Posted: 25 July 2017 at 7:15pm | IP Logged | 2
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I really did appreciate how DC tried to "close up shop" on a lot of titles before CRISIS hit: Cary Bates finished up his "Flash on Trial" epic; Wonder Woman married Steve Trevor (which must have been some sort of closure for those who had been reading since all those "I can't marry you, Steve, until all crime is defeated" stories of the 50's); and Alan Moore & Curt Swan's last Superman story (Moore really can be great when he's normal). But not everything gets tied up with a bow.
THE CELESTIAL MADONNA--Steve Englehart's decade-and-company-spanning epic may have been finished at some point, but I didn't see it. (I believe Marvel did a limited series, but they put such a not-great artist on it, it didn't make a splash and will probably never be collected.)
CAPTAIN AMERICA: SERPENT CROWN, etc.--I started reading during Englehart & Sal Buscema's great run, but I was immediately hit by the reality of the behind the scenes business of comics as Sal left before things were over and Englehart left just after opening a can of worms with the whole "Snap" Wilson thing. Ideally, I would have liked to have seen these two tie up that era tightly.
LSH BY STARLIN--Jim Starlin (aided by Paul Levitz scripting and the great Joe Rubinstein on inks) crafted what I think might be the finest single issue in comics history with SUPERBOY AND THE LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES #239, which had Ultra Boy on the run and set up a mystery to be solved later. The sequel appeared later, with Starlin's story truncated and the art ruined by a wholly inappropriate inker--so bad that Starlin took his name off of it. If Starlin had been allowed to finish the story as intended, the whole thing would have been collectible as a watershed moment in DC comics history.
SPIDER-WOMAN--I happen to love Mark Gruenwald's run on SW. Certainly the fact that it was set in my town of Los Angeles might have had something to do with it, but I just loved the tone Gruenwald and Infantino set with it--trust me, it was the perfect L.A. comic. Suddenly, they left and I had to sit through jarring abrupt changes for the next few years until the series was finally put out of its misery. When I recently found out Gruenwald's leaving was not his choice and he had 100 issues he could have written and he was heartbroken being replaced, I was heartbroken too.
OMEGA AND HOWARD--Likewise, I could have read 100 issues each of Steve Gerber's HOWARD THE DUCK and OMEGA THE UNKNOWN (a highly underrated concept). At least over 30 issues of his HOWARD exist, but OMEGA barely had a chance. And Gerber never even got the chance to finish the story.
In an industry where literally hundreds of throwaway issues of the "Big Guns" can be cranked out decade after decade, is it really possible that we only have five issues of THE SHADOW by Mike Kaluta? Just doesn't seem right.
Edited by Eric Jansen on 25 July 2017 at 7:17pm
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