The 40 Years of Comics Project Friday Magazine 21: Epic Illustrated #6, June 1981

Okay. Time to blog this one.

I have to say that these magazines have tired me much more quickly than I thought they would. Though I'm still enjoying some of the features, there's a lot in this one, and admittedly the last one, that was just okay.

Perhaps this is why magazines are published on a monthly basis? So that there's a bit more distance between things, a palette cleanser.

(Just looked up palate and that last sentence was a completely unintentional pun!)

Back to Heavy Metal, next week? Or perhaps DW Weekly.

I don't want to suggest that the stories aren't well done. They are. But it really seems that the magazine is struggling to differentiate itself from Heavy Metal and the be Heavy Metal all at the same time. It's inevitable, as the artists who are represented in Epic Illustrated are likely discovering all of the European greats at the time, through Heavy Metal, like everyone else in North America. I'm curious to see what changes come over the magazine in the next few issues - many of the letters that are printed are offering suggestions on, or critiquing, the features, the style, of the magazine. I wonder how much the editors listen to their audience?

As always, it's great to see Rick Veitch's work anywhere. He's one of the few artists whose work I love that genuinely creeps me out. There is this unsettling visceral quality to his art that is both beautiful and discomforting. One of these days I'll (re)read his Can't Get No graphic novel and I'll still have no idea what to say about it. His Greyshirt miniseries, and the Tomorrow Stories stuff is some of the coolest looking comics I've ever seen. Today's "Shipmates" applies that viscerility to a spaceship, rusting and hanging in space.

Onward!

The 40 Years of Comics Project Friday Magazine 20: Epic Illustrated #5, April 1981

There's really a lot going on in each of these issues. I'm of two minds about this. Sometimes it's nice to have so much variety - granted that it's restricted in this case by its genre(s), though you can really get away with a lot in Science Fiction and Fantasy - enough that you can read a 100-page magazine and not get bored at all. On the other hand, keeping track of all of these narratives, from the continuing to the tiny, can be a bit much every now and again.

That said, I'm absolutely loving Jim Starlin's "Metamorphosis Odyssey," which I did not know was the first place that his famed character Dreadstar appeared. Now I'm intrigued to read that as well (though I have no issues of the series in the collection, unfortunately). There's also some more stuff from Mirko Ilic, which I linked to in the review of the first issue of the magazine. His comics are, as I noted in that earlier piece, genius. I wish there were more. So there's a lovely example of what this magazine is doing right. An ongoing series that's definitely engrossing, and small snapshot pieces that are pushing at boundaries. Today's story "Satri," written and drawn by Margaret Gallagher (who's got a shockingly low online presence) is another wonderful and innovative piece.

I think I could do with less text-piece content. There's an interview with the Hildebrandt Brothers, very important artists in fantasy art, but it takes up soooo much space, and I can only read so much about people holding forth on their artistic processes. I think the shorter text pieces are pretty great, especially the ones commentating on the medium in this pre-Maus world (as I noted last week), but the long ones are just a bit much.

My opinion, I guess, for what it's worth. Onward!

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 740: Marvel Fanfare #10, September 1983

Marvel Fanfare was, when I was first collecting comics, that book that sat off to the side from others, different because of its production quality and its purporting to tell stories a little more mature than the standard Marvel comics. I never really paid it much attention until a couple of issues made their way into the collection years back and I finally had a chance to read it.

At which point I realized it's pretty much a standard Marvel comic from the early 80s.

That said, the back-up in this issue is P. Craig Russell illustrating a story from The Jungle Book, and though Kipling's a bit dodgy sometimes, Russell's work is always worth seeing. The lead story, "Widow," however, is a kind of boring origin story for the Black Widow that appears to serve as set-up for the story in the next issue. Which I don't have. What I did like about the story is that this is the Widow in my favourite of her outfits. I wasn't a fan of the short-haired look that dominated the later part of the decade and much of the 90s. And this is definitely the version of the character that inspires the Scarlett Johansson version of the character. That could be her up on the cover there, really.

I'm feeling a bit aimless in the project again. Perhaps it's time to go back to alphabetical reading, though I'm just not feeling the Alpha Flight right now. Guess I've got a day to figure it out!

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 374: The Saga of Crystar, Crystal Warrior #2, July 1983

Had to get a little bit more Crystar in, though I don't have issue 3, so this'll be it for now.

I have to admit that I'm surprised at how the transformation from human to crystal being is being handled in this series. People around the transformed characters are horrified, the wizard who transformed them admits to knowing nothing, really, of the process, and even those who were transformed themselves are put off by their new state. I'm finding it to be a slightly more believable tale of transformation than many of the superhero comics I cleave to. Crystar and his compatriots are struggling with this change, rather than simply embracing it and becoming heroes.

I'm rather chuffed to see Bret Blevins' art in this series. He did a fairly sustained run on The New Mutants with Louise Simonson that I remember fondly from my youth, and I've always loved the roundness he puts into his female faces. That said, I'm not totally sure why all of the women in this series are either nude or mostly nude (aside from it being a comic produced in the 80s, ostensibly for pre-pubescent boys). But this odd choice of clothing (or lack thereof) aside, he work is, unsurprisingly, really great.

The other thing that this series has surprised me with is the political angle of the story. Feldspar refuses outright in this issue to allow Crystar to take the throne, claiming that to take the throne by force would be wrong, and that he will rule as regent until the two brothers settle their differences and take the throne together. Considering that this series is founded on a conflict between order and chaos, and spawned a toy line dependent on conflict, the suggestion that the narrative is heading toward peaceful resolution is quite remarkable. I wonder if it got the chance to see that story through.

(Of course, seeing as how Moltar is working for Morgan Le Fay in Weirdworld, perhaps it didn't.)

Onward!

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 373: The Saga of Crystar, Crystal Warrior #1, May 1983

I don't actually recall where or when this comic made its way into my collection. I remember the toys associated with it, all those years ago in the 80s, but I also remember not being particularly impressed by them. One had to choose wisely which toys one was going to cleave to back then. There were a lot.

Of course, at the time I had no idea that the series was a Marvel property, in that it had been created in house at Marvel rather than it being a toy line the comic for which was a thinly-veiled advertisement. In fact, I didn't know that until characters from this series (which ran 11 issues in 1983 - 84) showed up in the recent Weirdworld series that spun out of Secret Wars. They continue to play a role in the new Weirdworld series, so I thought it was time I re-familiarized myself with the characters.

I'm always (well, almost always) pleasantly surprised when I read these old, toy-based comics. Things like Starriors, or Sectaurs, or Masters of the Universe, they go above and beyond what one might expect. Though they certainly are used as advertisements, the artists involved do their absolute best to also be telling as compelling a story as one can under the conditions that such a comic is going to be produced. It has to make people want to buy the toy, but it can't just be an ad. I always had this problem with the television show of Yu-Gi-Oh. It was little more than a moving, poorly scripted instruction manual for the card game. Advertisement, if it is to be successful, must incorporate entertainment. Which is a long way of saying that I was entertained by Crystar, and I hope I'll be able to lay hands on the rest of the series. I did manage to find some of it in a quarter bin this weekend, but not the whole series. This is one problem with such series, actually. They're not the more popular superhero stuff, and are often seen, and were often seen, as simply ads for the toys - thus they're not widely available in the secondary market. But, as I've said repeatedly, if the items were easy to find, I wouldn't love hunting for them so much.

More tomorrow.