moriarty@fluke.UUCP (Jeff Meyer) (10/29/84)
<RAMBLE ALERT! RAMBLE ALERT!>
A little while ago, Jerry pointed me to an excellent weekly comics journal
called the Comic Buyer's Guide (or Buyer's Guide or CBG for short). Well
worth the subscription rate for many reasons (the cartoons are excellent,
especially Everett True and a delightful character by the name of
Steppinwolf, which brings back the charm of Dave Sim's old THE BEAVER's
strip, but a bit more human ( :-) ) ), but specifically, there is a reviewer
by the name of Dan Thompson whose opinions and reviews are, err, well,
UNCANNILY like Jerry's and mine. I mean, it makes you wonder. Quick, is
Thompson an anagram of Boyajian? Or maybe I'm going SCHIZO and writing them
MYSELF...
"Get back on the subject, dogbreath!"
Whoops! excuse me... anyway, he had a list of a month's worth of comics
which he considered good. And the review was long.
It was 6 newspaper pages long.
6 PAGES!
And looking through it, I had to agree; while I didn't laud all the titles
he had rated as much, I would have to agree that all of these were WORTH
READING. I've been been doing anti-grade inflation in my reviews lately,
but it is not due to quality... it's due to the fact that I'd have all B's
if I used a less-stacked system.
Now, what can we draw from this observation?
I think this means that COMICS HAVE NEVER BEEN BETTER (in my memory, anyway,
which goes back to the early 70's)! With the flourishing of independent
companies, I think we're seeing a level of quality that has never been seen
before. When I bought comics during the 70's, I was constantly cutting down
to get rid of comics I was simply not reading for lack of good scripts or
art. And now look what I get EVERY MONTH:
CEREBUS
LOVE & ROCKETS
ZOT!
JOURNEY
SWAMP THING
BLUE DEVIL
NEIL THE HORSE
FLAMING CARROT
MS. TREE
NEXUS
THE BADGER
AMERICAN FLAGG
E-MAN
JON SABLE
THE SPIRIT
POWER PAK
THOR
TEEN TITANS
AMBUSH BUG (okay, every once in a while...)
MR. X
DNAgents
CROSSFIRE
STEVE CANYON (Pu-leeze, let us have TERRY AND THE PIRATES!)
THE MASKED MAN
CAP'N QUICK & A FOOZLE
GRIMJACK
A DISTANT SOIL
MAGE
and I'm sure I've forgotten a few...
Look at that. Christ, just LOOK AT IT! Those are all B-rated comics! Not
only worth reading, but excellent! I have never, in all my life, seen such
an array of comics talent. In the 1970's it was X-Men and 6 issues of
Detective and that was about it... good comics were sporadic. BUT LOOK AT
THIS! My tastes, if anything, have become more particular; but this is a
banquet. I yam flaberagested, as Terry Austin might say ( ;-) ). I think
that THIS is the period that is going to be remembered as the good ol'
days... and I couldn't be happier!
What do you think? I'd like to hear opinions on this.
By the way, what are the "ages" of comics? I thought it went this way:
GOLDEN AGE: 30's and 40's
either { DARK AGE: the 50's, and SILVER AGE: the early 60's
or { SILVER AGE: the 50's (possibly early 60's) and the BRONZE AGE: 60's
PLATINUM AGE: the 70's
Any nominations for this age? I'd love to hear them (CRYSTAL AGE?)....
"Chuckles the Clown is dead."
Moriarty, aka Jeff Meyer
John Fluke Mfg. Co., Inc.
UUCP:
{cornell,decvax,ihnp4,sdcsvax,tektronix,utcsrgv}!uw-beaver \
{allegra,gatech!sb1,hplabs!lbl-csam,decwrl!sun,ssc-vax} -- !fluke!moriarty
ARPA:
fluke!moriarty@uw-beaver.ARPAhaeckel@stolaf.UUCP (11/01/84)
Very true indeed Jerry! Naturally there are a few exceptions brought on
by capitalistic greed and probably a little lack of self-pride (eg Super
Powers and Secret Wars), but certainly the quality of writing and art has
improved tremendously. Continuity is stressed much more, and the level of
comics in terms of the audience being aimed towards has gone up. Look at
some old comics and you will see what I mean. I have some old JLA's that
I picked up a few years ago that were dated about 15 years before that, and
I frankly was rather disappointed in the books. I mean, here were these
heroes that I had come to know and love spouting forth all sorts of worn-out
cliches in their speech. How dissapointing!
On a more recent note, the Super Friends comic started by DC a number of
years ago showed a lot of these same sorts of problems at the very beginning.
The first few issues (about 6 or 7, actually) were almost pathetic in terms
of the cr*p they were trying to pass off as art - not to mention the dialogue!
However, I stuck with the mag through the 20th issue before I had to cut down
on my habit :-) for financial reasons, and the whole book had a much better
look to it by then. It seems that around the 8th or 9th issue, the people in
charge of it finally got the hang of it. All in all, a remarkable example of
the standards of comics these day, especially since the entire Super Friends
concept was rather juvinile to begin with. Talk about an uphill climb - sheesh!
Any way, I think we can all agree that the quality of comics is up these days,
although a lot of this is probably due to the trial-and-error process that
went on in the early days of all of the books. After all, it takes time to
become perfect...
--
Paul Haeckel
> "Death to the war monkeys!!" < {decvax|ihnp4}!stolaf!haeckeleric@milo.UUCP (Eric Bergan) (11/04/84)
On a parallel note - when was the GARB AGE? -- eric ...!seismo!umcp-cs!aplvax!milo!eric
boyajian@akov68.DEC (Jerry Boyajian) (11/06/84)
> From: fluke!moriarty (Jeff Meyer) > A little while ago, Jerry pointed me to an excellent weekly comics journal > called the Comic Buyer's Guide (or Buyer's Guide or CBG for short). Well > worth the subscription rate for many reasons... but specifically, there is a > reviewer by the name of Dan Thompson whose opinions and reviews are, err, > well, UNCANNILY like Jerry's and mine. I mean, it makes you wonder. Quick, > is Thompson an anagram of Boyajian? Or maybe I'm going SCHIZO and writing > them MYSELF... That's DON Thompson, but no matter. I know what you mean. There have been a couple of times that I've been tempted to write to Don & Maggie to say how downright *scary* it is to see how much Don's opinions and mine coincide. It's almost a relief when I see us disagree on something. > STEVE CANYON (Pu-leeze, let us have TERRY AND THE PIRATES!) Actually, you *can* have "Terry and the Pirates" right this very minute! A publisher called NBM (Nantier, Beall, Minoustchine) have just started a series of reprints of T&TP in book form. The first (of 12) volume is out (covering the first year of the strip). The reprints will be issued quarterly. The 12 volumes will reprint the complete run (by Caniff, that is). The repro is uneven, mostly because it looks like some of the strips are reproduced from originals, while other are reproed from newspaper copies, but it's worth having anyway. I have a hardcover, but I believe that it's also available in trade paper (it's in a low, wide format, like, say the "Garfield" paperbacks, with two tiers per page). I don't have the pricing information at hand (you can get a "subscription", at least with the hardcover), but I do have the address if you want to write for information: NBM Publishing Co., P.O. Box 281, Peck Slip Station, New York, NY 10272 If you're feeling really extravagant and want to call them, the number is: 201-332-5153 > By the way, what are the "ages" of comics? I thought it went this way: > > GOLDEN AGE: 30's and 40's > > either { DARK AGE: the 50's, and SILVER AGE: the early 60's > or { SILVER AGE: the 50's (possibly early 60's) and the BRONZE AGE: 60's > > PLATINUM AGE: the 70's > > Any nominations for this age? I'd love to hear them (CRYSTAL AGE?).... Well, the Golden Age is the 30's & 40's, all right. There is some disagreement about the start of the Silver Age, but most people set it with the publication of SHOWCASE #4 (with the Earth-1 Flash) in 1956. As far as ome are concerned, we're still in the Silver Age, but I would venture to say that the Silver Age should be stopped at around 1970, when things really started to go down hill. I think PLATINUM AGE is a perfect term for what we have now.