Ken Aldred

It does look like a fudged grade.

Yup. Whenever there’s disagreement there’s also the chance of the authority figure card being played; ‘your grading clearly far exceeds that of Overstreet’.

Not so much well-loved as well-mauled.

Yup. That had occurred to me, but showing a gif of a cat actually coughing one up seemed a bit unnecessary to me, natural though it may be.

There is also the possibility that, like Mile High, the seller is using a stock image of the book and has forgotten to change it to show the actual 9.4 copy, which might look fantastic and satisfy even the most obsessive-compulsive amongst us.

It’s a beaut. So minty fresh. The cover gloss is incredible. Straight off a 70s newsstand. Takes me back.

2012 for me was the start of the Great Film and TV Speculation Age, and we're still in it, transitioning through to a year, in the near future, when physical comics stop being published. That will be the true start of the Digital Age.

I agree. Every decade, Golden Age onwards, has a small number of comics with outstanding story and art, and a lot of mediocre-to-terrible material. No decade’s immune to that limitation. That’s still a subjective statement, and there are different perceptions of those qualities out there that you just have to accept exist, rather than keep fretting about it. There isn’t going to be a universal consensus. Better to focus on and get the most out of your own interpretation.

Brilliant artist and storyteller. I have a lot of his stuff, including Absolute New Frontier. Parker’s great, and I have all the volumes in digital format.

For me, Kurtzman shows his range better in the science fiction and war stories, especially the former, where a light, humorous tone can suddenly shift to being quite dark and shocking towards the end. Brilliantly expressive artwork and storytelling.

I like his work on the science fiction and war books, not the humour material from EC. To me, it shows his range better. Strange to say that, as many consider him to be one of comics’ all-time great humour cartoonists.

Original series? I'll have a look.

I'm not a fan. The 'special price' of 75c was also a rip-off. It should've been priced at least 75c cheaper.

My most disliked Swamp Thing comic ever. Terrible cover, and one of the most pretentious comic stories I've ever read. For me, the worst thing Alan Moore has ever written, made even more unreadable by trippy artwork. Absolute, utter bollocks.

One of my favourite SA Steve Ditko covers. Still holds up today far better than most of his ASM covers.

Another bad Hulk cover. Here's an issue I had to buy to continue a run, even though the cover's abysmal. First appearance of The Thunderbolts. Awful interior art as well. Mike Deodato got much, much better.

As we've now gone into full Covid lockdown again here in England until March, there'll be plenty enough opportunity to read comics this year.

1 to 13 Werewolf by Night 31 to 41 (11 issues in total) A fairly mixed bag. The Moon Knight two-parter (32, 33, of course ) is good, much more easy for me to get into in remastered format, as Don Perlin’s art looked quite dull and muddy in the original newsprint version. The haunted house story (34 to 37) is the best of the Bronze Age issues, throwing every ghost / haunted house trope imaginable into the mix. Quite insane. The next multi-part story co-starring Brother Voodoo starts out well, with interesting ideas such as zombies (sorry, “zuvembies”) made of energy, but the writing eventually breaks down later, when Moench tries his hand at cosmic storytelling for a few pages. Good horror writer, no Jim Starlin. Moon Knight 29, 30 Classic Werewolf story. Fairly ordinary satanic cult plot, but Sienkiewicz’s art is fantastic.

Cal could start off the new year here by providing a review of Iron Man and Sub-Mariner 1, maybe?

If Chibnall continues it’s most likely just going to continue being boring and generally terrible, so it’s difficult to care about the news.

No great loss. A generally terrible, boring run of stories.

I like reading extended runs as well. Last year was the Avengers / New Avengers / Secret Wars saga. Took me forever to post about it all in the thread. Legion is one of my favourites as well.