Ken Aldred

He liked his blue shirts.

An excellent example for DC is Nick Cardy, who throughout the late Silver Age and the Bronze Age created some absolutely superb covers, hiding a lot of very average artwork inside. I suppose at that age, 8 or 9, I wasn’t particularly critical and was just content to be able to find some original American comics, regardless of the disparity between cover and interior art.

We seemed to get everything by Robbins. As a kid in England in the 1970s, many big Marvel titles weren’t distributed here, such as Amazing Spider-Man and Avengers, and desperate comic book geeks like myself were left scraping by with the dregs on the newsagent racks. One vivid memory from that time was opening a comic book with a nice cover and getting the all-too-common, distressing, crushingly-disappointed reaction… “Oh, bloody hell, not Frank Robbins again!” No wonder the US cent import copy market and dedicated comic shops took off here, I suspect mainly as a way to circumvent this ongoing misery and deprivation.

But, think of the cumulative hours of entertainment this often-posted image has provided for so, so many boardies, worldwide, over many years. We should, in retrospect, be grateful.

I must be a bit of an anomaly in this regard, as I never paid that much attention to the cover or treated it as an inducement to buy. Never occurred to me. If I was following a title, I’d buy it anyway. If the stories started to go downhill, I’d drop it, regardless of what was on the front. I could still judge harshly, but nothing so superficial.

I agree. There's too much addition of overwhelming computer colouring and effects in remasters of classic Silver and Bronze Age. A particularly disappointing read for me, now that you mention Star Wars, was the recent 'remastered' collection of the original Star Wars movie adaptations, which completely obliterated Al Williamson's excellent fine line, detailed artwork. Quite horrendous. A shame Neal decided to go George Lucas over his brilliant original material as well, something that for many of us wasn't even broken to begin with.

Nice to see you posting, Gav.

I liked it because it was different in that way. I'd never imagined it as being anything other than a most everything dies, very dark, and relentlessly intense story. May not have been true to the mythos, but entertaining.

I have a lot of music as well; vinyl, CD. But, you’re accumulating sources of two different stimuli, visual and auditory, and so it’s natural to see the collections develop in parallel.

Absolutely. It's a long time ago, but IIRC, it was Roy Thomas in an issue of the 80s reprint of The Kree-Skrull War who said that artists such as Adams, with their excellent page layout, dynamic pacing and imaginative design sense allowed us to create exciting, complex worlds which would've been impossible to achieve in live action films, at that time. In the present, a Kree-Skrull War, or Avengers Infinity War / Endgame is feasible with 21st Century CGI, something Thomas and Adams could only dream about. Given the limitations of his time period, both he and other mega-talented creators did brilliantly, awakening some of us to the true excellence and potential of high-level comic art, even if for the general public it took the transposition of comics to another medium and, much, much longer, to stop mocking and have the same epiphany.

My movie version Thor commission.

A Bronze Age comic art masterpiece.

The artist who really got me started as a serious comics geek, from the moment I first read a copy of X-Men 58 while on holiday in 1974, drawn in by his talent right from its brilliant front cover. Who’s illustrated this? I wanted to see much more. Then, a short time later, I found his equally-accomplished and classic Avengers 93, and Batman 251, the latter of which I consider the greatest artistic achievement of his entire career; simply brilliant, classic panels and storytelling. I always liked talking to Neal at the UK’s LSCC conventions, having, I guess, similarities; a blunt-speaking New Yorker and an equally blunt-speaking northern Englishman. It’s a downer to lose another of my Bronze Age icons, and someone easily one of the most significant comic artists of all time. Thanks Neal, a creator I’ve admired for decades, and you’ll be missed.

I read back in the 70s that Bill Everett called the Sub-Mariner Namor for exactly this reason.

Sounds a bit like how I handled the Ebony Warrior in Skyrim, on Legendary. Crafting and enchanting were your friends, but avoiding direct melee. Another relentless juggernaut.

I decided to consolidate everything there as well, same idea as in Skyrim and Oblivion, rather than spreading out resources all over the map and ending up missing an item required for a certain crafting process. Only on level 17 so far, doing a first playthrough on Normal, which is enough if you stick to basic, low level armour pickups rather than a full power suit. Always have a go with Legendary super mutants or higher-levelled characters as you can scavenge better quality pickups if you manage to defeat them. For gun mods, I’ve always done a lot of smithing and enchanting in Elder Scrolls, so continuing that modding in the new game has OCD appeal to me.

Same here. Console campaign player. I didn’t play the games before Fallout 4 as they had a terrible reputation for glitches, slowdown and crashes on PS 3. A shame because New Vegas was said to be excellent. I find Fallout 4 on PS 5 runs smoothly enough but still can crash and occasionally corrupt your last save file. Loading is extremely noisy, but thankfully runs quiet in game, which apparently can be common with PS 4 titles on the newer system.

Supposedly a science / maths nerd, but I would hang out with the arts crowd mainly.

You should visit the Water Cooler.

I concur. A distraction that was always there to help me through difficult times.

The World’s Fair comics are actually really nice books. The one posted looks superb. I have the Archive reprint, which is essential Golden Age. Nice art, and perhaps they put a lot of effort into that as the comics were intended to be a promotional tool.

The Sea Devils were terrible, especially the rubber masks, little improvement 50 or so years on. All the same, fixed expression. This series is also maintaining the solidly craptastic storytelling. Please, let it end.

Kevin is actually a very common boy’s name for Ferengi.

The dummy looks like a ‘Daily Planet Clark Kent’ model.

Yup. Jack Ryder, The Creeper's Objectivist alter ego. "I am right, and you are wrong."