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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jul 18, 2017 14:14:32 GMT -5
That kind of surprises me, as to The Spirit. I find Eisner a stronger writer than artist and he's no slouch as an artist. I agree with you about Flash Gordon though. It could be I'm missing something: they used to call Eisner the Shakespeare of comics and, even accounting for hyperbole, there must have been some reason for that. Maybe I'm just not attuned to whatever is is he was doing. Or I haven't read enough - I've read more Flash than Spirit, though a fair bit of the latter too. Could also be the stories you're reading. The consensus is that the best period was a bit after Eisner got back from the military and retook the strip from his assistants. So 46-48 or thereabouts.
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Post by berkley on Jul 18, 2017 16:30:11 GMT -5
I read somewhere years ago that the consensus among science fiction fandom was that Flash Gordon had better art while Buck Rogers had better stories. I'm still kicking myself for not buying a big Buck Rogers collected edition I saw at a used book store a few years ago: I didn't want to lug the thing around with me all afternoon so I told myself it would still be there on my way back in a few hours. Wrong!
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Post by chadwilliam on Jul 18, 2017 21:52:48 GMT -5
Crimebuster is one of the most realistically presented teen heroes ever seen in comics. I've read very little of Crimebuster but man, is his first appearance an incredibly affecting tale. His father is placed in a situation where he has to choose between sacrificing the life of his dear wife to indescribable torture or sacrificing the safety of his entire nation and is forced by his conscience to sacrifice his wife; he is gunned down in an assassination attempt and miraculously survives only to be murdered on the operating table; his son learns the news on a day he had long been looking forward to; he manages to make it to France and smuggle his mother out of the Nazi occupied territory while having no idea how to break the news to her of her husband's death; they're allowed to leave only so their submarine can be sunk by a Nazi U-Boat making the son an orphan less than 24 hours after what he thought would be one of the proudest days of his life; and we meet Iron Jaw... Man, what a villain. "Yes, Herr Chandler, Iron Jaw! Your memory serves you well, but tonight you will forget many things! Perhaps you will recall seeing the great Iron Jaw bite a man's arm off back in Paris!" Later we'd see Hitler himself cower in front of Iron Jaw and why shouldn't he, since he was there when Von Schmidt had his jaw blown off in World War I. I can't think of any other comic at the moment, which introduced both such a classic good guy and iconic bad guy in the same tale. I suppose you can count The Red Skull (though he didn't appear in the first Captain America story) but even there, that was something of a false start since we didn't get the real Red Skull until after we were introduced to the American decoy one. It's really a shame that these tales haven't been reprinted beyond the little that Accomics has done.
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Post by hondobrode on Jul 18, 2017 22:04:51 GMT -5
I haven't read them but they sound great !
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Post by LovesGilKane on Jul 19, 2017 2:14:02 GMT -5
Frankenstein (the Monster)... such an original yet oddly traditional take on the character For a while, anyway... yeah, like WOLVERINE.
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Post by Jesse on Jul 19, 2017 9:51:46 GMT -5
Golden Age Joker was so creepy looking
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Post by Duragizer on Dec 4, 2017 1:43:41 GMT -5
Golden age Superman by Siegel and Shuster is really the only version of the character I really like... It amazes how such a simple straightforward strip that worked so well could have so many accretions over the decades that rob it of its original feel until for me it becomes almost unreadable by the 50s and onwards. I am fascinated by the simplicity and power of the Golden Age Superman material and can only wonder what the character had been like if they stuck to that tone and feel throughout instead of the weak sauce boy scout he became in the Atomic and Silver Age. I certainly agree with most of this. I do enjoy later versions of the character (namely the early post- Crisis version) but there's a purity to the original I find refreshing. I only wish he'd had a better rogues gallery; aside from Luthor and the Ultra-Humanite, there weren't many villains around who posed a challenge to him.
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Post by chadwilliam on Dec 5, 2017 9:41:09 GMT -5
Golden age Superman by Siegel and Shuster is really the only version of the character I really like... It amazes how such a simple straightforward strip that worked so well could have so many accretions over the decades that rob it of its original feel until for me it becomes almost unreadable by the 50s and onwards. I am fascinated by the simplicity and power of the Golden Age Superman material and can only wonder what the character had been like if they stuck to that tone and feel throughout instead of the weak sauce boy scout he became in the Atomic and Silver Age. I certainly agree with most of this. I do enjoy later versions of the character (namely the early post- Crisis version) but there's a purity to the original I find refreshing. I only wish he'd had a better rogues gallery; aside from Luthor and the Ultra-Humanite, there weren't many villains around who posed a challenge to him. It's kind of strange that Superman's Rogues Gallery remained virtually unchanged from the early 40's until the late 50's only for that collection of miscreants to explode like some sort of super villain Big Bang within a very short period - Brainiac, The Parasite, Metallo, Bizarro, The Phantom Zone Villains, Titano all debuted within about a three year time period between 1958 and 1961. I wonder however, how much of that original quality inherent in Superman as a socially crusading Champion of the Oppressed would have faded had he been facing off against atypical bad guys. While the character sometimes gets criticized for going up against little more than gangsters, corrupt politicians, and the police in those early years, it is that sort of human foe that inspires writers to conjure up stories where Superman will behave in the manner depicted above. A lazy Mayor who can't be bothered to crack down on drunk drivers can expect a wake up call from Superman in the middle of the night so he can be forced to pay a visit to the morgue where Superman will pin his arms behind his back and make him look at the bodies of people he killed through his inaction. I'm not sure you can really tell the same stories with someone such as Brainiac. Incidentally...
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Post by chadwilliam on Apr 5, 2018 1:08:36 GMT -5
Marvel Comics The Vagabond A sort of cross between Wimpy J Wellington and W C Fields this is a character who could only have been created when superhero comics had not quite decided what they were. I suppose the story behind all those Marvel/Timely anthology titles of the early 40's is that Martin Goodman/Stan Lee wasn't quite sure how to create the next big thing in comics. Sure they had Captain America, Namor, and The Human Torch, but these guys weren't exactly the product of a formula for success that Marvel could simply copy again and again to produce one hit after another. In fact, Namor wasn't really much of a good guy, popular though he may have been. Therefore, there's an excitement to these early titles (The Vagabond arriving by way of USA Comics, by the way) borne out of the sense that whatever crazy ideas a creator came up with had to go onto the page - how could they discount any idea when no one was quite sure what it was that kids rejected about Character A,B, and C and what they adored about Character D, E, and F? The Vagabond feels like "Lets remove the brakes from this car, floor it to 150 mph, aim it for that ring of fire, and pack it full of electric eels and see what happens". His real name is Pat Murphy but friends call him Chauncey Throttlebottom III. His enemies however know him as The Vagabond. His battlecry? "Hark Ye! Where's the proprietor of this den of iniquity!" Someone once described Batman during this period as "an eccentric millionaire's hobby" but I think the description better suits The Vagabond. Pat Murphy was a well groomed, nicely dressed police detective who decided that to fight crime, he should adopt the guise you see above. Murphy didn't quote Shakespeare as a detective and seemed like the type of guy to forego Elizabethian pronouns in everyday speech; The Vagabond on the other hand, embraced all of these peculiar habits and more as he headed fist first into whatever criminal situations he could find. He isn't trying to strike fear into any criminals heart and neither is he trying to blend into his surroundings - he is at all times garish, loud, and devoted to the single minded goal of attracting as much attention to himself as he can. There's no real reason for his Vagabond disguise - it isn't as if criminals are going to warm up to a guy who makes his introductions by waking them up from their alcoholic induced slumbers by throwing them out of the bar - and he doesn't really do anything that a detective (which he is) shouldn't be doing himself. It really feels as if Murphy is a detective who has always harboured the desire to entertain in front of a large crowd and uses this superhero gig as an outlet for letting his id run amuck. He really embraces The Vagabond identity. As mentioned, even his alter ego has an alter ego and he's the only hero I can think of whose disguise requires him to not only make himself look like he just woke up from a hangover in a gutter somewhere but also involves wearing a fat suit underneath some clothes he got from God knows where. He isn't simply adopting a disguise; he's letting a completely repressed personality rise to the surface to submerge his humdrum Pat Murphy identity. Sort of like what might have happened had Bruce Banner been harbouring not a violent brute within his psyche, but a vaudevillian hobo/clown who had been waiting his whole life to explode upon the underworld. I like the fact that at this point, it was assumed that a comedic strip might take off within the superhero genre. Popeye was a funny character and he begat Superman, so why wouldn't fans take to a superhero feature which also made them laugh? Don't ask me, I happen to love The Vagabond.
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Post by Rob Allen on Apr 5, 2018 11:53:39 GMT -5
I like the fact that at this point, it was assumed that a comedic strip might take off within the superhero genre. Popeye was a funny character and he begat Superman, so why wouldn't fans take to a superhero feature which also made them laugh? Don't ask me, I happen to love The Vagabond. Jerry Siegel agreed with you. When Siegel & Shuster were booted from DC in the late forties, their next big project was Funnyman, a clown superhero who vaguely resembled Danny Kaye. The character got a big push from publisher Magazine Enterprises, but didn't catch on. Some people think Jerry was just not in the right frame of mind to write humor after losing a legal fight with DC.
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Post by chadwilliam on Apr 5, 2018 13:12:49 GMT -5
I like the fact that at this point, it was assumed that a comedic strip might take off within the superhero genre. Popeye was a funny character and he begat Superman, so why wouldn't fans take to a superhero feature which also made them laugh? Don't ask me, I happen to love The Vagabond. Jerry Siegel agreed with you. When Siegel & Shuster were booted from DC in the late forties, their next big project was Funnyman, a clown superhero who vaguely resembled Danny Kaye. The character got a big push from publisher Magazine Enterprises, but didn't catch on. Some people think Jerry was just not in the right frame of mind to write humor after losing a legal fight with DC. That's a great point. There was a lot of humour in those early Superman tales - Mxyztplk, Clark taking Lois to see the Flesicher Superman shorts, even Superman at his most threatening wasn't without his quips with his running with crooks atop telephone wires when a simple raised fist would have proved effective, and while perhaps bordering on the cruel, Superman's masquerade as Kent could be viewed as the ultimate prank. I believe Siegel described his plans for Superboy as 'Superman before he developed a social conscience' - a boy who used his powers for mischief and self amusement. I've long considered this to be one of the great missed opportunities in the Superman story - Superman as a boy with the personality of Mr Mxyztplk.
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Post by codystarbuck on Apr 5, 2018 14:59:19 GMT -5
Madame Fatal, from Quality Comics. The character is Richard Stanton, an actor, whose niece is kidnapped. he disguises himself as an old lady to throw the kidnappers off the scent and underestimate him, rescuing the niece in the process. Cross dressing gags like these weren't unknown in the comics, as Captain America donned an old lady drag, for one story. He continued as a back-up feature in Cracked comics, for about 2 years; but, was never a big focus. James Robinson used the character for one sight gag, in The Golden Age, and a dialogue joke, in JSA (stating that only the touring company of La Cage aux Foilles turned up for his funeral). The idea of a cross-dressing hero kind of intrigued me, after a cosplay incident at a convention, back in the 90s, which Peter David wrote about. David attended a convention where one of the volunteers cosplayed as the Michelle Pfeiffer Catwoman and looked the part to a T. Fans asked for photos and the DC folks loved it, until they found out the volunteer was a male, who moonlighted as a drag performer. Suddenly, they demanded the person be removed from the convention. David posed the question about what would have happened if the volunteer had turned around and bought a ticket, since DC wasn't objecting to any other cosplay of a trademarked character? That incident had me thinking about the idea of a cross-dresser or drag performer who finds themselves in a situation where they defend themselves, ala multiple comic book origins. What if they decided to continue to fight crime; but, only felt comfortable doing so while cross-dressed? Madame Fatal provided a precedent, as did the Wonder Woman villain Blue Snowman, in the Golden Age. Meanwhile, what would happen if the villain found out? Lot of possibilities there, though it would probably only sell as a Vertigo title or something from Fantagraphics.
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Post by mikelmidnight on Apr 6, 2018 12:20:59 GMT -5
David attended a convention where one of the volunteers cosplayed as the Michelle Pfeiffer Catwoman and looked the part to a T. Fans asked for photos and the DC folks loved it, until they found out the volunteer was a male, who moonlighted as a drag performer. Suddenly, they demanded the person be removed from the convention. David posed the question about what would have happened if the volunteer had turned around and bought a ticket, since DC wasn't objecting to any other cosplay of a trademarked character? Wow, that's crappy behavior on DC's part. This must have been a while ago as this would've blown up the internet nowadays. She also popped up in an episode of Robinson's Shade series and acquitted herself well. I'll add Bill Loebs' character "Rex Mason, Boy Transvestite." I always thought she was made for Vertigo.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 10, 2018 9:07:11 GMT -5
Red RavenMember of Liberty Legion during the Timely Comics Era and I find him fascinating because he similar to a Golden Age Hawkman, Batman, and couple others heroes as well. He carries a mace and that's where Hawkman comes in place. Red RavenGeneral Information see link. Early Version of the Red Raven
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Post by chadwilliam on May 9, 2018 21:50:32 GMT -5
Though I quite like the character, I'm not sure if I'd describe The Sandman as fascinating. This page from his first appearance, however... Two pages into the first adventure of a new superhero and that superhero is already given the psychological quirk of having to place a doll of himself in his own bed while he goes out and fights crime in another guise. Strangely, this is the only time Wesley Dodds acts out this peculiar ritual until Sandman Mystery Theatre in the 1990's. I can certainly see why Matt Wagner decided that this strange habit of The Sandman was worth incorporating into his own version of the character, but I can't understand why it was introduced in that first appearance only to be forgotten about thereafter. This isn't a catchphrase which was dropped for not being catchy enough - but a unique personality trait for a character in a medium in which unique personality traits were extremely rare. There's also that unusual pacing for a comic from this period (1939) in which time is devoted to showing Dodds simply standing in thoughtful contemplation in panel two and then walking away from the camera in panel three. This is a six page story and so time is of the essence and yet care is taken to slow things down to real time. I feel as though I'm eavesdropping on an almost real person instead of being thrown into the daring new exploits of The Sandman. Fascinating.
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