The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1364: Twisted Tales #3, June 1983

Damn, but Richard Corben draws some dark, dark shit.

What immediately struck me about this comic as I took it out of its bag was the amazing condition it's in. I've no record of where I got this issue, though due to the tag of "garage" in the notes in my database, I can tell that I've had it at least since 2008ish, if not longer. I'm always surprised to find a comic in this good shape and this old. It means that it's probably been stored properly since it was released, so it was probably part of a collection, or old stock from a store.

The stories are, of course, fantastic, though the cover story was a bit too narratively similar to a story from the previous issue. I can't imagine that this slipped by a writer like Jones, and perhaps the whole point of the series is to tell stories literally in the vein of the old ECs, and see what one could do with that format. It's a bit like when I read poets who mess about with the sonnet format. It's very rigid, but within that rigidity one can achieve amazing things. The 12-bar blues are a similar idea.

The other thing that really makes these comics quite different from those that inspired it is the amount of nudity. But the cool thing is it's not just female nudity. There's a shot in story "Off Key" in which a young lady slips her husband's jeans off and we get a full shot of a rather nicely-rendered bottom. It's a small thing, but what it allows, in this and in some of the other stories, is for us to see the nudity not as exploitative, as it would have been if only the women were unclothed, but as a part of the story. The couple in this story are having a private weekend away. I don't know about many of you, but when my wife and I have a private weekend away, there's very often nudity involved! I guess the short version is that the nudity and sexuality in these stories is there for verisimilitude, rather than simply to titillate. Which it also does, by the way.

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 688: Ghost Rider #37, May 1993

My first thought on picking up this comic to read this morning was that this cover says everything you need to know about early 90s Marvel "We-wish-we-were-Image" Comics. The shoulder pads.

The. Shoulder. Pads.

Of course, two pages in we're treated to this:

Um.

I was surprised by this issue on a couple of fronts. First is the art by Bret Blevins. I'm usually a fan of his work. His run on The New Mutants late in that series is some stellar comics storytelling, and his designs are wonderful. But here it almost seems like he's either chosen, or been instructed, to do his best Rob Liefeld impression. I can't even begin to figure out the physics of the above panel. Is she sitting on a stool that we can't see? Is the gun made of foam? The other surprise was that the comic, later on, becomes quite philosophical on the subject of vengeance. Though, so was yesterday's comic, by the same writer, almost 3 years prior. Much as I appreciate this kind of thoughtfulness in a superhero comic, it speaks to one of the reasons that Ghost Rider remains a B-list character: he's got one motivation, one trick up his narrative sleeve. And it's hard to sustain something like that over the course of more than 40 years now. How does a character that's defined by being a fundamental force for one particular thing grow?

Onward.

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.