Me too, love Jae Lee, but that book made no sense.

Day Three: Conan #24, "The Song of Red Sonja," 1973.

I was only three.  It would take me years to discover Barry Windsor Smith, and years more to discover Barry Smith without the Windsor. And then, I'd find Conan.  And dislike him as "boring" compared to all of the guys in costumes with super powers.

I obviously don't think the same way now, since this comic made it onto my top 12 list.  What a gorgeous comic book!  A compelling pair of personalities, great storytelling, a done-in-one plot--everything you could ever want.  My only complaint is that it was Smith's last issue, just as the pair reached their creative peak.  Here's hoping we get a bit more Smith output over the next few years.

I remember feeling like that too, it was such a quantum shift in storytelling, and I think if you werent there in the 80s when it all happened, you will never quite "get" how it affected everything. Probably the closest modern examples may be Morrisons JLA, & Ellis's Authority for "widescreen" comics, or the current Image books(and other indy publishers too I have to admit) pushing truly excellent stories beyond the superhero genre.

10. Nexus #7 (First, April 1985)



I loved the early '80s indy explosion, but most of all I loved First Comics.  Not only did they come up with some great books on their own (American Flagg and Jon Sable, Freelance were early faves), they picked up other comics from defunct companies, like Grimjack coming from a back-up in Pacific's Starslayer and, the men of the hour, Capital's Nexus and Badger.

I hadn't heard of either when I saw this in the shop. But the art on the cover looked great and First hadn't really steered me wrong yet, so I grabbed it.  It was amazing.  It was weird that it "started" with part two of a three-parter, but bad grocery store distribution in my youth had made me pretty adept at coming in in the middle of a story.  If, indeed, this is a "story".  I liked the way I was introduced here.  I knew that this was taking place in world I knew nothing about, so the transition was made easier by the fact that they'd put the characters in a world they knew nothing about.  It read like the old "y'know, if I locked these three characters in a closet, it would write itself" idea.  These were very well-formed characters that didn't need their backgrounds and settings to make you "know" them. Half of it was philosophy, half of it was tongue-in-cheek almost Three Stooges like comedy, except for the slapstick.  It was a weird and funny issue-long conversation, more or less, but it hooked me good. Later delving into the series let me know that Nexus' setting was just a deep and well-formed as he was, and before I knew it, I was peppering my speech with "What it is?"s, "Vootie!"s and "Great Goulesairan!"s with much satisfaction. 

I'd gotten the first First issue of Badger, too, but somehow he seemed a lot more fun in juxtaposition to the other two.  His book got better as it went along, but never really reached the heights of Nexus. I still loved the Badger, though.  You can count on that, Larry.

Tales of the Beanworld has been on my to-read list for years. Sounds like it's time to kick it to the top and rectify this terrible oversight in my comic reading.

Master of Kung Fu #49: The Affair of the Agent who Died
November 1976 (cover date Feb 1977)




This was my first issue of MoKF. I had been getting back into comics for over a year, and after a few months of mostly checking out old favourites like ToD, the Avengers, etc, was slowly discovering some of the new series that I'd never heard of before. I'd seen MoKF advertised in other Marvel comics, but the covers often weren't very good and I felt some suspicion that it might be nothing more than a cheap attempt to cash in on the martial arts fad that was pretty big at the time.

All those doubts ere laid to rest as soon as I opened this one up and got an eyeful of Paul Gulacy's incredible artwork. And after getting it home and reading it, I was kicking myself that I hadn't been following this series all along.

Even though I'd never read a single panel of the series before and #49 was a late instalment of a long, multi-part story, Moench's writing somehow had me feeling as involved with these characters and their story as if I'd been reading it all my life. I've rarely felt as emotionally drained at the end of a comic as I did after reading this one.

And Gulacy's artwork was something else. I'd never seen a fight scene in comics or elsewhere that dared to create drama and tension by slowing everything down before the kinetic mayhem ensued. And since at this point in my life I had only heard about the Bruce Lee films, but had never been able to see one (too young to get into the theatre when they came around our town), pages like this felt like a revelation:



MoKF instantly became one of my favourite series and I followed it to the end, even though Gulacy only had one more issue to go before he left.

The artwork was really erratic for a long time after Gulacy left, and it wasn't until Mike Zeck came on board that the artwork started to be a match for Moench's writing again in quality, especially once Gene Day took over as regular inker (and later on as artist).