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Post by Slam_Bradley on May 30, 2019 15:03:45 GMT -5
Sometimes I think I'm the only person who likes Sparling and brighten up when he shows up in a book. I'm not crazy about his superhero work at the big two but he did tons of oddball stuff in the 60s, and some good horror/mystery work at DC and Warren. He also seemed to have a "stock company" of big-headed characters.
Well, as I said, the covers often can be pretty good. The inker can make a difference, too. Here he is channeling Gil Kane courtesy Sid Greene's inks: What happened to Hal's chin in that second to the last panel. Also starring Jay Leno as Green Lantern.
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Post by Prince Hal on May 30, 2019 15:13:01 GMT -5
Well, as I said, the covers often can be pretty good. The inker can make a difference, too. Here he is channeling Gil Kane courtesy Sid Greene's inks: What happened to Hal's chin in that second to the last panel. Also starring Jay Leno as Green Lantern. Greene didn't notice the outcropping known as Sparling Chin. Look at the two beauties in the last panel.
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Post by chaykinstevens on May 30, 2019 16:08:45 GMT -5
Besides a story in Kamandi and a couple of back up stories in Warlord, I would've loved to have seen the original OMAC continue, though I loved later version as well. Have you read David Morris and Dek Baker's amateur small press continuation, Omac #9? link
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Crimebuster
CCF Podcast Guru
Making comics!
Posts: 3,901
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Post by Crimebuster on May 30, 2019 16:24:16 GMT -5
My understanding is that Jonny Double was originally supposed to have the same gimmick as The Human Target - hence the name "Double." For some reason, that was kiboshed, but Wein later used the idea to create The Human Target four years later. It's possible that the weakness of the story/character is due to the central conceit being stripped away during development.
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Post by Farrar on May 30, 2019 17:00:47 GMT -5
Sometimes I think I'm the only person who likes Sparling and brighten up when he shows up in a book. I'm not crazy about his superhero work at the big two but he did tons of oddball stuff in the 60s, and some good horror/mystery work at DC and Warren. He also seemed to have a "stock company" of big-headed characters. Oh, how I loved his work on the Secret Six series. And as great as those first two Cardy covers were, the Sparling covers that followed were just as memorable IMO. Fwiw my favorite cover from that series was #4 by Sparling. And the interior art he did for #3-7 never failed to draw me into the stories and the world of the characters, which is what I wanted from a comic.
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Post by Cei-U! on May 30, 2019 19:01:03 GMT -5
There were a handful of art touch-ups on the Golden Age reprints, mostly to soften some of the era's harsh racial caricatures, but nothing significant. I have the complete run of Fantasy Masterpieces, as well as the nine issues of Marvel Super-Heroes before it became all Silver Age reprints. I consider it one of the jewels of my collection.
And mark me down as on the side of the Sparling bashers. I can't stand his art in any way, shape, or form. He ruined a ton of otherwise decent Dells and Gold Keys for me. The only job he did that I can remotely tolerate is his Captain America story in Tales of Suspense #87, only because Joe Sinnott did an amazing job of covering his flaws.
Cei-U! I summarily summon the summary!
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Post by Deleted on May 30, 2019 19:11:34 GMT -5
Title: Fantasy Masterpieces. Publisher: Marvel Comics. Number of issues: 11. Dates of publication: February, 1966 - October, 1967. One can confidently say What the 80 Page Giant series was to DC, Fantasy Masterpieces was to Marvel. Long before Roy Thomas transformed his Golden Age love into The Invaders (and other stories), this was the title to bring many of the company's most important Golden Age superheroes to an eager fanbase...and eager they were, thanks to the publisher reintroducing two characters with great success-- Count me in as another reader that loved Marvel and DC reprints of their Golden Age material back in the 60's and 70's. It was an inexpensive way to read the older material that was hard to find back then.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on May 30, 2019 20:09:53 GMT -5
My understanding is that Jonny Double was originally supposed to have the same gimmick as The Human Target - hence the name "Double." For some reason, that was kiboshed, but Wein later used the idea to create The Human Target four years later. It's possible that the weakness of the story/character is due to the central conceit being stripped away during development. That’s my understanding as well. I wonder if that’s why there’s no sign of Len Wein being involved in the story.
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Post by berkley on May 30, 2019 21:23:38 GMT -5
Then Skull the Slayer's got resolved unsatisfyingly in Marvel Two-in-One, didn't it? Indeed! I also believe that much later he was integrated in one of those Marvel books where B- and C- listers are usually used as cannon fodder. I don't recall the details but I know I didn't like it when they connected Skull the Slayer with the superhero world rather than leaving it as the ERB-style adventure series it had started out as.
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Post by Cei-U! on May 30, 2019 21:39:37 GMT -5
Skull the Slayer was one of those series that changed either its editor, writer, or artist every damned issue (nor did it help that its hero and his supporting cast were so unlikeable). It was a confusing, pointless mess from the third issue on and richly deserved its early demise. That Wolfman was able to salvage his original concept in that Two-in-One two-parter is something of a minor miracle.
Cei-U! I summon the round-trip ticket to the Bermuda Triangle!
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Post by Reptisaurus! on May 30, 2019 21:55:23 GMT -5
There were a handful of art touch-ups on the Golden Age reprints, mostly to soften some of the era's harsh racial caricatures, but nothing significant. I have the complete run of Fantasy Masterpieces, as well as the nine issues of Marvel Super-Heroes before it became all Silver Age reprints. I consider it one of the jewels of my collection. And mark me down as on the side of the Sparling bashers. I can't stand his art in any way, shape, or form. He ruined a ton of otherwise decent Dells and Gold Keys for me. The only job he did that I can remotely tolerate is his Captain America story in Tales of Suspense #87, only because Joe Sinnott did an amazing job of covering his flaws. Cei-U! I summarily summon the summary! I would like this post but I always dug Starling. I wouldn't have minded if he had a regular run on... any title. Ever.
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Post by hondobrode on May 30, 2019 23:10:34 GMT -5
Besides a story in Kamandi and a couple of back up stories in Warlord, I would've loved to have seen the original OMAC continue, though I loved later version as well. Have you read David Morris and Dek Baker's amateur small press continuation, Omac #9? link
No !
Thank you very much !
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jun 8, 2019 14:01:45 GMT -5
Dolphin - DC Comics - Showcase # 79, December 1968. Writer/Artist: Jay Scott Pike Back to the Showcase well for this one-shot by Jay Scott Pike who was primarily a romance artist. The romance genre was still going fairly strong in 1968, so combining it with the super-hero genre (something we'd seen somewhat at Marvel but not so much at DC) was an interesting move. There's also a frogman element a genre that was never big but had a few books whose time had passed. The story itself is simple. Navy frogmen are trying to retrieve documents from a ship sunk during WWII. While down there they encounter Dolphin, a woman who can breathe underwater, swim like a fish and inexplicably wears a shirt and cut-offs. Of course we have to have a love-interest arise and since we need some sort of drama a typhoon is coming that will push the sunken ship into a trench from whence the documents won't be able to be recovered. Of course lovely Dolphin comes to the rescue. Unfortunately a few careless words from her sailor/love and she can't sail off into the sunrise and disappears into the ocean. So... Was it gone too soon? Probably not. Not that there's anything inherently wrong with the book. It's decent late-Silver-Age DC fare. Certainly there is nothing to complain about with Pike's art which is a cut above average and is a nice change of pace from the average super-hero work of the time. Part of the problem is that Dolphin suffers from the same problems that most undersea heroes do, the "I gotta get back to the water or die" thing. And undersea heroes that have been able to sustain a decent comics run have been incredibly few and far between. Add to that that Dolphin was a female hero in a much less enlightened time and what starts to emerge is a run that likely would not be well remembered, whereas the Showcase one-shot has always seemed to be a kind of bright spot in a sea of standard stuff.
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Post by The Captain on Jun 8, 2019 16:04:32 GMT -5
There were a handful of art touch-ups on the Golden Age reprints, mostly to soften some of the era's harsh racial caricatures, but nothing significant. I have the complete run of Fantasy Masterpieces, as well as the nine issues of Marvel Super-Heroes before it became all Silver Age reprints. I consider it one of the jewels of my collection. And mark me down as on the side of the Sparling bashers. I can't stand his art in any way, shape, or form. He ruined a ton of otherwise decent Dells and Gold Keys for me. The only job he did that I can remotely tolerate is his Captain America story in Tales of Suspense #87, only because Joe Sinnott did an amazing job of covering his flaws. Cei-U! I summarily summon the summary! Kurt - I was just catching up on some threads I'd let lie for a while, and I came across your comment here. It struck a chord with me, so I went back and checked, and yup, you wrote almost the exact same thing as a post in my Captain America review thread about Sparling's artwork for ToS #87 being the only one of his that you can stand and only because of Sinnott's inking. You are remarkably consistent, my friend!
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Jun 8, 2019 16:42:42 GMT -5
Besides a story in Kamandi and a couple of back up stories in Warlord, I would've loved to have seen the original OMAC continue, though I loved later version as well. Have you read David Morris and Dek Baker's amateur small press continuation, Omac #9? linkWOW!!! Thanks for that, chaykinstevens! That a very good Kirby impression, from the art and script to the very pacing!
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