vaillant

No one was questioning the Cat is a nice series (and I see what you mean about the following issues, #2 is good anyway). @BrianR: I did not imply one should look for a connection: in fact, I didn’t see any, but we have to acknowledge that this movie hype and bubbles influences the way we spend our money towards our collecting goals (which may be totally unrelated to movies). The Cat is undoubtedly one of the most interesting (limited) series done by Marvel at the time, with that cool idea to have female writers. In fact, it was one of the first ones I wished to have back when I started to collect. Well, I had a big love for Hellcat from the Defenders too, so seeing that originally the costume and identity were of the Cat attracted me furtherly to the character. What I don’t get is: why one should go after a first appearance of Tigra, Hellcat, whatever, when these shows clearly show they have a little to do with the original works. Even Daredevil, this new TV series. Ah Logan, I still miss a #144, you don’t happen to have a decent copy for a good price, don’t you?

I am an oldtime fan of the Inhumans (being italian, as a kid I have had the opportunity to read the early stories, and then the original 1974 series) and I wasn’t much convinced by what Ann Nocenti did with the graphic novel (about the son of Medusa and Black Bolt et al.). Too much "prosaic" social commentary not enough interweaved with the artistic/entertainment quaility I expect from comics or good fiction. But I quite loved Ann Nocenti on Daredevil (I am not a big Miller fan and he managed to bring the character ahead after Miller). But again, I know Daredevil less…

Gulp!

I quite like Jae Lee, especially after the first period, when he fine-tuned his peculiar style. I just don’t see it fit with the Inhumans, but again I saw a little of that series. Jenkins… I have probably read some Hulk from him, and did not like it, but who knows? I did not like Waid on the Fantastic Four much, but apparently his Daredevil work and more recent work is more appraised. Is the 2000 mini-series of the Inhumans related to the 1998 series?

Beautiful! I just love the non-comics publications you are posting… most magazines and books outside of comics collecting are less collected, and very uncommon to see, even now in this Internet age of "sharing"…

What do you mean with "stewardship"? " the careful and responsible management of something entrusted to one's care" Thanks, I was at work and did not check in a dictionary. Surely would be better for these to pass hand to hand to people who care about the books…

What do you mean with "stewardship"?

Stop recycling that image endlessly…

To see the value in research you have to have people which want to do research. Aside from this, research is not much useful if you are not interested to see the truth: it just goes in cycles (see what I wrote above about reading). People want to buy hyped books, no matter their content, it’s compulsive and not much intelligent although we often fall into this today.

I don’t think that was Chuck's point. He is basically saying that as much good as a criticism or fan magazine is, it’s not a comic book, and rarely a first apperance. The exceptions are minimal (maybe that San Diego book for Hellboy?). Dime Press 4? I know both the publisher and an editor of Dime Press, and besides not being a "first appearance" of any kind (just an Hellboy-like drawing before the book actually came out), the print run was at least of some thousand copies (it was not properly a "fanzine"). The San Diego book posted by Chuck is the one I was referring to, I think it contains a proper Hellboy story, previous to Dark Horse Presents and Hellboy #1. And no, I wasn’t strictly speaking of comic books when I said people do not actually read. In fact, I wasn’t thinking of comics at all.

I think the cat 1 is the book to get...ff 66-67, Thor 165 vs. Marvel premiere 1 argument that has been going on here for a while now... The Cat is the book to get for what? The Cat is not Hellcat. Greer Grant is Tigra, OK, so if you like Tigra you have to keep both the Cat mini-series and the Giant Size Creatures. Aside from this, anyone still insisting on the relevance of Thor #165 (story wise) have just never read the stories (or deliberately want to ignore a 40+ years of comics history). A cool cover, whatever you want, but nothing more. The story is also inconsistent. It's the one to get regarding bronze age books that are heating up on eBay... Ah! – wasn’t the hype about Hellcat, or Patsy Walker for what matters? That's what I thought too, but it seems it's the first appearance of the costume that matters So the earliest Tarzan comic book is the one to get if they make a film about Ka-Zar? Hey, it’s the first time I enjoy a communion of sorts with Logan!

I don’t think that was Chuck's point. He is basically saying that as much good as a criticism or fan magazine is, it’s not a comic book, and rarely a first apperance. The exceptions are minimal (maybe that San Diego book for Hellboy?).

Bosco, honestly, you wrote it very well "for those that take the time to read it all": there is a very minimal percentage of people who actually read today, I mean there is not much love for truth or proper information, and so much refusal of a honest critical attitude that I must say Chuck is 100% right.

I think the cat 1 is the book to get...ff 66-67, Thor 165 vs. Marvel premiere 1 argument that has been going on here for a while now... The Cat is the book to get for what? The Cat is not Hellcat. Greer Grant is Tigra, OK, so if you like Tigra you have to keep both the Cat mini-series and the Giant Size Creatures. Aside from this, anyone still insisting on the relevance of Thor #165 (story wise) have just never read the stories (or deliberately want to ignore a 40+ years of comics history). A cool cover, whatever you want, but nothing more. The story is also inconsistent. It's the one to get regarding bronze age books that are heating up on eBay... Ah! – wasn’t the hype about Hellcat, or Patsy Walker for what matters?

I think the cat 1 is the book to get...ff 66-67, Thor 165 vs. Marvel premiere 1 argument that has been going on here for a while now... The Cat is the book to get for what? The Cat is not Hellcat. Greer Grant is Tigra, OK, so if you like Tigra you have to keep both the Cat mini-series and the Giant Size Creatures. Aside from this, anyone still insisting on the relevance of Thor #165 (story wise) have just never read the stories (or deliberately want to ignore a 40+ years of comics history). A cool cover, whatever you want, but nothing more. The story is also inconsistent.

+1 This. I usually run away immediately from sellers like that. (thumbs u

Who wrote it? I did not like the Jae Lee art.

I always loved the cover to #75, one of my favorites. I don’t have my copy scanned yet, but I owe it to Andy (October), and it‘s a nice VF+

And the ones about the quality of the stories win!

Even if they inspired a real-world religion, I would never care about Hawk and Dove. If you want to "invent a religion" all you have got to do is to ask Neil Gaiman. He was bragging about it since the early 1990s. Which religion? He made a general statement: Gaiman said he would have liked to "design religions" in an interview in one of the magazines about comics in the late 1980s-early 1990s (don’t recall the name, it was tabloid format). I did not recall the original Hawk & Dove were written by Ditko. The Avenging World and (especially) Mr. A are at least partly enjoyable as fiction, but I never understood why he continued to empoverish the work and extremize the limitations of these philosophical ideas.

I loved them all, I think I started reading X-Factor with 22-23 and then get back and was able to track down backwards issues up to #15. Was super-stoked when I picked the first ones, although I realized the book was weak at the beginning, both in terms of art and writing, but when Louise Simonson starts writing (with #5, I believe), and warms up… some episodes were instant classics. Unbelievably, back then the distributor here in Italy was out of #25s, and I have managed to recover #25 just recently, as I never had it (probably the only issue I was missing).

Well, I would say that at least for Apocalypse and the horseman Death (not yet Archangel, Archangel is how Warren gets rechristened a:) X-Factor 5 and 6-1st Apocalypse X-Factor 23 and 24-1st Archangel I think all 6 will see a bit of momentum in terms of price, but out of the 6 books the 15, 19 and 23 are probably the most overlooked. I'm not even sure CGC recognizes 19 as the 1st full Horsemen of Apocalypse. Until we see a longer preview it will be hard to tell how big of a role they will play within the context of the movie. As a teenager 24-25 was one of my favorite comic book battles so I must admit I am a little biased on behalf of nostalgia A cut and paste partially ate my comment. I wrote that Archangel is rechristened afterwards, when he is freed from Apocalypse's influence. Yes, I entirely agree. And I totally love these issues as well, I was about twenty when they came out, but they marked the beginning of my collecting books in original edition, and X-Factor was one of my favorites, alongside with Power Pack: Louise Simonson was just great in writing these.

I completely agree with this. All my Marvel Age books have been sitting unbagged and unboarded in my loft (subject to cold and heat) for over twenty years, go figure how sweet the page quality must be. But I still love them…

Well, I would say that at least for Apocalypse and the horseman Death (not yet Archangel, Archangel is how Warren gets rechristened a:) X-Factor 5 and 6-1st Apocalypse X-Factor 23 and 24-1st Archangel

Even if they inspired a real-world religion, I would never care about Hawk and Dove. If you want to "invent a religion" all you have got to do is to ask Neil Gaiman. He was bragging about it since the early 1990s. I have never read the series, but Hawk and Dove are an interesting concept.