Redartz: Okay, folks; are you ready for a couple of questions to wrap your head around? Not to worry, nothing too weighty or challenging today. Just an exercise in imagination another in memory:
1. Think of an artist , especially one often identified with a particular publisher. Then think of a title or character from another company that would benefit from that artist's touch (or at least make for an interesting variation).
2. Among your youthful activities, did you ever start / join a secret club? And if so, what can you tell us about it (I know, then it's not a secret anymore)?
To start things off, here's my answers:
1. As a Spider-man fan, I'm going with Jazzy Johnny Romita. He defined the web-slinger for me, and many others as well (certainly no disrespect to Ditko, but Romita was 'my' Spidey artist, so there it is). Romita is generally considered a 'Marvel man', understandable as he served as Marvel's Art Director for years. But to address our question, what if John Romita drew Batman? Romita could render phenomenal cityscapes for Spidey to swing around; surely he could do the same for the Darknight Detective. And he also made the villains look great; imagine what he would do with the Joker, Scarecrow or Clayface. Not to mention the famous Romita women; wouldn't you like to see his version of Catwoman, or Poison Ivy? I sure would...
2. Yes, my brother and I had clubs, and so did some of my friends. We lived next to a small woods, so we would go out and find some logs and branches with which to construct a 'clubhouse', or fort as may be. One such club included my brother, my cousin and I; we even went so far as to type up membership cards!Another time our neighbor started a secret club, and even devised a secret code. This one didn't include my brother, much to his annoyance. He offered me a dollar for the code; I took it and spilled the beans, and promptly spent the loot on a comic and a pack of baseball cards. My friend next door wasn't amused. Obviously I was a security risk , easily bribed.
Okay, your turn. Care to share?
28 comments:
Red - awesome questions.
Oddly, I was pondering the first a few days ago.
Would have loved to see Gene Colan take a crack at the Shadow after Kaluta or at the Spectre (Adventure) after Aparo. In the former, to spare me the pain of the transition to FR; in the latter, to see if it could get any better.
Similarly I would have loved to see some of the E.C. artists (can't think of names at 6:00 AM, LOL) take a crack at the Shadow after Kaluta.
On the Marvel side, I am thinking who I would have enjoyed on DD after Gene the Dean's magnificent run (how many issues? dozens and dozens) to avoid DH's art. I really cannot think of a DC artist... I was thinking Adams b/c of his genius work on GA/GL and such but I just remembered his work on Avengers 93, for example. So, I am stymied at 6:00 AM.
Cheers All!
Grew up within a stone's throw of Lake Michigan beaches among sand dunes and woods and a low population area of Gary, Indiana.
My brother and friends were always constructing forts, from wood "found" at a few houses being built nearby. (I recall my dad ixnaying the indoor toilet we added since it drained into the fort... (well, we are talking about 5 -6 year olds, lol)
We were always digging in the sand too. About 2 - 3 foot down and you hit water, due to Lake Michigan water table. Try as we might we could never build us a swimming pool, lol, cause sand kept filling in.
Among all that we would form our secret clubs, have secret missions, build traps for the kids on the next blocks. Lot of fun. But lot of unstable personalities around us in Gary, Indiana, too. ALso spent a lot of time imitating the TV show Combat as we fought our way across France killing Nazis!
Great topics Redartz!
First one I think of is Jim Aparo on Captain America. Aparo is my Batman artist and would love to see his line on Cap.
How 'bout taking Dick Dillin from JLA and give him a run on the Avengers.
As for clubs, I remember 1 summer when I was about 12, about 5 of us comic book friends created the "Ace Gang". We got the name from the combs most of us carried in our back pockets, the ones with long handles and funky colors that were popular at the time. We used a club house in the back yard of one of the guys. We had sleep overs, used the ouija board, and talked comics.
Good times!
Yeah, great questions.
On the first one, Romita is an obvious choice, good call, Red. I would have loved seeing him draw stories with any number of DC characters, esp. Wonder Woman - with frequent visits to Paradise Island. Agree with Killraven about Aparo: he's another artist who, I think, would have done an awesome job with any number of Marvel titles, not just Cap (wouldn't have minded seeing him draw a run of stories in Marvel Team-up or Marvel Two-in-One).
My own choice, though, is Jose Luis Garcia Lopez (PBHN). In the Batman vs. Hulk treasury (reviewed by some geeks for BAB a few years ago), we got a tantalizing look at JLGL drawing a few Marvel characters (Hulk/Banner and a few villains), but it would have been - and still would be, for that matter - great to see him draw any number of Marvel characters. My preference would be a team book, like Avengers or Defenders, so as many characters as possible get rendered by his magnificent pencils.
Question two: we never really had any secret clubs or whatnot, but since I grew up in a pretty rural area in Oregon, with lots of forests or groves of trees in the immediate vicinity of our house, we had a lot of secret hideaways. Initially, when they were still younger, my older sister and brother would traipse around in the woods and I would tag along. Later, my school buddies and I often met in some little hideaway in the woods - usually with a stack of comics to read and compare, and later, when we approached our teens, a girlie magazine someone filched from their father or uncle or something would get thrown into the mix as well.
Solid topics, Red!
DC artist to Marvel title: INSTANTLY came to mind---- Joe Kubert on CONAN THE BARBARIAN. A completely different style from either Barry Smith or John Buscema, sure, but I can't imagine it NOT being breath-taking, y'know?
And for Marvel artist to DC title: Killraven, I thought of the inverse of your suggestion before seeing your post(!)-- John Buscema over to JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA.
Since so many A-list artists ended up working for both DC & Marvel (Byrne, Perez, Kirby, Colan, Adams, etc), it does get a little muddy as to which one would truly be the crossover, yeah? So, relaxing the parameters a bit, I was also thinking:
John Byrne on THE FLASH- I think that's a magical union that sadly never happened.
Sal Buscema inked by Klaus Janson on BATMAN
John Romita on SUPERMAN-- I feel like Romita's inherently "bright" look might be better suited to our optimistic Man of Steel and his supporting cast.
Joe Staton on POWER PACK (yup!)
If Dick Dillin could have jumped on THE CHAMPIONS from the get-go, it might've stood a chance of out-living the bad writing it launched with. . .
Similarly, Dick Dillin would have been a great replacement once Sal B left THE DEFENDERS.
Re: Secret Clubs
CH47-- yep, we lived about 75 minutes or so NE of you, up around the lake, into the farm belt of SW Michigan. (And I will TOTALLY avoid the disparaging comments about the air quality in Gary during that era--- yikes!) And we engaged in pretty much all of those same activities in one form or another. Secret Clubs, though-- I swear they always existed more as something in comic strips (Dennis the Menace) and books (Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators) than they ever really did for us. In our case it would fall under the heading of "Whatta ya wanna do today?"-- like, go ride bikes? Or play driveway ball? Or go swimming? Or form a club? Whatcha feel like? Hmmm-- and IIRC, we may have supplanted that "Secret Club" urge with a tendency to declare ourselves, like, a super-ish "Team" of some sort. Which makes sense, in retrospect, 'cause the death of fun in the Club model is when special rules and conditions and membership requirements (even rudimentary ones) enter the discussion at all. Rudimentary bureaucracy-- ugh. Whereas a "Team" could always just hop right on their bikes the next day and pick up where they left off. . .
HB
North America's great lakes are so big they are really inland seas (any "lake" that can be seen from orbit is an inland sea) and Charlie's mention of beaches and sand-dunes confirms my point. Seas not lakes!
My father had a shed in the back garden which he never used (so why did he buy it??) and it became a sort of HQ for the kids in my street - we'd gather there and it was our "club".
Well, Colin, I've always joked that the Adriatic Sea is actually a salty, warm lake - mainly because I grew up about an hour's drive from the Pacific Ocean in Oregon, and that monster body of water has always been my first association with the word sea.4
By the way, HB, Sal Buscema and Klaus Janson have indeed done a Batman story - it's in Detective Comics Annual #10 from 1997 (the story is by Chuck Dixon). That's one of the small number of single issues in my current collection, because I just had to have a DC story, and Batman to boot, drawn by Sal.
Humanbelly you might be interested to know that John Byrne drew the Flash (Wally West) in the Legends miniseries, spinning out of Crisis on Infinite Earths. Also JLA Classified in the 2000s saw Byrne reunite with Roger Stern for some fine renditions of the League :)
Anthony
I'm with Edo on Garcia-Lopez; I'd love to see what he would've done with Spider-Man. I also agree with HB, John Buscema would've done really well on JLA, but Big John always said he hated drawing superheroes, so what about Warlord? It had somewhat the same vibe as Conan, but I think Buscema could've put his own stamp on it. Buscema might've worked on Sgt. Rock as well. And Joe Kubert on Conan ...? Yeah, HB, that'd be something to see!
On the flip side, how about Grell doing Conan? Come to think of it, Grell's Legion stuff was pretty good, so I think he'd have done a pretty good job on Avengers too ... or maybe DD or Moon Knight, since Grell's good at the "lone vigilante" stuff.
If I am allowed my little Golden Age fantasy, I would have loved to see Lou Fine from Quality Comics have a rack at The Ray’s and The Condor’s resurrection at DC in the 1990s!
Anthony & edo--- how cool is THAT, that there are a few examples from my wish-list in REAL LIFE?? Might have to order me a couple o' comics on-line. And geeze, the specificity of the Sal B/Klaus J on BATMAN--- and then there it is!
I'd forgotten about the brilliant Garcia-Lopez--- Anybody like to see him on FANTASTIC FOUR, possibly? And did anyone tap him for DAREDEVIL yet-?
And just to go with a double-obscure:
Herb Trimpe/John Severin on KAMANDI.
HB
ANd if I may indulge one last GA fantasy, I would have loved to see Jack Cole, Reed Crandall, and Lou Fine have a crack at Justice League 100 - 102 (?) wherein DC integrated the Quality Comics' heroes into the JLA / JSA universe(s).
Charlie- Yes. Reed Crandall on anything!
I know it's a bit outside the parameters, but I would have liked to have seen Paul Smith, X-Men artist, on the Justice League. And while we're on the Justice League, Kevin Maguire on the Avengers. And I know it's Marvel in Marvel, but Byrne drawing Daredevil. Wouldn't hate it.
An ad within a post: Sal Buscema took over the artwork at the end of Walter Simonson's run on Thor. Not bad, not bad...
Secret clubs:
I was in the usual clubs. Cub Scouts, Webelos, Boy Scouts. I was also a Junior Lion for the Lions Clubs. But if we're going to talk about "secret clubs", my friend was DeMolay. There was a lodge, we wore robes. Sometimes we were blindfolded...
I will say no more...
(I got a call the other day
It was my sister Carolyn, sayin'
"Aretha, come by when you can
I've got somethin' that I wanna say"
And when I got there she said
"You know rather than go through a long drawn out thing
I think the melody on the box will help me explain"
Gotta find me an angel
To fly away with me
Gotta find me an angel
Ooo and set me free
My heart is without a home
I don't want to be alone
I gotta find me an angel
In my life, in my life
Too long have I loved
So unattached within
So much that I know
That I need somebody so
So I'll just go on
Hoping that I find me someone
Gotta find me an angel in my life
In my life...in my life
I know there must be someone
Somewhere for me
Oh I lived too long
Without the love of someone
And there's no misery
Ooooh oooh like the misery
I feel in me
I gotta find me an angel in
In my life
(You'll meet him now don't you worry)
In my life
(Keep lookin' and just keep cookin')
In my life
(He'll be there, now don't you worry)
In my life).
The Queen is dead, long live the Queen.
R.I.P. Aretha...
Many thanks for participating today, everyone! Great comments all!
Charlie- So what are the Indiana Dunes like? I've never been there; but it's 'on the list'. And by the way, indulge your Golden Age fantasies (Fantasy Masterpieces?) all you wish! Love it; imagine Jack Cole on Spider-Man- sort of a pseudo Ditko...
Killraven- good call on Dick Dillin and Avengers. Aparo on Cap would be very fine indeed. And your club name,"The Ace Gang"- great, great name. You could have had a comic named after you.
Edo- Romita on Wonder Woman! Excellent! That Batman/Hulk Treasury , thanks for the reminder. I need to find that, or at least the TPB that collects all those vintage crossovers.
Oh, and you mention being about an hour from the coast. Not being familiar with Oregonian geography, were you anywhere near the mountains? I know you've mentioned the clammy weather there, did your summers last or were they short? And by the way, thanks for the info on the Detective Annual! Another item for the old Want List...
HB- Kubert on Conan: reserve me a copy. Man, that would have been great. As would Buscema on JLA. Oh, and nice point about the effects of bureucratic red tape on a 'secret club'. I think immediately of the shenanigans Calvin and Hobbes went through with their club (and of course loving every minute of it; while searching for the image used above).
Colin- yes, the Great Lakes are pretty large, especially imposing in person. Having been to the Atlantic, and to Lake Superior, I'd say Superior has the advantage in ruggedness while the ocean has the breadth. Lake Superior just looked cold and wild, even in July. Lake Michigan seems more mellow, but many Chicagoans would probably disagree with that assessment. Regardless, Lake Michigan will be ever etched in my memories for the time we went snowmobiling on the lake itself (along the shore, of course). It was frozen over so completely, it looked like Antarctica. Ice waves as far as you could see. HB and Charlie might know something about that too.
Prowl- Kevin Maguire on Avengers, great idea. Perhaps with Keith Giffen and JM Dematteis?
Finally, yes, a farewell to Aretha. She may have moved on to the Next Big Stage, but her voice and her music will live on eternally.
OK - side track to Lake Michigan.
1) It is as big as Portugal.
2) It is contaminated. NO fish is safe to eat. Period. My "father's" steel mill, for which he was the Executive in charge of purchasing, was 7th largest on the lake and dumped over 2000 lbs/ day of cyanide into the lake. God knows what the other 6 dumped to include chromium, etc.
3) Fair number of folks drown every year, in winter. They go waking among the icebergs not realizing that the snow between the bergs is just that... snow and not ice. Folks fall in and can't get out.
4) Red - I would take it off your list unless you plan to go way north into Michigan or Wisconsin. It's not all that attractive on the south shore unless you are into "industrial" nostalgia.
Red - I apologize if I may have ruined a dream of yours. It's just the south end of the lake is not so nice... going up into Michigan or Wisconsin is the better way. Though, Chicago is magnificent set as it is against the Lake, with its stunning architecture. I just don't want you bathing around Gary and getting a case of the cooties.
Continuing the Lake Michigan sidetrack for Red's education:
The dunes in Michigan possibly still have a better rep for visitors. Warren Dunes State Park was the one nearest us (45 min. drive, maybe?), and we went many times over the years. And it was still quite beautiful even in blustery, late autumn-- in a sort of wild, out-doorsy way. (Plus it was free, and no other folks around to speak of.) Great alternative date destination. Childhood memories seem to include huge swaths of dead fish washing ashore more often than not. Cook nuclear plant wasn't too far up the shore, and they would dump their overheated water right into the lake, so. . . .
Geeze--- cyanide? Man, NOW I don't feel so good---!
Hmmm-- is it possible that salt water = sea/fresh water = lake. . . regardless of relative size? Seems like I've heard of the Great Salt Lake being referred to as "really" a sea. . .
HB
I always get to these so late in the day that most of the things I think of are already mentioned, which is a good thing, I guess. I will list mine anyway, since I'm here.
A few of my dream matchups actually came to fruition when I was reading. I always wanted to see George Perez as artist for Justice League of America and Dick Dillin try his hand on the Avengers. Sadly, Dillin never got his shot, but Perez did. I remember being sad when I picked up the JLA issue that reported Dillin's death, but being excited to see Perez as the new artist. I wish he'd been able to stick it out a little bit longer.
One of the others was Gene Colan as Batman artist. Even better was seeing Doug Moench as the writer at the same time. During Frank Miller's stint with Daredevil, I dreamed of him drawing Batman and, son of a gun, that one happened too.
I would have enjoyed seeing John Buscema take on a few of the DC heroes and Jose Luis Garcia Lopez cross over to Marvel, like mentioned here.......and how cool is it to see someone else imagining Conan in the hands of Joe Kubert!! Oddly enough, I never envisioned Aparo working on any of the Marvel characters for some reason.
Sadly, there were no secret clubs in my hometown....not enough kids in town to actually have one. Still had plenty to do without it, though.
More geography. Red, since you asked, yes, there were quite a few mountains near where we lived, which was a large, fertile river valley named after the Willamette River. To the west there was the low Coast Range, which, obviously, runs right along the coastline. To the east we had the Cascades, a major range that runs from northern California to southern British Columbia. The nearest foothills were about a half-hour to 45 minute drive from where we lived. As for the weather, back when I was growing up there (i.e., 1970s-1980s), Oregon had a reputation as being rainy and miserable, but that was a bit of an exaggeration. Yes, a lot of rain fell from fall through early spring, but the summers were actually really pleasant: it wasn't humid (like here in Croatia, ugh!), and it only got really hot for a few weeks in late July/early August. But usually it all ended by September, when the rains kicked in again (I remember only a few genuine Indian summers, with warm temps and sunny skies lasting well into October).
Edo - I keep thinking of Croatia as Split, Dubrovnik, and beautiful beaches and here you are talking about Satan's armpit, lol. WHat a difference a few miles can make!!!
HB _I know the Warren Dunes well enough. And a fair amount of the ecology of the Lake. Once Lake Michigan connected to the Atlantic in the 1950s all hell broke loose. Those dying fish are Ale Wives from the Atlantic Ocean. They die from the fresh water. I can relive horror stories about them as a child. Miles of dead Ale Wives, about 6 - 10 feet wide swath every morning... Gary brought in road graders to clean them each morning and dump into the city dump. Anyhow, corrective action was taken introducing Salmon to eat Ale Wives... and so begins a very long story of humans trying to control nature.
But the DUnes are still very popular to this day! Check out the tens of 1000s of cars each weekend making the trip from Chicago LOL!
Charlie, yep, the Adriatic coast and islands are pleasant enough - it's still humid but the air circulates a little more and, of course, you can always take a dip in the sea. Here in Zagreb, in the interior, it gets really muggy and, child of the North American west coast that I am, I just cannot get used to it. It's even worse in the easternmost part of the country (where my parents grew up) - the humidity is off the charts there, so it's heaven for plants (which is why you can grow pretty much anything you want there) and bugs.
HB, your definition of sea vs. lake is probably correct (sea = salt water, lake = fresh water). That would explain why the extremely salty Dead Sea in Israel is a sea, not a lake. But I still think a body of water big enough to be seen from space should be defined as a sea.
Colin-
Hey, no matter how you look at it. . . it's a whole big bunch o' water-!
I also just recalled that in THE AFRICAN QUEEN, they're en-route to "The Big Lake", which I think is Lake Victoria. . . 2nd biggest lake in the world, and bigger than some seas, surely. So yep, I bet the fresh-water distinction is what comes into play. . . Annnnnd we're just speaking english here, of course. Possibly the "sea" vs "lake" linguistic distinction isn't universal across other languages, yeah? (Like, maybe to Klingons, all large bodies of water are called "m'k'lubglsh" or something. . . )
HB
Holy cats-- I just checked on a whim, and "sea" and "lake" in Klingon are indeed the same word!! Wow. . .
HB
HB my old man’s working theory on why their were no outbreaks of disease in the lake, like now when beaches get closedown for days, was that all the cyanide and other chemicals killed them. Now that they greatly reduced the toxins nature is back in action!
Great suggestions for swaps, guys! My initial answer has already been mentioned (Paul Smith, who I would put on either the aforementioned JLA or Aquaman, believe it or not), so I'll add Jim Steranko, preferably on a trippy mystic or sci-fi comic. I could see his psychadelic style making for some wild Green Lantern, Spectre, Dr. Fate, or Adam Strange stories.
- Mike Loughlin
Edo, Charlie, Colin, HB et al- thanks for the geography lessons! I'll be better prepared for that trip to the dunes of Lake Michigan...
Mike L- Excellent suggestion; Steranko at DC! He'd be mindblowing on any of the titles you mentioned, but Green Lantern would be mighty special.
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