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Post by Slam_Bradley on Dec 3, 2021 10:24:44 GMT -5
Another thing about that Swamp Thing run... I never realized how many hidden secret villages there were around! The Burroughs effect.
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Post by spoon on Dec 3, 2021 11:10:47 GMT -5
What got me was HOW on Earth did DC get LARRY NIVEN to write a GREEN LANTERN story? From its debut, the Hal Jordan GL series has too often been a "sci-fi" story where science-fiction was pushed to the side in favor of 5th-rate super-villains... That does seem to have changed since " REBIRTH". Although, I got bored and lost track of things (again) some ways into the "Sinestro War" (or whatever it was-- how many times can they keep bringing the SAME villains back from the dead?). From my Green Lantern binge read during the early part of 2021, there was a lot of sci-fi. Granted it varies over time. The Wein/Gibbons run, for example, was light on the sci-fi but had unimpressive villains like Javelin and Demolition Team.
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Post by majestic on Dec 3, 2021 16:10:41 GMT -5
Early Image stuff. When Image started I didn't read any of it except Wild CATS. I also jumped on Supreme when Alan Moore started writing it.
So far Spawn & Savage Dragon are decent. The rest just wasn't any good IMO.
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Post by profh0011 on Dec 4, 2021 10:53:30 GMT -5
What got me was HOW on Earth did DC get LARRY NIVEN to write a GREEN LANTERN story? From its debut, the Hal Jordan GL series has too often been a "sci-fi" story where science-fiction was pushed to the side in favor of 5th-rate super-villains... That does seem to have changed since " REBIRTH". Although, I got bored and lost track of things (again) some ways into the "Sinestro War" (or whatever it was-- how many times can they keep bringing the SAME villains back from the dead?). From my Green Lantern binge read during the early part of 2021, there was a lot of sci-fi. Granted it varies over time. The Wein/Gibbons run, for example, was light on the sci-fi but had unimpressive villains like Javelin and Demolition Team. Dave Gibbons said once he got on GL to do "space" stories, but Len "back to basics" Wein wanted to do Earth stories. Eventually, Gibbons quit, and, in reaction to that, Wein said, "Oh-- well, I might as well quit, TOO!" 2 months later, Joe Staton returned, joined by... STEVE ENGLEHART.
You know, if it had been Marvel, I bet there would have been 6 random fill-in creative teams until they finally managed to nail down a new regular team.
The Larry Niven thing is a whole other issue, however. He's NOT a comics-writer. He was an established SCIENCE-FICTION writer. And his one-and-only GL story (published in a "prestige format" one-shot, with John Byrne on art) was WAY better than-- well-- pretty much EVERYTHING that Denny O'Neil or Steve Englehart or Gerard Jones or most who followed him ever did.
Heck my favorite STAR TREK cartoon was based on a Larry Niven story.
I wish Andy Helfer hadn't dropped off the book. His replacement, in my view, derailed long-range plans and drove the series INTO THE GROUND. ("Green Lantern's Number One Fan", LIKE HELL. )
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Post by wildfire2099 on Dec 4, 2021 12:06:54 GMT -5
Wait... Larry Niven wrote a Green Lantern story???
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Post by Deleted on Dec 4, 2021 12:29:29 GMT -5
Wait... Larry Niven wrote a Green Lantern story??? Ganthet's Tales circa 1992. -M
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Post by profh0011 on Dec 4, 2021 13:00:29 GMT -5
Ganthet's Tale circa 1992. Yep. It came out about halfway to 2/3rds of the way into Gerard Jones' time on the series.
Jones would have been on a lot longer, but incoming editor Kevin Dooley totally sabotaged plans Andy Helfer had set into motion. In was, in a way, even worse than what Mark Gruenwald did to Roger Stern on THE AVENGERS.
Helfer & Jones worked very hard to ressurect the book after what I consider the DISASTROUS run overseen by Denny O'Neil in ACTION COMICS WEEKLY, a run whose main goal seemed to be to destroy the lives and careers of every regular character in the book.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Dec 4, 2021 23:09:51 GMT -5
I think I have that.. had no idea it was Larry Niven... been forever since I read it though. I just recently read a bunch of Jones' run... it's ok, he still didn't sell me on Hal Jordan though
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Post by profh0011 on Dec 4, 2021 23:33:14 GMT -5
Strange but (from what I've read) apparently true:
After O'Neil & Owsley ran GL into the ground in ACW... the next GL project was EMERALD DAWN, a "rebooted" origin. (Like several other series, they didn't reboot GL for the Post-Crisis / New DCU until several years AFTER "CRISIS", which had to have caused more confusion than it was worth).
Though planned as a 3-issue prestige mini, Owsley JUMPED SHIP halfway thru the first 3rd... and KEITH GIFFEN and Gerard Jones replaced him on the rest of what became a 6-issue mini. Apparently, this happened because Andy Helfer replaced Denny O'Neil, and while Owsley & Helfer were friends, their ideas of sci-fi were so totally at odds, Owsley walked away so as not to destroy their friendship. WHOA! That's not something you hear about happening too often.
When it came time to re-start GREEN LANTERN as a regular series, Jones wanted to follow in the footsteps of what Roger Stern had done with STARMAN-- create a brand-new version of the character from scratch. I loved the Stern-Lyle STARMAN... until editorial interference went into high gear and Stern was KICKED OFF a character he created himself.
However... Helfer had other ideas, and wound up talking Jones into, instead, "bringing closure" to Hal Jordan's by-then RUINED career. This meant bringing him back from the precipice, and re-building the entire series from the ground up. They knew this would be a long-term thing. They also planned, from the start, a big epic storyline they wanted to call "EMERALD TWILIGHT" in which Hal would feel betrayed by the Guardians, quit, be replaced by a new GL, and eventually, continue on in a NEW heroic identity.
They could have made it... except, about halfway there, Helfer jumped ship, his assistant Kevin Dooley took over, Dooley decided to expland GL into a "franchise", and before you know it, this character who'd barely got his act back together was suddenly appearing in 4 books instead of 1. W--T--F!! And then when sales TANKED (in direct response, I think, to this marketing overkill)... Dooley blamed his writers.
Then, JUST when Jones was about to get to "EMERALD TWILIGHT"... Dooley insisted he write a COMPLETELY-different story. Well, my best friend told me what Dooley had in mind, just before it happened. And right then, I decided, I'd had enough. So I stopped buying, and to this day, have NEVER read Dooley's version of "EMERALD TWILIGHT" that got published.
I heard he's gone from comics these days. GOOD RIDDANCE.
They had to wait until he'd left do to GREEN LANTERN: REBIRTH, and clear Hal Jordan's name and rep.
Whatever happened to just telling "good stories", instead of focusing more on the soap-opera and having to drag the heroes THRU THE MUD all the time?
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Post by spoon on Dec 5, 2021 11:35:38 GMT -5
I read Wrath of the Spectre #1-4. It reprints the Spectre stories from his 1970s run by Michael Fleisher and Jim Aparo in Adventures Comics, plus two non-Spectre short stories drawn by Aparo (an Adventurers Club story and a story from House of Mystery). The Spectre stories in #4 were scripted by Fleisher back in the 70s, but never drawn or published. Aparo drew the stories in 80s for this series, with others inking.
The run was interesting, but I think it would've gotten monotonous without a change. Toward the end of stories published in 1970s, it seemed to be going that way. Spectre's adversaries are largely ordinary humans (although a couple of them use apparent supernatural powers) and the Spectre's power seem nearly unlimited. It hard to feel the stakes when there seemingly no way the protagonist can lose. The introduction of Gwen Sterling as a love interest does create some stakes, as she's vulnerable to harm. The last two stories from Adventure Comics #439-440 are a continuing story and do a good job at creating a deeper, higher stakes story.
With less doubt about who wins, much of the drama is about what gruesome way the Spectre will use to dispatch wrongdoers. For the most part, the villains are treated as wholly evil, and ethical implications of the gruesome deaths are dealt with in depth, beyond the concerns of a reporter. That's Earl Crawford of Newsbeat Magazine. He has a curious introduction. He bears a striking resemblance to Clark Kent, and in his first appearance, Jim Corrigan jokingly calls him Clark Kent and a cop asks if he's Superman.
Aparo pencils and inks most of the 1970s stories, but only inks a couple of stories (drawn by Frank Thorne and Ernie Chua). The art by Aparo is brilliant, and captures the horror of the deaths of villains almost too well. The art in issues Aparo just inks is very good as well. In the stories drawn in the 1980s from Fleisher unproduced script for #4, other inkers work less effectively, although that may also be Jim Aparo receding from the peak of his skills. All four issues have nice behind-the-scenes essays on the inside covers. Russell Carley is credited as Art Continuity or Script Continuity in the early issues, and the essays explain that Carley teamed with Fleisher on the writing. Since Fleisher's background was as a prose writer/comics historian, he didn't have experience writing comic strips. So Fleisher would talk over the plots, then Carley would transform that into a panel-by-panel breakdown, and Fleisher would create a final script for that panel-by-panel background. From the essays, it sounds like Carley actually contributed some plot elements, so it sounds like the nebulous title might downplay his contributions a bit. Admittedly, the essay don't give a sense on what percentage of the plot actually came from Carley. 5%? 10%? 25%? 40%?
With this small reading project over, I've now just started Legion of Super-Heroes Archives vol. 9.
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Post by MWGallaher on Dec 5, 2021 22:52:51 GMT -5
The Spectre stories did look like they were heading into monotonous territory, but based on how Fleisher developed, I think he might well have found a path forward that kept the series fresh and engaging. As we speculated in chadwilliam's Spectre comprehensive review thread a while back, those three installments that went unpublished in the original run may have been intended to precede the 2-issue tale that ran as the series finale. Things might have changed up after the second death and resurrection of Jim Corrigan had the series seen better sales...
As for my classic comics reading, I've been overdosing on a couple of Marvel's Western characters who were reprinted in the 70's, but have yet to get the spotlight in my 2nd Tier Western Marvel thread. After them, there are only two more on the slate, who had a significant reprint presence in the 70's.
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Post by Hoosier X on Dec 7, 2021 1:17:05 GMT -5
I’m still making my way through The Fourth World Omnibus. Today I read The New Gods #1.
I’m really enjoying The Fourth World! This one is especially SUPER COOL because there’s no Superman appearance so we don’t have to look at awkward figures of Superman or Jimmy Olsen hammered into the narrative BECAUSE REASONS!!
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Post by berkley on Dec 7, 2021 2:15:21 GMT -5
I’m still making my way through The Fourth World Omnibus. Today I read The New Gods #1. I’m really enjoying The Fourth World! This one is especially SUPER COOL because there’s no Superman appearance so we don’t have to look at awkward figures of Superman or Jimmy Olsen hammered into the narrative BECAUSE REASONS!!
I know this isn't exactly what you were referring to with, but looking at what's been done by later comics writers with the whole Fourth World concept, I'll never understand how someone can read that first issue and think to themselves, "What this needs is more Superman!"
Or Batman, or JLA, or what have you. More DCU, more superheroes, basically. And yet, this is what so many of even the best comics writers, e.g. Grant Morrison, appear to have decided. OK, I'm being a little unfair, because in many cases they were simply bowing to the realities of the industry. But still, they had the choice of not using the New Gods at all if they weren't allowed to write them with complete creative freedom.
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Post by Hoosier X on Dec 7, 2021 6:43:01 GMT -5
The first time I ever saw any Fourth World characters was in the 1970s Secret Society of Super-Villains series. Mantis! Kalibak fighting Grodd for some reason. The Black Racer! The Paul Kirk Manhunter clone killed Darkseid with a bomb that had been implanted inside his body!
I love the SSOSV series! I still have all the issues I bought brand new. The Apokolips gang just seemed like another batch of DC villains. I used to read it pretty regularly.
I wonder how it’s going to look to me the next time I read it, now that I’m finally experiencing Kirby’s Fourth World?
The Forever People should have appeared in SSOSV. That would have been AWESOME!!
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Post by profh0011 on Dec 7, 2021 10:49:05 GMT -5
SSoSV #7 features both Lex Luthor & Funky Flashman. At the end, Funky yanks off his toupee. When I saw that, I came to the conclusion that someone involved in the 1978 SUPERMAN movie (which came out a year later) had looked over that particular comic... and gotten the 2 villains confused.
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