Marvel Comics blabbery

shame about the marvel micronauts series for the same reason, and that's a series that was very dear to my heart. It had its longeurs but there were several stretches where mantlo caught fire (not just the initial run with M Golden).

Yeah, it's unfortunate that, between that and ROM, Mantlo cornered the market on popular late-'70s/early-'80s Marvel titles that will likely never be reprinted.

Well, him and Moench, I guess.

re: Moench are you referring to Kung Fu...? I follow Diversions of the Groovy Kind religiously and he's always putting up issues of that, and given that he p much sticks to stuff that's never reprinted I was wondering what the deal was there.

It's because Fu Manchu is still somehow under copyright.

jeez, is that why they never reprinted Master of Kung Fu? Damn.

you'd think the copyright holder would be falling all over themselves to shed that most racist invention of the pulp era. But yeah. (I'm an HPL and REH fan despite their noxious facets, but I don't ever expect to reread Sax Rohmer).

Rohmer's Fu Manchu supporting characters Nayland Smith and Petrie also turn up in MOKF, tho I imagine their value as 'properties' are negligible.

There's another 60s Marvel repeated annoyance!

"Hey, look at Harry Osborn's Fu Manchu moustache" "You like my Fu Manchu moustache Peter?"

Don't forget Mary Jane's outtasight "ginchy" new haircut.

bring back "ginchy"

been there, done that

http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/FullTextSearchControllerServlet?terms=ginchy&offset=0&searchtype=text&startdate=&enddate=&artefact=messages&idtype=null&sortorder=Relevance&boardid=0

I know the early Ultimate Spiderman comics had lots of nu-metal t-shirts and modern teenage speak but did any of those comics have stuff like "lol, random"?

this is just a thought but maybe you would enjoy reading comics from different eras more if you didn't come across as explicitly looking for things in them to complain about

To be fair, Harry's mustache and Mary Jane's new do are probably the biggest '60s Marvel tonsorial mistakes I've seen outside of Doc Ock's perennial bowl cut.

Harry's mustache and Mary Jane's new do

don't recall these - pics?

I read these comics mostly because those eras are my favourite in terms of American comic artists. Now I just tend to look at them instead of reading.

And I find some of the dialogue funny. There's a Spiderman annual with bonus page of Aunt talking hip and groovy and then Stan Lee actually apologizes for it in a caption below.

Harry's mustache has it's own marvel wiki page:

http://marvel.wikia.com/Harry_Osborn's_Fu_Manchu

http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130421143111/marveldatabase/images/2/2f/Harry_Osborn_in_1969.JPG

http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6512/558/320/File0501.jpg

nice.

lol

Extra points to anyone who can get a scan of Aunt May talking hip. I almost certain it's a backup in a Romita drawn annual.

When I watched the first season of SNL, I was ultimately more fascinated with the shots of the audience than anything else. Talk about a time capsule of godawful hair and style choices. So given the way things were headed by the late '60s, I really look forward to seeing Marvel's depictions of 1975.

Peter Parker's ugly jacket with tassels is the only thing that stuck out to me. I think his sideburns got longer too but it wasn't a bad look.

http://www.spidermancrawlspace.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/91.jpg

God DAMN but the influence on xaime is writ large there

it really is

Woody Allen Lives

Well done Bizarro Gazzara. Funny that even Fu Manchu is there.

I always thought Gilbert was the most Romita inspired one.

was wondering - is this Fu Manchu copyright thing also the reason the character is never referenced by name in the initial League of Extraordinary Gentlemen storyline?

yeah, it is

someone should do an intentional meta thing about the strange numinous menace of the licensed-character-who-cannot-be-named. (someone probably has, probably moore even)

Should just call him Nu Manchu and get on with it.

Marvel/Agents of Atlas sort of did that with Yellow Claw

Yellow Claw has been around since the golden age.

call him "Craig"

The other Asian claw still gets used but he looks so monstrous that it probably doesn't register as racial caricature to most people.

I've got kind of a soft spot for characters like Fu Manchu, I always thought they were really cool but preferably the ones that don't caricature or portray Asians in general as sinister (like the crap old Karloff version of Fu Manchu).
There's quite a few of these characters in videogames and Hong Kong martial arts films but I can't presume they aren't racist because sometimes they have racial typecasting that isn't obvious to western viewers, so I wouldn't really know when those cruel emperors are supposed to be associated with foreign people. Like I read that sometimes having Japanese or Malaysian villain was like having a German or Transylvanian villain.

xp I know - in the Agents of Atlas mini they actually try to clean it up by having the guy reclaim it as "dammit it's GOLDEN CLAW you dumb racist Americans"

Which are the best crossover events worth reading?

Just finished the Infinity Gauntlet one and have all 51 issues of Infinity War lined up next (and then onto Crusade, Abyss, The End and Annihilation).

Any more recent ones worth checking out? Civil War? X-Men?

The worthiness of a given crossover can often be measured in part by how familiar you are with the characters/situations presented therein. There are several decent X-Men crossovers that may not do much for you if you haven't read a year or so ahead of when the crossover started.

The best crossover from recent years (and one that doesn't require much of a new reader) is Annihilation. The Infinity stuff doesn't really even provide much of a preamble to it. It's pretty easy to just jump right in.

kind of - since it was all on MU anyway, i did find the preceding Marvel: The End and Thanos series that preceded Annihilation to be worthwhile

really loved the mutant massacre

idk where to put this (there's no Bronze Age Marvel or Superhero Spanking threads) so um yeah:

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-iN6RbCdaO_s/VPiE1ySuYLI/AAAAAAABIPE/XJCG_YRlnXc/s1600/MarvelTwo-in-One062-11.jpg

I died a little laughing at this:

http://www.frequency.com/video/staying-positive-in-apocalypse-pilot/208508354?cid=5-47

More directly:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tV54wy_IBVg

So I'm apparently going all-in on Secret Wars and its 25,847 crossover issues. In case you were wondering who'd be dumb enough to do that.

post here.

Make a thread like Aldo's 52 excursion.

that video is pretty great btw

The best thing about DC this week has been the last issues of a lot of books, and stories actually ENDING.

I'm a few years behind on Marvel stuff so I've put my silver age marathon on pause (up to '71 currently) to catch up on material that seems like it might be germane to Secret Wars. Having only read a little of Hickman's Secret Warriors and Fantastic Four before, my current deep plunge into that material has been overwhelming. I don't know if it's going to ultimately add up to anything or how long it's going to take to get there if it does, but every one of these issues is a massive info dump of new concepts and new characters and new timelines and locations. Pretty much the polar opposite of the decompressed style that was so in vogue just a few years prior. I can see where it might've been kind of a confusing slog to keep up with on a monthly basis, but it's been thrilling to read through a couple years' worth of this over a handful of days. Feel like that dude's home must be plastered floor to ceiling with notes and maps and strings connecting this map to that note. Depending on how adroitly he's been able to play the long game, I have a degree of faith that he'll be able to make Secret Wars Mk 2 an interesting failure at the very least.