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Neil Brauer
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 10 February 2012
Location: United States
Posts: 714
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| Posted: 07 October 2012 at 11:33pm | IP Logged | 1
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It's really amazing how good(I remember) some of those licensed series being.
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Richard White
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 28 August 2009
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 1058
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| Posted: 07 October 2012 at 11:45pm | IP Logged | 2
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Love the John Carter stuff from the 70's, especially the issues drawn by Gil Kane. There's a very nice omnibus out too.
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Robert White
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 4560
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| Posted: 08 October 2012 at 12:45am | IP Logged | 3
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Do you guys think that 1961-1964 Marvel sometimes gets a "pass" based on the high quality of Lee/Ditko Spider-Man and Lee/Kirby FF? I find pre-Buscema Avengers to be quite sketchy, Thor didn't start to click till Kirby returned full force, the X-Men never quite clicked, the Hulk didn't really start to come into his own until Trimpe, etc, etc.
Pre-Shooter 70's Marvel certainly had its problems, but I'd say that most of it was superior to the first half of the 60's, though certainly not on the level of the second half.
Edited by Robert White on 08 October 2012 at 12:45am
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 133324
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| Posted: 08 October 2012 at 4:15am | IP Logged | 4
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Do you guys think that 1961-1964 Marvel sometimes gets a "pass" based on the high quality of Lee/Ditko Spider-Man and Lee/Kirby FF? I find pre-Buscema Avengers to be quite sketchy, Thor didn't start to click till Kirby returned full force, the X-Men never quite clicked, the Hulk didn't really start to come into his own until Trimpe, etc, etc. •• There was some truly astonishing CRAP published in the early days of the "Marvel Age", t'is true. And even the early issues of FF didn't shine quite as brightly as did those that came later. But Marvel was much SMALLER then, so the percentage of good to bad (at least in my eyes, as a reader at the time) was much higher. Sad fact is, as Marvel got bigger and bigger there was simply no way to maintain the same level of quality across the line. The more books being published, the more crap there would be and, alas, that would tend to be a larger percentage of the total, too.
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Robert Bradley
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 20 September 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 4881
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| Posted: 08 October 2012 at 7:28am | IP Logged | 5
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Do you guys think that 1961-1964 Marvel sometimes gets a "pass" based on the high quality of Lee/Ditko Spider-Man and Lee/Kirby FF? I find pre-Buscema Avengers to be quite sketchy, Thor didn't start to click till Kirby returned full force, the X-Men never quite clicked, the Hulk didn't really start to come into his own until Trimpe, etc, etc.
* * * * * * * *
The Human Torch stories in STRANGE TALES were not the best either, and the Ant-Man stories in TALES TO ASTONISH were pretty uninspired.
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Matt Reed
Byrne Robotics Security
Robotmod
Joined: 16 April 2004
Posts: 35945
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| Posted: 08 October 2012 at 7:38am | IP Logged | 6
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It really does depend on when you came into the hobby. I'm biased. I came into comics as a 70s kid. Got my first Batman comic in '73 or 74 and my first Spider-Man comic shortly thereafter. Opened my eyes to an entirely new world. Those 70s comics were gold to me. Still are. I've got quite a few Essential volumes collecting 70s runs. Do they age quite as gracefully as others from a different era? Depends on the era we're talking about. Perhaps not as well as the 60s, but certainly much better than the comics of the late 80s into the 90s. And here's where bias creeps in. People on this board who came into comics in the 80s and 90s have a fond memory of that time regardless of their quality when put into their proper context. I'm fine with that as long as they don't disparage what came before in order to prop up their own opinion.
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Robert Bradley
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 20 September 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 4881
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| Posted: 08 October 2012 at 8:17am | IP Logged | 7
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Agreed Matt - Some of the work from the 60's doesn't hold up so well either, but its mainly because things like the space race and fighting the red menace were so prevalent in their work then. If you read them understanding when they were written, like the titles such as THE CAT and HERO FOR HIRE, which seem equally dated now, you have a better appreciation for them.
Still, there are things that were done by Starlin or Englehart (for example) in the 70's that hold up just like the Lee-Kirby and Lee-Ditko comics from the 60's.
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David Plunkert
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 03 July 2012
Posts: 536
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| Posted: 08 October 2012 at 9:15am | IP Logged | 8
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If you were reading comics in the 70's there was quite a bit of the 60's stuff in reprint form. ..and a lot of it was the stuff that really cooked including: Ditko and Romita Spider-man, Kirby and Sinnott FFs, Colan Ironman and Kirby Captain A, plus what I assumed was the best of the pre-hero Marvel stuff.
As a kid of 8, 9 10.... that stuff seemed exotic and strange in a good way compared to the latest monthlies that were coming out in 73-77.
Plus, as a reader it made you thirsty to know what the back story was.
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Pete York
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 1198
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| Posted: 08 October 2012 at 2:07pm | IP Logged | 9
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Boy, I sure am sorry I missed the chance, as an 8, 9, 10-year-old, to read someone working out their anger issues with Nixon by having 'him' kill himself in CAPTAIN AMERICA. Or the unreadable, hippy-dippy noodling in DOCTOR STRANGE. I realize the mere concept of a Gardner Fox was enough to make some of these guys throw up a little in their mouths, but I'll take him. Especially if the alternative is Green Lantern mediating a real property dispute between a lumberman's union and a Native American tribe.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 133324
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| Posted: 08 October 2012 at 2:13pm | IP Logged | 10
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Boy, I sure am sorry I missed the chance, as an 8, 9, 10-year-old, to read someone working out their anger issues with Nixon by having 'him' kill himself in CAPTAIN AMERICA. Or the unreadable, hippy-dippy noodling in DOCTOR STRANGE. I realize the mere concept of a Gardner Fox was enough to make some of these guys throw up a little in their mouths, but I'll take him. Especially if the alternative is Green Lantern mediating a real property dispute between a lumberman's union and a Native American tribe. •• A fairly neat summation of what went mostly wrong in the Seventies. RELEVANCE. Pretty much started with GREEN LANTERN/GREEN ARROW, which almost every pro seemed to love -- and which the fans stayed away from in droves. Book DID get canceled, after all, even with Neal Adams art. But those pros who thought GL/GA was the bee's knees started showing "relevance" into everything. And relevance begat "grim and gritty" which begat "dark and edgy". Liked some of that stuff myself, at the time. DID some of that stuff. But I also like apple pie. That doesn't mean I would want it for every meal. Unfortunately, it's kinda like the myth of the HUGE SUCCESS of the Adam West BATMAN. Reality dare not intrude, and no matter how many times superheroes get played straight, sooner or later someone will decide parody is a brilliant new idea. Same with "dark and edgy". Everybody's brilliant new idea. "Only this will be… darker!"
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Robbie Parry
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 17 June 2007
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 12186
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| Posted: 08 October 2012 at 2:27pm | IP Logged | 11
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QUOTE:
| Unfortunately, it's kinda like the myth of the HUGE SUCCESS of the Adam West BATMAN. |
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I read once that a duck's quack doesn't echo. That "fact" was published in countless books and was on quiz shows, but it isn't true (and I believe they've tested it). It goes to show that, whether we're talking about a duck's echo or the Adam West BATMAN series, something can become "true" just by being repeated time and time again.
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Jason Czeskleba
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 30 April 2004
Posts: 4620
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| Posted: 08 October 2012 at 4:36pm | IP Logged | 12
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Pete: I'll give you O'Neil's Green Lantern. It's preachy, strident, and heavy handed. But I consider Englehart's Dr. Strange stories to be the best non-Ditko iteration of that character. Exciting stories with some truly weird concepts... nothing "hippy dippy" about it. It's not like Doc is wearing a flower in his hair or preaching free love to the reader. And childhood nostalgia isn't coloring my assessment of that series, as I didn't even like Doctor Strange when I was a young kid, and I didn't read Englehart's stories until about ten years ago. To me they stand up very well.
I do think Englehart went too far in inserting Nixon into the final few pages of that Captain America storyline. It was over-the-top and unnecessary. But beyond that, the story itself was quite good, and appropriate for the times. I think Captain America can effectively reflect the tenor of the times in a general way, without referencing specific political events. If the overall mood of the country is suspicious, paranoid, or cynical (as it was in the post-Watergate era), Captain America can touch upon that.
Edited by Jason Czeskleba on 08 October 2012 at 4:37pm
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Topic Closed)
