Zonker

Speedy recovery Jimbo! Your contributions to the threads always make them better.

SOLD! Last Half of Steve Englehart's JLA Run: 144 145 146 149 150 Contemporaneous with his classic collaborations with Marshall Rogers on Detective Comics and Mister Miracle, Englehart's Justice League of America run is often overlooked, but it is one of the best JLA storylines between those of Gardner Fox and Grant Morrison! Each issue Giant sized. Each has artwork by the regular 1970s team of Dick Dillin & Frank McLaughlin. Note #147 & #148 not by Englehart (and therefore not included here)

The "Head" in this issue served as an inspiration for Mike Baron & Steve Rude's Nexus series

NOW SOLD! Uncanny X-Men Claremont/Cockrum Lot: 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153

Rumor has it the original artwork shows Kirby's 1st draft dialogue read "Eff You, Stanley! I'm Outa Here!"

indeed. Makes you wonder if Steve's idea of the gag went something like: Steve: "Glad that crazy idea is done. Fortunately, I'll never have to deal with that again!" Narrator: "But, the very next month..." Then Stan realized the joke worked better if it was timed to land immediately after Steve completed drawing the previous brainstorm.

6 DC 1970s Number 1 Issues

Well, if we're going strictly by Marvel Method forensic analysis, it must have been Steve who came up with the visual gags of poor overworked Stan having all those Marvel characters crowding around his typewriter, while dozing Steve lets the spiders do the artwork for him (which I think is a really funny self-deprecating gag coming from Ditko). Stan does use his captions to puff up his "scripting" contributions, and maybe that does indeed rub Steve the wrong way. But Stan also uses his dialogue to have some fun at his own expense here: "you practice signing your name all over" "it sure wasn't you, Lee" "I copied it from one of the best classics I could find" "Lee's swelled head"

Jack's most "Fourth-Worldish" issue of Mister Miracle to date. Great stuff!

See, I don't think the movie is pretending that at all. Before the movie was even written, the foundation was set with the toy Barbie having a history of being both: a) a certain physical body type often thought of as an ideal; while also b) at least in recent years, a vessel for the widest possible career aspirations for women (Astronaut Barbie, anyone?) While the Ken doll was generally (I think, not being much of an authority on this) at most a clothes horse, or arm-candy for Barbie. So, Ken & Barbie are not really great examples of EveryMan & EveryWoman. They actually represent a kind of reverse-patriarchy, or a matriarchy, that the movie plays with in its first act set in Barbieland. They could have kept it there, with the Kens gradually coming to realize there might be more to life than Beach, organizing to get better access to all those accessories available to the Barbies of Barbieland, etc. But that would have been a pretty simplistic reverse-allegory and somewhat boring after a while I would think.

Roy said this in the Jack Kirby Collector #74:

In addition to Alan Light's Flashback series (B&W reprints of individual Golden Age comic books), he also produced three of those thick anthology Special Editions. In addition to the two you posted, there also was a Volume 1 reprinting the Captain Marvel stories from Whiz Comics #7-28, all in black and white, retailing for $9.95. Among other stories, this included the introduction of Captain Marvel Junior and Captain Nazi. I am not sure how these were distributed, I got mine years ago on eBay. I'd guess they originally were sold via ads in Light's The Buyers' Guide fanzine.

Lot of 9 Batman/Detective Comics 1975-1982 NOW SOLD!

This rings completely true to me. Add to it this observation: Corporate leaders, like all economic actors in capitalism, are motivated by 2 things: Greed and Fear. So doing things that may look to us Monday morning quarterbacks like stupid profit-destroying acts may be the result of misplaced or insufficiently-thought-out greed (i.e. anticipating that one demographic would be more lucrative than another) but could instead be fear of online boycotts by a vocal twitter faction. This is not specific to the MCU, but I think it very likely the new Oscar rules are a direct attempt to deflect any #oscarssowhite protests.

10 new pages in less than 24 hours? So that's where the party is.

So, I don't think we're so far apart on this. But I guess I don't really see "the media" as this big monolithic thing pushing a single agenda. Instead, I think people who self-select to go into journalism or filmmaking or fiction-writing are generally people who want to express a point of view that may not align with the status quo. Not many people would choose to be a struggling artist in order to get the word out that "Hey Everybody! The glass is half FULL!" So, once those self-selected folks get access to a microphone, the things they say often are...

Since reading this, I've been struggling with whether to respond, and if so, how to do so. But I think it needs a response, so here goes: First, I tend to agree with you when it comes to the averages. On average, men tend to be more suited to certain roles, and on average women tend to be suited to other roles. Vive la différence, right? But a lot of what is written above makes it sound like there are completely separate realms to be labeled masculine and feminine, with no overlap. Whereas we can probably all think of examples of some overlap, a Venn diagram of intersecting circles, overlapping in the middle. So, yes, women can make great doctors, but does that mean men should be "educated" not be doctors, since they tend to be less agreeable on average? Or, an opposite example, one of my wife's friends is a male nurse, and he's happily married to a wonderful woman. Not too many years ago, many people would think there was something wrong with him for being in a not traditionally-masculine field. Surely, we are in a better place in society now to allow for people to take on non-traditional roles, without being labeled as sissies or tomboys or worse homophobic or transphobic slurs.

Keith Giffen Legion of Super-Heroes lot

Also my favorite of the early Mister Miracle issues. This human death trap was a nice change of pace from the usual mechanized doomsday devices. And I just realized the commonality between this story's violent mob and the previous month's Forever People #3 where Glorious Godfrey's acolytes rampage through the streets, burning books, etc. In Mister Miracle the mob is incited by drugs, in the Forever People it is ideology, but clearly it was something on Kirby's mind at the time.

The concept of "escape" was probably very meaningful for Kirby, in the context of escaping his previous employment situation. The character's big jump to freedom in Mister Miracle #9 was likely cathartic. And the escape artist premise let Kirby create all those fantastic doom traps that were staples of previous super-hero comics and the Batman TV show. But it did get old after a while, especially after the reader began to realize a never-ending series of previously unrevealed technology from Apokolips could be used to create the escape.

For me, Mister Miracle was often the weakest of the Kirby Fourth World books, about on par with the mid-run Jimmy Olsens. - As mentioned before, all those super-science escape gimmicks being revealed after-the-fact is just too... convenient for my taste. - Love the Mister Miracle costume, but doesn't it look like typical New Genesis style rather than something independently created on Earth by Thadeus Brown and his son? - A wager of ten thousand dollars? (cue Dr. Evil voice) - "Hello! Get me the Secret Inter-Gang Missile Site!"

Kirby was starting to do something very interesting with this story. Up until now we had a fairly simple dichotomy between New Genesis = good and Apokolips = bad. But here we see an oppressed minority on New Genesis, the Bugs. So maybe while New Genesis has been so busy worried about the external threat of Darkseid, they have neglected their own second-class citizens? Not at all as black-and-white as it first seemed. But the end is getting near. Infantino has already demanded the inclusion of a Deadman crossover (starting with Forever People #9). Kirby will have time to get his Scott Free backstory into Mister Miracle #9. But with the 10th issues, Kirby is pretty much done with worldbuilding for this particular series.

NOW SOLD! Final Four Batman Family issues #17-20, Michael Golden artwork in each Covers by Michael Kaluta & Jim Starlin Couple of Denny O'Neil Batman stories Huntress solo series begins Kirby's Etrigan the Demon makes a return appearance Batman Family #17 Mike Kaluta cover. Jim Starlin pin-up splash page. Jim Aparo art on the Batman story. Huntress and Robin guest-star. There is a great 20-page team-up between Man-Bat and Kirby's Demon, Etrigan, drawn by Michael Golden. Fine condition: just a hint of a color break to the right of Batgirl's face on the front cover. Production crease runs through Man-Bat's face on the front cover. Slight ink transfer on the back cover. Batman Family #18 Mike Kaluta cover. Batman story written by Denny O'Neil and illustrated by Michael Golden and P. Craig Russell. Huntress solo series begins. Fine Plus condition: just a bit of ink transfer along the upper edge of the back cover. Batman Family #19 Mike Kaluta cover. Batman story written by Denny O'Neil and illustrated by Michael Golden and P. Craig Russell. The second Huntress solo story appears in this issue. Fine Plus condition: there is a tiny crease at the tip of the lower right-hand corner of the front cover. On the back cover there is some minor ink transfer along the spine and the lower edge of the back cover. There is some non-color-breaking creasing at well on the upper right-hand portion of the back cover. Batman Family #20 features two Michael Golden illustrated stories, first a team-up between the Batman and Ragman written by David V. Reed, the second a Man-Bat solo story written by Bob Rozakis. Long-time Gotham City private eye Jason Bard makes an appearance in the Man-Bat story. Batgirl & Robin team up with Red Tornado and the Elongated Man in a separate story. The Huntress appears in a solo story. Jim Starlin provided the wraparound cover art. Fine condition: here the added height of the issue has led to some color-breaking creasing along the upper edge of the back cover.

It is interesting to see they are starting to refer to the book as a solo Thor book, rather than Journey to Mystery.

I'm pretty sure DeZuniga was living in New York City when he started working for DC, and he was largely responsible for opening the doors to the talent available back home in the Philippines. No doubt those artists were also resented by the States-side talent, as reportedly they were used to working for about 1/10th of what USA artists were being paid. But because of the economics, I'd bet the folks running DC went out of their way to make it work. So maybe Jack should have had a DC editor to advocate for him and run interference for him back in New York. I know he wanted complete control of his work, but in the end, he didn't get it, having to accommodate publisher Carmine Infantino's ideas (generally not for the better!) Perhaps things would have turned out better if he had a New York editor like Joe Orlando as his sponsor back at headquarters.