Yeah, I like Miller a fair bit too. At least, I like his Daredevil, Batman and Sin City stuff from the 80s and 90s. But no way would he make my Top 5 writer-artists list.

This poll is very U.S.-centric and rather limited in scope to superhero comics of the 70s, 80s and 90s. Which is a shame.

Anyway, I voted "other" for Hergé.

Also, just for the record, I'd pick Chester Gould, Frank Hampson and Will Eisner before any of those listed in this poll.

I read The Uncanny X-Men #141 and #142 in the "Days of Future Past" trade paperback last night...




Traditionally, I've never been much of an X-Men fan, but in the last year I read the "Dark Phoenix" saga and enjoyed it more than I thought I would. The events of these two issues take place only 2 or 3 issues after the "Dark Phoenix" story, which is some going on Chris Claremont's part: two extremely well-regarded and influential storylines within the space of a year!

I was a little shocked when I got the trade paperback collection that this arc is only two issues long; I think I was expecting it to be a good five or six issues. Still, despite being disappointed at the length of the story, "Days of Future Past" certainly packs in a lot into a short space. These are two very dense comics, with a lot of dialogue, a lot of big ideas, and quite a lot of panels per page.

The story begins in bewildering fashion, with a glimpse of the dystopian far-flung future of…2013(!), where the Sentinels have taken over America and killed most of the mutants and superheroes, including the Fantastic Four and many of the X-Men. The consciousness of Kate (Kitty) Pryde travels back from the future and inhabits the body of her younger self in order to warn the X-Men that they must prevent the assassination of Senator Robert Kelly, which is the pivotal moment that leads to this dark future.

Claremont's writing is really good, with a surprising amount of U.S. political satire sprinkled throughout. I guess the fact that 1980 was an election year in America is not a coincidence. Of course, there's plenty of superhero derring-do as well, as the modern-day X-Men face off against the new Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, led by Mystique in her classic late '70s/early '80s costume (my favourite), while the future X-Men battle to stop the Sentinels from triggering a nuclear holocaust. Claremont also hints that Mystique and Nightcrawler may be related (which was news to me, but I'm sure some of the forum's better read X-Fans can fill me in on the details of that).

I think these comics must've been fairly ground-breaking back in the day, what with their time travelling/alternate dystopian timeline plot, which appeared way before films like Terminator or Back to the Future popularised such concepts in the public consciousness. Overall, these were two very enjoyable issues. I might just be turning into a bit of an X-Men fan in my old age!

Yeah, saying that Lee/Romita created MJ is clearly incorrect, though as you point out, the development and design that created the character we all know and love was definitely down to Lee and Romita. But with that understood, I'm not sure how you can definitively say that Ditko created MJ without any input from Stan at all (unless you have a reliable third-party source that I'm unaware of, of course).

ASM #25 was the very first issue where Ditko was credited as the plotter, but clearly MJ had been in the background since issue #15, as you say, and was -- prior to the Romita-drawn reveal in ASM #42 -- used as a running gag about this (almost certainly) ugly girl that Aunt May was desperate to fix Peter up with. Stan and Steve's relationship fell apart not long after ASM #25, with the pair reportedly not talking at all for the last year of Ditko's tenure on Spider-Man (Ditko would apparently drop off his finished art, with brief dialogue notes, and Stan would take the artwork and script it, without the two interacting at all). But prior to this total breakdown in communications, Stan would've almost certainly had some input into the discussions about adding another love interest for Peter to the comic.

I know that Ditko has written in letters that Lee had no input at all into the stories from the second half of his stint on ASM, but as I pointed out earlier in the thread, some pages back, Ditko is himself an unreliable source and certainly had an axe to grind. As author Sean Howe points out in his book Marvel Comics: The Untold Story, Lee was still having input into the Spider-Man stories that Ditko plotted because he was still writing the dialogue for them and would, in fact, often use the dialogue to change minor story elements or lessen some of Ditko's more extreme objectivism.


In a related subject, I think it's fascinating to speculate on what Ditko (and Lee) may've originally intended with Mary Jane before her Lee/Romita makeover. Ditko clearly intended for her to be a stunning beauty (Liz and Betty's reactions in the panels above prove that), but I think he was looking to introduce a love interest for Peter with a more mature, grown-up personality than Gwen or Liz (though not necessarily an older woman). Unlike Romita's MJ, Ditko's version is definitely not a happening, swinging '60s chick...just look at her conservative clothing and headscarf. Now admittedly, the headscarf was likely added as just another device to conceal her appearance, but nevertheless, clearly Ditko was intentionally dressing her like a more sophisticated and glamorous woman, a la Grace Kelly, than the free spirited and groovy Ann-Margret influenced character we eventually got.

I saw the full solar eclipse from Cornwall in 1999. I have also seen two partial eclipses from where I live outside London; one in summer 1982 and another in 2005 or thereabouts.

Solar eclipses are rather eerie, I think. The way the light starts fading and the birds all start singing their evening song in the middle of the day, the way the wind suddenly picks up...it awakens something primeval in you and makes the hairs on your neck stand up. You can absolutely see why they used to freak our ancestors out.

You forgot one...

Which comics or characters are your favourite?