oz@rlgvax.UUCP (THE GREAT AND POWERFUL OZ) (08/17/83)
I went for my weekly trip down to my local comics story (a friend of mine rates "civilized" towns as those that have their own comics shops) and noticed something rather interesting in my buying: I am buying more and more comics from "alternate" comic companies. It has been YEARS since I bought almost everything that Marvel put out, and there was never a time that I bought everything that DC had (I mean, Bob Hope and Jerry Lewis comics, give me a break). Yet this month I bought every single comic that was offered by FIRST COMICS, and enjoyed them all. I may be hasty on that statement, if I can ever understand AMERICAN FLAGG, then I will be able to tell if I enjoy it. Be that as it may, I also rushed to buy CEREBUS, SOUTHERN KNIGHTS 3 (a very good issue by the way) and find it hard to contain myself waiting for ANY NEWS of Dave Stevens and THE ROCKETEER. The alternate comics have taken over as my consistently favorite comics. Call me a traitor, call me a fink, call me a taxi, but I ceased to care what happened to Peter Parker years ago. Is the HULK's mind in Robert, Bruce, David ET AL's body, or vice versa? I could not care less. "What about IRON FIST?" you ask? Well, what about him? "Can a rich aryan looking boy find happyness in the big city with no one but a poor black man who when he curses says 'Christmas' to keep him company?" Now, I do follow many of my old favorites: IRON MAN has been interesting, DAREDEVIL is good, the JOKER is back in BATMAN, but I cannot blindly follow them anymore. The neat thing about the alternate comics is you never know, the crazy bastards might actually kill off one of the main characters. How many of you out there are REALLY sure that Lord Cum- ulis will be in WARP next issue. How many of you wonder if Elmer Fudd is going to pop up in CEREBUS? There is invention, wit and surprises in the alternate comics, while the best MARVEL can offer us is Jim Shooter. In the words of WPIX/Channel 11 in New York: "that's my opinion. What's yours? We'd like to know." OZ seismo!rlgvax!oz
eric@aplvax.UUCP (08/17/83)
I continue to find myself getting more and more of the alternate comics. FIRST Comics seems to have pulled off a feat unparalleled in my memory, a new comic company that continues to meet its deadlines, and with monthly titles at that! Some of Pacific's titles are good (Dave Stephens continues to grow on me), while others strike me as silly. The Kirby titles seem to be faltering to me. The horror book seems to be poor plots with gratuitous blood thrown in (this may have changed, I have stopped getting it). On the other hand, the Elric title seems to be going well. The main problem with Pacific seems to be that their definition of "every other month" seems to translate to "February 29th". Back to FIRST's titles, I really enjoy the new E-MAN (I was an E-MAN freak during the first run). Grell's Sable seemed to be going very well, particularly the four issue origin, but I did not particularly care as much for the latest issue. And Starslayer seems to be suffering without Grell to guide it. American Flagg has great promise, but the jury is still out. Sorry to say, I never got started on Warp, and am too lazy and cheap to go back and pick up the back issues. (Wife: You spend $25 a month on COMICS?!!? Me: Yes, but I have to keep up the collection, and they are a good investment. Wife: Sure they are, but you never sell any. Ah, well) Well, I have rambled about these titles long enough. I would be interested in hearing what others think of these new books. eric ...!seismo!umcp-cs!aplvax!eric