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Post by Slam_Bradley on Dec 13, 2018 12:58:14 GMT -5
12. The Phantom by Don Newton (Charlton Comics).  I read very few Charlton Comics. If their distribution was spotty in general, it was super spotty in Idaho. But one book I looked for after-the-fact was Don Newton's Phantom. I say Newton because I bought the book for his artwork something I had never done before and have seldom done since (I'm a writing guy...not an art guy). The Pièce De Résistance, of course, was The Phantom #74 (see cover above) which was 100% Newton, writing, art, lettering. It found The Phantom in the American Colonies during the Revolution and for a kid who was both a history and a super-hero buff in 1977 it was absolute perfection.
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Post by thwhtguardian on Dec 13, 2018 13:07:53 GMT -5
#12. Superman AdventuresSpecifically #41 Written by Mark Millar Art by Brett Blevins, Joe Staton, Cameron Stewart, Craig Rousseau, Darwin Cooke and others January, 2001 This is like the Inception of adaptations for me, a fantastic comic book adaptation of an already brilliant adaptation of Superman. Adventures of Superman by Mark Millar(long before writing Kick Ass, Wanted or the Ultumates) took all the elements that made the cartoon so fantastic, such as the brilliant visual language of Bruce Timm, the bright color pallet and the down home working man personality of Clark Kent/ Superman but elevated it all by taking full advantage of the comic book medium to control time much better than a weekly cartoon ever could. Unlike a cartoon that has to come out every week, and has a season that will last only a few months which limits how long a story can be and the connections you can make from episode to episode a comic is monthly and goes all year uninterrupted for an indefinite period of time meaning you can easily tell long form stories and as there are fewer issues there it's much easier to connect disparate dots between stories like having Mr. Mxyzptlk literally showing up every 90 days as he always said he could.
So why this issue in particular? Well, in addition to the title being a clever play on the old Superman intro, Millar's use of 22 individual one page stories is something that can only work in comics. In a cartoon you'd need establishing shots to smooth out the transitions between the various stories and then you'd never get as many stories told in the allotted time of the episode, but in a comic we're used to seeing something new from panel to panel and page to page so we don't need those establishing shots to make the anthology work which gives us a fun romp featuring not only day in the life stories of Superman but great character beats for the supporting cast.
Overall, it's just a book that does what every adaptation should: gives us the spirit of the original while show casing it in a way that highlights the strengths of the medium. |
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Post by MWGallaher on Dec 13, 2018 13:51:17 GMT -5
12. The Phantom, Charlton Comics, 1969-1970
Issues 31-34, 36-38, penciled, inked, and lettered by Jim Aparo with scripts by "Norm diPluhm" and Dick Wood  When I was little, I didn't know anything about this character. His strip didn't run in the Memphis papers, so I never heard of him until he showed up as one of the available costumes for the much-loved Captain Action toy. Even though I didn't know him, I wanted that costume, and it was high on my Christmas wish list. (I got Captain America instead. I'll assume the Ghost Who Walks wasn't on the shelves when my mom went Christmas shopping that season.) A couple of years on, I became acquainted with the premise via a paperback adaptation, "The Slave Market of Mucar", which I bought in a Sears store (paperback racks were everywhere in the early 70's!). (Trivial aside: I much much later became friends with a man who had mowed lawns for newspaper Phantom artist Wilson McCoy.)It was later, after I had become a comics fan, that I discovered that my favorite artist, Jim Aparo, had developed his superhero chops on Charlton's late 1960's adaptation of the Lee Falk comic strip, later still when I read my first Aparo issue in a Spanish language reprint bought in Mexico, and even later still that I finally bought up the back issues. Not only was Aparo's art very clearly on the top levels of Charlton's roster of talent, but the stories were engaging and far more varied than I had expected. There were a lot more than the standard jungle stories that the above pages of original art might suggest. A particularly memorable story featured the Phantom undercover in civilian garb, wearing sunglasses to hide his never-seen eyes (great practice for Aparo's later depiction of the Phantom Stranger at DC), on board a jet airplane in a thunderstorm, with striking use of black-and-white panels in an otherwise conventionally colored story. And then there was the Pharaoh Phantom, with cool depictions of ancient Egypt, and this memorable underwater cover (good practice for Jim's Aquaman work):  (Pretty nice coloring there for a Charlton, wouldn't you say?)
Surprisingly, the letters column implies that King Features wasn't happy with Aparo's work. Charlton replaced him with Pat Boyette, a fine enough choice but not nearly as impressive, and later with the excellent Don Newton, whose work has already made Slam's #12 slot this year. But for me, it's Jim's Phantom that makes me happiest.
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Dec 13, 2018 13:51:49 GMT -5
12. Marvel Team-Up # 74 (I like team-up books dept.)  So this is a thing that exists. Uh-huh. . . . Fine, a little more detail. MTU 74 was the only appearance of living people in a title that generally co-starred Spider-man and, say, Nighthawk. It is.... not great. There are two things you would most want from a Spider-man/NRFPTP team-up, and the comic fails at both. (A) The main cast of SNL = Belushi, Gilda Rander, Dan Ackroyd - are not particularly recognizable. (Except for Jane Curtin. Bob Hall's Jane Curtin is amazing. I remember some review saying "She looks more like Jane Curtin than Jane Curtin does," and I couldn't agree more.) And (B) it is aggressively unfunny. Still, there's a primal part of me that delights in seeing Spider-Man webswinging around studio 8h, and interacting with beloved comedic icons There's nothing like this in any other '70s Marvel comic, and the simple fact that This Exists is low key glorious. This is also the first Marvel comic where Stan Lee-as-character has a starring role. Stan is the host of SNL during the crossover, and now I am so, so, sad this never happened outside of comics.
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Post by thwhtguardian on Dec 13, 2018 13:56:09 GMT -5
Yeah, I'm actually kind of surprised Stan Lee never hosted SNL; it seems like it would have been a perfect fit.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Dec 13, 2018 14:10:03 GMT -5
12. Marvel Team-Up # 74 (I like team-up books dept.) This is also the first Marvel comic where Stan Lee-as-character has a starring role. Stan is the host of SNL during the crossover, and now I am so, so, sad this never happened outside of comics. Upon further review...that really does seem like a natural fit. |
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Post by hondobrode on Dec 13, 2018 14:30:34 GMT -5
12. Marvel Super Special # 1, 5 Kiss (Marvel 1977 - 1978)
I honestly remember nothing about the second issue, # 5, except the cover. The first, however, I remember very vividly. I bought it off my buddy Mike O’Brien who got it from his big brother. So cool seeing on tv how they added their blood to the ink (I was 12). The cover was spectacular and a whole new title, Marvel Super Special, and it felt special; A magazine on decent paper with sophisticated coloring and a whole slug of Marvel guest stars including Dr Doom, the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, Spider-Man, the Defenders, Mephisto, and The Man himself, Stan Lee. Decent story by Steve Gerber, the hippest writer at Marvel, with A-list art from Alan Weiss on the cover and interiors and others contributing pencils included the Buscema, inks and lettering by Al Milgrom, and Marie Severin on colors. This comic came out at the height of KISS’ popularity and will always have a special place in my heart.  In fact, thinking about it the other day, I downloaded some of their old tunes on my iPhone. |
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Post by Deleted on Dec 13, 2018 14:35:34 GMT -5
I'm a huge KISS fan (are you reading their Dynamite-published exploits?). Destroyer is one of my favourite rock albums, and I am glad to see someone else appreciates them.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 13, 2018 15:03:29 GMT -5
On the First Day of Christmas, it wasn’t Santa coming down the chimney, but the Creep... Creepshow GN by Stephen King & Bernie Wrightson; New American Library; 1982;  adapted from the film directed by Wes Craven and the screenplay by Stephen King  This is a horror anthology modeled after the classic EC horror books based on the shorts written by Stephen King and directed by George Romero in the classic horror film. All rendered in its gorgeous gory glory by Bernie Wrightson under a cover by Jack Kamen. There are 5 shorts, ranging from 10 to 20 pages, each one faithfully adapting one of the tales in the movie, but given Wrightson’s talent and flair for storytelling (especially in the horror genre), each is a phenomenal comic book horror story in its own right. These evoke the best of the EC horror classics in tone and style and sort of serve as a what if Bernie Wrightson had been one of the EC staple of artists. Simply glorious. I discovered the comic before the movie, drawn by the Wrightson art, and it lead me to the movie itself, which I had been aware of, but my folks were very strict about access to horror movies when I was a kid and this came out, so I had not seen it when I was younger. -M |
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Post by Prince Hal on Dec 13, 2018 15:05:26 GMT -5
  12. Batman: The Golden Streets of Gotham (2003) Writer: Jen Van Meter; Artists: Cliff Chiang, Tommy Lee Edwards I have to be honest. I had a blank space on my list and had moved something else to the twelfth spot so that I wouldn’t fall behind on postings, but when I saw shaxper’s first post, I regretted not remembering Gotham by Gaslight as I was making up my list. I didn’t want to repeat the choice, as deserving as it is -- shax nailed it in his write-up – but it brought to mind this other Elseworlds entry that I had also slipped my mind, and I’m delighted to include it in my list. The story itself follows many of the usual rules of these Elseworlds stories: a raft of familiar characters in unfamiliar settings, but this one plays with the Batman mythos far more than most. In this one, also set in roughly the same era as G by G, Batman is not the wealthy scion of an aristocratic WASP family, but an Eastern European labor organizer/ agitator and borderline terrorist named Bruno Vanekow, whose parents and many others are killed in a fire analogous to the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire. (Hence what may be a tenuous adaptation claim, as the dead and the survivors are fictional versions of the immigrant community of Manhattan’s Lower East Side.) I won’t spoil the story by revealing the names and professions of the usual suspects from the Batman Family, famous and infamous, who appear here. (You can read the story on YouTube, if you want.) The artwork captures the feel of the decaying years of the Gilded Age, evocative of Art Spiegelman’s Maus and the powerful editorial cartoons of Robert Minor. The dialogue, while not particularly notable, does the job well enough, and the plot is not altogether surprising. I think both would have benefited mightily if the story could have been told in two issues, as it has a rushed feel to it. What stays with me, though is the unexpected, novel political bent of the story, and particularly of the Batman character, a vigilante who is decidedly not in league with the powers that be, clearly a socialist, a Bolshevik even, and one who has no illusions about the power structure of capitalists, politicians and corrupt police who run Gotham City. Your mileage many vary if you are not an admirer of figures like Emma Goldman, Ida Tarbell, and Eugene V. Debs, but I think this is an excellent adaptation of the lives of immigrants and the injustices they faced in early twentieth century America. I was just delighted to see a left-wing (no pun intended, though it works) Batman appearing somewhere in the staid DC Comics universe. Like all good imaginary stories, this one left me wanting to see more adventures of Progressive Batman. Well worth a read. PS: I hope this passes muster, Kurt. ☺ |
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Post by EdoBosnar on Dec 13, 2018 15:55:35 GMT -5
Oh, man. I suspected I'd be doing these by the seat of my pants, and sure enough. (My order on these is probably not going to be the order of my actual preference, i.e., it's going to be pretty random except for the top few.) Anyway:  12. Star Wars #38 (August 1980)Scripter: Archie Goodwin, Art: Michael Golden (also plotter and colorist) & Terry Austin This is basically a filler issue, and honestly it's only peripherally even a Star Wars story, but it’s probably my favorite single issue of the entire Marvel series. Luke and Leia, on a covert mission in a spice tanker, are attacked by an imperial destroyer and TIE fighters. They jump into hyperspace, but apparently the hyperdrive sustained damage in the attack, and they end up in a starless void. They eventually run into an immense glowing object that appears to be alive. It sucks in their ship, and once inside they get caught up in what seems like an insane and very lethal game...  This story puts some familiar characters from a beloved movie franchise into a rather unusual - for them - situation, and it works quite well as a sort of Outer Limits-esque SF story. . And the art by Golden and Austin is, of course, gorgeous. Back in the day, when I still had my original collection, I found myself re-reading this issue quite a bit, and this is one of those rare single issues I made it a point to re-acquire, and I've read it several more times over. |
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Post by thwhtguardian on Dec 13, 2018 15:58:16 GMT -5
12. Batman: The Golden Streets of Gotham (2003) Writer: Jen Van Meter; Artists: Cliff Chiang, Tommy Lee Edwards I have to be honest. I had a blank space on my list and had moved something else to the twelfth spot so that I wouldn’t fall behind on postings, but when I saw shaxper’s first post, I regretted not remembering Gotham by Gaslight as I was making up my list. I didn’t want to repeat the choice, as deserving as it is -- shax nailed it in his write-up – but it brought to mind this other Elseworlds entry that I had also slipped my mind, and I’m delighted to include it in my list. The story itself follows many of the usual rules of these Elseworlds stories: a raft of familiar characters in unfamiliar settings, but this one plays with the Batman mythos far more than most. In this one, also set in roughly the same era as G by G, Batman is not the wealthy scion of an aristocratic WASP family, but an Eastern European labor organizer/ agitator and borderline terrorist named Bruno Vanekow, whose parents and many others are killed in a fire analogous to the 1911 Triangle Shirtwast Company fire. (Hence what may be a tenuous adaptation claim, as the dead and the survivors are fictional versions of the immigrant community of Manhattan’s Lower East Side.) I won’t spoil the story by revealing the names and professions of the usual suspects from the Batman Family, famous and infamous, who appear here. (You can read the story on YouTube, if you want.) The artwork captures the feel of the decaying years of the Gilded Age, evocative of Art Spiegelman’s Maus and the powerful editorial cartoons of Robert Minor. The dialogue, while not particularly notable, does the job well enough, and the plot is not altogether surprising. I think both would have benefited mightily if the story could have been told in two issues, as it has a rushed feel to it. What stays with me, though is the unexpected, novel political bent of the story, and particularly of the Batman character, a vigilante who is decidedly not in league with the powers that be, clearly a socialist, a Bolshevik even, and one who has no illusions about the power structure of capitalists, politicians and corrupt police who run Gotham City. Your mileage many vary if you are not an admirer of figures like Emma Goldman, Ida Tarbell, and Eugene V. Debs, but I think this is an excellent adaptation of the lives of immigrants and the injustices they faced in early twentieth century America. I was just delighted to see a left-wing (no pun intended, though it works) Batman appearing somewhere in the staid DC Comics universe. Like all good imaginary stories, this one left me wanting to see more adventures of Progressive Batman. Well worth a read. PS: I hope this passes muster, Kurt. ☺ I hope it passes too as after Gotham by Gaslight this is one of my favorite Elseworlds, but I never thought to include either of them so it's great to see them see some love. |
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Post by EdoBosnar on Dec 13, 2018 15:59:41 GMT -5
12. Batman: The Golden Streets of Gotham (2003) Writer: Jen Van Meter; Artists: Cliff Chiang, Tommy Lee Edwards (...) PS: I hope this passes muster, Kurt. ☺ Well, it passes muster with me. I'm a huge fan of the whole Elseworlds line, and this is one I haven't gotten around to reading yet. Your write-up makes me want to get to it all the more.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Dec 13, 2018 16:10:41 GMT -5
12. Batman: The Golden Streets of Gotham (2003) Writer: Jen Van Meter; Artists: Cliff Chiang, Tommy Lee Edwards (...) PS: I hope this passes muster, Kurt. ☺ Well, it passes muster with me. I'm a huge fan of the whole Elseworlds line, and this is one I haven't gotten around to reading yet. Your write-up makes me want to get to it all the more.
I honestly didn't even think of the Elseworlds books in this context. But I too loved them. I've considered doing a review thread of the line...but I'm notoriously bad about keeping up with review threads. |
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Dec 13, 2018 16:19:49 GMT -5
12. Batman: The Golden Streets of Gotham (2003) Writer: Jen Van Meter; Artists: Cliff Chiang, Tommy Lee Edwards (...) PS: I hope this passes muster, Kurt. ☺ Well, it passes muster with me. I'm a huge fan of the whole Elseworlds line, and this is one I haven't gotten around to reading yet. Your write-up makes me want to get to it all the more.
I never even considered looking at Elseworlds books as their own adaptations. I was just going the Jack the Ripper adaptation angle. Intriguing interpretation of the rules. I like it. |
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