What Classic Comic Have You Read Lately? Pt. 2

**adam_warlock_2099** · 07-10-2011, 02:25 PM

Not really sure what specific issues I've read so far of this book, but the Vampirella Crimson Chronicles TPB collects the first 37 issues of the Warren magazine.

The first two stories by Forrest J Ackerman were quite different from the random, either Archie Goodwin or Steve Englehart stories I've read in other collections. Reading them in chronological order in this collection really shows how different a direction the series took after only two stories.

I am also torn on whether I enjoy Jose Gonzalez or Tom Sutton. I have only read one maybe two stories prior to this collection of Mr Sutton's art. I've always enjoyed his art, especially his horror in those Charelton titles. I think he doesn't have as masterful of a hand as Senior Gonzalez does with Vampirella, (or the female form in general) but I think I like his art over all better. Especially the story "The Testing". Mr Sutton was "off the hook" with his art in that issue. Something about it flowed so well from hideous wheelchair bound cultist, to undead brute to Vampirella's shapely form.

I am very impressed and happy with this collection so far and glad I found it. With this, attaining the remaining series in original magazines doesn't seem so financially impossible.

I am also glad to see in the credits that there is some of Jose Ortiz's work in this collection as well, as I believe benday-dot praised. It's towards the end of the collection, but I look forward to seeing it.

**Paulie** · 07-12-2011, 01:21 PM

I read New Mutants Special #1 last night. 64 pages, it was a long story.

I expected to cringe at the Art Adams work but I found it brought out the Asgardian setting just fine. My only complaint is that his layouts were a little cluttered.

Claremont over-wrote the heck out of this but at least the story had a feel of whimsy as opposed to melodrama.

All in all I was very happy to read this again.

**mrc1214** · 07-12-2011, 01:42 PM

I am re-reading my Avengers run right now (from 150-end but I started right before the Korvac saga). Great stuff. There is hardly a lapse in quality at all. Stern's run is amazing one great story after another and I am up to the Under Siege storyline. I have never read anything after this point though.

I have not heard good things about the Avengers after Stern except for the Harris stuff but I am going to give it a go.

**CromagnonMan** · 07-12-2011, 02:08 PM

Originally Posted by Paulie

I read New Mutants Special #1 last night. 64 pages, it was a long story.

all time classic! I love Asgard.

Me, i have been reading some Tales of the Zombie. I have read issues 2-5 today. I find myself only reading the Simon Garth stories and skipping the rest, though. I may go back and read the text-pieces later, some look , shall we say, interesting..

**Judomaster** · 07-12-2011, 03:46 PM

I just finished reading Mighty Comics Presents #45

http://www.comics.org/issue/20871/cover/4/

The usual amusing Radio comics offering... One line in the lead story in which The Shield does battle with several agents of P.E.R.I.L. caused me to actually "lol" as they say.

Just prior to his first engagement with the enemy, our hero finds himself meandering through the city "seeking villainy to squelch." He thinks to himself: "To-day's as dull as a Brand Ecch Comic Book! If things don't start swingin' soon, I'll go ape!"

A fine little dig indeed.

Along with the Shield story, the reader is presented with a Web origin story, and a great little Hangman tale called "The Nine Lives of Falseface!" The Hangman's rope is a great and original bit of hero acoutrement. i love the way he is able to swing around a la Spider-man without the rope actually being attached to anything.

I think I'm going to try to fill out my Archie Hero collection a little with my next online purchase...

**MWGallaher** · 07-12-2011, 06:31 PM

I've been rereading the early installments of The Hulk in Tales To Astonish (from Essential Hulk Volume 1).
As I've said a few times in other threads, the early Hulk is one place where the seams really show in Stan Lee's "Marvel Method". For example, in issue 63, the art team of Steve Ditko and George Bell (Roussos) stage some train-roof action so poorly that Hulk seems to be changing direction after falling down from a height, and Stan covers with this far-fetched caption: "He performs a seemingly impossible feat! By sheer brute power alone, by actual muscle control, he forces his flying body to lift itself up, over the solid stone trestle!". And these episodes seem to finish up awkwardly: one installment concludes with the Hulk battling four enemies on an island, but the words "The End" are scrawled in the bottom corner of the panel...very disorienting! Others end with strangely quiet panels with lots of space, so that even cliffhangers seem sedated.
And boy, the Leader's spongelike artificial constructs, the Humanoids, surely have one of the goofiest designs ever: Kilroy faces on pencil eraser pink bodies. Not one of Ditko's most inspired. Of course, Ditko doesn't seem to be fondly remembered for his Hulk work, which is really massacred by Roussos' clunky, primitive inking. The often maligned Vince Colletta is a relief when he shows up to ink 66, in which Hulk's speech pattern devolves (much more suddenly than I had remembered) from his early gangsterish crudity to brain-damaged monosyllables. After Colletta, we get an issue inked by Giacoia, who finally makes these pages look like Ditko's work, but by then, Stan seems to have come to the conclusion that the art just wasn't working (and it wasn't), and brings back Kirby.
Simple stuff, but charmingly so. I much prefer this era of the Hulk, with its military base ambiance, its proud "soap opera" aspirations, its grumpy, not-so-stupid Hulk. I'm looking forward now to re-reading the Bill Everett issues--I thought he was a terrific match for the character.

**inferno** · 07-14-2011, 03:10 PM

Power Man #32 (1976) by McGregor/Robbins/Coletta.

This was a pretty wild book. A 17pp story from the stagflation-era.

We open in Queens with Luke Cage fighting a costumed guy armed with a flamethrower. "Wildfire" is trying to burn a local black family out of their house, because he doesn't believe in mildly integrated neighborhoods. The neighbors watch the fight and wonder where the local rent-a-cop is as the narration POV randomly shifts from omniscient to that of the family's little boy. Wildfire's noisy monologues reveal him to be someone from the neighborhood, married with children. Other neighbors come out to watch the fight, at least one rooting for and warning Wildfire, and others suddenly wondering if they should be concerned this lunatic is gonna accidentally fry the crowd of onlookers. Wildfire gets away as the firemen arrive.

Then we cut to the next day, Luke is grabbing lunch with his white-cop buddy. White-cop buddy has apparently been acting like THE MAN in previous issues and asking to see Luke's Social Security card. Here, Luke shows him one, but also asks cop-buddy to not actually check up on how legit his SSN is.

Cut to evening. Cop-buddy is staking out the family's house with Luke, who makes fun of him for caring about black people. A few blocks away, Wildfire's neglectful wife is staring at the TV and talking about her flakey women's-lib group. Wildfire sneaks out with his flamethrower again. He spots Luke and pal hiding in the tree and tries to burn them down before working on the family again. Luke crashes into the family's window and tells the kids to get out of the house; but "Augie," our sometimes-narrator is apparently a very stupid little kid, because he hides in the closet instead of listening to Luke. So Luke and Wildfire fight, and the stupid kid dies. Wildfire apologizes, saying he just wanted to scare the family and didn't think anyone would be dumb enough to stay in a burning house. Luke accepts the apology graciously by clocking the guy in the face so that he passes out on the ground.

Luke burns off the rest of his aggression by screaming at cop-buddy, who concludes by delivering a moral even vaguer than Cage's rant...

Okay, so we had arguments about ID cards and the word "honkie"; and a dead kid. Certainly not boring. There is so much going on here it has to get a THUMBS UP.

**benday-dot** · 07-14-2011, 06:33 PM

Originally Posted by MWGallaher

I've been rereading the early installments of The Hulk in Tales To Astonish (from Essential Hulk Volume 1).
As I've said a few times in other threads, the early Hulk is one place where the seams really show in Stan Lee's "Marvel Method". For example, in issue 63, the art team of Steve Ditko and George Bell (Roussos) stage some train-roof action so poorly that Hulk seems to be changing direction after falling down from a height, and Stan covers with this far-fetched caption: "He performs a seemingly impossible feat! By sheer brute power alone, by actual muscle control, he forces his flying body to lift itself up, over the solid stone trestle!". And these episodes seem to finish up awkwardly: one installment concludes with the Hulk battling four enemies on an island, but the words "The End" are scrawled in the bottom corner of the panel...very disorienting! Others end with strangely quiet panels with lots of space, so that even cliffhangers seem sedated.
And boy, the Leader's spongelike artificial constructs, the Humanoids, surely have one of the goofiest designs ever: Kilroy faces on pencil eraser pink bodies. Not one of Ditko's most inspired. Of course, Ditko doesn't seem to be fondly remembered for his Hulk work, which is really massacred by Roussos' clunky, primitive inking. The often maligned Vince Colletta is a relief when he shows up to ink 66, in which Hulk's speech pattern devolves (much more suddenly than I had remembered) from his early gangsterish crudity to brain-damaged monosyllables. After Colletta, we get an issue inked by Giacoia, who finally makes these pages look like Ditko's work, but by then, Stan seems to have come to the conclusion that the art just wasn't working (and it wasn't), and brings back Kirby.
Simple stuff, but charmingly so. I much prefer this era of the Hulk, with its military base ambiance, its proud "soap opera" aspirations, its grumpy, not-so-stupid Hulk. I'm looking forward now to re-reading the Bill Everett issues--I thought he was a terrific match for the character.

That was a fine review MW. It is astonishing (sorry) how closely your thoughts on this series mirror my own. The Bill Everett issues (with Kirby layouts in most cases) are special to me. While I first became a Hulk fan during the Herb Trimpe drawn issues of the successor Incredible Hulk title, those comics soon led me back to the earlier Tales to Astonish book. I built up a little run of TtA and took to the split format of the book, being a big Sub-Mariner fan as well. I hear lots of comic fans who are bored to death of Hulk and the seemingly endless battle with General Ross and the military. I; however, have always embraced this ongoing "soap opera." It all really comes to life round about the the Bill Everett run.

I like the desert setting and it's whole implication of atomic secrets that goes back to Los Alamos, and which is so deeply imbued in the Hulks origin. The Hulk is one of Marvel's most existentially fraught characters, and his abiding loneliness (once such a hallmark of the character) is yet so very emblematic of the isolation, fear and sadness that once echoed in the atomic age. It all began in Tales to Astonish.

Ok. Before anyone nails me... the saga of Hulk did of course literally begin in Hulk #1, but, to me at least, the charterer only began to be fully realized in the mid to later issues of TtA.

**Scott Harris** · 07-17-2011, 06:59 PM

I recently read Boy Comics #18 and 22. Not quite as out there as some of the other issues in this range, but both Crimebuster stories had their moments.

#18 was a pretty straightforward story about some crooks who killed a guy to help set up their underground gambling venture. It did have a couple crazy moments, though. At the beginning of the story, the crooks are about to be sent up the river because a star witness is set to testify against them. Since he's already sealed some of this testimony, they can't kill him, otherwise that evidence would be admissible. So instead, they rather viciously murder his girlfriend as a warning to recant. Then they accidentally get run over by a train. WHOOPS! Luckily for them, they survive, but it was kind of funny. The really out of whack element here, though, is that CB is visiting some local cops who are all like "Man, it's boring around here. Gosh, I hope someone gets murdered so we have something to do!" And then the girl gets stabbed through the chest. So they're like "Hot dog!" Really, great job, guys.

The best part about the issue is later, though, when Crimebuster decides to go undercover into the illegal casino. He loses his costume in favor of a tuxedo and gets in on the action. There are just two problems. First, he's a kid -- which someone notices right off, and tries to throw him out. He smartly points out that since the whole place is illegal anyway, they aren't exactly going to get in trouble for dealing with a minor. A bigger issue. though, is the fact that he has his pet monkey Squeaks with him. Which... yeah, exactly what you might expect would happen ends up happening.

Crook #1: Everything's going fine, boss, except that kid's monkey keeps mucking things up.

Crook #2: Kid? Monkey? You idiot, that's Crimebuster! Get him!

Rule number one of going undercover: don't bring your pet monkey.

#22 wasn't quite as good, but it was pretty bizare. CB finds a drifting ghost ship which turns out to have a very live captain on it who has gone crazy. Somehow, he's also been adrift for 3 years on a missing to try and stop Pearl Harbor from happening. I guess he's been eating a lot of fish. He's also managed to single-handedly capture hundreds of Japanese soldiers, who he has thrown into the cargo hold. We don't actually see them -- though CB verifies they are there -- but we do see some Japanese soldiers in flashback, who are all fat, buck-toothed, yellow-skinned morons who can't pronounce the letter L. It's pretty rough. But not as rough as what happens at the end, when the captain, who has rigged his ship with explosives, self destructs the whole thing with all his prisoners still aboard, blowing them to kingdom come.

Crimebuster: I guess the old goat had his own way of squaring things up!

Well, that's one way of looking at it. Glass half full.

Two more golden age classics form the pen of Charles Biro!

**pmpknface** · 07-18-2011, 07:03 AM

HA! That's awesome. I read a few books this weekend while sitting on the hammock on the porch:

Saga of the Swamp Thing HC, v. 5 - Only 6 issues in this one but it was awesome. This mainly focuses on Abby's trial where they are trying to prosecute her for having "relations" with ST. There's some great stuff in here when he just engulfs all of Gotham City in vegetation wanting her to be released. Then a showdown that leads to the "My Blue Heaven" issue.

I can't wait to see what happens next, but the next HC isn't out until almost Halloween, and that will be the last one. It should be pretty big as I think it'll be 8 issues long and wrap up Moore's run.

**AdamYJ** · 07-18-2011, 08:31 AM

Originally Posted by CromagnonMan

Me, i have been reading some Tales of the Zombie. I have read issues 2-5 today. I find myself only reading the Simon Garth stories and skipping the rest, though. I may go back and read the text-pieces later, some look , shall we say, interesting..

I did that too. Though, I did read some of the non-text zombie stories that didn't have Simon Garth in them. I'll have to revisit that collection sometime.

Right now, I'm working my way through Showcase Presents SHAZAM! vol. 1. It's interesting to see how much the stuff around Billy Batson changes and becomes more realistic looking as the collection goes on, all while Billy still looks kind of like he stepped out of a Fleischer Brothers cartoon.

**dan bailey** · 07-23-2011, 07:54 AM

This mention by The Confessor awhile back in the "Uatu's Greatest Hits" thread --

Originally Posted by The Confessor

I also really loved Uatu's appearance in Marvel Team-Up #127. It's a fairly schmaltzy Christmas tale but it's fun seeing Spider-Man teaming up with the Watcher to bring yuletide joy to an old man and his granddaughter.

-- prompted me to order a cheap copy of the issue, which I'd never heard of, & which I read & enjoyed. I'm pretty sure I'd be high on anyone's list of "Classic Comics Regulars Most Likely to be Mistaken for the Grinch (from a philosophical, as opposed to a physiological, standpoint)," but I've always had a soft spot for Xmas-themed superhero stuff, & after reading that MTU I sat down & read all 3 of the late-'90s DC Universe Holiday Bashes that I'd acquired very recently after learning of their existence by happenstance.

The contents were pretty uneven, as is to be expected with such anthologies, of course, but for me the highlight was probably "A High Father Christmas" in the first, '97 issue, mainly because of some really uncharacteristic (to me, at least) Sal Buscema art. If I'd been shown this without the credits, I'd have bet my bottom dollar (which wouldn't be at all hard to get to, what with pay day being 6 days away & all) that Ernie Colon either drew it or at the very least turned in a very thorough inking job ... but the art credit is Sal's & Sal's alone. Makes me wonder just how stringently he might've curbed his natural tendencies to adhere to Marvel house style all those years as probaby the House of Ideas' main workhorse.

Anyway ... yeah. Fun stuff. Too, reading strips set in late December probably isn't the worst idea I've ever had in the middle of summer in the Deep South.

**Blue_Beetle** · 07-24-2011, 02:05 AM

I bought the Spider-Man Omnibus and Crisis on Infinite Earths within the same week. Between them I think there are more words than the Bible.

Not complaining though. Crisis will take another reading, and Stan Lee Spider-Man is amazing (

) stuff.

Also bought Astro City: Confession. Already one of my favorite stories. I think DC is reprinting "Life in the Big City" or whatever the first trade is called. Of course it's in September, when I'll be pennyless but I will definitely make room to buy it.