The Second Day of Classic Comics Christmas '06

[Cei-U!]

Coming in at #11 is one of the sweetest, most endearing characters to ever appear in comics: Arn Saba's Neil the Horse. Combining the starkly simple look of early Disney animation with the zany innocence of Gracie Allen and the impulsiveness of a hyperactive three-year-old, Neil plays the perfect foil for the cynical, self-absorbed (and more realistically drawn) Soapy. And like the classic animation characters, Neil lent himself to a broad spectrum of plots, settings and approaches.

Cei-U!
I summon the pixilated pony!

[Aaron King]

11. Green Lantern
One Christmas, when I was in middle school, I got All-American Comics Archives 2, Green Lantern Archives 1, and The Greatest Flash Stories Ever Told. With All-American (some of the earliest hero team comics), I got a glimpse of a heroic universe I never knew existed. With Flash Stories, I found out how that past world interacted with the DC Universe that I knew. And taking all three books, I really got into the idea of “legacy characters,” a practice that passes a single super-hero identity through multiple characters.

Green Lantern has a natural and obvious appeal: anyone with enough willpower can do anything as long as they’re worthy of a little green ring. The original GL of the forties had a garish costume and a mystical background. The GL of the sixties was in streamlined spandex and part of an intergalactic corps of space police. It was also one of the few comics I had at my dad’s house after my parents got divorced. It was an Englehart/Staton issue, and I’ll always remember how crazy the alien lanterns looked as they fought through a glowing green jungle gym. Later on, GL was the first comic I subscribed to. At this point, the guy with the ring was a young struggling artist, adding another resonating factor.

Since this is all about choosing a favorite, though, I’d have to go with John Stewart (or as my non-comic-reading friends call him, “The Black Green Lantern”). He’s a swell guy, an architect, and was mostly unaffected by the Grim and Grit.

In This Ring: Golden Age Green Lantern Archives; Showcase Presents Green Lantern; Green Lantern (volume 3) #50-55, #0; Justice League Adventures; Justice League Unlimited

[shjonescrk]

No. 11 - Thor

It was through Thor, I really got into Jack Kirby. Thor appeared as a backup story in Spider-man Weekly comic reprinted in the early 70s in the UK. I liked it but I wasn't overwhelmed by it. However, once we got to the Absorbing Man and Harris Hobbs stories, Thor just exploded on me. Then we got Hercules, the Recorder, Ego and so on. For me this is Kirby at his best and hell, I even liked Colletta's inking.

Mayhap it's time to digeth out my Thor Treasury editions. Verily, I say, enow, let it be so.

Steve

PS thanks to Slam for the welcome in the previous thread.

[Kan-Man]

Coming in at #11 is... Hourman



I'm going to echo some of the sentiment from yesterday - most of my choices are based on a specific period in the character's development. For Hourman, I'm talking about the original, the real deal. And I'm also discounting the Miraclo addiction too because that came after I stopped reading.

Why Hourman? Good question. First of all, great costume. And I like the premise behind the character as well. But I don't really have many strong reasons beyond nostalgia. My dad was a comics nut growing up in the 40s and 50s and he passed that along to my brother and me. Like many others on this board, I learned to read through comics. But before I could, my brother and I would squeeze close to my dad on the couch while he read to us. At the time (early 70s), DC was reprinting a lot of Golden Age stuff at the back of 100 page specials and elsewhere. This is where I saw a lot of the original JSA gang. This slot could have gone to Dr. Mid-Nite or the original Sandman, but for some reason my internal tiebreaker awarded the spot to Hourman.

And since today is my birthday, I think it's appropriate to dedicate this posting to my dad for not only sharing this hobby/passion with me but also never allowing me to feel ashamed of it either.

Just so this doesn't come across as a eulogy, my dad is still (knock on wood) alive and kicking.

[MWGallaher]

#11: Harvey Pekar
I ran across my first issue of American Splendor at the local Huntsville comics shop in 1983, a few months after moving here. In a magazine box were several issues; I vaguely remembered seeing a positive review of the series somewhere, and they were only a dollar a piece, so I left with several issues.
Over a decade spent reading adventure comics didn't prepare me for this. I was half way through the first story, in which Harvey helps a friend lug a curiously heavy rolled up carpet to someone's apartment, and I was thinking, they're gonna find a body inside there! Nope. As it turns out, they give up and go home. The end. What th--?! Are these supposed to be stories or what?! Page after page, nothing happens, or something trivial happens, or people have ordinary conversations, and I, adventure hound though I was and am, got hooked. The biographical comics of Harvey Pekar are an expansive experience, and some of the best evidence that the comics medium can tell stories as emotionally complex and as rich as any other.
Harvey's comic proves that no life is uninteresting, even that of an unambitious file clerk. There's not a single comic book character that I feel I "know" as well as I do Harvey Pekar. I know him and love him.
Thanks, Harvey!

[SamuraiJack]

THE FALCON!

For the life of me I can’t figure out why Sam Wilson gets no love. Granted, his first few appearances, as well as his costume/back story are a little odd, but Sam ran with Captain Frickin’ AMERICA! And he’s got a pet falcon named Redwing! Wow, it’s no wonder he’s lacking praise, or that he made my list. I’ve been a big fan of C-listers for a while, and something about Falcon just sings to me. I love his look (yes, even the silly green costume), his ‘powers’ (a flying Aquaman? AWESOME! *grins*),
and his loyalty and ties to Cap.

I think Sam really first spoke to me back in the Avengers, right after Gyrich forced the team to take him in just to promote racial diversity. Sam left the group shortly after learning this, which to me defined his moral code and made me stand up and take notice. Ever since I’ve gobbled up everything he’s appeared in, including the miserable (IMO) Marvel Max U.S. War Machine series. And I LOVED the short-lived Captain America and the Falcon series out a couple years back. Here’s to you, Sam- may you soar the skies of the Marvel U for a good long while yet…

[Red Oak Kid]

11. The Hulk

As others have said, my choices are based on the time when I was reading and collecting comics off the newstands. So in the early 70s I was introduced to the Hulk via the Roy Thomas/Herb Trimpe issues. Plus Marvel was reprinting his earlier stories from the 60s.

I like the Hulk for the reason that I like nearly all of my choices here, he is a loner who is misunderstood by "normal" society and all he wants is to be left alone. That's how he was during this period. He went to the desert of the South West just to be left alone. But Thunderbolt Ross just couldn't leave him be. He only fought when he was attacked. Left to his own devices he would usually help people or animals who also were being persecuted the way he was.

The Hulk/Banner relationship has been changed around many times since then. But I'm really not aware of all the variations because I stopped reading Hulk in the latter 70s.

But I really liked the Hulk I knew then.

I've just realised that the above describes all but one or two of my choices, so get ready for a bunch of misunderstood loners with no social skills characters from me in the days ahead.

[MDG]

MWG--I can't believe that I forgot Harvey! Probably because I don't think of him as a "character."

My #11 is..... E-Man!

Maybe it was because Cuti and Staton didn't have to worry about how the character fit into "the Charlton universe"--because there wasn't any--E-man seemed to have a "looseness" that was becoming lost in comics as continuity and cross-overs started to proliferate in the Bronze Age.

http://alectronn.homestead.com/Eman.html

Nick Cuti is a good writer and Joe Staton had just the right balance of cartoonishness and realism for a series that didn't take itself too seriously, but respected it's characters.

MDG

[Budman]

11. The Invisible Girl/Woman

Since Sue was one of the first women I ever loved, she might have made the list for that alone. But she is also a comic book heroine who evolved as time went on.

A friend of mine in seminary used to say that if the Invisible Girl from the early days of the Fantastic Four were to have filled out a personnel questionnaire, she would have wrote, “Name: Susan Storm; Occupation: Hostage.” And he wasn’t far from wrong. Sue’s dialog would consist of emotional releases along the lines of, “Oh, Reed, my darling, how can we ever hope to defeat the horribly evil Blastarr? He... He’s coming this way! His sneer is so cruel, so cold! I think I’m...going to faint!!” And when asked by the comic book readers to defend Sue’s presence on the team, Ben Grimm responded by saying that she helped morale because guys like to have a pretty gal around.

But eventually Stan Lee began portraying her as more than just the eye candy girlfriend of the main hero. For example, in the Overmind saga, Sue dared call Dr. Doom a coward to his face. And writers such as Roy Thomas, Chris Claremont, and John Byrne expanded her powers and freed Sue’s imagination up to use them in new ways. She also received more combat training. Her core personality traits of being loyal and protective toward those she loves, and of possessing the personal confidence she must have had to be a top model and actress (her early emotional “We’re doomed, my love” outbursts notwithstanding) came to the fore and were built upon to the point where Sue became a feminist icon of sorts.

She is now the most powerful member of the Fantastic Four and the most deadly and dangerous. I loved the way Claremont had her calmly explain to Doom that if he ever tried to break up her family again, she would kill him. And then she told him how she would do it.

And it’s always a bonus when writers and artists remember that Sue is supposed to be one of the most attractive women in the entire Marvel Universe and write and draw her as such.

[Scott Shaw!]

No. 11: DRAGON MAN

http://www.comics.org/coverview.lasso?id=18970&zoom=4

"Dragon Man"?!?

Yup. Dragon Man first appeared in FANTASTIC FOUR No. 35's "Calamity On The Campus!" (Feb, 1965), possibly the last "small" story in Simon and Kirby's run on the book (and it was inked by my favorite Kirby inker, the great Chic Stone!) Dragon Man started out as a stone statue of Professor Gilbert's, but when his new lab assistant, Diablo (the FF's least-popular villain), brings the granite creature to life, he flies and breathes fire! Sure, it was a goofy concept, but I was 13 at the time, and as both then and now, I LIKE goofy!

In his first appearance, Dragon Man didn't have much to do other than go on a rampage around a college campus. But Jack Kirby's design for the creature remains one of my all-time favorites: an unlikely combination of a Protoceratops' face, a humanoid body (wearing tiny Underoos), bat-wings, a writhing anaconda-like tail and a swollen cranium -- suggesting greater intelligence than one would expect in a monster!

When Dragon Man made his second appearance in FF No. 44 's "The Gentleman's Name Is Gorgon!" (Nov., 1965) -- the first of a continuous string of ever-more-cosmic tales for "The World's Greatest Comic Magazine" (hey, it WAS!) -- Jack and Stan (and inker Joe Sinnott; man, what a welcome change from Vinnie The C's blandifyingly awful hackwork) portrayed the reptilian critter as Marvel's version of King Kong...and by Godfrey, it worked! Dragon Man became fixated with the blonde Sue Storm (or was it Sue Richards by that time?), and just like Kong (my all-time favorite movie star), proved to have a somewhat lovable quality about him (when he wasn't beating the soup outta Ben Grimm, that is.) At least, *I* found it lovable...and I still DO!

So let's hear it for Marvel's equivalent of King Kong -- and my eleventh favorite comic book character -- DRAGON MAN!

Aloha,

Scott!

[Hintermann]

#11 Goofy: When I first got into Mickey Mouse in the early 60s, I did not actually like this stumbling, bumbling sidekick. But over the years, the character sorta grew on me, especially after I met my wife, who likes him a lot. I was not even sure which animal he was supposed to represent until I realised that he was the successor to Dippy Dawg and therefore himself an anthropomorphic dog. Goofy became one of my favourites after I started reading some classic Bill Wright stories like "World Under the Sea" where Goofy is a crazy inventor or the Chrimas story "Special Delivery" . In later stories by Paul Murry & Jack Bradbury, Goofy often played an important role, his antics often the stepping stone for some adventure as in "The Great Stamp Search", "The Red Wasp Mystery" or "Sneezing Burro of Mystery Mesa". One of my all time favourite stories is Dick Moore's classic "The Wonderful Whizzix" where Goofy has a major role. Paradoxically, Goofy's character was not as well portrayed in his own shorts, usually by Jack Bradbury; I did not like him in the 'Super Goof' guise. But overall I have a soft spot for the guy and Goofy certainly deserves a place in my own Comic characters' hall of fame.

Save0046.JPG

[Rob on the Job]

Aren't the 12 days of Christmas supposed to be the 12 days between Dec. 25 and Jan. 6 [Epiphany] -- not the 12 days before Christmas?

[Lone Ranger]

Aren't the 12 days of Christmas supposed to be the 12 days between Dec. 25 and Jan. 6 [Epiphany] -- not the 12 days before Christmas?

Umm....

So are you nominating Ebenezer Scrooge from the Classics Illustrated version of A Christmas Carol?

[Rob on the Job]

Umm....

So are you nominating Ebenezer Scrooge from the Classics Illustrated version of A Christmas Carol?

Uhh ... I'm leaving.

I was never here.

[Lone Ranger]

11. Sandman/Wesley Dodds

I was only vaguely aware of the Golden Age Sandman when I started reading Sandman Mystery Theatre. I had seen him in a few JLA books, but that’s about it. I was always intrigued by this guy in a trench coat, fedora and gas mask; as he looked so different from all of the other Earth-Two heroes. I remember that Justice League of America #46 was one of the first Silver Age books I actively tracked down because I just had to know about this guy.

SMT was a revelation. It started during my undergrad years in Montreal – I wasn’t reading too many comics back then as money was scarce and the nearest LCS was far enough away that I’d probably drop the ‘L’. The closet store to my apartment was an artsy-fartsy bookstore on St. Denis that carried a small selection of comics like Maus and Love & Rockets. Luckily, they carried some Vertigo books. I saw this strange looking comic called Sandman Mystery Theatre and thought it might be worth checking out.



I am ever glad I did. In my opinion, there was no finer series published in the 90s. I never missed an issue and was completely enthralled by this lead character who was the unlikeliest of heroes. The great thing about Wesley Dodds is that he’s an everyman (well, except for the cash). He isn’t exactly the most ‘buff’ of heroes, his got bad eyesight and he hairline is in freefall. He’s a quiet fellow and seems quite shy. It took a very strong woman, in Dian Belmont, to slowly bring Wes out of his shell. What a pair they make!

What I really love about Wesley, though, is his need to become the Sandman. He is haunted by dreams, and the only way he can fight these inner demons is to step out into the night seeking justice. Quite often, he’s in way over his head and this makes him incredibly courageous as he only relies on a mixture of spooky intimidation and luck.

I was very sad when the series came to an end. There were any other books that gave me the same thrill as SMT. Since then, I’ve purchased the Sandman Archives to see where it all began. I know understand that right from the get go, Sandman was a very different hero – more in line with a pulp character like the Shadow or Phantom Detective than most of the DCU’s cape and tights set.