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Post by benday-dot on Dec 20, 2014 22:10:07 GMT -5
#5 Conan #24 (Marvel)
This will be my final pick as a part of an effort to represent the colour and flavour of collection. I started with Sheena and end with Conan-- not a bad lineage. My final few choices are based more on intangible things like personal attachment and, yes, nostalgia. Polar Bear already featured that indisputable classic. Not only was it my first Windsor-Smith Conan comic (and with a pick-up of CtB #1 a couple weeks ago I went on to complete the lot), but it was also my first ever back issue purchase. It cost be 5 bucks. Not bad for a classic, and it was in pretty good shape as well, all things considered. It was BWS' coda on his 2 year masterwork. Everything was leading up this, in terms of the brilliance of the art and the virtuosity of the storytelling. There is not a panel in "The Song of Red Sonja" in which Windor-Smith didn't give his all. He knew this was it, and he knew that his fans and the fans of Conan would not soon forget the triumph. 
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Post by berkley on Dec 20, 2014 22:38:04 GMT -5
Day 8 brings us pick #5 Some of the titles on my list are clearly there for personal reasons rather than any, shall we say, intrinsic value of the books themselves. Today's choice qualifies both ways. New Gods #7"The Pact" DC Feb 1971 Creator - Jack Kirby It's been said that Jack Kirby helped create the Marvel Universe, then went on to reshape DC's. Certainly his Fourth World saga has been a major part of DC's universe since he introduced us to Darkseid, Apokolips and the rest. I remember the excitement when Kirby hit DC in the seventies, all these new characters, a broad epic going on. But at the very beginning, he wanted to hit the ground running, dropping us into the on-going struggle between Apokolips and New Genesis, leaving a lot of the backstory to unfold as we went. That's where this issue comes in. 'The Pact' set the plot of Orion vs. Darkseid aside for an issue, and took us back to show us how and why the conflict all started. We saw the first war between the New Gods, how it ended, and how that ending held the seeds for the current conflict. We saw a weary warrior find a new path, in a scene out of a Biblical epic. We learned the origin of Highfather. We learned the secret origins of Orion and Mister Miracle, and we could never see those characters the same way again. We got a tale of terrible war, and a terrible price for peace. A tale of hope and betrayal, triumph and tragedy. I had a friend who'd bought the first issues of the New Gods, then dropped it. The day after I read 'The Pact' for the first 3 or 4 times, I couldn't wait to collar him and tell him all about it. And I guess my excitement for this book was contagious, since he went out and bought a copy. I don't know if readers who come to this book late, who already know all the revelations here, can appreciate just how big a deal it was. This book blew my mind. I was looking at some of the current DC comics featuring the New Gods at the LCS the other day, and the level of ignorance on display was depressing. The current version seems to be trying to present a New Genesis and a Highfather that have become so caught up in the war with Apokolips that their tactics and general attitude sometimes appear to be not so very different from that of their Apokoliptan adversaries. Now, the whole point of The Pact was that Izaya already went through all this in the earlier wars between New Genesis and Apokolips and saw the fatal error he was committing - that's exactly how he came into contact with the Source and became Highfather. Have any of the current DC writers even bothered to read the original series? Apparently not, because it would be impossible to miss this, one of the fundamental themes of the whole concept. Or maybe they're just not interested - they'd rather think about the JLA or the Green Lanterns or whatever. Which is fine, but in that case, I'd prefer they didn't take the New Gods and twist them into something they were never meant to be just to fit the latest Green lantern story. |
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Post by cattysquaw on Dec 20, 2014 23:39:25 GMT -5
Cheryl Blossom #1
Guess Archie Comics decided that the boys of Riverdale, minus Jughead, needed someone new to drool and swoon over, and of course she would be a redhead like Archie himself. It was also someone new for Betty and Veronica to hate, despise and be jealous of. A new rivalry for Archie's heart and love.
I liked Cheryl, she spoke her mind and was not shy about herself, plus the fact she also had my name was cool also. Even though her series did not last too long, she still showed up in the comic, occasionally. She also came back in the Life of Archie series, as a cancer patient, something I also had in common at one point with her also.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 21, 2014 1:25:22 GMT -5
#5: Giant-Size Spider-Man #5 (Marvel, 1975)  This is another comic that I discovered after receiving "Manuel's Stash" as mentioned in my sixth pick, and is special in that it introduced me to a favorite monster, the Man-Thing. Written by Gerry Conway with pencils by Ross Andru and inks by Mike Esposito, this is a fun and nicely illustrated book. Spidey sees news footage on T.V. of the Man-Thing running amok in the swamps of Citrusville, Florida, and decides a photo feature on the bog monster could make for a nice vacation. This leads to action in the swamp, featuring skirmishes between the Lizard, Man-Thing, Spidey, and a chemist, recently bankrupt, who decides to enter the swamp to commit suicide. The Man-Thing senses his emotions and decides to save the guy from a giant alligator. The chemist later runs into a battle between the Lizard, Man-Thing and Spidey. He makes an antidote to turn the Lizard back into Dr. Conner, but trips over a snake. Spidey webs the vial and smashes it onto the Lizard's head. The chemist later finds renewed hope in life after his encounter with the Man-Thing. Just a fun comic with great art, and the one that made me a big fan of that loveable, souless-eyed muck-monster. |
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Post by Paste Pot Paul on Dec 21, 2014 4:28:13 GMT -5
#5. Preacher 40Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon Its hard to describe the affect that Preacher had on me, this may well have been the quantum leap comicbook for me. Now I had read plenty of adult books in my time, Heavy Metal, Eerie, American Flagg, and plenty of comix too, but nothing like this bad boy. I was grazing at Mark One Comics, my then LCS, and started to browse some Vertigo books they had gathering dust. There were a few of those Preacher books I had read about in Comic Shop Weekly or whatever that free newspaper thingy was. I decided to take a chance with it, and grabbed this issue, and was hooked for good.  This page helped seal the deal, what I still consider to be one of the funniest scenes ever. I had to hunt the rest of the series down, first by trade, then by grabbing every separate issue they had. What made all of this even more special at the time for me was that at the time of this issue in 1998 I was phasing out my comic buying, mainly due to the financial constraints of expanding family and shit wages. So Preacher became my last regular book, paid with the occasional overtime, or gift money, until issue 60. The comic shop folded. Gone. I was like a crack addict without a dealer, roaming the streets at night, accosting innocent strangers, getting into cars with odd men... Well, I was screwed anyway...until 8 or so years later, financially climbing out of divorce hell and I find the Alamo trade in a bookshop. Mine... all mine I screamed, beating off frantic geekboy assistants, plunging through the gaggle of pimply nerds, bursting onto the unsuspecting mean streets of Wellington... It took some time, but I was finally able to finish what I consider one of the finest, best written books I've ever had the privilege to share.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Dec 21, 2014 11:39:50 GMT -5
#5 Kingdom Come #1 Writer: Mark Waid Artist: Alex Ross  This was a watershed comic for me in alot of ways... first, the art. I know these days Alex Ross is out of fashion, and, to be honest, his recent work has lost something, but this comic, to me, unlocks everything that's can be amazing about comics... you could have no words in it at all and not only still enjoy it, but still get the story. The story, though, is not just filler, it's a great moral play with religious overtones that you don't often see in comics. I spent alot of time buying elseworlds after this, but DC never really recaptured the magic... this world very easily could have replaced the DCU and I would have been fine... Waid's vision of the DCU future was both awesome and scary at the same time, but yet is probably still less dark than the new 52 is. 
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Post by thwhtguardian on Dec 21, 2014 11:46:51 GMT -5
#5 Kingdom Come #1 Writer: Mark Waid Artist: Alex Ross This was a watershed comic for me in alot of ways... first, the art. I know these days Alex Ross is out of fashion, and, to be honest, his recent work has lost something, but this comic, to me, unlocks everything that's can be amazing about comics... you could have no words in it at all and not only still enjoy it, but still get the story. The story, though, is not just filler, it's a great moral play with religious overtones that you don't often see in comics. I spent alot of time buying elseworlds after this, but DC never really recaptured the magic... this world very easily could have replaced the DCU and I would have been fine... Waid's vision of the DCU future was both awesome and scary at the same time, but yet is probably still less dark than the new 52 is. I love that image, and the overall idea, of Superman as a farmer. It just feels right. |
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Post by wildfire2099 on Dec 21, 2014 11:51:46 GMT -5
Me too... I'd never considered it before, but Clark the Smallville farmer after retiring is so perfect, I feel like it should always be that way in elseworlds.
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Post by Action Ace on Dec 21, 2014 14:47:18 GMT -5
Both Kingdom Come and Marvels could take up quite a part of this list for me. Alex Ross is without any shadow of a doubt my favorite comic book artist to debut after 1980.
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Post by badwolf on Dec 22, 2014 11:43:32 GMT -5
Thor Annual #9  "The Great Game" by Chris Claremont and Luke McDonnell Thor and Sif find themselves cast as pawns in an annual cosmic chess game played by Odin and Dormammu to determine the fate of Asgard.  Big stuff! Dormammu is one of the coolest villains and I love seeing him go "out of his element" and interact with other areas of the MU (as in the ASM annual I listed a few days ago). The game ends favorably, but Thor wonders "what of next year, or the next?" I don't know if this concept was ever revisited, but perhaps, like the Bend Sinister, it's something best left a mystery. And I love that. I love feeling that the MU is vaster and stranger than I, the reader, could ever know. A complex story fully deserving of the label "epic." |
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Dec 22, 2014 12:11:13 GMT -5
Justice League of America #127 (DC Feb. '76)  This is not a great book. It's oddly structured and is just kind of weird. But it's the book that introduced me to the wider DCU and helped move me beyond books with Batman on the cover. So it's an important book to me. |
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Post by JKCarrier on Dec 22, 2014 23:43:40 GMT -5
 8) Epic Illustrated #4 (1980) Having grown up on nothing but traditional 4-color comics on newsprint, this slick package completely blew my mind. Comics where every single panel was a full-color painting? It was breathtaking. From Michael Kaluta's insanely-detailed cover, to Craig Russell's hallucinogenic Elric, to Tim Conrad's sombre and grungy Almuric, to Starlin's trippy Metamorphosis Odyssey, it was a smorgasbord of beautiful illustration. The story content was generally strong as well, if not quite as edgy and experimental as their rival mag Heavy Metal (which I discovered soon after). We take comics with high production values for granted now, but this was a real revelation to me, and a big step towards the realization that yes, comics could be ART. |
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Post by Deleted on Dec 23, 2014 23:28:01 GMT -5
5. Not Brand Echh #10 "The Worst of Not Brand Echh" October 1968 cover date Marvel In retrospect, making the 10th (& second double-sized) issue of a title a greatest-hits collection probably isn't a good sign ... but heck, at age 8 such considerations were beyond me, & besides I'd never seen any of the stories before, since I'd discovered NBE only one issue earlier. These are some of my favorite comics parodies ever, with the FF meeting the Silver Burper (only incarnation in which I've ever been able to stand the insufferable Surfer, of course), the Echhs-Men squaring off against Magneat-O, the origins of Sore, God of Blunder, & Charlie America, etc. etc. etc. In many cases, they marked my introduction to the characters they were parodying, or darned close to it. That was definitely true, of course, with the B.L.U.N.D.E.R. Agents.  |
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Post by berkley on Dec 24, 2014 1:02:51 GMT -5
5. Not Brand Echh #10 "The Worst of Not Brand Echh" October 1968 cover date Marvel In retrospect, making the 10th (& second double-sized) issue of a title a greatest-hits collection probably isn't a good sign ... but heck, at age 8 such considerations were beyond me, & besides I'd never seen any of the stories before, since I'd discovered NBE only one issue earlier. These are some of my favorite comics parodies ever, with the FF meeting the Silver Burper (only incarnation in which I've ever been able to stand the insufferable Surfer, of course), the Echhs-Men squaring off against Magneat-O, the origins of Sore, God of Blunder, & Charlie America, etc. etc. etc. In many cases, they marked my introduction to the characters they were parodying, or darned close to it. That was definitely true, of course, with the B.L.U.N.D.E.R. Agents. Not all of them were so great, but I loved some of those parody names: The Mighty Sore and Charlie America are two of my favourites. And that Marie Severin art! I wish she had drawn more comics in general, both humour - NBE should have enjoyed a good 50 or 100-issue run, at least - and straight superhero. And of course the Severins' run on Kull should have lasted a lot longer as well. |
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Post by Deleted on Dec 24, 2014 9:27:49 GMT -5
I realized after going to bed that I'd neglected to mention Mirthful Marie's masterful work on this title. *sigh*
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