Batman: "What if our wolf-like prowler is not wearing a mask?"
from: "Moon Of The Wolf" by Len Wein, Neal Adams & Dick Giordano (Batman # 255)
"The sun is going down, the streets are still as bright as day.
See the shiny cars driving round detecting crime.
Hear the sirens wail; the cops are only killing time.
I've been searching all through the city."
from: "All Through The City" - Dr Feelgood (BBC session version)
There's a terrible melancholy which comes from feeling able to identify the precise point at which a favourite creator's style ceases to become entirely compelling. From the time of "Moon Of The Wolf" onwards, the art of Neal Adams would become gradually more and more characterised by a sense of the monumental, by ever-broader and more exaggerated cartoon gestures which at times quite seemed to overwhelm that part of his art which had previously been marked by restraint and delicacy. It's a development which worked to the considerable advantage of 1978's "Superman v Muhammad Ali", but then what else but a great monumental shift up in gears would have suited the grand sweeping spectacularisms of that tale? But "Moon Of The Wolf" is the product of a somewhat different Neal Adams, struggling with the challenges of Len Wein's serviceable script and the constraints of just 20 page of story. Every page strains with invention, as if he were an artist furiously attempting to express so much more than the page-count might ordinarily permit. Innovative and yet always story-serving layouts abound. There's a mass of panel-heavy sides suggesting a far more complex story than really is at hand, and yet those somewhat-crowded pages are brilliantly structured to compel the reader to drive faster and faster into the narrative. Having struggled one last time against the limitations of another's script combined with the standard format of the comics of the time, his work having been enhanced by Dick Giordano's gorgeously rich and atmospheric inks, Neal Adams abandoned regular work for the Big Two, and in doing so left behind something of that vital pearl-stimulating grit too.
"It has been necessary to shatter the globular light fixture - - - - to attain a position from which you may - - - - shatter their faces ... with a forearm smash and a knee smash, respectively."
from: "Citadel On The Edge Of Vengeance" by Doug Moench, Larry Hama & Dick Giordano (Marvel Premiere featuring Iron Fist # 17)
"Do the Wall Street Shuffle,
Let your money hustle,
Bet you'd sell your mother.
You could buy another."
from: "The Wall Street Shuffle" by 10cc
The first four of Iron Fist's tales are, for stories placed in a monthly book whose covers carried the Comics Code Authority seal, often notably brutal. It's a level of deliberately-inflicted and precisely-directed violence which, in juxtaposition with the setting of sterile corridors and strip-lit offices, creates an almost psychedelic sense of the everyday and the extraordinary colliding. Relentless, bleak, hopeless, this Iron Fist feels like every capitalist's most terrifying nightmare, the indomitable embodiment of the most savage retribution owed to all of those whose lives were squandered in the name of whatever it was that avarice had wanted to extort from the powerless.
Henry: "By golly, Emma ... Today's convinced me! You're right! Mosques ... Cathedrals ... after a while, they all look alike!"
Nico: "But, Dad ... !"
from: "Cathedral Perilous: Chapter 5" - Archie Goodwin & Walt Simonson (Detective Comics # 441)
"Here I stand. Look around. You won't see me.
Now I'm here. Now I'm there.
I'm just a new man. Yes, you made me live again ... "
from: "Now I'm Here" - Queen
If there's a more perfectly judged homage to Will Eisner's Spirit stories in the canon of superhero tales than "Cathedral Perilous", I've yet to read it. Goodwin and Simonson established just how secret the Manhunter's world, and indeed the Manhunter's war, was by showing how it just occasionally peaked out into plain view before the eyes of a young bored tourist desperate for a more exciting holiday. In the background, cloned assassins grown from the DNA of the Golden Age Manhunter are picked off by the resurrected Paul Kirk himself, while in the foreground, everyday life rolls on dully under an ice-cream-melting sun. Enchanting, exciting, heart-breakingly suggestive of a lost future in which comic-book modernism and traditionalism might combine to create a new way of telling even the back-up stories in "Detective Comics", "Manhunter" still stands as the road which ought to have been more travelled.
Nameless Old Man: "I have head tales of your coming ... on a horse, it was said ... I rode a horse once ... as did my two brothers. We rode with the one you seek, Dr Strange! Aye, we rode with Death, Dr Strange! My name is Famine!"
from: "... Where Boundaries Decay" by Steve Engelhart, Frank Brunner and Dick Giordano (Dr Strange # 4)
"As I walk through this wicked world,
Searching for light in the darkness of insanity,
I ask myself, is all hope lost?
Is there only pain and hatred and misery"
from; "What's So Funny About Peace, Love And Understanding" by Brinsley Schwarz
Engelhart and Brunner's solution in the "Silver Dagger" stories to the problems of how to portray a terrifying comicbook world of magik drew upon the late Medieval traditions associated with the wake of the Black Death. Trapped in a realm of the most hopeless poverty and suffering, surrounded by "plague-ridden" men who cannot die although they hurl themselves from the heights to do so, Stephen Strange and a simulacrum of the winged horse Aragorn must track down and fall before death in an attempt to escape back to Earth. In places almost sickening in its horror, "... Where Boundaries Decay" offers subsequent generations of creators a simple guideline as to how to frighten their readers, namely; tap in the material generated by the cultures of folks who really have lived through hell, and only just survived.
Doc: "What is that ... that thing, Mr Tork?"
Tork: "He ain't no thing, Doc. He's a good friend of the family, same as Dawg wuz."
from "Nobody Dies Forever" by Steve Gerber, Mike Ploog and Frank Chiaramonte ("Man-Thing # 10)
"But remember Brothers and Sisters,
You can still stand tall.
Just be thankful for what you've got."
from: "Be Thankful For What You Got" by William DeVaughan
Marvel, it's said, had never received so many letters pleading for the life of anyone, let alone that of a poor old dead dog, or 'Dawg', as they had posted to them in response to "Nobody Dies Forever". The trope of the beloved hound murdered while bravely defending its family is a strange almost-commonplace in many of the era's best comics, but it's probably presented in its most touching form here. From the street mutt slaughtered in "Swamp Thing" # 7, to the Werewolf-slain pet in "Night Of The Moon" in "Batman" # 255, to the poor canine sidekick of Jonah Hex in "Weird Western Comics" # 14, the comic book readers of the Seventies must have developed an anxiously quickening heartbeat and a prickly sense of unease whenever a dog appeared in the comics before them. The very sight of Krypto in any of the Superman titles must have unwittingly caused panic attacks across America and beyond.
Private Cop: "You can't enter this city . . It's been rented for the night by a private citizen!"
OMAC: "I'm OMAC! No city is closed to me!!"
from: "In The Era Of The Super-Rich" by Jack Kirby & Mike Royer
"For the love of money,
People will steal from their mother.
For the love of money,
People will rob their own brother."
from: "For The Love Of Money" - The O'Jays
Jack Kirby, as we know, loathed bullies, and, from Will Eisner's tale of a young Kirby "explaining" himself to a hoodlum trying to shake down the studio in which they worked, it was a hatred of the abuse of power which he'd carried with him all his life. And OMAC is at its heart a tale of how the bullying elites of the West are slipping from the possibility of democratic control and fundamental human decencies, and of how someone is desperately needed to step in and deliver a few heavy blows in order to bring our supposed betters back into line. In these concerns, OMAC is one of the most profoundly political comics of its time, and it's unfair that it's rarely ever granted the respectful attention it deserves for that beyond the estimable ranks of Kirby fans and scholars. OMAC's world is one of environmental collapse and de-humanising technology, of global corruption and individual helplessness. It's a picture of the whole of the Earth reduced to a great broken playground for warlords of one class or another to lord over it. "In The World That's Coming" ran the tag-line for the series, but almost 40 years later, that world seems practically here. Yet, it appears, there's no Brother Eye or Buddy Blank in sight to inspire our resistance, and the various takes of OMAC which we've been given since carry not a trace of the radical loathing for power which the original so brilliantly embodied.
Earl Crawford: "Wh-What are you? Wh-why couldn't you at leave his family s -- something to ... to bury?"
from: "The Man Who Stalked The Spectre" by Michael Fleisher, Russell Carley and Jim Aparo (Adventure Comics # 435)
"Remember your guard dog?
Well I'm afraid that he's gone.
It was such a drag to hear him whining all night long ..."
from: "Revolution Blues" by Neil Young
In the comics marketplace of the first half of the Seventies, Michael Fleischer's Spectre scripts were quite literally shocking to more traditional-minded readers. His corpse-white guardian wasn't a super-ghost on a learning curve, discovering how not to judge too harshly we poor fallible mortals, but rather a creature of the most resolutely malicious and savage of natures. And so, each Spectre tale followed a simple and predictable and entirely satisfying path. Someone would do something profoundly terrible and the Spectre would track him down and do something profoundly and imaginatively terrible to him. What was most remarkable was that the stories never became as dull as they were over-familiar and utterly predictable. Fleischer and Aparo's absolutist glee was channelled so joyfully into this month's gruesomely final punishment that the slightest variation in the Spectre's murderous business became funny in itself; the formula worked like that of a Warner Brother's cartoon or the closing havoc of a spaghetti western, teasing the reader towards the satisfaction of a nasty, nasty baddy-killing climax. And yet, these were tales which were so apparently unambiguous in their hang-'em-high, far-right morality that even instinctively liberal-humanist readers could read them and enjoy them, as if they were brilliant satires of notions of frontier justice. Well, perhaps they were. But even the presence of a crusading bleeding heart journalist looking suspiciously like Clark Kent placed as a moral counterpoint in the stories couldn't diminish the sense that the pleasure of these tales was that of schadenfreude. When the Spectre transformed a murderer into a wooden statue of himself and then took a chainsaw to his art, there's nothing but the joy of the most bloody-handed of vengeance-porn sitting there right before the reader's eyes. Even in the era of the slightly-transgressive monster book, there was nothing to match Fleischer's scripts for their message that life's hard, mistakes get made, and then you get transformed into a candle so that the Spectre can melt you down.
"Lu Sun ... Would you contend against Fu Manchu?"
"Would you, Shang Chi?"
"She's reading comics, eating Chinese food,
She chopped the coffee table right in two.
Kung Fu; it's messing with my life."
from: "Kung Fu" by Sharks (Shockingly, not on Youtube!)
It's sometimes easy to forget how pretentious Pop culture can be, and there never was a pop craze as pretentiously vapid as the Kung Fu excesses of 1972/5. Justifying hours and hours of screeching men smashing themselves in puree with a few seconds of faux-Daoism was the spirit of the times, and "Retreat" perfectly captures both the glee and the portentousness of Bruce Lee and his deadly little brothers. Like a great pop culture mash-up, the script carries an obvious and unofficial guest appearance by Kwai Chang Caine from TV's "Kung Fu", a host of characters from Rohmer's Fun Manchu novels, Shang-Chi himself, and, as if that wasn't enough, the Man-Thing, burning whatever it is that knows fear as the Man-Thing must. It's exactly the kind of smart and unrestrained thieving from popular culture which comics seem to have almost entirely forgotten how to do, and yet here stealing from left, right and centre immeasurably enriched the whitebread superheroic staples of the Marvel Universe. If you could stomach the deeply meaningful as well as revel in the patently ridiculous, the early "Master Of Kung Fu" could be a tremendously enjoyable, if almost entirely insubstantial, ride.
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Hi Colin,
ReplyDeleteyou sure know to pick the memorable ones, do you? :-)
We really must have been impressionable ones back then. I read the Batman story a long time ago in a translation as a kid and never forgot it.
All the other I read as an adult. Manhunter was such an odd one, because it had so many "firsts", the weapons, the conspiracy, the kung fu and of course the death of the hero, which actually stuck for once. (Nice coincidence with for CBR article, btw *g)
Fleisher´s Spectre also is a guilty pleasure. It was so ECish, but hugely enjoyable. I still think the short form is the best for such an insanely powerful character like the Spectre; the only other writer to do a good Spectre was John Ostrander, the rest was rubbish.
And MoKF. this was the first series I bought all back-issues I could get, mostly through mail-order - which at the time was not easy - and I am glad I did it because it will never be reprinted because of the rights-issue. I loved it, even if I have to confess that it must be the most pretentious comic of its era. Some issues are virtually unreadable - this pseudo-Zen babbling not making any sense whatsoever -and Moench often was not half as clever as he thought :-)
But it was also very innovative. Today it often seems that Grant Morrison and Alan Moore are the writers who invented the post-modern schtick of superhero comics, but Doug Moench did it first. In the ridiculous world of Shang-Chi you had characters buying Frazetta prints, listening to Fleetwood Mac and fighting against Fu Manchu´s riff on Aleister Crowley, the Golden Dawn and the Illuminati. This is mostly forgotten, but it gave the book sometimes a texture which was way ahead of its time. It is still surprising how insulated this books was in the Marvel U. Of course this was the time before the company cross-over was invented, still, Moench could do what he wanted without worrying about Spider-Man or Iron Fist.
And of course the art. It was a book which seemed to bring the best out of a lot of artists. Not just the early Gulacy issues, but Mike Zeck and the late Gene Day who did such great layouts.
Oh, and the thieving of popular culture? I guess the times where the movie-tickets of Alien and Terminator gave Chris Claremont enough plot for years to write X-Men are truly over. In all fairness where should they steal from? Is there any movie or book in the last ten years which did something innovative worth adapting?
Hello Andy:- there weren’t many memorable ones that I could find, actually :) I’m afraid that any residual belief in the splendidness of the past is just ebbing away! I can’t even claim that the Master Of Kung Fu was anything special, although it is full of ideas and that issue of cultural-thieving which I quite wanted to discuss. Which is not to say that there weren’t some fine comics about in 1974, of course. (Manhunter was indeed another death that I thought of discussing in the piece elsewhere, but I was desperately trying to cut what I had before me!) There is of course something to be said for discovering how good books have always existed in something of a vacuum, because it makes each good book all the more precious and makes the business of working out how they tick, to whatever degree, all the more interesting.
ReplyDeleteMOKF was a remarkable comic, wasn’t it, and as you say, it remained relatively independent of the MU for a period of time quite unimaginable today. And you’re right to say that, whatever the problems the material now seems to have, MOKF had a texture all of its own.
Now, I know what you mean about the rights re: Fu Manchu, but stranger things have happened. Why, we might even have Miracleman back on the shelves before the mid-point of the decade.
As for what might be stolen from pop culture, well, I say everything. Every film, every TV series, every big sci-fi/fantasy epic; of course, straight lifts don’t help, but some imagination and hybridising always gets the pot boiling. 2000ad has often been at its best when mixing and matching the media and politics of the world itself. History and politics are stories too, though you’d not often know so in sub-genre comics :)
Another fine selection here, Colin. I'm pleased that you found a match for Queen's stonking Now I'm Here. Watching the accompanying video open with the band arriving at the Rainbow is creepy, because I happen live 10 minutes' walk from the venue!
ReplyDeleteIt's long been the headquarters of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, but whenever I walk past I imagine I can hear the echoes of concerts past. I also think of Zappa being shoved into the orchestra pit by a deranged audience member in 1971, resulting in his being confined to a wheelchair for the best part of a year, and his voice permanently dropping as a result of his larynx being crushed. The awful thing is, I know from a recording that he played a beautiful guitar solo on the epic King Kong shortly before the incident occurred.
The trends you identify in Neal Adams' work seems to have reached some sort of impossible endpoint, if what I've seen of his current work on Batman Odyssey is to be believed. It makes the work of Frank Miller and Jim Lee on All-Star Batman and Robin look subdued by comparison.
Your paragraph about OMAC had me cheering. Those eight issues are probably my favourite thing Kirby ever did (that I've read anyway). It's remarkable how the issue you focus on anticipates the proliferation of gated communities. See the recent Mexican film La Zona for a stark treatment of this theme, and also several of JG Ballard's novels.
I don't want to jinx it, but I'm cautiously optimistic about the new OMAC title that's being launched in September. Keith Giffen, who's doing a Tom Scioli and unleashing his inner Kirby on art duties, has said that's it's the spirit of Kirby's original series that he wants to get back to. Of course, Dan DiDio coscripting is guaranteed to be a hate magnet for disgruntled fans, plus even if the new title is good the chances of the sorts of political themes you identify being promulgated through it are slim. But hope springs eternal....
I love the cheek of Marvel having a horse called Aragorn and a baddie called Sauron in the 70s, just as early versions of D&D (which launched in 1974) had loads of direct Tolkien lifts. Tolkien died in 1973, and his estate began clamping down heavily on that sort of thing thereafter.
Talking of IP disputes, the reason you can't find that Kung Fu track on YouTube may be because it's been taken down by request. This isn't the time or place for me to go into the background, but the policy at Google that has resulted in all this music being on YouTube is based on an interpretation of the law that's contentious in some circles. (Even in relation to US copyright law, which gives a bit more leeway for these sorts of things, it's contentious.) I'm not picking sides in these IP disputes (not here anyway), just pointing out that they're a factor.
There are a few tracks you've listed in this post that I'm unfamiliar with but am enjoying checking out, so thanks once again for helping me broaden my education. I don't know how I missed Be Thankful For What You Got, it's brilliant. But I don't want to read about dying dogs, goshdarnit!
Alex S
Wow, in the past couple of months, I have read two of those for the first time- OMAC and Manhunter. That issue of Manhunter definitely was a stand-out,exciting and funny, too!
ReplyDeleteI really liked OMAC- it had so many concepts in it, but also was very simple in the end. I think you hit on why the more recent Project OMAC book was so disappointing: the idea of a satellite in the sky that could turn people into super-cops was cool, but the core of the book was really about kicking the asses of people trafficking in human bodies for old people to inhabit or buying entire cities to destroy for fun. Instead, Project OMAC just became the same old cliche "supercomputer goes bad!" story.
Just as Batman only works in a city with scarier threats than a man dressing up as a bat running around kicking people, and the Spectre is only useful for revenge against horrible, reprehensible people*, OMAC only works in a future society in which a superstrong guy is necessary to stand up to the corruption and evil in the world.
*I'd love to get my hands on that Spectre run, can't find anything by Fleischer at the library at all. I've only seen him in other people's comics like Kingdom Come. Your description reminds me of Chris Sim (the-isb.com)'s description of Garth Ennis's Punisher run, where most of the story is spent on detailing how horrible the guy is, before the Punisher busts in and gives him the vengeance he richly deserves.
Hello Alex:- “Another fine selection here, Colin.”
ReplyDeleteIt gets harder. Neither the music or the comics was at its height in 74/75. Much of what was fine in music was instrumental or semi-instrumental – the Fire-Island synthesis, for example, or dub – or so cleverly specific that it’s hard to find a match – Steely Dan, SAHB, Bowie etc. I’ve really learned that there is no Golden Age of comics or 45s. That’s why I'm keeping going. These pieces neither win nor loose readers, which is good on the not dropping visitors tally, but the key point is that it really forces me to wake and reconsider my own time-distorted prejudices.
“I'm pleased that you found a match for Queen's stonking Now I'm Here. Watching the accompanying video open with the band arriving at the Rainbow is creepy, because I happen live 10 minutes' walk from the venue!”
Look, I claim serendipity as a badge of some debased genius. Look at the appropriateness of the lyric for the Manhunter tale! In the world of this-means-nothing-at-all, it was a real pleasure of deduction.
”It's long been the headquarters of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, but whenever I walk past I imagine I can hear the echoes of concerts past. I also think of Zappa being shoved into the orchestra pit by a deranged audience member in 1971 .. “
The Rainbow was always the rougher of the two big-deal regular London venues. The Odeon was practically bloodless by comparison, and the bouncers of the two venues hardly bore comparison. I don’t mean to suggest that the Rainbow was a nightmare in any way, but I can remember the bouncers literally walking up the isles at a Jam gig punching anyone standing up before the lights went down. Or was it just my mate Keith? Thing is, memory dissolves into hyperbole. Anyway, the Rainbow tended to have far more violence in the seats and the streets too. The worst I ever saw at the Odeon was a bloke having a coat set light to at a Be Bop Deluxe gig. Mind you, that doesn’t sound too minor in retrospect ..
”The trends you identify in Neal Adams' work seems to have reached some sort of impossible endpoint, if what I've seen of his current work on Batman Odyssey is to be believed. It makes the work of Frank Miller and Jim Lee on All-Star Batman and Robin look subdued by comparison.”
I’ve always felt an apostate for finding ‘my’ Neal Adams disappeared in 1975. Yet at least I can express – no matter how ineptly – why I feel that way now :)
”Your paragraph about OMAC had me cheering. Those eight issues are probably my favourite thing Kirby ever did (that I've read anyway). It's remarkable how the issue you focus on anticipates the proliferation of gated communities. See the recent Mexican film La Zona for a stark treatment of this theme, and also several of JG Ballard's novels.”
There’s SO much to discuss in OMAC and that’s a-gonna happen here v. soon. I read the article in the Guardian recently about how its possible to rent Luxembourg for a few days if you’re stinking rich, be given the keys to the city in a ceremony, have streets temporarily re-named and so on. THAT’S $*!£ OMAC I THOUGHT!
cont;
cont;
ReplyDelete”I don't want to jinx it, but I'm cautiously optimistic about the new OMAC title that's being launched in September. Keith Giffen, who's doing a Tom Scioli and unleashing his inner Kirby on art duties, has said that's it's the spirit of Kirby's original series that he wants to get back to. Of course, Dan DiDio coscripting is guaranteed to be a hate magnet for disgruntled fans, plus even if the new title is good the chances of the sorts of political themes you identify being promulgated through it are slim. But hope springs eternal....”
Yes, and I’m not pre-judging OMAC. Giffen’s an egg, and at the very least it’ll be a gas to see how they dig themselves out of the mess they’ve created for OMAC. But it’s a woeful misjudgement for DDD to give himself a book to write. Somebody needed just to point out that the whole PR aspect of it is inevitably a disaster unless he pulls off a masterpiece. Well, I won’t do anything but applaud if it so. Can’t have too many examples of excellence. But the track record doesn’t suggest anything of the sort, and a great many creators who have produced fine work are on the 52 gravy-train …
”I love the cheek of Marvel having a horse called Aragorn and a baddie called Sauron in the 70s, just as early versions of D&D (which launched in 1974) had loads of direct Tolkien lifts. Tolkien died in 1973, and his estate began clamping down heavily on that sort of thing thereafter.”
Yep, and also how those names were a kind of insiders-argot rather than commonly-known character names. We lovers of fantastic fiction can’t be reminded too often that geeks have taken over the world – in relative terms – to the degree that even programmes such as Star Trek have passed through adolescent fondness, camp association, revisionism through to the mainstream.
”Talking of IP disputes, the reason you can't find that Kung Fu track on YouTube may be because it's been taken down by request.”
Thanks for the nudge. Snips, the vocalist/lyricist for much of the Sharks stuff, was one of those minor but always well-worth listening to artists. Much of Sharks is hoary ol’blues rock, but if you can ever get hold of Snips “La Rocca” album from 1980, well; it’s a lost GEM. Chris Spedding and Midge Ure guitars, Bill Nelson keyboards, t’r’fic lyrics, and a stonking lead-off single which Alexis Korner – bless him – used to play all the time. (He could hear the blues under the Ultravox keyboards.) One of the great lost albums, I’d say, although it informs rather than transcends its time.
”I don't know how I missed Be Thankful For What You Got, it's brilliant.”
Oh, it NEVER wears thin. Don’t ever mistake the 1980 re-make, which for all its virtues ain’t a patch on the original. There’s been SO many remakes of the track, starting with Love – yep, Mr Lee’s – in 75. But even the lyrical imagery is burnt into so much Hip Hop.
“But I don't want to read about dying dogs, goshdarnit!2
I told you there was more dawgs-a-coming. But I don’t think there’s any more. No, I agree. Those comics are good ‘uns despite and not because of that trope. Except for the Man-Thing story, which was all about how love overcomes hatred. Good ol’dawg. Oh, dear, I think I’m tearing up ….
Hello Historyman:- you do express exactly how I feel about Project Omac. The original is indeed an absolutely incandescent burst of fury against the social changes we'd now group under headings such as 'globalisation'. OMAC is the most fantastic ball of compassion and concern and justifiable contempt for the powerful. It reflects a loathing the abuse of responsibility which I rarely see in the superhero mainstream these days. I guess nobody was thinking of anything but superheroes when they thought of adapting the OMAC property. But its NOT a 'property' so much as its great big ball of politics and fun. As you intimate, it's not the 'living weapon' bit that matters, it's the people that the weapon had to developed against. Brother Eye was a weapons system designed to take out the various warlords of a global class of super-bullies. Ah. It's too wonderful a concept to blow on continuity piffle ...
ReplyDelete"OMAC only works in a future society in which a superstrong guy is necessary to stand up to the corruption and evil in the world."
Now, that made me think. Because we ARE almost 40 years on from Kirby's world. We now do environmental collapse, private nations, a super-super-rich class, international crime on a scale never imagined before, imaginary virtual worlds promising individual satisfaction; I think OMAC could do very well set in today's world, although, let's face it, he'd pretty soon be set against the status-quo defending super-heroes of the DCU.
Now there's a comic I'd pay to read!
The only two Fleischer comics I can think of that've been collected and might be easily, if not always cheaply, found as "Wrath Of The Spectre" - 978-1401204747 - which is sadly going for about $30 in the USA and around $45 in the UK, and the first Jonah Hex Showcase - 978-1401207601 - which is again seemingly and shamefully out of print. That's a shame. Those are fine stories which ought to be available. Considering that they're some of the best of DC's mid-Seventies range, I'd've thought keeping them in play would've been a fine idea indeed.
Yes, I think Mr Sims had the Spectre's MO nailed as well as the Punishers there. Yet the Spectre is far more scary. After all, God gave him his power, and the sheer appalling insanity of his murders clashes with that religious sub-text in strange, strange ways!
I love hearing your war stories about the 70s live scene. Even the Dr Feelgood performance you link to above seems to have a certain danger about it (or am I projecting that onto it?). I've seen some shenanigans at gigs, but I get the sense that after the 70s, the hairier concertgoing experiences began to be confined to the thriving subcultures (metal and punk and their various tributaries) rather than being par for the course with the chart-topping acts of the day. And even those subcultures have developed in some odd directions, as intergenerational dynamics have changed. The phenomenon of parents dropping the teenage kids off at Ozzfest or at a Slipknot or Marilyn Manson gig, then picking them up again at the end, is still surreal to me.
ReplyDeleteMind you, I don't want to romanticise rowdiness. The Zappa recording I mentioned is from his 12CD live magnum opus You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore, which covers his entire live career, and there are loads of things documented on it that just seem sad and unnecessary in light of the easily forgotten fact that he's ostensibly trying to play music to people who want to listen to it. There are a couple of tracks on it where you can hear tear gas being launched into the audience by riot police in Italy, there's one where he says that if people don't stop throwing sharp objects at the stage the concert's over (the audience don't stop, he makes good on his threat and says 'house lights' and walks off, and you hear the fading sounds of audience apoplexy). Heaven forbid that music should get in the way of a good barnie.
Yeah, DiDio's adding another gamble on top of the whole relaunch gamble by getting his hands dirty with writing. If he's really dying to write that title, and if he really thinks he has time amid his other responsibilities, perhaps he should use a pseudonym and then say 'aha, it was me all along!' if the thing is a success. Mind you, given his track record and the way the online echo chamber magnifies and personalises fan acrimony, people will probably just respond to that by saying they don't believe him!
Thanks for pointing me to the Sharks and Snips material. Funny you should mention Bill Nelson after I was discussing IP disputes, because if you read his recent comments at http://www.jagshouse.com/music/billnelson.html you'll see that he's NEVER been paid royalties by EMI for his Be Bop Deluxe recordings. There are many similar stories from veteran musicians floating around. While I'm far from enamoured of the argument that people are justified in downloading music (or movies, comics etc) for free because they're 'sticking it to the man', I do recognise that the big entertainment companies aren't exactly standing on the moral high ground when they carry on like this.
Alex S
Re Fleischer, his Conan the Barbarian are being collected ISBN-10: 9781595825841 & ISBN-10: 1595827048
ReplyDeleteIf I remember correctly, they were not very good though.
If you are in luck and can haunt those back-issue bins, the Spectre stories were also reprinted in a 4 issues volume in 1988 as Wrath of the Spectre.
Yeah, the frustrating thing about that is that the story even had Batman creating him in response to the way the rest of the superheroes were abusing their power. It pretty much IS that exact premise! But they never deliver on that - I don't think there's even one scene of the technology being used for its intended purpose, before it goes all Terminator.
ReplyDeleteThe original really was a gem, full of fascinating future concepts- as soon as I read the part where the office has designated rooms for destroying dummies, then escalates to blowing up cars, as a way for people to blow off steam, I was hooked*. The way he deals with it so matter-of-factly makes it almost a parody of science fiction and Star Trek's Holodeck (which it probably predates?), while still making grand statements about humanity. I love the way Kirby takes things so seriously while simultaneously treating them very lightly.
I think I need to get into more supernatural horror comics. I've just been reading Hellblazer trades recently, and it's really amazing how much metaphor can be snuck in to a story about a dude fighting demons. The entire Jamie Delano Original Sins trade uses magic as a metaphor for heroin addiction far better than Buffy, and the story where the Midwest town prays to resurrect their men who'd gone to Vietnam, but when the soldiers come back they see their families as the Vietnamese and treat them as such and torch the town is like a punch to the gut. Like Rambo (the first one actually an excellent commentary on PTSD) crossed with The Curse of the Black Freighter.
Speaking of political, Delano really situates his stories in a time period. That run is incredibly, blatantly a political critique of 80s Thatcherite UK. But Hellblazer: Pandemonium, written pretty recently, does a very convincing job of using Constantine to comment on the Iraq War and Terror and all that.
Okay, I've totally steered off into a wide tangent. But as someone who's just started getting into comics in the last few years, it was really relevatory to discover that there were authors who used subtext and metaphor really well who aren't named Moore or Gaiman or Morrison.
*and knew I had to show it to my therapist mother, who got a kick out of it.
Hello Alex:- oh, dear. My war stories .... Ah, well, I do think that folks forget just how violent the seventies were. It's become seen as a kind of pop culture museum with music and style marking distinct periods, and yet the constant throughout them all was how *&$! violent it was. Of course, today is a far more aggressive society in general, but then violence was simply a given in certain areas and situations. There was to a degree a de-coupling of that later in the Eighties - only a touch, but a little was enough - but I can recall being trapped in London because all of the London Transport bus and rail staff were on strike because of the violence that came along with Man Utd's visits to the capital. By which I mean, it wasn't worse, we weren't harder, but there was a pervasive nastiness which had a different character. Certainly today's cross-generational rock event, as you share, simply has nothing to do with the gigs of the past. Of course, violence has migrated to other genres. Different violence, different sub-cultures ...
ReplyDeleteItalian gigs were - they may still be - absolutely famous for the violence. I think just about every rock biography has an Italian stadium horror story. There's some hilarious tales of the Fatima Mansions supporting U2 in Italy, or at least memory tells me there are; if memory is correct, that's just a red rag to a Cathal. And you know, I never wanted to experience Altamont or any of its brother venues.
I worry a great deal - in the context of it being comics and therefore not much of a worry at all - about DDD and his scripting. It just speaks, whether he means to or not, of an arrogant sensibility. If he wanted to make it as a scripter, there's plenty of places he could go to develop his craft. He could self-publish, for heavens sake. Instead, he publishes what were simply terrible Outsider's scripts. Now why would anyone listen to his advice beyond the commercial imperatives if he can't even keep a team book above the - what was it? - around 12 000 mark? I know nothing of him as a bloke, I'm sure he's an egg. But he just undercuts his authority by producing poor work and then expecting his own staff to follow his lead. At least when, say, Archie Goodwin suggested something, it had the authority of expertise behind it.
Or did I miss some Outsiders stories which were excellent?
Ah, dear Bill Nelson. I saw the last Be Bop gig in London. Indeed, I'm just reading the Be Bop biography now. The latest Word podcast stars the ex-head of EMI through the 90s; he makes his reign sound like a period of artistic bliss. And indeed folks like Blur and Radiohead swear by him. Well, why didn't Bill get a penny of royalties? No, the record companies have no moral authority, which is a shame for them and the music biz now, when all they've got beyond a few supermarket best-sellers to defend their interests is, yes, moral authority.
No,I'm not supporting illegal downloading. But every time I start a DVD and I get a great thundering, unskippable warning about piracy, I am sorely tempted to do exactly as I'm asked not to. The hypocrisy of it, from an industry apparently incapable of dealing honorably with its bills in so many cases, just sticks in the windpipe ...
Hello Andy:- thank you for the nudge. I only read a few MF Conan tales. I wasn't in any way impressed, which is a shame, because I wanted to be. His Hex tales, for example, were splendid.
ReplyDeleteBut MF did go into a spectacular decline as the Eighties rolled on. The work he did for 2000 ad was simply .... well, I hesitate to use the words I feel I ought to!
Hello Historyman:- that whole Project Omac stuff just reads like an awful dream, or rather nightmare, doesn't it, as if nobody could quite understand the point of OMAC. Or perhaps they just thought that the Kirby text couldn't ever fly commercially, meaning that gutting his concepts so they could do SOMETHING in the marketplace was the height of their ambition. Obviously, I can't say, but it's poor show from beginning to end. I hope the DDD version is much better. Fingers crossed, hope struggling with experience ...
ReplyDeleteOh yes, it predate the holodeck as used in the Next Gen, just as it predates the net as we know it. Of course, there was lots about immersive virtual/chemical tech around in the seventies, and even before in say Dick's novels, but Kirby really boiled it down to the basics of freedom, license, cravenness and bullying.
I think Mr Kirby would get a real kick out of his work being furthered to your mother, given her professional experience. I think that's an absolutely heartening thought.
I did have some problems with the later Delano issues, when JC moved from being a general symbol of opposition to Thatcherism to being a representative of the Crusty fraternity. At that point, a general political stance became too specific for me and I bailed. But I've no problem with JD doing that, anymore than I'd object to the opposite politics being put to use. What I object to is folks who don't think about the politics of their work and end up making daft statements that they're not in control of.
Horror and, more recently and surprisingly, sword'n'sorcery of a kind are proving excellent seed-beds for political debate. You're right to discuss it as a really useful example of how politics can be used to charge up familiar genres. That's one reason why I don't object, for example, to the DC "I Vampire" re-launch. Well, I can't say what the book will be like, but fans who've been criticising DC for jumping the romo-vampire trend are missing the fact that (1) it sells, (2) it sells to women, and (3) there's lots of room to play with metaphor there too. As with Hellblazer, Buffy and so on. Well, whyever not? I agree with your enthusiasm for approaching these opportunities with something other than closed minds.
I hope I didn't make it sound that I lacked respect for Mr Delano's Hellblazer. The single-issue story set somewhere between 3 and 5, acted against one of Thatcher's re-election nights and featuring a gay friend of Constantine's who was HIV-Positive was .... well, I found it both moving and inspiring. And in many ways that episode shows the Hellblazer I choose to believe. A hard man, but a genuinely compassionate one too when its appropriate.
We take wide tangents here! It's one of the things I most appreciate about the comments folks leave.
Thanks for the response!
ReplyDeleteRegarding the OMAC, is it possible they had to do SOMETHING with it so as to not let the copyright expire? I dunno, just a thought.
One of the more frustrating aspects of unemployment at the moment is that I can't find any of Kirby's Fourth World stuff at the library besides the introduction in Jimmy Olsen, and I can't afford to buy a trade at the moment. I keep reading these characters in Final Crisis, Seven Soldiers, Kingdom Come, etc, that I really want to know their genesis (pun not intended?).
Well, I'm a 26 year old American, so I have no experience of 80s UK outside of what movies, comics, and books have told me. The political stuff in the Delano seemed a bit heavy-handed, but I appreciated the honesty of the approach. As you said, better to have intent and a viewpoint than to just flail around.
I definitely did get a sense of compassion from Constantine- the end of the first arc, when he [SPOILER ON A THIRTY YEAR OLD COMIC?] is forced to betray and sacrifice his junkie friend to save the population of New York from the hunger demon (metaphor!) is absolutely heartbreaking. Maybe you mean later parts of the run I haven't read yet? But I do get a consistent reading of Constantine through Delano, Ennis, and Carey that his crustiness is a defense mechanism against the horror he has to put up with daily. Practically every demon he meets says "I know you're only acting a clown to throw me off guard", and then falls for it anyway. Constantine strikes me as an incredibly loyal, compassionate man, whose friends die constantly as a result of his actions and mistakes- so he's understandably bitter and guilt-ridden.
It's funny you mentioned his HIV-positive friend- that really heavily reminded me of V's gay friend in V for Vendetta. Was that just a common trope in that era, that the badass hero would have a flamboyant but tragic gay elderly friend to take his lady friend to for protection (who would inevitably die as a casualty of whatever war he was fighting)? Between that and the thematic similarities between the Vietnam story I mentioned before and Curse of the Black Freighter, i'm starting to wonder how novel Moore really was. Of course, while some people's genius lies in originality (Kirby), it seems Moore's was maybe more in synthesis and form. Tropes are tropes because they work, I guess.
Regarding fantasy, I read through a fair amount of the first book of Cerebus, partly just because I'd read so much about Dave Sim being a misogynist online that I figured I should go to the source and look at it in context. Leaving aside that issue for the moment, that book partway through becomes all about the parodies, from Batman and the X-Men (his Professor Charles X Claremont still makes me chuckle) to Red Sonja, to various political and economic systems (and a King who's totally Groucho Marx). All of his parodies are extremely ham-handed, but it does indicate some of the potential for the medium.
And speaking of PKDick, I tried reading a few of his books a few years ago, and had a really hard time getting over all the wife-beating his heroes do. I know it was a different era, and the characters aren't even being portrayed necessarily as in the right, but it just rubbed me the wrong way. Also, all his heroes worked as tire re-groovers. I guess it's a good metaphor (superficially restoring something to new condition, while actually making it incredibly dangerous), but is it really necessary to put it in every book? I guess back then it was considered more disposable entertainment than now, so he figured he'd reuse his best details, nobody'll notice.
I swear, I'm not trying to top my tangentiality, it's just happening that way! I just read all these old comics and don't have anyone to discuss them with.
When I did college radio, I devoted one show to playing a song a year from 1954 ("That's Alright") to the present (late 1990s). It was fun, but I only prepared the first 10 or so songs. I remember searching through the records at the station, and coming up with nothing at all for 1974 that I wouldn't dislike playing. I ended up skipping it. I'm fairly amazed you found so many good songs from that year, and it's nice to see Mr. Young make an appearance.
ReplyDelete"Or did I miss some Outsiders stories which were excellent?"
HA HA HA HA! Good one! DC's (admittedly more successful) answer to the Champions.
I hope DC decides to release more Jonah Hex Showcases. Are there royalty issues that make the company unwilling to do so? I remember that being the reason someone gave for the otherwise inexplicable decision to include the Outlaw stories in vol. 1 instead of more Hex comics.
I hope I can get my hands on OMAC someday. Full-priced hardcovers are a bit out of my price range. Off to go looking for a cheaper copy!
- Mike Loughlin
"I did have some problems with the later Delano issues, when JC moved from being a general symbol of opposition to Thatcherism to being a representative of the Crusty fraternity"
ReplyDeleteYou are not alone in this, Colin :-) At first Delano was undercut by some seriously terrible artwork, but later he became so - I guess navel-gazing is the word? JC as the Hippie-King or whatever it was was so dull.
Hellblazer is a difficult book. It has its rituals - every new writer ditches the supporting cast of the last one, which really just supports the "best mate we have never seen before" syndrom, which has become so idiotic -, but JC is such an ambiguous character, and some writers have problems with that. Every readable arc is mostly followed by a terrible bore. I know that Peter Milligan can do no wrong for a lot of people, but his JC is not to my taste. Of course I hasten to add that Hellblazer is a book which invites a more subjective viewpoint than other. It goes seldom totally off the rails. Well, except the Azzarello arc, which should never have seen the light of the day :-)
Hello Historyman: ”Regarding the OMAC, is it possible they had to do SOMETHING with it so as to not let the copyright expire? I dunno, just a thought.”
ReplyDeleteIt’s an interesting idea, isn’t it? Jom Shooter has been discussing on his blog how he was asked to create a future Superboy substitute in for the LSH in case the court case re: that property went against DC. I’m unaware of whether the Kirby properties are up for dispute now or whenever. But if I were acting for a corporation, I’d want my copyrights solid and protected.
”One of the more frustrating aspects of unemployment at the moment is that I can't find any of Kirby's Fourth World stuff at the library besides the introduction in Jimmy Olsen, and I can't afford to buy a trade at the moment. I keep reading these characters in Final Crisis, Seven Soldiers, Kingdom Come, etc, that I really want to know their genesis (pun not intended?).”
You have my sympathy, sir. I’ve the originals in tattered originals with UK price stamps from the early 1970s. It seemed like inexpensive riches at the time. Now I treasure them all the more.
”Well, I'm a 26 year old American, so I have no experience of 80s UK outside of what movies, comics, and books have told me. The political stuff in the Delano seemed a bit heavy-handed, but I appreciated the honesty of the approach.”
There very much is a sense of how a certain sub-set of the left felt about Thatcher and her regime. In many ways I do wish that there was also something that’d been created from the opposite POV. There’s a great deal of anti-Thatcher work, from Moore’s Cpt Britain to a great deal of the contents of 2000ad. I’d just find it interesting to see how the opposing tendency framed their own discourse ….
”Practically every demon he meets says "I know you're only acting a clown to throw me off guard", and then falls for it anyway. Constantine strikes me as an incredibly loyal, compassionate man, whose friends die constantly as a result of his actions and mistakes- so he's understandably bitter and guilt-ridden.”
Reading this made me realise that my knowledge of Constantine just isn’t what it might be. The truth is, I found a version of the character which I liked when he first appeared. The Moore-Veitch-Delano take – up until about Hellblazer # 12 – is such an enjoyable period for me that later material lacks appeal for me. I go back regularly, I collect whatever cheap ex-Library collections I can find, but thinking about, I’m not qualified to have an opinion. Isn’t that terrible to realise that? Thank you for asking a question that reveals just how narrow my knowledge-base is :)
”It's funny you mentioned his HIV-positive friend- that really heavily reminded me of V's gay friend in V for Vendetta. Was that just a common trope in that era, that the badass hero would have a flamboyant but tragic gay elderly friend to take his lady friend to for protection (who would inevitably die as a casualty of whatever war he was fighting)? Between that and the thematic similarities between the Vietnam story I mentioned before and Curse of the Black Freighter, i'm starting to wonder how novel Moore really was. Of course, while some people's genius lies in originality (Kirby), it seems Moore's was maybe more in synthesis and form. Tropes are tropes because they work, I guess.”
cont;
cont;
ReplyDeleteWell, any form of engagement with the issue of HIV was incredibly rare in the media in the mid-to-late 80s. I’ve not thought through the representations issue though. It’s a REALLY good question about what kind of gay man was first represented. Jim Wilson from the Hulk was a young Black American, but that’s all that comes to mind off the top of my head.
On Moore and Kirby; I tend to see both chaps as geniuses possessed of an unnaturally broad range of interests. They hovered up material and processed it in ways which we ordinary folks wouldn’t have dreamed of doing. I wonder if there is anything new under the sun which can’t be traced elsewhere :) But there certainly are new and brilliant ways to recombine material. Kirby’s skill was in some ways similar. You can trace parallels between broader cultural trends and products and his own material throughout his career, but he always created something which no-one else could. I always find the fun is tracing the influences, with the help of all the fine expert guides we now have, and then sitting back and accepting that I’d NEVER think of combining and innovating the raw material in such a way. After all, OMAC is a remarkable thing, but it’s roots are rather simple.
”All of his parodies are extremely ham-handed, but it does indicate some of the potential for the medium.”
One of these days I’m going to gop back and re-read Cerebus from start to finish. But I’m with you on the value of parody. What’s inspiring – one of the things which is inspiring – about DS’s work is how those broad parodies often become far more subtle and inspiring characters over time.
Gosh. Wife-beating in PKD. It’s been decades since I read his books, though I have a bookshelf of them by me as I type. Is it possible I was so caught up in the misogyny of the time that I didn’t notice that trope? I shall be a-googling when I finish this. As for the repetition in the work, I think it’s one of the pleasures of it, but then, you have to be pretty committed to the body of work to think that :) But any author producing 4 novels a year and a host of short stories is going to end up going to same well, and if the process by which he re-used ideas isn’t a particular interest, then, yes, I can imagine it being wearisome. But then, I’m not sure how many of his novels I recommend as must-reads. The Man In The High Council, UBIK, Valis, maybe a few more. Beyond that and my heretical view is that it’s probably fans only.
Ah, now there’s me off at a tangent too. No matter, I hope. What else are blogs for?
Hello Mike:- a great deal of the really good stuff in 1974 is, as I fear I've said above, in genres which it's hard to make 'stick' to the superhero comics. Reggae and dub, jazz-funk and disco. But looking back over the period, it's not hard to see why the two great non-conformist genres of disco - pre-mainstream - and punk arose. Because you're right, things on the surface were rank. In fact, anyone bemoaning music now ought to look back at '74 and thank their lucky stars they've access to the energy of a great deal of today's music :)
ReplyDeleteI wish I knew what was holding up the second Showcase volume of Jonah stories, I really do. It was announced and on the schedules for a fair while and then cancelled in that period that saw other much-looked-for volumes such as Super-Friends and Suicide Squad pulled too. We can only presume that royalties are the stumbling block. Oh, well; I know Mr Ostrander had said he wasn't keen on the deal offered to him for the SuSq Showcase, but he's obviously on-board with the new collection. Perhaps we might get something similar with Hex. And yet if that was going to so, I'd suspect it would have been sorted out for the movie, that great damp nothing of an opportunity ....
Good luck with your OMAC hunt. I have a file of incredibly battered copies from the 70s. I too would like to get my mits on some of those Kirby hardbacks, and that includes things like the '40s Guardian stories. One day, when that multi-lottery win comes in, I'll buy us both a set, as well as two Llamas for the Splendid Wife. It's a promise I've made which I intend to honour.
But I doubt I'll even be looking for a collection of 2009/10 Outsiders stories. Or ever have a hardback collection of them offered. Mind you, the response to OMAC in the 70s was such that you'd never have imagined a HB of it several decades in the future either.
Hello Andy; I'll agree with you on one point - huzzah1 - and disagree on one too - boo! The whole new-age traveler riff in Hellblazer lost me at the start. It was sincerely meant, but I too found it profoundly dull. Since I can't believe in the specific political-mystic values being hurled around, I lost interest, plus I found the narrative as a whole entirely uncompelling. But it doesn't reduce my fondness for the first year's stories, and particularly the first 6 months.
ReplyDeleteBut I love John Ridgeway's art, so there's the disagreement out in the open. I know that he doesn't the extremes of horror in a faux-realistic way, but his storytelling is so precise and his character work so compelling that I'll forgive him anything :)
I must admit, I dip into each new Hellblazer and see how things are going. The only shot at the series I can think that I've not tried is PMs,for which I'm awaiting the local library to buy into before the government demolishes the very idea of libraries. I must admit, I was somewhat dumfounded by BA's John C., but I'm not sure why; I always meant to go back and see whether I'd given the series a fair crack of the whip. Perhaps if DC might just as a favour release great thick phone-book from-the-beginning collections, I might be able to get caught up :)
Hi Colin.
ReplyDeleteNo, I didn´t meant Ridgeway, even if Alcala was a unfortunate choice as an inker. I rather meant Piers Rayner and Mike Hoffman which were not suited for this work.
There are many risings & advancings of the spirit grasshopper! Great stuff once again. I hope venting this stuff here is saving your marriage btw.
ReplyDeleteI never thought about Night of The Wolf as the cutoff point for Neal Adams' mainstream comics style but it does make sense. He earned the right to do whatever he damn well pleased by 1974, but I wish he'd gone in the opposite direction and pursued a more lean, minimalist storytelling style.
Some of his best work was much less bombastic--the stuff his imitators didn't pick up on.
Hello Solo:- I've never been very good at spotting those risings and advancing m'self. Hope, grasshopper. One day I will take the ping-pong ball from the master's hand :)
ReplyDeleteI'd never thought about Night Of The Wolf in that way either! I've always had a keen sense that I loved it in a way that I didn't a great deal of the later stuff, but anything more detailed than that escaped me. I'm with you 100% on the later Adams style/s. He's earned the right to do whatever he wants. Huzzah. In so many way the industry owes him a great deal. But I liked the quieter, more delicate material, and you're right, that's not the NA that tended to get lifted.
Still, there's a good eight or nine years of NA work which does fit the profile which we're discussing. That's a rather splendid thing. Glass half full and all of that.
Grasshopper. :)
Re: Philip K Dick, Historyman I recommend at least two of the books Colin mentioned, Ubik and Valis. There's little or no overt misogyny in them – Valis is admittedly heartbreaking, but for very different reasons, which make it all the more worth reading.
ReplyDeleteColin, I suspect one of the PKD books Historyman may have been alluding to (do correct me if I'm wrong Historyman) is Confessions of a Crap Artist, which deals explicitly with misogyny and with the disorientation induced by the early steps towards sexual equality that occurred in the 1950s (small but crucial things like the idea that a man in California might buy his wife's tampons while out at the shops). It's a fascinating book, but certainly too upsetting for me to want to read it again in any hurry.
Alex S
Hello Alex:- thanks for the ideas re: Phil K Dick. In my twenties, I knew just about everything he'd written backwards, but I reached a point where I just stopped being surprised by the books. That's not HIS fault, of course; I was the one who read everything backwards until I'd sucked all the juice from it, but I find it strange to be here so many years later and forgetting the contents of COACA, which I recall reading one X-Mas day as it'd been recently published and I was anxious to enjoy it. I'm glad you're more on the ball than I am!
ReplyDeleteI too recall COACA to be a bleak book. Yet unlike you, I've dumped just about everything in it. One day I hope to regain an enthusiasm for PKD to match my remaining excess of admiration.
Oh, nice---a discussion of Phillip K. Dick in the comments section! I actually came 'round looking for something marked gggg1976, a variation on this type of article, here, featuring a fondly-recalled Defenders #35 cover and Morgan's shock regarding Chondu's musical minds. I imagine you'll post it again though!
ReplyDeleteThanks for bringing up OMAC; now I really want to read this! There was not enough high-concept. Bless Kirby, that's one area where he delivered time and again!
Too bad to hear MOKF may well be over-rated; I snagged a few issues leading into #50 and a couple more besides and found them a treat. Still, when it comes to capturing a time period (and note its erudite letter columns), I think I'll enjoy collecting other storylines, with a sense of their historical context. Were they about as good as it got in the mid-70's comics world? Such blogs often help me pick and choose old issues to peruse, even if I haven't spent much time/money collecting this year. Always a blast to catch up here!
Hello CeaseIll:- I'm sorry to have to tell you that ggg1976 was an accidental printing of a piece I'm slowly putting together for next week. When it appears, however, it will have that Defenders cover and a little about it. I know we have a love for that splendid book in common.
ReplyDeleteOMAC is an incredibly focused all-out-action book. In many ways, it's couldn't be more different from the Gerber books of the period which I know you enjoy. The political concerns that inspired OMAC are genuingly interesting and important ones, but I wouldn't want to suggest that the books are anything other than wall-to-wall action/adventure tales. I love them, of course, but they're as difficult to Defenders 35, for example, as might be expected.
Still, Mr Kirby and Mr Gerber thought well of each other, as we know, and produced those wonderfully fun Destroyer Duck tales.
I did add the word "early" to my qualifications about MOKF. I think the book became better and better when creator Steve Engelhart moved on, though I loved his stories for their pop fizz. In fact, I probably like his Shang-Chi best, but I think the later Doug Moench tales are the better work. Does that make ANY sense? In truth, I don't think there's a MOKF comic that isn't worth the reading, which can't be said for Iron Fist for example.
Thanks for the kind words. My best to you!