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Post by geneweigel on Aug 26, 2007 20:47:34 GMT -5
Yeah, that is the problem. You can always find something else more worthwhile than a modern comic. Let's face it, modern comics seem a tad anathemic compared to the old jampacked comics of yesteryear's "more for less" mentality.
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GT
Wizard
Duke of Indiana, Knight Commander
Posts: 2,032
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Post by GT on Sept 1, 2007 13:18:29 GMT -5
I have a thousand plus odd comics stashed away in the library. In the 60s I was primarily a DC buyer, then in the 70s it was about 50/50 DC/Marvel. In the 80s, Marvel took the lead primarily due to the "Mutant" titles. Then, in the late 80s, I got into anime and discovered "independant" titles--primarily Eclipse and Dark Horse. In the 70s, I was a huge Flash (Barry Allen) fan, for reasons I don't quite recall. Always liked the Avengers and JLA/JSA as well... As for cost of comics, when I first started buying them they were 12 cents. They really started getting pricey when the whole "hoarding as an investment" thing started in the late 80s--which backfired for the most part, BTW! I do still buy some of the compilation books nowadays, but so far that's about it. ^__^
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Post by Scott on Sept 10, 2007 22:01:00 GMT -5
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Post by geneweigel on Sept 11, 2007 9:37:46 GMT -5
It looks impressive.
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Post by Scott on Sept 11, 2007 9:44:16 GMT -5
When I heard Robert Downey Jr. was going to play Stark, I cringed, but he looks pretty good in the preview.
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Post by geneweigel on Sept 11, 2007 10:27:26 GMT -5
I heard that this team was originally set out to do CAPTAIN AMERICA the movie but "public reaction" had "turned them off" because of the anti-commie 50's storylines that are attached to the character. Any glib non-comic fan isn't going to know that Marvel did away with by saying Rogers was frozen during that time and replaced in the interim by a commie-smashing cap. Who cares anyway? What a bunch a saps the general populace has become! What would Kirby say if he was alive? ITS CLOBBERIN' TIME! with his cigar clenched prominently in his teeth!
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Post by grodog on Sept 11, 2007 22:48:35 GMT -5
I saw Neil Gaiman's Stardust on this past weekend, and it was fun; I'll pull the comics out to re-read those sometime sooner vs. later.
I didn't really read comics until I got into college (other than the SW comics when I was a kid), then I got sucked into the cool Vertigo stuff (Sandman, Alan Moore Swamp Thing, Hellblazer, Dark Knight, etc.), and some Marvel too (Elektra's the only one that stands out as Marvel that I recall?).
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Post by geneweigel on Sept 12, 2007 13:36:02 GMT -5
That was probably the worst time to get introduced to comics. A lot of the comics you mention were "rationalized" with "over-realism" to make it more "adult". While they were sometimes entertaining in themselves, the sense and feeling of them were very shallow with an underlying disdain for heroism of the past. DOOM PATROL for example was very intelligent and funny but ultimately it was grinding up good stories and rendering them into babble. The SWAMP THING became a renewed success but the damage done to the character (which was done in total continuity of the past stories) was irrepairable. This was no longer an antogized human in a monster shell but now a comfortable deity who was master of his own domain. (Plus ,he was now so comfortable in his own shell that he started a family and became the poster boy for environmentalists.) I hate stories like this that take away the alarming premise for non-adventurous mediocrity to normalize the characters. Being a fan of the original concepts of most of these "edgy" comics, I felt betrayed by the IP owners to let these devolve in this way. ANIMAL MAN for instance was hands down the most bastardized revival that I had ever read. The character was a marginal adventure hero of the 60's who becomes a non-hero (read: villain) who is a suburban dad talking about balancing bills for most of it however his adventures (when he had them) were against humanity so much that it doesn't even make sense (he literally attempted to murder a fisherman!). I didn't "get" the premise of VERTIGO (and the the trend in DC comics that led up to it being labeled "VERTIGO") at all in the end. It just seemed like DC comics hired a bunch of of young, naive and antagonistic writers and let them do whatever they pleased just because they were all British.
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Post by Scott on Sept 19, 2007 7:48:19 GMT -5
I'm still buying the three books. The Thor book is on issue 3. The writing and story are impressive. All of the Asgardian gods have 'died', sort of. Their sould are now each tied to a mortal. Thor is searching for them. In issue 3, Thor lays a major smack doen on another one of my old favorites, Iron Man. Tony Stark has become a govt. man, and when he approaches Thor about registering for some govt. super hero policy, Thor fries him.
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Post by geneweigel on Sept 19, 2007 15:58:23 GMT -5
Wasn't it the other way around in the 80's? Thor was the government tool and Stark was the government liability?
Times change...
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Post by Scott on Sept 20, 2007 4:57:52 GMT -5
I can't remember that for sure. I remember for a chunk of the 80s Start was an alcholic, and his man Rhodes was Iron Man.
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Post by geneweigel on Sept 20, 2007 8:30:15 GMT -5
Yeah, the drunkeness was going on for a while though before he fell apart in 1983 with the "YOU BE IRON MAN!" cover.: And one of the things was that S.H.I.E.L.D. duped him into letting them get a chunk of his company in the first drunk issue in 1979: In 1983, Fury called up Thor to deal with this "U.F.O.": And in 1984 Thor went right to S.H.I.E.L.D. to get his new secret Identity here:
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Post by geneweigel on Sept 20, 2007 8:36:25 GMT -5
The first drunk issue was also the first appearance of Rhodey but it was through a Vietnam flashback establishing that he had known Stark for years.
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Post by GRWelsh on Jun 25, 2020 11:28:04 GMT -5
I've been reading X-Men since the relaunch in 2019 with Jonathan Hickman at the helm. It is bold and ambitious and different, but may be too much. It almost reads like a huge WHAT IF? story, so in that respect I'm really enjoying it.
I've been reading Batman for the past 5+ years but nothing else from DC except DARK NIGHTS: METAL... which was a big crossover thing... too much. The Snyder run on Batman was decent but overhyped. The Court of Owls was a good. The Tom King arc was supposed to go for 100 issues but even 85 issues felt dragged out. That storyline should have been done in 12 issues. I'm enjoying the new James Tinion IV arc so far. I've heard some weird rumors about DC related to troubles with their distribution and executive leadership which could lead to an end to DC comics as we know them. I've always preferred Marvel to DC but still, I don't want DC to go belly up. I did not like New 52 at all, but REBIRTH was a step back in the right direction.
I guess the trick of writing for comic books is staying true to the characters and lore, yet also making it fresh again, which sounds paradoxical. That is not an easy line to walk, so I try to be less critical than I used to be.
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Post by Scott on Jun 25, 2020 20:08:32 GMT -5
I haven't read a lot of comics lately. Re-read some of the original Judge Dredd books recently. Read a few horror comics before that. And that's about it. Haven't followed any current titles in a long time.
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Post by GRWelsh on Jun 26, 2020 8:20:54 GMT -5
The Conan comics have been good as well. Marvel reacquired the rights last year and revived the "Conan the Barbarian" and "Savage Sword of Conan" titles, which also hit a sweet spot for nostalgia and I've been enjoying them. There's basically only one Conan story that gets told over and over again -- the odds are against him and Conan should die but doesn't -- and I never get sick of it.
The Thor relaunch looks interesting. Thor is now the All-Father and up until recently had one eye and a metal arm and ravens on his shoulders and was looking a lot more like Odin. Now he's got a new costume and perhaps new powers. The new series looks very cosmic. It seems Thor is the new Herald of Galactus, and so has the Power Cosmic in addition to all of his other powers and that may also explain why he has his eye and arm back.
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Post by GRWelsh on Sept 6, 2021 13:26:53 GMT -5
Well, this was a weird connection. Over the weekend I was on a bike ride listening to a podcast which has episodes of CBS Radio Mystery Theater. I was listening to the episode #95 "The Longest Knife" (first aired 5/21/1974) and it dawned on me how similar this was to CAPTAIN AMERICA AND THE FALCON #206 (February 1977) during Jack Kirby's run. In the comic book, a cruel dictator of a South American country nicknamed "the Swine" allowed a starving prisoner to eat himself to death. In the podcast, a peasant woman's son was murdered by a cruel dictator of a South American country and she repeatedly describes him as a pig and became his cook... He liked her old peasant style cooking so much he couldn't resist it even though he was supposed to be on a strict diet, and he ate himself to death! Kirby took the idea and just inverted it. I bought the CAPTAIN AMERICA omnibus by Kirby several years ago and love it... Kirby's run was all over the place, with the Mad Bomb, Kill Derby, Night People and the Swine of the Rio Muerte story which is where Arnim Zola first appeared.
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Post by geneweigel on Sept 6, 2021 18:44:24 GMT -5
I was daydreaming that I was talking to a comic villain that I created in the early 80s after sorting artwork the other day. He was complaining about all the costume changes.
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Post by GRWelsh on Sept 8, 2021 13:40:25 GMT -5
Dark Horse is reprinting the EC Comics Archives in paperback editions. I just got THE VAULT OF HORROR volume 1. The stories are extremely corny, but I am enjoying them. There are lots of werewolves, bodies returning from the grave, and people 'getting what they deserve.' Some of the twists come out of nowhere, or have to be explained by the narrator at the end. These were the horror comics of the early 1950's: TALES FROM THE CRYPT (previously titled THE CRYPT OF TERROR and before that a crime comic book), THE VAULT OF HORROR, and THE HAUNT OF FEAR. There was a humorous YouTube TV show named "Robot's Bedtime Stories" that reviewed and discussed the old EC Comic. It was produced by Tyson Wheeler, the former partner of ComicBookGirl19, and I wish he would continue them. www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLc_LMmDf_-uiv_nvNI1RgjPaEVzzBFyMX
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Post by geneweigel on Sept 8, 2021 21:49:38 GMT -5
I had these old B&W reprints for years but they disappeared because I had them on the shelf during games. I recall when I was a kid tons of crusty comics (In addition to the pulp rags) laying around in the "library" but they all slowly vanished. There was a big movement in my family to get closer to my uncle's famous friends and once Woodbridge (From MAD) became a regular at my aunt's house the presence of the EC people and the associated mags rapidly disappeared at the "country house". Heck, they had a jacuzzi and a shower! My cousin had become accustomed to free Mad Magazine paraphenalia so much that he stole my copy of Captain Klutz perhaps believing it was his. Most of my cousins like him were shit poor when it came to comics and toys but they had many gas-operated vehicle hand-me-downs. So they were sticky fingered in that regard.
I recall being disappointed when the only comics available, when my parents would say you can get one at the gas station, would be horror comics and mags but I would buy them anyway.
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