What Classic Comic Have You Read Lately? Pt. 2

[dan bailey]

(love that dynamic pop art! I wish we could still get this in comics today). Incidentally, when did Marvel retire that pop-art style?

Also, I must confess I'm not really sure what you mean by this. My near-complete lack of an artist's vocabulary is no doubt to blame.

Or maybe I'm just, y'know, really thick.

[Roquefort Raider]

Check back 9 months later, True Believer!

One issue?

*Sigh*. Nowadays that would be the subject of a line-wide crossover tied to a main miniseries ("IN THE KINGDOM OF THE BLIND...") and things like 'Frontline: the eyepatch dossier". The artwork would be promoted as eye-popping.

An eyepatch would be included in specially polybagged issues. Many series would be renumbered, starting with N. I, which would of course be the letter i.

Ten new series would flood the market... one of them being, naturally, "Patch" starring Wolverine. Captain Barracuda would get his own series. So would Odin.

And the whole thing would be instantly optioned by a Hollywood studio.


I miss the 12 cents comics published on toilet paper!

[Phil Maurice]

The Shooter ones are OKish, certainly better than most of the Englehart ones, and definitely better than Conway, who is one of my least-favourite writers, but they all seem horribly over-written and contrived to me - the Avengers are always arguing with each other for no logical reason other than it advances the plot, the dialogue is wildly unrealistic and everything groans under the weight on narrative captions.

It's no worse than a lot of 70s comics, but my sensibilities have turned more towards modern sparser writing.

That's a fair assessment, but reading Shooter's blog, he sees himself as a man beset on all sides during that era. The arguments and discord seem "ripped from his own headlines," so it's not surprising that much of that stuff worked its way into what he was writing. The best of it, "Attacked by the Ant-Man," and "Bride of Ultron" are nonetheless very effective and memorable, IMHO.

[shaxper]

Also, I must confess I'm not really sure what you mean by this. My near-complete lack of an artist's vocabulary is no doubt to blame.

Or maybe I'm just, y'know, really thick.

Or I may have just invented a phrase that doesn't exist -- who knows?

Really, what I meant was that in-panel arrangements, subjective/emotive depictions, and even coloring often mirrored pop art sensibilities of the time period.

It might just be easier to give examples:

Take a look at the larger than life arrangement and subjective crooked angle of page 4, panel 4, the primary/secondary contrast and subjective coloring of page 7, panel 5, the unusual and subjective focal point of page 12, panel 5 and 6, or just the crazy experimentations with what's seen and not seen on page 14, panels 6 (my personal favorite) and 7.

I'm no art major, and anyone who's been paying attention could tell you that I didn't give even the slightest consideration to comic art until last year, but this issue's art felt like something that belonged in a modern art gallery of this time period, specifically cultivating that insubstantial pop art feel that was as commercial as Andy Warhol, but with all the heavy emotion of the post-modernists.

I've seen this done before in Silver Age Marvel comics, but really nowhere else.


Hope that makes a little more sense. I'll readily admit that I have only the slightest inkling of what I'm talking about here.

[dan bailey]

I see I'm going to have to dig my copy of ish 18 out of my Sgt. Fury/Capt. Savage/Combat Kelly short box tomorrow. (I'd do it right now, but I'm lacking the requisite physical or mental energy.) (Sure would be convenient if I had the 2nd Masterworks volume ...)

I have a strange feeling, though, that I'll look at the examples you cite & simply think something like, "Gee, I just thought that was Dick Ayers being Dick Ayers & whoever the colorist was being whoever the colorist was."

*sigh*

It (p)reminds me of one of my favorite Peanuts Sunday strips, in which Charlie Brown & Linus are lying on a hill & gazing at the sky, & they start talking about the shapes they see in the clouds. Linus goes on in learned detail about how he sees hints of some famous representation of the stoning of Stephen & the profile of Thomas Eakins ... & Charlie Brown says something like, "I was going to say I see a ducky & a horsy, but I changed my mind.)

[dan bailey]

One issue?

*Sigh*. Nowadays that would be the subject of a line-wide crossover tied to a main miniseries ("IN THE KINGDOM OF THE BLIND...") and things like 'Frontline: the eyepatch dossier". The artwork would be promoted as eye-popping.

An eyepatch would be included in specially polybagged issues. Many series would be renumbered, starting with N. I, which would of course be the letter i.

Ten new series would flood the market... one of them being, naturally, "Patch" starring Wolverine. Captain Barracuda would get his own series. So would Odin.

And the whole thing would be instantly optioned by a Hollywood studio.

Masterful, RR. Just masterful.

[shaxper]

It (p)reminds me of one of my favorite Peanuts Sunday strips, in which Charlie Brown & Linus are lying on a hill & gazing at the sky, & they start talking about the shapes they see in the clouds. Linus goes on in learned detail about how he sees hints of some famous representation of the stoning of Stephen & the profile of Thomas Eakins ... & Charlie Brown says something like, "I was going to say I see a ducky & a horsy, but I changed my mind.)

Possibly my favorite Peanuts strip of all time, and my reaction has always been, "Don't be discouraged, Charles. There's a good chance you're getting just as much out of the cloud watching experience."

And I think that message applies here, as well.

[Paulie]

I have nothing really to add except that it is nice to roll into the coffee shoppe on Saturday morning and read a thread about Sgt. Fury, Dick Ayers, and Pop-Art.

Good Stuff...

[AdamYJ]

I'm halfway through Showcase Presents Aquaman vol. 2. The book is notable for collecting the first appearances of Aquaman's wife Mera, his being crowned king of Atlantis and the birth of Aquababy (depite what a poor, short life he had). You can tell these stories come from a different time, though. In Mera's first appearance, Aquaman saves the day by intentionally causing an oil spill. You'd never see that in our more ecologically conscious time.

[Aaron King]

Or I may have just invented a phrase that doesn't exist -- who knows?

Really, what I meant was that in-panel arrangements, subjective/emotive depictions, and even coloring often mirrored pop art sensibilities of the time period.

As usual, I blame Watchmen. Or, rather, I blame the superhero comics that came out after Watchmen and tried to ride its coattails by trying to match its realistic grit instead of trying to match its formalism. Trying to make comics look more like movies has also lessened those qualities you mentioned, especially in the removal of interesting page layouts and subjective renderings (since everything has to be seen from the objective "camera").

It all amounts to widescreen panels, naturalistic depictions, and computer coloring.

The good news is, there are all sorts of modern books that do what you're looking for. The books that Jonathan Hickman wrote and drew (Nightly News, Pax Romana) have all sorts of crazy panel arrangements and popping colors. Jimmy Gownley's Amelia Rules! has all sorts of subjective depictions. Also, oddly enough, Brian Bendis's early books (the ones he wrote and drew) had a number of more abstract panels, like pictures of money falling through empty space or what have you. (They reminded me a lot of Ditko's more personal work, actually.) His superhero stuff is as mainstream as you can get, though. And I would argue that, regardless of what your opinion of the book as a whole is, Lynn Varley's coloring in Dark Knight Strikes Again, all garish and pixelated, is the modern equivalent to the moody benday palettes of yesteryear.

I'm sure there are people I'm forgetting, but the important thing is that we're not in a hopeless situation here.

[Roquefort Raider]

I've begun Essential Thor#5. I had forgotten that this entire run had been written by Gerry Conway and drawn by John Buscema. Good stuff overall, especially the early part (a few issues before and after the classic #200, with the last interesting appearance of Mangog, the "death" of Odin, the story of Ragnarok, and the cool Ego-Prime tale that ushers in a new race of gods who would play a big role in #300).

I think Vince Colletta did an amazing job on Big John's pencils, here. The art doesn't look much like pure Buscema, just as Alcala over Buscema also doesn't, but the result is quite good nevertheless. Colletta's women are always pretty to look at! He's not always been my favorite inker, but over Buscema or Tuska Colletta usually does real good.

Asgard back then had a sense of grandeur and history that is sorely lacking in the recent revival of the Thor title. (It's probably in part because writers back then hadn't really a clue as to what Asgard really was! A true-blue godly realm, a "magical" realm in the Dr. Strange vein, a space alien culture with Viking overtones? .. but it was a lot of fun).

[benday-dot]

I've begun Essential Thor#5. I had forgotten that this entire run had been written by Gerry Conway and drawn by John Buscema. Good stuff overall, especially the early part (a few issues before and after the classic #200, with the last interesting appearance of Mangog, the "death" of Odin, the story of Ragnarok, and the cool Ego-Prime tale that ushers in a new race of gods who would play a big role in #300).

I think Vince Colletta did an amazing job on Big John's pencils, here. The art doesn't look much like pure Buscema, just as Alcala over Buscema also doesn't, but the result is quite good nevertheless. Colletta's women are always pretty to look at! He's not always been my favorite inker, but over Buscema or Tuska Colletta usually does real good.

Asgard back then had a sense of grandeur and history that is sorely lacking in the recent revival of the Thor title. (It's probably in part because writers back then hadn't really a clue as to what Asgard really was! A true-blue godly realm, a "magical" realm in the Dr. Strange vein, a space alien culture with Viking overtones? .. but it was a lot of fun).

I have a fondness for those Thor issues leading up to 200 as well RR. Sometimes they get dismissed as simply being "of that bunch of Thor issues that followed Kirby." "The Well at the Edge of the World" (#195) was one of the first Thor comics I ever owned. The storyline had a nice epic feel to it, and pretty good characterization as well. And I do love the role the Warriors Three play in this era of Thor!

[inferno]

Marvel Chillers #4 (1976) - Tigra's run on this title lasted only a handful of issues-- all one arc but this, the second one. It is a one-part fill-in written by Claremont with art by Robbins and Coletta. In this issue, Tigra fights Kraven the Hunter. Two pages are spent recapping Tigra's origin, which is great because I didn't know it, and it is rather complicated and convoluted. Apparently Tigra used to be a Catwoman ripoff called The Cat, but then she was kidnapped by the Rockefeller-found University of Chicago where she was turned into a cat-person. Interesting.

Now, granted, while I like a comic I can pick up and grok in one reading, Marvel was a victim of FORD(aka King) stagflation at the time and the page count was only 17pp. So origin aside, we only have 15pp of new story. (FTR, I conclude a one-page prose frontmatter/recap is the way to go on this.)

Anyway, the stagflation serves as a plot point in that Tigra and Kraven battle in a small-midsized theater venue, abandoned by the stagflation to rot, complete w/ circus equipment. So they battle and no one wins and no one dies. Tigra concludes with a stirring paean to her own alienation from the human race.

It's fine as it goes. I'm glad I read it, but I don't really recommend it.

[Roquefort Raider]

I have a fondness for those Thor issues leading up to 200 as well RR. Sometimes they get dismissed as simply being "of that bunch of Thor issues that followed Kirby." "The Well at the Edge of the World" (#195) was one of the first Thor comics I ever owned. The storyline had a nice epic feel to it, and pretty good characterization as well. And I do love the role the Warriors Three play in this era of Thor!

Yeah, it's about the last time they had a personality. Hogun would harbor a secret love for Hildegarde, for example, something that was later simply forgotten.

A few years later, they became very one-dimensional. Colorful, yes, but one-trick puppies. Hogun was grim. Fandral was dashing and a womanizer. Vostagg got some development under Simonson, but was reduced to being the funny fat man later on.

I guess that fits with the development of Marvel's characters as "brands", though. We don't see much character development in the Trix rabbit or the Kool-Aid pitcher either!

[Scott Harris]

Yeah, it's about the last time they had a personality. Hogun would harbor a secret love for Hildegarde, for example, something that was later simply forgotten.

A few years later, they became very one-dimensional. Colorful, yes, but one-trick puppies. Hogun was grim. Fandral was dashing and a womanizer. Vostagg got some development under Simonson, but was reduced to being the funny fat man later on.

I guess that fits with the development of Marvel's characters as "brands", though. We don't see much character development in the Trix rabbit or the Kool-Aid pitcher either!

The stuff Simonson did with Volstagg was really great, though.