What Classic Comic Have You Read Lately? Pt. 2

[Mormel]

I've recently bought a TPB containing an early-70s Avengers vs. Defenders crossover. Basically Loki and Dormammu trick the Defenders into retrieving the parts to create some super weapon, and then Loki starts a doublecross and tries to get the Avengers to stop them. It's mostly fighting and not too heavy on the plot, but it's fun. It's just that I hadn't expected a Steve Englehart story to be quite so simple.

[Bad Wolf]

I've recently bought a TPB containing an early-70s Avengers vs. Defenders crossover. Basically Loki and Dormammu trick the Defenders into retrieving the parts to create some super weapon, and then Loki starts a doublecross and tries to get the Avengers to stop them. It's mostly fighting and not too heavy on the plot, but it's fun. It's just that I hadn't expected a Steve Englehart story to be quite so simple.

I just read that myself. I thought it was terribly contrived, and I had to laugh at the Avengers accepting Loki's story at face value (Vision convinces Thor he should listen to his half-brother...because he's blind! Never mind that the condition arose as a result of a battle between the two just a short while ago.) I've never been a fan of Englehart's writing, but I'd hoped his earlier ("classic") work would be better than what he did in the 80s. I was disappointed.

[Bad Wolf]

Fantastic Four 275-277, back when John Byrne was doing a great job with the "illusion of change" thing. Reed and Sue played with suburban secret identities for a while, there was talk of moving out of the Baxter Building, and She-Hulk replaced Ben as a member (for an extended stint, which is fine with readers, and not in a misleading and annoying fake-permanent way). In these issues, though, things go bad for the Richards' house, due to the shenanigans of a nosy neighbour who thinks they're witches. And Mephisto. And Dire Wraiths. Damn, there goes the neighourhood!

Loved that story with the amateur witch next door and Mephisto. Some very dark imagery in there (I cringe when I see Reed's broken arm.)

[Mormel]

I just read that myself. I thought it was terribly contrived, and I had to laugh at the Avengers accepting Loki's story at face value (Vision convinces Thor he should listen to his half-brother...because he's blind! Never mind that the condition arose as a result of a battle between the two just a short while ago.) I've never been a fan of Englehart's writing, but I'd hoped his earlier ("classic") work would be better than what he did in the 80s. I was disappointed.

Englehart usually pushes all the right buttons with me, I must say. I thought this Avengers/Defenders crossover was uncharacteristically weak for his doing, and it felt contrived.
Have you read Englehart's 70s Captain America stories, especially the 'Secret Empire' and 'Nomad' arcs? Because those are the books that sold me on his writing. I love the social commentary in it, as well as the slight satire on the superhero genre itself that can be found in those pages.

[Bad Wolf]

Englehart usually pushes all the right buttons with me, I must say. I thought this Avengers/Defenders crossover was uncharacteristically weak for his doing, and it felt contrived.
Have you read Englehart's 70s Captain America stories, especially the 'Secret Empire' and 'Nomad' arcs? Because those are the books that sold me on his writing. I love the social commentary in it, as well as the slight satire on the superhero genre itself that can be found in those pages.

I don't think I've read those. Have they been collected? I mainly know his work from West Coast Avengers, and Silver Surfer in the 80s.

[Mormel]

I don't think I've read those. Have they been collected? I mainly know his work from West Coast Avengers, and Silver Surfer in the 80s.

Yes, the 'Secret Empire' TPB collects Captain America & The Falcon #169-176, and the 'Nomad' TPB collects # 177-186.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain...ected_editions

I've never read his WCA or Silver Surfer- I can't imagine that his writing style would differ that much from his work on Captain America and Avengers in the 70s, though. But if you can get your hands on them at your LCS, you could always take a peek at them.

[MWGallaher]

I've been reading early issues of All-American Comics from the 1940's.
I was especially interested in reading the stories of Gary Concord, the Ultra-Man. The first I'd ever heard of this obscure hero, written and drawn by Jon Blummer (under the pseudonym of Don Shelby) was the character's page in DC's Who's Who series of the early 80's, and it sounded like a pretty cool concept. It ran from All-American 8 through 19 (with another installment in All-Star Comics #1), and it's a Buck Rogers-ish tale of the son of a super-scientist born in 1915 who survives, via suspended animation, to eventually rule the United States of (North) America in the year 2240. Gary follows in his father's footsteps, battling the mad schemes of dictators of this future world. The first six installments are a serial, the rest of the episodes are loosely linked via evolving continuity, including the death of his sidekick "Guppy".
I was a little leery of Blummer, whose primary fame was his work on All-American's long-running feature Hop Harrigan (who, amazingly for such a mundane character, had his own movie serial!). I had glanced at some of the Hop installments first, and they (particularly the later episodes in the series' run) looked absolutely unreadable: the art was bland talking heads cramped by the most astonishingly heavy amount of dialogue I could imagine.


Ultra-Man was not nearly as dialogue-heavy as Hop, but as I read Blummer's work, I began to realize something that probably should have been obvious to me years ago, and may not strike anyone else as a great revelation at all: early comics writers like Blummer, whose characters talked non-stop, often describing action that was clearly going on in the panel ("He's dropped the vial! It's broken, and the fumes are filling the room!") were working from the model of old-time radio drama! While I'm sure it never sounded quite natural, even to them, it conformed to their conceptions of how a story was to be told: the characters constantly filling the time and clarifying the ongoing action through their speech. It makes the innovation of more cinematically-inspired comics creators look a lot more advanced, but this kind of storytelling was clearly quite conventional to them, and I'm sure the audience was completely comfortable with it. It's painful to read today, but that insight makes the approach a lot more tolerable to me as a modern-day reader.

[Jezebel Bond]

Imitation is certainly the best form of flattery...but when it's soooooooooo painfully obvious? I'm referring to Glennan, Saul, Benji and Hal, Flabbey Road...and the song Pink Submarine in Batman 222. I'm wondering if anyone back then had no idea this was a take on the Beatles and whether Paul was really dead...

Copy I read was dog-eared to hell but naturally, finding a better one is in the cards. The back-up story was a bit unreal...an exhausted Batman, and no major villains going for a money shot...

[pmpknface]

Started reading the latest Milo Manara collection last night. The art is just amazing. If you get a chance to flip through this please do. I just started, but the story so far takes place in Argentina in the early 1800's. Beautifully rendered! :D

[Superboy Sr]

All Star Squadron & alot of JLA/JSA crossover with Power Girl & Huntress.

[MWGallaher]

Weird Western Tales #39, featuring the debut of Scalphunter. Although I occasionally bought and enjoyed Jonah Hex (both in Weird Western Tales and his own comic) back in the mid-70's, I never considered buying any of Scalphunter's run as the lead of WWT back then. My appreciation of Hex was, so far as I thought, an anomalous reaction for me. Turns out I was missing out on a pretty nice little run, based on this debut. Creator Michael Fleischer was doing the same kind of story he had done on that much-loved Spectre series here: Scalphunter, at least here at the start, is a violent, vengeful force in a brutal episode. Dick Ayers pencilled and George Evans inked, but there's little trace of Ayers' distinctive work left on the page once Evans is done. The overall result is art very comparable to what Tony DeZuniga was doing on Jonah Hex, making this a far more fitting successor than I might have guessed back in 1977.

[Polar Bear]

Re-reading the Morrison and Waid runs of JLA from the late 90s and early aughts. Morrison's plots come much closer to making sense when read together instead of with monthly gaps. That said, I'm still not convinced anything he did besides issues 1-4 (the Hyperclan storyline) was actually that spectacular. I'm only up to issue 15 or so, so I haven't even hit the first Waid fill-in yet.

[Slam_Bradley]

Re-reading the Morrison and Waid runs of JLA from the late 90s and early aughts. Morrison's plots come much closer to making sense when read together instead of with monthly gaps. That said, I'm still not convinced anything he did besides issues 1-4 (the Hyperclan storyline) was actually that spectacular. I'm only up to issue 15 or so, so I haven't even hit the first Waid fill-in yet.

I run hot and cold on Morrison. Which I'm not sure is allowed. I think it's only permissible to either hate him or worship him.

I've never been able to figure out the overwhelming praise for his run on JLA. Not that it's bad. It's just that I find it to be a pretty standard super-hero funnybook. Maybe it seemed so much better because the JLA had been pretty dire for a long time before he took over. But it's really just OK. And the art is atrocious.

[Aaron King]

I run hot and cold on Morrison. Which I'm not sure is allowed. I think it's only permissible to either hate him or worship him.

My favorite Morrison comics are some of my modern favorite comics. My least favorite Morrison comics are "eh." I think I generally follow him because this ratio of favorite-to-eh nets me better odds than, say, favorite-to-bad (Milligan), really-good-to-eh (Waid), and so on.

[dupont2005]

The first Loveless TPB. I had two later issues I got in grab bags or something and I read them and loved them, so I got this trade for basically nothing on sale. Loved it. I'll be buying more.