The Adventures of Jimmy Olsen Volume 1 by Jack Kirby and Vince Colletta (1970-71): One of the strangest occurences in 1970's comic books consisted of DC wresting writer/artist Jack Kirby (co-creator of Marvel's Captain America, the Fantastic Four, Thor, Iron Man, the Avengers and a slew of other characters) away from Marvel and then apparently having absolutely no idea what to do with him.
This led to a number of fascinating Kirby series that always seemed to get cancelled just as they were shifting into high gear (The Demon, The New Gods, The Forever People, OMAC...). It also led to DC putting Kirby not on the core Superman books but on the failing Jimmy Olsen book for close to two years. Kirby created stuff there (the Cadmus Project chief among them) that would go on to become crucial elements in Superman mythology...more than 20 years later, during and just after the Death of Superman storyline of the early 1990's. Maybe Mark Evanier is right -- Kirby was always ahead of the curve.
The oddest thing about Kirby's run on Jimmy Olsen was that DC, apparently traumatized by a Kirby Man of Steel, got other artists to redraw Superman's face so that it "fit" better with the company-wide portrayal of Superman. Why did this happen? Good question, because Kirby's unedited Superman is as much or more "on-model" as Mike Sekowsky's Superman in Justice League during the 1960's and early 1970's. For whatever reason, what one gets is a lot of characters with Kirby heads and Superman and the occasional Perry White with an Al Plastino or Curt Swan head. Bizarre.
The Jimmy Olsen stuff Kirby did is mostly fun, and it offers glimpses of what Superman would have been like had DC handed the reins to the character to Kirby (hint: dynamic and somewhat offbeat). Clashes with genetically engineered super-mutants abound, including one with a four-armed yellow-guy who wouldn't look out of place in Hellboy. This volume also contains the famous/infamous Don Rickles two-parter. Yes, Don Rickles guest-stars alongside Jimmy Olsen and Superman, though Superman and Rickles never actually meet. Again, bizarre. To quote the tremendous cover blurb on the second part of this team-up, "Don't ask! Just buy it!"
Hellboy Volume 8: Darkness Calls (2006-2007) by Mike Mignola and Duncan Fegredo: Fegredo nicely combines the moody and the action-packed in taking over for Mignola on Hellboy's art here. Various supernatural nasties -- chief among them the Russian Baba Yaga and Koschei the Deathless -- take their shots at Hellboy while armageddon continues to move closer. That Hellboy occasionally generates his own sound effects -- yelling 'Boom!' as he punches somebody -- continues to amuse me way more than it probably should.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Monday, October 5, 2009
Comics X 5
Essential Spider-man Volume 6 (1972-74) by Stan Lee, Gerry Conway, Len Wein, John Romita, Gil Kane, Ross Andru and others: Not only does this volume supply a lot of the framework for Spider-man movies 1 and 3, but it also introduces the Punisher, Marvel's popular and bloodthirsty vigilante who so far has starred in three woeful movies of his own. Major moments in Spider-man history showcased here include the death of Gwen Stacy, the death of Norman Osborn (the first Green Goblin), and the assumption of the Green Goblin mantle by Norman's mentally disturbed son Harry.
The issues -- mostly written by Conway -- work heroically to expand Spidey's rogue's gallery while also managing to get decent stories out of fairly minor Lee/Ditko era villains (most notably the Vulture and the Molten Man). Contained herein are some of the first Spider-man comic books ever bought for me, which gives this volume a nostalgic tinge. For the record, "my" Spider#1 would be the second installment of the Molten Man two-parter.
Spider-man probably had one of the smoothest writer-and-artist transitions from its initial Lee/Ditko (or for other Marvel books, Lee/Kirby) days. John Romita took over prety dynamically after seminal Spidey artist Ditko left in the mid-1960's, while in this volume, Conway and Wein finally take the reins from Stan Lee without any noticeable drop in quality. On the art side, Gil Kane and Ross Andru start putting their imprints on the web-spinner. Andru, especially, is one of the more under-rated super-hero artists of the 60's, 70's and 80's, with terrific runs on Wonder Woman, Super-man and Spider-man during that time, along with the spiffy first Superman/Spider-man team-up.
Reading these issues now, I'm struck by how much plot and dialogue a normal Spider-man comic book of the far-flung past of 1973 had when compared to most super-hero comic books now, allowing for things like character-building to occur in between the fight sequences.
Showcase Presents the Flash Volume 2 (c. 1960-63) by John Broome, Gardner Fox and Carmine Infantino: Fittingly, super-speedster Flash had pretty much the zippiest adventures of DC's Silver Age heroes. His rogue's gallery was the weirdest this side of Spider-man and included such characters as the Top, Captain Boomerang, Mirror Master, Captain Cold, the Reverse-Flash, the Pied Piper, 64th-century magician Abra Kadabra and the Weather Wizard. When he wasn't dealing with those criminals separately or in various combinations, the Flash tended to fend off alien invasions.
The whole volume goes down smoothly, and Broome's often loopy extrapolations of the Flash's power (the Flash can control every molecule in his body, to cite one example) keep things fresh and lively. Team-ups with Kid Flash, Green Lantern and the risibly named stretchy superhero Elongated Man also appear.
Showcase Presents Teen Titans Volume 1 (1964-68) by Bob Haney, Len Wein, Marv Wolfman, Nick Cardy, Irv Novick, Lee Elias, Bill Draut and others: Robin, Wonder Girl, Aqualad and Kid Flash -- the youthful sidekicks or proteges of Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman and the Flash, respectively -- team up here for adventures that are generally easy on the eyes (Nick Cardy, a really deft and appealing penciller and sometime inker, handles a lot of the art duties here) but sometimes really hard on the old reading part of the brain. Writer Bob Haney, who's generally quite readable on his Batman material of about the same era, seems to have been under orders to make the Titans hip and groovy and, once the Batman TV show hit the airwaves, campy.
The result is possibly the worst writing on any DC book of the 1960's. The only analogy I can think of is Homer Simpson's attempt to be hip with Poochy on the Itchy and Scratchy Show. OK, so who doesn't want to see the Titans disguise themselves as hippies, battle the Mad Mod or take part in various adventures that seem to be thinly disguised ads for Honda motor scooters? The art is terrific, though, and a glimpse of things to come appears in the last story of the volume with Titans uber-scribe Marv Wolfman sharing writing duties with Len Wein on what was, for the Titans of the time, a thoughtful and serious piece about politics and bigotry.
Angel: Blood and Trenches by John Byrne (2009): Byrne's story of Buffy's Angel fighting vampires during World War One is a fun piece done in glorious black, red and white. The art recalls Byrne's similar B&W art on his vastly under-rated OMAC miniseries of the early 1990's, a miniseries I'd suggest you go out and buy right now. Angel isn't quite as compelling, but it's still a fun read with an interesting twist at the end. A warning to the curious: don't read Byrne's afterword until after you've read the comic or you'll spoil the surprise. Certainly recommended for Buffy and Angel fans.
Hellboy Volume 7: The Troll Witch and Other Tales by Mike Mignola, P. Craig Russell and Richard Corben (2003-2005): After the catastrophic Hellboy mythology building of Volume 6 comes a somewhat lighter collection of standalone stories (though most add something to our understanding of how Hellboy is either going to destroy the world or save it).
Having two of comics' greatest fantasy artists along to illustrate a couple of the stories -- Russell on a light-hearted romp about the vampire of Prague and Corben on an apocalyptic slice of African mythology -- keeps things fizzing along quite nicely. Russell can be one of the funniest -- or maybe drollest -- comic book artists around, and the vampire story plays to that side of his art. Corben's story gives us that distinctive mix of the monumental, the realistic and the matter-of-fact grotesque that's characterized Corben's work since the early 1970's. By this point, Hellboy has become a rarity in horror/dark fantasy stories -- an investigator character who's as interesting as the menaces and mysteries he investigates, a company that would also include Seabury Quinn's Jules de Grandin and Manly Wade Wellman's John the Balladeer and not many others.
The issues -- mostly written by Conway -- work heroically to expand Spidey's rogue's gallery while also managing to get decent stories out of fairly minor Lee/Ditko era villains (most notably the Vulture and the Molten Man). Contained herein are some of the first Spider-man comic books ever bought for me, which gives this volume a nostalgic tinge. For the record, "my" Spider#1 would be the second installment of the Molten Man two-parter.
Spider-man probably had one of the smoothest writer-and-artist transitions from its initial Lee/Ditko (or for other Marvel books, Lee/Kirby) days. John Romita took over prety dynamically after seminal Spidey artist Ditko left in the mid-1960's, while in this volume, Conway and Wein finally take the reins from Stan Lee without any noticeable drop in quality. On the art side, Gil Kane and Ross Andru start putting their imprints on the web-spinner. Andru, especially, is one of the more under-rated super-hero artists of the 60's, 70's and 80's, with terrific runs on Wonder Woman, Super-man and Spider-man during that time, along with the spiffy first Superman/Spider-man team-up.
Reading these issues now, I'm struck by how much plot and dialogue a normal Spider-man comic book of the far-flung past of 1973 had when compared to most super-hero comic books now, allowing for things like character-building to occur in between the fight sequences.
Showcase Presents the Flash Volume 2 (c. 1960-63) by John Broome, Gardner Fox and Carmine Infantino: Fittingly, super-speedster Flash had pretty much the zippiest adventures of DC's Silver Age heroes. His rogue's gallery was the weirdest this side of Spider-man and included such characters as the Top, Captain Boomerang, Mirror Master, Captain Cold, the Reverse-Flash, the Pied Piper, 64th-century magician Abra Kadabra and the Weather Wizard. When he wasn't dealing with those criminals separately or in various combinations, the Flash tended to fend off alien invasions.
The whole volume goes down smoothly, and Broome's often loopy extrapolations of the Flash's power (the Flash can control every molecule in his body, to cite one example) keep things fresh and lively. Team-ups with Kid Flash, Green Lantern and the risibly named stretchy superhero Elongated Man also appear.
Showcase Presents Teen Titans Volume 1 (1964-68) by Bob Haney, Len Wein, Marv Wolfman, Nick Cardy, Irv Novick, Lee Elias, Bill Draut and others: Robin, Wonder Girl, Aqualad and Kid Flash -- the youthful sidekicks or proteges of Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman and the Flash, respectively -- team up here for adventures that are generally easy on the eyes (Nick Cardy, a really deft and appealing penciller and sometime inker, handles a lot of the art duties here) but sometimes really hard on the old reading part of the brain. Writer Bob Haney, who's generally quite readable on his Batman material of about the same era, seems to have been under orders to make the Titans hip and groovy and, once the Batman TV show hit the airwaves, campy.
The result is possibly the worst writing on any DC book of the 1960's. The only analogy I can think of is Homer Simpson's attempt to be hip with Poochy on the Itchy and Scratchy Show. OK, so who doesn't want to see the Titans disguise themselves as hippies, battle the Mad Mod or take part in various adventures that seem to be thinly disguised ads for Honda motor scooters? The art is terrific, though, and a glimpse of things to come appears in the last story of the volume with Titans uber-scribe Marv Wolfman sharing writing duties with Len Wein on what was, for the Titans of the time, a thoughtful and serious piece about politics and bigotry.
Angel: Blood and Trenches by John Byrne (2009): Byrne's story of Buffy's Angel fighting vampires during World War One is a fun piece done in glorious black, red and white. The art recalls Byrne's similar B&W art on his vastly under-rated OMAC miniseries of the early 1990's, a miniseries I'd suggest you go out and buy right now. Angel isn't quite as compelling, but it's still a fun read with an interesting twist at the end. A warning to the curious: don't read Byrne's afterword until after you've read the comic or you'll spoil the surprise. Certainly recommended for Buffy and Angel fans.
Hellboy Volume 7: The Troll Witch and Other Tales by Mike Mignola, P. Craig Russell and Richard Corben (2003-2005): After the catastrophic Hellboy mythology building of Volume 6 comes a somewhat lighter collection of standalone stories (though most add something to our understanding of how Hellboy is either going to destroy the world or save it).
Having two of comics' greatest fantasy artists along to illustrate a couple of the stories -- Russell on a light-hearted romp about the vampire of Prague and Corben on an apocalyptic slice of African mythology -- keeps things fizzing along quite nicely. Russell can be one of the funniest -- or maybe drollest -- comic book artists around, and the vampire story plays to that side of his art. Corben's story gives us that distinctive mix of the monumental, the realistic and the matter-of-fact grotesque that's characterized Corben's work since the early 1970's. By this point, Hellboy has become a rarity in horror/dark fantasy stories -- an investigator character who's as interesting as the menaces and mysteries he investigates, a company that would also include Seabury Quinn's Jules de Grandin and Manly Wade Wellman's John the Balladeer and not many others.
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