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Post by thwhtguardian on Dec 13, 2018 16:37:04 GMT -5
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. I'd dearly love to read that thread! |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Dec 13, 2018 17:11:06 GMT -5
#12 The Ring of the Nibelung, Richard Wagner's tetralogy, adapted in Thor #295-299 (which means it's not a comics tetralogy... heh!) Published by Marvel 1n 1980.  Oh, sure, with all due respect, Keith Pollard's art is not as lyrical or epic as either Gil Kane's or P. Craig Russell's, who also illustrated beautiful adaptations of the Ring for American audiences. Neither is a super-heroic take on this classic story as engrossing as a more traditional approach might be. Still, it remains my favourite adaptations for... family reasons (of all things). See, while my Dad and I loved each other, we had few common interests when I was a kid. I loved comics, adventure novels, action movies and cartooning. Dad was a classical music fan, only read serious books (I doubt I ever saw him read a novel for fun) and was definitely not into superheroes. One of the rare things we could bond over were ice hockey and fishing, but I stopped playing hockey when I got serious about judo and he wasn't into martial arts. Then one day he purchased Wagner's tetralogy on LPs, Wagner being one of his favourite composers. And suddenly we had a new common interest! I knew zip about classical music but we could talk about the Ring of the Nibelung, about Fafner and Fasolt and Wotan and the rest... because I had just bought those issues of Thor! That got me to actually listen to Wagner's operas, and not too long after that Dad and I got to see Tannhaüser together (on a cinema screen, but still). It turns out that our new common interest for Wagnerian lore extended into Arthurian legend, and from a mix of medieval legendry and classical music we formed an all-new father and son bond. I'm sorry, Gil and P. Craig, but no amount of gorgeous art in Epic Illustrated #2 or in a Ring of the Nibelungen miniseries will ever top that!!! Storywise, shoehorning the tale of the Wolsungs into Marvel's Thor series feels definitely clunky... but I must admit that I greatly admire the grand scope of the overarching tale, in which we find out how the Ring, the Odinsword, the Destroyer armour, Kirby's Eternals and the Celestials all fit together. As far as retroactive continuity goes, that was spectacularly well done... because for once it actually makes sense!
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Post by Prince Hal on Dec 13, 2018 17:27:02 GMT -5
A wonderful story, Roquefort Raider, and one of the reasons I enjoy this annual thread and others like it. We get to hear about others' favorites without worrying about how "good" any of them has to be. For me the personal associations we bring to any work of art, highbrow or low, are what give it its power and make reading about them that much more meaningful. This also hit home with me as a Norse mythology lover since my early days and the son-in-law of a Wagner devotee who could sing -- in a manner of speaking -- all of his operas from memory. He loved the Ring and we talked about is love of it many times. He was an aeronautical engineer, with all of an engineer's typical quirks, including a reserved emotional side, but when it came to Wagner, his artistic side glowed through. One of my fondest memories of him is the time he told me about finally being able to get a standing-room ticket to see Tristan und Isolde at the old Met, maybe in 1936 or so. He told me that he wept while watching it. An astonishing revelation coming from him and further proof of the overwhelming power of art. Nice choice! |
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Post by Farrar on Dec 13, 2018 17:37:28 GMT -5
#12 Tarzan Dark Horse, 1996 series I'm going to start by posting my obvious choices first. So without further ado, here's Tarzan. Why? Umm...he's Tarzan! Plus I've been waiting for an opportunity to post this magnificent cover by Arthur Sudyam for quite some time now. It hasn't exactly been a match for the Cover Contest topics, but I think it's a perfect fit here! 
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shaxper
CCF Site Custodian
Posts: 22,871
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Post by shaxper on Dec 13, 2018 17:53:16 GMT -5
#12 The Ring of the Nibelung, Richard Wagner's tetralogy, adapted in Thor #295-299 (which means it's not a comics tetralogy... heh!) Oh, sure, with all due respect, Keith Pollard's art is not as lyrical or epic as either Gil Kane's or P. Craig Russell's, who also illustrated beautiful adaptations of the Ring for American audiences. Neither is a super-heroic take on this classic story as engrossing as a more traditional approach might be. Still, it remains my favourite adaptations for... family reasons (of all things). See, while my Dad and I loved each other, we had few common interests when I was a kid. I loved comics, adventure novels, action movies and cartooning. Dad was a classical music fan, only read serious books (I doubt I veer saw him read a novel for fun) and was definitely not into superheroes. One of the rare things we could bond over were ice hockey and fishing, but I stopped playing hockey when I got serious about judo and he wasn't into martial arts. Then one day he purchased Wagner's tetralogy on LPs, Wagner being one of his favourite composers. And suddenly we had a new common interest! I knew zip about classical music but we could talk about the Ring of the Nibelung, about Fafner and Fasolt and Wotan and the rest... because I had just bought those issues of Thor! That got me to actually listen to Wagner's operas, and not too long after that Dad and I got to see Tannhaüser together (on a cinema screen, but still). It turns out that our new common interest for Wagnerian lore extended into Arthurian legend, and from a mix of medieval legendry and classic music we formed an all-new father and son bond. I'm sorry, Gil and P. Craig, but no amount of gorgeous art in Epic Illustrated #2 or in a Ring of the Nibelungen miniseries will ever top that!!! Storywise, shoehorning the tale of the Wolsungs into Marvel's Thor series feels definitely clunky... but I must admit that I greatly admire the grand scope of the overarching tale, in which we find out how the Ring, the Odinsword, the Destroyer armour, Kirby's Eternals and the Celestials all fit together. As far as retroactive continuity goes, that was spectacularly well done... because for once it actually makes sense! Amazing story. Makes me wonder what the hell happened with each of your other eleven choices! |
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Post by Deleted on Dec 13, 2018 18:02:03 GMT -5
The people on this forum bring a lot of personality to their posts - doubly so in this topic so far!
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Post by Icctrombone on Dec 13, 2018 19:12:42 GMT -5
12. Shadowman # 19 Aerosmith
Publisher: Valiant
Year: 1993
Writer: Bob Hall
Artist: Bob Hall / John Dixon
 In the 90’s Valiant Comics had a book called Shadow Man which involved a person called Jack Boniface who has powers that are magical / voodoo based, which gives him Super Strength and speed . He is a saxophone player and in this issue, he plays backup for the band Aerosmith while they tour in New Orleans. The lead singer, Steven Tyler, is attacked and robbed of certain items which enable Jacks main nemesis, Master Darque, to replace him with a mentally deranged fan of his.Ultimately the plan is thwarted but not before Jack has to make a deal placing himself in the service of Darque. I’ll admit to not really Knowing who Aerosmith was when this book came out but it was some type of crossover that was agreed upon by the band with a press conference and some publicity. I have two copies of this book and remember giving a copy to a friend of mine who was a big fan of the group. They apparently gave this book some press. 
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shaxper
CCF Site Custodian
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Post by shaxper on Dec 13, 2018 21:39:31 GMT -5
12. Shadowman # 19 Aerosmith
At one point, I owned over twenty copies of this book. That was during my days as a comic speculator. I learned fast  |
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Post by Cei-U! on Dec 14, 2018 0:16:16 GMT -5
12. Marvel Team-Up # 74 (I like team-up books dept.) (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.) Just wanted to note in passing that all the heads/faces of the SNL cast (and Stan) were drawn by Marvel's go-to caricaturist Marie Severin, not Bob Hall (who was instructed to pencil his pages with their heads left blank).
Cei-U! I summon the spirit of Roseanne Rosannadanna!
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Post by foxley on Dec 14, 2018 0:56:03 GMT -5
12. "The Doomsday Book", Detective Comics #572 (DC, 1987) 1987 was a good time to be a teenaged comic book fan. Stories would run one or two issues; characters weren’t forced to wallow in oceans of angst (apart from the X-books); books weren’t continually being hijacked by year-long, companywide ‘events’; comics weren’t beholden to cinematic versions of themselves; and Mike W. Barr and Alan Davis were in the middle of their criminally underappreciated run on Detective Comics. “That’s all well good, foxley,” I hear you say, “but before you start a rambling monologue about how much better comics were back in your day, what does this to do with adaptations?” I’m getting there. 1987 also marked the 50th anniversary of Detective Comics. Barr was tasked with writing an anniversary issue. Now, obviously the story would star Batman, but this was the 50th anniversary of Detective Comics, not Batman, so, as a link to the first issue, the story co-starred Slam Bradley, who had debuted in #1. And Barr also included Elongated Man, as a tribute to the various back-up features that appeared over the years. However, in a stunning piece of synchronicity, 1987 also marked the 100th anniversary of the first appearance of Sherlock Holmes. Barr is a mystery novelist as well as a comics writer and this was too good an opportunity for him to pass up, and a chance to truly celebrate the ‘Detective’ in Detective Comics. In “The Doomsday Book”, a descendant of Moriarty plans to implement one of his ancestor’s failed schemes. Batman, Slam and Ralph are chasing down separate threads when their paths converge in London. Ralph locates a lost manuscript of Watson’s that details the original Moriarty’s scheme (and using one of the titles Watson mentioned but never wrote down; “The Adventure of Red Leech”). Barr wrote a very good Holmes pastiche (and I’ve read enough bad ones to know a good one when I see it), which was illustrated by E.R. Cruz, who had been the artist on the one-shot Sherlock Holmes book DC released in the 70s. Our heroes use the information in the manuscript to foil Moriarty’s scheme, aided at the last minute by ( SPOILER for a 30 year old book) the extremely elderly Holmes himself. So I have a comic from my personal golden age, featuring two of my favourite fictional characters in a romp that celebrates everything that is great about comics, combined with an excellent stand-alone Holmes tale. How can I not love this?
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Post by codystarbuck on Dec 14, 2018 2:22:34 GMT -5
My list has no particular rank to it, as much as twelve selections. So, #12 is the Oz series, from eric Shanower, begun at First Comics.      Originally begun as graphic novels at first Comics, when Shanower was a young pup. These kind of flew under the radar in the mainstream comic world; but, discerning readers quickly snapped them up. Shanower was already a revelation, with a nice, charming, sensitive line that really captured the fantasy and imagination of Baum's (and others') Oz. These were pure delight, capturing the feel and spirit of the originals, but presenting entirely new works in that universe. Many would be daunted by such a task, or take the path of the Caliber series, where the Oz characters are used for a new, more odern style of story. Shanower goes the harder route of trying to capture the tone of the original, while adding something new; and, he succeeds massively. He continued the series at Dark Horse, then later worked at Marvel doing direct adaptations of Baum. Although DC and Marvel had already tread upon this world, Shanower left them wanting, in the eyes of Oz fans and lovers of great stories. |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Dec 14, 2018 5:51:08 GMT -5
A wonderful story, Roquefort Raider , and one of the reasons I enjoy this annual thread and others like it. We get to hear about others' favorites without worrying about how "good" any of them has to be. For me the personal associations we bring to any work of art, highbrow or low, are what give it its power and make reading about them that much more meaningful. This also hit home with me as a Norse mythology lover since my early days and the son-in-law of a Wagner devotee who could sing -- in a manner of speaking -- all of his operas from memory. He loved the Ring and we talked about is love of it many times. He was an aeronautical engineer, with all of an engineer's typical quirks, including a reserved emotional side, but when it came to Wagner, his artistic side glowed through. One of my fondest memories of him is the time he told me about finally being able to get a standing-room ticket to see Tristan und Isolde at the old Met, maybe in 1936 or so. He told me that he wept while watching it. An astonishing revelation coming from him and further proof of the overwhelming power of art. That is so cool, Prince Hal! I never saw my dad cry, but Mom once told me she had caught him red-handed (or wet cheeked) once, in the middle of the night, listening to Parsifal (with his headphones on so as not to wake us up). I think he and your father-in-law might have had a few interesting conversations! Art can indeed be overwhelming, and for all that I am personally a graphic arts person, I believe that nothing can move us so deeply as music. |
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Post by Icctrombone on Dec 14, 2018 6:07:50 GMT -5
12. The Phantom, Charlton Comics, issues 31-34, 36-38, pencilled, 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. I remember picking up a Phantom book drawn by Aparo. Just amazing stuff. IMHO, his artwork was never better than in this series and the early BaB. Does anyone know if these issues have been collected? |
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Post by DubipR on Dec 14, 2018 6:50:05 GMT -5
12. "The Doomsday Book", Detective Comics #572 (DC, 1987)So I have a comic from my personal golden age, featuring two of my favourite fictional characters in a romp that celebrates everything that is great about comics, combined with an excellent stand-alone Holmes tale. How can I not love this? This was one of those last minute drops on my list to make room for a substitution. Great selection Foxley. |
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Post by MWGallaher on Dec 14, 2018 8:32:06 GMT -5
12. The Phantom, Charlton Comics, issues 31-34, 36-38, pencilled, 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):
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. I remember picking up a Phantom book drawn by Aparo. Just amazing stuff. IMHO, his artwork was never better than in this series and the early BaB. Does anyone know if these issues have been collected? Yes, Aparo's issues have been collected in "Jim Aparo's Complete The Phantom" by Hermes Press (ISBN-13: 978-1613451106). Reviews said the reproduction was sub-par--presumably scans of the usually poor original Charlton printing--so I never picked up a copy myself, since I have the originals. |
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