Von Cichlid

On 7/22/2022 at 10:50 AM, rexinnih said:

The Claremont X-Men was my introduction to comics and started it all for me. Combined with some really great Silver Age stories, I'll go with two ages for my answer.

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. 

On 7/22/2022 at 1:00 AM, shadroch said:

Late bronze/early copper.   Miller Daredevil, Teen Titans, Legion, Watchmen, Crisis, Cerebus, Dreadstar, Elfquest, Swamp Thing, Dark Knight, Groo.

Simonson on Thor, X-Men,Turtles

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.     

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.  

On 7/26/2021 at 6:58 PM, johnenock said:

Got a bunch of early copper/late bronze books today. Super-sweet unread white paged beauties:

 

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.

2 hours ago, F For Fake said:

Yes, absolutely! I started reading X-Men with Fall of the Mutants, and began to feverishly connect the dots via Classic X-Men and back issues. The run from Mutant Massacre through Inferno is “my X-Men”, though I quickly came to love Paul Smith, Dave Cockrum, etc.

It seems like such a short run, but FotM through Jim Lee essentially was my adolescent comic reading peak, encompassing 5th through 8th grade or so, and by the time X-Men 1 hit, I was in high school and no longer keeping up with it. The thrill was gone, in that very specific teenage X-nerd way. When I was 19 or 20 I started working at a comic shop, and began to catch up on what I’d missed.

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.    

7 minutes ago, comicginger1789 said:

I love how you can see the photgrapher in the background...like who looked at this and said "Yup, that will sell well!"

The belt buckle too.  

3 hours ago, Mecha_Fantastic said:

My entry: 

 

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.

5 hours ago, Get Marwood & I said:

Severin or Trimpe?

No joy finding a source...

Well, we know it's not Kirby because Hulk has one too many toes.

1 hour ago, comicwiz said:

Yes, I wondered that myself, but wasn't sure if I could shift the timeline that far back. That said, I'm glad you posted this because I do believe it's based on this without question, however if you look at the line art closely, it appears JR redrew it.

After I found out the paper distribution center relocated, I didn't really bother to delve deeper to see if I could narrow that range down even more, however I had also hoped to find a point of reference for the Hulk corner box art as well, like in a house ad or somewhere.

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.  

33 minutes ago, comicwiz said:

 

Similarly to what happened with the ASM series, where Ditko's last Spidey was issue #38 (1966), it is believed that Romita's rendition for the corner box art was already drawn, and they kept using the Ditko corner box art even after John Romita took over, and Romita's rendition only first appeared a year after he was working on the title in issue #48 (1967).

 

That art you see in the corner of ASM 48 was drawn by Ditko,  and came from this issue, which was 1965 I believe.

4 hours ago, Ken Aldred said:

I liked Thunderbird, and was happy when his brother appeared in the 80s with similar abilities. Good character, same with Warpath.

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 hours ago, bluehorseshoe said:

That because its not a book named UF4 or whatever that Keanu Reeves comic book is called.

This book is just simply not for sale anywhere, and hasnt been for a long time.

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. 

1 hour ago, PeterPark said:

Shouldn't the first Patch be MCP 10? I thought he didn't adopt the name before that, even if he had the look...

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.

56 minutes ago, PeterPark said:

Shouldn't the first Patch be MCP 10? I thought he didn't adopt the name before that, even if he had the look...

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. 

9 hours ago, F For Fake said:

Maybe MCP 1 is selling because people FINALLY realize it has an awesome Simonson cover? I had a promo poster of that cover as a kid, hang on my wall for many years. Love Uncle Walt!

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.

Has anybody mentioned Spectacular Spiderman?  I think 64 might be the mvp in that series.

Edit:  It was mentioned on the 2nd page.

59 minutes ago, IronMan_Cave said:

What about Avengers? I can't think of anything major besides #1, #55, #57 

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.  

1 hour ago, Brock said:

That’s one of those things I never really noticed before, but I’ll never unsee now.

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.  

2 hours ago, Poekaymon said:

Listen.  Practically no one hates Liefeld more than I do.  The 90s age of craparama that he helped usher in was part of why I quit the hobby.  But.  I'm going to be honest with you all.

I like that NM 98 cover.  There.  I said it.  I'm not ashamed.  (Well, a little.)

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.  

6 minutes ago, GeeksAreMyPeeps said:

Sure...

Arnold, Sonny Landham, Carl Weathers, and Bill Duke are terrible compared to the awesome action movie stars we got today.  

2 hours ago, Dr. Dank said:

Cyber was my favorite wolverine villain.

Nobody, not a single entity that wolverine had ever faced, made him pee his pants like Cyber did.

What was done to that character was blasphemy. 

Ok, kill him and use his adamantium to revive the old wolverine we love. I loved the irony in that, and the fact that wolverine had nothing to do with it. But who is this Dakon BS?

Glad I never read any of that, except on Wikipedia. 

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.

5 hours ago, F For Fake said:

100%. Origins are always a letdown. One of the great things about Alien was that you felt like the characters had been dropped into a world much larger, and stranger, than they could have imagined. Not only did they encounter the alien itself, but they found it on a crashed derelict craft. Large parts of my childhood were spent thinking about how that ship got there, what the space jockey was, and what the hell was going on there. Of course, what they eventually showed us in Prometheus and Covenant (ugh) could never compare to those visions. The mystery is what makes it interesting.

It's the same thing with modern horror movies. Did we need origin films for Michael Myers and Leatherface? Of course not. They were terrifying because we had no idea what their deal was. Why was this happening?

Same with superheroes. Wolverine was much cooler before we found out whatever it was that "Origin" told us happened because I can't remember anymore because I already blocked it out of my memory blah blah blah

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. 

28 minutes ago, Qalyar said:

People like 'em some xenomorphs. That said, I really don't expect a ton of movement in this franchise. Alien and Aliens are both candidates for a short list of essential science fiction. The rest of the series? Ehhh... not so much. Prometheus was so bad it defies rational description; a lesser property would have seen fan abandonment in its wake. Covenant isn't tons better.

Where do they go from here? And yeah, I know they're still planning a third prequel.

The first two films are never going away, and so interest in the early comics is never going away, but I don't expect some new tranche of franchise material to suddenly alter the landscape here.

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.)   

4 hours ago, the blob said:

My extremely dim recollection is that my older brother was pretty happy to get an X-Men 94 at our first show in 1977. He wound up selling it for weed money a few years later. 

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.