Comic books and Manga Thread

[Mad Dog]

I downloaded all of the Golden Age Captain Marvel books I could find, there's a lot. I am looking forward to digging into those between reading Silver Age Doctor Strange. 

[Graham Crackers]

My dream is for DC to license the Fawcett Captain Marvel comics for curated reprints in a format similar to  Fantagraphics' Carl Barks stuff. Never going to happen but it'd be nice.

[Mad Dog]

At least a Monster Society of Evil reprint. 

[Mad Dog]

Also I have been listening to a spotlight of Captain Marvel in the Golden Age. The DC lawsuit was total bullshit. He's nothing like Superman past a couple of superficial differences. 

[Johnny Sorrow]

Would DC have to license the Fawcett stuff? They used to reprint a ton of it in the Seventies. 

 

[Mad Dog]

A lot of it is public domain but I think they own the rights to the stuff that isn't.

[Graham Crackers]

4 hours ago, Johnny Sorrow said:

Would DC have to license the Fawcett stuff? They used to reprint a ton of it in the Seventies. 

 

I mean license it to another publisher like how Disney licensed the Duck comics to Fantagraphics for their curated Carl Barks library, preferably a publisher who specializes in archival reprints like Fanta or IDW.

[Ricky Jackson]

The lack of easily available, affordable Captain Marvel reprints has frustrated me for 20+ years 

[Mad Dog]

I seem to have gotten almost everything from the Golden Age at this point. The original ashcsn doesn't seem to exist in its original form online. A lot of it is in pretty rough shape and hard to read like a lot of Golden Age books that have been scanned. 

It's really well written compared to a lot of other Golden Age stuff I have read. Batman is just outright terrible but stuff like Green Lantern was pretty decent. I can see why Cap became so popular. 

[Graham Crackers]

While I am under the impression that most of these golden age comics are awful or don't hold up, I think that the way superhero publishers indulge fannish instincts when selecting reprints makes it worse. They frequently focus on the first appearances and the earliest stories but that material is also the most raw. I read a lot of that kind of material when DC printed those Millennium Editions 20 years ago so I was shocked when I saw scans of some mid 40s Justice Society stories. It seems DC went on to develop a pretty tight house style in the mid to late 40s that combined big foot cartooning with influences from contemporary adventure strips (Caniff, Crane, Gould, etc). This is the territory early Kubert and Toth would explore. I'm convinced there is some merit to be found in this work but I hate reading comics on a screen so I'm doomed to speculation.

I've read some post-Timely golden age Kirby and that material also seems worth exploring. One of my all time favorite Kirby stories is a Newsboy Legion story reprinted in one of those 70s 100 page super spectaculars. It's about the Legion trying to sell war bonds to a pair of recluses clearly based upon infamous NY based hoarders the Collyer brothers. There is a sort of mythologized vision of Kirby's childhood neighborhood at play in that story. It's fascinating stuff and reminds me of some of Kirby's later more personal stories like Delilah from Boy's Ranch.

While I'm rambling about this material let me also say that even though the first few years of Batman comics are unreadable, I have become a big fan of Dick Sprang (what a name). Sprang shows up in 1943 and right away he's Kane's best ghost artist. He even shows up fully formed with his trademark grotesque caricatures, architecturally elaborate setpieces, and a love of diagrams/maps. If you want to see Sprang at his best DC released a pair of trades titled World's Finest - The Silver Age and they are really lovely to look at.

[Mad Dog]

It's a talent issue with the early years. If you go get a collection of the Spirit by Will Eisner it's totally fine. Art is good and it reads well but it's a newspaper strip. All of the good writing and artistic talent were on newspaper strips or writing pulp novels. Comics were getting guys that weren't good enough for the big time or needed development. You obviously had some exceptions to that rule but early original content comics were done by third rate talent of the time. I think probably by the mid 40s, they were selling well enough and there was enough money in it to start attracting some bigger names but I also think those bigger names were going to EC instead of superhero stuff.

[Ricky Jackson]

Yeah, I totally agree with @Graham Crackers take on Golden Age comics. The earliest stuff, and like you said, the most often reprinted, is the least readable. I'm no expert on the Golden Age, but it seems around 1945 the quality really improves and there are some real gems if you can find them (although I would prefer a physical copy, I generally have no problem with scans, so there are several sites with large amounts of issues). Around 45 is when Captain Marvel and the Spirit, for example, really hit their peak. I also love Dick Sprang 

[Mad Dog]

The Captain Marvel stuff is especially upsetting on the reprint front when The EC horror and sci fi books have gotten pretty comprehensive reprints in affordable form. If those can get that sort of treatment I don't see why Captain Marvel can't.

[Ricky Jackson]

Especially when there was a very successful movie out a couple years back that you would think someone would've thought would be a good idea to capitalize on the popularity of

[Mad Dog]

Just now, Ricky Jackson said:

Especially when there was a very successful movie out a couple years back that you would think someone would've thought would be a good idea to capitalize on the popularity of

DC has been especially terrible with their trade policies for a long time. Marvel smokes them in this regard with those Epic reprints that have like every appearance the character made in order and aren't obscenely expensive. Marvel has also done a far better job of even just having their Golden Age stuff on their app. I was really pissed off when I wanted to read some Captain Marvel and there is zero Golden Age stuff available on the DC app.

[Mad Dog]

Also to show how dumb it is. Right now I can get Doc Savage and Shadow reprints no issue and in more than one format. That is far less in demand than Captain Marvel would be. 

[Graham Crackers]

If we're being honest, just about everybody in comic books did it because they couldn't get a better gig until sometime in the 1970s. Folks we think of as geniuses like Kirby made a stab at newspaper comics and failed (mainly due to shrinking space for adventure strips and newspaper editors not comprehending his work). Which isn't to say that none of them liked comic books, just a statement about economic reality. Even the first generation of fans turned artists in the late 60s/early 70s had a mass exodus into commercial illustration and animation when DC squashed their attempts at unionization.

[Ricky Jackson]

Re: Captain Marvel reprints. Was listening to a comics history podcast the other day, a retrospective of 80s Secret Origins from DC, already 5-6 years old, and one of the hosts (seemed very historically knowledgeable) offhandedly mentioned that the lack of Captain Marvel reprints is due to the racism depicted in some of the 40s issues. I've read some of the old issues but not a lot. I dont remember anything glaring like some comics from the time. Anyone have thoughts on this? 

[Johnny Sorrow]

2 hours ago, Ricky Jackson said:

Re: Captain Marvel reprints. Was listening to a comics history podcast the other day, a retrospective of 80s Secret Origins from DC, already 5-6 years old, and one of the hosts (seemed very historically knowledgeable) offhandedly mentioned that the lack of Captain Marvel reprints is due to the racism depicted in some of the 40s issues. I've read some of the old issues but not a lot. I dont remember anything glaring like some comics from the time. Anyone have thoughts on this? 

Yeah man. Billy Batson had a sidekick called Steamboat who was straight out of Amos And Andy. 

https://www.cbr.com/dark-secrets-captain-marvel-shazam/

[Graham Crackers]

I've heard that's the case before, and that it specifically lead to a Monster Society of Evil book getting scrapped. That's also why something closer to the presentation IDW gives newspaper comics would be appropriate.

[Ricky Jackson]

Shit, I'm not sure if I knew about that and had forgotten or not. Horrible 

[Mad Dog]

Yeah. Steamboat was bad even by the standards of the time to the point people protested it and they retired him by 1945.

[ohtani's jacket]

I'm halfway through the Dark Age books in Astro City. People have mentioned that the Dark Age books were a slog to get through, but I haven't felt that way. I guess it helps that the arcs I enjoyed the most had a darker edge to them (The Confessor arc and the Steeljack arc). I grew up in the 80s and 90s when superheroes were meant to be darker, and I've spent the past few years exploring the 70s comics where the tonal shift first began. 

I'm still enjoying Starman. James Robinson enjoys writing about things he likes (to put it nicely), and there are moments where the characters have ridiculous debates about pop culture that seem to be influenced by Tarantino, but aren't as universal as Tarantino. Reservoir Dog characters argued about Madonna songs, but Robinson's characters argue about far more esoteric topics. All writers have bad habits, though. I feel like that's something his editor should have curbed. I pretty much love everything else Robinson does in terms of messing with comic book structure. There's no real emotional pull yet, where I have to keep reading, though I do like Jack's relationship with his dad. The art, and character design, is really 90s at times, but I do love the foreshadowing and the preordained sense that the book is leading somewhere.

I was kind of disappointed by Barry Smith's second run on Conan the Barbarian after they announced he was leaving the book. He struggled to keep up with the deadlines and ended up doing a lot of breakdowns. Gil Kane did the fill-in issues between Smith's two stints. Opinion was divided in the letter column over Kane's work, but personally I thought it was much better than Smith's second run. 

I recently finished Omega the Unknown. I'm not a huge fan of Steve Gerber, but as far as deconstructionist takes on the superhero genre go, I think his unfinished run on Omega pretty much encapsulates the heart and soul of what he was trying to do. 

I've been slowly making my way through the Five Years Later Legion of Superheroes. I usually enjoy dystopian future stories, but I've got to be honest, it is really hard to follow what is going on. It's not like I haven't read the famous runs on Legion. Admittedly, it's been a few years, but still... I feel lost from issue to issue, and Giffen's art doesn't hold up.  

[Ricky Jackson]

I love Astro City but something about the Dark Age didnt grab me like other arcs and stories in the run. I seem to remember that in real time it took quite a while for all the issues to come out, like several years, and I didnt finish it until much later, when it was all collected in trades. May have to re-read someday.

Gerber can be hit and miss. I really liked a lot of Howard the Duck when I tried reading the whole run back in the day but eventually tapped out about halfway through. Man Thing was similarly inconsistent. I really enjoyed his Defenders run, although at the end, the Headmen saga went on a bit too long and the climax wasn't great. Going to read his Guardians of the Galaxy next and then finally Omega 

[Mad Dog]

Speaking of Gerber and the Defenders. Has anyone ever resolved the Elf with a gun?