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Post by GRWelsh on Sept 9, 2021 7:37:28 GMT -5
That reminds me of Classics Illustrated and Hot Rod comics Granny gave me when I was young in the 70's or early 80's. I had them for a long time but they went missing at some point, maybe lost in a move. She told me that someone in our family worked on the comics and proudly pointed out one of the Hot Rod comics but sadly I cannot remember the details. You'd think I'd remember since I was into comics from a young age, but I was into super hero comics and the Classics Illustrated and Hot Rod comics from the 40's or 50's didn't interest me.
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Post by Scott on Sept 9, 2021 8:28:36 GMT -5
Most of the comics I've read lately have been horror comics. I loved Creepy when I was a kid and I have been scooping up the occasional archives collection. Bunny Mask is a new one I've been interested in, but haven't started yet. According to the publisher: A new horror series from the creator of the Eisner-nominated Colder!
Sealed in a cave before the dawn of man, released by a crazed madman, Bunny Mask walks our world once more. But for what dark purpose does she use her unnatural powers? And what’s her connection to Bee Foster, a young girl murdered by her father fourteen years ago? In order to save his life – and his sanity – one man will have to discover the truth of what waits behind the mask.
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Post by GRWelsh on Sept 9, 2021 10:26:35 GMT -5
My first thought upon seeing Bunny Mask that it may be influenced by Frank from the movie DONNIE DARKO (2001). That was such a creepy looking bunny outfit.
I have bought many modern horror, sf and fantasy comics in the past several years. The one I've kept up with is SAGA which is a raunchy space fantasy with surprisingly engaging characters -- it is focused on a family on the run through a hostile universe. Others I've read have been THE WAKE, WYTCHES, THE AUTUMNLANDS, THE GODDAMNED, DESCENDER, BLACK SCIENCE, LOW and OUTCAST. I started the new ALIEN series and I've been enjoying it.
I've gotten back into comics in a big way in the past 5-10 years. Every game night, Eric brings a huge order for me. It is like another golden age right now, especially for independent or non-superhero books. DC and Marvel have been sort of lame, although I still read Batman, Conan and X-Men comics. The X-Men reboot of two years started off strong and felt fresh at the time, but it feels like a huge WHAT IF? storyline and doesn't really fit with the established Marvel continuity so it cannot last forever. DC and Marvel have done so many reboots now that at this point everything feels like an ELSEWORLDS or WHAT IF? story: "Somewhere, in the multiverse, THIS is happening..."
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Post by geneweigel on Sept 9, 2021 11:09:52 GMT -5
My daughter forced me to read JOJO'S BIZARRE ADVENTURE the first series because thats her thing now. Basically, every generation gets a little bit more gender confused. Japan has cartoons, live action and games of this thing. My take on this late 80's - early 90's initial run there was a lot of culture confusion where they're depicting 1800's America and its basically Japanese notions that don't make American sense. Too much manly honor. Otherwise it was a slow build up supernatural story. I told her from the looks of these later generation of "Jojos", as she calls them, I'm gonna pass. She can't watch a single Godzilla or samurai movie but she loves this stuff.
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Post by Scott on Sept 9, 2021 11:28:48 GMT -5
My first thought upon seeing Bunny Mask that it may be influenced by Frank from the movie DONNIE DARKO (2001). That was such a creepy looking bunny outfit. I have bought many modern horror, sf and fantasy comics in the past several years. The one I've kept up with is SAGA which is a raunchy space fantasy with surprising engaging characters -- it is focused on a family on the run through a hostile universe. Others I've read have been THE WAKE, WYTCHES, THE AUTUMNLANDS, THE GODDAMNED, DESCENDER, BLACK SCIENCE, LOW and OUTCAST. I started the new ALIEN series and I've been enjoying it. I've gotten back into comics in a big way in the past 5-10 years. Every game night, Eric brings a huge order for me. It is like another golden age right now, especially for independent or non-superhero books. DC and Marvel have been sort of lame, although I still read Batman, Conan and X-Men comics. The X-Men reboot of two years started off strong and felt fresh at the time, but it feels like a huge WHAT IF? storyline and doesn't really fit with the established Marvel continuity so it cannot last forever. DC and Marvel have done so many reboots now that at this point everything feels like an ELSEWORLDS or WHAT IF? story: "Somewhere, in the multiverse, THIS is happening..." That's why the last time I picked up a few super hero books it didn't go anywhere. The reboots just seems so lazy to me and the lack of continuity with the older stuff just kills my interest. Right now new horror is probably what's most tempting, but I've not jumped into anything yet. I loved the first Dark Horse Alien books, and I'm always tempted when I see new books, but it's been years since I bought one. I've been thinking about trying to find some old Weird War collections or GI Combat for the Haunted Tank stories.
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Post by GRWelsh on Sept 9, 2021 15:32:26 GMT -5
I have a cousin about 16 years younger than me and she has always tried to get me into manga and anime more ever since she was a teenager. Other than COWBOY BEBOP and SAMURAI CHAMPLOO, which I love, and SPEED RACER, BATTLE OF THE PLANETS and STAR BLAZERS, which I loved as a kid, there hasn't been much anime that I liked and I can't think of any manga I like. AKIRA, VAMPIRE HUNTER D, NEON GENESIS EVANGELION and GHOST IN THE SHELL (animes) were good but weird. I'm all in favor of the cross-cultural influence as it keeps things fresh. But there is something untranslatable about the Japanese psyche to the Western mind, and vice versa. When they're trying to get us, like with the fantasy genre or Christianity or Westerns it is always a bit off.
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Post by GRWelsh on Sept 9, 2021 16:41:47 GMT -5
The new ALIEN series by Marvel is on the same level of quality as what Dark Horse put out, at least so far (5 issues or so). The writing captures the feeling of the ALIEN universe without being totally derivative and predictable. The art work is very good -- there is a Bishop model synthetic that is instantly recognizable on the page.
I wish the movies would have kept to a more non-human Space Jockey (Mala'Kak) from the Dark Horse comics. The Giger-designed one from the original ALIEN movie would have been about 25' tall if it had stood up. The one in PROMETHEUS was no more than 9' tall, played by an actor around 7' tall with camera tricks to make him seem taller. For the ancient astronauts to turn out to be us, but just bigger, seemed like a cop out. And it just wasn't alien enough for the ALIEN universe.
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Post by geneweigel on Sept 9, 2021 18:22:16 GMT -5
Yeah, the comic pilot was straight up and the prequel version of helmeted people seemed like an interesting twist but the follow up kind of abandoned the monstrous tech to give us a plain world.
Hollywood always utilizes "budget casting and tech" where the comics go full fan and rely on face value with mandatory derivatives. Steve Ditko's Gorgo and Konga comics of the 60's were so obscure they didn't matter where the story went.
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Post by GRWelsh on Sept 12, 2021 8:29:58 GMT -5
Eric brought me MISKATONIC (collection of issues #1-5) and it's okay but I find all of the Lovecraftian name-dropping to be annoying. It is like the writer Mark Sable is trying to do Lovecraft's greatest hits all combined into one story. It reminds me of the Derleth approach... When you don't have an idea, just rehash or mash up previous Lovecraft characters and stories. It is interesting to contrast this with PROVIDENCE (2015-2017) by Alan Moore which I loved and although it did the same thing with Moore it was clever rather than lazy. Moore does it in a more subtle and complex way, and shows a real depth of scholarship and insight. The references were all there, but they were veiled or altered. Some of the art in MISKATONIC by Giorgio Pontrelli is good, other times it looks lazy or unfinished. By contrast, Jacen Burrows' art in PROVIDENCE was consistent and great in its attention to detail. I am thinking PROVIDENCE spoiled me for any Lovecraftian comic book that comes afterwards.
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Post by geneweigel on Sept 12, 2021 10:26:30 GMT -5
Cthulhu phenomena might be worse than Star Wars because its out of IP. As much as I would like to do something on it, because of the fact that "its free", I feel HPL watching me in the back of my mind shaking his head (I still have all that Tolkien for AD&D material unfinished BTW. Shut up, Professor! I'm working on it! ). I started back reading old "out of IP" comics online again. Its amazing how many ideas were just regurged over and over by all these comic companies as "tributes" (TRANSLATION: What we can steal.).
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Post by GRWelsh on Sept 12, 2021 10:47:59 GMT -5
The old EC horror comics were guilty of this and not just with stories in the public domain. One story in THE VAULT OF HORROR was just a retelling of "The Most Dangerous Game" by Richard Connell and they didn't even give him credit. It was retold as "Island of Death." Ray Bradbury called them on their plagiarism, and reached some sort of agreement allowing them to do adaptations. My favorite EC stories are the ones that have a twist or something original. One is about a writer who works for a horror magazine missing his deadlines and trying to get away from the constant partying going on in his city apartment to get some work done... He buys an abandoned house outside the city that is said to be haunted, and he thinks this will be great in inspiring him with the proper mood. I love that because it obviously has some autobiographical basis.
If I wrote some Lovecraftian stories they wouldn't be Lovecraftian in the sense of name-dropping or being set in New England, but would explore the same themes of cosmic horror, investigation, inheritance, the reward of knowledge also being a punishment, the insignificance of man, etc. My stories would be based on cave-dwellers haunting coal mines facing off against gun-hoarding survivalists in Western Pennsylvania or something like that...
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Post by geneweigel on Sept 12, 2021 11:03:48 GMT -5
Sorry, I meant to add an example of the quasi-chicanery/tribute of the comics. The late 1960's-1970's DC comics House of Mystery/Secrets characters Abel/Cain/Eve take almost the exact setup inverted from this Harvey comic MAN IN BLACK: comicbookplus.com/?dlid=17535They seem like a version of the ancient Greek/Roman Fates mixed in with the goddesses of the Trojan War for mass consumption: "Man In Black" Male (FATE: Atropos/Morta-Female)(TROJAN WAR: Athena-Female) "The Weaver" Female (FATE: Lakhesis/Decima-Female)(TROJAN WAR: Hera-Female) "Venus" Female (FATE: Clotho/Nona-Female)(TROJAN WAR: Aphrodite-Female) Then Cain/Abel/Eve were tied in to the DC Comic THE WITCHING HOUR (1969) with "The 3 Witches" (Fair/obese/old) who hinted they were "The Fates". Then the question is: Is the Harvey Comic derived? All I want to know is: Who started the Wolverine hair?
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Post by geneweigel on Sept 12, 2021 11:20:54 GMT -5
The old EC horror comics were guilty of this and not just with stories in the public domain. One story in THE VAULT OF HORROR was just a retelling of "The Most Dangerous Game" by Richard Connell and they didn't even give him credit. It was retold as "Island of Death." Ray Bradbury called them on their plagiarism, and reached some sort of agreement allowing them to do adaptations. My favorite EC stories are the ones that have a twist or something original. One is about a writer who works for a horror magazine missing his deadlines and trying to get away from the constant partying going on in his city apartment to get some work done... He buys an abandoned house outside the city that is said to be haunted, and he thinks this will be great in inspiring him with the proper mood. I love that because it obviously has some autobiographical basis. I love some of the generic horror comics where they try to franchise it into an ongoing hero and it fails. Those are my favorites. This one that I read yesterday the "hero" has an unexplained radimeter (I think thats what it was called) and it kills ghosts. No explanation. It just does it. Then there are the "kids get a chance to participate in adult violence" comics which through today's lens seem sexual. If I wrote some Lovecraftian stories they wouldn't be Lovecraftian in the sense of name-dropping or being set in New England, but would explore the same themes of cosmic horror, investigation, inheritance, the reward of knowledge also being a punishment, the insignificance of man, etc. My stories would be based on cave-dwellers haunting coal mines facing off against gun-hoarding survivalists in Western Pennsylvania or something like that... ...Just don't "Stephen King" it with day-to-day issues being the real problem...
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Post by geneweigel on Sept 12, 2021 11:26:49 GMT -5
I think the "comic boy sidekick" sex connotation comes from the 40's-50's sales move of pushing the kid's fantasy of hanging out with an action-oriented and unrelated adult to daydream of getting away from their non-action parents.
I read one last week with a kid camping with a teacher in the desert.
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Post by GRWelsh on Sept 13, 2021 6:39:56 GMT -5
...Just don't "Stephen King" it with day-to-day issues being the real problem... For this sort of thing it is the way that is handled. For King, the mundane issue is often alcoholism, for Lovecraft it is immigrants. But whether it is veiled or too much on the surface may be the difference. I remember after reading Lovecraft's biography by S. T. Joshi it dawned on me that "The Thing on the Doorstop" was about being trapped in a marriage with a domineering personality! But it was okay, since that was just the kernel for the idea. The mundane fear of one's personality being overshadowed became mind transferral. A modern horror story based on monsters in the Appalachians would probably have Mountain Dew as the real problem, along with poverty and a lack of upward mobility. They're coming to take away your guns! www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/09/12/221845853/mountain-dew-mouth-is-destroying-appalachias-teeth
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Post by geneweigel on Sept 13, 2021 7:17:32 GMT -5
One could get a lot out of HPL who entertained a certain weird-enthused audience with a lot of suggestive colors (That is a good take on "Thing On The Doorstep" to beware of where your love interest's background originates... If only someone explained this to me sooner... ) in short form whereas SK is sort of bolted down to safely entertain a constant theme to a large international audience with a lot of details. (As an aside, I opened my Tolkien AD&D folder yesterday. Its really a lot of work to finish with maybe a legal red flag upon posting. I'm going to have to rethink it.)
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Post by GRWelsh on Sept 13, 2021 11:34:35 GMT -5
The kid sidekick seems to have started with Robin, and became very popular. I've always thought that mentality of "we need a kid character for our readers to identify with" was absurd. Kids don't want to imagine being some other kid, they want to imagine being the grown-up hero (or maybe sometimes the monster)! But for some reason this became the norm. As far as the sexual subtext I can imagine certain artists and writers with certain predilections running with it and most others not recognizing it... Was there an 'agenda' here? Possibly. Even without this subtext, the concept of adults putting children in danger to have them fight crime, monsters or aliens alongside them is preposterous. This is why the Joker beating Jason Todd to death had such an impact... Yeah, what did you think would happen, Bruce?
It's not the sidekick itself that is ridiculous, but that it is a 15 year old or something like that.
Now, with Wonder Woman comics I absolutely believe there was a bondage theme with sexual subtext. And her kid sidekick, Etta Candy, is probably the most bizarre of all since her super power is basically an eating disorder. Is this what inspired Marvel's Big Bertha?
The comics industry of the 30's, 40's and early 50's were in a weird era since it was ostensibly for kids and not paid attention to by adults, so there is this sense of "Look what I was able to sneak in here!" -- but also had a callous disregard for giving proper credit to creators.
The Golden Age is looking worse and worse, isn't it?
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Post by geneweigel on Sept 13, 2021 12:40:55 GMT -5
Yeah, its so weird that some of the original comics are just off the rails. Like the original Captain Marvel comics, he is a child with a hostile adult love interest. Who thought this was a good idea?
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Post by GRWelsh on Sept 13, 2021 15:21:50 GMT -5
Captain Marvel was relatable as a child's wish fulfillment of being able to transform into an adult with power. Presumably once transformed he wasn't simply a child's mind in an adult's body anymore since he had the wisdom of Solomon. But what about when he transformed back into a boy and retained those memories? Did he lose all of the wisdom and knowledge he had while he was Captain Marvel? The one that really seemed strange to me was Captain Marvel Jr. who was a disabled boy who got the same super powers as Captain Marvel -- except he turned into a boy version of that. Why not also an adult, since he was also getting the wisdom of Solomon, strength of Hercules, etc.? It seemed oddly inconsistent. The blue outfit with yellow trim and red cape was one of the best looking super hero costumes, though. Every time I see that character I think of Elvis.
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Post by geneweigel on Sept 13, 2021 16:34:13 GMT -5
The old movie version Captain Marvel in the serials was more down to earth and that was almost immediately.
Speaking of serials, my dad had a picture book of stills from cheap cowboy movies and I remember that they had some trend of superhero crossovers. I would ask if that was going to be on tv but he would just shrug. Stocky guys with masks and tights fighting cowboys. Weird memory.
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