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Wallace Sellars
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 01 May 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 17700
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| Posted: 08 October 2012 at 5:02pm | IP Logged | 1
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The Human Torch stories in STRANGE TALES
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If those are the same ones printed in the ESSENTIAL HUMAN TORCH, I really
like them!
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Kip Lewis
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 01 March 2011
Posts: 2880
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| Posted: 08 October 2012 at 5:15pm | IP Logged | 2
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So; pulled out Sphinx issues of the FF. (Realized I'm missing 210).
Then pulled out out FF issue with the glowing green gorilla. And a
flood of feelings from how I loved finding and reading those issues as
a kid. Now rereading the FF vs Crusader storyline. (Though later I
hated what happened to Marvel Boy, at that time, part one reaally
struck a cord with me. So, rereading my FF's. (Too many holes in my
collection.) I and this will probably end up with me rereading Byrne's
FF and beyond.
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Mike Norris
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 4274
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| Posted: 08 October 2012 at 6:20pm | IP Logged | 3
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I didn't get the "Nixon" thing in CA&F until it was pointed out a few years later. My thought at the time was Secret Empire leader was just a high ranking official gone bad.( dime a dozen in fiction) The oval office setting went over my head. Which I think is fine. The older reader might have got it, but my not getting it didn't change my enjoyment of the story. I didn't read those GL/GA stories till later so its hard to say what I would made of them when originally published. When I did read them, I found they didn't quite live up to the hype. The art was great though.
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Neil Brauer
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Joined: 10 February 2012
Location: United States
Posts: 714
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| Posted: 08 October 2012 at 6:53pm | IP Logged | 4
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I bought the GL/GA trade about 12-10 years ago. To be quite honest, I couldn't believe how bad it was. Story--BAAAD Art--GOOOD
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Bill Guerra
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 29 March 2012
Location: United States
Posts: 1072
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| Posted: 08 October 2012 at 6:54pm | IP Logged | 5
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Mike, the current retcon at Marvel is that the leader of the Secret Empire was indeed a "high ranking official" and not the president himself, so you were right! Of course, with the whole sliding time scale at play, it couldn't be Richard Nixon anyway, as he was president too long ago.
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David Plunkert
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 03 July 2012
Posts: 536
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| Posted: 08 October 2012 at 7:01pm | IP Logged | 6
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Jason said: 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.
iii
...and the Brunner art is pretty top notch. They are "trippy" comics for their day but so were Ditko's.
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Mike Norris
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 4274
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| Posted: 08 October 2012 at 7:28pm | IP Logged | 7
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The idea that Marvel was our word with superheroes was drilled into my brain,so the SE leader couldn't have killed himself and be the President, because the President wasn't dead. Too young for conspiracy theories, I guess.
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Robert Bradley
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 20 September 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 4887
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| Posted: 08 October 2012 at 7:31pm | IP Logged | 8
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Wallace - I think the art of the series varies wildly (Kirby vs. non-Kirby) and some of the stories just didn't work very well for me, but I'm glad you enjoyed them (we all have different tastes). I wouldn't say they were awful, I just don't think they're as strong as the other titles Marvel was publishing.
Actually, I wouldn't say any of the main titles from the early 60's were bad overall (although there are plenty of clunkers among the individual issues), but AMAZING SPIDER-MAN and FANTASTIC FOUR were clearly the best. THE AVENGERS and X-MEN hit their stride later in the decade when Roy Thomas took them over, but up to that point they were hit and miss, and the Lee/Kirby Thor stories are much better than the early JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY issues. Iron Man and Captain America are of varying quality, but I generally enjoy all the STRANGE TALES Doctor Strange and Nick Fury stories. As for the Sub-Mariner and Hulk I liked them more once they got their own titles, although I am a big fan of Marie Severin's work on the Hulk in TALES TO ASTONISH. She's easily the most under-appreciated of Marvel's Silver Age artists.
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David Plunkert
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Joined: 03 July 2012
Posts: 536
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| Posted: 08 October 2012 at 8:04pm | IP Logged | 9
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Wallace Sellars said: If those are the same ones printed in the ESSENTIAL HUMAN TORCH, I really
like them!
iii
In case you didn't know... the early Torch tales in Strange Tales were written by Superman co-creator Jerry Seigel under the pen name John Carter.
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Greg Kirkman
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Joined: 12 May 2006
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| Posted: 08 October 2012 at 9:32pm | IP Logged | 10
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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. ++++++++ I wonder...based on the fates of X-MEN and GL/GA, would Adams himself be labeled as a "book-killer" by fans if those events had happened today?
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Pete York
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Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 1198
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| Posted: 09 October 2012 at 12:12am | IP Logged | 11
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Jason Czeskleba wrote:
| 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... |
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I appreciate that it is fondly remembered and I am in the minority. STRANGE, to me, is the comic book equivalent of giving a kid Yes's TALES FROM TOPOGRAHPIC OCEANS to listen to and then asking him, "Hey Jimmy, which of the 20-minute long songs based on Hindu aphorisms was your favorite?" I didn't like the book much as an adult, there is no way I would've liked it as a kid. It seems like they were more interested in college kids and dudes in head shops with blacklight posters anyway.
QUOTE:
| 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. |
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I use 'hippy-dippy' not in the sense of Scott McKenzie's 'San Francisco', to stick with the music examples, but rather The Amboy Dukes 'Journey to the Center of the Mind', if you follow. Elevated consciousness and such. Always a guaranteed killer bore for me.
QUOTE:
| 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.... |
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You think kids in 1974 were reading and interested in this Doctor Strange?
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| 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... |
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When the inmates run the asylum, yeah, the freedom's great, but it's a short trip to self-indulgence. We can be clear here, CAPTAIN AMERICA was used. I hate to think of the people who did get it at the time possibly kind of har-har'ing and elbow nudging and getting a po-mo collective laugh at the fact that CAPTAIN AMERICA, of all books, was the instrument with which Englehart got his shot in.
QUOTE:
| ...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. |
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Must we? I wasn't a big fan of cynicism at age 10. I'm not sure superhero comics need to check in on the country's temperature. That's what gave us 9/11 books, isn't it? Maybe you're right, but I'd prefer to see writers who want to go there follow, more or less, a route like Howard Chaykin and write their own stuff.
In closing, I'll cite, for both CAPTAIN AMERICA and DOCTOR STRANGE, Roger Stern's (and JB, of course) runs as what I wanted to read as a kid. And add that CA #250 addresses Captain America's place in 'our world' so beautifully and superbly as to be definitive.
Neil Brauer wrote:
| I bought the GL/GA trade about 12-10 years ago. To be quite honest, I couldn't believe how bad it was.... |
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Yeah, no need to dance around it. Denny is a legend with plenty of hits on his resume but, 'overpopulation on the planet MALTUS'? Ugh. I guess the series' demise saved us from 'PCBs on the planet Hudson!' |
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
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| Posted: 09 October 2012 at 5:37am | IP Logged | 12
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Think of Denny as the Alan Moore of his day. In GL/GA (to cite one) he wasn't really doing anything all that New and Innovative, but he was doing things most of the readers had not seen in superhero comics before.Mostly, tho, we were all blown away by the ART! Speaking of GL/GA, there was one scene that everybody seemed to go wild about, in the first O'Neil/Adams issue. When I did an internet search for the graphic just now, it was the FIRST THING to pop up. You know the scene: 
Well, for many of us who had been reading comics, especially GREEN LANTERN, for many a year, the reaction was quite different from the Ooo-Ahh of some corners of fandom and the popular press. While over there they were singing the praises of this scene for being so pointed and topical and RELEVANT (and, ultimately, award winning!), us "old timers" were saying "What has he done? How about SAVED THE WHOLE F***ING PLANET A HUNDRED TIMES OVER!?!" Ah, well. It's not often we can point to an exact moment comics made a wrong turn, but here we can. That scene was the one almost everybody wanted to duplicate after. In much the same way, in later years, everybody wanted to do "The Death of Phoenix" or WATCHMEN or DARK KNIGHT.
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Topic Closed)
