I going to do this in roughly reverse chronological order, so here goes:

Eternals #1



I could have went with several other issues of this series - e.g. #2, #5, #10, the Annual - but even though the story is barely developed at all in this issue - it's mostly set-up and exposition - and my favourite Eternals characters - Thena, the Reject, and Karkas - don't appear at all, I chose Eternals #1 because it was my first exposure to the book, and while it's little more than an introduction to the basic Eternals concept, what an introduction and what a concept they were!

I'd always been fascinated by Erich von Däniken's whole Chariots of the Gods thing as a kid and still think it's a great conception - not, as von Däniken tried to present it,  as a credible scientific hypothesis, but rather as a creative framework for a fictional, symbolic exploration of human nature and its origins - where we came from, where we are right now, and where we're going as a species.

And that's exactly what Kirby, with great care and skill, did in this book - a basic point that, tragically (and I mean that seriously), has been overlooked or ignored by every writer that's dealt with these characters ever since - something I find hard to forgive, because concepts this good don't come along every day, especially not in mainstream comics.

But of course, therein lay the tragedy - that Kirby was forced by the nature of the industry upon which he depended to make a living to develop his idea for a company and an audience that weren't capable of appreciating it. And thus it's been travestied ever since, on the few occasions Marvel has bothered to revive it.

But anyway, what captured me about this issue was not just the basic idea -  that was just the hook - but the power and grandeur of Kirby's visualistion of it. Everything looked - and felt - so awe-inspringly huge, so immensely significant.

And John Verpoorten's inks added - or rather retained - a certain roughness that are often evident in Kirby's pencils but tend to disappear under the hands of more slick inkers like Mike Royer, lending a kind of depth to the imagery that made it come alive to the reader/viewer. I think Verpoorten's inks added a lot of atmosphere to the first few issues of the series and wish he had stayed on the series, much as I admire Royer's excellent but very different style.



The details and intricacies of the actual development of this basic idea unfolded in later issues - along with some of the best characters ever seen in comics, to my mind - all wasted on Marvel's management, their writers, and their audience, to my everlasting disappointment. But in this first issue, that basic idea and the imagery Kirby used to convey it to the reader were the things that caught my imagination and that make it a special comics memory for me to this day.

I must confess to never reading your Eternals thread back on the CBR berk, but your write up above has intrigued me to the point that, if you were to resurrect it here, I'd definitely have a crack at reading this series along with you.

I used to love choose your own adventure books but I've never seen one in comic form, great choice man.

The Unwritten had a Choose your own adventure issue to reveal the origin of one of its characters a couple years back. Good stuff.

I just thought of something, there came a time when DC and Marvel both copyrighted the term "Superheroes". I wonder how this comic was able to use the term ?

Better (really, really) late than never, I hope ...

12. Lois Lane #77 (80-Page Giant G-39)
"A Collection of Lois' Greatest Shockers"
October 1967 cover date
DC

I had to really restrain myself from making all 4 of my additions to my original 2005 list (we get two more slots this time, of course, & I forced myself to drop two of my original 10 purely to apply a chronological scheme this time around ... in short, I'm sticking purely to comics I encountered at 10 or [mostly] younger) 80-Page Giants. Heck, for that matter, if Cei-U! had put a gun to my head (one of his fondest dreams, I know) & told me I could only pick 80-Page Giants, I'd have been able to do so without batting an eye, so deep is my fondness for these comics.

Anyway. Lois Lane #77 was almost certainly the first issue of Lois' series that I bought, way back in the summer of '67, & it's still a corker. A few years ago I picked one of these, "Lois Lane -- Convict" as one of my all-time favorite shorter stories; the thing was downright grim, especially to the 7-year-old I was when I first encountered it, with an aura of sinister queasiness that created a captivating noir atmosphere. Similar descriptions could be applied to several of the other stories here, especially "The Mad Woman of Metropolis," "The Ghost of Lois Lane" & "Lois Lane's Darkest Secret."

Looking back, this was the 3rd 80-Page Giant I ever bought. The two before it will show up here later. The one after it, too.