CBR: When Words Collide - Jan 2, 2012

[CBR News]

Tim kicks off the new year with a new feature called "Before They Were Famous," putting the spotlight on 'The Saga of the Swamp Thing' #19 in a way you might not expect. Alan Moore may or may not be mentioned.


Full article here.

[Just Endless]

I picked that outta my family's collection of old comics, after reading the Alan Moore stuff a bit. The main thing i recall is a major overload of editor's notes, commonly of high redundancy.

See issue 18, etc.

[DC_AllStar]

This should be a fun look at comics from the past. The interesting thing, until the endless perfunctory relaunch of series to #1, was seeing how a title changed (or didn't change) over time with different creators. Like you've stated, not every issue before a 'new direction' issue was horrible. But yes, some were.

Here are two suggestions; not sure why what comes to my mind is from the same period, but there you have it. The issue of Batman before Year One was introduced, and the final issue of Wonder Woman's first series before George Perez relaunched the title. In all fairness, however, it might be Legend of WW #4, by Busiek & Robbins, that was technically the preceding issue. Depends on how you look at it, I guess.

Thanks for a great look at Swamp Thing #19!

[Zolton]

May I suggest Howard Mackie's Amazing Spider-man #29 to JMS's ASM #30?

Holy shit.

[coy_dog0]

Yes, some writers really are better than others, despite people's 'opinions' to the contrary.
I'm looking very forward to future installments of this series!

[cinemajunk3000]

Can you do Animal Man after Grant Morrison and before Jeff Lemire??

[briguyx]

Was actually pretty great, with a Peter Milligan arc that was just plain strange but turned out to have a logical reason for everything that was happening.

[earl]

I actually have been working my way through the Saga of the Swamp Thing.

I'd say the whole Pasko run is probably about average for the time. The plot line of his run is all over his place and pretty much most of the characters start as something then turn to the exact opposite. It's pretty crazy that the editors allowed him to pretty much start a storyline and have it run for like 19 issues, as really the threads that started in the first issue of the Saga of the Swamp Thing pretty much run up until Moore ties them up mostly in # 20, but he references them in a few of the later stories.

Still it is a real big shake up in #20, as Moore says more with a couple words than would have taken an issue. It's pretty striking.

That said, the artwork in the pre-Moore run is generally pretty good. Tom Yeates artwork was quite nice and fit in well with Bissette/Totleben and the others that followed later on the comic.

[largand30]

Certainly Pasko is not in Moore's league, but I think he deserves some credit for evolving the concept beyond the limited scope of the original run.

I'm a big fan of Wein & Wrightson — but, aside from the Conclave plot, their stories were relatively simple one-off homages to classic monster/SF archetypes, featuring an extremely small cast (ST, Cable & Abigail). Micheline slightly broadened the scope (possibly out of necessity, since most of the obvious themes had already been covered) and Conway's issues are best forgotten. (Thrudvang??)

Pasko added complexity, introducing continuing story threads and expanding the cast — giving Moore a much broader canvas on which to paint.

Which is not to imply that Moore could not have done great things had he directly followed the original run, but the results would likely have been very
different.

[Mikael]

If you're going to compare an issue's creative team to the creative team that comes after it - the whole thing is biased and flawed. As if the first team will ever stand a chance or get a fair assessment since all your doing is showing your preference for the new guard. Doesn't surprise me.

[cmkeller]

You're suggesting looking at Detective before Scott Snyder's run? I don't think you'll find much to compare there. Before Snyder, Detective had the amazing Rucka-Williams (and for a few issues, Jock) Batwoman, with the Question backup series.

[rev sully]

I gladly nominate...

http://marvel.wikia.com/X-Men_Vol_2_113

X-Men, Vol. 2 #113. Before "You Know Who"...
;)

cheers & Happy New Year, Tim!
-Eric

[sobek]

You should do Paul Kupperberg's Doom Patrol, it's the run that came before Grant Morrison's epic and famous run, it never gets any attention and almost all of the characters from his run were killed off straight afterwards, I'd quite like to know what it was like. I'm thinking of buying the issues online.

[jmyoung]

For the record, I am choosing some of these because of the impact of the subsequent writer, not because I thought the subsequent writer was great.

Comics I would like to see covered:

Doom Patrol 18,
Last Issue of Wonder Woman before Perez.
Last issue of Daredevil before Miller's initial run as writer (unless he co-plotted the previous issues as the artist - in which case, I would go with the last issue before he was credited as co-plotter).
Last issue of JLI before Morrison's JLA.
Last issue of Flash before Mark Waid (I was a fan of the messner-loebs run)
Last issue of Avengers before Bendis.
Last issue of Fantastic Four before Byrne's run.
Last issue of Hulk before PAD's run.
Last issue of Action or Superman before Moore's two-parter and Byrne's subsequent run.
Jimmy Olsen prior to Kirby.

[rev sully]

Comics I would like to see covered:

Last issue of Flash before Mark Waid (I was a fan of the messner-loebs run).

http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Flash_Vol_2_61

Issue #61. I'm racking my brains on this one. I've read the Wally West volume twice.
Bill Messner-Loebs' final issue and it was 1992.
One thing...his run was Soapy and I mean that nicely. In Bill's final issue we have everybody important to Wally in the Messner-Loebs run including a mentor character in Mason Trollbridge, both of his divorced parents & that stormy relationship, we have Chunk and Connie. I think even Piper had a date off-panel now he was Out of the Closet (that was big then!). And it all ends with Wally sitting next to Linda Park with the future ahead of them.
I hadda RTFM it a bit but it's coming back to me. The days of Lady Flash too...it was the early 90s. A different time. I loved Chunk being one of Wally's best friends and they endured that George Harrison/Eric Clapton stuff with the girlfriend. Connie was dating Wally, got stuck hanging out with Chunk all the time waiting for Wally to come home from adventuring and ended up falling in love with the CeeLo Green of the DCU. I'm fond of that story...someone should make them the next Sue & Ralph Dibny but iDigress...Wally & Chunk made up and they all stayed friends. That always struck me as cool.

Sidethought: I'm a big fan of the notion that a hero is only as good as his supporting cast. I'm really coming to terms of this while watching Doctor Who. I've just started watching the 2005 Doctor on Netflix Streaming and I'm mid Season 3. Nonetheless I simply loved Rose Tyler and Jackie and Mickey and ultimately Pete Tyler and Cap'n Jack. I mean what a great collection of personalities & heroes. And then there is the Doctor to bind them all together.

So with Flash vol 2, #61 there was a big shift from this Soapy Vibe to a more Heroic Vibe, changing Wally's supporting cast from personal relationships & romance to heroic relationships & Boss-Level Threats. I love Mark Waid and his introduction of things like Savitar & Cobalt Blue. Savitar was perhaps my number one favorite Flash adversary.

Thanks & Kriya Shakti,
Rev. Sully
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