Dammit.

I sat down about an hour ago to write up some reminiscences of favorite Mantlo stories and talk about why they still hold up for me...was just about to post it...and somehow, I accidentally hit the "back" button on my browser. Lost the whole post, and it was something of a whopper.

Very frustrating.

Maybe I'll reconstruct it later - I like talking about those issues - but the short version of it was that, for me, Bill's best work had an air of tragedy that connected with me more powerfully than most of the other Marvel comics of my youth. I can't speak for his entire body of work - as a kid I only had enough money for maybe a comic or two a week. Favorites, though, like MICRONAUTS #12, INCREDIBLE HULK #266, ROM #29, and especially MARVEL FANFARE #7 - nearly the equal of "The Kid Who Collects Spider-Man" for me - these are stories I can still revisit and be moved by. And after five years of writing comic reviews online, I like to think I can look at a comic with a fair degree of  detachment. That critical eye didn't stop me from picking HULK #266 as my  favorite Hulk story when my review group did a spotlight on Hulk comics to coincide with the then-topical Ang Lee flick. Something like 20 years after the issue was written, it still held up for me.

With Mantlo's best work in mind, I suppose it's ultimately irrelevant to me personally if the majority of his writing was forgettable or uninspired or whatever. It seems I had the good fortune to stumble across some of his best stuff as a kid, and whatever his broader writing faults, I can honestly say that at those times, he matched up to any of his contemporaries.

Great Bill Mantlo interview from 1979.

http://www.innerspaceonline.com/BEM24-1.htm

Thanks for the link. Very informative. Mantlo comes across as an intelligent guy who cared about his work.

I found it interesting that Mantlo was so complimentary of Jim Shooter in the piece but Shooter in his interviews over the last few years has been particular in mentioning Bill Mantlo as a weak writer. Whether or not Shooter actually thinks that to be true I always thought that it's in bad taste for Shooter to criticise somebody who is now not in a position to respond.

I'd put him in the "solid 2nd tier" group, too.  There was the occasional bit of wince-inducing dialogue, and he only rarely achieved "damn, that was one fine comic" status, but by the same token I very rarely felt that he had put out an actual bad story.  (The main two that come to mind are his first issue of Alpha Flight and that Hulk issue where everyone comes to congratulate him.)

And he made Micronauts (okay, maybe not the Chaykin issues...) and Rom far better books than they had any right to be. 

Was Micronauts the first comic book to tie in with a toy line? It was a far cry from what followed. Seems most action toys in the 80s ended up with half-hour TV shows and comics that patronized kids. They didn't have the sci-fi of Mantlo's Micronauts.

I wonder if Marvel is going to be putting out Essential volumes of Micronauts or ROM?

Jason wrote: I guess it must be.  I know I have that issue... I looked on comics.org and I recognize the cover.  But I have not the vaguest recollection about the story (and I can vividly remember many other stories from the same era that I have never gone back and reread).  I quit buying Hulk during Mantlo's run, I'm afraid.  My "definitive Hulk" from childhood was Len Wein's run a few years earlier, and Gerber's concurrent work in Defenders.

That's the point, man. I was very young when I read Mantlo's Hulk, but having read Wein's run (well, at least part of it) I could see that Mantlo's Hulk was much less interesting.

And he broke TWO of Hulk's golden rules! First he did away with the "Jeckyl and Hyde" aspect of the character by doing his "Hulk with Banner mind" period (and later doing away with Banner itself for an exceedingly long period). Then he broke the "Hulk is the strongest there is" one doing the Crossroads period, where pretty much anyone Hulk met was strongest then he was!

When Peter David did that, you guys crucified him. but Bill Mantlo gets a free pass just because he did it when you guys were 10? No way!

And his utter destruction of the Alpha Flight as a viable series must go into history as one of comics' very worst runs. It makes JMS' Spider-Man pale in comparison. No amount of decent Micronauts, Rom or Cloak and Dagger will ever make up for THAT!

Glenn Greenberg: The relationship between Mantlo and Shooter had disintegrated by the mid 1980s.

Wasn't that the case between Shooter and just about everybody at Marvel by that point?

Pedro Bouca wrote: And his utter destruction of the Alpha Flight as a viable series must go into history as one of comics' very worst runs. It makes JMS' Spider-Man pale in comparison.

Poppycock.  Now you're using hyperbole to make a point.  Nothing Mantlo did was ever, EVER, as disparaging, destructive, and mind-bogglingly horrible as what JMS did in ASM and "Sins Past".  Sorry, Pedro, but you're dead wrong on this point.

FYI, I don't ever remember "crucifying" PAD over the Hulk facing challenges that were equal to or, for a while, exceeded his strength level.  No generalizations to make a point, please.  Villains have, for a long time, been able to beat the Hulk, otherwise he'd be the single most boring character on the planet.  But who won in the end, Pedro?  Yeah, that's right; the Hulk.  As far as what Mantlo did with Hulk and Banner and what PAD did with them, well, I consider that to be apples and oranges, but YMMV.  I will say, however, that I never liked Mantlo introducing the MPD theory for Banner, but that was one issue.  PAD picked that particular ball up and ran with it as if his life depended on it.