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On the topic of Jack Kirby, just started reading Destroyer Duck and man is this some absolutely vicious writing on his end, the infamous Cogburn page is just a taste of how savage it is
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Jan 16, 2021 05:16
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bobkatt013 posted:In the last thread there was talk about Giffen/DeMatteis's Justice League collections and how they stopped. Wasn’t it because they decided they did not want to pay sexual predator Gerard Jones residentials? It’s also why they have removed almost all his work from its streaming services and comixology Lord it feels awkward having gotten a copy of one of his books for Christmas this year(I had put it on my Amazon Christmas wishlist years ago before that whole mess happened and I had forgotten it was still on there, and my mom bought it as one of my presents this year)
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Jan 18, 2021 01:53
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CopywrightMMXI posted:Oh man, I didn’t know that about Jones until now. The first comic series I ever had on my pull list was Justice League International. That era really doesn’t hold up well but I always had a nostalgic soft spot for it. His subsequent JLA run was the worst justice league run ever though and he got pretty perverted with Fire and Ice Maiden. Not sure if it was an issue written by him for sure, but now got me remembering an issue of JLI that involved a teen runaway crashing at League HQ and she raids Fire's closet for an outfit that is definitely a bit suspect from a run written by a pedophile
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Jan 18, 2021 21:43
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Gaz-L posted:There's already some Black Label stuff on it, and some weird random Wildstorm and ABC books. By sheer virtue of DC being more aggressive in gobbling up indie stuff and actively trying to be in that marketplace a DC library app/service has the potential to be more interesting that Marvel Unlimited. True, like 99% of the reason someone would do Marvel Unlimited is if they're going to try for one of the variations of the challenge to read through everything in the main continuity from Fantastic Four #1 onwards
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Jan 20, 2021 00:29
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Uthor posted:
Yeah a similar disc came with my copy of Kingdom Come back in like 2004
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Jan 21, 2021 04:03
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Just reread JLA: The Nail, and overall it's still good though I hate that they took the lazy route(just like in New Frontier) of having most of the mystical heroes sidelined by some inane "humanity must fight it's own battles" bullshit* that you can tell was really only included because the author had no idea how to keep the Spectre or Doctor Fate from solving the crisis in mere minutes, Another Nail handled that much better in comparison *the scenes are indeed basically written exactly the same too
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Jan 25, 2021 11:10
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Roth posted:Anyone got any advice on organizing boxes of comics? I used to keep them alphabetized but I gave up at a certain point, and I want to get them organized again. I'd say by company and then either by book or chronologically depending on the composition of your collection
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Jan 25, 2021 11:45
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So I just found out that there's a random issue of Green Lantern back in the 70's or something where a kid gets blown up by explosive decompression(back when people thought that was what happened to a person exposed to the vacuum of space and that it only takes seconds to happen for some reason) and not only is that just grotesque and unnecessary they even depict it on the cover It's the biggest Why that a comic has gotten out of me in a long time and considering how stupid comics can get that is really saying something
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Jan 29, 2021 04:20
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so I restarted once again my Marvel chronological reading project once more and I figure to give me more motivation I'll post some basic thoughts* on each issue here, with this first post covering the first five issues in the order I'm following; Fantastic Four #1: a classic for reasons gone into by many people, even if it is a janky mess clearly edited and sown together from a bunch of originally unrelated unused stories Fantastic Four #2: another classic story and also still very janky, not to mention at least one big plot hole and some very questionable ethics on Reed's part Tales to Astonish #27: the introduction of Hank Pym though at this point he's just a generic comic book mad scientist, the other stories in this issue include one about a magic mirror, a really silly story about a talking horse, and "Dead Planet" a story about an otherwise invincible alien warrior having to combat loneliness, honestly it's the best story in the issue a real Hidden Gem of early Silver Age Marvel Fantastic Four #3: honestly the only real reason to read this issue is to see the debut of the FF's costumes, the Fantasti-Car, and their headquarters, otherwise this is a really bleh issue(Miracle Man might just be the lamest opponent the Fantastic Four fight in the Silver Age that I'm aware of) that shows that Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were still ironing out the kinks for this series Fantastic Four #4: probably the first issue of FF that's fully good on it's own merits and not just for historical reasons, with the reintroduction of the Sub-Mariner and the cast's personalities are beginning to solidify(well Sue is still pretty one dimensional), also Giganto is a classic example of a Kirby Monster, and I love the goofy little "The Hulk Is Coming" and "Who Is The Hulk??" thing they stick at the bottom of certain pages in here I'll post more later *when I first started this a couple years ago in a thread over on another site I did much more in-depth analysis for each issue but doing that took ages to do(and got derailed thanks to some personal problems at the time), so for the time being I'm going to stick to these shorter reviews, maybe once I hit the end of say 1963 I'll go back and do full length ones for all the issues past FF#3(as I've already written up FF#1-3 and TtA#27 over in that other thread)
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Feb 8, 2021 07:13
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onto the next set of issues; Tales to Astonish #29: the titular story for this issue "When the Space Beasts Attack!!" is a fun little twist on the alien invasion plotline, the rest of this issue's stories are also pretty fun overall(the other three stories all revolve around assholes getting their just desserts in ironic and lethal ways) Tales to Astonish #30: another fun issue, we had three stories involving assholes getting their just desserts again(including the introduction of "Quogg" who might be one of Marvel's nuttiest monsters ever), as well as a cute story about a woman getting rewarded for helping an alien The Incredible Hulk #1: the debut of one of Marvel's most enduring characters(though it took a little while for that to really stick) and the first Silver Age debut to really stick the landing on it's own merits, though it does have some quirks(Hulk's original personality is weird and physically he's not really all that impressive yet either) Tales to Astonish #32: this one was kinda mediocre overall, not much else to say about it The Incredible Hulk #2: this one is also kinda iffy(there's a reason people make jokes about the Toad Men whenever anyone can be bothered to remember they exist), though the way Hulk is drawn in this issue is interesting and he's finally green now, also it's kinda funny how this marks two issues now where Hulk doesn't really contribute to the climax of the plot, it's Banner who saves the day
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Feb 8, 2021 09:30
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Random Stranger posted:I'm not saying you're doing it wrong since you have to pick your own boundaries that make sense to you on a reading project like this, but is there a reason that you're going forward with the non-super issues of Tales to Astonish? Most people either only read the comics that were Marvel Universe at the time they were published, or they go whole hog and read everything. Adding one of the monster books to your reading list just feels a bit odd. Each of these that's on here is on the "Main Reading Order" over on The Complete Marvel Reading Order, for these anthology comics usually only one story is actually eventual Marvel Canon, I'm just reading the whole issue(minus text stories because those universally blow) cause the idea of going through the effort of hunting down an old comic and only reading part of it just feels wrong As for where I'm reading them, I'll admit I'm using a  source mostly cause I know Marvel Unlimited still has holes in it's libraryJordan7hm posted:I think it's helpful to read at least some monster books to get a better sense of what was there at the time. And if drrockso20 is using CMRO a lot of those monster books are included because they have a character or monster who comes back 30 years later. Yup
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Feb 9, 2021 00:59
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continuing yet again with my Marvel readthrough, some big stuff this time around; Amazing Adult Fantasy #14: some fun little stories in this issue, including the first appearance of the Marvel brand of Mutants Fantastic Four #5: the debut of Doctor Doom and overall a very solid comic, the whole time travel adventure to find Blackbeard's Treasure is wonderfully goofy(and we see more of the continuity begin to be built up as they make a callback to Namor from the prior issue) Amazing Fantasy #15: Spider-Man's debut is still as classic as always, even if Ditko's art is a bit sloppy and/or stiff in some panels, and yeah Peter Parker does kinda give off some "School Shooter" vibes in the first couple of pages whenever he's around people his own age, also there's at least one aspect that later retellings change that definitely works better than it did here, in most adaptations the burglar pretty much immediately goes off and kills Uncle Ben after Peter let's him get away, here they had several days stretch between the two encounters which just feels kinda contrived for some reason, also funny thing is Amazing Fantasy is still an anthology comic in this issue so we have a couple more stories after this though they're overall kinda mediocre little things Journey Into Mystery #83: Thor's debut is probably the most overall solid of the major debuts so far, not as unique or interesting as most of the others but lacking any major flaws too, unfortunately the copy of this issue I have on hand only has the Thor story so I have no idea what else was in this issue Journey Into Mystery #84: unfortunately Thor's second story is overall REALLY bad, only good thing about it is that as both Thor and Donald Blake he makes some creative uses of his powers, also the debut of Jane Foster and well it's not really a strong showing for her
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Feb 11, 2021 21:40
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Skwirl posted:Still? that's the last issue for decades, isn't it? The source I was using had listed a couple more issues after that one, but turns out those were made in the 90's as some sort of weird promotional stunt
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Feb 11, 2021 21:58
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and now for the next set of comics; Incredible Hulk #3: this one is pretty ho-hum, you can tell Lee & Kirby were kinda drawing blanks on what to do with Hulk so they essentially write out both Banner and Hulk as characters to have Hulk become a mostly mindless puppet of Rick Jones, but unfortunately Rick at this point has all the personality of a bucket of paste so it doesn't really help matters Fantastic Four #6: this issue has a lot of firsts in it, we have the first villain team-up of modern Marvel, the debuts of Unstable Molecules, the Yancy Street Gang, and the first of many seeming demises of Doctor Doom, also man if these stories were being told today people would be calling Namor a "himbo" for sure Tales to Astonish #35: the return of Hank Pym and the debut of Ant-Man, another pretty solid story Journey Into Mystery #85: the debut of Loki(and technically a bunch of other Asgardians as well as Asgard itself) is a fun little story full of both him and Thor doing some ridiculous feats of magic, not sure what the heck is up with them trying to setup a love triangle between Thor, Loki, and Jane Foster though, guess they just thought repeating the Namor one from FF would make Jane Foster not a complete bore of a character and failed miserably in the process Fantastic Four #7: pretty much a filler issue but one that does it's job
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Feb 12, 2021 00:15
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Random Stranger posted:Amazing Fantasy 15 definitely wasn't intended to be the last issue, despite Stan Lee's later stories of fitting Spider-Man in because the book was doomed. AF switched to an all Ditko book (and was promoted as such!) with issue 10, so when Ditko was eventually tapped to draw Spider-Man it was only natural for the character to debut there. Issue 15 has an editorial page on it asking readers for what they want to see in future issues; almost definitely a prompt for them to go, " Thankfully I'm already well aware of how that all works out down the road, or at least the Cliff Notes version Besides I'm soon going to be reaching the Human Torch solo stories, that's where the real pain is at Skwirl posted:If you wanna get really esoteric, in X-Men #1 he's the only one not excited about there finally being a girl in their previously all boys school. Well he's also the youngest so it's possible he just hadn't really hit that point yet
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Feb 12, 2021 20:11
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back for yet more early Marvel comics, this one is going to be a bit painful; Strange Tales #101: so here we have the first of the Human Torch's solo comics(as the cover says "By Permission of The Fantastic Four Magazine") and well to say these comics are generally bad is a huge understatement, for whatever reason they move the action out of NYC to some fictional small town and try to retcon in Johnny Storm having to maintain a secret identity(though they at least acknowledged that previously he had friends who did know his identity) and it just doesn't work, like nothing on paper should indicate why these comics are so bad and no one element is especially awful it just all collides together into a steaming pile of mediocrity and weirdness Tales to Astonish #36: Hank Pym's second adventure as Ant Man is a fairly average story with moments of cleverness, I'll definitely be glad for when they stop hitting the "Communist Agent" well so often for villains though Journey Into Mystery #86: a fun little time travel tale for Thor to experience, meanwhile Donald Blake only appears for three panels at the very end of the story, it's amazing how obvious that they had no idea what to do with Thor's alter ego Strange Tales #102: this one is actually pretty decent for a solo Human Torch story, if mostly because The Wizard made for an interesting foe, unlike the previous issue the copy I have on hand has the other stories in this issue, but honestly they're nothing special Incredible Hulk #4: the tagline on the cover says "Fantasy As You Like It" and man is that a lie, this issue like pretty much this whole run(except issue 1) has been an exhibition of mediocrity, it becomes really obvious why Hulk's first comic only lasted six issues before getting canned
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Feb 13, 2021 09:38
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Jordan7hm posted:The first ~300 issues of CMRO are a slog. The pacing of the stories is slow and they’re very much still in the figuring thing out stage. I think doing it in these little 5 issue blocks will be a big help(especially since the versions I'm finding for a lot of these chop out the ads and the non canon stories so they end up being only like 15 pages an issue), especially as I'll usually be jumping between multiple books in each block Edge & Christian posted:From all acounts he gave them a pretty clear outline and they had the full script for the first issue or two of Final Crisis in hand and he had some specific requests, but for some reason DC editorial decided to ignore/contradict/just straight up misunderstand a bunch of those plot points. Due to that very little about Countdown or it's tie-ins ended up staying canon once Final Crisis actually came out, making it even more pointless to read
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Feb 13, 2021 21:18
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once more into the breach with the next block of early Marvel comics; Fantastic Four #8: the Puppet Master might just be the creepiest villain of the Silver Age and he also is one of the biggest assholes of the era(and considering that list includes literal Hitler that's really saying something), meanwhile Alicia Masters has a very strong debut as Marvel's purest soul, showing love even to someone as monstrous and hateful as her step-father(seriously he yells at her about her calling him father instead of step-father), overall a very strong issue Tales to Astonish #37: an okay little story but nothing special either Strange Tales #103: this one was an okay if kinda weird little dimensional jaunt for the Human Torch, again nothing special Fantastic Four #9: an excellent issue overall, the Fantastic Four going broke because of the Stock Market and then going to Hollywood to regain their fortune is a wonderfully silly premise and there's some great moments of both action and character building in this one, only negative is an awkward section where the Human Torch fights against an African Tribe that has not aged well one iota Journey Into Mystery #87: ugh this issue blew chunks, not only do we have another tired Red Menace plot it also highlights just how bad of a secret identity Donald Blake is, and how shallow Jane Foster as a love interest is
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Feb 14, 2021 00:26
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Vincent posted:Anyone knows where this panel is from? Justice, which has several great Captain Marvel moments in it
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Feb 14, 2021 08:52
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more Marvel Comics time; Tales to Astonish #38: the debut of Egghead, actually a really fun story as the majority of it takes place from his perspective rather than Ant Man's Incredible Hulk #5: so besides the fact that the second story in this issue is racist as hell there's also the fact that the Hulk as a character just does not work at all, at this point he's just an abrasive rear end in a top hat and not a funny or interesting one either Journey Into Mystery #88: Loki returns in this story that's fun but nothing super special Strange Tales #104: the introduction of possibly the doofiest villain of the entire Silver Age; Paste Pot Pete, in spite of that the story treats him as a serious foe for Human Torch to deal with and he's surprisingly competent for a villain of this era too, Human Torch manages to stop his plans but he manages to get away to freedom, setting him up as a recurrent foe of Johnny Storm, actually pretty decent story overall, the other two stories in this issue(for once the non-Human Torch stories were present in the scan I found) were kinda goofy and not too great Fantastic Four #10: while Marvel has done some meta bits before this issue(see Reed using pinups of monsters from the monster comics in #2 to scare the Skrull Armada or Johnny reading a Hulk comic a couple issues ago) but this issue went heavy duty on it by having Stan Lee and Jack Kirby and the Marvel Comics offices appear directly in the story and play a major role in it, once again an excellent issue
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Feb 15, 2021 07:58
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And then you get the 90's comics that are hard to catalog as being good or bad like Body Bags cause on the one hand there's a lot of that "trying to ape Image" edginess(a lot of the violence especially that one infamous page, good amount of casual racist and homophobic dialog, basically everything about Panda's design), but on the other hand the art is gorgeous(Jason Pearson is an excellent artist even if it's hampered by his work ethic) and the writing has a lot of energy and emotion to it that puts it above a lot of it's contemporaries
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Feb 18, 2021 22:55
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Just finished a reread of all of Superman & Batman: Generations, by which I mean all three parts, first part was mostly good but suffered from getting needlessly edgy and dark in it's back half, second part was overall great since it was essentially just more stories(though the last story in it was kinda silly in a bad way), and the third part was just a way too long and confusing mess that somehow dove even deeper into pointless edge and darkness to an extent I hadn't really thought possible(part 3 had been the one part I hadn't read before, well besides that one weird page involving an adult Superman kissing a teenaged Lana Lang*) *John Byrne is a talented man but he's also a huge weirdo
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Feb 26, 2021 17:46
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Been reading a bunch of old DC Elseworlds books and man the quality of these books is even more inconsistent than I remembered, makes a bit more sense now why DC mostly abandoned the concept after a while even though it happened right around the same time they brought back the Multiverse as a concept in the main universe(and thus has resulted in it going heavily underused for most of the time it's been back)
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Mar 1, 2021 23:57
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Splint Chesthair posted:Wasn't Red Rain one of the Earths that stuck around for Multiversity? I remember a Kelley Jones drawing of a vampire Justice League in that guidebook. But somehow they had a vampire Earth-3 Ultraman instead of a vampire Superman? Yup and every time it's shown up it's been lame, both because having Vampire Batman be a villain is lame(only works in Crimson Mist because he dies at the end) and having everyone become vampires is also lame, should have had everyone be different kinds of monster
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Mar 3, 2021 03:03
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muscles like this! posted:There is an Elseworld where he's a Frankenstein monster. And there's a Batman one as well
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Mar 3, 2021 03:32
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muscles like this! posted:The most confusing Elseworld definitely has to be JLA: Destiny which takes forever to explain why things are different (instead of Bruce Wayne and Kal-El there's Thomas Wayne and Jor-El) and also uses a bunch of Golden Age heroes without actually explaining who they are. Yeah that one is kinda a weird one, though it did have some fun ideas
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Mar 3, 2021 04:19
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Mr. Maltose posted:Can’t believe no one’s mentioned The Batman of Arkham yet. Give me a sequel to that with Batman and his best buddy Croc fighting crime and Dr. Bruce Wayne providing actual quality care to people. That one is a favorite of mine Those designs would be right at home in a late 80's to mid 90's Super Sentai series
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Mar 4, 2021 00:55
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Skwirl posted:It's from the Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark broadway play that was cancelled early because every actor playing Spider-Man suffered horrible injuries. I'm aware, doesn't refute my point though
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Mar 4, 2021 01:08
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CopywrightMMXI posted:Thanks for the recommendation of Maniac of New York. I read the first issue and it’s great. I’ll have to order 2 and 3 soon. Just read the first two issues myself, and it's definitely a well made comic in terms of both art and writing, but it suffers from that common ailment that all but cripples most modern indie comics in the US, it's WAY too cynical and depressing for it's own good(Ultramega is another recent example of this phenomenon*) to the point that it saps out ANY form of possible enjoyment or entertainment from reading them that it makes reading them in the first place meaningless *both are also very shameless about blatantly ripping off their inspirations to such a degree that it's honestly amazing that neither has gotten sued yet for copyright infringement
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Mar 30, 2021 10:33
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drrockso20 posted:more Marvel Comics time; just realized that it's been the better part of two months since I last did one of these posts, so back to my project of semi-chronologically reading through all of Marvel from Fantastic Four #1 onward with another five or so issue dump of my inane opinions; Tales to Astonish #39: so this one is a weird one even by early Marvel standards, the Scarlet Beetle is one of the oddest villains of the era and yet another one defeated by vaguely unethical means(in his case the radiation that mutated him and granted him human intelligence is removed turning him back into a regular mindless beetle), also notably this is the first Ant-Man story where we see that his "growth gas" can grow things beyond their normal size, overall this story is continuing the trend where Ant-Man tend to be more interesting for the villains than for Ant-Man himself Strange Tales #105: the Wizard makes his return in this "solo" Human Torch story(in truth Invisible Girl plays a big role in this one too) and you can tell Jack Kirby was having a wonderful time drawing this guy's goofy mug(some great potential avatars in this issue), overall a fun if relatively middle of the road story(Johnny is really starting to pull off some goofy tricks with his fire in these stories) Journey Into Mystery #89: lord this issue has a ridiculously generic cover for an early Silver Age comic, just Thor making a pose, also this story has a very goofy start where in order to distract people so he can switch back to Donald Blake without getting noticed he dresses up a mannequin like himself and sends it flying over Manhattan, overall that's probably the most notable thing that happens in this issue, otherwise a fairly humdrum story about Thor taking on some mobsters Fantastic Four #11: this issue starts off with some downright astoundingly shameless shilling of the very comic itself and a downright adorable scene with the FF hanging out with some young fans, and then we have the FF open some fan mail(and Thing gets pranked once again by the Yancy Street Gang) and then after testing out a new formula to turn Ben human again(which in it's favor does last more than a couple panels) we get some backstory on how Ben and Reed met in college and their activities during WW2(Ben as a Fighter Ace in the Pacific and Reed as an OSS agent in Occupied Europe) as well as some drama regarding Reed & Sue's romance due to doubt sown by Namor over the past few issues, as well as yet another recap of the FF's origins followed by a semi-Fourth Wall breaking bit where Reed & Ben confront reader accusations about Sue being useless(it doesn't really work but you can give them a couple points for trying) and then Ben goes back to being the Thing and we move on to the main story after celebrating Sue's birthday, which introduces The Impossible Man, which is interesting in that while he's definitely a destructive rear end in a top hat, a lot of the trouble happens because everyone else acts like an rear end in a top hat to him first, and indeed he's beaten by everyone on Earth engaging in a whole different form of assholery entirely, overall a fun issue Tales to Astonish #40: not a bad story but really not much of anything to discuss about it beyond the novelty of Ant-Man faking a burst appendix as part of his plan to beat the villain of this story so overall a decent crop of stories to make my return to this series of mine, though FF#11 is the only real standout story
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Apr 7, 2021 09:44
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Inkspot posted:The original plan was for the twist to come up a couple years in, but sales were waning so the reveal got pushed forward. Personally I would have much rather Invincible and Kirkman's career had died in obscurity
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Apr 8, 2021 05:57
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Splint Chesthair posted:It’s such a weird thing to me because, from a narrative perspective, why not say Reed Richards and T’Challa cured cancer? There’s hardly a good reason in-universe that cancer has to be a thing that still exists. (Mar-vell’s death aside.) Trans-dimensional travel is fine, but curing cancer is a bridge too far in terms of realism? This is why Astro City is so good
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May 7, 2021 22:47
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drrockso20 posted:just realized that it's been the better part of two months since I last did one of these posts, so back to my project of semi-chronologically reading through all of Marvel from Fantastic Four #1 onward with another five or so issue dump of my inane opinions; been a while so might as well do another one of these, this one is going to be a bit special as it's going to be slightly bigger than my previous ones(six issues/seven stories instead of the usual 5 issues) as I'm very close to hitting the 50th story in the CMRO list, also we're going to be seeing two special debuts this time around, first as a bonus the covers for the first 40 issues I've read for this project so far covering the first 43 stories(as the CMRO list covers) in it;  starting with this specific post from now on I'll be including the covers for each issue as I reach them, so lets get on with it Strange Tales #106: so remember how I was saying when I covered earlier Human Torch solo stories that Johnny Storm suddenly having to do Secret Identity shenanigans felt weird and contrived, well turns out Stan Lee must have realized this too as this story reveals pretty much immediately(in what's a rather blatant retcon) that everyone in Glenville already knows Johnny is the Torch and that the only reason no one brought it up to him was that since he never talked about being the Torch(due to trying to maintain a secret identity for no real reason) was that everyone assumed he wanted his privacy about it, otherwise the story is nothing special though honestly it's not really a Human Torch solo story it's truthfully just a Fantastic Four story with a heavy focus on Johnny, it does reveal the interesting idea that Johnny is good at making costumes as he makes a new temporary costume as part of the story(and at the end of the story throws it in the trash in spite of it being an Unstable Molecules costume like his normal FF one, which feels like the sort of thing that would be fun to have a callback to), also The Acrobat definitely feels like a less interesting prototype for Batroc The Leaper down the road Strange Tales #107: this story opens on a fun little meta note as it has Reed & Ben visiting Glenville briefly to have Sue type up notes of one of their adventures for the Fantastic Four comic, which doing so without Johnny's input reopens some soreness he had from the last issue(last time it was over the money the team earns, this time about him being equally represented in the team's decisions), this leads to him deciding to hunt down and beat Namor all by himself, I do wonder how much longer it will take before they ditch Johnny having a time limit on how long he stays aflame though as it's kinda annoying honestly(and leads to a very silly moment where he has to rest on a ship and the crew make him swab the deck cause they don't believe he's the Torch since his powers are out), notably when he does find Namor, Namor's actually reluctant to fight Johnny, if only because he wants to give Sue his fishbone, only agreeing to it after Johnny agitates him with some fire, thus leading to a creative and pretty wacky fight(since at this point Namor still has the ability to mimic fish traits, so we get to see the incredibly ridiculous image of Namor inflating himself like a puffer fish), definitely the best of the Solo Human Torch stories so far, also this issue for once had a copy I could find that had other stories in it besides the Human Torch one, first story is an interesting one primarily for the final twist in it, the next one is another one of those fun "rear end in a top hat gets what he deserves in the big twist", and lastly as this copy includes the original ads, there's one of those old fashioned ads for a giant set of Plastic Army Men(well in this case Knights rather than Army Men) and I always love seeing those kind of ads(they're probably one of the few mail order ads in these old Silver Age comics that wasn't a complete ripoff) Fantastic Four #12: one of the big milestones of Modern Marvel has arrived, the first crossover between two of it's leading stars(Namor doesn't count since he doesn't have a book or feature of his own at this point) with the Fantastic Four meeting The Incredible Hulk(which is ironic since not too long ago we had Johnny reading a Hulk comic book), the story opens with Ben taking Alica Masters out on a date to listen to music at a Symphony(while Alicia is a fan of Classical Music we find out that Ben prefers Jazz), thanks to a misunderstanding Ben gets jumped by a bunch of army guys due to them mistaking him for The Hulk, which understandably puts Ben in a pretty sour mood, soon enough General "Thunderbolt" Ross visits the FF to recruit them in stopping the Hulk who apparently has been sabotaging missile bases, there's a very poorly aged bit where just seeing some footage of the Hulk is enough to frighten Sue into momentarily losing control of her powers(as well as right after the rest of the FF all talk about how they'll fight the Hulk Sue mentions she probably won't be of much use and Ross says her role is the important one of keeping morale high by being a pretty face and Reed agrees with him), we then get Johnny's mechanical skills hyped up by showing off the Fantasticar which has been remodeled away from it's original "Flying Bathtub" design(which in another meta bit they specifically mention how fan letters complained about that and how Johnny agreed with them about it) to a much more sleek and toyetic new design(complete with a whole page specifically to show off how cool the new design is) and soon we have the FF meeting with Bruce Banner(whose drawn with old timey comic book "black hair that's actually dark blue" rather than his normal brown on the first page with him on it), soon enough Rick Jones has been kidnapped by the real candidate "The Wrecker"(not the more famous one with the magic crowbar, he's much later down the line) who sends the Hulk a note telling him to get rid of the FF if he ever wants to see Rick again, and soon enough we've got Hulk and Thing in their first meeting and first fight, after a nice exciting fight it gets interrupted by a robot of The Wrecker zapping Hulk before Thing wrecks it and soon the FF catch the Wrecker, and thus the first encounter between the FF and Hulk ends in a draw, a fun and action packed issue Journey Into Mystery #90: so I've talked before about how Thor's stories in this comic are held back by Donald Blake being bland and Jane Foster being shallow, well sad thing is this story almost could have fixed it, at the beginning of it Donald Blake actually briefly gets the resolve to tell Jane both his feelings for her and his secret of being Thor, only to literally get cockblocked by Odin telling him that he can't reveal the truth about being Thor to mortals, which immediately knocks the winds out of Blake's sails and dooms Thor's civilian aspect to be a boring and pointless artifact of the genre rather than anything interesting, as for the rest of the story well it's essentially a larger scale version of the first Skrull story over in Fantastic Four, the Xartan's have the exact sort of shapeshifting, indeed even more impressive as they can do stuff like turn into ice or even go invisible naturally, and in the end just like the Skrulls they get beaten and subjected to what's frankly a horrifically unethical fate(they are made to turn into trees and since trees can't think neither can they), not the worst Thor story so far but not a particularly great one either The Incredible Hulk #6: man this one is a weird one to end Hulk's first solo book on, between Ditko doing the art, the already odd plot the last couple issues(and Hulk's FF appearance) have of Banner/Hulk intentionally transforming back and forth using a ray being made even more odd by having it cause weird side effects(like Banner turning into Hulk but his face stays Banner so he has to put on a Hulk mask that's just lying around) to the Metal Master being a silly villain even by Marvel Silver Age standards(complete with Hulk beating him with a "wooden gun ploy" like with Magneto in that one Fantastic Four cartoon), to them really just not being able to decide whether Hulk is gruff good guy or an outright villain, to the sheer ridiculousness that is the concept of the Teen Brigade, overall a mediocre end to what's been overall a fairly mediocre book Tales of Suspense #39: Iron Man's debut is a very solid story even if it does dip into "Yellow Peril" a touch with it's depiction of North Vietnam, and while the way Transistor technology is depicted here is completely ridiculous even by Silver Age Comic Book Science standards it does result in some clever gadgets on the part of Tony Stark's first Iron Man suit(indeed from my recollection it's going to be a while before any Iron Man suit regularly has the energy weapons that are now considered part and parcel of Iron Man as a concept), overall a very strong debut for one of Marvel's most important characters, now Tales of Suspense #39 had another story that's considered canon a Viking story called "Gundar", however the copy of this issue I had on hand only has the Iron Man story in it, so I'm briefly having to jump ahead to 1973 when it got reprinted in Creatures On The Loose #22 in order to read it, "Gundar" isn't a super special story and since it's never gotten directly called back in any form it seems like it's only considered canon by CMRO because it has a cameo by Odin which is kinda silly and now the covers for this batch of 6 issues;       also I just realized we're partway into May but are still in the Winter thread, guess we'll just continue with it till June since using a Spring thread for only part of a month would be silly
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May 10, 2021 05:05
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Considering June is in just over a week I'd say just wait till then and make a Summer thread instead
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May 21, 2021 23:55
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