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Post by foxley on Sept 10, 2014 16:46:16 GMT -5
Attributing that quote to Aldous Huxley instead of Thomas henry Huxley is a common mistake. That quote is also used for the title of an Ellery Queen novel.
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Post by fanboystranger on Sept 10, 2014 18:49:38 GMT -5
Detective Comics Annual #3 - Did Goodwin come out of retirement for this? I don't think I'd previously seen his name on a book after the 1970s. Archie was somewhat active at Marvel throughout the '80s, but other than Wolverine/Nick Fury: The Scorpio Connection and a few issues of Wolverine, it was mostly on obscure stuff from "The New Universe" and fill-ins. He was also the plotmaster on the "Shadowline Saga" books from Epic, but they were scripted by DC Chicester and Margaret Clark, two of Archie's assistant editors. Marvel's failure to support Epic is why he returned to DC in 1989. Even then, he mostly did annuals and special projects, like the great Batman OGN Night Cries with the Hamptons. |
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Sept 22, 2014 19:39:32 GMT -5
The Thirteenth Dimension just ran this interview with Denny O'Neil about Year One today: 13thdimension.com/the-denny-oneil-interviews-batman-year-one/Two things it confirms that I've long speculated on here: 1. O'Neil's primary goal from Day One as editor was to boost sales. 2. Year One was originally intended as a graphic novel |
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Post by Hoosier X on Sept 22, 2014 20:08:27 GMT -5
The Thirteenth Dimension just ran this interview with Denny O'Neil about Year One today: 13thdimension.com/the-denny-oneil-interviews-batman-year-one/Two things it confirms that I've long speculated on here: 1. O'Neil's primary goal from Day One as editor was to boost sales. 2. Year One was originally intended as a graphic novel Thanks for linking that interview! I'll read as soon as I get back from walking the dog.
I have very mixed feeling about O'Neil. He did so many just ridiculous things as Batman editor (and I don't think much of his later writing was really very good). But I frequently come across some random story he did in the 1970s that I'd forgotten he wrote and I remember how cool he was way back when.
I was thinking about "Hail Emperor Penguin!" from Batman #257 a few days ago. A bizarre adventure, wherein Robin and Talia guest-star, and they all go to some small Himalayan country to rescue the teen-aged king because he's being help captive by the Penguin. (Or something like that. I've had this comic since the late 1970s when I got it from a used bookstore for 25 cents, and I've read it a million times. But not recently.)
I love that story! There's so much crazy stuff going on. It's no "Joker's Five-Way Revenge," but it's one of my favorite Penguin stories. Lots of fun! So what if I've read it so many times! I'm going to read it again tonight after I get back from walking the dog and after I read that interview!
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Sept 22, 2014 20:15:35 GMT -5
The Thirteenth Dimension just ran this interview with Denny O'Neil about Year One today: 13thdimension.com/the-denny-oneil-interviews-batman-year-one/Two things it confirms that I've long speculated on here: 1. O'Neil's primary goal from Day One as editor was to boost sales. 2. Year One was originally intended as a graphic novel Thanks for linking that interview! I'll read as soon as I get back from walking the dog.
I have very mixed feeling about O'Neil. He did so many just ridiculous things as Batman editor (and I don't think much of his later writing was really very good). But I frequently come across some random story he did in the 1970s that I'd forgotten he wrote and I remember how cool he was way back when.
I was thinking about "Hail Emperor Penguin!" from Batman #257 a few days ago. A bizarre adventure, wherein Robin and Talia guest-star, and they all go to some small Himalayan country to rescue the teen-aged king because he's being help captive by the Penguin. (Or something like that. I've had this comic since the late 1970s when I got it from a used bookstore for 25 cents, and I've read it a million times. But not recently.)
I love that story! There's so much crazy stuff going on. It's no "Joker's Five-Way Revenge," but it's one of my favorite Penguin stories. Lots of fun! So what if I've read it so many times! I'm going to read it again tonight after I get back from walking the dog and after I read that interview!
There are other parts of the interview discussing other aspects of O'Neil's career, including his '70s Batman stories, so definitely check those out. |
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Post by truertothecore on Oct 19, 2014 7:55:53 GMT -5
Hey shaxper, get this thread running again  Hell of a work to copy all those snapshots, I must say. You are now entering that interval of comics I bought back in the day (mostly out of habit) but probably only read them once or so, so I do not remember that much about them. To me Batman will always be the '80s, some of the 70s, and the 40s to mid-50s Isn't it time to make some sort of resume about the differences of pre- and post-crisis, what was better and what was worse... I must say, as messy at it was, the good thing about post-crisis was that it streamlined Batman's continuity, never cared much about Batman having been Robin or that stuff... Also new Jason Todd (his origin) was an interesting idea, just the execution was very dumb. Alfred being Batman's "surrogate father" (which started in DKR and a Superfriends episode, I believe) is one of those changes that became undisputed in the fandom, so deeply engrained that most people do not even know or remember that this was not like it once was. But right now I feel that this take has become stale, Alfred being worried and making sarcastic remarks is now only an annoying cliche to me. Bring back the loyal servant... |
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Post by Nowhere Man on Oct 19, 2014 7:58:09 GMT -5
Not to derail the thread, but the Batman/Sherlock Holmes issue during the Barr/Davis run got me wondering if there has ever been a team-up between Batman and Dick Tracy? Of all the team-up's Batman has had with his various influences, that one makes the most sense to me.
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Post by truertothecore on Oct 19, 2014 9:39:25 GMT -5
And shaxper, another interesting bit of trivia: I've heard that the original reason for Jason Todd's death was planned to be AIDS which he picked up during his time as a sex-worker(!).
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Post by Cei-U! on Oct 19, 2014 10:25:52 GMT -5
Not to derail the thread, but the Batman/Sherlock Holmes issue during the Barr/Davis run got me wondering if there has ever been a team-up between Batman and Dick Tracy? Of all the team-up's Batman has had with his various influences, that one makes the most sense to me. Oddly enough, there hasn't been, even though it seems so obvious. I actually have some random plot notes from years ago kicking around here somewhere for such a project, although all I recall is I set it in the 1940s and featured villain team-ups of Joker/Flattop and Two-Face/Pruneface. I always thought Peter Poplaski would be a great choice for the art, as he has previously shown an aptitude for mimicking the styles of both Chester Gould and Dick Sprang. Cei-U! I summon the might-have-been masterpiece! |
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Post by thwhtguardian on Oct 19, 2014 12:25:05 GMT -5
And I thought the Dick Tracy and Daffy Duck Mash up was great, but Batman/ Tracy!? That would blow my mind.
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Post by Cei-U! on Oct 19, 2014 13:18:17 GMT -5
I wish I knew the Tracy characters better. Most of what I know comes from a 1940s novelization, with plates by Gould, that was around the house when I was a kid. That, and those gawdawful cartoons with Joe Jitsu. The only full sequence of the strip I've seen is the one reprinted in The Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics, an early story from before the grotesque villains started. That was why I didn't pursue the idea any further. What collections are available?
Cei-U!
I summon the new project!
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Post by Hoosier X on Oct 19, 2014 13:41:22 GMT -5
I wish I knew the Tracy characters better. Most of what I know comes from a 1940s novelization, with plates by Gould, that was around the house when I was a kid. That, and those gawdawful cartoons with Joe Jitsu. The only full sequence of the strip I've seen is the one reprinted in The Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics, an early story from before the grotesque villains started. That was why I didn't pursue the idea any further. What collections are available? Cei-U! I summon the new project! When I lived in L.A., one of my neighbors had a DC Limited Collector's Edition (from the 1970s) that reprinted the Flattop storyline from the Dick Tracy comic strip. It's great! Just about the only exposure I've had to Dick Tracy outside of some black and white reprints. I'd recommend that because it's a cool over-sized format and a great story that's stuck with me for years.
I looked on eBay and there are several copies, in the $10 to $20 range. It's Limited Collector's Edition C-40.
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Post by foxley on Oct 19, 2014 15:57:33 GMT -5
Not to derail the thread, but the Batman/Sherlock Holmes issue during the Barr/Davis run got me wondering if there has ever been a team-up between Batman and Dick Tracy? Of all the team-up's Batman has had with his various influences, that one makes the most sense to me. There hasn't been (to the best of my knowledge) but when Max Allan Collins was writing Batman he did a text piece looking at the connections between Dick Tracy and Batman, and the shared influences. The closest I can think of is the actually quite good Batman/Spirit team-up. |
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Oct 19, 2014 18:53:55 GMT -5
Hey shaxper, get this thread running again 'bout time you showed up here  Yep. Not something I'd care to repeat! I've commented on this a lot in the reviews, but I haven't tried to make a specific post only about this because it's just too big a topic to reduce into a post that's both coherent and meaningful. There was no one pre-Crisis depiction of Batman, no one post-Crisis depiction, and there are a million different facets of each depiction worth comparing. To overly generalize, though, I'd say the late late Pre-Crisis Batman had, ironically, a far tighter continuity and more consistent characterization than the post-Crisis, which pretty much flies in the face of the rationale for rebooting in the first place. Post-Crisis is just all over the place and clearly more concerned with selling more copies and pleasing the higher ups at Warner than it was with telling good stories. There have been a number of Post-Crisis stories that I found top-notch but, generally speaking, O'Neil's office is a grab bag mess of Batman, and you never quite know what you're going to get next. I think that's a big part of why I've slowed down on these reviews. The quality wavers greatly, and there's little to no consistency, continuity, nor even character development across stories. And I really, REALLY don't like Tim Drake at this point. |
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Oct 19, 2014 18:56:57 GMT -5
Not to derail the thread, but the Batman/Sherlock Holmes issue during the Barr/Davis run got me wondering if there has ever been a team-up between Batman and Dick Tracy? Of all the team-up's Batman has had with his various influences, that one makes the most sense to me. Kind of hard to believe they didn't do one in 1989-1990, when both characters had big movies in the theaters. Then again, Batman didn't start doing the inter-company crossovers until a few years later, by which point Dick Tracy was old news to the average fan and more likely to get a "Dick Tracy? That's so 1990" response as opposed to "Dick Tracy? Who's this guy? I'm intrigued!" |
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