The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 2038: Amazing Spider-Man #415, October 1996

 

 For information on stopping the spread of COVID-19, and on what to do if you are quarantined, have a look at the World Health Organization site.

 

I'm having a bit of a pain day today, so I'll talk a bit more about the "Onslaught" crossover tomorrow. Which might be more appropriate because, really, not much happens to further the plot in today's comic.

And there's two Peter Parkers? What's that all about?

(Yes, I know it's the infamous Clone Saga. I'm being facetious.)

 So, I like Mr. Bagley's art - he of Thunderbolts can do no wrong. And, as far as superheroes battling giant robots, it did the trick. But not much else.

 More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1561: The Superman Family #193, Jan.-Feb.1979

Supergirl and the Doom Patrol finally meet! After the villains are defeated, and the chaos subsides. Supergirl says thanks, and lets them get back to their vacation. All in all, not the Patrol's finest hour.

A while back, I read the issue that follows this one, an issue that finishes up a number of the storylines I've read in the last few days. I'm going to have to read it again, I think, just to get a bit of closure. The Doom Patrol are absent from comics for a couple of years after this adventure, and it's a very different version that we'll see next. But that can wait til tomorrow.

If you're looking for a stereotypical DC comic of this era, Superman Family is pretty much it. It's kind of a last gasp of these versions of the characters, as the Crisis looms in the not too distant future. Superboy's Smallville backstory is never quite this naive ever again, nor Krypto's inner dialogue so wry. Lois loses a bit of her independence in losing her own feature. So, despite what I've called their unremarkability, their naivety is charming enough that I'd recommend giving them a go.

"I'd hoped my little absence wouldn't undermine our splendid relationship!"

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1560: The Superman Family #192, Nov.-Dec.1978

I think the thing about these stories is that they are, for the most part, unremarkable. It's not that they're not good stories - they're wonderful, silly, weird stories, just not remarkable ones. I get the sense that writers and artists were starting to really feel the stifling shadow of the Comics Code at this point, especially those creators who had come up through a more revolutionary culture than the generation before. You can see this in the pushing at the boundaries in some of the stories, most interestingly the Krypto feature. The Dog of Steel is involved in some inner city gang trouble, but it all turns out okay. Perhaps that's the problem - everything turns out okay in these stories. There never really seems to be too much on the line.

That aside, the Doom Patrol feature in this issue, and last, is odd. It's touted as a team-up with Supergirl, but the two haven't even come close to meeting. And the Doom Patrol's part of the story seems fairly straightforward, and really could have featured any superteam. I think that if you're going to have a guest star, you have to respect the version of the genre that star comes from. I'm prepping a post that is the first article I ever had published, and it thinks about how we can reconcile a satiric or parodic comic like Doom Patrol, Ambush Bug, or Hitman, with the more serious fare of the Batman books, for example. I explain it through inflection theory, which very quickly would mean that if the Patrol are guesting in Supergirl's feature, there should be some specific reason it's the Patrol. Just as if she were guesting in their book, there would have to be some reason it was her.

I'll try to get the article up soonish.

"Gosh, Supergirl---you're even better than the Bionic Woman!"

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1559: The Superman Family #191, Sept.-Oct. 1978

A little less than a year later, the Patrol return to assist Supergirl in her series in the anthology title The Superman Family. Although the stories are, for the most part, the generally pretty undramatic fare of comics in the throes of the Code, I have a soft spot for these kinds of series. These, to me, are comics aimed squarely at kids, and at giving them a fair bit for their hard-earned money. Some of the stories are standalones and some are parts of series. They're all well-rendered, much in the vein of the era, like their stories. One thing I will say for this era of DC is that despite having some lackluster stories, their artists were still top of the line.

The Patrol stumbles into trouble today while on holiday in England. I suppose that's as good a place as any to find them, and let's assume that some strange case took them to the United Kingdom. They don't actually meet up with Supergirl in this issue, though both she and the Patrol face menaces that are affecting local gravity with some pretty catastrophic consequences. I'll likely get sick of writing it, but they act very much like superheroes here, saving people and trying to stop the menace, and there's nothing wrong with that, but usually it's more of a struggle for the Doom Patrol to act like superheroes. More often than not the situations within which they find themselves remind our heroes of just how fragile they really are, which in turn prompts them to adopt more unorthodox thinking. Not so with the New Doom Patrol. They wade in, hands blazing, and blow things up.

(Oh, the Lois Lane story today has the intrepid reporter tracking down a baby trafficking ring and just about beating the leader of it to death. Literally. She has to be pulled off at the last moment. It was pretty intense, and not at all what I was expecting from this series.)

"For all our insecurities, it seems we have some use in this world, after all!"

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 973: Avengers Annual #16, 1987

This issue was kind of "meh."

And I'm not really feeling the writing right now.

There wasn't nearly enough made of the Captain Marvels facing off against one another.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 906: The Adventures of the Thing #4, July 1992

When I read the first page of this issue, it read to me like an interaction from The Venture Brothers. Which, of course, is a parody of just this kind of superhero story and series, but it occurred to me that, through parody like VB, it's possible for a Fantastic Four comic to become a retroactive parody of itself. If that makes any sense.

This is a nice little rarity in the life of the malodorous Man-Thing. Rather than a constant state of pain due to the incessant fear that seems to follow him around, the swamp creature instead basks in the radiance of Ben Grimm's heroic nature. There are so many moments in this comic that really are textbook cases of the hyperbolic nature of superhero storytelling. A rooftop Oscar-moment facing the setting sun, flashbacks of old war stories while staggering half-dead, refusing to give up. And, truly, they're glorious. It's over the top and ridiculous, a story of extremes, in art and in letters. I think it may rank as one of my favourites of this era, and reaffirms my opinion of Marvel Two-in-One and writer Tom DeFalco's tenure on the title. They're really, really good.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 844: Superman Family #194, March/April 1979

It's no secret that I have a thing for the Man of Steel. He was the first superhero. How can we not revere him, even in some small measure. For me, though he hasn't always been my favourite character to read, he's always stood for the best that superheroes, and by proxy of their metaphor, we, can become. Ben Saunders, in his book Do the Gods Wear Capes? labels Superman as the Platonic good in fictional form. I think I agree, though he's not always been treated as such.

Superman Family is a cool comic - I like the idea that rather than buying four or five different series, you can get this one that includes stories about all of the cast of the Super-titles. What I didn't realize about this comic, which I picked up on the cheap from the Calgary Expo this year, is that it's the last part of a multi-issue story which I actually have the previous bits of. So I could have read the story in proper sequence, had I just glanced at my collection before reading it. Ah well. These things are likely to happen, really.

The central story features art by John Calnan, an artist I've never heard of before. I'm torn about his style, and really it's over one particular aspect of the art: The characters all look like they're posed action figures. Part of me loves it, and part of me hates it. There's a staticness to the movement and pose of the characters that almost pushes into the realm of the uncanny. But on the other hand, it takes that stylizedness of superhero art and applies it to the motion of the comic, not just the appearance. And I can't decide whether it's brilliant or mediocre.

Also, whoever drew that cover has no idea how human (or Kryptonian) physiology works. Unless Supergirl has a rubber spine.

To be continued.

Flea Market Finds

This past weekend, I did something that I very rarely, if ever, do. I bought a box (a whole box!) of comics.
At a local flea market I found myself flipping through a single long box sitting below a vendor's table. I'd been disappointed with this trip to the Hillhurst-Sunnyside Community Centre, as this was the only box of cheap comics (and actually the only cheap comics, period) that I could find. There was one other vendor selling key Silver Age issues at guide prices, but no other "dollar bins." This particular one had quite a few issues of the latter bits of Avengers v.1, issues up in the 300s, which is the section of that series that I'm currently in the process of tracking down. So I'd decided to pick up a few, maybe $10 worth, when the lady behind the table said she'd do a good deal on the whole box. I considered for a few long moments, and then asked what kind of deal. She said $50 for the whole thing. Again, a few long moments passed, and then I agreed. I dashed to the ATM, got another $40 out, and left with a box of comics.

I've spent the last 4 days going through, databasing, bagging, boarding, removing duplicates. In the end, doubles included, there were 228 comics, which very roughly breaks down to 22 cents per issue. I think I did alright there.

Up above, there, you can see the collection laid out after I got home. The stacks of comics are all issues from the same, or similar, series. Thus, the Avengers pile is all Avengers. The Archie Comics pile is all Archie Comics (the only bit I haven't finished cataloging quite yet). I bought the collection primarily on the strength of the number of Avengers comics in it, though, of all the runs in the box, that was the one that produced the most duplicates. It was, in fact, the stuff that I initially dismissed as "filler" that turned out to be the gold amongst the dross (yep, I'm looking squarely at that enhanced cover Silver Sable #1 from the 90s).

Up in the top left corner there is a pile of The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, both initial and deluxe editions. I love these encyclopedias, so it was a nice treat to get them. I'm also in the process of tracking down duplicate issues of each one so I can remove the covers and use them as posters. There were a few doubles in that pile, but mostly it was new stuff. The large pile of Archie comics is mostly mid to late 80s. Betty and Veronica's fashion sense was, in a word, atrocious in that era. I remember living through those fashions, both the first time and in the ill-advised 80s revival that seemed to take the world by storm a few years back.

Next to the Archies is the pile of comics I was most surprised by. It's an almost complete run of Marvel Two-In-One, Marvel's solo title for The Thing, from #80 to #100. I had little to no interest in this run, written predominantly by Tom DeFalco, who I immediately associate with the deplorable Clone Saga. But, as my impetus for the 40 Years of Comics Project had it, I shouldn't automatically assume that a comic is bad having not read it. I did read a few of these issues (once I'm done with Age of Ultron, I'm going to devote a few weeks to the stuff in this collection), and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. In particular, issue #86, and the story "Time Runs Like Sand," now ranks as one of my favourite comics ever. I'll re-read it and blog it next week some time.

There was also some late-era Fantastic Four v.1 in the box, which, again, I had little interest in, until I realized that it encompasses the majority of Walt Simonson's run on the title that I have been meaning to read for quite a few years now. So I'll chalk that up as a win too.

Before I talk about the other piles, I'll note that there were, as you can see, a number of individual issues of various comics. The ones I've read (Guardians of the Galaxy, Silver Sable) were pretty unremarkable, which is probably why whoever bought these in the first place didn't get any more.

I've already noted the Avengers comics as being the most important, at least from a collecting viewpoint, in the lot. Most of the pile of Superboy were duplicates, and in truly terrible shape. That version of the character was never one I had that much interest in, though the "Zero Hour" tie-in issue does feature the old, pre-Crisis Superboy, so that should be interesting. One thing I will note about the Avengers comics is that they included full runs of both Walt Simonson and John Byrne's tenures as writers on the title, both quite short, but probably pretty good.

The last little bit is that pile of Marvel Age comics, a good 30 of them in sequential order. This might seem a low point to end the assessment of the collection on, until one realizes that, by and large, these are comics that have never been reprinted. That is, of course, because the series functioned as a news magazine, and only included the occasional sequential strip (Fred Hembeck's center pages notwithstanding). What they do contain, however, is a chronological recounting of the events of each year of Marvel Comics narratives in the "Marvel Age" feature at the end of each issue. The earliest one I have starts in 1973, more than a decade after the "Age" begins. The articles are fantastic for the fact that rather than recounting publication history, they actually tell the fictional histories of the characters. I envision this as a scanning-and-sharing/cataloging project for the future. There's also occasional exclusive comics (like the Kirby/Stern piece that graces Marvel Age Annual #2, or the Shadowline summary from Annual #4) and the aforementioned Hembeck work, which I'm assuming has been reprinted somewhere, but maybe hasn't. Add to this the occasional article about the workings of the company, faux Daily Bugles, and such, and it's actually a pretty great find. Not one that I ever would have gone out of my way for, but pretty great nonetheless.

And that's it. As I said, I don't buy collections like this very often, due to both space and financial constraints, but I felt like treating myself on the weekend, and it turned out to be more of a treat than I'd expected. Look for some examples of what was in the collection over the next couple of weeks of the 40 Years project.