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Post by Cei-U! on Jul 20, 2016 8:13:39 GMT -5
I'm also not a big fan of Dick Ayers' solo work (despite my love of Sgt. Fury), particularly his problems with pacing and his inability to draw symmetrical faces. I certainly would never place him ahead of Don Heck, whose art I've come to appreciate after disdaining it in my youth. But I gotta disagree with my man Slam: Ayers was one of Kirby's best inkers, not among his worst. Dick gave weight, volume, and depth to Jack's pencils. The first three pages of Fantastic Four Annual #1 contain some of the most beautiful artwork of the Silver Age, at Marvel or anyone else.
Cei-U! I summon the conflicted opinion!
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Post by brutalis on Jul 20, 2016 8:46:26 GMT -5
Heck and Ayers along with Don Perlin and Sal Buscema and Werner Roth and Herb Trimpe and others of their ilk were what i call the reliable work horses for Marvel and DC. They could always be counted on to produce a good comic and on time but they were never splashy or bombastic in doing so. In comparison i consider them to be television to movies. Where one calls for big over the top fantastic filming the other focus on close ups and characterization to carry it through. Many artists were not comic book trained artists but were instead advertising and commercial artists trying to earn a living. Therefore they were more focused on getting the job done without the bells and whistles to telling the story. Artistically nothing wrong in that premise at all, just not overly interesting to a kid looking for escapism in art.
i honestly enjoy their continued monthly deliverance over the splashy artists who suddenly appeared amidst a hail of praise for an issue or two and then be missing for several issues while trying to finish a story only to disappear too quickly over the long term. Yes, I am looking at you Steranko, Gulacy and Kaluta and Wrightson, etc. Amazing, incredible and spectacular but ultimately too few and too far between.
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Post by Nowhere Man on Jul 20, 2016 10:50:19 GMT -5
I've come to like and appreciate Heck as an older reader, but I'd still put Ayers just above him in terms of personal preference. Heck's art could be too scratchy for my tastes and almost seemed like it would have been a better fit for a fashion advertisement.
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Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 10,057
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Post by Confessor on Jul 20, 2016 13:57:47 GMT -5
I like the plant-man story in Strange Tales #113 quite a bit. I mean, yeah...it's hokey as all hell and the dialogue is bad, bad, BAD, but that story also has a charm...or did, the last time I read it.
For the record, I regard Dick Ayers and Don Heck about equally. To my eyes, Heck was the more "Marvel-style" of the two, but Ayers was a decent artist too. Ayers's style seemed particularly suited to westerns and his work on Jonah Hex in the '70s was very nice.
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Post by Hoosier X on Jul 20, 2016 18:29:15 GMT -5
Behold Mangog! from his debut in Thor #154. Cei-U! I summon the big ugly dude! This story is so awesome! I first saw it in a Marvel Treasury Edition (#10, I think) in the late 1970s and I remember it so well! One of Thor's best storylines ever! One of my favorite all-time panels is where Mangog is lifting Ulik out of the hole and Ulik looks like a little hairy orange baby with a green diaper.
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Post by Nowhere Man on Jul 22, 2016 2:36:11 GMT -5
Mangog may be the most Kirby creation that Kirby ever created.
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Post by tingramretro on Jul 22, 2016 8:06:26 GMT -5
Behold Mangog! from his debut in Thor #154. Cei-U! I summon the big ugly dude! Why is his head the same size as his torso? How can he even stand up without breaking his neck?
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Post by Deleted on Jul 22, 2016 8:50:40 GMT -5
Mangog may be the most Kirby creation that Kirby ever created. You can say that again and I'm still kicking myself in the pants for not being aware of this character at all and I'm making myself a mission to get any issues of Thor and beyond that contains this character and start reading it.
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Post by Nowhere Man on Jul 22, 2016 8:59:00 GMT -5
Mangog may be the most Kirby creation that Kirby ever created. You can say that again and I'm still kicking myself in the pants for not being aware of this character at all and I'm making myself a mission to get any issues of Thor and beyond that contains this character and start reading it. I don't think Mangog has made many appearances since his Silver Age debut. I know that Jurgans used him early in his Heroes Return Thor run, but I'm not sure if he was used much, if at all, since the original Stan/Jack stories. He's kind like Surtur in that he's really out of Thor's league and is more of a match for Odin.
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Post by tingramretro on Jul 22, 2016 9:10:05 GMT -5
You can say that again and I'm still kicking myself in the pants for not being aware of this character at all and I'm making myself a mission to get any issues of Thor and beyond that contains this character and start reading it. I don't think Mangog has made many appearances since his Silver Age debut. I know that Jurgans used him early in his Heroes Return Thor run, but I'm not sure if he was used much, if at all, since the original Stan/Jack stories. He's kind like Surtur in that he's really out of Thor's league and is more of a match for Odin. Mangog has made a couple of dozen appearances over the years, notably clashing with Thunderstrike as well as Thor. At one point, he apparently worked with Thanos.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 22, 2016 12:52:35 GMT -5
Robert the Unconquered & tingramretro - thanks for the additional info here.
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Post by Nowhere Man on Jul 25, 2016 4:23:17 GMT -5
Tales of Suspense #46 Story Title: “Iron Man Faces the Crimson Dynamo!” Cover Date: October, 1963 CreditsScript: Stan Lee (plot); Robert Bernstein (script) [as R. Berns] Pencils: Don Heck Inks: Don Heck Colors: Unknown Letters: Artie Simek Cover Art: Jack Kirby (pencils); Dick Ayers (inks) Synopsis: The story opens with Iron Man attempting to save a malfunctioning rocket, but then flashes back to two weeks prior and shows us the origins of electrical genius Anton Vanko, the Crimson Dynamo. Khrushchev sends the Crimson Dynamo to the United States to "wreck Stark's project and get rid of Iron Man". The Dynamo, using his armors impressive electrical abilities, manages to wreck ten of Stark’s instillation's and succeeds in arousing suspicion that Stark may be behind the attacks. The Dynamo attacks Stark directly at his research facility, but Iron Man defeats him (getting a confession in the process) and convinces him to defect. Vanko accepts and becomes Stark’s top research scientist. Character Appearances: Iron Man [Tony Stark]; Crimson Dynamo [Anton Vanko] (introduction, origin); Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev; Happy Hogan; Pepper Potts Comments: This story was one of the better uses of the otherwise unfortunate “evil communist threat as villain” plot device. It still had a heavy-handed dose of pro-capitalist propaganda, of course, but I like the way Lee, Heck and Bernstein used it as a framework to introduce an interesting new villain in the Crimson Dynamo. The ending was rather lame, like many of these shorter tales, with Iron Man inexplicably uprooting trees to “trap” him only to fly him over the water in the next panel to get him to surrender--apparently convincing him that Iron Man was willing to electrocute them both. While it was a stretch, I kind of like the uniqueness of having a villain switch sides at the end. Character Development: Pepper and Happy keep up the verbal sparring, with Pepper continuing her brutal assault on poor Happy’s ego. They’re definitely two of the more interesting supporting characters of the early Marvel Age. Personal Rating: 6. An above average issue marred by a semi-ridiculous ending, it nonetheless made good use of the Cold War setting and industrial sabotage in the 1960’s. Historical Rating: 8. The Crimson Dynamo is one of Iron Man’s classic villains and would remain so for many years to come. This was in a way the start of the “armor wars” seeing as how the Dynamo was Iron Man’s first armored adversary.
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Post by Hoosier X on Jul 26, 2016 6:41:32 GMT -5
Mangog would usually appear in multi-issue storylines, separated by four or five years. He was in Thor #195 to #198 in 1972. Here's the cover to #197: And he was in a storyline in several issues running up to #250 in 1976. Here's the cover to #250: Look at that Kirby/Sinnott cover.
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Jul 26, 2016 7:55:00 GMT -5
An alternate Earth Mangog appeared in 1982's Marvel Fanfare # 51 Then in 2000 Mangog returned in Thor Vol 2 # 20-25 as a partner with Thanos
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Post by Nowhere Man on Jul 26, 2016 9:45:12 GMT -5
An alternate Earth Mangog appeared in 1982's Marvel Fanfare # 51 Then in 2000 Mangog returned in Thor Vol 2 # 20-25 as a partner with Thanos This must be what I had a vague recollection of. He really went 18 years without being used? Fascinating.
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