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Post by MWGallaher on Dec 22, 2023 13:45:41 GMT -5
3. THE KENTS, DC Comics, #1 (August 1997) - #12 (July 1998) By John Ostrander, Tim Truman, Tom Mandrake and Michael Bair  Spun-off from MORE FUN COMICS #101 (Pa Kent, narrator) So how do you get away with getting DC to greenlight an epic Western generational maxiseries with no SF, fantasy, or superhero elements in the late 90's? John Ostrander does it by framing it as part of the history of Superman's adopted paternal line, the Kents. Originally, this was conceived as a spin-off of SUICIDE SQUAD, telling the story of Floyd "Deadshot" Lawton's family, but Paul Levitz suggested the change to the Kents, despite there being some skeletons in the family history. At the time this came out, I wasn't a fan of Westerns, neither comics, nor film, nor television, nor literature. While I can't credit this epic alone for making me a convert, it did open me to the potential breadth in the genre, and I would come to explore it in a lot more depth. I did, however, embrace this wholeheartedly at the time, and continue to appreciate it as a deeply engaging and serious work, woven richly with actual American history, and establishing a foundation for the family's commitment to the values it would imbue in its adopted son, justifying the "American Way" part of Superman's creed.
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Post by MWGallaher on Dec 21, 2023 8:49:24 GMT -5
4. The Legion of Super-Heroes DC Comics Spun off from Superboy’s feature in ADVENTURE COMICS #247  Now that we’re in the top tiers of the lists, I expect to see more and more Legion fans chiming in. My initial exposure to the team would have been in the reprint of “The Lone Wolf Legionnaire” in SUPERBOY #178, in my first month of comics collecting (August, 1971). It had lots of stuff to hook me: the origin of a new (to me) character, one with a really cool code name (“Lone Wolf” stood out from a sea of -boys and -girls and -lads and -lasses), and a really cool costume. Evident in that first sampling was a richness of lore and an incomparable cast size, which so appealed to the youthful urge to accumulate a hefty catalog of knowledge on your chosen domain, be it the types of dinosaurs, the listing of Pokemon, or the powers, names, and origins of a favorite superhero team. I’d never heard of any of these guys: they weren’t on Saturday morning cartoons, they weren’t merchandized in the toy department, I couldn’t remember even glimpsing them on the comics racks. But I was quickly enamored, and while SUPERBOY began to lose favor with me, I returned when the Legion regained prominence and asserted dominance in “his” comic. I’m most fond of the Dave Cockrum, and, to a lesser degree, the Mike Grell stories of the 70’s, as those were the comics of my golden age. If I have one objection to the feature, it’s that its initially unique approach of a massive cast interacting primarily with one another led to the excesses that would follow: a mutant universe where everyone’s in the X-Men or a potential X-Man and all they do is hang out with other X-Men, or a Marvel Universe where everyone eventually becomes an Avenger, including Conan the Barbarian (wait, I don’t think Dracula was ever on the team, was he?).
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Post by MWGallaher on Dec 20, 2023 7:37:22 GMT -5
5. The Beast in AMAZING ADVENTURES #11-17 (March 1972-March 1973), Marvel Comics Spun off from X-MEN (1963)  It’s 1972, and the X-Men are languishing as a bi-monthly reprint. Marvel still has some hopes of getting additional mileage out of the characters—perhaps as solo features? Iceman makes a guest appearance with Spider-Man, and the Bullpen Bulletins tease a potential solo series for him. Havoc makes a prominent appearance with the Hulk, testing the waters on a character with a unique visual but a boring, ill-defined super-power. Then, as the monster craze hits hard, someone realizes they’ve got a strong trademark in “The Beast”, but their Beast is no monster, just an agile mutant with big hands and bare feet… But inherent in their “mutant” conceit is the idea of change, so why not mutate Hank McCoy even further? In years to come, I would find I much prefer the humanoid approach, with the modestly exaggerated physique ultimately turning out to be a more novel idea than yet another monster man, but in 1972, a hairy hulk with an awesome logo would appeal much more to preteen MW when I snapped up the third installment, issue 13’s “Evil Is All In Your Mind” by Steve Englehart, Tom Sutton, and Frank Giacoia, pitting Hank against the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants: The Blob, Unus the Untouchable, and Mastermind. This first sample of the feature didn’t do much to orient me to the premise, but it hooked me, as the Beast is temporarily mind-controlled into assisting the villains. Mysterious supporting characters are introduced, a previous incarnation as a more humanoid member of the X-Men is hinted at, but it would take another few issues for me to pick up on the tragic situation Hank had gotten himself into. I happily bought into the unlikely idea that he could disguise himself with back braces and rubber masks to pass for human--the concept of having to endure suffering to mingle in normal society was something I found touching. Stubbornly refusing his mentor’s aid, tinged with embarrassment at having done this to himself also delivered some emotional impact to me. The feature didn’t last, running only a year at bi-monthly frequency, capped with a reprint issue that had a sad and haunting exit:  Little did I suspect as I watched Jim Starlin usher him off into the darkness that this character would soon become a popular fan favorite, after a personality transplant that transformed him from the tragic and, admittedly, Hulk-like figure he was in this series. And while I appreciated the happy-go-lucky Hank McCoy for what it was, it’s the tragic genius who messed up big-time from AMAZING ADVENTURES that continued to resonate with me.
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Post by MWGallaher on Dec 19, 2023 8:23:00 GMT -5
Today I learned that Mac Raboy was paid $300/week when he took over the Flash Gordon Sunday in 1949. That’s $3870 in 2023 money. Or just over $200,000 a year. That’s pretty good money. We often hear that most Golden Age comics artists really had their hopes on moving up to newspaper syndication, and I guess that's one good reason why. And then there's also the prospect of celebrity; Jack Kirby never got on tv and Life magazine and in the newspaper headlines like Al Capp or Milt Caniff. I'm sure that Raboy was probably given an above average salary, but I've never wondered what an average salary was for an American comic strip artist. |
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Post by MWGallaher on Dec 19, 2023 8:10:48 GMT -5
9. Black Canary1st appearance: Flash Comics #86 Choice run: Adventure Comics #416, 418-419 Black Canary has had a number of solo or feature runs over the course of her long existence, including a run in World's Finest, her own title several times, and Birds of Prey. But my pick is her brief run in Adventure Comics. After having her 1st appearance reprinted in #416, she got an all-new 2-part story in #418 and #419 with unparalleled art by Alex Toth. Unbeatable! I'm surprised we haven't seen Black Canary appear before now, but I'm also surprised at how many characters I've forgotten were spin-offs, as Black Canary was from the Johnny Thunder feature ( not the Alex Toth JT!). |
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Post by MWGallaher on Dec 19, 2023 7:39:31 GMT -5
6. THE HEAP in AIRBOY COMICS, Hillman Spun off from Skywolf in AIRFIGHTERS COMICS v.1 #3, December 1942, with its own feature as backup and occasional cover feature in AIRBOY COMICS #32 (October, 1946)-111 (May, 1953)  You can read the entire Heap saga here! It’s public domain! The Heap was exactly the kind of comic book I would have wanted at the very start of my comics collecting career: a monster’s journey, following a fearsome, misunderstood and hideous creature as it traveled the world, encountering strange situations and conflicts, and escaping to follow its instincts. I found it in SWAMP THING, an early favorite, and soon after that in Marvel’s Man-Thing, never suspecting at the time that path of the comic book swamp monster had been established decades before in an utterly unique backup feature. After four appearances as a threat to Skywolf ( not Airboy!), the folks at Hillman made the crowd-pleasing decision to install The Heap, a World War I German pilot, Baron Emmelmann, whose crash into a Polish swamp led to his resurrection as a mute, blood-drinking mass of ambulatory vegetation, as an ongoing feature. Initially acting as a sort of a pet to an American boy, The Heap became less of a general menace but a more selective deliverer of deadly justice to the wicked. As time went on, the feature’s creative team bothered less and less with tying The Heap’s stories into the comic’s aviation theme, delving into outright horror, morality tales, science fiction…it was sui generis in its day. The Heap was untethered to any home base, wandering across the globe, unable to share its thoughts with the reader. The closest contemporary that I can think of was Dick Briefer’s Frankenstein, which happens to be another favorite of mine, but that character could at least express himself, show some personality and intent. In The Heap, we see a feature that is in many ways a precursor to not only the obvious Man-Thing, Swamp Thing, Morlock 2001, Bog Beast, and Skywald’s own version of “The Heap” but also to characters like The Hulk, Werewolf By Night and The Zombie. It’s probably no coincidence that all of those, as well, are favorites of mine. I really dig seeing creators tackle the challenge of an ongoing feature based on characters that are not relatable in conventional terms, and the fact that Hillman was able to make such a successful run of it with The Heap is impressive. Reading The Heap’s adventures in their entirety is one of my 2024 goals, but every sample I’ve read so far has justified my confidence in including it here.
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Post by MWGallaher on Dec 18, 2023 22:08:37 GMT -5
10. The Deadly Dozen1st appearance: Sgt. Fury #98 Choice run: Combat Kelly and His Deadly Dozen #1-9 The idea of the Deadly Dozen is a direct rip-off from the film "The Dirty Dozen." In their first appearance, the Deadly Dozen are led by Dum-Dum Dugan, but when the team spun off into their own title, they gained a new leader in the form of Combat Kelly (not to be confused with the Atlas character of the same name). The series was a lot gritter than Sgt. Fury right from jump street, but what really makes the short run stand out is the insanely violent and depressing end to the series. Sure, in the movie, many members of the Dirty Dozen were killed, but they still accomplished their mission and there was a sort of "happy ending" for the survivors. Not so here. In the last issue, the whole team dies horribly trying to save Kelly's lady love from Nazis. Kelly himself is the only survivor, but they don't really manage to save her - by the time they rescue her, she's been brutally experimented on by Nazi scientists and left unable to walk. Kelly is left a broken shell of a man who no longer believes in war but has no other way out. It's a shocking and memorable finale. Discovering that comics like this existed are like a glimpse of an alternate reality. I was buying comics at the time this was published, but I either forgot or never realized that things like this and OUTLAW KID were running new material rather than reprints (because I didn't ever even crack up most war, westerns, cartoon, or romance comics as a pre-teen). I start feeling like an expert, both from my own memory of what was on the stands and decades of articles, histories, discussions, and then something like this crops up: nine all-new issues by familiar creators that went so far under the radar I could never have conjured up the most meager of recollections of them! Now if only someone would point out seven issues of a new LORNA THE JUNGLE GIRL from 1972, or an APACHE KID revival running discreetly in WESTERN GUNFIGHTERS, or a long-forgotten Black Knight feature tucked among the reprints in JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY... |
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Post by MWGallaher on Dec 18, 2023 21:43:44 GMT -5
7. Ka-ZarPeople have already written about him, but I don't think anyone has mentioned the very Conanesque art by Barry Smith early in his Astonishing Tales series. If you like BWS Conan, it's worth seeking out. As a kid I had most of his earliest appearances but not his first one in X-Men #10. So I didn't see the note on the splash page about the pronunciation of his name until the 21st century. I still can't get used to calling him "Kay-sar". Agreed. Looking at it in today's light, I have to wonder whether what Lee really meant was "Like Caesar, but with a 'Kay-'"; that is, he didn't think readers would conclude that the 'z' was really supposed to be pronounced like an 's', just that he meant for it to be pronounced with a long 'a' in the first syllable (although I'd bet that's not how "Bob Byrd", the writer of the pulp from which this character descended, would have pronounced it). Anyway, it's quite surprising how many Ka-Zar fans have fessed up thus far in the celebration, eh? |
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Post by MWGallaher on Dec 18, 2023 14:21:05 GMT -5
I found a gap in my list when I realized one of my picks didn't really qualify (the lead was a legacy character following a character who did originate in another title, but the lead of the comic made his debut in his own title. It turned out to be fortuitous, because I thought of a non-Big Two feature that really, really belonged on my list (one that hasn't shown up in anyone's list thus far).
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Post by MWGallaher on Dec 18, 2023 14:01:31 GMT -5
Angry youth and alternative music comes alive! #7- HATE! (1990-2011)Excuse my pedantry (and quite possibly my ignorance as well), but how is this a spin-off? Bradley was the star of his own strip in a number of issues of Neat Stuff, and he was also the star of his own strip in the pages of Hate, albeit with less emphasis on his family, admittedly. So, it's not like he was a co-star who broke out into his own starring strip. The feature that started in NEAT STUFF #1 was "The Bradleys", with Buddy living at home with his parents. Even if he later got his own masthead in some stories in later issues of NEAT STUFF, Buddy's own feature in HATE! is a spin-off of the one named after his whole family. |
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Post by MWGallaher on Dec 18, 2023 8:01:43 GMT -5
7. GCPD #1-4, August-November 1996 By Chuck Dixon, Jim Aparo, and Bill Sienkeiwicz Spun off from various Batman comics over the years  This one’s an indulgence among my entries this year. I’m not much of a fan of police stories, and I’m not that much into the Batman Family of characters, to be honest. But I do love the work of Jim Aparo, who was being shuffled off to the sidelines at this stage of his career. DC still kept him on contract, but didn’t feel confident about using him for high profile, ongoing series, using him on things like fill-in issues of BLACK CANARY, SUPERBOY AND THE RAVERS, and STEEL. This may have been the last use of Aparo’s talents in what could be considered “high-profile”, and even here, he was paired with the inks of Bill Sienkeiwicz, who inked several of Jim’s later efforts, bringing his dramatically different, more experimental and contemporary techniques in order to, hopefully, appeal to readers who might have found Aparo’s style dated. But there’s no hiding Jim’s distinctive page composition, his Dutch angles, his memorable use of body language, his use of “stage props” to provide layered depth to his pages. In the 90’s, many of the “hot” younger artists had grown up exclusively on superheroes: that’s what they loved, that’s what they knew how to draw, and that’s what they did draw. Many had zero interest in depicting the real world. To draw a man in a suit, they would draw a muscle man in spandex and then try to build a suit around him, with no care or comprehension of how fine clothes are crafted to define a silhouette, not to, say, emphasize powerful calf muscles. Aparo had worked in advertising, he understood fashion, he understood different body types, he understood that not everybody should be drawn based on the same ideal physique. Aparo, though, was unabashedly old school, and for him, a more down-to-earth, realistic setting was something he was very comfortable with, something he could do better than the hotshots like McFarlane, Liefeld, Lee. Guys like that would have turned down an assignment like GCPD, or shown themselves to be incapable of pulling it off. No, a DCU miniseries that minimizes the use of costumed adventurers and high tech environments needed a guy like Jim Aparo, and in 1996, there few guys like Jim still around the business. I don’t think GCPD was that much of a sales success at the time, but it did pave the way for later successes, such as the 40-issue GOTHAM CENTRAL series from 2003-2006 and the tv series GOTHAM. A good idea, and one I appreciated in its first incarnation as rendered by my favorite comic book artist, even if the genre isn’t a personal favorite.
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Post by MWGallaher on Dec 17, 2023 7:41:02 GMT -5
I have never in my 62 years have read a story containing Uncle Scrooge. I suspect I would hate him the way I hate Dr. Smith and Sheldon on Lost in space and the Big Bang theory , respectively. You have a very wrong impression of the character. I suspect that if you in your 63rd year would read some Carl Barks Uncle Scrooge, your reaction would be like mine: "Oh, wow, it's as good as everyone says it is." And with that... 8. Uncle Scrooge, as done by Carl Barks and by Don Rosa Spun of from, well you can read it at the top of this thread. I was much like Icctrombone once upon a time, thinking animated-style Disney comics like this wouldn't be of interest to me, but my favorite comics shop dealer kept pushing the Russ Cochran UNCLE SCROOGE by Carl Barks collection, and I finally bit the bullet. "Oh, wow, it's as good as everyone says it is." This is not as some might assume, a Richie Rich-style humor book about a crazy duck obsessed with money. Yes, obsessed he certainly is, but the character is an ingenious planner, an intrepid adventurer, an impatient, irascible and demanding but genuinely loving uncle, a perhaps-initially-off-putting but ultimately reliable and capable friend and ally. Of all American comic characters derived from animation, I don't think you could find another whose character, personality, and history were as richly developed, consistently portrayed, and genuinely complex as Scrooge McDuck's. Barks' and Rosa's Scrooge stories are as much adventure comics as they are humor comics. As adventure comics, their plots are more engaging and complex than your usual superhero slugfests; as humor comics, a single installment is more genuinely laugh-provoking than the entire collection of, say, the Atlas-era "funny" comics. Every list of "100 American Comics You Must Read", "Best American Comics", whatever broad-range top rankings you can come up, will have Uncle Scrooge up there. If you've never sampled them, you can certainly be excused for any presumptions. If you've read them and said "Nah, not so great", well, I'd be very puzzled. |
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Post by MWGallaher on Dec 16, 2023 9:11:14 GMT -5
"Pantha" from DEADSHOT #2 by Ostrander, Yale, and McDonnell:  Am I reading too much into this or is this a dig at parody of a certain comic book writer? |
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Post by MWGallaher on Dec 16, 2023 8:06:24 GMT -5
If there's any debate, I'm on your side here, EdoBosnar : MTIO was indeed a Thing comic that just so happened to feature a co-star in most (but not all!) issues. |
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Post by MWGallaher on Dec 16, 2023 7:33:26 GMT -5
9. ELONGATED MAN #1-4, January-April 1992, DC Comics By Gerard Jones, Mike Parobeck, and Ty Templeton Spun off from THE FLASH #112, April/May 1960  The Elongated Man and I go way back. Not only do he and I share the same cover date for our debut appearance in this world, I read an Elongated Man story, FLASH #210’s “A Tasteless Trick” by Skeates and Giordano, in my first month of comic collecting. With such a significance in my personal comics history, Ralph’s 1992 miniseries was an early addition to my slate. He appears today substituting for my original #9, a series that I decided was just too dark and grim to suit the spirit of the season (but which held a revelation that I was only able to appreciate on re-reading this week, thanks to my #10 pick…and I’ll bring that up elsewhere!). In stark contrast, ELONGATED MAN is a high-spirited romp, by a writer whose skills at humor I always enjoyed (let’s separate his talent from the serious crimes for which he is being punished) and two artists, Parobeck and Templeton, whose every drawing has been a consistent delight! I was sold on this immediately by the idea on which the miniseries is predicated: just as Jerry Lewis was (supposedly) respected as a cinematic genius in Europe, so was Ralph Dibney celebrated as a great superhero, despite his lesser regard in the DC pantheon among American comics fans. Taking Ralph and Sue on a European tour made perfect sense given their life of luxury, thanks to Sue’s status as a wealthy heir of the Dearbon dynasty—why wouldn’t they be solving mysteries as they live the life of carefree jet-setters? The creative team visits established DCU European state Modora, where they encounter Green Lantern villain Sonar, “Master of Sound”, new European-themed villains like the wonderful Calamari and a gang of sausage-themed Germans, with slinky Silver Age villain Copperhead plaguing them throughout their adventure. Elongated Man may be considered a poor imitation of Plastic Man, but this was way funnier than any of DC’s attempts as spotlighting Plas in the Silver or Bronze Ages. I can’t imagine any creative team better suited to this assignment: clever script, gorgeous art, bright, cheery coloring, fun, fun, fun!
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