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Topic: eternals....was jack kirby ahead of his time? (Topic Closed Topic Closed) Post ReplyPost New Topic
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Jason Fulton
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Posted: 27 July 2006 at 7:09pm | IP Logged | 1  

ETERNALS was published during Marvel's "Writer and Editor" phase, right?
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James Hanson
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Posted: 27 July 2006 at 8:22pm | IP Logged | 2  

"The "mystery" is who is wanting an Eternals book by anyone other than Kirby."

And the mystery is solved when that "anyone" is John Romita JR drawing classic Kirby characters.

BTw, I have the first two issues and they couldn't be moving any slower or be anymore cliche ridden. My first exposure to Gaiman, and he seems like every other writer out there. Luckily--JR jr. I mean, c'mon.
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Steve Horton
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Posted: 27 July 2006 at 8:25pm | IP Logged | 3  

I think the company is in another "writer and editor" phase right now...
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Matt Linton
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Posted: 27 July 2006 at 10:07pm | IP Logged | 4  

I love Gaimen's work, but his DC stuff (and his novels) are much better than the two Marvel projects he's done.  I think it's the real world feel of Marvel books that throws it off.  Best place to start with Gaimen (in my opinion) is the Sandman: Endless Nights graphic novel.  
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Hugh Cherry
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Posted: 27 July 2006 at 10:22pm | IP Logged | 5  

Gaiman.
Not to be picky, but it's spelled that way all up and
down this thread, and probably on the books you
have.
I know that sounds like me beinga prick, but it's a pet
peeve of mine (Like JB's pet peeve of people saying
they are great fans of "Spiderman", and not realizing
it's "Spider-Man").
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Matt Linton
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Posted: 27 July 2006 at 11:33pm | IP Logged | 6  

I am consistent, at least.  Every time I've used his name on the thread I've spelled it incorrectly.  : )
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Jason Czeskleba
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Posted: 27 July 2006 at 11:53pm | IP Logged | 7  

 Jason Fulton wrote:
ETERNALS was published during Marvel's "Writer and Editor" phase, right?


Marvel was pretty much always a "Writer and Editor" company before Shooter took over and gradually phased the practice out.  But 1976-77 was definitely the peak of the practice, as there were seven Writer/Editors at the time (Roy Thomas, Len Wein, Marv Wolfman, Jack Kirby, Steve Gerber, Archie Goodwin, and briefly, Gerry Conway).


Edited by Jason Czeskleba on 27 July 2006 at 11:54pm
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Joe Mayer
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Posted: 28 July 2006 at 6:18am | IP Logged | 8  

If you want to start off with Gaiman's stuff, I would recommend his book of short stories Smoke and Mirrors.  He has some fantastic things in there that I would read and re-read immediately.  Its a great book to keep by the bed and just pick up and grab a story at random.  That has helped me to find some of the nuances in his other works.

And 1602 wasn't my favorite project of his, but it wasn't my least.  I like Eternals so far and can't wait to have more.

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John Byrne
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Posted: 28 July 2006 at 6:25am | IP Logged | 9  

(Like JB's pet peeve of people saying they are great fans of "Spiderman", and not realizing it's "Spider-Man").

***

My "pet peeve" is those "fans" who claim great knowledge of the character, insist that whichever current creative team is not handling him correctly -- and then refer to him as "Spiderman". If someone merely misspells the name in the course of a civil discussion, I let it slide, as I do "Bryne" and other such variants.

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John Byrne
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Posted: 28 July 2006 at 6:37am | IP Logged | 10  

Re: Kirby's treatment by Marvel. As one who was there at the time, I can report that Jack was given carte blanche until it was seen that sales were plummeting --- at a time when FANTASTIC FOUR was selling about 190,000 per month, Kirby's CAPTAIN AMERICA sank to 17,000! --whereupon the "real" Marvel Universe was placed out of bounds, and he was given books like MACHINE MAN and DEVIL DINOSAUR. (Important to note that he was still given work, out of respect for who he had been. Look around for much of that going on these days.)

On the matter of Kirby complaining that his scripts were being rewritten -- this did, indeed, happen. One of the people doing the rewriting was Roger Stern, who was doing the best he could to make Kirby's material fit into the contemporary MU. (One example Rog told me about was rewriting some dialog in a CAPTAIN AMERICA ANNUAL, in which Cap looks at a flying saucer that crashed in that issue, and muses that this is the first alien space craft ever to visit the Earth!)

There was some mockery involved, elsewhere, alas. This was the period of "Jack the Hack" and one writer -- I won't name names, you'd be very disappointed to learn this about this guy -- rewrote Kirby's dialog for the "What If the Original Marvel Bullpen Became the Fantastic Four" story, taking out all of Kirby's oddly placed bold words and quotation marks -- except in Kirby's own dialog in the story. So everyone else spoke "normally", but Jack spoke with those "funky" Kirby mannerisms. Ha ha.

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Jason Fulton
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Posted: 28 July 2006 at 6:43am | IP Logged | 11  

The more I learn about the inner workings of the comic industry, the more it resembles some idiot school yard. Have I just not worked in the real world long enough to see this in all industries?
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John Byrne
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Posted: 28 July 2006 at 6:53am | IP Logged | 12  

I have long been of the opinion that just about everyone who works in the creative end of comics is in some way emotionally retarded. Yes, me too.

Unfortunately, the internet has let you all see this a bit more clearly.

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