Imported previous discussion from the Teen Titans thread:
Here's how I read them in the UK:http://i.ebayimg.com/images/i/200997052842-0-1/s-l1000.jpg― Chuck_Tatum, Wednesday, October 18, 2017 7:14 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post PermalinkThat weird age when you are old enough to have your mind blown by Animal Man, but also dig wearing an Atom badge― Chuck_Tatum, Wednesday, October 18, 2017 7:18 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalinkyeah, i read that too! the issue where animal man has his arm torn off by a giant mutant rat (with accompanying splash page of him bleeding out in an alley) had a profound effect on 10-tear-old me― midas / medusa cage match (bizarro gazzara), Wednesday, October 18, 2017 7:22 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalinki dunno who thought putting teen titans and animal man together in the same comic was a good idea but i salute their commitment to making bad decisions― midas / medusa cage match (bizarro gazzara), Wednesday, October 18, 2017 7:24 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post PermalinkHaha yeah - but lack of congruence aside, all those London Editions DC comics were really well-curated - introduced me to Byrne's Superman, Norm Breyfogle, Grant Morrison, Neal Adams's hairy-chested-love-god Batman... I think there was a proto-Vertigo one too, with Swamp Thing and some Howard Chaykin thing... that lasted about two issues. I have such clear memories of them - and yeah, especially that Animal Man splash page (I was 12 I think).― Chuck_Tatum, Wednesday, October 18, 2017 8:30 AM (forty-three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post PermalinkThe US equivalent to that phenomenon was five completely random comics sealed in plastic and sold for a buck at grocery stores and the like. Maybe you guys had that, too? Still fondly recall the single issues of Alpha Flight and Micronauts: the New Voyages and Kull the Conqueror that I read over and over and over with no context or ability to really understand what was going on.― I believe I will have another helping of your scrumptious casserole (Old Lunch), Wednesday, October 18, 2017 8:35 AM (thirty-eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalinkall those London Editions DC comics were really well-curatedyeah, they really were - they introduced me to so many great stories from dc historythe proto-vertigo one might have been swamp thing and black orchid iirc?― midas / medusa cage match (bizarro gazzara), Wednesday, October 18, 2017 8:38 AM (thirty-five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalinkold lunch, i saw those bags of random comics a few times in the uk but weirdly more often in spain, where i'd pick them up every time i saw them in supermarkets or newsagents no idea why or how english-language comics were showing up in bagged batches in catalonia in the late 80s to mid-90s but i loved 'em― midas / medusa cage match (bizarro gazzara), Wednesday, October 18, 2017 8:42 AM (thirty-one minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post PermalinkHa yes, family holidays where you starved for reading and were like, "Hey, a glossy magazine reprint of Star Brand in Flemish, why not?"― Chuck_Tatum, Wednesday, October 18, 2017 8:57 AM (fifteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post PermalinkWe could probably do with a thread dedicated to the insane variations of our childhood comics consumption. Like the campground I always went to with my grandparents, where they had a general store whose entire comics selection (in the mid-'80s) was made up of '70s DC horror anthologies. Why was that a thing? I have no idea, but I'm thankful that it was a thing.― I believe I will have another helping of your scrumptious casserole (Old Lunch), Wednesday, October 18, 2017 9:04 AM (nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalinkstart that thread! i wanna tell my stories of piecing together a run of green lantern: mosaic from dogeared back issues found in newsagents across devon in 1992!― midas / medusa cage match (bizarro gazzara), Wednesday, October 18, 2017 9:07 AM (six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
http://i.ebayimg.com/images/i/200997052842-0-1/s-l1000.jpg
― Chuck_Tatum, Wednesday, October 18, 2017 7:14 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
That weird age when you are old enough to have your mind blown by Animal Man, but also dig wearing an Atom badge
― Chuck_Tatum, Wednesday, October 18, 2017 7:18 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
yeah, i read that too! the issue where animal man has his arm torn off by a giant mutant rat (with accompanying splash page of him bleeding out in an alley) had a profound effect on 10-tear-old me
― midas / medusa cage match (bizarro gazzara), Wednesday, October 18, 2017 7:22 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
i dunno who thought putting teen titans and animal man together in the same comic was a good idea but i salute their commitment to making bad decisions
― midas / medusa cage match (bizarro gazzara), Wednesday, October 18, 2017 7:24 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
Haha yeah - but lack of congruence aside, all those London Editions DC comics were really well-curated - introduced me to Byrne's Superman, Norm Breyfogle, Grant Morrison, Neal Adams's hairy-chested-love-god Batman... I think there was a proto-Vertigo one too, with Swamp Thing and some Howard Chaykin thing... that lasted about two issues. I have such clear memories of them - and yeah, especially that Animal Man splash page (I was 12 I think).
― Chuck_Tatum, Wednesday, October 18, 2017 8:30 AM (forty-three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
The US equivalent to that phenomenon was five completely random comics sealed in plastic and sold for a buck at grocery stores and the like. Maybe you guys had that, too? Still fondly recall the single issues of Alpha Flight and Micronauts: the New Voyages and Kull the Conqueror that I read over and over and over with no context or ability to really understand what was going on.
― I believe I will have another helping of your scrumptious casserole (Old Lunch), Wednesday, October 18, 2017 8:35 AM (thirty-eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
all those London Editions DC comics were really well-curated
yeah, they really were - they introduced me to so many great stories from dc history
the proto-vertigo one might have been swamp thing and black orchid iirc?
― midas / medusa cage match (bizarro gazzara), Wednesday, October 18, 2017 8:38 AM (thirty-five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
old lunch, i saw those bags of random comics a few times in the uk but weirdly more often in spain, where i'd pick them up every time i saw them in supermarkets or newsagents
no idea why or how english-language comics were showing up in bagged batches in catalonia in the late 80s to mid-90s but i loved 'em
― midas / medusa cage match (bizarro gazzara), Wednesday, October 18, 2017 8:42 AM (thirty-one minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
Ha yes, family holidays where you starved for reading and were like, "Hey, a glossy magazine reprint of Star Brand in Flemish, why not?"
― Chuck_Tatum, Wednesday, October 18, 2017 8:57 AM (fifteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
We could probably do with a thread dedicated to the insane variations of our childhood comics consumption. Like the campground I always went to with my grandparents, where they had a general store whose entire comics selection (in the mid-'80s) was made up of '70s DC horror anthologies. Why was that a thing? I have no idea, but I'm thankful that it was a thing.
― I believe I will have another helping of your scrumptious casserole (Old Lunch), Wednesday, October 18, 2017 9:04 AM (nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
start that thread! i wanna tell my stories of piecing together a run of green lantern: mosaic from dogeared back issues found in newsagents across devon in 1992!
― midas / medusa cage match (bizarro gazzara), Wednesday, October 18, 2017 9:07 AM (six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
― I believe I will have another helping of your scrumptious casserole (Old Lunch), Wednesday, 18 October 2017 14:22 (six years ago) link
YESSSS
― midas / medusa cage match (bizarro gazzara), Wednesday, 18 October 2017 14:23 (six years ago) link
this played such an important role in my childhood that, no word of a lie, i still have the occasional dream about stumbling across a stack of random comics in a shop somewhere with a full run of some obscure object of desire contained within, even although i haven't bought a single issue of a comic-book in a decade
― midas / medusa cage match (bizarro gazzara), Wednesday, 18 October 2017 14:25 (six years ago) link
I'm rereading Flex Mentallo at the moment (which I'm increasingly convinced might be Morrison's single best work), and he captures certain sensory aspects of those nascent childhood comics explorations so well. So much of the ritual (beyond actually reading the things) resonates so strongly, particularly with respect to figuring out how to approach that world. And even just recognizing it as a world to explore.
― I believe I will have another helping of your scrumptious casserole (Old Lunch), Wednesday, 18 October 2017 14:34 (six years ago) link
i used to visit my grandparents in paisley every other weekend, and one saturday when i was maybe 10 or 11 i ended up in a semi-newsagent/semi-bookseller in the local shopping centre where i found a stack of old marvel and dc comics and managed to pick out the entire run of the invasion! limited series
honestly, it was legit a highlight of my childhood - i couldn't believe my luck at finding an entire story for only a couple of quid
― midas / medusa cage match (bizarro gazzara), Wednesday, 18 October 2017 14:40 (six years ago) link
When I first started buying American comics in Britain in the 1970s, newsagents would often have 'new' comics for sale that were months or even years old, from a range of publishers - Marvel, DC, Charlton. They'd just never returned them to their wholesaler.
There were also the extremely mysterious and desirable Alan Class titles - basically, black and white bootleg reprints of American comics (primarily Charlton, the ACG group and pre-Marvel Atlas strips).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Class_Comics
As I got more into comics, I began to hear about this mythical comic shop in London - Dark They Were and Golden Eyed. Not long after Star Wars opened in the UK, my Dad took me to see it in a Leicester Square cinema, and then afterwards we went along to Dark They Were..., which was at this time located in a very seedy part of Soho, St Anne's Court. I think I've spent the rest of my life trying to recapture the incredible rush of pleasure I experienced upon going down to their comics basement for the first time, and seeing huge piles of the latest American comics for sale everywhere, many of them not distributed to British newsagents.
The other thing I remember about Dark They Were...is that on the top floor, devoted to import SF paperbacks, there was a huge glass cabinet stuffed full of bongs, pipes etc. I had no fucking idea what they were, but I'm pretty sure my father was less than impressed.
Here's a nice Brian Bolland-drawn advert for Dark They Were... (the name came from a Ray Bradbury story, btw. The shop was owned and run by a geezer called Derek Stokes, who of course went by the name 'Bram').
http://www.bleedingcool.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/bolland0011.jpg
― Ward Fowler, Wednesday, 18 October 2017 14:45 (six years ago) link
I'm rereading Flex Mentallo at the moment (which I'm increasingly convinced might be Morrison's single best work)
i'd be hard-pressed to disagree, even although my sentimental attachment to other runs might be more pronounced, with the aforementioned animal man run being a particular highlight
in fact, i think the reprints of animal man that chuck_tatum and i were reminiscing about might have finished the issue after animal man regrows his arm, because the next issue is the utterly extraordinary 'coyote gospel' story (where a wile e coyote figure is drawn into the dc universe, with tragic results) and the first time i saw that was actually in spanish-language reprint i saw in a supermarket while on holiday
fucking hell how do i remember this shit
― midas / medusa cage match (bizarro gazzara), Wednesday, 18 October 2017 14:45 (six years ago) link
I think Animal Man got shunted around to a few different magazines after DC Action - I definitely bought this one, because I cut it up and pritt-sticked panels to my bedroom wall!
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/britishcomics/images/3/3b/2513539-shockwave2.jpg
― Chuck_Tatum, Wednesday, 18 October 2017 14:50 (six years ago) link
People have been mentioning buying comics while on holiday, and I also have very strong memories of going to France as a child and seeing countless Asterix, Lucky Luke, TinTin etc albums that hadn't yet been translated into English - it really was like getting a glimpse of an alternate reality. It was also mind-blowing seeing French adults reading comics on the beach (more often than not, Disney comics), or visiting supermarkets with huge displays of comic albums. Not just for kids!
― Ward Fowler, Wednesday, 18 October 2017 15:10 (six years ago) link
I think I've spent the rest of my life trying to recapture the incredible rush of pleasure I experienced upon going down to their comics basement for the first time, and seeing huge piles of the latest American comics for sale everywhere, many of them not distributed to British newsagents.
oh yeah, that first introduction to a space devoted to comics was mind-melting to me - i don't think any chemical experimentation has ever equalled it
for me, it was 1990 - i'd been saving money for months to go to some kind of comic convention in glasgow but i'd somehow managed to miss that there was a fee to get in, which was almost exactly everything i'd managed to save to buy comics while i was there, so my mum and i turned back and went to forbidden planet instead
i got the glow-in-the-dark cover edition of the just-released ghost rider #1 (among other things) and ended up getting a really bad headache because i was so uncontrollably excited to be surrounded by comics and comic paraphernalia
― midas / medusa cage match (bizarro gazzara), Wednesday, 18 October 2017 15:50 (six years ago) link
Ha, I've been typing up a document of my own four-color Proustian rush (stupid work, getting in my stupid way, grumble grumble...) but you're on my wavelength again, bizarro. Summer of '90 is when it all began.
― I believe I will have another helping of your scrumptious casserole (Old Lunch), Wednesday, 18 October 2017 15:57 (six years ago) link
and with such terrible comics too
― midas / medusa cage match (bizarro gazzara), Wednesday, 18 October 2017 15:58 (six years ago) link
strong memories of going to France as a child and seeing countless Asterix, Lucky Luke, TinTin etc albums that hadn't yet been translated into English
Totally! While my family were off having fun at the beach, they would just leave me sitting on the floor of a hypermarche, reading Gaston and Spirou for hours. Looking at the index of books at the back of every Dupuis hardback was like gazing into a beautiful parallel universe...
I go into a comic book shop and see rows of Lucky Lukes in English that barely stir my interest, and I'm like "Where were you when I was 10, you bastards"
― Chuck_Tatum, Wednesday, 18 October 2017 16:06 (six years ago) link
I'd been a committed reader of Whoopee and Wow and Whizzer And Chips when I was young, and the UK reprints of Star Wars, but mostly only knew superheroes from the Spiderman and Hulk and Wonder Woman TV shows and thought them kind of cheesy. Can't remember when I finally got seduced by American comics, but remember ordering them through a local newsagent around 86-87 or so, though it was a hit and miss operation, and often I'd be cycling all around the local area trawling newsagents that might also carry Marvel. There was a shop in Kingston, Books Bits & Bobs, that carried comics for a short while, and my friend and I would make occasional visits to Virgin Megastore, which sold comics, and, I think, Comics Showcase and Forbidden Planet. But we were broke and didn't get to go there very often, and so our regular haunt for comics was a "book shop" in Colliers Wood called Plus Books, which had hundreds of mildewy old 70s Marvels and DCs for sale for pennies. Its only other stock was hundreds of old muscle mags, and I remember we stopped going there after my mate's mum accompanied us one time and took a VERY dim view of the proprietor, who always called us "My loves."
I gave away the lion's share of my comics to a friend's friend's son earlier this year, after clearing our loft out. He's eleven and going through "some stuff" so I hope they mean as much to him as they did to me.
― Estella, Damm (stevie), Wednesday, 18 October 2017 16:31 (six years ago) link
i quarter boxed my way to considerably lengthy runs of daredevil, moore's swamp thing, cerebus, batman and the outsiders, strikeforce morituri, camelot 3000, Justice League Europe and Critters as a kid; held them all in roughly equal esteem.
― Chocolate-covered gummy bears? Not ruling those lil' guys out. (ulysses), Wednesday, 18 October 2017 19:37 (six years ago) link
buying comics at the Circle K on the corner of our block was my gateway in the late 70s. They had Star Wars comics. everything else followed from there.
― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 18 October 2017 19:42 (six years ago) link
I got a pound from my parents every day, spent 30p on the tube, 20p on the bus home, and 50p on a comic. Then DC comics went up to 55p and I was totally fucked.
― Chuck_Tatum, Wednesday, 18 October 2017 19:47 (six years ago) link
Following the slew of completely random comics that I asked my parents to buy for me because I was a kid with completely unformed tastes who liked things with pictures, I still vividly remember my first intentional plunge into that world:
I was probably twelve, living in Jacksonville, FL on the far end of a freeway that led to the only comics store I was aware of in the area. This was the first time in my childhood I clearly remember kids being big into comics and trading stuff among one another. Batman was huge at the time (this was probably less than a year after the first Burton movie), and I'd gotten A Death in the Family and Year One for Christmas, and was a little mindblown when I flipped through Arkham Asylum in a bookstore. A kid down the street lent me a collection of some weird comic called Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (the second colorized trade of the Eastman & Laird material) and I became obsessed with that, trying to figure out how to draw those dudes from memory after I returned it to him. Punisher was a big deal, as were the Robocop comics, for some reason. Probably just because Robocop was cool (but it was also written by Alan Grant at the same time he was writing Batman stuff so it may have also been the familiar vibe). At any rate, this was the first time that comics became something more than just a part of the background detritus of my childhood.
One Saturday, I blatantly disobeyed the oft-repeated rule to never leave our neighborhood without an adult and rode my bike right down the median of that aforementioned freeway (mortifying adult me to the core) to buy me some comics. This particular shop had all of the new titles displayed on the wall with copies for purchase in long boxes below, so I got a nice overview of everything currently being sold. I had no idea of what I was looking for and no intention going in beyond exploration. I was probably looking for something similar to what the kids were passing around at school, but my eye was particularly caught by the covers of DC's (pre-Vertigo) mature readers titles. Which is unsurprising, as those covers tended to stand out. In particular, I was agog when I saw the cover of Swamp Thing #97:
http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/marvel_dc/images/9/90/Swamp_Thing_Vol_2_97.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20090111201127
Which was, uh, not what I was used to comics looking like. But I'd started reading some Stephen King at that point, so I was primed for that sort of thing. Reading it later, I couldn't make heads or tails of what the fuck was going on, but I'll be damned if it didn't plant a seed, evoking some huge and unwieldy and weird world of which it seemed I'd only scratched the surface. By the end of that summer, I'd managed to cobble together most of the prior issues of Doug Wheeler's unfairly-maligned run on the title, along with a sizeable handful of contemporaneous Hellblazer issues. I have a deep, deep connection with all of that shared Vertigo universe stuff as a result of those initial steps. And having inadvertently backasswarded myself into the mature end of the pool, I eventually worked my way back to the superhero stuff at a later time.
I picked up a nice stack of complete randomness on that trip, but the only things that really stand out in my memory are the Swamp Thing issue and this:
https://static.comicvine.com/uploads/scale_small/6/65600/1266215-street_poet_ray_v1_004.jpg
And, no, I know neither why it existed or why I gave someone money for it.
― I believe I will have another helping of your scrumptious casserole (Old Lunch), Wednesday, 18 October 2017 19:58 (six years ago) link
man what a weird thing for Marvel to publish
― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 18 October 2017 20:09 (six years ago) link
weirdest is that they picked it up after two issues on Blackthorne!
― shackling the masses with plastic-wrapped snack picks (sic), Wednesday, 18 October 2017 21:47 (six years ago) link
(nb, I don't honestly remember if the pictured issue of Street Poet Ray is the same as the one I owned.)
I'm realizing as I try to recall those nascent steps into the world of comics how much I was drawn to weird stuff. Part of it was probably the growing appeal of pre-cultural phenomenon TMNT. I'd occasionally track down an issue or two of the main title or some related spin-off, which led to me picking up other miscellaneous b+w comics when I found them, stuff like Tales of the Beanworld and Gnatrat. I mention again that I was in junior high at the time, so I barely had any idea what this weird shit was, but I loved that it was weird.
So I guess I spent roughly a year buying proto-Vertigo titles and everything I could find featuring Turtles (I was particularly fond of the Archie series) and any of the brief flourish of Clive Barker-related comics that were coming out around then (I was a fledgling horror hound, so I was all about the continuing sagas of Hellraiser and Nightbreed). The neighbor kid who lived next to my grandma was all about superhero stuff, so I read through his collections of Justice League and Green Lantern. It was pretty good stuff, and different inasmuch as I'd never read anything more than scattershot issues of mainstream Marvel and DC stuff, divorced from any context or larger story. One summer after I'd begun tending to this new hobby in earnest, my friend showed me a thing he'd just bought with a fancy metallic cover. I had no idea who Silver Surfer was, but he seemed like a pretty cool dude. I learned at the end of this fiftieth issue spectacular that the story would be continued in something called The Infinity Gauntlet. I was intrigued, but little did I realize that my intrigue would blossom over the course of that summer into something more akin to obsession or that my initial entree into the Marvel Universe would lead to decades of spending a whole shitload of money to fill up countless shelves and a sizeable storage unit with the fruits of that obsession. Thanks, Silver Surfer. Thanks a lot.
― I believe I will have another helping of your scrumptious casserole (Old Lunch), Thursday, 19 October 2017 02:55 (six years ago) link
i'd love an oral history of the publication of street poet ray - wtf was going on behind the scenes at marvel in 1990
― midas / medusa cage match (bizarro gazzara), Thursday, 19 October 2017 11:38 (six years ago) link
Best random find was the first 10 issues of John Sable: Freelance and the complete Moench/Sienkiewicz Moon Knight run in a record shop some time in 85-86. I was starting to read comics again by then but only what I could find at newsstands (particularly the one at St Andrew's Square bus station) and I think they were the kick to find a regular comic shop (which turned out to be West Crosscauseway in Edinburgh) because I remember buying Watchmen #1 there. I clearly wasn't exclusive to their though because I definitely bought both Slash Maraud and Silverblade from that bus station kiosk and they were 1987?
Strangest single issue was in a newsagent whose stock I regularly trawled for things of interest - All Star Squadron #62 fascinated me and was the only issue of the title they ever stocked in the time I was checking.
― Thomas Gabriel Fischer does not endorse (aldo), Thursday, 19 October 2017 13:21 (six years ago) link
xpost I think it probably wasn't that far off from some of the stuff they were releasing via the Epic imprint. Although why they didn't just release it as an Epic title is beyond me.
This was just a couple of years before their weird and brief foray into religious comics, as well. Not to mention NFL SuperPro. '90s Marvel is just...weird.
― I believe I will have another helping of your scrumptious casserole (Old Lunch), Thursday, 19 October 2017 13:28 (six years ago) link
brb gonna put up a kickstarter to support an oral history of 90s marvel
― midas / medusa cage match (bizarro gazzara), Thursday, 19 October 2017 13:30 (six years ago) link
This was just a couple of years before their weird and brief foray into religious comics, as well.
Marvel had been publishing religious comics, off and on, since the 1950s eg
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSQWWitDJuBF6q7zvwFDp45IRvGvRScfCqbFEkA7-PtKuNlulX5
one issue of which at least features some exquisite Bernie Krigstein artwork. There's also this classic from the 1980s:
http://www.churchpop.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/17-675x1024.jpg
Similarly, Marvel had had their eye on the Underground/'alternative' market for years, going back to the early 70s w/ this failed attempt at a UG mag of their own:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c7/ComixBook01.jpg
― Ward Fowler, Thursday, 19 October 2017 13:51 (six years ago) link
Easter weekend 1974, while I was living in Orange County, we visited an uncle in San Francisco and I discovered my first comic shop. I remember seeing some recent back issues of Iron Man that would have filled in a storyline that I started reading in the middle and freaking out that the guy was charging 60¢ each, and that they were in bags so I couldn't just read them right there. My main comic buying consisted of bags of 3 Marvels (3/57¢ for 20¢ covers, then 3/69¢ for 25¢ covers) at the store where my mom did most of her grocery shopping. Occasionally she went to Vons, which was great – it had better selection and individual issues on the spinners instead of threefers.
I've mentioned it on ILC before, but my biggest find was a pair of VD-education giveaway comics from the 1940s, together in a bag for 2 bucks — Kurtzman's "Lucky Fights It Through" and "Little Willie," produced by the same North Carolina health publications outfit that published Doc Carter VD Comics. I sold Lucky for $750 and still have Willie. https://www.archives.gov/atlanta/exhibits/item463-exh.html (cover and 2 pages)http://www.meterstampsociety.com/Exhibits/Stager/VD_4_PubHealth.pdf (cover shown on pg 12)
― WilliamC, Thursday, 19 October 2017 13:54 (six years ago) link
― midas / medusa cage match (bizarro gazzara), Thursday, October 19, 2017 8:30 AM (twenty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
How about a 35-part oral history of the Clone Saga?
― I believe I will have another helping of your scrumptious casserole (Old Lunch), Thursday, 19 October 2017 13:55 (six years ago) link
xpostMan, that Kurtzman comic is some find! I've only ever seen it reproduced in an issue of Squa Tront.
― Ward Fowler, Thursday, 19 October 2017 13:56 (six years ago) link
i suspect it won't surprise you that i've already read all of that xp
― midas / medusa cage match (bizarro gazzara), Thursday, 19 October 2017 13:59 (six years ago) link
i've wasted my life
At the time, at least according to Overstreet, I had found the 6th known copy. I wish I could have done something fun with the money, but it had to go for mundane car repairs.
I sold it via a small display ad in CBG, and used this panel in the ad --https://i.imgur.com/XSeMRYP.jpg
― WilliamC, Thursday, 19 October 2017 14:08 (six years ago) link
lucky otm
― midas / medusa cage match (bizarro gazzara), Thursday, 19 October 2017 14:25 (six years ago) link
lol @ Jon Sable mention, young me followed that for awhile (mostly for the T&A, let's be honest). and I was just into how it looked, the open panel layouts and life-drawing-class look of the characters. it was *adult*
― Οὖτις, Thursday, 19 October 2017 18:01 (six years ago) link
Oh yeah, i loved grell as a kid.
― Chocolate-covered gummy bears? Not ruling those lil' guys out. (ulysses), Thursday, 19 October 2017 18:14 (six years ago) link
I'm trying to remember all of the inescapable indie quarter bin fodder from 25 years ago. Let me throw some names out at you: Dalgoda. DNAgents. Trollords. Boris the Bear. Ex-Mutants. Ralph Snart. Uhhhh...what else. Appleseed?
― I believe I will have another helping of your scrumptious casserole (Old Lunch), Thursday, 19 October 2017 18:36 (six years ago) link
Lots of stuff I bought a single issue of (because, y'know, a quarter) and never read once.
― I believe I will have another helping of your scrumptious casserole (Old Lunch), Thursday, 19 October 2017 18:37 (six years ago) link
Dalgoda is GREAT, recently reclaimed that from a box at my brother's and it was better than I remembered it. Love Fujitake's (sp?) proto-Moebius art.
― Οὖτις, Thursday, 19 October 2017 18:38 (six years ago) link
DNAgents I remember but there's no way that's actually good...
All the new universe books. Pre teen dirty gene kung fu kangaroos and the tmnt ripoff like. Ray zone 3d books were generally 50 cents.
― i believe that (s)he is sincere (forksclovetofu), Thursday, 19 October 2017 18:42 (six years ago) link
Oh god, the post-TMNT titles. Fish Police! Miami Mice!
― I believe I will have another helping of your scrumptious casserole (Old Lunch), Thursday, 19 October 2017 18:45 (six years ago) link
adolescent underground radioactive hamsterswhy do i know this shit
― Chocolate-covered gummy bears? Not ruling those lil' guys out. (ulysses), Thursday, 19 October 2017 19:35 (six years ago) link
The Jam by Bernie Mireault was one of my favorites. Willingham's Elementals was good for a while.
― WilliamC, Thursday, 19 October 2017 19:37 (six years ago) link
Willingham's stuff at least *looked* good.
who remembers the Fish Police TV show
― Οὖτις, Thursday, 19 October 2017 19:37 (six years ago) link
I remember the existence of the Fish Police TV show (at a time when every network thought they could just stick some animated POS or another in a primetime slot and enjoy Simpsons-level fame and fortune, see also: Capitol Critters, Family Dog).
― I believe I will have another helping of your scrumptious casserole (Old Lunch), Thursday, 19 October 2017 19:41 (six years ago) link
the Tick
― Οὖτις, Thursday, 19 October 2017 19:46 (six years ago) link
couple more random recollections:
i think it was on that first trip to forbidden planet i got a copy of previews for the first time and it blew my mind that there was all this shit out there i'd never dreamed of- i vividly remember some bettie page-related stuff (which at 10 i knew was kinda adult i think and it made me feel like i was peeking into something i maybe shouldn't have been), a married with children comic book before, and an ad for the world's first digitally-created graphic novel, batman: digital justice which had a super-cool computer-generated batman head on the cover. i ended up saving up to buy a copy and in the meantime before it arrived i read that issue of previews issue cover to cover over and over again
digital justice was of course utter shit
second thing is that i used to love poring for hours and hours over ads from a company i think was called the comics warehouse, who used to sell really cheap back issues by mail and took out massive ads in uk fandom mags like comics international which ran for pages and pages
i would make and endlessly amend lists of how best i could spend a budget of like £40. i ended up buying a shitload of recent-ish comics from them and every time a package of comics arrived i'd spend the entire day at school positively vibrating with excitement at reading new runs of the ray or the flash or the batman titles during knightfall
― midas / medusa cage match (bizarro gazzara), Thursday, 19 October 2017 19:50 (six years ago) link
how about SHATTER THE FIRST ALL DIGITALLY CREATED COMIC
― Οὖτις, Thursday, 19 October 2017 19:54 (six years ago) link
I remember flipping through that and going 'lol nnnnnnnnope'
― WilliamC, Thursday, 19 October 2017 19:57 (six years ago) link
shatter was a comic, my man - digital justice was a graphic novel
― midas / medusa cage match (bizarro gazzara), Thursday, 19 October 2017 19:58 (six years ago) link
Duuuuuuude, I was going to write something about Previews but basically the thing you wrote so NBD. I discovered Previews and Wizard about the same time, but the former was definitely a deeper dive into the astounding array of stuff that was out there. And, yeah, I went over those things with a fine-toothed comb.
I'm realizing the more I think about this stuff that what I'd previously thought of as this long, meandering journey from a kid who didn't really care about comics to a hardcore, dedicated fan really took place over maybe like two years, from like '90 to '92 or so.
― I believe I will have another helping of your scrumptious casserole (Old Lunch), Thursday, 19 October 2017 20:01 (six years ago) link
Wasn't Iron Man 2020 a digital joint, too? Was that later?
'Digital', lol.
yet more proof that old lunch and i are basically the same person
― midas / medusa cage match (bizarro gazzara), Thursday, 19 October 2017 20:03 (six years ago) link
previews was a bible for a few years. i think i got into it right when Defiant started and i bought heavy into PLASM there's some garbage not worth reheatinghttps://badgenious.blogspot.com/2008/08/panelology-casualty-of-90s-warriors-of.html
― Chocolate-covered gummy bears? Not ruling those lil' guys out. (ulysses), Thursday, 19 October 2017 20:05 (six years ago) link
One sad thing that was true in 80s indie comics as today is that you have a high degree of certainty a series will end before the story is done.
― earlnash, Thursday, 19 October 2017 20:05 (six years ago) link
all I know about Iron Man 2020 was that he showed up in the Barry Windsor Smith Machine Man ltd series (which had p incredible artwork)
― Οὖτις, Thursday, 19 October 2017 20:06 (six years ago) link
My 80s collection was packed with quarter box indies. I bet I had a good portion of every First and Eclipse/Pacific comic published.
― earlnash, Thursday, 19 October 2017 20:07 (six years ago) link
my early interest in superhero comics was spurred by a kid in my class whose dad was weirdly opposed to him getting comics for some reason but he had a real obsession with spider man and was willing to buy any marvel issues with spiderman in them from me for a dollar apiece if he didn't own them. That's A LOT of possible comics and I was out at the local comic / record shop on the regular cause my dad did business with them so I was able to buy twenty spider books for five bucks, flip that for twenty and then buy fifteen bucks worth of quarter books with the profit. Dad spent hours going through the crates so i spent hours going through long boxes... got to the point where i could recognize boxes that I'd already gone through. back then there were several hundred quarter boxes to riffle through!
― Chocolate-covered gummy bears? Not ruling those lil' guys out. (ulysses), Thursday, 19 October 2017 20:08 (six years ago) link
old Lunch, you are thinking of Iron Man: CRASH not 2020https://taint-the-meat.com/2016/03/27/iron-man-crash/
― Chocolate-covered gummy bears? Not ruling those lil' guys out. (ulysses), Thursday, 19 October 2017 20:09 (six years ago) link
<img src="http://tainthemeat.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/iron-man-crash-page-49.jpg">^ as done by the SHATTER guy
― Chocolate-covered gummy bears? Not ruling those lil' guys out. (ulysses), Thursday, 19 October 2017 20:10 (six years ago) link
er:http://tainthemeat.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/iron-man-crash-page-49.jpg
t0rrenting has been scratching a lot of old quarter box itches... recently got the complete Pacific/First collection. Not gonna read it all but by gum i finally OWN IT
― Chocolate-covered gummy bears? Not ruling those lil' guys out. (ulysses), Thursday, 19 October 2017 20:11 (six years ago) link
Much love to bizarro and our trans-Atlantic brain tether.
Haaaaa, omg, forks...the issue of Previews with the sneak peak of Warriors of Plasm bound in was my first. What a dumb piece of crap that was.
― I believe I will have another helping of your scrumptious casserole (Old Lunch), Thursday, 19 October 2017 20:12 (six years ago) link
yeah that was my first exposure to bws (as part of the backup to a weekly marvel uk spider-man reprint series iirc) and i've loved his work ever since - the lithe grace he gives to machine man is astonishing
― midas / medusa cage match (bizarro gazzara), Thursday, 19 October 2017 20:47 (six years ago) link
I think my only exposure to him was like one-off X-Men issues and other random stuff, I had no idea about Conan/his 70s work until way later
― Οὖτις, Thursday, 19 October 2017 20:51 (six years ago) link
me too old lunch! i think we were at the same comicbook store
― Chocolate-covered gummy bears? Not ruling those lil' guys out. (ulysses), Thursday, 19 October 2017 21:10 (six years ago) link
Fish Police and TMNT were basically contemporaries - I think the comics debuted within a year of each other. I don't know why I know this.
― EZ Snappin, Thursday, 19 October 2017 21:14 (six years ago) link
this thread is a glittering monument to 'i don't know why i know this'
― midas / medusa cage match (bizarro gazzara), Thursday, 19 October 2017 21:15 (six years ago) link
eh we all know exactly why
― Οὖτις, Thursday, 19 October 2017 21:16 (six years ago) link
Wish I still had my first issues of both those comics. Alas, I had to pay for college somehow.
― EZ Snappin, Thursday, 19 October 2017 21:23 (six years ago) link
what was the TMNT ripoff with beavers...? drawn by Truman iirc?
― Οὖτις, Thursday, 19 October 2017 21:27 (six years ago) link
Space Beavers. Possibly predated TMNT.
― shackling the masses with plastic-wrapped snack picks (sic), Thursday, 19 October 2017 21:52 (six years ago) link
yeah I could be misremembering the chronology there
― Οὖτις, Thursday, 19 October 2017 21:54 (six years ago) link
Dalgoda is indeed pretty great, and the second series featured one of Alan Moore's best works as the back-up.
DNAgents had a higher level of competency than most of hese, and functioned well enough as an off-brand New Teen Titans -- but spun off the much better Crossfire, which morphed from a supervillain antihero into an almost-straight Hollywood PI series. With long prose essays about amusing stories from Evanier's life as a jobbing TV writer as a bonus feature.
― shackling the masses with plastic-wrapped snack picks (sic), Thursday, 19 October 2017 21:56 (six years ago) link
wait, no, Time Beavers was Tim Truman, Space Beaver was Darick Robertson.
― shackling the masses with plastic-wrapped snack picks (sic), Thursday, 19 October 2017 21:57 (six years ago) link
leave us not forget dave sims beavershttps://momentofcerebus.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-origin-of-beavers.html
― Chocolate-covered gummy bears? Not ruling those lil' guys out. (ulysses), Thursday, 19 October 2017 22:03 (six years ago) link
ah yeah Time Beavers is what I was thinking of thx
― Οὖτις, Thursday, 19 October 2017 22:04 (six years ago) link
there was a great spiderman annual where iron man 2020 went back to the mid-80s to get a scan of a future terrorist's retina to prevent some apocalyptic event, only to be foiled by an assholish spidey. I found all four issues of that Machine Man series while clearing out the loft, I must reread it - loved his work (esp the X-men stories he did).
― Estella, Damm (stevie), Friday, 20 October 2017 10:32 (six years ago) link
ah, for the days when 2020 seemed like the impossibly far future
― midas / medusa cage match (bizarro gazzara), Friday, 20 October 2017 10:34 (six years ago) link
BWS inked - obliterated - Herb Trimpe's pencils on the first three parts of that Machine Man mini-series (the fourth and last issue is all BWS).
Back in the 70s, loved the few pages of the Captain America treasury that Bazza inked over Kirby - so odd (in a good way!) seeing Jack being given a completely different finishing style from the Sinnott/Kirby brushy norm.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-9goaVu7qTSE/Uq8H6IYrqFI/AAAAAAAAEDs/6PAQiT7nhCQ/s1600/1+(1).jpg
Finding a Treasury edition for sale in a newsagent was always a special score.
― Ward Fowler, Friday, 20 October 2017 10:44 (six years ago) link
I seem to recall that the Machine Man was some of BWS first comic work in quite a few years and he started working with Trimpe to get back in the swing.
― earlnash, Friday, 20 October 2017 21:46 (six years ago) link
whoah yeah Kirby+Bazza is a great, odd combo!
― Οὖτις, Friday, 20 October 2017 21:56 (six years ago) link
That sorta-mask thing (paint?) on Jon Sable is so annoying. Hate it when they added just a little something to make it look superheroey. I'm sure there others in the 80s like that. Will Eisner was pressured into giving The Spirit an eye mask.
It's interesting to see First, Pacific, Eclipse etc titles and backups get collected editions. I thought a lot of this would never resurface.
My first comic shop visit was also unbelievably exciting, I wanted to live in there like the Phantom Of The Opera and read everything when the store was closed, back then almost everything looked great to me. Getting Previews was often the most exciting part of the month. Stopped reading Previews around 7 years ago, it just made me too furious to see what a huge percentage of it is expensive opportunism. Hacky tie-ins and spin-offs, variant covers, $160 models with no craft, Star Trek pizza cutters and Watchmen bearbricks and toasters (not making those up).
It's nice to see more quality creator owned comics in the mainstream but there's still so much weak material and collectables that it gets me down. It's unlikely I'll ever be that excited to go to a comic shop again unless there's some unprecedented wave of brilliance in the future. Would like to go to a big French or Japanese store someday though.
Ordering Charlton ghost comics and reading them by the fire is one of my happiest comics memories. The British magazine From The Tomb was a big deal for me, it was a few years before all that cover art was so easy to find on the internet and it had so much great images that you'd rarely see anywhere else. This Charlton, Atlas era Marvel, Skywald and Harvey stuff was so tantalizing.
They got a lot of flack but the Pure Imagination reprints were great, getting there before bigger publishers.
I bought most of the Savage Dragon run from cheapie bins. Sometimes titles like Twisted Tales and miscellaneous Ditko comics from the 80s and 90s (usually not his best).
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Friday, 27 October 2017 21:56 (six years ago) link
It's unlikely I'll ever be that excited to go to a comic shop again unless there's some unprecedented wave of brilliance in the future. I went to Floating World this week. If it's never exciting to go there, then it'd be time to give up on the medium forever.(Only had half an hour before having to leave the city, so it felt like one of those dreams where you find an entire shop or cache of comics, and you get glimpses of things you've never seen before, but something keeps getting in the way of going through them, so you can never know what wonders were in there)
― shackling the masses with plastic-wrapped snack picks (sic), Saturday, 28 October 2017 06:32 (six years ago) link
The Passaic Book Center in Passaic, New Jersey was my mecca for a good few years (81-84). A seemingly cavernous old space stacked with comics and back issue sci-fi mags and paperbacks. Golden Age comics pinned to the walls and hanging from cords above the floor. In the window were displayed Heavy Metal graphic novels like Walt Simonson's "Alien" adaptation as well as a couple stacks of comics bundled together with twine under a sign saying "100 mix n' match comics for $20". A friend and I once split the cost of one of these stacks and it was such a joy sitting on the front steps of my house going through and dividing up the goods. I vividly recall the rush of excitement going in each month to get the latest Miller's "Daredevil" or Byrne FF, for example. Smell of old newsprint and older wood. Nothing like it.
― Acid Hose (Capitaine Jay Vee), Saturday, 28 October 2017 07:59 (six years ago) link
I discover most of the newer comics I like through Meathaus, but they're mostly just illustrations and not sequences, so arguably not comics at all (I have no problem with this, there's a lot of older comic artists I wish had just done this, for all the crappy pinup books nobody really taken advantage of this approach until relatively recently).
I like comics for images first and foremost and there's always going to be more good artists in the wider fine art and illustration world because it's bigger and generally less constrained. I wish more artists would adopt sequential methods.
I like to think anything is possible but it's difficult to imagine a great quantity of things impressing your adult mind as it did your child-teenage-early 20s brains.
Then there's the excitement of initial discovery vs the reality of experiencing the things in full. So many discoveries would have been less exciting if I had been able to read quicker (same is true now with all the speculative fiction I'm buying that will inevitably disappoint). The last time I was really excited by obscure comics was the Manga Zombie profiles of creators, I'd still love the full book and to see translations of some of these.
I quite like Uno Moralez, Tin Can Forest, Kurokawa John and Loic Locatelli, as far as newish comic people go.
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Saturday, 28 October 2017 14:22 (six years ago) link
i had a place in my old hometown where the prices were good and the selection was excellent but the owner let her two cats have the run of the place and there was often catshit in the back of the box.
― Chocolate-covered gummy bears? Not ruling those lil' guys out. (ulysses), Monday, 30 October 2017 17:31 (six years ago) link
Yeaaaaaah. Buying comics with unidentifiable stains in weirdly-sticky mylar bags is the dark side of the rites of passage related itt.
― Winky Carrothers (Old Lunch), Monday, 30 October 2017 17:34 (six years ago) link
My gf's parents were refurbishing their basement a while back and her dad gave me a sampling of a big cache of comics he'd found, wondering if they were worth anything. It was my sad duty to report back, nah, not really in terms of actual monetary value (mildly warped and mildewed late-'70s/early-'80s Marvel & DC), but I'm sure they'd be an absolute goldmine to some kid somewhere.
(Oh, completely random detail I just remembered: the comics in question originally belonged to a young Michael T. Weiss of The Pretender fame, as he was apparently a childhood friend of their family. Life is weird.)
― Winky Carrothers (Old Lunch), Monday, 30 October 2017 17:43 (six years ago) link
the right way to get rid of a longbox is to give it to an impressionable teenager.
― Chocolate-covered gummy bears? Not ruling those lil' guys out. (ulysses), Monday, 30 October 2017 18:52 (six years ago) link
that's gonna get put in "ilx posted out of character" isn't it
― Chocolate-covered gummy bears? Not ruling those lil' guys out. (ulysses), Monday, 30 October 2017 18:53 (six years ago) link
I loved those seemingly random Kirby text emphases. I could tell it was Kirby before I read Ward's description.
"We're not out of this yet, Cap!"
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Tuesday, 17 October 2023 01:28 (eleven months ago) link
I love Kirby's dialogue. This article was interesting about the Kirby text emphases style, and how it differed from Stan Lee's:
Lee's "natural" dialogue emphasized nouns - it could have been anything, any component of the sentence, but Lee whipped his nouns until they bled. Lee loved words that were solid, visible, concrete, tangible - words you could pose for a picture. Look at the classic FF #50 (1966), the climax of the Galactus trilogy. As Reed Richards checkmates Marvel's most powerful entity and saves the trembling Earth, as Kirby's art crackles off the page with cosmic action, Lee's dialogue (admittedly some of his best) dwells on the stolid nouns and pronouns:REED: "NO, Galactus, it is YOU who will perish... for we have found the WEAPON at last!"GALACTUS: "The ULTIMATE NULLIFIER! ! In the hands of... a HUMAN! ...Your feeble mind cannot begin to comprehend its POWER! You hold the means to destroy a GALAXY... to lay waste to a UNIVERSE!!"REED: "And should the UNIVERSE crumble... can GALACTUS survive??"GALACTUS (to Watcher): "YOU did this!! Only YOU had the power... only YOU had the will! You have given a MATCH to a child who lives in a TINDERBOX!"We know that Lee's dialogue often grated on Kirby. Words frequently didn't match what was in Kirby's mind when the scenes popped from his head onto the page. Maybe one of the reasons was a basic psychological mismatch between the two men's thinking and writing styles: When Kirby began writing his own dialogue, first at DC and then after his unhappy return to Marvel, he largely emphasized verbs. Even in Kirby's quietest scenes of the 1970s, his choice of emphasis in dialogue stresses words that run, jump, crash, explode, do things - like his images, they can't sit still. Take this reflective exchange from Mister Miracle #6 (1972). The art is simply head shots, but look at the way Kirby gooses the verbs until they notch up the tension level of the sentences:SCOTT: "Earth ISN'T small! Perhaps we can LOSE ourselves in hamlets, cities - continents - !! Perhaps, in time - the forces of Apokolips will GIVE UP the hunt!!"BARDA: "It's a DELUSION, Scott! But I'll BUY it! Only, WATCH Flashman! Megalomaniacs LOVE to make noise! ! He COULD be our Achilles' heel!"
REED: "NO, Galactus, it is YOU who will perish... for we have found the WEAPON at last!"GALACTUS: "The ULTIMATE NULLIFIER! ! In the hands of... a HUMAN! ...Your feeble mind cannot begin to comprehend its POWER! You hold the means to destroy a GALAXY... to lay waste to a UNIVERSE!!"REED: "And should the UNIVERSE crumble... can GALACTUS survive??"GALACTUS (to Watcher): "YOU did this!! Only YOU had the power... only YOU had the will! You have given a MATCH to a child who lives in a TINDERBOX!"
We know that Lee's dialogue often grated on Kirby. Words frequently didn't match what was in Kirby's mind when the scenes popped from his head onto the page. Maybe one of the reasons was a basic psychological mismatch between the two men's thinking and writing styles: When Kirby began writing his own dialogue, first at DC and then after his unhappy return to Marvel, he largely emphasized verbs. Even in Kirby's quietest scenes of the 1970s, his choice of emphasis in dialogue stresses words that run, jump, crash, explode, do things - like his images, they can't sit still. Take this reflective exchange from Mister Miracle #6 (1972). The art is simply head shots, but look at the way Kirby gooses the verbs until they notch up the tension level of the sentences:
SCOTT: "Earth ISN'T small! Perhaps we can LOSE ourselves in hamlets, cities - continents - !! Perhaps, in time - the forces of Apokolips will GIVE UP the hunt!!"BARDA: "It's a DELUSION, Scott! But I'll BUY it! Only, WATCH Flashman! Megalomaniacs LOVE to make noise! ! He COULD be our Achilles' heel!"
― soref, Tuesday, 17 October 2023 11:40 (eleven months ago) link
https://twomorrows.com/kirby/articles/19dialogue.html
― soref, Tuesday, 17 October 2023 11:41 (eleven months ago) link
Kirby's style of dialogue seems like something very specific to the medium of comics, in a way that Lee's wasn't (I know Lee has aspirations towards being a novelist or getting into the film industry). I think I read some of Kirby's self-scripted 70s work for the first time in the mid-2000s around the time that 'decompressed storytelling' and that Brian Michael Bendis style 'naturalistic' dialogue was in vogue, and the Kirby stuff just seemed like the complete opposite, both in terms of the visuals and the words, the dialogue seemed dense and distilled in the same way that the images were.
― soref, Tuesday, 17 October 2023 12:04 (eleven months ago) link
I generally ignore the story and the dialogue when I'm reading Kirby/Kirby (as opposed to Lee/Kirby) but... are there good Kirby-penned "stories" I'm missing out on? I don't think Kirby's disinterest in narrative tarnishes his work in any way -- it's not what I want from him. But I guess I might be missing something as a result?
― Chuck_Tatum, Tuesday, 17 October 2023 12:59 (eleven months ago) link
*When I say "disinterest in narrative", I mean lettered narrative (dialogue, plot) as opposed to storytelling with images, or ideas
― Chuck_Tatum, Tuesday, 17 October 2023 13:01 (eleven months ago) link
In rough chronological order:
*My mom's old stash of Gold Key and Harvey comics when we spent the week at grandma's house. Little Dot. Baby Huey. Sad Sack. Casper. A handful of generic army adventure comics that were probably my uncle's. *Stacks of comics influenced by my toy habits: G.I. Joe, Transformers, Sectaurs, Starriors*Slightly older family friend (a teenager when I was still in elementary school) would occasionally gift me comics: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #2, X-Men #209, X-Men Annual #13. Let me read an issue of The Tick once. I obsessed pretty hard over these individual comics, re-reading them, but never buying other issues to learn more of the story. As an adult in my 30s, I finally bought a trade paperback that included X-Men #209. Reading the whole thing was a bit of a let-down. I mean, the run was fine, but it didn't recapture the magic of reading this lone issue of a comic full of references and storylines that I didn't understand. Following that, I made a point for about a year to just grab random comics off the shelf at my LCS, to try to relive the mystery, but I couldn't really make that trick work twice. *My dad's younger brother had a stack of kung fu magazines in his old room at my other grandparents' house. One of the titles had Iron Fist serialized in the back. I was obsessed with this story, and on the way back home bought a handful of used Power Man and Iron Fist comics from a spinner rack in O'Hare.
After that, I wasn't into comics for a long time.
― peace, man, Tuesday, 17 October 2023 13:23 (eleven months ago) link
are there good Kirby-penned "stories" I'm missing out on?
All of the 60s Marvel Comics have Kirby-penned stories - Stan Lee worked 'Marvel Method' for his entire career. Apart from a hotly disputed outline for FF 1, conveniently found in a drawer years after the fact, there is no physical evidence anywhere of Lee typing out a plot and giving it to an artist. And by all accounts, even from company loyalists like John Romita Sir, his verbal plotting sessions with artists amounted to little more than 'let's bring back Doctor Doom this month'.
Of course, Lee did have some influence over Kirby's writing - he would sometimes reject pages, write dialogue that contradicted Kirby's story notes and dialogue suggestions, and push for greater continuity between titles (something Kirby wasn't really interested in).
But if we're talking 70s DC/Marvel Comics plotted, dialogued and drawn by Kirby then I think you have to accept that his storytelling style changed - a bit like Lennon and McCartney's songwriting changed in the 70s once they were free of each other, and free of the expectations as to what a Beatles song could or couldn't be. And reading things like Kamandi now, I'm struck by how 'straightforward' Kirby's dialogue actually is - it's just not Stan Lee snappy patter dialogue (and not going to lie, I LOVED that style when I was a kid).
― Ward Fowler, Tuesday, 17 October 2023 13:47 (eleven months ago) link
I loved Power Man as a kid. I got the second issue of Luke Cage, Hero for Hire in one of those comics three-packs where you could usually tell only what the top one was. There were often good surprises tucked away in those. As a seven year old, I had no idea what "blaxploitation" was; I just thought his costume was cool af, and the fact that bullets bounced off of him but left bruises felt somehow more "real."
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Tuesday, 17 October 2023 13:48 (eleven months ago) link
My first ever exposure to X-Men was randomly buying Uncanny #273 off the spinner rack. It was the issue immediately following X-Tinction Agenda and featured all of the characters from all of the X-teams hanging out in the mansion and it had like eight different pencilers (double checks...no it had exactly eight different pencilers) and I had zero idea of what was happening or who anyone was but I was super intrigued. So I bought the next issue to try and learn more, and I was treated to a completely unrelated and equally baffling story about Magneto and Rogue and Nick Fury hanging out in the Savage Land. And then I couldn't find the next couple of issues but when I finally tracked down 277, the X-Men were suddenly in space and I just figured that this ADD shit was what comics were all about and leaned into it.
― Prop Dramedy (Old Lunch), Tuesday, 17 October 2023 13:51 (eleven months ago) link
I genuinely love everything about Kirby's Fourth World at its peak, most definitely including the dialogue. Dude was accessing a different dimension.
― Prop Dramedy (Old Lunch), Tuesday, 17 October 2023 13:52 (eleven months ago) link
Agreed. Even the Black Racer had some kind of weird appeal.
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Tuesday, 17 October 2023 13:55 (eleven months ago) link
I think my favourite find in a comic bin was Farmer Fiend's Horror Harvest by Glenn Chadbourne. Rarely ever get those "what the fuck is this?!" moments in a comic shop but that was one of them. I've been out of the loop for years so maybe more surprises are coming.
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Saturday, 21 October 2023 23:21 (eleven months ago) link