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Post by dbutler69 on Jul 23, 2021 16:01:16 GMT -5
I read Iron Man #131. The story was OK, but my favorite part was seeing the Micronauts! There's a little boy who has Micronauts action figures and gets the Hulk to play with him. Cool!
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Post by commond on Jul 24, 2021 8:31:30 GMT -5
I read the first arc of Sandman Mystery Theatre. This series has been on my bucket list for a while. I was actually on board with Vertigo when it first launched, but Sandman Mystery Theatre wasn't a title I picked up. I may have had a few issues or flicked through it at my local comic book shop, or perhaps I just read the monthly blurbs in Direct Currents, but it didn't seem unfamiliar to me. I'm not sure why I didn't buy it at the time. I knew who Matt Wagner was. I remember going on a family ski trip and heading to my comic book shop to get some comics to read at the chateau, and my friend who worked there went through the back issue boxes choosing stuff for me to take. One of the books he picked for me was a Dark Horse collected version of Devil by the Deed, which I loved. That led me to discover both Grendel and Mage. The first arc of Sandman Mystery Theatre drew on pulp influences, as you'd expect, but it was darker and more violent than I expected. I guess that's not a surprise given that it was a Vertigo book, but I wasn't quite prepared for some of the more graphic stuff (especially for a title about a Golden Age character.) I was hooked after issue 3, but if I had one criticism about an otherwise excellent arc, it's that there wasn't much mystery surrounding the identity of the killers and the ending was somewhat predictable. Good start to the series, however.
I finished Epic's Akira series. I know there are better ways to read Akira, but as I said a while back, I really wanted to read those Epic Akira volumes that I could never afford as a kid. It was interesting to learn about the process of how Epic worked with the Japanese publisher to adapt Akira for a Western audience. I wouldn't call it one of my favorite anime series, as it was drawn out and didn't really move me, but the artwork was excellent throughout and Epic did a fantastic job of coloring it. I am kind of inspired to watch the movie again after finishing the manga.
Regarding my other reading habits, Ernie Chan has just rejoined Conan and Buscema's art never looked better, IMO. The What If? story didn't quite work for me, but the COTB ongoing series looks fantastic. Jonah Hex continues to be extremely readable on a monthly basis even if there aren't a lot of big stories. I just got up to the Five Years Later Legion of Super-Heroes issue where the Earth is destroyed (after all)... ok... and I am almost at the end of J.M. DeMatteis' Captain America run.
I also knocked out a couple of volumes of Yasuhisa Hara's epic manga, Kingdom, which deals with the Warring States period of ancient Chinese history. I'm not even halfway through the series yet, but if you love epic battle scenes this is the manga for you. I enjoy it a lot but not in large doses. In fact, I often take long breaks between reading each volume.
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Post by Batflunkie on Jul 24, 2021 9:45:35 GMT -5
Read some more of Legion Of Super-Heroes (201-206). While I like Cary Bates' writing style (feels very cozy honestly), the excessive amount of *CHOKE* and *SOB* is really grating
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Post by tartanphantom on Jul 24, 2021 10:29:10 GMT -5
I read the first arc of Sandman Mystery Theatre. This series has been on my bucket list for a while. I was actually on board with Vertigo when it first launched, but Sandman Mystery Theatre wasn't a title I picked up. I may have had a few issues or flicked through it at my local comic book shop, or perhaps I just read the monthly blurbs in Direct Currents, but it didn't seem unfamiliar to me. I'm not sure why I didn't buy it at the time. I knew who Matt Wagner was. I remember going on a family ski trip and heading to my comic book shop to get some comics to read at the chateau, and my friend who worked there went through the back issue boxes choosing stuff for me to take. One of the books he picked for me was a Dark Horse collected version of Devil by the Deed, which I loved. That led me to discover both Grendel and Mage. The first arc of Sandman Mystery Theatre drew on pulp influences, as you'd expect, but it was darker and more violent than I expected. I guess that's not a surprise given that it was a Vertigo book, but I wasn't quite prepared for some of the more graphic stuff (especially for a title about a Golden Age character.) I was hooked after issue 3, but if I had one criticism about an otherwise excellent arc, it's that there wasn't much mystery surrounding the identity of the killers and the ending was somewhat predictable. Good start to the series, however. I finished Epic's Akira series. I know there are better ways to read Akira, but as I said a while back, I really wanted to read those Epic Akira volumes that I could never afford as a kid. It was interesting to learn about the process of how Epic worked with the Japanese publisher to adapt Akira for a Western audience. I wouldn't call it one of my favorite anime series, as it was drawn out and didn't really move me, but the artwork was excellent throughout and Epic did a fantastic job of coloring it. I am kind of inspired to watch the movie again after finishing the manga. Regarding my other reading habits, Ernie Chan has just rejoined Conan and Buscema's art never looked better, IMO. The What If? story didn't quite work for me, but the COTB ongoing series looks fantastic. Jonah Hex continues to be extremely readable on a monthly basis even if there aren't a lot of big stories. I just got up to the Five Years Later Legion of Super-Heroes issue where the Earth is destroyed (after all)... ok... and I am almost at the end of J.M. DeMatteis' Captain America run. I also knocked out a couple of volumes of Yasuhisa Hara's epic manga, Kingdom, which deals with the Warring States period of ancient Chinese history. I'm not even halfway through the series yet, but if you love epic battle scenes this is the manga for you. I enjoy it a lot but not in large doses. In fact, I often take long breaks between reading each volume. Keep in mind that SMT doesn't really hit full stride until around issue 9. From there on, it's consistently well-written and engaging. And truthfully, the series is really more about Dian than Wes. Had this discussion with Crimebuster , who is another fan of SMT. I'm pretty sure he agrees. Slam_Bradley is also another fan of SMT-- He and Crimebuster have also done a great podcast series breaking the series down... Part 1 and Part 2 are currently up, and the last podcast episode should drop in the near future.
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Post by profh0011 on Jul 24, 2021 11:52:10 GMT -5
I read the first arc of Sandman Mystery Theatre. SMT was one of my favorite books of the 90s. In fact, all my favorite DCs of the 90s, focused on characters related to Earth-2 more than Earth-1 (SPECTRE, STARMAN, SANDMAN, STARS AND S.T.R.I.P.E.).
This may sound funny, but at times, I had trouble getting it. Before I finally threw my hands up and began ordering books thru the Diamond catalog 3 months in advance, SMT was, oddly, a title that more times than I like to think of, I kept missing issues of-- or, ALMOST missed. I'd be walking down the aisle, scanning the racks, grabbing books I wanted. And somehow KEPT MISSING issues of SMT that were sitting on the shelf right in front of me. I can only put this down to some bizarre kind of glitch involving the cover designs, or the logos, or both. It got very annoying when time and again, I seemed to be unable to actually SEE a favorite book that was sitting on the shelf right in front of me. (This has-- I swear-- NEVER happened with any other book I've regularly bought over the decades.)
MY favorite thing about SMT was the format of the writing. Every 4 months, you'd get a new story-- often with a different artist doing a complete 4-part serial. It was like watching DOCTOR WHO with Tom Baker, if you get what I'm saying. There was a slow, ongoing continuity and character growth-- but the stories were NOT being told in "soap-opera" format, a thing I have grown, frankly, SICK TO DEATH of in most comics, because with soap-opera format, every single issue feels incomplete, no story ever seems to end, and the non-stop "TO BE CONTINUED!" thing at the end just really gets on my nerves (even as it did on certain shows I watched back in the mid-1960s-- I'm sure you can guess which ones).
I came to feel that the 4-part format of SMT would be a good way to do a LOT of other series... if I ever miraculously found myself in the position of being a DC editor...
I loved the slowly growing relationship between Wesley Dodds & Dian Belmont.
Now, my LEAST-favorite thing about the book-- and I have to lay this 100% on Matt Wagner-- was the excessive focus on darkness, violence, DEPRAVITY, and just really SICK S***. What the hell was his problem? Was he really, really obsessed with this, or was he just incapable of telling any kind of "normal" mystery or murder mystery story?
To that point, I wound up enjoyng the series MUCH MORE after Wagner left.
There was also the matter of confusing long-term continuity. While, at first, it seemed like SMT stories were intended to take place early in Wesley's career, perhaps even before the original SANDMAN series, the longer it went on, Wagner seemed determined to make a point that... just like LEGENDS OF THE DARK KNIGHT... this was an entirely new continuity, with no connection with and replacing the old one.
There was at least one story somewhere in there that seemed to indicate that this version of Wesley Dodds would NEVER wind up dressed in colorful tights, working side-by-side with a teenager named "Sandy The Golden Boy".
However, in the long run, I don't believe that proved to be the case. While Roy Thomas made a completely POINTLESS deal of showing Dian MURDERED in an issue of SECRET ORIGINS (which came out, Post-Crisis), in James Robinson's STARMAN, we found out that-- NO-- Dian was still alive decades later, and married to Wesley.
And once the then-new JSA series started, we learned that, YES, there had been a "Sandy the Golden Boy" in the Golden Age. (Although, Wesley got killed right at the very start of the new JSA series.)
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Post by Cei-U! on Jul 24, 2021 12:13:55 GMT -5
However, in the long run, I don't believe that proved to be the case. While Roy Thomas made a completely POINTLESS deal of showing Dian MURDERED in an issue of SECRET ORIGINS (which came out, Post-Crisis), in James Robinson's STARMAN, we found out that-- NO-- Dian was still alive decades later, and married to Wesley. Actually, Roy killed Dian in a pre-Crisis issue of All-Star Squadron (#18). The Sandman issue of Secret Origins (#7) makes no reference to her death.
Cei-U! I summon the footnote!
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Post by profh0011 on Jul 24, 2021 17:11:04 GMT -5
Actually, Roy killed Dian in a pre-Crisis issue of All-Star Squadron (#18). The Sandman issue of Secret Origins (#7) makes no reference to her death.
Thanks! It's hard to keep track when they keep re-writing history every 6 months...
The point is, I was SO GLAD somebody over-wrote Roy Thomas in that case.
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Post by MDG on Jul 25, 2021 9:38:38 GMT -5
Yesterday, I read this book I recently picked up: People often talk down these Dell monster heroes, but the basic premise of this one is pretty good. I wonder if he's in the public domain? Of course, the Fraccio/Tallarico art is nothing to write home about. The best you can say is that it's easy to tell what's going on.
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Post by tartanphantom on Jul 25, 2021 10:26:44 GMT -5
Yesterday, I read this book I recently picked up: People often talk down these Dell monster heroes, but the basic premise of this one is pretty good. I wonder if he's in the public domain? Of course, the Fraccio/Tallarico art is nothing to write home about. The best you can say is that it's easy to tell what's going on.
I'd say the art is at least 1 step above Tales of the Beanworld... but that's not fair to ToB... which was drawn that way on purpose.
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Post by dbutler69 on Jul 25, 2021 15:00:21 GMT -5
Yesterday, I read this book I recently picked up: People often talk down these Dell monster heroes, but the basic premise of this one is pretty good. I wonder if he's in the public domain? Of course, the Fraccio/Tallarico art is nothing to write home about. The best you can say is that it's easy to tell what's going on.Well, that puts it ahead of a lot of the art I've seen over the past 30 years.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 26, 2021 22:34:39 GMT -5
Starting a "staycation" this week and jumping into a great stack of material. Today was re-reading this beautiful Burne Hogarth Tarzan collection, I discovered this era of Tarzan way too late in life! Better late than never I tell myself.
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Post by badwolf on Jul 27, 2021 12:17:27 GMT -5
I'm about halfway through the JLA Bronze Age Omnibus #3. It's fun! But the stories don't make much sense if you think about them. It really feels like they're being written on the fly. Characters' powers are wildly inconsistent, especially Green Lantern, whose ring can literally do anything including travel through time, except when it can't. Let's just throw a yellow aura on whatever it is!
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Post by profh0011 on Jul 27, 2021 13:45:22 GMT -5
Gerry Conway and most of the young writers really weren't the brightest lights in the field, all too often. I know a lot of readers who grew up with them will disagree, but they just didn't have the sense of professionalism that many of the older, more experienced writer had. Plus, too often they wouldn't stick around long enough on a series to actually figure out what they were doing-- I suspect Conway stuck around because he knew his limitations, and as a result appreciated steady paychecks more than most... heh.
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Post by profh0011 on Jul 27, 2021 13:50:22 GMT -5
I recall back in the 90s getting ahold of the first few SILVER AGE JLA ARCHIVE books, and thinking, of all the old DC comics I was reading for the first time, Gardner Fox's JLA was the one where I really, really had to adjust my mind to appreciate. All his stories seemed, far more than anything out there at the time, to operate entirely on their own unique, "out there" rules, which often DID NOT MAKE ANY LOGICAL SENSE at all, unless you just accepted his "nonsense science" and went with it. The best thing I can say about it, is that from my limited experience, Fox often wrote many of the lesser characters (like Hal Jordan-- heh) BETTER than they was written in THEIR OWN BOOKS. For a perfect example of "nonsense science", see the 1949 BATMAN AND ROBIN serial with Robert Lowery. The stuff The Wizard's machine does is totally outside the realms of common sense or any kind of believable science. First time I watched, I thought, "Hey, this is just like a Gardner Fox JLA story!"
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Post by Batflunkie on Jul 27, 2021 15:48:51 GMT -5
More Legion (#207-#216), really turning out to be a fun series. Haven't enjoyed too many of the Shooter serials as I mentioned in "There, I Said It", even though he throws the Legion into more daring and action-focused directions, while Bates is more comfortable with "Hey kids, let's go on an outerspace adventure!"Not sure how I feel about Tyroc with Super-Talk constantly hyping him up to be the next big thing, when in reality he's just basically Banshee from X-Men with a fresh coat of paint
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