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Doctor Who Monthly #365 (2006)I'm amazed by how many people at Microsoft are closet Doctor Who fans. It's not just the people who have been watching the revival of the show on the SAci-Fi channel or the people who, like me, caught it on CBC or even Torrented it. But there are so many people who watched the show when they were younger. I was testing a DVD dub I made from a video my friend Mike made me of an episode, and the guy across the all from me heard and immediately recognized that very unique theme song. I kind of figured Jeff as a closet Doctor Who fan when he was younger, but I was more surprised by straight-laced Barry dubbing a project K9, after the Doctor's robotic dog. Who knew, indeed? American Virgin #1 (2006)Adam Chamberlin is a soldier of God. He's a happy foot soldier in the army of purity, preaching virginity and a godly life to anyone who will listen to him. And Adam is a pure soul, suffused by a pureness of spirit and calm that translates into raw charisma. People are attracted to him, even beautiful girls, but he resists all temptation. After one of his "Save Yourself" sessions, Adam even tells a girl who propositions him, "I am totally flattered by your offer. But I am not the one for you. You will know him when you meet him with your heart and not your lust." And the girl believes what Adam says, because he really means it with all his heart and soul. He believes he's blessed, so he is blessed.
Unfortunately, Adam is living in denial of the evil and worldly ways that surround him. His mother and stepfather are professional televangelists who care more about how Adam can help their ratings than they do about Adam's message. Meanwhile, his brother is a stoner, his sister is a tattooed rebel with unspecified troubles that are forcing her to leave town, and his cousins are rough-spoken men who hang out with exotic dancers. And, most distressing of all, his girlfriend, on an African Peace Corps trip, is about to make international news. Against all this temptation and evil, how can Adam stay pure?
As this issue ends, Adam is standing on the precipice. Will the cruel reality of the real world cause Adam to fall from grace, or will he be able to resist temptation and become an even more exemplary example of a purity of mind and spirit? Can Adam's faith survive the cruelty and evil that exists in the world, or will it begin to eat his soul? I know how I would feel if I lived through what Adam experienced, but I've never been in the state of grace that Adam lives in. He could go either way, and this first issue gives only a small clue as to which way he'll go.
Give Steven Seagle a lot of credit for creating a fascinating dilemma for his lead character. This is a man who's clearly come to conclusions that have served him well, but which also seem to sow the seeds of his own destruction. The fact is that Adam is actually a quite admirable character at the beginning of this issue. He's a truly happy man, who is happy in the way that only a very religious young man can be. Who wouldn't want a completely happy life, as Adam lives? Unfortunately, that happiness seems to have come at the price of not truly experiencing the world around him. Which way will Adam go? Can he maintain his values, or will reality take its unfortunate toll?
Becky Cloonan's art is a nice fit for this book. I especially liked the increasing desiccated look of Adam as the issue progressed. The man who begins the issue with a pure look, with perfect hair and grooming, has by the end of the issue become a disheveled man who looks like the world is falling down all around him, a man who looks like he has literally had a hell of a week.
This is one of those very unique first issues that give no indication of how the series might play out. This could become another Preacher, or it could become something very different and unique. I can't wait to see in what direction American Virgin goes. Marvel Preview #7: Satana (1976)Remember the Seinfeld episode "The Jimmy", which centers around a guy who plays basketball with Jerry and George and always refers to himself in the third person? "Jimmy hit a great shot, didn't he?" and all that?
I was reading this comic and it brought that episode to mind. Instead of "Jimmy" this and "Jimmy" that, it for a long time was "Marvel" this and "Marvel" that. There were Marvel Adventure and Marvel Spectacular. Marvel Chillers and Marvel Presents launched with fill-ins in their first two issues. Marvel's Greatest Comics continued from Marvel Collector's Item Classics (not to be confused with Marvel Classics Comics, which had two issues written by Don McGregor). Marvel Team-Up and Marvel Two-In-One were team-up books, while Marvel Premiere, Marvel Spotlight (two series), Marvel Preview and Marvel Fanfare were anthology comics of one sort or another. There were Mighty Marvel Western and Special Marvel Edition, Marvel Double Feature and Marvel Triple Action (never understood how it was triple the action), which became Marvel Super Action. Not to mention Marvel Super-Heroes (logical title for the whole line) and the venerable Marvel Tales, which resurrected its title from a horror comic.
So which witch is which? How can you tell your Marvel Fanfare from your Marvel Spectacular? To me, this is the perfect test of true geek knowledge. To not only be able to remember these titles but know what appeared in them is one of those tests that only those who really care about this minutia can pass. (For the record, Marvel Fanfare was an '80s book that ran old, inventory stories as well as a few cool one-offs, while Marvel Spectacular was Thor reprints).
And Marvel Preview was a black-and-white anthology comic that presented various stories. The second issue featured the first solo appearance of the Punisher, while the 4th introduced Starlord for the first of five appearances, and other issues included a two-part Sherlock Holmes story and another adapted the classic novel Gladiator.
And some issues were like this one, fill-ins that presented inventory stories from Marvel's archives. Satana was the Devil's daughter, but she always felt redundant. We already had the Son of Satan and Lilith, Dracula's Daughter (in a series written by Steve Gerber), so there just didn't seem to be a niche for Satan's baby girl. Under the hands of Chris Claremont (just as the X-Men were getting started) and artist Vincente Alcazar, there's nothing at all memorable about this comic. it's competent, and the artwork has an exotic feel to it, but in the end it's just another blah '70s Marvel book.
Has this character ever been brought back? Does Satana still stalk the mean streets of New York City, possessing unknowing women? Or, damn it, is that Lilith who possesses? What was Satana's schtick? I have the comic sitting next to me and I don't even know... Daredevil #83 (2006)Warning: In this review I discuss a major spoiler that happened in the previous issue of Daredevil. If you're waiting for the trade, don't read this review. So apparently Foggy Nelson is dead. This is comics, so it may or may not be true, but it certainly feels like Brubaker has shaken up the status quo for this book, killing off another supporting character that’s been around since the early 1960s. Foggy has been Matt Murdock's partner for as long as Daredevil has appeared on the printed page, always the faithful best friend and law partner. And, you know, it feels right for Foggy to be killed somehow. Sure, it's weird for such a long-lived character to be gone, but it perfectly fits the feel of this comic over the last several years. Matt's life has slowly been falling apart since Brian Bendis took over his book, and Ed Brubaker's two issues have only accelerated that dissolution. Matt is becoming ever more and more trapped in a disaster of his own making, stuck in the general population in Riker's Island Prison, and living with scum like the Owl and Morgan, who was once the crime lord of Harlem. Is this all part of an elaborate scheme to take down the Kingpin once and for all, or is Matt continuing to suffer the results of his own mistakes, literally the tragic hero who plants the seeds for his own fall? That question sets the subtext for this series of stories, putting everything into a unique perspective. Meanwhile, this issue really focuses on the struggles of Ben Urich, a good man, a hell of a reporter, and one of Matt's best friends. Urich acts as a sort of surrogate for readers, as we see Matt's struggles and the story's mysteries through his eyes. Urich is trying to figure out what's really going on, trying to help Matt wherever he can, but constantly falling short in his hopes. Urich is, as he often is, the real hero of this comic, the everyman trying his best to help one of his closest friends. That humanness paradoxically makes Urich seem more super-human in his intelligence and intensity. Because we as readers feel that Urich's actions will have a high cost, his steadfastness is even more powerful. Lark and Gaudiano's art is wonderfully dark and moody, a perfect counterpart to Brubaker's grim story. The shadows in this comic seem alive with conflict, conflicts that mirror the main characters' internal battles. It really is a gorgeously human and tough world that these characters live in. It's a real compliment to say that this issue feels like a really good episode of Law & Order. In Daredevil #83, people try to do good, try to fight for justice, but always seem to fall short. As everyone knows, Law & Order always has a twist somewhere in the plot. I can't wait to see what the twist is in this one. FOOM #11 (1975)Marvel's in-house fan magazine was highly beloved by aging boomers and post-boomers like myself. FOOM was like an extension of the Bullpen Bulletins page, where these cool Marvel minions would talk to us readers like we were part of a family of fans, part of a special, cool group because we were smart enough to be fans of the greatest line of comic books in the world.
FOOM was an extension of that ethos, presenting fun articles and previews of upcoming comics. Always, the magazine was written with a breathlessly positive style, but one that was positive and fun rather than cloying. The message was that Marvel was a fun place, so wouldn't you want to come visit it for awhile? I really think that this ethos, as much as the comics themselves, was a big part of why Marvel became so successful in this era. Readers were told repeatedly that they were making a great choice by joining this club; simply by reading the Bullpen Bulletins, you became part of a club with its own unspoken rules and its own in-jokes. What young kid wouldn't want to be part of something like that?
This issue highlights the return of Jack Kirby to Marvel, and it's clear that this return was a big deal at the time. Of course, the King's return would be ill-fated at the time - his books didn't sell as well as anyone hoped, and Jack's work was hated by many of the Marvel staffers at the time - but here, at least there's a giant feeling of optimism about Jack at Marvel. We get a wonderful interview wth Kirby, where he expounds on his empowering philosophy: "We already are super-heroes," he says at one point.
There's also a nice little appreciation of Kirby by Alex Boyd, which makes several points that have become the common wisdom about Kirby. My favorite is that Kirby's lack of attention to anatomy is a big part of what gives his work real power - they seem to be real and elaborate, but it's all in service to his grand stories. I like that a lot!
In Marvel news, this month eatured the debuts of Tigra, Howard the Duck and Black Goliath in their short-lived series. X-Men #97 was released this month, while my man Don McGregor was writing Jungle Action with the Black Panther, Power Man and Amazing Adventures featuring War of the Worlds, while Steve Gerber was writing Defenders, Man-Thing and, of course, the duck.
I tend to look back on this era fondly, but I've heard more than once that the company almost went out of business before the runaway success of the Star Wars comic in 1977. It's pretty clear that there was no unifying force between Marvel's line in '75, and that the company spent a lot of time trying to find new successes. Of course, '75 was also when the company successfully tried to kill Atlas/Seaboard Comics, so maybe that effort sowed the seeds of the company's eventual destruction. I'll leave that question for smarter people than me to think about. Supergirl #75 (2002)I paid twelve bucks for this comic. Twelve bucks! For a comic from less than four years ago. It seems crazy, especially since I had every reason to want to pick this comic up. By then my friend Mike had already keyed me in to the greatness of this comic, and I had a pretty good run of the series. I was intrigued by the new Supergirl, the whole Earth Angel/Chaos Stream storyline being fresh in my mind from reading the series, and even though this was a new direction in the storyline, I should have known to trust writer Peter David to deliver something interesting.
But no, I didn't pick it up for the mere $2.50 I could have bought it for at the time, instead spending nearly ten times as much as cover price to read the first reappearance of the original Supergirl.
Yeah, that last sentence sounds like tanged comic book logic, doesn't it? The first post-Crisis reappearance of a classic Silver Age character in a comic featuring a heroine who shares her name but not her powers or her looks.
Damn, that sounded worse.
See, the Silver Age Supergirl was from Argo City, a whole city-sized chunk of Krypton that was shot into space. There were a lot of survivors of Krypton in the 1960s. I don't know what happened to the city, but somehow Supergirl rocketed to Earth and became part of DC's mainstream hero line, including some wonderful stories illustrated by Curt Swan, Jim Mooney and Mike Sekowsky.
Meanwhile, there was a new Supergirl in this series written by Peter David, who took a much less common approach to the character. Her backstory is impossibly convoluted, and had its fans, including me. But many people didn't want a complex Supergirl who didn't even dress like her cousin Superman. Instead they wanted the original. And in this issue, they got her.
And, you know, there really is something refreshing about the original. She's cute, she's naive, she doesn't quite know how to handle her powers. The original Supergirl is retro-cool, a sweet reminder of days long past when comics cost a thin dime. And here she was, back again for our entertainment.
Twelve bucks for a nice illustration of the power of nostalgia versus the modern world? That's not a bad deal, if you ask me. Creepy #91 (1977)What a line-up in this one! Neal Adams! (a reprint, but a terrific story). A clever monster story by Berni(e) Wrightson! A story by John Severin with inks by Wally Wood - a combination I've never, ever seen before! The great Alex Toth! The underrated Luis Bermejo! Berni(e) Wrightson in collaboration with Jeff Jones! And, perhaps most amazing of all, a story written by Dave Sim.
Yeah, Dave Sim. The cartoonist who wrote and drew 300 issues of Cerebus, one of the most controversial and famous cartoonists of all time, a true independent spirit maven, writes a story in this issue, illustrated by the great Russ Heath.
It's weird to remember back to around when Cerebus launched, when Sim was simply a big name fan looking to go professional. He did work for many fanzines in '76 and '77, and obviously sold a few professional stories. Sim's talked many times how creating Cerebus was in some ways an attempt to find work at the big publishers. It's clear that Sim tried to diversify his portfolio of quality work in an effort to make himself more useful to publishers, a very interesting strategy.
The story's really not too bad. It's a twist ending story about an axe murderer who gets his comeuppance. It's not a great story, but "Shadow of the Axe" is quite readable and, quite logically, plays to the strengths of artist Heath. I like the way that Sim obviously gave some thought to how the story would play on the page, and how the rhythm of the events would play out. It's a solidly professional bit of writing, and it's clear that if the 'bus hadn't worked out, Sim could have had a decent career as a freelance writer.
But that's parallel universe stuff. In this universe it was a gateway to bigger and better work. Hard Time Season Two #4 (2006)This terrific series keeps rolling along.
The issue begins with Ethan Harrow, our young protagonist, being beat up by a group of Italian thugs in the jail they share. The jail is divided among various ethnic and political lines, and Ethan is the ultimate outsider at the jail. He's not part of the Italian gang, or a Nazi or black power fighter. Instead, Ethan seems to always be involved in things he shouldn't be, picking fights with members of each power broker, in order to fight for his idea of justice. Surprisingly, though, the person who stops the beating is the man whose very physical presence hurts Ethan: Cutter, the man who loves to inflict and receive pain.
Cutter leads a group of outsiders, which includes Cindy, the young man who loves to be treated as a woman, and this issue is mostly about his life, both before and after entering prison. Readers get a feel for Cindy's younger life, as we see him fight his impulses towards femininity, finally coming to head with a confrontation with his step-father. The story seems familiar, but as usual with Gerber and Skrenes, the writers find some new and unique touches in the story.
Finally, at the end of the issue, Cutter is a horrible fight himself, as retribution for what he did earlier in the issue, which beings up interesting questions for what Ethan should do.
Overall this is a nice, thoughtful issue. Cindy moves from being a cipher to a more fully-fleshed character, and Brian Hurtt's cover is terrific. Vampirella #18 (1972)I seem to be stuck on the magazine format comics when I look at older things lately. I've been filling in some holes in my collection with the Warren mags and such, and thus they've been at the top of my list. There's a lot of good stuff in these mags, and this stuff is extremely hard to find anymore due to its odd format, so it's always a treat to read an old school b&w.
This issue features work by several great Warren writers. T. Casey Brennan was a very popular writer for the mags, cited by no less than Dave Sim as a big influence on him at the time. My man Don McGregor also has a story in this issue, as do solid mainstays Don Glut and Doug Moench. Unfortunately, this issue isn't as good as I'd like it to be.
The first story, naturally, features Vampirella, the sultry vampiress from the planet Drakulon, who in this issue seems to be in a running battle with Dracula. Drac is from the same planet as Vampi, and in this issue falls under the influence on a woman from their planet who can save his soul. It's an extremely odd take on Drac, from writer Brennan. In this story, Dracula is looking to redeem his immortal soul, and seems more tormented than evil. This is tremendously at odds with the way that Dracula is usually portrayed, and that makes this a hard piece to get through. Dracula is such an archetype that such a dramatic movement out of his normal portrayal is hard to get into.
Also, unfortunately, Don Mcgregor's "Song of a Sad-Eyed Sorceress" is also oddly hard to get into. This may have been one of McGregor's first professional sales, so it's easy to forgive. But this story is verbose even for McGregor. It seems almost overwhelmed by the number of words used. And unlike usual, the words don't intensify the story but instead feel like a man fumbling around trying to find the right words for his story. And it is a very odd story. It's really two stories in one: the tale of a jerk of a man who loves 'em and leaves 'em, and at the same time a story of that man tortured by a goddess for his jerkitude. Frankly it all feels a bit over the top, a bit much of a reaction to a simple every day relationship gone sour. Luis Garcia's beautifully rendered art doesn't quite redeem the story. But it sure is pretty.
Doug Moench's "Won't Get Fooled Again" is a simple little revenge tale. It has its clever moments, and some nice art by Aureleon, but it's shallow and obvious.
And Don Glut's "The 'Dorian Gray' Syndrome" is a clever idea ruined by an idiotic ending.
So not primo Warren stuff. I feel especially disappointed that I didn't like the McGregor piece. I'm quickly running out of comics that feature Don's writing, and I want each one of them to be even better than the one before. Oh well.
Jonah Hex #5 (2006)Holy freaking crap. Tony DeZuñiga is back drawing Jonah Hex! Talk about a match made in heaven. DeZuñiga was one of the key artists for Jonah's original series, way back in the 1970s and '80s, and I'd honestly thought the dude had retired or died or just gave up comics for a higher paid career in animation or something. But here's DeZuñiga, back drawing the adventures of the bounty hunter with the facial scars that match the scars that life has inflicted in his soul.
Man, it's great to see DeZuñiga back. The man was born to draw Hex. With his moody, impressionistic line work and uniquely scratchy style, DeZuñiga is the ideal artist for a comic that takes place in a wintry frontier in the old west. Like the cinematography in the TV series Deadwood, DeZuniga's art conveys the intensity and grit of life in the old west. Peoples' lives look hard, and every day is a struggle to get by. People at that time wake up each day and fight just to get by, and sometimes that fight spills over into schemes to hijack railroads and generally make other peoples' lives miserable.
The coolest thing is that it isn't just some sort of nostalgia that brings DeZuñiga back to the book. His style has grown and changed in the intervening years, becoming even more gritty and intense than it was back in the day, giving Hex's world even more of a feeling of roughness and struggle than it had when he first was drawing the book.
This is the perfect issue for DeZuñiga to draw. On Christmas Eve, Hex is caught in confrontation at a small railroad station when trying to hold a train robber from recapture by his friends. The nasty confrontation in a small building on a snowy night with only an old man, a woman, and the train robber to help him is a tremendously dramatic tableau, one that shows the intense brutality of life in that era and the toughness of Hex. As usual, Hex loses the battle, only to win in the end, with an absolutely thrilling conclusion.
I have no idea how many issues of Jonah Hex will boast the art of Tony DeZuñiga, but this one, at least is a real treat. Alter Ego #57 (2006)So I bought a subscription to Roy Thomas's fanzine Alter Ego last year because, as you might know, I'm a big fan of obscure comics information. And there are few better places to get obscure comics info than AE; the whole fanzine is dedicated to exploring the minutiae of comics history, and I love it. I love hearing the reminiscences by creators in their 60s and 70s about life in the industry, hearing their stories about Syd Shores and Mike Sekowsky and Andru and Esposito and all the other creatos who were always just names on paper for my when I was growing up.
Sometimes the minutiae gets even a bit too obscure for me. I have to admit a strong bias towards Marvel's history over the more unknown creators, though stories about the hard-drinking, hard-living creators of the early days are always fun.
Anyway, this issue has almost none of that. Fully 58 pages of this magazine are dedicated to an index of the Timely and Atlas heroes from 1939-1957. If you need me to explain that Timely and Atlas were the precursors to the company we know as Marvel Comics, you already are eliminated from the class of people who care about this magazine. If, however, you do care about history, you might find this magazine interesting.
For me, well, I gotta admit I didn't look at any of the index. It's all a bit too obscure for me, much as most indices are. I think that's logical - unless one is using the index as a buying guide (as I do with the long index at the back of The Warren Companion, another TwoMorrows publication), there's just not a lot of browsable content here.
The thing that makes it at least browsable, though, is the rare art and pictures shown as part of the issue. It's fun to see such golden age obscurities as the Vision, Miss America and the Patriot on display. Thomas presents some old ads, too, which are a kick, and I loved the glimpse at "Captain America's Weird Tales."
The one interview in this issue is of the legendary Gene Colan, who started out at Timely, and as always, Colan's grace and insight is wonderful.
So, if you care, this is indispensible. If you don't care, you'd never think of buying this. Annihilation: Prologue (2006)Did you know that somewhere out in space in the Marvel Universe, there's a group called the Nova Corps out there protecting us? They're a lot like the Green Lantern Corps: each member looks differently from each other, and have slightly different costumes from each other, but each follows a great central authority, and put themselves on the line to save the universe from great galaxy-spanning menaces. In this case, "something just pushed through the crunch," that nasty something being a nasty race of interstellar killers. This Annihilation Prologue tells the story of that valiant Nova Corps as they try to win the war. How do they do? well, let's just say that a certain Terran member of the Nova Corps has a reason to seek revenge on his enemies.
Well, it's an exciting start to a big star-spanning adventure. There's a sense of menace and threat here that's a lot of fun. This issue sets a number of plot threads in motion. Some seem to be obvious for future exploration - for instance, what is the future of the Nova Corps - and others seem more subtle - what are Thanos's plans here, and what is his involvement in this whole scheme?
I don't know to what extent this story follows the Infinite Crisis problem of being too much inside the tent, of requiring too much inside knowledge to really get a lot out of the story. For instance, does the great revelation on the last story page make any sense for anyone who doesn't already know that character? Does the appearance of the character make the story more laughable for the non-initiates, or more interesting? I'm not sure that writer Giffen does a good enough job of keeping readers up to speed on who all these characters are and what all their actions mean.
I've never been a big fan of Scott Kolins's work. To me, his human characters look stiff and mechanical. Maybe it's the influence of Ariel Olivetti or maybe it's because he's drawing non-human characters here, but Kolins's work seems especially effective here. He obviously had a lot of fun drawing the diverse Nova Corps, and all their different looks. Kolins's big space battles have a hell of a lot going on in them, even if it's sometimes seems hard to understand exactly what's going on.
It's hard to assess an epic on the basis of one chapter, but this is a nice, solid beginning for this one. Eerie #3 (1966)The first few years of Warren Publishing presented horror and war comics with perhaps the finest roster of creators since the heyday of EC Comics in the 1950s. Under the astute and insightful editorship of Archie Goodwin, these magazines are a virtual clinic in the art of intelligently creating horror comics.
Just look at the roster for this magazine, which came out towards the tail end of the golden age: Gene Colan, Reed Crandall, Steve Ditko, Rocco Mastroserio, Joe Orlando, John Severin, George Evans, Alex Toth and Al Williamson. Just how many legends can one magazine contain? Crandall, Orlando, Severin, Evans and Williamson were among the finest of the EC artists, and Williamson has always been a master at a very beautiful, highly illustrative approach that is a real fan favorite. Meanwhile, Ditko and Colan were among the finest of the Marvel artists, and Toth is, well, Toth. A master at his own maverick art style and approach, an idiosyncratic genius, Toth is a genius on his own terms.
Toth has one of my three favorite pieces in this issue. "The Monument" is a masterpiece of clean lines and thoughtful panel arrangements. Ideal for a story about a work of architectural genius that helps to spawn some evil people, the story almost feels architected, built from the ground up with a master plan for design and creation in place. The story has a lean and intelligent feel, attributes typical of Toth. And his mastery of wash art is just wonderful, adding a depth and emotion to the b&w art that adds still more drama to the story.
Gene Colan illustrates "Full Fathom Fright," abut treachary and greed (and a monster) among underwater explorers. Like Toth, Colan uses wash to intensify the story, but unlike Toth, Colan's focus is on his characters as much as their setting. Colan's strongest suit has always been the way he draws real people, and in this story his characters show their emotions in every movement of their bodies. Colan's talked many times about how he's a big movie fan, and here he follows the trick of great actors: every line and movement is about the characters on the page.
Steve Ditko's "Room with a View" takes the opposite approach for its art, employing thick cross-hatching to create mood. Ditko's art, even at its most open, has a claustrophobic feel to it; here, using this style, the claustrophobia is overwhelming. His characters really are tortured by their evil inner lives, as depcited by Ditko, constantly in conflict with the evil beings who live just beyond their reach. Ditko's style is just wonderful here, using bizarre camera angles and intense emotions to lift an ordinary story into something special.
Plus Al Williamson and Reed Crandall and a bunch of other artists. It's too bad this old Warren stuff has its rights tied up, because it's the perfect candidate for the nice hardcover treatment. The Spectacular Spider-Man #2 (1968)In '68, someone at Marvel got it into their minds to release a magazine-sized Spider-Man comic. Exactly who that wise man was has been lost to posterity, but it seems pretty clear that the brass above Stan Lee's head got it into their minds to try something different. Besides Marvel Comics, Magazine Management published a whole line of "real" magazines, including crossword puzzle magazines, romance mags, and even at least one "men's" magazine of the time (if I remember the story right, the models used to work a couple of floors above Marvel's offices, and one of the perks of working at Marvel was to occassionally get to go upstairs and ogle the models.)
Also, at this time, there were several magazine-sized horror comics on the stands. Jim Warren's Creepy, Eerie and Blazing Combat were the gold standard, but there were a slew of imitators such as the Skywald mags. The early Warren mags were amazing comics, and I'll talk about them soon.
So earlier in '68, Marvel released the first issue of Spectacular Spider-Man, a black-and-white adventure of Spidey fighting the Green Goblin, as written by Stan Lee and illustrated by Johnny Romits. Several months later, a second issue was released, also by Lee & Romita, but this time produced in color. This is a 58-page epic adventure once again pitting Spidey versus the ol' Goblin.
What's striking about this book, really, is how typically Marvel it is. Stan didn't dress it up at all for release in a fancier edition; instead, this comic just reads like a slightly longer Spider-Man Annual, or perhaps three issues published together, without the title pages.
Which is not to say it's a bad story. Spectacular is a nice solid story of its era. The story features the iconic versions of the characters that so many people adore. We get the full cast of supporting characters: beautiful, loyal Gwen Stacy, hotheaded Mary Jane (in a very not MJ haircut), blustery JJJ, loyal Harry Osborn, and tortured Norman Osborn. Even Police Captain Stacy, Gwen's dad who would later die saving Peter Parker's life, is in this story, puffing his ever-present pipe.
But what readers really want from a story like this is a rousing battle between Spidey and his arch-nemesis. And they get it in spades. There are several really wonderful battles between the costumed hero and villain, but actually the most interesting scene happens when neither one is in costume. Norman decides to hold a party, obsensibly for his son's friends, but really to psychologically torture Peter Parker, and tighten the screws on him. See, the Goblin knows Peter's secret identity, and he wants to defeat his foe utterly. So Norman calls the party, knowing that Peter will worry about his friends. The scene builds wonderfully slowly, until Peter is able to wiggle off the hook. But Romita's depiction of an ever more crazy Norman Osborn is just wonderful.
In fact, Romita does his usual sterling job on this story. Ring-a-Ding Romita is a real pro, and sometimes it's easy to forget the quality of his work. But here, his art is so clear, so thoughtful and so professional, that it looks almost iconic. Inkers Jim Mooney and Frank Giacoia add a nice touch of mood to the piece as well.
This is a really nice comic, actually really close to definitive for Spider-Man. Who can ask for more? Tales of the Zombie #7 (1974)What a disappointment this one was. This issue of Tales of the Zombie is one of the final comics written by Steve Gerber that I haven't collected. I've talked about Gerber on this blog a lot in the past, how I love his writing, how I find him to be a wonderful master at the existential art of creating intelligent comics about walking bog beasts and living zombies.
Unfortunately, this issue has only two pages by Gerber. As was so often the case in Marvel's color comics at the time, this issue was a fill-in, written by Doug Moench. Moench would become a terrific comics writer, but he was never Gerber. Nobody was. And Moench's Sherlock Holmes-like tale of killings for money totally lacks the existential spark that Gerber brought this series. Perish the thought, but this story felt ordinary, typical, nothing special.
Kinda like this blog post, I guess... Creepy #59 (1974)This issue has two, count 'em, two stories written by my man Don McGregor. McGregor was the master of taking standard story topics and making very interesting tales out of them through his introspective and poetic use of language, along with his sometimes very unique takes on life. That's a nice way of saying that while there's some logic holes in these stories (some pretty big logic holes, in fact), the passion and energy that McGregor customarily brings to his stories helps make them immensely readable and addictive.
The first of the pieces, "A Dark and Violent Place," is a police procedural that takes place at a big theatre showing blaxploitation movies in New York. It turns out the killer is some phantom of the opera type masked villain, out to take revenge because he was scarred. Yeah, it's a silly plot (this is from very early on in McGregor's professional career), but it has one of his characteristic soliloquies from a main character:
Yeah, ikt's a bit corny, but in a twist-ending type of comic like Creepy, this was excitingly different stuff.
The second piece, "Not a Creature Was Stirring," boasts wonderfully intense Tom Sutton art for the story of a serial killer out to kill Salvation Army Santas on Christmas Eve in New York. Two cops - not the ones from the other story - track down the serial killer. This story actually does a nice job of being kind of a parallel biography of several people's lives. We see the past of the serial killer and get a feel for what drives him to murder. More interesting, We get insight into a crazy woman who screams at people on the street, meet Detective Dave Turner and his depressed girlfriend, even see why a homeless man dresses up sa Santa each year.
It's an odd piece, veering around between different stories, but the power of the writing and the marvelous art really carry it off. McGregor makes this simple serial killer story into something more about the power of despair in the city of New York, providing a portrait of people in decline.
Okay, so you want a quote, as I seem to do for every Dandy Don story? How about a dialogue between Detectives O'Brien and Turner?
Very nice, Mr. McGregor. Very nice. Chilling Adventures in Sorcery As Told by Sabrina #1 (1972)Now this is an oddball comic book. Chilling Adventures in Sorcery As Told by Sabrina is basically a serious horror comic, featuring vampires and monsters and murderous revenge plots, and yet it's all narrated in classic Archie Comics form by Sabrina the Teen-Age Witch.
Take the first story, for instance. "Behold the Beast" tells the story of Tommy, born with four arms and an agly face, and a temprament to match. He lives chained up in his parents' attic but one day manages to shake his steel shackles and run away from home. Wandering out of his neighborhood, Timmy attracts a posse of attackers as he runs into the woods, the same reason where, for reasons left unexplained, a blind girl just happens to be wandering. The blind girl talks to him and of course likes him: "You're not horrible to behold. Not to me, you're not! You see, I'm blind. I can't behold anything. And you sound as kind as they sound cruel." Yes, the blind girl in the woods has a heart of gold, as so many blind girls in woods do. Of course, fate intervenes between our young crush-sharers, and the girl falls into a quicksand pit. Guess what happens next? Yes, our hero, poor misunderstood Timmy, jumps into the quicksand and saves the girl, sacrificing himself in the process. The monster is dead, the posse goes back to drink their beer, and the girl is sobbing and alone. Sounds like a great Saturday night to me.
And this whole thing is drawn in a Dan DeCarlo type style - it may even be DeCarlo - that looks like it should be drawing a story about Archie battling the schemes of Betty and Veronica. Weeeird.
Not to obsess over this one story, but it raises so many spooky questions for me, things that merit this being turned into a whole novel. Who are these parents who lock their monster up in an attick, chained up? What kind of cruelty prevents him from even going to the bathroom freely? And why is he a monster just because he had four arms and was ugly? Over at Marvel he would be attending Professor Xavier's Academy; was he just born in the wrong place and time? Why was this neighborhood so quick to have a posse form, and why do all these men have guns? Is there perhaps a plague of four-armed ugly men? Why is there quicksand in woods? This doesn't seem to be a tropical area, so what would cause the quicksand to form? And of course the real question is: where can I meet a beautiful blind girl with long straight blonde hair and a nice figure who will love me for who I am and not the pathetic misshapen monster that I look like from the outside?
Oh, sorry, I'd better stop this post before my tears burn out my motherboard. The Pulse, vol 2: Secret War (2005)I think Brian Bendis may have finally jumped the shark. At least, that's the conclusion I've come to after reading this collection of issues 6 to 9 of The Pulse. The Pulse depicts the continuing adventures of Jessica Jones, late of the clever series Alias, who has given up her life as a private investigator and now works as a reporter for the Daily Bugle. Oh, and she's pregnant. And she's in love with Luke Cage, Power Man. And she doesn't actually spend much time writing.
In fact, in this book, pregnant Jessica basically finds herself wandering through New York confused about what's happening, having strange events happen around her that she doesn't understand, meeting an incredibly out-of-character Wolverine, and having every random person she meets comment on her pregnancy. If you're getting the idea that there's not much plot in this story, you're right. Instead we get page after page of characters talking with each other, arguing with each other, punching each other, but no real movement of plot. It's so exaperating to read this kind of endless unfiltered Brian Michael Bendis for page after page. Hydra even shows up and kidnaps Jessica, offering her a basically unlimited amount of money to join their side. But really all that scene does is present another chance for people to talk in that endless Bendis-speak. Oh, and the Hydra guys know that Jessica is pregnant.
Apparently everybody in the damn Marvel universe knows that Jessica is pregnant, because it feels like nearly every page has a comment by one character or another on Jessica'a pregancy. Okay, Bendis, I wanted to scream, she's pregnant. I get it. Now what in the hell does that have to do with the story? Nothing, really: there's no threat of Jessica miscarrying, no appearance that the pregnancy is affecting her health or her reactions to what happens around here. It's just there and is commented on because it seems like it should be important.
Even the details of this story just seem false. There's an angry confrontation between Cage's partner Iron Fist where he talks about how he barely knows Jessica. This is despite the fact that we see them earlier talking in the hospital and, of yeah, she's pregnant with Cage's baby and Cage is Iron Fist's best pal. Jessica never ran into Danny in Heroes For Hire office, or ever went to his house for a barbecue?
I could talk about more stupid scenes in this comic, like where Captain America punches Nick Fury for who knows what reason, or how Wolverine actually breaks down sobbing, or why ninjas knew that Jessica was going to visit Luke Cage at a clinic, or how the nurse at that clinic is wearing an outfit out of the 1950s. But I won't. Really almost nothing rings true in this book.
The saving grace of this book is the art. Brent Anderson, best known for his work on Astro City, illustrates much of the book and does a fantastic job with the rotten source material. Anderson is a master of mood and emotion, and is very effective at depicting New York, both interiors and exteriors, effectively. Michael Lark also steps in to contribute some work, and adds a wonderfully graceful line to the story.
One more note on the art: the cover is a big tease. It shows Wolverine breaking through a newspaper, in full uniform, ready to kick ass. No such scene happens in this book. Logan only appears in eight pages, never in his uniform, and mostly spends his time whining about his lot in life. It's false advertising to depict an image that doesn't even come close to happening inside the book, just an annoying tease for readers.
I don't know if I can extrapolate from this book to say if Bendis has jumped the shark, but based on this book, I'd have to say yes. Volume two of The Pulse is just awful. Leave It to Binky #61 (1968)My wife and her friend at work like to trade text messages with each other. They trade a lot of text messages. Liisa's friend Crystal likes to call her "Pookie". Funny enough, I picked up this old comic at the Portland Comicon, and what name is written on then first page? Pooky. Funny coincidence, huh? Comet Tales #16 (2005)Sometimes I feel like I live in a parallel universe by being a longtime member (often lapsed) of comics fandom. Fandom has its own legends, only some of whom move into professional comics work. For every Roy Thomas, Jerry Ordway, Jim Starlin or Mitch O'Connell, who went from fandom to professional comics work, there are dozens more who happily keep their hand in fan work while working a real day job.
Jim Pack and Tim Corrigan are two such fans. Jim has been putting out his wonderful zine Comet Tales for several years now, after a long lapse in work. Meanwhile, Tim is a fan who was ridiculously prolific for quite a few years and has only recently resurfaced in fandom. It was a treat to see this zine arrive in the mail and find a new Pack/Corrigan story.
"Interview with a Martian Cat", their new collaboration, is a fun little time paradox yarn, with some clever twists (it's fun how Pack shows that money changes everything) and some charming art. These guys aren't pros, but that somehow makes the story more fun and refreshing. These creators are doing what they want, and are having a hell of a good time as they do that.
The zine is only a dollar, and Jim will put you on a lifetime`subscription list if you send the buck.
Jim Pack 787 Bay Harbor Maineville OH 45039 |
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