The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1925: Captain Marvel #0, November 1999

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There was a time, before the widespread use of the Internet, when one would have to actually pick up print magazines to find out all the upcoming news and gossip from the world of comic books. Some magazines were very good, offering interesting critical engagements with interesting works coming out of the medium. And some were Wizard.

I'm not going to lie - I read Wizard on a regular basis for a while. It wasn't great reporting, but it did a decent job of keeping a comics junkie up to speed on new titles, new creators, and just neat things. And the magazine never purported to be any more than that. But, to be fair, one of my favourite parts of the publication was the exclusive comics that would fairly frequently be packaged with it, of which today's issue is an example.

Featuring pencils by Chriscross, this comic started off the Captain Marvel series featuring Genis-Vell, son of the original Captain Mar-Vell. And, honestly, that's about all I know about it. In the late 90s I was much more a DC fan than a Marvel fan, so this character kind of passed me by. I'm not even sure if he's a part of the Marvel U anymore, though, given superhero comics, I'm sure he could be once again.

Today's art is, and I do not mean this disparagingly, very 90s. There was a particular aesthetic to superhero comics at the time, perhaps spurred by the huge success of Howard Porter on JLA, and Chriscross' work is a wonderful example of that aesthetic. I think the true mark of a good artist in such circumstances is when they can keep to this general aesthetic but at the same time inject interesting variations that personalize the piece. There are some cool panel constructions in this comic, and some neat visual effects that add a sense of motion to all of the characters. There's also a really hot picture of Genis about halfway through, still super-muscly, but in kind of a good way?

I should mention that the series is scribed by veteran writer Peter David, of Incredible Hulk fame, and it is yet another example of his facility with dialogue and action, and with the superhero in general. We'll see more of these creators as the project progresses.

More to follow.

Further Reading and Related Posts

I've only read one other Chriscross comic for the project, and I really didn't have much context for it.

Some thoughts after having seen Captain Marvel

I often wonder how much I’d disagree with teenage me. He was a surly little shit. There are definitely things I’ve done that I know, I know, teenage me would snort at with disgust. We’d probably still agree on music. I had impeccable taste in music as a teen. And we’d agree on how great it is that superheroes are out in the public consciousness in a way we haven’t really seen since the very early days. And I know, I know, you’re all sick of them, and they’re all the same story, and the effects are covering up a pretty thin story, and how many times can they go to the same well over and over and over?

Which, honestly, is what you can say about every fucking myth ever, including the Abrahamic ones – let’s just put that in there right from the beginning.

Just like every other thing in our lives, our myths and beliefs are becoming more public. Superheroes have always been one of the ways that we do this. The story is created as a reflection of a hoped-for zeitgeist, and as the story spreads the change is reflected, one hopes, in the affected culture. This is also how advertising works – think about that. It’s not a perfect process. The trouble is remembering that these are human-made stories, rather than divine truths. They’re metaphors. Once we recognize this, it becomes much easier to manipulate these myths in our favour – which literally every religion ever has done. But once we realize that the myth is in our power, we can begin creating new ones – thus Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel. Women have, in these films, wrested the mythic power from the men who’ve wielded it a good few thousand years, and have given us back the mythic women we’ve needed for so long.

Of course, teenage me would just be fucking in love with the special effects. He thought Masters of the Universe: The Motion Picture was a pretty good film.

*sigh*                                                                                                

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1359: Shazam! #6, October 1973

First time I've read some proper, old-school Captain Marvel. It was very weird.

And my copy has no cover, so I've never seen that creepy AF cover up there.

I've never really understood the draw of Captain Marvel. To me, he's always been a less-interesting Superman. But today's comic is just really weird. I've been thinking a lot lately about the stories that writers were able to tell under the restrictions of the Comics Code. Some of the work we get is good, but definitely pretty standard. Would it be too strong to say that the Comics Code inspired a few decades of mediocrity being the standard. And only when you had a particularly imaginative writer or artist would we get what might be seen as a comic that pushes the genre forward.

Captain Marvel's adventures are definitely very different from those that I've seen in other superhero comics, especially of this era. There's actually something of an Archie feel to this comic for me. The situations are every bit as weird as the ones that the Riverdale gang get themselves into in the 60s and 70s, but instead of American teenagers, it's a guy in a bright red costume. I wonder if I could transpose the Riverdale characters into stories of the Marvel Family?

I don't think I actually have more than 10 comics in the collection that feature Captain Marvel, and that's a liberal estimate. I may have to track down a bit more of the C.C. Beck stuff, though, as his art style is just so lovely.

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 300: World's Finest Comics #269, July 1981

300 days!

Not that I want to give the impression that I can't commit to anything, but I'm surprised that I've managed to do a consistent 300 days of posting to this blog. As the old saying goes, "Practice makes perfect," and this amount of writing is certainly great practice. But after 300 days, I'm only in the early stages of my journey toward perfection, I think.

From sentient viruses to being buried alive. It seems this stack of comics from the dollar bin is demonstrating Jungian synchronicity. As I noted yesterday, the idea of a virus that takes over one's body is amongst my greatest fears. Perhaps the greatest, at least in terms of irrational terror, is of being buried alive. I'm quite claustrophobic, and what happens to Batman in the cover story of this issue is just about one of the worst things I can imagine. Thank goodness he remains more calm and collected than I would in the same situation.

This issue, arriving 4 years before the tumult of Crisis, offers a showcase of some of the best artists of the last years of the Silver Age. Rich Buckler is a great exemplar of the DC style of the late 70s and early 80s. Trevor Von Eeden, in the "Green Arrow" story in this issue offers one of the more realistic depictions of breasts that I've seen in superhero comics (it's the little details that matter). In the "Hawkman & Hawkgirl" story, Alex Saviuk gives Shayera Hol wonderful muscle definition, showing us that it's not only the male superheroes that have to be "ripped" in order to do the job they do. Of all the art in this issue, the Saviuk/Rodriguez stuff in this story is probably the best. Don Newton's "Captain Marvel, Jr." work offers a nice combination of the more realistic art toward which DC moves in this era and the stylized art that's characterized the Marvel Family work through its existence. In particular, Newton captures facial expression in a way that many comics artists cannot.

The writing is less impressive than the art, unfortunately. Gerry Conway is a capable writer, and his deployment of the 70s address to the protagonist in the caption box is effective, but the story as a whole is relatively tame. The same goes for the rest of the stories - tame. It's hard to feel like there's really anything at stake in any of these adventures, hence my concentration on the art, rather than the writing. Oh, and if I can just offer an opinion here, too, this version of Green Arrow, roving reporter for the Star City "Daily Star" is a complete dick. As a poor woman relates the story of her incarcerated brother, GA is trying to decide if she's a "10" or an "11." Total. Dick.

What I actually found the most interesting about this comic was the inside back cover, which features "The Daily Planet Feature Page." The creator profile on this page is for one Laurie Sutton, a woman who scripts the "Adam Strange" adventures of this era. It's always great to hear of women working in the industry at this time (and at any time, really). Mainstream comics still struggles with the "boys club" mentality, though greater strides are taken with each passing year to quash that notion. In the late 70s and early 80s, however, I imagine the idea of a woman working prominently in comics was even less likely, so to see Ms. Sutton profiled is lovely. I'm curious to read some of her Adam Strange stuff.

We've almost worked through the dollar bin comics I recently procured. It's probably time I pulled out my holiday comics and read one or two, in the spirit of the season.