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Post by MWGallaher on May 2, 2024 6:14:24 GMT -5
Over in this week's cover contest, Icctrombone posted this entry: I usually find it true that in this age of collected editions, comic compilations intended to be and promoted as "comprehensive" rarely are. DC's Steve Ditko omnibuses leave out a couple of Ditko Legion stories, MTU and MTIO collections have to skip over issues with characters whose license Marvel no longer had at the time, Marvel's exhaustive Tomb of Dracula collections leave out one (admittedly easily overlooked) story from one B&W magazine, and this story misses inclusion in DC's Batman by Neal Adams set, although Adams provided half of the art for the story in this issue, taking over when an ailing Jim Aparo couldn't finish the job.
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Post by MWGallaher on Apr 25, 2024 17:57:16 GMT -5
TALES TO ASTONISH #85 I always thought Bill Everett was underappreciated as a Hulk artist.
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Post by MWGallaher on Apr 25, 2024 17:33:46 GMT -5
I'll be heading to Memphis to celebrate the life of the second of my two best friends, both of whom have died this year. I'll be with you CCF friends next time.
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Post by MWGallaher on Apr 20, 2024 10:22:22 GMT -5
I notice that the collection of NIGHT NURSE #5 pencils which I sampled above is from a story that ends on page 14. I suspect that, like many of the lower-tier Marvel comics of that era, they intended to save money by padding it with reprints. I wonder what would have been slotted here--a short romance from the 60's? a 5-pager from LINDA CARTER, STUDENT NURSE?
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Post by MWGallaher on Apr 20, 2024 5:37:55 GMT -5
I've never heard that a fifth NIGHT NURSE was prepped, but there was a fifth issue of THE CAT that never got completed; maybe that's what you are thinking of? The Ramona Fradon pencils for that one are extant, and scans are pretty easy to find online. The 'tentative' #5 was mentioned in the comments here (scroll down to one dated August 13, 2015)
Who knows...as it's just a mention but no actual pics are provided. That said, I do have a big chore ahead trying to get the other 4. Thanks, @hots ! I found the proof: It makes sense that a fifth issue would have been in the works, since that was true of the other two comics in the sub-line when the ax fell. I didn't buy NIGHT NURSE at the time (that would have been embarrassing, and I didn't have any interest anyway), but the logo always stuck with me for some reason. When I read them years later, I found them to be my favorites of this female reader-seeking trio. I remember the explosion of gothic romance in the paperback market in the early 70's, and there was a lesser but still profitable boomlet of nurse romance paperbacks as well. DC tried for the gothic readers and failed with its pair of gothic comics and a heavy lean in that direction in HOUSE OF SECRETS, as well as in superhero comics like TEEN TITANS and even BATMAN.
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Post by MWGallaher on Apr 19, 2024 19:49:01 GMT -5
I heard a Night Nurse #5 was pencilled but never inked and was cancelled after #4. What else was 'prepped' but never made it to final print?
I've never heard that a fifth NIGHT NURSE was prepped, but there was a fifth issue of THE CAT that never got completed; maybe that's what you are thinking of? The Ramona Fradon pencils for that one are extant, and scans are pretty easy to find online. As for other never-published issues, there's SWAMP THING #25, which would have been the first issue establishing the unlikely team of Swamp Thing and Hawkman, which would have been ongoing, and TALES OF THE ZOMBIE #11, which reanimated Simon Garth. Both of them can also--at least partially--be found online.
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Post by MWGallaher on Apr 19, 2024 19:38:54 GMT -5
I was disappointed in claude.ai's breadth of knowledge on Hourman, so I spent a session correcting it and teaching it about the character. I went back to see if it retained anything and it didn't. Now it wants to go on and on about some "Miss Hourwoman" character, and it's forgotten everything I taught it about Thorndyke, Jimmy Martin, the Minutemen of America, and the evolution of the Hourman character. And it seemed so appreciative at the time!
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Post by MWGallaher on Apr 5, 2024 18:19:00 GMT -5
I'm in, I need some socializing!
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Post by MWGallaher on Apr 5, 2024 17:31:40 GMT -5
Anyone read Tim Conrad's Etc. ? I never heard of it until today. According to the credits he wrote it and did the layouts with someone else finishing the art - I wasn't able to find any interior page samples so no idea how it looks. Conrad changed his style from time to time even when not inked or finished by another artist, so I'm a bit leery of this one until I see more. I wasn't able to register the story, because the art was absolutely unbearable. Michael Davis was clearly relying on lots of photo reference and failing even with that aid. I was baffled that an artist so obviously not ready for the big leagues was given such a (relatively) high profile project. And then he was assigned a higher profile Prestige Format spin-off of the then-very-hot Grell Green Arrow series, which was partly saved by Gray Morrow's finishes. Unfortunately, Morrow's contributions couldn't make up for Davis's page composition choice that ruined virtually every page of the comic: Each left-right pair of pages has art spanning the center line, which was rendered unreadable thanks to the square-bound binding.
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Post by MWGallaher on Apr 3, 2024 21:32:31 GMT -5
It's gotta be frustrating when a prestige package like the Amalgam book has to leave one issue out. which one? JLX
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Post by MWGallaher on Apr 3, 2024 16:50:40 GMT -5
It's gotta be frustrating when a prestige package like the Amalgam book has to leave one issue out.
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Post by MWGallaher on Apr 2, 2024 8:10:46 GMT -5
I've reviewed sample issues of each of the Atlas jungle comics in my Jungle Gems or Jungle Junk thread: Jungle Action, Jungle Tales, Lorna the Jungle Queen/Girl, and Jann of the Jungle. Recently, I've been sampling some of the Atlas war titles, which are proving to be a lot better than I expected them to be. There's a lot of fascinating stuff in the Atlas era, and interesting trends, such as their tendency to duplicate words in their titles, presumably based on sales response: Journey Into Mystery, Adventure Into Mystery, Mystery Tales; Battle, Battle Action, Battlefield, Battlefront, Battleground, Marines In Battle; Combat, Combat Casey, Combat Kelly, Navy Combat; Marines in Action, Navy Action, Men In Action, Police Action, Jungle Action, War Action.
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Post by MWGallaher on Mar 23, 2024 15:51:16 GMT -5
I just happened to notice that D. Bruce Berry--pretty much known only as Jack Kirby's inker/letter following Mike Royer in the mid 1970's--preceded Kirby's return to Captain America by one issue, inking Frank Robbins' final issue, #191. This and an ink job over Herb Trimpe on a Killraven story the same month appear to be his only mainstream comics credits outside of his work for Kirby. I wonder if it was some kind of on-boarding exercise to prepare him for working in the Marvel corporate system. (He would proceed to work on some of Kirby's Captain America stories, although Frank Giacoia would become the book's most consistent Kirby inker.)
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Post by MWGallaher on Mar 22, 2024 8:06:39 GMT -5
I think the most fertile ground for imaginative, sustainable series would be derived from Jack Kirby's contributions in the Jimmy Olsen comic: The DNA Project, The Wild Area/The Habitat, Project Cadmus, The Evil Factory... But from the more traditional Superman Family canon, Lexor, the planet where Luthor is a revered hero, might be a cool setting to explore. My affections for weird, isolated environments would make me vote for The Phantom Zone. Gerber's miniseries didn't exactly do the kind of thing I'd like to see there, but the premise was intriguing.
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Post by MWGallaher on Mar 14, 2024 18:21:28 GMT -5
FLAMING CARROT AND REID FLEMING, WORLD'S TOUGHEST MILKMAN number... 32?! December, 2002 Dark Horse publishes a crossover between FC, best known for his Aardvark-Vanaheim series, and RF, whose greatest exploits were published by Eclipse:
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