|
Post by mikelmidnight on Feb 9, 2024 12:39:12 GMT -5
In American Flagg!, Howard Chaykin gave a very distinctive sound to one of the government's stock weapons, gas canisters fired from a cylinder:
Sound of firing: PAPA PAPA Sound of canister hurling through the air: OOOOO Sound of gas being released: MOW MOW
|
|
|
Post by mikelmidnight on Feb 6, 2024 11:37:40 GMT -5
"Skull & Bones", featuring Tom Strong- Tom Strong, recently arrived from Attabar Teru, is being interviewed by Greta Gabriel. His ignorance of crime in the city (enough for a whole page feature, in The Millennial, the Millennium City newspaper) leads Greta to give him an impromptu tour of the lowlife district, including a place called Hank's Bar, where they look for info on mobster Charles Costanza, aka Charley Bones. The two hoods in the bar call her a female dog and Tom tosses the pixies out, tru da window! Tom asks them nicely and they cough up the info on Charley, who had an accident with heavy water and is planning a big heist at the McCay Tower, at midnight. They go to find Charley Bones. Tom climbs up the side of the tower, with Greta on his back and surprises Bones, during the heist. he runs for the cable car and Greta chases, which means Tom has to rescue her.... Bones tears out the brake and tosses Greta out of the car and Tom dives out and rescues her, then drops to another car, as Bones is trapped in a car, with a bomb, which he forgot about and it blows up. Tom finds his purpose in Millennium City and sets out to become the city's guardian and root out crime. These early stories are interesting particularly because Tom is so aggressive in them, much more the standard two-fisted crimefighter we're used to seeing. The contemporary Tom is more thoughtful, and while no pacifist, seeks out non-violent conflict resolution as a priority. This story was alluded to in the main Promethea comic, suggesting events like this (but not quite as depicted) did in fact happen to this incarnation of the character.
|
|
|
Post by mikelmidnight on Feb 6, 2024 11:29:50 GMT -5
I have all my Spider-Man comics filed under 'D' for Ditko. I used to keep some of my favourite creators separate- Alan Moore, Kirby, Gerber, the Hernandezes, Clowes, ... but it's hard to be consistent with it, especially with the Marvel/DC suff whisch is usually in collaboration and part of an ongoing title with a history before and after any one contributor. My strategy is based on what I'm liable to want to read. Typically, I collect comics based on author, so Moore's, Kirby's, Hernandez's, and Clowes' work is all together. But if I feel like reading a Superman, Batman, or Spider-Man comic, then I usually want to read a run of them, so they are filed under 'S,' 'K,' and 'D' respectively.
|
|
|
Post by mikelmidnight on Feb 5, 2024 12:19:59 GMT -5
I have all my Spider-Man comics filed under 'D' for Ditko.
|
|
|
Post by mikelmidnight on Feb 5, 2024 12:17:25 GMT -5
I see little bits of Don Heck, here and there, but I don't know if he is cleaning up Kupperberg, before Stone gets his pass or what, but three artists aren't cutting the mustard, working together. According to GCD, Don Heck's contribution was pencilling pages five to seven, which, along with Heck's portion of Invaders #35, he had drawn for a proposed Liberty Legion comic, which failed to materialise. It's just as well. That's why I've long insisted Roy Thomas ought to have revived the USA Comics gathering of heroes: the Liberty Legion was never going to go anywhere and there's no way even as a fan of the Invaders comic that I thought the market would support that sort of spinoff.
|
|
|
Post by mikelmidnight on Feb 5, 2024 12:10:38 GMT -5
I have no interest in the film beyond the oxymoronic title: FIRST BLOOD PART TWO
|
|
|
Post by mikelmidnight on Jan 31, 2024 12:12:43 GMT -5
Whizzer and Miss America report to Namor's flagship, do a bit of groveling to be let on the team, then join the rest. Meanwhile, Cap puts in a radio call to his child decoy...sidekick. The Invaders are being sent to San Diego, to look into spy activity and they decide to meet up, in Tijuana, for a donk....uh...a show. Whizzer and Miss America again revel in leaving behind a bunch of losers, to join the winning team.... I wrote a fanfic once where Roosevelt's idea was for the superhero teams to learn each others' tactics by rotating members. So the Invaders got Whizzer & Miss America; the Liberty Legion got Super Sabre and Yankee Clipper; and the Crimson Commando's squad got Miss Patriot and (the original) Human Top.
|
|
|
Post by mikelmidnight on Jan 24, 2024 12:06:41 GMT -5
I consider myself a Doc Savage fan, though I haven't read all that much, and I imagine that's what they were going for with the safari jacket but it never worked for me: didn't like the look in itself and also thought it inappropriate for a super-duper character like Wonder Man, as opposed to the relatively more down to earth pulp hero. My only objection to the outfit is that whenever I see it, I go looking for the rest of the THUNDER Squad.
|
|
|
Post by mikelmidnight on Jan 22, 2024 12:34:49 GMT -5
I quite enjoyed The Golden Age, although it was clear to me it was a transitional book. And I enjoyed the first couple episodes of The Silver Age, published by Eclipse.
But yeah, this completely underwhelmed me. Not so much the abuse revelation (which felt meretricious to me), but the pretense that anything being offered by YM was somehow profound or worldchanging, when it was all pretty much the obvious critiques one would make in that kind of situation.
And the Dark Ages are supposed to be about the return of Bates ... whom I am thoroughly bored of by now.
Grant Morrison had wanted to take over the title, but that didn't happen because of the acrimony between him and Moore; I usually rate Gaiman over Morrison but now I'm wondering where he'd have gone with it.
|
|
|
Post by mikelmidnight on Jan 22, 2024 12:28:28 GMT -5
Though at times he could lay it on just too thick. His Silver Surfer being an example. People say Kirby failed without Stan. Though the reality behind the cancellation of the Fourth World is more complex than "it didn't sell". It sold better than other books that were not cancelled. Moreover, this was a period of time when there was an enormous amount of fraud in the comic retailing world. A lot of store owners were hoarding titles they considered collectible, which resulted in Marvel and DC being convinced that some highly commercial properties were not selling. The 4th World books, and a lot of Neal Adams' comics, received that treatment.
|
|
|
Post by mikelmidnight on Jan 19, 2024 14:53:34 GMT -5
I tend to take anything said by a guy who says he is a wizard and worships a 3000 year old snake god who lives in his toilet with a grain of salt. No offense, but I always chuckle when people wat to reduce Moore down to something that simple. I read that long interview session he did, I forget with whom, but it was collected into a book or special magazine, in the 00s (or very early 10s), where he described his beliefs and practices and, basically, it boiled down to meditative practices and the whole snake god thing merely a focal point for meditation. Not very dissimilar to a mandala. At least, that was my take. Moreover, he has explicitly stated that the reason he chose the snake god to worship, is that it was (even in antiquity) an obvious con and didn't really exist!
|
|
|
Post by mikelmidnight on Jan 12, 2024 12:57:17 GMT -5
Top 10 came back for Season 2, but in far lesser hands and it isn't worth covering, without Moore, just as Tom Strong continued and I will skip those, apart from Moore's last story, which was withheld, until the end. One question I've never received an answer to: I know Moore had plans for a Season 3, but I don't know whether anything was ever written down and whether any notes of his were ever applied to the subsequent publications.
|
|
|
Post by mikelmidnight on Jan 9, 2024 11:54:11 GMT -5
What's everyone's favourite Manara recommendations, while we're talking about him? I personally don't care for Milo Manara's artwork all that much. The only one I've ever liked was Gullivera (his soft-core porn take on Gulliver's Travels) because the absurdity of the original text leant itself well to rather silly erotic fantasies.
|
|
|
Post by mikelmidnight on Jan 5, 2024 11:56:33 GMT -5
It certainly seems lazy and creatively bankrupt. I just read your reply after reading about Ramona Fradon retiring... and somehow, for a split second, thought you were replying to that. I did too! (but it was obvious sarcasm in that case)
|
|
|
Post by mikelmidnight on Jan 5, 2024 11:52:24 GMT -5
So I have acquired (from the library) the previously mentioned Maggie the Mechanic collections. There are no references to were any of the stories come from, just that this is the 'first five years of Locus stories'. It claims them to be presented in 'perfect chronological order' (no idea if that means in story or release. I read the first few and the art is nice (great in the first one, good but rushed feeling in the others) but I'm throughly confused. If it's the collection I'm thinking of, it's the Jamie material from L&R in chronological order ... plus a couple of stories which appeared elsewhere, inserted here in chronological order. Sci-fi Maggie! This is a mood piece, which you'll either gravitate to or not. It's not about Hopey; it's about Isabel (Izzy) Ruebens. We see her as a well put together writer her, and ... something dramatic happens to her ... because we see her many years later as the burnout in the next story. The purpose of the story is to show different aspects of the characters' lives. They're a bunch of punks, but Maggie also has a job which takes her to some pretty wild locations and adventures. The threads unite better as the series continues. This is really just a humorous one-shot ... but Penny is also a continuing character and will meet up with Maggie and Hopey later on. To be fair, I never liked Maggie much either. I like it for the other characters and the things happening around her, more than her personally.
|
|