with Marty Pasko and Rick Burchett, that followed both the Chaykin mini, which revamped the concept a bit, and the Action Comics Weekly story, which had them in a post-War adventure. It brings them into the 60s and the assassinations of JFK and, later RFK. Andre is killed in Saigon, by what appears to be the CIA, who are involved with the killing of Kennedy, in this conspiracy-laden book. It also brings up the voting in Chicago, in 1960, which has long been a source of conspiracy theories about Kennedy winning the election. It also has Control, of the OSS stories, who John Ostrander retconned into leading Argent, the post-war covert agency that was the opposite of the public Task Force X, aka The Suicide Squad. One of the Blackhawks turns out to be an agent of his. The climax occurs in 1975, during the Fall of Saigon. It mostly springs from the Blackhawk regular series, previously, where the post-War Blackhawk became a sort of Air America, for the DC Universe, contracted by the CIA. Mike Gold and John Ostrander had been using them in other books, especially Weng Chiang (Chop-Chop), in Hawkworld. Blackhawk Express would pop up, from time to time, in other books, keeping the trademarks alive, while the audience was too small to justify long term series. This was largely trademark maintenance; but, Mike Gold, in the editorial page of the comic, talks about a love of the Blackhawks and Dick Giordano telling him that he was going to get to do a Special. He and John Ostrander worked out some of the conspiracy theories to play out, in the storyline, to bring the team through the 60s and into the mid-70s. If you like political thrillers and/or mercenary adventure, this is good stuff, on par with Ostrander's more espionage-themed Suicide Squad stories, but without superheroes.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jul 19, 2024 21:51:12 GMT -5
Ostrander and Mandrake’s Spectre is probably an all-time top ten book for me.
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Post by EdoBosnar on Jul 20, 2024 2:59:25 GMT -5
I remember, at the time, I though KGBeast was a pretty good name. Then, we got the NKVDemon. I started waiting for the GRUesome, but was glad not to see the CCCPedophile. Of course, the naming convention doesn't work in Russian: Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopaznosti-east. Doesn't have the same zing. (...) The problem isn't what the 'B' stands for in Russian (like everywhere else, pretty much everybody in the former Soviet Union just used the initials to refer to the organization); rather, the problem is that the word for 'beast' in Russian starts with the letter 'z', i.e., zvyer (зверь). |
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Post by commond on Jul 20, 2024 16:50:02 GMT -5
DC Direct Currents #58 (January cover date, 1993) Finally, we get to the big one. Not a dream, not a hoax. Some people blame this event for the market crashing, but it was really a perfect storm. I don't think either DC or the retailers realized how big it would be. Once the media caught wind of it, it became global news. It was pre-internet, but satellite TV had made the world more connected and almost every country had access to CNN or a similar news network. There were even stories printed about it in our local New Zealand newspapers. The retailers weren't ready for the foot traffic they'd get and under-ordered Superman #75. The fact that it was hard to a copy stirred interest even more. I don't think you can blame DC for a successful event. Goodness knows, they had plodded along while Marvel and Image sold millions of books. They helped the industry as a whole have its single biggest sales day in history with comic shops bringing in $30 million dollars in the States alone. Personally, I see this as a triumph for DC and for the Superman office. If you look at comic book sales for 1992, DC only had 35 of the top 300 selling books. Most of this were either first issue "collector" items, the Death of Superman storyline and a few hot books like Robin and Lobo. Randomly, their second best selling book of 1992 was Green Lantern #25, which was a big shake-up issue but not what I'd expect to be their second biggest seller of the year. DC was performing extremely poorly sales-wise in '92 and on the brink of losing its market share to Image. In fact, if Image hadn't been such a mess internally, DC would have almost definitely slid to third in market share. The things that a lot of fans like about DC -- good writing, solid storytelling, etc. -- weren't capturing the comic book buyer's eye. And I don't just mean the speculators, I mean the average fan who bought Spawn because they thought the art was good. DC had some success with gimmick covers and Lobo was an example of being hot artists on a cool character, but the Death of Superman was an example of how the typically solid, stay the course, Superman creators could create phenomenal sales success with a minimum of excess. But what else was happening that month? How about an ongoing series I've never heard of? Scarlett, scourge of vampires. It ran for 14 issues. Denny O'Neil and Norm Breyfogle bring us the origin of Ra's al Ghul in what was Breyfogle's first fully-painted interior art. Fully painted comics have got to be tough work. There's a new Batman Elseworlds story set in the American West, and a monthly book for Black Canary. Robin also gets an Elseworlds book, and a new character is introduced in Batman: Vengeance of Bane. Last, but not least, is the return of Showcase. In the solicitations, Grant Morrison very quietly ends his run on Doom Patrol. I was extremely moved by the end of this issue, though I found out later on that Morrison had pinched it from a song by The Jam. The back cover is the superheroes carrying Superman's coffin.
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Post by codystarbuck on Jul 20, 2024 18:08:30 GMT -5
DC Direct Currents #58 (January cover date, 1993)Finally, we get to the big one. Not a dream, not a hoax. Some people blame this event for the market crashing, but it was really a perfect storm. I don't think either DC or the retailers realized how big it would be. Once the media caught wind of it, it became global news. It was pre-internet, but satellite TV had made the world more connected and almost every country had access to CNN or a similar news network. There were even stories printed about it in our local New Zealand newspapers. The retailers weren't ready for the foot traffic they'd get and under-ordered Superman #75. The fact that it was hard to a copy stirred interest even more. I don't think you can blame DC for a successful event. Goodness knows, they had plodded along while Marvel and Image sold millions of books. They helped the industry as a whole have its single biggest sales day in history with comic shops bringing in $30 million dollars in the States alone. Personally, I see this as a triumph for DC and for the Superman office. If you look at comic book sales for 1992, DC only had 35 of the top 300 selling books. Most of this were either first issue "collector" items, the Death of Superman storyline and a few hot books like Robin and Lobo. Randomly, their second best selling book of 1992 was Green Lantern #25, which was a big shake-up issue but not what I'd expect to be their second biggest seller of the year. DC was performing extremely poorly sales-wise in '92 and on the brink of losing its market share to Image. In fact, if Image hadn't been such a mess internally, DC would have almost definitely slid to third in market share. The things that a lot of fans like about DC -- good writing, solid storytelling, etc. -- weren't capturing the comic book buyer's eye. And I don't just mean the speculators, I mean the average fan who bought Spawn because they thought the art was good. DC had some success with gimmick covers and Lobo was an example of being hot artists on a cool character, but the Death of Superman was an example of how the typically solid, stay the course, Superman creators could create phenomenal sales success with a minimum of excess. But what else was happening that month? How about an ongoing series I've never heard of? Scarlett, scourge of vampires. It ran for 14 issues. Denny O'Neil and Norm Breyfogle bring us the origin of Ra's al Ghul in what was Breyfogle's first fully-painted interior art. Fully painted comics have got to be tough work. There's a new Batman Elseworlds story set in the American West, and a monthly book for Black Canary. Robin also gets an Elseworlds book, and a new character is introduced in Batman: Vengeance of Bane. Last, but not least, is the return of Showcase comics. In the solicitations, Grant Morrison very quietly ends his run on Doom Patrol. I was extremely moved by the end of this issue, though I found out later on that Morrison had pinched it from a song by The Jam. The back cover is the superheroes carrying Superman's coffin. Grant Morrison cribbed an idea from someone else? The hell you say! Here in the US, it was a slow news day that pretty much led to the wire services and networks to run with the story, before the release and everyone went nuts, thinking it was going to be A) historical (because they hadn't picked up a comic since they were little kids); or, B) was going to be worth a fortune and put their kids through college or cover their retirement. Both ideas were fantasies, but they lined up for them. I personally found the bagged edition, with the armband, to be more than a little morbid and silly. My shop had held both editions for me, not at my request and I told them the one without the stupid gimmick. I had actually dropped the books just before it started, then heard what was going on a added them back, but had to scramble for the first two installments, in reprints. They were selling that stuff on QVC, at ridiculous prices, while showing third printings on screen. It didn't kill the market, as it was already tipping over the edge; but, it did throw a bunch of lead weights onto the bus and sped it along down the cliff. The Return is what killed my local shop. They had done huge business with the death, then speculated on Adventures of Superman #500 and were just able to break even, when the Return 4 books drove a stake into their fiscal heart, as they had grossly over-speculated on them. They ended up owing a ton to their distributor and were cut off and suddenly we weren't getting our subscription copies. What little they did get was from going to Sparta and buying directly from the distributor. They closed up within a couple of weeks. Image's failure to put books out in anything close to a timely manner caused a lot of issues with shops and distributors, to the point that both Diamond and Capital were talking about financial penalties for missed solicitations. Then, they dropped the ball on their portions of Deathmate and turned the hottest crossover, in solicitations, into bargain bin material in an instant, when they blew deadlines. I think it was Bob Layton who talked about babysitting Rob Liefeld in a hotel room to get his pages out of him, so he could ink them and they could get it to the printer. The Ra's story didn't really wow me and made me wish Mike Barr had written it, as his two previous Ra's graphic novels were great pieces of work. That Batman western was The Blue, The Grey and the Bat, with art from Alan Weiss and Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez (PBHN) and story from Elliot Maggin. Weiss loved westerns and drew the hell out of it and JLGL (PBHN) made everything look spectacular. To me, it was like a cross between The Wild Wild West and the Lone Ranger. I always thought the Bane special was kind of middling and when he turned up for Knightfall, he still didn't impress, as the whole thing required Batman to react like an idiot, instead of employing strategy to deal with the threat he faced. That's just bad writing and it became too much of the norm, in a lot of mainstream books. |
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Post by jason on Jul 20, 2024 19:40:02 GMT -5
I never got the actual Death issue but I did get the Death of Superman TPB (which came out almost instantly after the death issue). I thought it was ok, but in retrospect it was an overlong fight (I've seen Shonen manga with shorter fights). Really, World Without a Superman (which had some compelling dramatic scenes) and Reign of the Supermen were more entertaining (I knew none of them were the real mc coy, though I did have my suspicions about Eradicator).
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jul 20, 2024 21:32:36 GMT -5
The Bane special was garbage based on a bad arc in Legends of the Dark Knight. Unfortunately it leads to worse garbage to come.
Death of Superman was both garbage and essentially a hoax, because there was zero chance he was staying dead…mores the pity.
DC was doing some very good stuff at the time. But it wasn’t the stuff that got any hoopla.
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Post by codystarbuck on Jul 21, 2024 0:53:29 GMT -5
I liked how Batman TAS fixed the massive plothole of Knightfall, by having Batman just sever the tubes feeding Venom to Bane, while he lifted him over his head. I also liked how they altered the mask to look like a lucha libre mask. Bane as luchador hitman was way cooler than what developed in the comics.
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Post by commond on Jul 21, 2024 15:54:36 GMT -5
DC Direct Currents #59 (February cover date, 1993) This month's cover feature is a John Ostrander one shot where Batman and Robin confront the issue of gun control. Sadly, I doubt much has changed since Ostrander wrote this book. Inside, Mike Grell beings us his version of Green Arrow Year One. A new era is beginning in Impact Comics with the Crucible miniseries. There's a very 90s looking revival of Stanley and his Monster. Batman vs. Predator is getting a trade paperback collection. It's World AIDS Awareness Month and DC is doing its part to raise awareness throughout their comics. And here comes Vertigo! In the solicitations, P. Graig Russell begins his beautiful two-part Poison Ivy story in Legends of the Dark Knight, and Travis Charest's art is beginning to pop up everywhere. Christ, those square jaws. The back cover is more superheroes in mourning.
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Post by codystarbuck on Jul 21, 2024 21:00:57 GMT -5
DC Direct Currents #59 (February cover date, 1993)This month's cover feature is a John Ostrander one shot where Batman and Robin confront the issue of gun control. Sadly, I doubt much has changed since Ostrander wrote this book. Inside, Mike Grell beings us his version of Green Arrow Year One. A new era is beginning in Impact Comics with the Crucible miniseries. There's a very 90s looking revival of Stanley and his Monster. Batman vs. Predator is getting a trade paperback collection. It's World AIDS Awareness Month and DC is doing its part to raise awareness throughout their comics. And here comes Vertigo! In the solicitations, P. Graig Russell begins his beautiful two-part Poison Ivy story in Legends of the Dark Knight, and Travis Charest's art is beginning to pop up everywhere. Christ, those square jaws. The back cover is more superheroes in mourning. Interesting type on P Craig Russell, there. Makes him sound European!  I don't recall reading the gun control book; but, given DC's long history of straddling the line, I doubt it came down too heavily in either side of the debate. That was pre-Columbine, too. I assume the World AIDS Awareness Month project was "Death Talks About Life." That ran about that time and coincided with the launch of the Vertigo brand imprint. Man I miss Karen Berger! Mike Grell had already done the Secret Origin of Green Arrow, back in DC Super Stars #17, which tweaked the original Golden Age origin a bit to add drug smugglers (issue also featured the origin of The Huntress, by Paul Levitz and Joe Staton); but the mini added the wrinkle that he didn't have a fight with the smugglers, as they were stoned and passed out, when he came upon their camp. That was later tweaked for the Arrow series to it being the playground of everyone from Eddie Fyers, to Slade Wilson and Dr Ivo. The Year One mini (called Green Arrow: The Wonder Year) also shows how his new vigilante sideline affects running his business interests as well as finagling his way into the JLA. It was a decent updating of things, with nice covers, from Grell, with interiors penciled by Grell and inked by Gray Morrow. Phil Foglio did Stanley and His Monster, presenting the monster as a demon cast out of Hell and with lots of parodies of other Vertigo books. I haven't read it; but, now I want to. |
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jul 21, 2024 21:04:53 GMT -5
Foglio’s Stanley & His Monster is super fun.
Seduction of the Gun is one of Ostrander’s worst scripts.
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Post by nairb73 on Jul 22, 2024 10:32:25 GMT -5
Foglio’s Stanley & His Monster is super fun. Seduction of the Gun is one of Ostrander’s worst scripts. I read and commented on it in the 'What have you read lately?' thread. It feels like it should have been one of those 'public service freebie' comics, but it's got the body count of a random Punisher story of that era. Plus, the 'awkward exposition info dump',courtesy of Alfred quoting statistics on gun use among teenagers, straight out of the 'Butling For Crimefighters' manual. And at the end, Jenette Kahn thanks students from a Brooklyn high school for their help in ensuring the slang is 'authentic'. |
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Post by commond on Jul 22, 2024 15:44:29 GMT -5
DC Direct Currents #60 (March cover date, 1993)  From this issue onwards, Direct Currents would become a flipbook with the mainstream DC stuff on one side and the Vertigo line on the other. I would become rapidly interested in one side of the mag over the other. The mainstream side barely has any news -- a Superman special and Modesty Blaise miniseries. The Vertigo side has an introduction to the line and news about Death: The High Cost of Living and Enigma by Peter Milligan and Duncan Fegredo. They namedrop Tundra's Skin, which is cool. The Vertigo solicitations have the Vertigo preview, some posters and a trade paperback collection of Books of Magic. The late Rachel Pollack takes over as the writer of Doom Patrol. The mainstream solicitations have bugger all.
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Post by DubipR on Jul 22, 2024 16:32:18 GMT -5
DC Direct Currents #60 (March cover date, 1993)From this issue onwards, Direct Currents would become a flipbook with the mainstream DC stuff on one side and the Vertigo line on the other. I would become rapidly interested in one side of the mag over the other. The mainstream side barely has any news -- a Superman special and Modesty Blaise miniseries. The Vertigo side has an introduction to the line and news about Death: The High Cost of Living and Enigma by Peter Milligan and Duncan Fegredo. They namedrop Tundra's Skin, which is cool. The Vertigo solicitations have the Vertigo preview, some posters and a trade paperback collection of Books of Magic. The late Rachel Pollack takes over as the writer of Doom Patrol. The mainstream solicitations have bugger all. I love that Art Adams Legends of Superman cover. Waverider became a favorite hero of mine from the 90s. That one-shot was alright. The Modesty Blaise book had gorgeous Giordano artwork. A good underrated mini. Death and Enigma were my gateways into Vertigo. I came to Sandman late but jumped on Death and picked up back issues of Sandman. Enigma is one of my favorite Vertigo minis. Great time to be reading DC. |
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jul 22, 2024 17:10:51 GMT -5
Vertigo was a game-changer for the way I pursued comics. I’d been reading Sandman from the beginning and it was about this time I restarted Hellblazer. However, I find Enigma unreadable. And I’ve tried at least four or five times.
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