The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1709: Arion, Lord of Atlantis #5, March 1982

(Told you I'd catch up!)

Oooo, I had no idea what the hell was going on in this comic. Not a clue.

My only other exposure to the character Arion in my 34 years of reading superhero comics is his brief inclusion in the original Crisis on Infinite Earths. That's it. He starts out as a back-up feature in The Warlord (I think), so we will be seeing quite a bit of Arion as soon as I track down those last 3 issues. But for now, I think there was time travel involved, and Arion met his father, I think. This is one of those comics that, one day, will make retrospective sense.

This comic has given me a very cool demonstration of the differences an inker makes. The comics are only a few years apart, so I'm going to assume that Ms. Duursema's work remained fairly consistent. But the comics look so different, thanks of course to the inking of Tom Mandrake (Arion) and of Jan Duursema's own inking on AD&D. I like to see examples of that stuff. It makes me appreciate the amount of work that goes into a comic that much more.

"You are fortunate, Garn, that our father was the man he was."

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1708: Advanced Dungeons & Dragons #13, December 1989

Waaaaayyyyy back in the early days of this project, I had the wacky notion that I would read my collection in alphabetical order. I stuck with that for a surprisingly long time, until, I think, Alpha Flight bogged me down enough that I started jumping around. Here is what I had to say about the AD&D comic back then, as well as some reproductions of the old advertisement comics from the 80s.

The reason for my having the series make a comeback is that this week's theme is fantastic and important female creators from mainstream comics. Long seen as a boys' club, there is a really fantastic tradition of lady creators in the mainstream, though they rarely attain the heights that some of the rock star male creators do. I'll just say that this is not because the men are better, and leave it at that for now.

Jan Duursema is today and tomorrow's focus. Her work on AD&D is virtually flawless. She translates the chaotic and strange environment of the Forgotten Realms to the page in a way both believable and fantastic. Much of DnD is played, of course, in the head, and even when one uses miniatures, they're static. Comics, though a static medium, conveys a good deal of motion, and I think it's that that I appreciate about these comics most - they convey a breath of life to things very often only seen by the mind's eye. Ms. Duursema does this, and more.

"Curse and double curse me not to have forseen this!!"

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 241: Advanced Dungeons & Dragons #12, November 1989

Dang.
Missed it by 36 minutes.
I read this comic today, if today means the awake periods between sleep periods.
I'll blog more tomorrow.

(Continued)
This storyline ends with a confusing chase through the sewers of Waterdeep. In confusing, I don't necessarily mean that it confuses the reader, but that alliances shift, new players jump in, old players vanish for pages at a time, all contributing to the effect of confusion that one might feel chasing and being chased through the sewers of a medieval city. Timoth and Onyx, of course, escape to regale their companions at "Selune's Eye" with their adventures, but I'm left with the feeling that I've alluded to previously for this series that there's something a little larger going on that we're only just beginning to see the edges of. We've been introduced, through the adventures of our focal characters, to factions of guildsmen and nobles all vying for some kind of power in the city, and it would be a pity if Mishkin, Grubb, et al. gave up such a nice set up for large-scale intrigues. That the comic gets a lifespan of at least two more years makes me think that we might see a payoff in this particular direction.

We'll see, I guess. I'll move on to more adventures of Onyx, Timoth, and company after a short break to read some contemporary comics. Need to change things up a bit. See you tomorrow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 240: Advanced Dungeons & Dragons #11, October 1989

Oh, I must be getting to that point of having read enough of this series. I'm about to be critical.

The crocodile that Onyx faces in the actual comic is not quite so big as to be able to swallow him whole. I was waiting for the monstrous croc, and when I came to the 3 panels or so that this scene actually takes up in the comic, I was a bit disappointed.

I've figured out what it is about this particular story arc that's bugging me, and it has everything to do with the fact that it's a new writer. I'm not sure why Mishkin took a break after his first arc, but Grubb's really does feel like a fill-in issue, stretched over four issues.

That said, there does seem to be an intrigue being build that involves some of the politicians and nobles who inhabit the higher strata of Waterdeep's society, so it'll be interesting to see if our intrepid heroes end up enmeshed in a large-scale political battle. Those are always fun in fantasy worlds, though I think we'll probably have slightly less incest than Game of Thrones. I do hope they continue this story line, as it really could rescue the series from being a monster of the week sort of title.

We'll finish up this story tomorrow, and then move on to something else, maybe back to Alpha Flight. Reading a single story line, or trade paperback's worth of comics seems the best idea. You'd think this far into the project, I'd have figured that out already. Ah well.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 239: Advanced Dungeons & Dragons #10, September 1989

Moving right along in the "Catspaw Quartet" story line. Timoth's been captured by "Jinxikins," an AD&D creature I've never heard of, Onyx is being manipulated into the sewers beneath Waterdeep, and Vajra and Kyriani are laughing it up at the bar.

This issue is basically just moving things along. There's an interesting balance to be maintained when telling a story in arcs rather than in single issues. In the single issue, one has to have a beginning, middle, and end all within the space of 22 pages. It forces a creator to consider what can be left in and what can be left out in a way that the longer format of the four-part series does not. What an extended story line does require is that, though one is ostensibly not giving the concrete beginning/middle/ending format in a single issue, the comic still needs to feel like a satisfying read. This particular issue only achieves that with the final page. Having never written or illustrated a work like this, I'm not entirely sure what one would have to do differently for this comic to have had that satisfaction more prevalently than simply in the final reveal. There's certainly action, and there's certainly intrigue, but because it's happening in what is part two of a four part story, the action is somewhat lacking in its climactic feel, and the intrigue smacks of simply being the surface of what will undoubtedly (and hopefully) become deeper as the story progresses. There's a difference between writing an 80-page graphic novel and a four-part monthly story. This issue doesn't quite make the transition smoothly.

That said, perhaps things will pick up with tomorrow's comic. I'm kicking around the idea of filling in the rest of my AD&D run on the weekend, but now I'm wondering if the stories work better as collected editions. I'll reserve my judgment until regular writer Dan Mishkin returns in the next story arc. See you tomorrow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 238: Advanced Dungeons & Dragons #9, August 1989

133 days later, we return to the city of Waterdeep and the lovable group of rogues we've been following through its environs.

First things first, I really hate Timoth's haircut. There. I've said it. He should have gone to the barber in Waterdeep that I recommended. Anyway...

The AD&D comic is good for numerous reasons, many of which I've laid out in my previous posts. What strikes me with today's comic is that the series manages a really great balance of humour and adventure, which is really the maximal experience of a role-playing game. They're social events, and one is generally inclined to not only pursue an adventure, but have a few laughs with friends as well. It does, admittedly, rely a lot on how the DM wants to run the game, but I've been involved in very, very few sessions in which something comedic didn't happen, either intentionally or unintentionally. Those critical fails can make for some amusing, if dangerous, moments.

What the comic does have over and above the RPG is that when a party splits up, as Timoth and Onyx do here, it's not a ridiculous inconvenience for the Dungeon Master. I'm curious as to whether these characters are based on actual PCs, and if the stories are based on actual adventures in Waterdeep. I imagine there'd have to be a whole bunch of co-authors, if that were the case. At any rate, it's nice to see the characters each getting a spotlight, something that I've been noting over in my Alpha Flight posts as well. Often times when we read team books, we forget that teams are made up of individuals. That said, I am hoping that we'll see the whole team together again soon. Perhaps in the next story arc.

I've discovered that I only need 14 issues of this series to have the complete run, and I've found a place that has most of those issues for $1. Thus it's actually cheaper for me to get the individual issues than to invest in the admittedly gorgeous IDW reprints of the series. Hopefully this coming weekend, I'll fill out the series, and we can thrill to more adventures. I am, however, set for at least a week without a hole in the run, so we'll see more of Timoth, Onyx, and you, tomorrow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 159: X-Factor #109, December 1994

From A to X? And what happened to that promised enormous run of Alpha Flight?

I feel sure that, at some point in my ramblings, I've noted that particular crossover series are alphabetized according to crossover, rather than having the various titles dispersed throughout the collection. In my Active collection, the original "Inferno" crossover is categorized this way (which is why I picked up the Inferno Secret Wars series, but I was pretty disappointed...anyway). The case is the same in the Storage collection, and before the aforementioned Alpha Flight run, we come to the epic X-crossover known as "The Age of Apocalypse."

A few initial thoughts before I hit the meat of this first comic: When this comic came out, it had probably been about 5 years since I'd seriously read comics, and would be a few more before I got back into them upon discovering Gaiman's The Sandman and Morrison's The Invisibles. My era of X-comics ended with the Claremont/Silvestri stuff where the team was living in the Australian Outback, so I missed Age of Apocalypse (AoA) in its initial run. I only picked it up in the early 2000s while working at a used book store and needing something to read. Looking back to my own X-universe experiences, I guess there were still a fair amount of titles chronicling the mutants (Uncanny, X-Factor, New Mutants, Excalibur), but the difference was that these were all individual titles telling the stories of individual teams, rather than, as I see it now, and in the time of AoA, individual titles telling the stories of a single group of characters. I may be wrong about that, but it's certainly what's kept me from reading X-titles for almost 2 decades. The final thing I'd like to address before hitting the comic is the reading order I'm going to be using. This particular issue isn't an official part of the crossover, but it's the crossover that leads into the crossover (90s comics were so ridiculous). Following the "Legion Quest" story, I'll be reading AoA in publication order, rather than reading all four issues of a particular title at once. I think this sort of read gives a much better look at the scope of the crossover, that it fleshes out the new reality much more effectively, and that it'll keep me from getting bored with a single title. It's going to be a long run in this alternate reality (probably a month or two). Let's get going, shall we?

Okay, first the bad: Jan Duursema's art in this comic is fucking abysmal. In the first panel of the comic, Mystique is front and center, and her breasts resemble nothing less that cantaloupes glued to the front of what, I guess, is a very spindly female body. There's shades of Eric Larsen's art to it, but it's a thoroughly inferior version. This makes sense, as the Image artists had left Marvel and become superstars by this point, and this comic gives us a very good indication of that divide between superstar artists like those Image lads and their imitators. Like Duursema.

It's easier if I just show you:

I've pointed this out before, and I just can't wrap my head around it. It's not even well-stylized. It's just bad. And then there's this awkward fight scene"

I don't really know what's going on in that last panel.

So much for the bad. The good is this: Legion comes back with a vengeance. He's always been one of my favourite characters in the X-Universe. The Claremont/Sienkiewicz New Mutants stuff that he was in still rank as some of my favourite superhero comics, so to see a treatment of him that, as this prologue to AoA unfolds, really taps into his madness and his power is quite a treat. This particular era of X-Factor also interrogates, with some success, the problems of a government-run and sanctioned mutant police force. It's tough to say what we can take away from this treatment. If one places the X-Men as metaphors for civil rights throughout the twentieth century, what is the message of this segregated super-team. Mutants deal with mutant problems? I'm not sure that's sending the right message. That said, I've only read bits and pieces of this run, so perhaps that problem is dealt with. But even the original X-Factor team had a mandate to deal with solely mutant problems. I understand the fact that there are issues to deal with that only a person of that particular genetic make-up might understand, but it really does set up a very divisive sort of mentality.

Or perhaps I'm reading too much into a fluff comic from the nineteen nineties.

So that's that for today. I was very hard on this comic, and I'll try to reign that in as we go through the Age of Apocalypse. The early nineties were not a good time for comics, from a creative standpoint, so there's certain to be glaring faults. I'll try to see past them, to read in the time, so to speak. AoA has stuck with many readers as foundational (see the upcoming movie called "Age of Apocalypse"), so there's got to be something to it. Heck, even from a completely personal standpoint, it's one of the few X-titles, crossover or otherwise, that I've read from the early nineties, so there's good in there. It's just that it's mixed rather expertly with some really horrendous story-telling. So let's, together, explore just exactly what makes this crossover such a classic. I'll see you tomorrow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 105: Advanced Dungeons & Dragons #8, July 1989

We reach the conclusion of "The Spirit of Myrrth" in a decidedly Monty Python-esque manner involving a battle between musicians and adventurers for possession of a joke that can kill its audience. This issue has a really lovely caper feel to it as the group attempts to infiltrate the Musician's Guild to steal back the skull of Myrrth before it reveals the killing joke. That term in mind, this comic really does have The Joker plastered all over it, most explicitly in the opening scenes depicting the outcome of Myrrth's infamous joke. I've often theorized about myths reverberating forward and backward through time, and here the tropes of The Joker myth jump genres into the realm of Waterdeep.

The next storyline features the centaur, Timoth Eyesbright, who was conspicuously missing from this drole little tale, so once I've procured those issues, we'll move on to that. In the meantime, we'll delve back into the depths of the collection. There's definitely comics coming up that I've never read before, which is exciting. I had also suggested that yesterday I would begin my series of graphic novel reads, but a surprise visit from my in-laws has set that back about a week. Hopefully next Monday will see the beginning of this other ingress into my comics collection.

A short post today, but that seems to be the way it goes with extended reads of individual series. On to something new tomorrow, then. See you soon.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 104: Advanced Dungeons & Dragons #7, June 1989

A raging battle against a re-animated giant skeleton with flame breath, ice breath, and a withering gaze through the streets of a medieval fantasy city, aided by guardsmen on winged hippogriff steeds.

That's the summary of this issue, and an awesome issue it is. The twist of the jesters using jokes as the components of a spell is made even more interesting by the fact that the punchlines to the jokes are the counterspells. I'm not sure if this is taken from the Jester NPC class that appeared many years ago in Dragon magazine, or if it's Mishkin's idea, but it's a cool one.

I've not commented much on the inking of the comics I've looked at, and that's because the inkers, amongst others, are unsung heroes of comic books. This issue replaces Kim DeMulder on inks with Joe Statema, and it's amazing the difference one can see. Statema inserts far more detailed line work that DeMulder, giving the characters a more realistic cast. Neither style is better than the other, and both bring something to the feel of the comic, though switching part way through a storyline is a dodgy gambit, if you ask me. Especially since this is a relatively light-hearted tale, it seems to me that DeMulder's more iconic work (as opposed to realistic work) functions more appropriately. Perhaps a grittier tale would benefit more atmospherically from Statema's work. I'm not sure if it's a permanent replacement or just for this particular issue, but the adoption of a more realist inking mode could work well for the series. What will be interesting is to see if the inking really has that much of an affect on the feel of the comic.

We'll finish up "The Spirit of Myrrth" tomorrow, and then move on to something else. I'll be continuing the AD&D series eventually, once I've procured the next storyline, but tomorrow we'll look to the next section of the collection, which I believe is an indie series from the eighties called The Adventurers, a grimmer take on the fantasy party quest model. It'll make an interesting contrast. See you tomorrow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 103: Advanced Dungeons & Dragons #6, May 1989

Before reading today's comic, I took my son down to our local gaming store (The Sentry Box). While he was flipping through new D&D books, I had a look at the book section of the store. I was surprised to find a volume entitled Classic Dungeons & Dragons, published by I.D.W., that contained the first eight issues of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons series. There were three more there collecting the complete series. My problem now is a mathematical one. Is it cheaper to buy the trades or the individual issues? Coupled with this conundrum is whether or not I'll be able to find all of the issues. Ah well. The concerns of the comic collector.

I've not much more to say about this storyline as yet. Both the praise and the problems I've outlined thus far with the series are still present. The Myrrth story is quite amusing, especially the Marty Feldman appearance as the leader of the Ancient and Revered Order of Merrymakers (the Jesters' Guild). A bit more of Vajra's backstory is filled in, by way of the mysterious Connor and his cat-child. One of the slight inconsistencies this time around was Vajra's behaviour while lost beneath the City of the Dead in Waterdeep. She begins to act quite petulantly, which Connor points out, and it's certainly not in keeping with her character as portrayed in the earlier issues. I'm sure this will be dealt with at some point, and the off-putting nature of the scene serves in some ways to add a bit of depth to characters that, as with any adventure-based comic, run the risk of descending into stereotype.

This issue, and the next, do afford me the opportunity to type something that I've never, ever typed before: Giant Undead Skeletal Jester.

That was satisfying. See you tomorrow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 102: Advanced Dungeons & Dragons #5, April 1989

I managed today to find a copy of AD&D #8, so I've got the complete "The Spirit of Myrrth" storyline, which I'll report on for the next 4 days. Of our previous group of adventurers, only the three pictured above are featured in this story. No word on what has happened to Timoth or Agrivar, but I quite like the idea that the cast can fluctuate. It gives the comic a sort of fantasy-Avengers kind of feel. The other nice thing about this story, as the title attests, is that it's not taking itself seriously. The adventurers are contacted by the ghost of a famous jester to stop his grave from being robbed. There are some truly amusing moments in this initial issue, mostly centering on Onyx's attempts at humour, and Myrrth's attempts to educate him in humour. There are rumblings of the ongoing stories that were set up in the first storyline, with the bearded stranger, who knows Vajra somehow, and his cat-eyed child who might be more cat than child. The writing still suffers a bit from the name-dropping that I mentioned previously, but it's starting to feel....not exactly natural, but like it's a part of the aesthetic of the fantasy story that's being told. The really important thing is that I'm very much enjoying the series, and I'm planning on procuring the rest of it. I like the characters, the setting of Waterdeep engenders all sorts of nostalgic feelings, and the writers and artist seem to have a good handle on the characters and the type of story they're interested in telling. I'm curious as to whether we'll see an even larger over-arching storyline, a campaign to these individual adventures, but that'll have to wait for a while.

I'm tired today. My in-laws have been visiting for the last few days and it's been quite a whirlwind of activity. Next week I'll try to get back to a bit more critical thought, as well as the personal reminisce, once I've a bit more energy to devote to the project. See you tomorrow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 98: Advanced Dungeons & Dragons #4, March 1989

(A note: while writing this, the Grand Comics Database is down, so this is a lower quality picture, and lacks a link to the statistics page. I'll fix this once the GCD is back up.)

The epic conclusion to the first storyline, which has actually been an origin story for a couple of the characters. What I noted about Duursema's art the other day has ceased to be a problem. There were no moments in this issue in which I felt like I was looking at statues rather than golems, if you'll pardon the referential humour. Even the dialogue has ceased to spell out (I did it again) every movement and action, so, overall, this was a really satisfying read. I notice from the cover date that I was 15, almost, when this comic came out, and I still for the life of me can't understand why I would have given this series up when I did (as I did 3 issues from now). It really seems to sum up just about everything I was interested in at the time. (This was, of course, one year before I discovered sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll.)

I am a little concerned about the series moving forward, as the writing chores are relinquished by Fleisher and handed to Dan Mishkin (whose name appears on this cover, but who is not the scripter of this issue). As with Duursema, I've relatively little work by Mishkin that's not fantasy or sci-fi, two very under-represented genres in my collection and, let's be honest, in North American comics in general. But perhaps that means the he'll have a good grasp of how a fantasy story based on a table-top role-playing game should read.

(I have to note, again, what good shape this comic is in. I must have read it maybe once and then never touched it again. It doesn't even have those little tiny creases along the spine that would earn it a "Very Fine" rating.)

As far as moving forward with this series, I'm enjoying it immensely. The whole run only lasted 36 issues, though, as I've noted, I stopped well short of that number. I only have 3 issues of the next story arc, but I think this is the first series I've come across in this project that I'd like to finish collecting. So before galloping with Timoth into "The Spirit of Myrrth" (a lighter-hearted story, as you might glean from the title) part one, I'll have to find part four first. I do so like a challenge.

See you tomorrow with.....I have no idea.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 97: Advanced Dungeons & Dragons #3, February 1989

The thing that really struck me about this particular issue of the series is that it's in such good condition. Considering that it's been a part of my collection since the late eighties, it's worn its time in the boxes well. This is either a function of how well I take care of my comics, or how little I've actually read this series since it was published. Let's be honest and err on the side of the latter.

I've similar criticisms of this issue as I've had so far of the whole series. I get why Cybriana might have to cry "Magic Missile!" when casting the spell of the same name, but I never imagined that the verbal casting components of a magical spell involved simply shouting the name of the spell. I think I'm more a fan of the idea of making up linguistic-looking pictograms that represent the spell, rather than this name-dropping. I wonder if it'll peter out a bit as the series matures, though Fleisher leaves as writer after this arc, which unfortunately means that a new writer will have to familiarize him- or herself with the characters and the world.

I'm on the fence so far with regard to Jan Duursema's artwork. Sometimes it's quite lovely, other times remarkably awkward. Interestingly, I've got him doing very little superhero work in my collection, the only other major presences being the DC sorcery title Arion, and the Star Wars Episode II adaptation. I'm not sure what it is. His facial close-ups are sometimes really lovely (mostly with Cybriana), and then sometimes really heavy-handed. What occurs to me is that it's not simply a writer who needs to get used to working with characters, but artists too. In television shows it's often obvious in a first season that the writers are still trying to sort out characters and motivations, no more or less so that the actors are attempting the same thing. In comics, the artist is all of the actors, and as such must figure out mannerisms, important visual features, and even something so simple as size differentiations not only for the character he or she plays, as with an actor, but with all the characters. Duursema is the regular artist on the whole run of this title, so hopefully the art will become more consistent as he familiarizes himself with the characters and the world within which they live.

This issue's most interesting feature is the back story we receive about Imgig Zu (the bad guy), and his interactions with Selune, goddess of the Moon. There's a couple of action scenes that are a bit bland compared to the battles in the last couple of issues, but I think this is the issue where we get a real understanding of what's going on. Cybriana fills in for us her odd backstory (she has a twin, a Drow, who was actually an evil growth on her body that appeared when she was born and was cast out by mages and is now working with Imgig Zu....I think), and is promptly kidnapped (again). Fleisher seems to be also developing future stories for subsequent writers with the introduction of Connor and a small child who don't seem to have much to do with the quest of our focal adventurers. I know they start to play a larger role in the next arc, but can't quite remember what it is.

We'll get there eventually, I guess. See you tomorrow.