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Post by adamwarlock2099 on Feb 8, 2023 9:53:39 GMT -5
I have never even heard of Strangehaven but those panels look nice. I am going to have to look into these issues and/or a TPB if available. That is some very nice art and just glancing at the panels seems like there is a lot going on to read.
Man, those Wolverine/Zealot panels .... I personally think that is Charest at his peak in that whole issue. And damn do I like Daemonites. Could see a lot of HR Giger and Brood influence in them. In fact #17 was the one that caught my eye in a book store on the spinner rack with a Daemonite on it with Zealot by Travis Charest. I was hooked after reading that. I didn't discover his Darkstars until way later. Probably into the 2000's after there was internet and all that to help find things like that.
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Post by arfetto on Feb 15, 2023 15:17:56 GMT -5
Today the '90s comic I read was
Gen13 issue 6 (1995)
Jim Lee draws this issue rather than Campbell. He does a much better job here than he did in issue 0, but the characters' faces are still not quite "right" to me after getting used to the Campbell style. I guess they are still too subdued in expression perhaps. Still, I am not going to complain too much about Jim Lee interiors haha.
This is the first issue so far where I may need to seek out other books to fully follow the going-ons, because I am not certain what is being referenced here in regards to "The Kindred" (turns out there is a mini-series called this): The "cheesecake/beefcake with levity" style that fits with Campbell's art feels more forced when drawn by Lee
Ivana and Threshold (and Bliss) re-appear in this issue. They begin to form what will I assume become DV8 in this issue, and a new Gen-Active code-named Frostbite is introduced on the opening pages (he will become a member of DV8).
There is also a mention of "The Order of the Cross" from some Deathblow comics that I am also unfamiliar with:
This Order of the Cross group speaks in Italian which is not translated on the actual pages:
Instead you have to flip to the letter pages for that:
I guess one thing I missed out on by buying that tpb collection of the first issues is the letter pages, because there is some interesting stuff mentioned in issue 6. A couple of the letter-writers seemed to have not regularly bought comics, but Gen13 was an exception.
It also seems Freefall/Roxy was a popular character for readers back in the day if the published letters reflected the general feedback.
"Identification" seemed to be, at least in the issue 6 column, a big part of the published readers' enthusiasm for Gen13. Most of the writers seem to be on the younger side and picked characters that resembled themselves in some aspects.
Even if they were not quite as "mondo built" as Grunge haha:
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Post by codystarbuck on Feb 15, 2023 16:25:29 GMT -5
Jim Lee's art has never really done much for me, even stuff like Hush. His faces aren't particularly expressive and he's not great with mundane things. He adds pointless linework to figures and objects that is downright puzzling. It's flashy, but it just doesn't work, for me, especially when he his aping Frank Miller aping Jose Munoz. By contrast, I don't care much for Todd McFarlane's storytelling and Spawn just seemed like a pointless excuse to have a guy posing on rooftops and draw some monsters; yet, I like McFarlane's art and design sense. His pages are interesting, artistically. I think he is a better graphic designer than a storyteller. With Lee, I see the flash and the influences; but, it all just kind of looks generic to me.
Gen-13 was not my thing; but Campbell's art had personality.
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Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 10,051
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Post by Confessor on Feb 15, 2023 20:11:01 GMT -5
I liked Gen-13 a whole lot at the time. It felt very different and current back then. But you know what? It really didn't age well...or maybe I just changed. I hung on to my issues of the series well into the 2000s, but I just started to dislike the series and its characters more and more each time I re-visited them. I eventually sold my extensive run on eBay and I can't say I've ever regretted it.
But yeah, it certainly captured something of the '90s Gen X grunge/slacker zeitgeist and definitely made its mark because of that.
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Post by codystarbuck on Feb 16, 2023 2:05:09 GMT -5
I liked Gen-13 a whole lot at the time. It felt very different and current back then. But you know what? It really didn't age well...or maybe I just changed. I hung on to my issues of the series well into the 2000s, but I just started to dislike the series and its characters more and more each time I re-visited them. I eventually sold my extensive run on eBay and I can't say I've ever regretted it. But yeah, it certainly captured something of the '90s Gen X grunge/slacker zeitgeist and definitely made its mark because of that. Speaking as a Gen X-er, who was working his butt off, with stagnant real wages, I resent that stereotype! It's all the Boomers fault!
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Post by adamwarlock2099 on Feb 16, 2023 8:43:37 GMT -5
I liked Gen-13 a whole lot at the time. It felt very different and current back then. But you know what? It really didn't age well...or maybe I just changed. I hung on to my issues of the series well into the 2000s, but I just started to dislike the series and its characters more and more each time I re-visited them. I eventually sold my extensive run on eBay and I can't say I've ever regretted it. But yeah, it certainly captured something of the '90s Gen X grunge/slacker zeitgeist and definitely made its mark because of that. Speaking as a Gen X-er, who was working his butt off, with stagnant real wages, I resent that stereotype! It's all the Boomers fault! That sounds like something a millenial would say. :suspiciouseye:
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Post by codystarbuck on Feb 16, 2023 12:55:59 GMT -5
Speaking as a Gen X-er, who was working his butt off, with stagnant real wages, I resent that stereotype! It's all the Boomers fault! That sounds like something a millenial would say. :suspiciouseye: No, a Millennial would mumble into their chest, from my experience. Or text on their phone, from two feet away. Seriously, though, I did hate that stupid stereotype and the media's fixation on it. As it was, they were basing it on the youngest end of Generation X. There was a big difference in life experiences between those of us at the beginning of the period (I was born in 1966) and those at the latter end. My contemporaries grew up with Vietnam as an active war, the Apollo program, the Cold War in full swing, Detente, the opening of the People's Republic of China, riots, peace protests, Watergate, the Oil Embargo, hijackings, Three Mile Island, the Womens' Movement & ERA, the death of John Lennon and that of Elvis, two attempts to assassinate Gerald Ford and one on Reagan. For the later X-ers, they missed out on that early stuff and were pretty young when much of the later events occurred . Similarly, I was alive when Apollo 11 landed on the Moon, but I was 2 1/2. I mostly recall the later Apollo missions, particularly Apollo 15, because my brother thought mission commander Dave Scott was the husband of one of our elementary school teachers, in Central Illinois. (He is a Boomer; what do you expect! ) I still think there should be a sociological category for those of us who fall into the "demilitarized zones" of generations, 2-3 years on either side of the arbitrary division assigned. I preferred the term Baby Busters to Generation X, anyway.
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Post by adamwarlock2099 on Feb 16, 2023 17:32:22 GMT -5
Can't argue with that. Born in 1977 most of what you listed I learned in school or from my parents. I didn't experience it first hand as those Gen X older than me. The closest I could get to remembering is a vague memory of my parents talking about it from hearing it on the radio, since we didn't have a TV until much later.
It's difficult in general to make generational classes, as there's no one arbitrary year whe one generation ends and the next begins. Same with Gen X and millenials. I see online people all over the place as to where one ends and one begins.
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Post by codystarbuck on Feb 16, 2023 19:13:02 GMT -5
Can't argue with that. Born in 1977 most of what you listed I learned in school or from my parents. I didn't experience it first hand as those Gen X older than me. The closest I could get to remembering is a vague memory of my parents talking about it from hearing it on the radio, since we didn't have a TV until much later. It's difficult in general to make generational classes, as there's no one arbitrary year whe one generation ends and the next begins. Same with Gen X and millenials. I see online people all over the place as to where one ends and one begins. There was also the association with grunge. I liked many grunge bands; but, I grew up with a wider variety of music on the radio and tv, in the 70s and listened to a lot of different styles; everything from folk rock, to psychedelic, glam rock, arena rock, easy listening/adult contemporary, R&B, soul, funk, disco, punk, new wave, heavy metal, rockabilly revival, ska revival, rap, and, yes grunge. As much as I liked the hard sounds of grunge, I also enjoyed some of the Carpenters' songs, Dolly Parton, the Bee Gees, The Commodores, Earth, Wind & Fire, KISS, David Bowie, The Clash, Pat benatar, Duran Duran, The English Beat, Blondie, The Cars, Fine Young Cannibals, New Order, The Dooby Brothers, The Kinks, Petula Clark, Booker T & The MGs, The Pointer Sisters, Jimmy Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane/Starship, The Who and so on and so on. Smashing Pumpkins or Stone Temple pilots were great; but they weren't everything. I think the decades that form your childhood probably have to say about you than the arbitrary generational divisions. Even those are artificial divisions, as culture evolves over time and what happened int he 60s, for example, started in the late 50s, coalesced, then evolved again, by the end of the decade and altered again. There was a difference between cultural stuff in the early 70s and the later 70s. In the early 60s, there were still remnants of the 60s issues and events, not to mention Vietnam was still an issue. That transitioned into Watergate and the loss in confidence in government, which carried on through the middle 70s. The latter half of the 70s was very much the post-Vietnam economy and the loss of manufacturing overseas, while people tried to escape from the turmoil the preceded, through drugs, dancing and other escapist pursuits. The 80s kind of start out as a reaction to that (and the 60s). I kind of feel like Gen X never got the credit for being flexible and adaptable. We caught a bit of life in affluent times and saw it turn sour and witnessed great socio-economic and political change, not to mention technological, with the silicon chip revolution. It is a generalization; but, my generation seems to adapt to new technology better than the Boomers, but we know life without it and don't necessarily fully trust it to turn everything over to it. We learned more why things work rather than just how to use it. My first computer instruction, as a senior, revolved around the functioning of a CPU and the peripherals, while we learned to do things in BASIC. College was more advanced, with things like Lotus spreadsheets and Pascal and Fortran programming (or Cobol). It was a big change between the Apple II Cs my school had and the MacIntosh, introduced the year I graduated. I still didn't use a mouse, on a computer, until after I left the military, in 1992. I keep having the discussion with a younger co-worker, about my new car and all of the electronic features and bells & whistles. There is an Auto Hold function, for the brakes, that will keep pressure on the breaks, without holding the pedal, until I press on the accelerator. She loves the idea. I have used it at drive-thru windows; but, I don't trust it for things like traffic or anything longer than a minute's wait. I have seen too much technology that cost millions fail to ever trust something like that, completely. The built-in GPS is nice; but I have decades of checking a map, before going anywhere to ever turn everything over to a GPS. We had them on board ship and they were accurate to within a few hundred yards; however, we still used a sextant to do star shots and double-check things (which is why the satellite gimmick in Tomorrow Never Dies doesn't work for me). When the robot revolution comes, my generation will be the ones who know how to fight back!
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Post by arfetto on Feb 17, 2023 15:52:02 GMT -5
Today the '90s comic I read was
StormWatch/Stormwatch issue 1 (1993).
I went through my boxes and put together a Stormwatch collection, which I believe is every issue. Since the later issues of Stormwatch were my main inspiration to make this '90s thread, I want to read the earlier issues as well and see the "whole picture" in regards to how The Authority eventually formed in the Wildstorm Universe. One thing I like about super-powered shared universes is when a character or team or concept "breaks out" years later, it is fun to follow the threads that eventually lead to that point. For another '90s example of what I mean, hmm...something like the Bloodlines event which led to Hitman appearing in The Demon and then eventually in his own series that lasted 60 issues, that type of thing. You never know what unpopular or forgotten story or event can help bring about a character or story that catches readers' eyes later on.
Stormwatch issue one is competent. It does what I believe it set out to do (selling itself as an action comic following a U.N. sanctioned super-powered group with guns and energy blasts) without major faults, but it is kind of middling overall due to not having any particularly stand-out characters so far. Fuji has a kind of cool design...anyway, for me, this issue simply exists haha.
Reading it did not excite me much, but I guess it is actually a pretty inspirational first issue, because, hmm, how to explain it...reading issue one helps me appreciate what a comic can eventually become as long as you have a competent set-up and give that comic time to evolve. I guess Stormwatch was probably a pretty well-speculated series on launch and sold decently for the first few issues (but I haven't looked it up or anything). But if it were not given time to "find its footing", the potential it eventually fulfills in later issues would have been cut off. I liked this era when even Thunderstrike (which I will get back to reading soon) could run 24 issues haha. A few years later in the '90s, A-Next (DeFalco/Frenz like Thunderstrike) is given just 12 issues. I imagine these days you've got to have a hit fast or the comic is cancelled quickly. How many interesting evolutions of comic stories has the world been deprived of due to this...
Brandon Choi and Jim Lee are the co-creators/story people for issue one. Scott Clark pencils and Trevor Scott inks. So, Scott Scott is the art team. Joe Chiodo colors and Mike Heisler letters.
A dossier on the credits page states:
In 1991, the world witnessed the disintegration of the Soviet Union. While the event signaled the end of the Cold War, it also marked the end of Soviet control over Eastern Europe. After nearly fifty years of Soviet oppression, these nations were free once more to govern themselves. Unfortunately, not all of them prospered under the new found freedom.
U.N. Security Council Communique 0121592/Priority Mission Directive 0021993 Top Secret / Stormwatch: Team One For Your Eyes Only: King, Jackson
Due to escalating hostility in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Council requires the immediate exfiltration of U.N. Envoy, John Windsor, from the Sarajevo area along with political refugees in his charge - Weatherman One/0122592
The story starts off in a danger zone with Battalion (Jackson King) blasting his psionic energy-blast-guns on a splash page.
Later in the issue, his powers are kind of explained:
With the speed of thought, Battalion's latent psionic powers energize his one-of-a-kind Cyber-Tran suit, giving him the awesome firepower of his namesake.
While blasting away, Battalion is also communicating with Skywatch Control (Weatherman One/Henry Bendix) and requests evacuation, but Weatherman refuses and tells him to proceed to the designated point with the "Seedling" (a kid with potential super powers I assume, though I am not sure how Seedlings differ from Gen-Actives at this point) and forget the rest. I am not sure how far off that designation point is compared to the "immediate evac" Battalion requests, but Weatherman is quickly established as a cold-hearted jerk haha, caring not for the other children (or King's old friend John Windsor who is also caught up in the situation) Battalion is trying to get to safety. Bendix was a huge jerk in the Ellis run of Stormwatch, totally haha, so I was interested to see if Ellis took liberties with the character and wondered how fans felt about it. Turns out, Weatherman was just always portrayed like this from the get-go haha. Saving Windsor and his political refugees (the children) was never the true objective of the mission (the opening credits dossier lied to me haha), it was only the one Seedling amongst the group that matters to the Weatherman.
Page two is a double-page spread showing the rest of Stormwatch (Fuji, Winters, Diva, etc) with Battalion. The team is attacked by soldiers, but they hold their own since they have amazing powers and all that. The gimmick of the Stormwatch team is that each one comes from a different nation. Fuji is Japanese, Winter is Russian, etc.
Then a mercenary group shows up, and it consists of the characters I saw in a pin-up in an issue of Wildstorm! (1995) I read last month, so that clears up that mystery for me.
Fully-masked red-outfit mercenary/villain types were very "in" in the early '90s it seems haha. Deadpool, Pike from Wildcats (well, I can't remember if he was a mercenary exactly but I think so), and now Deathtrap. Oh yeah, wasn't Stinger from Superman/Superboy a mercenary type? I should make a list haha.
Stormwatch and the mercs face off and there is a lot of flying and shooting and punching and all this. It is standard fare and I feel is not depicted with much thought or care (lacking the enthusiasm of Campbell's Gen13 action scenes for example), but then Deathtrap incinerates Battalion's old pal Windsor in front of him. Battalion wakes up screaming in his bed a few days later. He keeps having nightmares about the situation. Then he is visited by a character named Synergy:
Scott Clark's artwork is not yet "there" in this issue, but he became a pretty awesome artist some years later (to me, anyway). His work here is just "strike a pose". I am somewhat fascinated with the background objects and color choices in this panel though. I am not sure why.
Anyway, Synergy informs Battalion/King that his younger brother has been arrested for breaking into an electronics store. Battalion explains to the police officers who arrested his brother that his family has diplomatic immunity under U.N. Protocol due to his involvement in Stormwatch, and so his brother is returned home. Battalion lectures his brother, and then we cut to Skywatch (and Weatherman/Bendix) for the first time in the issue:
I kind of like the purple night skies
Youngblood and Supreme, Liefeld creations, are mentioned here, since this issue came out early enough in Image's lifespan when the founders were trying to play nice and incorporate everyones' characters into a shared universe. I believe this does not last very long haha.
The next day, Deathtrap and some more mercs crash Windsor's memorial service and Battalion's younger brother gets seriously injured in the attack. At the end of the issue, Synergy has no choice but to "activate" Battalion's brother (his name is Malcolm and apparently he is also a "Seedling" that has just not been activated yet). Energy beams emanate out of Malcom's body and he screams, which I suppose is a good enough cliffhanger. The problem is, it is a bit hard to care too much about Malcolm so far. Characterization is not very existent in issue one.
There is nothing really laughably bad about Stormwatch issue one, and I have to credit it for setting up Skywatch which is used well later on. I can't say this issue is super impressive, but I've certainly read worse comics haha. I just don't think there is too much to recommend in just this one issue alone, but perhaps the next few issues will change my mind.
I guess the main problem with issue one is it is simply an overly-serious, humorless affair. Image was supposed to be a dynamic upstart comic company led by young visionary artists with egos (or so I am told in documentaries and such), right?...but this comic is overall kind of stodgy haha (in a vacuum, anyway, as it is inspirational in a totally different way).
I don't recommend it to anyone here, but for me personally I enjoy seeing these "humble" beginnings and taking note of how this series will morph into something quite cool by the end.
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Post by codystarbuck on Feb 17, 2023 21:35:01 GMT -5
Early Stormwatch kind of illustrates why I skipped most early Image books. It's not bad, but there is nothing unique about it. The characters are pretty much the same physical types that were in every other book, especially the X-Men and related titles. The names sound like they came from flipping through a thesaurus and have little connection to their powers or personalities, in many cases. The personalities feel like they were pulled from a file and pasted on a mannequin. The basic set-up is a SHIELD/X-Men kind of thing and there were way too many people who needed guns to operate, but those guns didn't require ammo or power packs. Things like Battalion, where they need a weapon to channel their energy. Why? How are they conducting it to the weapon? If they can transport it without a conduit to the weapon, why can't they do that to other objects or people? Just little thought between random names and costume designs, for the standard physical types. The satellite control was even just a retread of the JLA satellite. Nothing really stood out.
That just seemed to be par for the course, for the company. Over time and especially when outside writers were brought in to do something with the concept, they developed beyond that and Stormwatch achieved that once Warren Ellis came onto it; but, the interesting characters were the ones he created to replace the existing ones, which ended up being the Authority. When he starts killing them off, it never really resonates, as they weren't that developed to begin with.
I think the books about individual characters had a better track record about doing something more unique, even if they weren't always terribly original. Spawn, Savage Dragon, The Maxx, and to a lesser extent Shadow Hawk. Books like Supreme were just carbon copies, until someone like Alan Moore comes in a figures out what makes the character tick or how to do something fun with it. Also, creators with a proven track record, developing under editorial guidance, like Mike Grell or Jerry Ordway, did a better job of putting out more personal projects (Sam Keith, too).
So much of this kind of thing at the start is why I didn't glom onto some of the better things, when they got good, until much, much later, like Superme (under Alan Moore) or Storwatch/The Authority. Every once in a while something like Black Ops popped up, that I thought was an interesting idea or take. That one look heavily inspired by Gatchaman (right down to ripping off the design of the Phoenix, from the 90s OVA series), but with firearms. It was a little closer to a SHIELD-like situation, which at least got me to look at it, even if the story wasn't that complex. It still felt like more thought went into it than some of those others out there. It helped that the art didn't seem like Liefeld or Lee-Lite, like some of the other books of the period.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Feb 17, 2023 21:44:57 GMT -5
I definitely bought this new of the shelf.. one of the first comics I bought.... I didn't know that there was better for a while. I stuck with it until the 'Image of Tomorrow' promo where they printed issue 25 of a bunch of issues.. I hated the idea so much I dropped it off my list and never really looked at it again.
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Post by arfetto on Feb 28, 2023 16:22:25 GMT -5
Yesterday I re-read:
One Piece Chapters 1-99 (1997-1999) by Eiichiro Oda. But for this particular post I will just look at chapter one.
I had not read these early chapters from the '90s since the early '00s, and revisiting them confirms my feelings that Oda is an amazing cartoonist, up there with Aragonés or Sakai. His work is energetic, creative, emotional, wonderful. I read these chapters with the '90s segments of the Color Walk art books as supplements.
In the early '00s, Oda had around four assistants who helped him with the work according to his writings. I am not sure what the situation is like now or what it was like when he started One Piece.
One Piece begins with an excitable youngster named Luffy idolizing a pirate crew that has been hanging around his town. He loves to hear about their crazy adventures and thinks being a pirate is all about being tough - so much so that he even stabs himself under his eye to prove his toughness in hopes the pirates will let him join their ranks (they don't).
One day, a mountain gang picks a fight with the pirates at the local tavern after the pirates exhaust the drink supply, but the pirates refuse to fight back and so the mountain men bully them. Luffy does not understand why the pirates do not retaliate and is aghast that the group he looked up to may be cowards.
Oh yeah, and Luffy also, without permission, eats an odd fruit that the pirates brought back as a "treasure" from their adventures. The fruit turns Luffy into a "rubber" person, just one concept in a long line of weirdness that exists within the One Piece world.
Eating this fruit may dash Luffy's dream of becoming a pirate as it causes anyone who eats it to lose their ability to swim (swimming would be a somewhat good skill to have as a pirate I suppose). The pirates eventually spring into action when Luffy's life is threatened (after he goes up against the mountain gang alone), and Oda's style shines. Near the end of the action, Shanks, the captain of the pirates, saves Luffy from a sea monster. At the cost of his own arm. Luffy learns that Shank's pirates are indeed tough, they just don't feel the need to prove it on meaningless battles and squabbles. Their lives could end at any time on the high seas, when they come to the port they just want to have fun.
The pirates head out, and Luffy no longer wishes to join their crew. Instead, he wants to become a pirate captain of his own and find a crew of his own, despite losing his ability to swim, going all in on his "dream". Shanks loans Luffy his important straw hat, and the two make a promise to meet again.
I write more in a later post.
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Post by Batflunkie on Feb 28, 2023 17:31:55 GMT -5
arfetto, I remember when One Piece first hit the states. It got fairly big fairly quickly, didn't expect it to last as long as it did, nor to become as beloved as it is I still have the first volume of the manga Nobuhiro Watsuki kind of tried to ape of it's success with Gun Blaze West, which added more of an American Cowboy flavoring to the idea. Didn't think it was all that bad despite not being well reviewed
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Post by arfetto on Feb 28, 2023 17:38:22 GMT -5
I have every English volume of One Piece so far (so basically 100 volumes, with more to come), and I think it is a very important part of '90s comics history.
Yeah, I also enjoyed Gun Blaze West and wish it stuck around (I guess typing "I have every English volume of Gun Blaze West" is not as impressive as it only lasted 3 volumes haha). I suppose everyone knows this, but at one time Oda was an assistant for Watsuki on Kenshin, so it was kind of cool to see the "master" sort of following the "apprentice" with how Gun Blaze West was following the One Piece style. A shame it did not last since I like cowboy comics.
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