The First Day of Classic Comics Christmas 2012

[Cei-U!]

Let the insanity ensue!

What better way to start our holiday festivities than with a charming little title whose eponymous star is the rotting corpse of a morally-challenged businessman? (No, dan, it's not Mitt Romney's Comics and Stories!) I am, of course, talking about

#12. Tales of the Zombie #1-10



I liked all of Marvel's b&w horror titles from that 1973-75 period but Zombie, in my opinion, stands out from the pack. Using an old Stan Lee/Bill Everett story from the Atlas title Menace as its launchpad, Steve Gerber wrote a stunning series of stories that outdid even his stellar work on Man-Thing, a thematically and structurally similar strip. Taking advantage of the magazine format to tell ghastly, often violent morality tales laden with magic, madness, monsters and mayhem, Gerber also delved into the dark sides of his characters in ways that were more honest emotionally than even the liberalized Comics Code of the '70s would allow. The art, too, is fantastic throughout the run, notably the work of Pablo Marcos (rarely have artist and character been more perfectly matched) and a mind-blowing Alfredo Alcala job in #7.

But the primary reason the series made it onto my list is Simon Garth himself (or is that itself?). Gerber's Zombie is astonishingly multi-faceted for a dead dude, simultaneously filling the roles of repulsive horror, pitiable victim, sympathetic anti-hero and, while alive, deeply flawed husband, father and friend. Unlike many Marvel series of that period, the series actually comes to a conclusion with #9, a moving story by Tony Isabella in which Garth is restored to life for 24 hours and spends it tying up loose plot threads and saying the goodbyes his murder had denied him.

ToZ was also the occasional home of Brother Voodoo, the Len Wein/Gene Colan super-hero from the Strange Tales revival, a character I've always had an inexplicable soft spot for. He took over the lead spot as of #10. (That, alas, would prove to be the last issue save for an all-reprint annual later that year.) But honestly, neither the Brother Voodoo episodes nor the title's non-series backup stories are memorable enough to have merited this citation. For me, it's all about the peculiar chemistry between Simon Garth and Steve Gerber.

Cei-U!
I summon the air freshener!

[Scott Harris]

12. Supergirl #1-10



Oh, poor Supergirl. Frankly, she deserved better treatment than she received from DC. Debuting in 1959, she was an instant hit, co-starring in Action on an almost monthly basis before getting her own backup series. In 1969, she finally got her own series, in Adventure Comics #381, a run that ran for 43 issues. And then, finally, in 1972, after 13 years as one of DC's most popular characters, she was at last given her own series.

Which ran for a total of ten issues.

Of course, her series actually did continue, in Superman Family, which she eventually took over for all intents and purposes; the series was eventually canceled in the 80's to make room for The Daring New Adventures of Supergirl, which ran for 23 issues before they killed her off. So in some ways this ten issue run is a real odd duck; there were 43 issues before it and then after it, Supergirl continued in other titles for another 82 issues. With a little luck and a little more support from DC, there's every reason to think this Supergirl series could have been a much bigger success, rather than a weird footnote.

In terms of the stories, these issues aren't any better or worse than the stories the preceded or followed them, though they do feature a lot more random guest stars, such as the JLA and Zatanna in particular. But mostly this series exists as a testament to the most minor major character DC ever published. For a series that should have been a flagship title, Supergirl just never seemed to catch the breaks it deserved.

[Paulie]

My first pick is a nostalgic one and not based on any sort of aesthetics - It's... Havok and Wolverine... the Epic Comics limited series from the late 80s.

It is nothing more that a chase story spread out over 4 issues but at that time it was the first 'mature' title that I had read. The painted interiors from Muth and Williams were a far cry from the classic six-panel Marvel layouts. Havok and Wolverine showed me that there was more to this comic thing than the .75 cent issues that I bought at the drug store.

Within a matter of months I was reading Swamp Thing and Hellblazer. Havok and Wolverine was my marker and that's why it on my list!

[MWGallaher]

#12. Shade, The Changing Man #1-8, 1977-1978, by Steve Ditko and Michael Fleisher

Shade is not an easy comic to read...but I'm a guy who likes a challenge: my favorite novel is the notoriously difficult-to-read Finnegans Wake by James Joyce, and this comic has its similarities with the Wake. It's dense, it's surreal, it's seemingly intentionally hard to follow, it's rich with themes and imagery that could only have sprung from a mind--in this case, Steve Ditko's--that had nourished this vision over a long period of time.
Shade was Ditko's last opportunity to weave a long-form tale in mainstream comics, seemingly unfettered (Fleisher, to all evidence, appears to have hewed closely to Ditko's plots, to his credit and, no doubt, to his frustration). Ditko shows us a side not so obsessed with Objectivist philosophy, but obsessed with the visual themes that, to this day, dominate his work: distortion, grotesquery, fluidity, as well as specific techniques--costume design, psychedelia, patchwork--that characterize his artistic technique. Shade, unlike many comics of its time, was about something, it seems to me (and, I assume, to Peter Milligan, who followed the same theme I perceive when he did his take on the character for Vertigo). Shade was about mental illness, as seen from the inside. Rac Shade himself is not a psychotic lead, he's more of a standard, cardboard good-guy hero, but he is a walking hallucination in this crazy sci-fi world that Ditko has constructed, and the ultimate message (as it registers with me) is that just maybe the schizophrenic has the tools to deal with certain aspects of the world that have to be dealt with.
What I love most is the freedom Ditko has here to be Ditko. The endless stream of crazy names (Wizor, Mellu, Sude, Kabe, Lopak, etc.) are pebbles in a greater stream of massive, yet curiously ephemeral events that form the flow of a story weaving between three "Zones", the Meta Zone, the Earth Zone, and the Zero Zone that separates them. The villains are flamboyant, curious, and endearingly flat world-beaters and criminal subjugators. Shade is allowed to spend an entire issue in a floating "Color Coma", throughout which his body shifts color--why? Who knows? Ditko wanted to draw it, and the pause allowed him to fill in some back story.
Shade was the kind of crazy experiment the existence of which is remarkable, and which I loved (without quite understanding why) on first exposure. Reading it this past week helped me to understand why I liked it so much, as well as remind me why so many people wouldn't. And that characterizes most works of art that I'm really passionate about: "most people aren't gonna be able to stand this". And alas, they didn't. But we got more of Ditko's Shade than most of his other works for DC, and I'm grateful for that.
You can read this series in the Steve Ditko Omnibus Volume 1, which includes the originally unpublished Shade #9.

[dan bailey]

12. Worlds Unknown #s 1-8 (Marvel, May 1973-August 1974)

This one is here in part for purely personal reasons (well, they're all going to be here for purely personal reaons, of course, not only in my case but also everyone else's, but you know what i mean ...), because when I started getting back into comics in the fall of '73 after 3 years of largely ignoring the spinner racks, it was sf that lured me, since I'd just begun immersing myself into the prose variety. Accordingly, #5, featuring an adaptation of A.E. Van Vogt's first story, "Black Destroyer," from back in 1939 (& also an eventual major influence on not only It! The Terror from Beyond Space but also Alien ... not too shabby for a maiden effort), pretty much reached out & grabbed me.



(The other comic that snagged my newly sf-attuned attention was the initial issue of Weird Wonder Tales, but it wound up lasting 22 issues, & besides it dropped the sf-centric focus pretty early on.)

As it turned out, I'd lucked into what was in many ways the title's last hurrah. The story itself was a memorable one, & the art -- Dan Adkins inked by Jim Mooney -- followed suit. The follow-up issue adapated Theodore Sturgeon's debut, "Killdozer," but sales reports must have been pretty dire, because not only did "The Thing Called ... Killdozer" take precedence over the actualy title on the cover, but also the tie-in to a recent TV movie of the week adapting the story received prominent mention as well.

And then #s 7 & 8 represented a complete departure from the orginal theme of adapting classic sf -- instead, they adapted the new Ray Harryhausen film, The Golden Voyage of Sinbad. That wasn't exactly a crime against humanity or anything, but it was clearly a last gasp, & that was it for the series.

Not too long thereafter, if memory serves, I was able to obtain the first 4 issues, when the series was in its short-lived prime, from the standpoint of both story & art: adaptations of Frederik Pohl's "The Day After the Day the Martians Came (Ralph Reese art), L. Sprague de Camp's "A Gun for Dinosaur" (Val Mayerik inked by Ernie Chan) , Keithy Laumer's "Doorstep" (stretching the concept of classic sf both chronologically & thematically, but what the heck ... besides, Tom Sutton inking Gil Kane was pretty much worth the price of admission even on a 7-pager), Edmond Hamilton's "He That Hath Wings" (Kane inked by Mike Esposito), Fredric Brown's "Arena" (John Buscema inked by Dick Giordano), Harry F. Bates' "Farewell to the Master" (Ross Andru inked by Wayne Howard, & the basis for The Day the Earth Stood Still; at that time, I hadn't read the original story, & for that matter I didn't see the movie for about a decade, I think at a special showing at the Mesa Public Library near Phoenix) ... hit after hit after hit.

And then it was over. The art became more pedestrain -- Chan inked Dick Ayers on "Killdozer," & then George Tuska & Vince Colletta churned out the "Sinbad" 2-parter. At least, under those circumstances, parting wasn't particularly sweet or sorrowful; the plug had been pulled, for all intents & purposes, a few months earlier, & it was only a matter of time till the breathing stopped.

*sigh*

[dan bailey]

Unless I get hit by a truck or something in the next few days, I guarantee that MWGallaher's choice will show up on the other resident Alabama forum regular's list.

[Paulie]

We are a handful of posts in and I did not see a single one of these picks coming... Awesome stuff...

[Cei-U!]

Worlds Unknown came very close to making my list. "He That Hath Wings" is one of my all-time favorite Gil Kane efforts.

Cei-U!
I summon the near-miss!

[DubipR]

Awesome stuff so far. I'll post my entry when I get home tonight.

[thwhtGuardian]

On the first day of Christmas my LCS owner gave to me Topps Comics adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula in a pear tree...

Okay, so he didn't just give this book to me, and there were no pears or trees to speak of but this book seemed like as good as anywhere else to begin my list.



Published by Topps comics in 1992 this comic is one of the best movie tie ins I've ever encountered, usually these kinds of movie adaptations are beyond flat and dull but this one really dazzles you which is all the more surprising as the film it adapts wasn't all that great. Really though this perhaps shouldn't come as a surprise as the pedigree alone should sell you on it, it's Roy Thomas who is no stranger to Dracula and Mike Mignola who is (in my mind) the best horror artist since Gene Colan.

Now adaptations are always tricky, even more so for works such as Dracula as with all the previous adaptations already familiar to the audience your work is then open to the risk of unflattering comparisons to the preceding versions. The key to a good adaptation is giving your readers that nostalgic feeling of repetition but with out actually replicating the same images frame by frame; you have to reflect the expectations of your audience and yet retain a feeling of originality. In the case of the Topps comics adaptation it becomes even harder still as Thomas and Mignola were tasked with adapting an adaptation. Talk about layers up on layers!

Where Thomas and Mignola succeed while others fail is in that they fully understand the differences between the mediums of film and comics. Too often writers and artists attempt to mimic a film in it's entirety, including it's pacing and that is the main reason they fail as in doing that they forget the power of a comic panel and it's difference from a frame of film. Simply put, Mignola never forgets that difference, he uses panels like no other to not only influence the pacing of a story but also in creating a sense of mood and even more interesting here he uses the lay out of the panels themselves to create evocative visual imagery. I wish I could find a scan of it, but there are several instances where Mignola constructs an image of the cross with the black space between his panels that really creates a perversion of that image in making it a symbol of suspense and fear instead one of hope. It's beautiful.

I think that's what makes this comic so much better than the film it adapted, it keeps the interesting and distinctive visual flair of Copala's film and yet has a level of subtlety that the film lacked.

[Slam_Bradley]

#12 Hawkworld 1-3



I never liked Hawkman. OK. I was alright with the Golden Age Hawkman, but Katar Hol left me colder than a week old mackerel. But I'll try anything by Tim Truman. Add gorgeous art by Quique Alcatena and what may be one of the greatest coloring jobs ever by Sam Parsons and you have a book I come back too again and again.

Following Crisis, DC was rebooting just about everyone. Eventually it had to happen to Hawkman. Many would argue that the combination of the Earths killed Hawkman. Maybe. But the original Hawkworld mini is pretty much continuity neutral. What we have is Katar Hol dealing with an incredibly corrupt Thanagarian elite and the story of how he teams with Shayera Thal and they are dispatched to Earth.

Except this time it's interesting. Thanagar truly is a Hawkworld. The elites lord above the groundlings and swoop down on them as prey. The art by Alcatena and Parsons is suitably dark and predatory. Katar Hol is a conflicted protagonist with occasional feet of clay who rises to the challenge of doing the right thing.

Hawkman was actually interesting. And his world was even more so.

[dan bailey]

Aaaaand another one I'll be picking as well.

[MDG]

#12. Prez #1-4 (1973)


Late 60s-early 70s DC is a treasure trove for this year's list--they were throwing a lot of non-superhero stuff at the wall and not much of it stuck. But a lot of it's interesting.

While Prez might appear a mis-guided, tone-deaf attempt by middle age guys to be "hip," it has the advantage of not seeming limited by expectations or imagination. Grandinetti's art is pretty wild, and the stories are totally off-the-wall. It's a great example of what was possible when comics didn't feel they had to be "realistic."

[MWGallaher]

Tales of the Zombie was on my short list. As a young comics fan, I got a huge kick out of the idea of spinning a series off from an obscure horror story (I also loved "It, the Living Colossus!"). Pablo Marcos' art often struck me as a bit stiff, which made it ideal for a comic book about a "stiff"! Zombie also rates high for me because of one of its backup stories, "Herbie the Liar Said It Wouldn't Hurt", which haunts me to this day. Great choice to start the celebration off with!
I joined Worlds Unknown with the 4th issue, and although I didn't happen to consider that series, it's a worthy choice (It seems Dan and I agree on about 95% of everything, so I expect I can presumptively endorse all of his entries this year!). I laud Marvel's literary adaptations of the early 70's, including the similar but ineligible Supernatural Thrillers, and the black & white magazine that succeeded Dan's entry here (which I did consider for one of my choices).
Supergirl is the kind of unexpected choice I heartily appreciate, since I love pretty much any of the short run comics from Marvel and DC in the 70's. I know I read Havok and Wolverine, which I had forgotten until I saw ads for it in one of my read-throughs of an upcoming choice. Havok was one of my favorites of the original X-men series characters. I don't think I read that adaptation of Dracula, but Mignola is obviously the perfect choice to translate Coppola's film into comics.

[MWGallaher]

I remember seeing the advertisements for Prez before it came out, and even though it wasn't quite my bag, those tiny thumbnails made the book seem irresistible! Who'd have guessed that all of Prez's appearances in the Bronze Age would have been covered on the first day of CCC '12? (Prez, of course, made his one venture out into the larger DC Universe in the pages of Supergirl!)