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Post by Roquefort Raider on Jun 8, 2019 16:46:00 GMT -5
Skull the Slayer was one of those series that changed either its editor, writer, or artist every damned issue (nor did it help that its hero and his supporting cast were so unlikeable). It was a confusing, pointless mess from the third issue on and richly deserved its early demise. That Wolfman was able to salvage his original concept in that Two-in-One two-parter is something of a minor miracle. Cei-U! I summon the round-trip ticket to the Bermuda Triangle! Oooooh, the pain in this Skull fan’s heart is deep! The fact that the book seemed completely rudderless was part of its appeal to my then-young eyes! Granted, the characters were pretty unpleasant... but then so was The Mucker in the first pages of his book!
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Post by Cei-U! on Jun 8, 2019 17:18:02 GMT -5
Skull the Slayer was one of those series that changed either its editor, writer, or artist every damned issue (nor did it help that its hero and his supporting cast were so unlikeable). It was a confusing, pointless mess from the third issue on and richly deserved its early demise. That Wolfman was able to salvage his original concept in that Two-in-One two-parter is something of a minor miracle. Cei-U! I summon the round-trip ticket to the Bermuda Triangle! Oooooh, the pain in this Skull fan’s heart is deep! The fact that the book seemed completely rudderless was part of its appeal to my then-young eyes! Granted, the characters were pretty unpleasant... but then so was The Mucker in the first pages of his book! Don't take my critique too seriously. After all, I do own the complete series.
Cei-U! I summon my softer side!
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Post by mikelmidnight on Jun 11, 2019 11:57:53 GMT -5
I actually liked Skull the Slayer, and granted I was in my early teens when it came out but I never picked up on the lack of cohesiveness. It did bother me in the Two-In-One closure, though, that the writer un-did all the character development that the group had gone through.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jun 21, 2019 10:46:38 GMT -5
Justice Society of America 1-10. Aug. 1992 - May 1993. Written by Len Strazewski. Pencils by Mike Parobeck. Inks by Mike Machlan. Following having been unceremoniously dumped in another dimension for a few years the JSA returned in their own continuing series. The members were re-aged, though not fully, so we are dealing with heroes in their mid to late 60s trying to find their place in a world that is seemingly over-saturated by super people. I was certainly pre-disposed to love this book. I've been a fan of the JSA and Earth-2 since I started reading comics. And I was super excited by this return. And this was really about the last point at which the original JSA could work as as heroes without an over-abundance of super-hero mumbo-jumbo and suspension of disbelief. While it's a super-hero book and we see the JSA fighting their old foes and interacting with some new heroes (Wally/Flash, Guy Gardner) it is, at its heart, about older heroes trying to find a place for themselves in a very changed world. Do elder statesmen, particularly of the likes of Wildcat and The Atom who are powerless or nearly so, have a place in a world with Superman? While we start to explore that question we never really get to answer it because of the truncated run. We also get to see the beginning of some legacy characters. Jessie Quick plays a significant role. We see what may be the successor to Johnny Thunder. I'd have liked to have seen that continue. That's the one way the JSA made sense at the time. Guiding a new generation with a bridge to the past. I know that is how the later JSA comic started out. But by that time I was done and I think it was just too late. The book also benefited from a great creative team. Strazewski clearly cared about the characters and had a plan for them that walked a great line between what had gone before and updating them to a new comics sensibility. Parobeck and Machlan were absolute gold on the book. A perfect blend of story-telling and art style that worked perfectly with the characters and the tone. So was it gone too soon? Damn rights it was. This is a book that I actually mourned when it was gone. But I don't say it was gone too soon just because I personally loved it. This was a book that was just a bit different from the other super-hero fare at the time. And it had something to say that was different even within the constraints of a shared universe.
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Post by Cei-U! on Jun 21, 2019 11:26:17 GMT -5
My favorite version of the JSA ever, put to death because then-EIC Mike Carlin hated them and ordered them killed during Zero Hour. Stupid and senseless,
Cei-U! I summon the unforgiveable sin!
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Post by beccabear67 on Jun 21, 2019 11:51:29 GMT -5
Talk about gone to soon, that was Mr. Parobeck himself. That series is top of my to find list. I love the art style! So solid without being over-rendered. I ran across a fold-out promo card/poster for it somewhere awhile ago but can't find it again, must've been an auction... Update: Just snagged 1-8 all together from a trusted Canadian seller, looks like 9 & 10 are a bit harder to come by. They had all eight of the series from the year before but I thought I'd pass on that. This forum leads me to spend sometimes.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jun 21, 2019 12:05:44 GMT -5
My favorite version of the JSA ever, put to death because then-EIC Mike Carlin hated them and ordered them killed during Zero Hour. Stupid and senseless, Cei-U! I summon the unforgiveable sin! Have you been able to confirm this anywhere, Kurt. I've heard it a lot but never seen it in print that I recall. They did talk about sales being soft in the last few issues.
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Post by EdoBosnar on Jun 21, 2019 13:55:03 GMT -5
I've always wanted to read Strazewski's JSA - both this series and the 8-issue series that immediately preceded it. That's why I was additionally disappointed when the announced book collecting both series - which even had a solicit and pre-order page on Amazon for a while - was scrapped. Those stories apparently get no respect from the powers that be at DC, although they were apparently quite popular with fans.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 22, 2019 0:17:35 GMT -5
Talk about gone to soon, that was Mr. Parobeck himself. That series is top of my to find list. I love the art style! So solid without being over-rendered. I ran across a fold-out promo card/poster for it somewhere awhile ago but can't find it again, must've been an auction... Update: Just snagged 1-8 all together from a trusted Canadian seller, looks like 9 & 10 are a bit harder to come by. They had all eight of the series from the year before but I thought I'd pass on that. This forum leads me to spend sometimes. I've been hunting #10 for about a year and a half now with no luck. Haven't run across it in the wild and online sellers are charging a lot for it. -M
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Post by Bronze age andy on Jun 22, 2019 4:27:04 GMT -5
Parobeck art is wonderful. Loved his work on The Fly (Impact) as well.
Gone way too soon.
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Post by beccabear67 on Jun 22, 2019 12:05:13 GMT -5
Dolphin - DC Comics - Showcase # 79, December 1968. Writer/Artist: Jay Scott Pike I had this issue of Showcase along with Hawk & Dove and Anthro ones which did go on to their own series however briefly. I don't think Dolphin would've sustained a series any longer than they did, but she did come back in an '80s Gil Kane Action Comics alongside Animal Man and others. Pike had a career outside comic books as a pin-up artist for calendars, maybe those men's magazines/digests with lots of drawings too? I like anything aquatic, I'd even buy Man From Atlantis comics from the '70s that were fairly uninspired, and it felt like they should've made some use of Dolphin in Aquaman at the very least. I actually liked the lack of a colorful costume but I imagine that hurt in terms of not attracting attention. Those visual elements; you can't write seriously with 'em but you can't sell without 'em?
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Post by kirby101 on Jun 22, 2019 14:22:49 GMT -5
DC's revival of OMAC by Giffen and Didio. It was so much Kirbyesque fun. Only 8 joyous issues.
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Post by chaykinstevens on Jun 22, 2019 14:45:39 GMT -5
DC's revival of OMAC by Giffen and Didio. It was so much Kirbyesque fun. Only 8 joyous issues.
Didio seems to attract a lot of hatred, but I thought OMAC was one of the more agreeable New 52 entries, and his Challengers of the Unknown with Jerry Ordway in DC Universe Presents wasn't too bad either. Strange credits though - I assume Didio had nothing to do with the artwork.
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Jun 22, 2019 16:12:40 GMT -5
The book also benefited from a great creative team. Strazewski clearly cared about the characters and had a plan for them that walked a great line between what had gone before and updating them to a new comics sensibility. Parobeck and Machlan were absolute gold on the book. A perfect blend of story-telling and art style that worked perfectly with the characters and the tone. So was it gone too soon? Damn rights it was. This is a book that I actually mourned when it was gone. But I don't say it was gone too soon just because I personally loved it. This was a book that was just a bit different from the other super-hero fare at the time. And it had something to say that was different even within the constraints of a shared universe. Nice write-up. Damn good book.
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Post by MWGallaher on Jun 23, 2019 18:43:38 GMT -5
Dolphin - DC Comics - Showcase # 79, December 1968. Writer/Artist: Jay Scott Pike Back to the Showcase well for this one-shot by Jay Scott Pike who was primarily a romance artist. The romance genre was still going fairly strong in 1968, so combining it with the super-hero genre (something we'd seen somewhat at Marvel but not so much at DC) was an interesting move. There's also a frogman element a genre that was never big but had a few books whose time had passed. The story itself is simple. Navy frogmen are trying to retrieve documents from a ship sunk during WWII. While down there they encounter Dolphin, a woman who can breathe underwater, swim like a fish and inexplicably wears a shirt and cut-offs. Of course we have to have a love-interest arise and since we need some sort of drama a typhoon is coming that will push the sunken ship into a trench from whence the documents won't be able to be recovered. Of course lovely Dolphin comes to the rescue. Unfortunately a few careless words from her sailor/love and she can't sail off into the sunrise and disappears into the ocean. So... Was it gone too soon? Probably not. Not that there's anything inherently wrong with the book. It's decent late-Silver-Age DC fare. Certainly there is nothing to complain about with Pike's art which is a cut above average and is a nice change of pace from the average super-hero work of the time. Part of the problem is that Dolphin suffers from the same problems that most undersea heroes do, the "I gotta get back to the water or die" thing. And undersea heroes that have been able to sustain a decent comics run have been incredibly few and far between. Add to that that Dolphin was a female hero in a much less enlightened time and what starts to emerge is a run that likely would not be well remembered, whereas the Showcase one-shot has always seemed to be a kind of bright spot in a sea of standard stuff. Pure conjecture on my part, but the fact that the Dolphin story didn't even fill up the entire page count of Showcase #79 (it was augmented with the 7-page reprint of Aqualad's debut) suggests to me that it wasn't prepared for Showcase. I suspect that it was originally intended as a serial fantasy for one of DC's romance comics, Pike's usual stomping grounds. Maybe DC had second thoughts about introducing fantastic elements into their romance line and decided to use up the pages here? It's definitely more akin to the love comics than to the superheroes.
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