Martinex1: You know what day it is - so let's Follow the Leader!
Just to repeat what we have said over the last number of weeks - here are some guidelines for any newcomers that may stop by..
1) Whoever gets here first (or even second) post a topic starter in the comments that others can jump on and discuss for the day; supply as little or as much detail as necessary to get the ball rolling.
2) The range of possible subjects is broad - comics, movies, music, television, fiction, hobbies, queries, etc. Try to have the topic touch some aspect of Bronze Age nostalgia if possible.
3) Keep it clean and family friendly.
4) All others...follow the Leader! Your job is to keep the conversation rolling. (As I said - follow the topic wherever it takes you; a conversation started about comics may lead to comments on jazz for all we know)!
Note: There is one caveat... if Redartz or I notice that the suggested topic is something we already have in the pipeline, we will let you know and inform you of the projected date for that subject for discussion. That is just so we don't double up. Hey - great minds think alike, right?
We have had a great run of topics this Summer, with outstanding conversations around recommended reading, side jobs for cash, and the Beatles. Anything even remotely touching the Bronze Age or shared experiences is open for discussion every Tuesday. So carry on ... and cheers!
18 comments:
Here's a topic I've been wanting to raise, with advance apologies if it's been touched on already.
I considered myself an avid comic collector growing up, but still could not sample everything. Websites like this have been a great way to hear about classic bronze age storylines that I did not pick up at the time, and in many cases I've since been able to track down those storylines and see what I've missed.
Quick questions:
1) What Bronze Age storylines did you first sample decades after they hit the stands, based on reputation and recommendation, and come away with a "you had to be there" conclusion? Even if you want to like the story, and can appreciate how maybe as a kid you would've been into it, you have to admit it's not grabbing you. I've got a few examples of this, but I'll just cite the Steve Gerber Defenders issues. I finally got an Essentials Defenders volume and, while I see how the storytelling is offbeat and bold for its time, I liked it but couldn't get as excited as the hype promised.
(side note: this happens to me way more with Silver Age stories...a lot of Lee/Kirby classics just don't get me past the cornier aspects of the stories).
and on a more positive note
2) What storyline or run absolutely lived up to the hype? My best example is the Walt Simonson Thor run. I had bought some sporadic issues growing up, and enjoyed the last year of the run when it came out. But it wasn't until the last decade or so that I tracked down and read the whole run, and I had a blast.
That's all I got for now.
Thanks,
david p.
Hey David, thanks for the questions!
Most of my Bronze Age goodness remains unread at this moment but I will give two positive examples of comics first read after the event.
And they are:
1. Thor as the silver turned over to bronze. That is, the final few Kirby issues, the Neal Adams issues and the John The Elder issues. All scripted by Stan of course. Boy, those comics took flight and Stan was clearly still enjoying himself.
2. Master of Kung-Fu. Pretty much unique to this day, a comic so good that it even kept going with low sales due to the respect it had from editorial. Definitely worth the hype.
As for comics that didn't live up to the hype, I can't think of an example. But this thread may jog my memory!
1."Panther's Rage" did absolutely nothing for me.
2, While it wasn't Bronze Age, the Astonishing X-Men run by Joss Weedon is a messy, wacky and multi-faceted arc with one of the best scenes I can remember to close it out (the on with Kitty Pryde, and I will say no more).
Yoyo
Positive example;
It took decades but I finally got to read "A Journey To The Center Of The Android".
Part of the Avengers Kree/Skrull War.
Great writing, great art (Thomas,Adams,Palmer). Greatest Ant-Man adventure...ever,IMHO.
I liked Deathlok a lot when I read it in the original but reading it collected, the weakness of the missed deadlines and at times scattershot artwork really hurt the overall effect. The earliest installments were so good they fooled my memory into thinking all of it was that good.
Phantom Stranger from DC was a book I did not read at the time, but I thoroughly enjoyed the two Essentials volumes which were released some years ago now. The stories were vintage but still flavorful and held up nicely.
The Spectre series in Adventure Comics was a huge favorite of mine and when I got to read it a few years ago in reprint I enjoyed it even more. It holds very nicely.
Rip Off
1)The Kree/Skrull War. It was a good enough read, but felt like a letdown after all the hype. I much preferred the What If? #20 ending of the story over the canonical one.
2) The Simonson/Goodwin Manhunter series. Great individual stories connected into a satisfying story arc.
Alan
i agree Alan, the Kree/Skrull War as a whole was a bit of a let down.
But there had been so many references over the years to the "Ant-Man inside of Vision" story, that when I got to that particular part it did not disappoint. And Neal Adams art...primo!
The Kree/Skrull didn't do it for me either... 'course I never thought Adams was a comfortable fit for Marvel heroes. Sure ish 93 was alright, the Antman trip into Vish was very cool, but it later suffered by a badly drawn Thing and FF later on.., that entire storyline suffered from too many changing artists.
For me, the greatest triumph was still the Avengers/Defenders clash, Summer of '73. It started pretty cool with the setup, with the Defenders strengthening up, the individual fights, all leading that summer to the great showdown with Dormammu and Loki 'cross several dimensions in ish 118. Love the brief after-math in the Defenders mag, but actually sorry to see Hawkeye leave there. And meanwhile in Avengers, Englehart was able to come off the heights with a nice little love-triangle AND a silly 3-part Zodiac tale, followed by none-other-than Thanos..
I mean, c'mon here...? The Englehart/Buscema (or Brown) machine was firing on all jets, pure and simple.
Good questions, David ! To answer them:
1. Much of the Bronze Age Justice League. At that time I mostly read Marvel and largely bypassed the JLA. In recent years I've picked up and read a few. Not that they're bad, they just don't excite me. Rather unremarkable story and art, but perhaps I just haven't read the right issues.
2. Rom and Alpha Flight. Marti convinced me to give Rom a try, and it was better than I expected. As for Alpha Flight, I read a few back then, but now I'm reading many more, and loving them. Both of these were due, incidentally, to review posts we were preparing. Another example of how educational blogging can be...
1) Yeah, the Kree/Skrull War seemed disjointed to me. I also ended up reading the entire first volume of FF, and I thought a lot of those stories were over-hyped (though I did generally like Byrne's run)
2) On the other hand, stuff like Miller's first run on DD, or the Korvac Saga totally lived up to the hype. They weren't perfect, but what is? I also ended up liking the early Conan stuff, even though Conan was never on my radar as a kid. Probably reading the original stories first helped.
Yeah, good questions, David P.
In response to no. 1), since my answer is related, I have to say I had a totally different response to Gerber's Defenders, as I enjoyed it pretty thoroughly when I re-read it as an adult. However, I only read his Howard the Duck the first time as an adult, when I bought the Essentials volume about 10 years ago, and that's one case it definitely didn't live up to the hype for me: while I appreciate what Gerber was trying to do, and enjoyed the idea of a 'funny animal' character in a superhero universe, so much of it fell short for me, and a lot of the humor is now dated. I really disagree when I see people call Howard Gerber's magnum opus, because I think his work on Defenders, Man-Thing, Guardians and even Omega is much better.
On question no. 2), I guess that like Alan, I'll have to pick Goodwin & Simonson's Manhunter as well; back in the day I did read one or two installments of the story, but I only read the whole thing when I bought a reprint collection - again, about 10 years ago. I've since read it twice (heck, I even wrote some reviews with a certain other commenter here), and loved it both times. Definitely lives up to the hype, and then some.
1. I have to go with the Kree/Skrull War as well. I had never read it when it originally ran in the Avengers comics, but I had heard a lot about it. So, sometime in the 1980's they came out with a TPB that reprinted the entire story in one book. So, I picked it up expecting to be blown away, and instead I was sort of underwhelmed. I thought the story did not flow very well as a continuous narrative, and I found it quite disjointed (and even a bit confusing). It may just be a case of having overly high expectations, or it might just not have aged that well.
2. Unlike The Kree/Skrull War, The Dark Phoenix Saga does not disappoint, and remains one of the gold standards by which all other multi-part epic comic stories are measured. I was a bit of a late comer to the Byrne / Claremont X-Men and I missed most of the Dark Phoenix Saga when it originally ran. The only issues I picked up were the last three. I wanted to read all the other issues that lead up to the final 3-part conclusion, but at the time the back issues were going for a pretty penny, and my young teenage self couldn't swing it on a bag-boy's salary. But a few years later the entire story was reprinted in a complete TPB volume that I found on the shelf of a bookstore. (That was a good day). I devoured the entire book, and then read it again. It's just that good.
Great question!
I discovered some gems over the past 25 years: Jack Cole’s Plastic Man and Will Eisner’s The Spirit (Golden Age Archives), Jim Shooter’s Legion run (mid-1960s Silver Age), and Howard Chaykin’s American Flagg (Bronze Age) and Buscema's early B&W Conan magazines.
Redartz and Martinex introduced me to John Byrne’s FF and the Avengers-Defenders war (around Avengers 117ish) a few months ago which I have enjoyed reading!
I’ve tried twice to read the much adored D.C.’s “Crisis on Infinite Earths” but no luck. And, I was luke warm on Simonson's Thor.
Glad you remembered our team review, Edo; I completely forgot until I was away from the computer :)
Hyped stories that I didn't like:Cap's switch to the Nomad identity, didn't read the whole thing until 2007. Bad art, depressing stories and the Falcon gets retconned as a stereotypical 70s pimp? No.
I didn't read Panther's Rage, Starlin's runs on Warlock or Captain Marvel in their entirety until the last 10 years and I loved all of them.
Excellent questions David P. Thanks for leading the charge.
1) I know Simonson's Thor is a highly recommended run, and I read it 25 years after it first appeared. I think the story and writing were top notch but the art distracted me. I did not llike Simonson's style here so the book did not ring as a classic to me. I actually think if he teamed with another artist I may have liked it better. Very good - not great in my opinion.
I also was not a fan of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen - that was recommended to me.
2) A strange one is that somebody here recommended is Killraven /War of the Worlds and I liked it much more than I expected to. The worst part was the hero's costume. (And thanks to Killraven for commenting today)! Early Doom Patrol also surprised me.
Still have to read Master of Kung Fu some day.
Lots of good, interesting responses! Thanks for reminding me of the Goodwin/Simonson Manhunter, that wqs a good one.
Martinex1, I'm also not a huge fan of Simonson's art, although it did grow on me. But like you, I thought his Thor stories were great. I actually preferred the art when Sal Buscema took over the end of Simonson's run. The big exception was the all-splash-page Midgard Serpent issue, #380, I thought Walt knocked that one out of the park!
I suspect the problem with reading acclaimed runs years, maybe decades, after they were first released is that so many comic books have come out since then, taking storytelling trends in new, different directions. I finally read Peter David's "Death of Jean DeWolf" a few years ago, a beloved Spidey tale. I think Peter David is great, and the story was well told, but it didn't resonate with me a lot. Shocking and dramatic for its time, but after reading so many years of comics upping the ante on "gritty" stories (to the point it was becoming a cliche), the Jean DeWolf story has a hard time standing out.
Probably the most fun issues to discover are the ones that fill in gaps in stories that you were excited about when they first came out. Like William's experience completing the Dark Phoenix Saga, I similarly loved finding all the issues in the Avengers Korvac Saga and, best of all, finally finding that Marvel Two-in-One annual wrapping up Starlin's epic Adam Warlock/Thanos arc.
Thanks for all the great input on this topic!
-david p.
No love for the Kree-Skrull War? I guess I have to jump in and defend it. To my mind, it was akin to Marvel's first epic saga, a Lord of the Rings-like journey that brought together so many different elements but, to me at least, in a cohesive manner. I will say it was hurt by the change in artists, and the ending was a bit too deus ex machina. But all in all, one of the best multi-issue stories of the bronze age.
As for the actual questions for this post, it's difficult, since I feel like I read almost everything when it first came out. But I'll try.
1)Disappointing: Kirby's Kamandi - while it hand a grand idea, there was no there there, so to speak. Kamandi was always a cypher, with no real personality.
2) And yet: I found myself coming back for more Kamandi, based mostly on Kirby's grand scene-scapes, the bizarre spectacle, and the hope that the story would evolve into something more meaningful. It never quite got there for me, but it was still fun, it just never reached its potential, as far as I'm concerned.
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