shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Aug 12, 2020 6:48:58 GMT -5
Flash (1987) #53 (August 1991)  "Fast Friends" Script: William Messner-Loebs Pencils: Greg LaRocque Inks: Jose Marzan Jr. Colors: Glenn Whitmore Letters: Tim Harkins Grade: C- Well, the Flash TV show starring John Wesley Shipp just got cancelled less than a year after being the sensation everyone was talking about, and thus one can only assume the character and title were inevitably taking a hit in popularity and sales as well. The solution: bring in one of DC's better selling properties for a guest appearance. And, while DC was losing ground to Marvel in a major way by this point, Superman was still DC's second best-selling property. These figures, from two months after this issue's release, illustrate both how badly DC is losing ground to Marvel and how badly The Flash needed Superman's sales (although The Flash is still outselling nearly all of DC's second tier titles). I guess my only question is why they couldn't bring in Batman to garner sales instead. I do like the thanks given to Mike Carlin on the title page:  They just recently started calling him "The Great Carlini" in the Superman letter columns. It's been many many years since I last read this era of The Flash as an adolescent, so it's an interesting privilege being able to visit it again. On the one hand, there's so much to love about the premise and tone of this run. This panel really encapsulates both the realism and utter surrealism of The Flash in 1991:  On the other, the plot was so illogical and difficult to follow here. For one thing, the cover promise a second race after the previous race between Superman and Wally West was contaminated by the schemings of Myxlplyx two years earlier, but no such race occurs here. I wonder if there was a last minute change after the cover was drawn. In fact, the entire rationale for Superman recruiting Wally for a mission in this story comes down to Messner-Loebs utterly forgetting the entire point of those races (as well as the title of this story) -- Superman has super speed too.  Ummm...oops? Bet that X-ray vision would also be useful on a mission like that. On top of this, several aspects of the plot were downright confusing and difficult to follow. For example, I'm still lost on how Superman and Flash are using The Daily Planet Mailroom to communicate.  Let's put aside the idea for a moment that only one guy is running the entire mailroom and circuit-board for The Daily Planet, let's ignore that The Planet seems to have only 30 mailboxes (and only 30 staffers??), and just explain to me why Superman would call The Daily Planet mailroom in order to send a message to Wally West, as well as why the mailroom guy takes the message? "No one here named Mr. West. And I should know, seeing as how only thirty people seem to work here." Finally, there's this bit, which ultimately gets explained, except that I didn't understand this was going to get explained away later on. And thus, during the climactic battle of the issue, I'm left wondering when and why Wally got topless and then suddenly was in two places at once, both clothed and unclothed:   Messner-Loebs was going for "mystery/enigmatic/teasing", but I got "confused/frustrated/lost". Minor Details / Memos These Guys Didn't Get From The Superman Office:- Ya know, Superman recently got a costume change too.  but even the Superman Office seems to keep forgetting that his costume is now supposed to be "jet black" in the wake of Time and Time Again. - Ummm...  And yet, literally from the most recent Superman story:  In closing, I only bothered to review this one because it's about to get referenced in this week's Superman: The Man of Steel, but wow you do not need to read this. |
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Post by badwolf on Aug 12, 2020 7:45:22 GMT -5
But far FAR worse in this issue is the art of Dusty Abell. It looks like this may have been her very first professional assignment, and her work here is distractingly bad -- angles, panel compositions, basic anatomy, and especially faces -- distractingly bad to the point that it severely inhibited my ability to enjoy this issue: Dusty Abell is male - perhaps Dusty is short for Dustin. Or perhaps he sat still for long periods of time. |
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Post by wildfire2099 on Aug 12, 2020 8:58:50 GMT -5
I wonder how many 'fast friends' stories there are for Flash? That was the name of a Wally-Kyle cross over too... then there was the 'Faster friends' Prestige format mini that also feature Jay and Alan.
Could that control room have been a JLA HQ? I think the Justice League still had an alphabet of teams at this time.. Superman was not all that involved, but I could see him pitching in for monitor duty now and then.
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Aug 12, 2020 9:46:24 GMT -5
Could that control room have been a JLA HQ? I think the Justice League still had an alphabet of teams at this time.. Superman was not all that involved, but I could see him pitching in for monitor duty now and then. Well, he's refused to be a member of the Justice League three times now, so I doubt he'd be doing monitor duty for them. Also, do they have an HQ in Metropolis? This was only a few blocks away for Lois. |
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Post by brutalis on Aug 12, 2020 10:08:32 GMT -5
I bet the Planet mailroom functions like a hospital mailroom. Only 1 person. Delivered by department. Example: my Medical Surgical department consisted of 4 Med-Surg units, a Dialysis unit, 2 Obsevation units and then 2 Wound units for inpatient and outpatient.
So EVERY mail labeled to these came to MY office and I separated and delivered out from there. Standard cost saving (read as cheap) measure. Was ALWAYS this way since I began working there 18 years ago. Easier to break down ENTIRE hospital with potentially 4-5,000 people/patient rooms by around 20 departments. And by default since I was the longest employeed Administrative Assistant if the mail clerk couldn't figure out who or where to d er liver mail. It came to me to figure it out.
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Aug 12, 2020 10:19:45 GMT -5
I bet the Planet mailroom functions like a hospital mailroom. Only 1 person. Delivered by department. Example: my Medical Surgical department consisted of 4 Med-Surg units, a Dialysis unit, 2 Obsevation units and then 2 Wound units for inpatient and outpatient. So EVERY mail labeled to these came to MY office and I separated and delivered out from there. Standard cost saving (read as cheap) measure. Was ALWAYS this way since I began working there 18 years ago. Easier to break down ENTIRE hospital with potentially 4-5,000 people/patient rooms by around 20 departments. And by default since I was the longest employeed Administrative Assistant if the mail clerk couldn't figure out who or where to d er liver mail. It came to me to figure it out. Interesting. I'm used to the enormous mailrooms they show in the movies. Thanks for this. Of course, in your circumstance, would it be efficient to have the guy funneling all the mail to each separate department also answering the phones and taking messages from strangers? |
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Post by chaykinstevens on Aug 12, 2020 11:06:17 GMT -5
It's been bothering me all along, especially Thibert and Bogdovane, who are drawing in far more Liefeld/Lee-inspired styles. Also (and I meant to bring this up in my review), what happened to Curt Swan, who ALWAYS got two pages whenever the Superman Office would share art chores on a book previously? Thibert is clearly very much from the Lee/Liefeld school, but I've not seen much of that in Bogdanove. I've not read much by him, so I could be mistaken, but I would tend to bracket him more with the likes of Bret Blevins, Kieron Dwyer or Mike Manley. Swan pencilled five pages in each of Adventures of Superman #480 and Action Comics #667, so if you average that out over the four issues, it's about two pages. |
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Post by chaykinstevens on Aug 12, 2020 12:06:20 GMT -5
Well, the Flash TV show starring John Wesley Shipp just got cancelled less than a year after being the sensation everyone was talking about, and thus one can only assume the character and title were inevitably taking a hit in popularity and sales as well. The solution: bring in one of DC's better selling properties for a guest appearance. And, while DC was losing ground to Marvel in a major way by this point, Superman was still DC's second best-selling property. These figures, from two months after this issue's release, illustrate both how badly DC is losing ground to Marvel and how badly The Flash needed Superman's sales (although The Flash is still outselling nearly all of DC's second tier titles). I guess my only question is why they couldn't bring in Batman to garner sales instead. The John Wesley Shipp show was about Barry Allen not Wally West, so I'm not sure how much it had boosted the comic's popularity. The sales figures you linked to don't show that clear a disparity between Superman and the Flash. Bogdanove's title was selling surprisingly well, but Flash at #72 was almost on a par with the lowest selling Superman title, Adventures of Superman at #67. In closing, I only bothered to review this one because it's about to get referenced in this week's Superman: The Man of Steel, but wow you do not need to read this. Wally's adventure with Superman wasn't at all memorable, but I thought at the time that the Pied Piper's coming out and Wally's reaction were well handled. |
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Post by chaykinstevens on Aug 12, 2020 12:16:13 GMT -5
So here's an interesting little phenomenon I've noticed with the Superman comics this month. DC has recently started doing the Marvel style corner box art, and while each Superman title was using its own corner box art prior to this month, ever since Superman, The Man of Steel #1, each title has the same image of Superman. ...except that it isn't. Look closely -- same pose, different drawings. What an interesting choice.  Ironically, while the pose appears to bebased upon Bogdanove's art on SMOS #1, Bogdanove's corner box (third from left) looks the least like his original piece. I like the idea, but I'm not impressed by any of the four drawings, and I wouldn't know for sure who drew the first and the third one. I guess this marks the point at which Tom Grummett replaced Jerry Ordway as one of the regular Superman artists, although Ordway will continue to contribute scripts and covers. |
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Post by brutalis on Aug 12, 2020 12:38:59 GMT -5
[quote author=" shaxper" source="/post/381865/thread"[/quote]Interesting. I'm used to the enormous mailrooms they show in the movies. Thanks for this. Of course, in your circumstance, would it be efficient to have the guy funneling all the mail to each separate department also answering the phones and taking messages from strangers?[/quote] Actually even dumber. ALL the Arizona Banner hospitals are routed through ONE main operating center who HAVE NO CLUE as to departments/leaders etc. They work from one electronic listing so you can imagine how ineffectual that is. Name guesses and location errors and the sort. Again, since I was there nearly 18 years, when the main operator had no clue call would be sent to my office for me to handle. I handled other departments, complaints and many times call in"s to other hospitals. Crazy! |
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Aug 12, 2020 14:10:14 GMT -5
The John Wesley Shipp show was about Barry Allen not Wally West, so I'm not sure how much it had boosted the comic's popularity. Quite a bit, actually. I can only speak from anecdotal evidence, but all my friends were reading Flash once the TV series hit, and all of us had dropped Flash around this time. I got to #51, myself. But movies and TV have traditionally sold DC comics. Just look at the comic book phenomenon the Batman titles suddenly became in the wake of the 1989 Batman film, or at how first appearances surge in price on ebay today the second a character makes a cameo on a TV show or is rumored to appear in an upcoming film. #29 Adventures of Superman Annual #3 #43 Superman: The Man of Steel #4 #57 Action Comics #670 #62 Superman #60 #67 Adventures of Superman #483 The rankings may seem low, but Batman is the only DC property to outperform these numbers. The Flash, coming in at #72 is right behind Adventures of Superman #483 two months after this crossover promotion gave a temporary boost to the series, but you are comparing the lowest performing Superman title to the only Flash title. |
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Post by chaykinstevens on Aug 12, 2020 16:20:07 GMT -5
#29 Adventures of Superman Annual #3 #43 Superman: The Man of Steel #4 #57 Action Comics #670 #62 Superman #60 #67 Adventures of Superman #483 The rankings may seem low, but Batman is the only DC property to outperform these numbers. The Flash, coming in at #72 is right behind Adventures of Superman #483 two months after this crossover promotion gave a temporary boost to the series, but you are comparing the lowest performing Superman title to the only Flash title. The Annual probably sold more because of the popularity of Armageddon 2001, which was even higher on the chart at #14, and Man of Steel probably sold more because it was still newish. I would argue that the other three were more representative of Superman's true level of popularity, and I imagine they had broadly similar sales figures, as you might expect from series with such tight continuity links. I'm sceptical that a Superman guest appearance in Flash #53 would significantly boost advance orders for #55, but you could be right. And you may be correct in your assertion that Flash needed a boost and received it from Superman, but the August chart in isolation can't provide supporting evidence. Do you know when Diamond began publishing monthly sales charts? Looking at Comichron's annual chart for 1991, Man of Steel #1 seems to have done better than I thoght. It was at #65, with only Dixon and Lyle's Robin comics doing better for DC. |
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Aug 12, 2020 21:33:01 GMT -5
The Annual probably sold more because of the popularity of Armageddon 2001, which was even higher on the chart at #14, and Man of Steel probably sold more because it was still newish. Agreed. Keep in mind the argument I've been making since Superman: The Man of Steel #1 that readership likely tanked immediately after its release. Unfortunately, we have no solid numbers from this time period, but the anecdotal evidence I've heard, combined with where attention was moving in comic industry publications, as well as the Office's own assertion that the reason they killed Superman was to bring back readers, all adds up pretty well. Diamond was only one distributor back during this time period. Comichron is a fascinating site, and they explain how they got their numbers for this month. It's not until 1995 that they can paint anything close to a monthly portrait of what was happening in terms of sales. |
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Post by shaxper on Aug 12, 2020 21:48:26 GMT -5
I guess this marks the point at which Tom Grummett replaced Jerry Ordway as one of the regular Superman artists, although Ordway will continue to contribute scripts and covers. He's contributing on art for these issues, but he doesn't fully take over until the next month. Do you know the story of why Ordway stopped doing interior pencils? Just transitioning from penciller, to penciller/writer, to writer? |
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Post by Duragizer on Aug 12, 2020 22:08:07 GMT -5
- Ya know, Superman recently got a costume change too. but even the Superman Office seems to keep forgetting that his costume is now supposed to be "jet black" in the wake of Time and Time Again. Though black costumes turning blue certainly aren't unheard of in comics, I wonder if the jet black costume was ever meant to be a long-lasting change. It could've been a one-time gimmick done for ... reasons. |
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