What Classic Comic Have You Read Lately? Pt. 2

[FanboyStranger]

Just read Marvel Premiere #41, Doug Moench and Tom Sutton's Seeker 3000!. This thing positively blew my mind, and I'm amazed it didn't even warrant a second appearance anywhere. Has anyone read the the follow-up limited series that was published two decades later? I am not familiar with the creative team and am wondering if it's anywhere near as good.

I remember reading it back in the day, but not too much else about it. Dan Abnett was the writer for the first few issues, and I think Ian Edgington took over for him. Both of those guys would go on to do excellent sci-fi books, but their Seeker 3000 was just average. It was a reach for Marvel at the time, and was actually part of a planned sci-fi line.

[shaxper]

Just finished the Tales of the Zombie run. #9 confused me in that it moved me deeply (including Doug Moench's back up story about "Herbie the Liar"), but it wasn't Gerber.

So what's the story, there? Was this the point at which Gerber left Marvel, or did he just walk off the book? And then, while it made artistic sense to kill off Simon Garth without Gerber, it seems like a disastrous decision from a business perspective (and, in fact, Tales of the Zombie made it exactly one issue without him).

So does anyone know the full scoop?

[JKCarrier]

So what's the story, there? Was this the point at which Gerber left Marvel, or did he just walk off the book? And then, while it made artistic sense to kill off Simon Garth without Gerber, it seems like a disastrous decision from a business perspective (and, in fact, Tales of the Zombie made it exactly one issue without him).

Checking the dates, it looks like this was around the same time that Gerber took over DEFENDERS. Whether the ZOMBIE book changed direction because Gerber left, or Gerber left because they were changing the direction, is anyone's guess.

[shaxper]

Finished Gaiman's The Sandman tonight. I'm still not sure how I feel about the ending -- the final story, as well as the entire final volume, but I cried on the last page, truly as though I'd lost a loved one. Only had one book ever do that to me, and never a comic book until now.

[Reptisaurus!]

Finished Gaiman's The Sandman tonight. I'm still not sure how I feel about the ending -- the final story, as well as the entire final volume, but I cried on the last page, truly as though I'd lost a loved one. Only had one book ever do that to me, and never a comic book until now.

I love Sandman, but the last three issues never did much for me. The WAKE (the actual story) was at least very pretty and had Darkseid in it.

I always tear up at the end of A GAME OF YOU.

[shaxper]

I love Sandman, but the last three issues never did much for me. The WAKE (the actual story) was at least very pretty and had Darkseid in it.

I always tear up at the end of A GAME OF YOU.

Funny. A Game of You was one of my less favorites of the series. I'm so passionately in love with most of it, yet four volumes (nearly half the series) didn't do much for me: Doll's House, Dream Country, A Game of You, and World's End.

[Slam_Bradley]

Funny. A Game of You was one of my less favorites of the series. I'm so passionately in love with most of it, yet four volumes (nearly half the series) didn't do much for me: Doll's House, Dream Country, A Game of You, and World's End.

Dream Country is my favorite. Every one of those four stories is gold and every one would be on a list of my fifty favorite issues of all time.

A Game of You is probably the most polarizing arc in the series. Gaiman was heavily involved in The Sandman Companion, giving a ton of interviews for it. A Game of You was apparently the closest to a "love it or hate it" story that the series had. It tended to break down on gender lines, with it being the favorite arc of female readers with the males generally not liking it that well.

[Reptisaurus!]

Dream Country is my favorite. Every one of those four stories is gold and every one would be on a list of my fifty favorite issues of all time.

A Game of You is probably the most polarizing arc in the series. Gaiman was heavily involved in The Sandman Companion, giving a ton of interviews for it. A Game of You was apparently the closest to a "love it or hate it" story that the series had. It tended to break down on gender lines, with it being the favorite arc of female readers with the males generally not liking it that well.

Oh yeah, I read that as well. I tended to like all the girl-preferred arcs - Game Of You, Doll's House, and Kindly Ones are my three favorites. It must be all that time I spent trying to touch my feminine side.

[shaxper]

Oh yeah, I read that as well. I tended to like all the girl-preferred arcs - Game Of You, Doll's House, and Kindly Ones are my three favorites. It must be all that time I spent trying to touch my feminine side.

It wasn't the feminine focus that turned me off (to sound like every racist that ever lived, "most of my favorite comic book characters are female"), but rather that I generally don't like Gaiman's women. I love the fantasy-based ones (Death, Nuala, Nada, etc), but not his "I hate my life, and I used to be so innocent" arch-type that he tries with Rose Walker, Barbie, and Lyta at various times. Note the parallels between Barbie and Lyta's relationships with their best friends, too. They're practically the same character with different back stories and outcomes.

[shaxper]

Dream Country is my favorite. Every one of those four stories is gold and every one would be on a list of my fifty favorite issues of all time.

Loved and was thoroughly disturbed by the Calliope story, Dream of a Thousand Cats was clever and interesting but didn't really wow me, Facade was perhaps too brutally depressing to be savored, and A Midsummer Night's Dream is, in my mind, a severely overrated story, and I say this as an amateur Shakespeare scholar who adores both the author and the play that serves as the subject of that issue. I felt like he understood Shakespeare a whole lot less here than he did when he wrote The Tempest so many years later, and the emotional impact didn't quite connect for me either.

I feel like Gaiman found a more solid voice with Season of Mists and the volumes that followed. He moved away from stories that tried too hard to be clever and/or shocking and began having more fun simply exploring the full extent of his concept/universe. The cleverness and shock naturally followed with less seeming effort after that.

For what it's worth, I felt about Fables and Reflections the way you seem to about Dream Country.

[Roquefort Raider]

Legionnaires #2-6.

What an underrated gem those early Legionnaires issues are. After the doom and gloom tone that had prevailed in the regular Legion of super-heroes book for the previous three-four years, the return to light hearted adventure, optimism and camaraderie in Legionnaires was a change that gave it its own identity and made us forget that the characters were, as far as we could tell, clones of the originals. Personally, I had been a little annoyed at the idea of an independent Legionnaires book that would feature these younger versions of the established heroes in a context that would simply omit to mention their origin, and would present them as the "real" Legion. I though that interactions between the old and new Legionnaires had a lot of unexplored dramatic potential (one that is currently being milked in the Marvel Universe with the "young" X-Men being transported to the present). Nevertheless, as a comic-book, Legionnaires was a lot of fun... a lot better than the latter V4 Legion of super-heroes issues running at the same time. (I loved the more serious Five years later run up until Earth blew up and characters started dying en masse, being crippled or felt victim to a deep ennui).

The artwork by Chris Sprouse is beautiful, with the elegance and deceptive simplicity of a Steve Rude or a Michael Golden. The design work in particular was lovely, as seen with the characters' uniforms, the architecture and the vehicles.

Unfortunately, in hindsight, that cool run was doomed from the start... The abomination that was Zero Hour was already looming in the future. Those were the last few days of the pre-boot Legion.

[MonteMike72]

For some reason I pulled out Marvel Graphic Novel #5
X-Men: God Loves, Man Kills

I always wonder what the X-Mew would have become if Brent Anderson would have been the regular artist on the book all them years ago.
I really liked his art on this graphic novel and the few other issues and annuals he did.
The only thing I didn't like about this story is that the change of Magneto to a hero may have started here. I always thought that Magneto made a better bad guy than good guy.

[Polar Bear]

Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars #1-7

I haven't read this since it first came out, i think...

Atrocious dialogue, possibly the worst of Shooter's career, and some out-of-character moments for several heroes and villains (and why those particular villains, anyway?), but a strong story structure with multiple, multiple subplots, keeping things moving and arousing the reader's curiosity. An interesting best of/worst of, all in one. I may update this after reading #8-12.

[dan bailey]

I really must look into Sandman at some point. Other than a couple of slim Death TPBs (IIRC), I've never done so. Are there any handy large compendiums? Last time I looked, the number of smaller collections seemed sort of daunting ...

[shaxper]

I really must look into Sandman at some point. Other than a couple of slim Death TPBs (IIRC), I've never done so. Are there any handy large compendiums? Last time I looked, the number of smaller collections seemed sort of daunting ...

The series has been collected in 10 tpbs. There are also Omnibus volumes. If I didn't already have the series, I'd go for the handsome set of all 10 tpbs in new binding that can be found on Amazon for $125: http://www.amazon.com/Sandman-Slipca...ywords=sandman