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Von Cichlid

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Everything posted by Von Cichlid

  1. Those same stories started it all for me around 88-89, but I was exposed through Classic X-Men. (I used to spend hours each night trying to recreate those Art Adams covers.) I wish I could see the sales data for Classic X-Men compared with the original run, as I suspect that that was the case for many people in my age bracket who didn't grow up in a town with an LCS and had to rely on newsstands. I was very fortunate to be introduced to the medium at that time. It was like having the best of 70's and the late 80's all at the exact same time.
  2. I would extend that all the way to about 1991 right before the talent exodus to Image, with the decline starting at Spiderman 1, X-Force 1, and X-Men 1. I feel lucky to have been 12 and into comics at that precise time. That was the point when the balance of quality and number of series offered was at its absolute max. Punisher had two very readable series, Wolverine's was good to great initially, Uncanny X-Men, while not what it was in the Bronze Age, still had it's core intact, X-Factor and New Mutants had their moments, Daredevil was good, ASM was great, with Web and Spectacular being decent. Incredible Hulk was good, Infinity Gauntlet provided a resurgence for many non-mutant characters. Crossovers were still anticipated and had not yet been run into the ground. Ghost Rider was interesting. And that was just Marvel. The sky was the limit had all the parties involved remained relatively humble and continued to do what they were best at.
  3. This is my favorite cover of his. Like a few have said, I greatly prefer his work prior to around 92 or so, when he became too minimalist.
  4. A nice looking Doorway to Nightmare 5 is hard to come by. I've searched for a while now and that one never seems to come up as much as the others.
  5. This was my experience too. I actually consider that to be the best time to get into X-Men. We had the benefit of Classic X-Men (my favorite at the time) giving us the new-to-us older stories along with being able to anticipate the newer ones as they were being written. Plus, Wolverine had his ongoing series of which I adored most the first 45 issues. Plus, New Mutants was hot and X-Factor was decent for a stretch too. Not to mention the Punisher and PWJ series were in their early primes and the McFarlane ASM's (I liked the Larson ones too). Even the JRJR Daredevil was fun. Everyone has their bias, but to me that late 80's to about the end of 1991 era of Marvel was as exciting as comics ever got overall. The possibilities were endless with all of the great titles and great artists.
  6. They look like the each drank a 5th of tequila and a scarfed down a bag of gummies. Storm and Nightcrawler are still peaking, but Wolverine is definitely regretting it and Colossus is just starting to realize that he might have overdone it.
  7. Well, we know it's not Kirby because Hulk has one too many toes.
  8. I was hesitant to post that because you seemed way too knowledgeable not to be aware of that ASM annual 2. I've never considered that the image was redrawn, but in the newer version Spiderman appears thicker and more muscular, which is indicative of Romita as opposed to Ditko. I was also wondering about the origin of that Hulk image. That one's going to be a lot tougher to get to the bottom of because the image is just too small for any artistic tendency to jump out at me. Plus, I just never paid near as much attention to early Hulk as I did ASM.
  9. That art you see in the corner of ASM 48 was drawn by Ditko, and came from this issue, which was 1965 I believe.
  10. I think a lot of people liked Thunderbird, which is why it was so significant when he was killed in his 3rd appearance. The fact that he stayed dead gave the title a sense of gravity that it really maintained for 10 - 15 years. In hindsight, X-Factor and Inferno were the beginning of the end of the classic era for me, with the era being completely over by 281/ X-Men 1.
  11. It is not an easy book to come across in brick and mortar stores. In the last 5 years I have been back into into collecting I've been to shops in every city I've been to and have not seen one. My LCS is very aggressive about buying collections and have had multiples of every bronze age Marvel/DC book out there, but there has only been one of those. It was a raw 7.0 that I bought 4 years ago for $170.
  12. OK, I just did some research. mycomicshop has Wolverine 1 (1988) listed as the first Patch. It was released in November 1988. I just read the issue and he is not called Patch, but he is wearing a patch at the end of the story. Wolverine (1988 1st Series) comic books (mycomicshop.com) However, I just thumbed through MCP 1-10, and Wolverine is not wearing a patch at all until you get to issue #6, where he wears a patch on the cover(!) and prominently on the splash page. Also, MCP 6 has a release date of November 1988, tying with Wolverine 1... Given that MCP 6 has Patch on the cover and Wolverine 1 does not, we might have a Hulk 180/181 situation developing here, with MCP 6 being the Hulk 181! I'm going to my used bookstore and LCS dollar bin right now.
  13. I'm not sure. I had just read that article about MCU / Madripoor / Patch and MCP 1 was the book I thought of. Then I saw someone post that it was heating up and I thought that was the reason. It was already stated above that NM 32 was the first Madripoor, so you are probably right about MCP 10 being the first Patch. When was Wolverine first seen/referred to as Patch in the regular series? I wonder if that predates MCP 10.
  14. I think it is the first appearance of Madripoor and Patch that is driving it. I read an article on yahoo mentioning the reintroduction of Wolverine into the MCU along with specifically those two things and I thought right away about that book.
  15. Has anybody mentioned Spectacular Spiderman? I think 64 might be the mvp in that series. Edit: It was mentioned on the 2nd page.
  16. 196 is the biggest book in the series after 57, which amounts to 345 (!) issues until 402. That isn't a very tall mountain for such a large stretch. Interestingly enough, in another thread a while back it was also mentioned that that was the most expensive George Perez book.
  17. Yup. A student of mine pointed that out to me four years ago and I am in the same boat. 251 has a similar flaw. Also makes me think of the the eye dots on ASM 332. I thought some kid marked on my copy until I noticed that every issue had it. They're not even lined up.
  18. I'll agree. With those NM and early X-Force covers you could still tell he had a boss to answer to and was grounded in reality. By the time he was at Image for a year was when it really started going down hill. He wasn't the only one it happened to either. None of the rock star artists that left Marvel ever surpassed their work at Marvel in my estimation. Not a single one. The only one who maybe came close was Sam Keith. I think one of life's basic truths is that we all need an editor no matter how good we are.
  19. Sure... Arnold, Sonny Landham, Carl Weathers, and Bill Duke are terrible compared to the awesome action movie stars we got today.
  20. Beats the hell out of me. I've never read any of it after the feral Wolverine with that Zorro mask or the future one with the metal stub on one arm. It really boggles my mind how much lameness they were able to include in that post issue 75 run. I didn't like what they were doing starting with 48 or so, but I at least read those for tradition's sake. By the time issue 100 hit, I had already stopped my subscription and have never cared to look back, even after getting back into the hobby pretty heavily around 6 years ago.
  21. I was totally thinking of the Wolverine / Sabretooth fiasco when I said origin stories don't work in comics either. Two characters who had years of intrigue built into their stories were wiped out over the stretch of Wolverine 48 to about that origins mini-series. Bone claws were so stupid. Making Silver Fox be some memory implant and negating perhaps the best issue (Wolverine 10) of the original series was awful too. I am glad I got into the X-Men before the 90's. Had it had ben too much later, I probably would not have cared it was just so silly.
  22. The same can be said for the Predator 1 (and to a lesser extent the 2nd), and especially Terminator 1 and 2. It wasn't just the concepts that made those movies great, it was the actors in them. Assembling a cast the quality of Predator or the 2nd Aliens would be impossible. The actors simply DNE. I won't even get into the CGI fest aspect. The first Predator, T2, and Aliens looked phenomenal, even by today's standards (or maybe because of the lack thereof). Lastly, the absence of information about the origin of the Aliens was a huge part of their mystique. In general, origin stories are never as good as what one's imagination provides for itself. The same holds true in comics. I can't think of a single origin reveal at this moment that seemed truly legitimate as opposed to being a more like a retcon than anything else. (Then again, there is a strong possibility I am just an old crank. I don't even like anything past the theatrical release of the first three Star Wars either.)
  23. I know that that was the fate of a lot of pretty nice comic, video game, and metal album collections in the late 90's in my circle.