kh (04/17/83)
What I read and Why #2 (collect 'em all! trade them with your friends! be
the first on your block to have all three!)
Part 2:
Mainstream (These can be theoretically found at your neighborhood drugstore.)
All of these comics are 60 cents, newsprint paper, around 25 pages long,
and monthly. The first six are by Marvel Comics, Inc, a division of
Cadence Corporation; the last four are by DC Comics, Inc, a Warner
Communications company. Copyrights as applicable.
1. The Avengers, by Roger Stern and Al Milgrom
The Avengers are the foremost Marvel Universe comic book; the
stories here involve a multitude of Marvel Heros, some of
whom even have their own comics. (All of them have appeared in
other strips at some time or another; but I digress.)
The Avengers are a team of Government-authorized superheros
who go around fighting bad guys and saving the universe.
The current members ( Captain America, Thor, She-Hulk [which
must be the worst name for a superhero since Brother Voodoo],
Captain Marvel [no, not the dead one, another one!],the Wasp,
and Starfox [Eros of Titan, Thanos' brother]) are fairly
interesting, although they specialize in brute force, not
subtlety.
2. The Fantastic Four, by John Byrne
The classic Marvel comic. since John Byrne is one of my
favorite artists, and a rather good writer, I'm going to be
reading this one for a while. Ben is still the Thing; Johnny
is still losing girlfriends (the last one became a Herald of
Galactus); Franklin is still a super-powered mutant; and
Reed and Sue are going to have another baby before too
long. The only real problem with this strip is that
however good Byrne is as a penciller, his inking really bites.
With Terry Austin or Vince Colleta inking, this could be
the best looking magazine on the market.
3. The Thing, by John Byrne and Ron Wilson
Ben Grimm finally has a strip all his own! It is a
companion series to The Fantastic Four, with heavy
cross-over of stories from that mag. The first two
issues were about Ben's past: growing up on Yancy
Street, falling in love hard at Empire University
(where he met Reed, of course), and things like that.
Not a single fight scene yet! Well done, but Byrne
does the inking, so see above.
4. The Uncanny X-Men, by Chris Claremont and Paul Smith
I think that if you read this news group, you probably
also read this comic, and probably enjoy it somewhat.
I won't go into details as to the characters, but
Claremont has more sub-plots going than anyone else
in comics except Paul Levitz (see #9, below.)
Paul Smith is a good artist on his way to becoming
great, and although he won't be up to Byrne&Austin
level for a while, he'll get there eventually.
(As an aside, Claremont, Byrne and Austin are one of the
four great comics teams of all time. The others are
Lee and Kirby, Miller and Miller, and Starlin and Starlin.)
5. The New Mutants, by Chris Claremont and Sal Bucsema
This comic bears the same relationship to the X-Men as
The Thing does to the FF. The stories in NM overlap
those in X-Men, and even have a character or three in common.
It is rather different from the X-Men, however, in that only
one of the New Mutants is actually unhappy about being
a super hero, whereas all of the X-Men except Kitty
bitch and groan about it a hell of a lot. (And Kitty
throws temper tantrums, so she makes up for it that way.)
6. The Invincible Iron Man, by Denny O'Neil and Luke McDonnel
I started reading this because I wanted to find out about the New
Iron Man, a friend of Tony Stark's named Jim Rhodes (Rhodey to
his friends). He is still learning the ropes, and doesn't yet
know some basic facts, like: don't tell that supervillain that
you are about to hit him. But he should be getting better.
The real interest is Tony Stark's returning alcoholism,
which has distracted him enough to allow Stark Industries'
debts to be assumed by a man named Stane, who seems to be a real
scumbag. Worth watching.
7. The New Teen Titans, by Marv Wolfman and George Perez
DC's most popular title. Although the Titans are very much
like the X-Men in personality, they are a somewhat better
adjusted and considerably funnier group. The art is
fantastic; George Perez is a real knockout artist.
(He could stand to learn a bit about shading, however;
but I'm picking nits.) Definitely DC's second best mainstream
title.
8. Night Force, by Marv Wolfman and Ernie Colon
Marv and Ernie, together again! Fresh from their success at
Marvel with Tomb of Dracula, the best-selling horror comic
of recent years, they have again decided to make a horror comic
with recurring characters. The main character is Baron Winters,
a timeless gentleman who looks annoyingly vampiric and can
travel into the past. Right now, he is trying to exorcise the
ghosts of men who financed Hitler's rise to power and has
accidentally endangered his ward, Vanessa Van Helsing and
her husband Jack Gold. The problem is, they just might die.
Marv has already killed off or mutilated several people.
All in all, I find this a refreshing break from both
superhero and horror comics, because it has a mixture of
both.
9. The Legion of Super-Heros, by Paul Levitz and Keith Giffen
I have long enjoyed the Legion, although I have never
thought they were that well written or drawn. Until now.
This is DC's best comic, possibly their best comic ever.
Giffen (and Mahlstatd, or however it is spelled) create
wonderful backdrops of Earth in the 30th century and
their curvaceous women can't be beat. Add to this the
complex and wordy style of Levitz and what do you
have? Ten thousand subplots for an almost believable
superhero team. And it works!
10. Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld, by Dan Mishkin, Gary Cohn
and Ernie Colon (12 issue series)
This is almost a typical swords and sorcery comic, but just
barely escapes it by a combination of luck and skill. It
is moderately well scripted, and is the story of a thirteen
year old girl who is a very powerful twenty year old witch
in an alternate reality named "the Gemworld". It has strange
encounters with gun-toting wizards, dark magic, demons-
and is a limited series, so it, too, has a beginning, middle,
and end. I just hope that by the time that the end comes, it
won't just be a welcome death.
Next up: What I will be collecting soon, and why. (Bet you're on the
edge of your seat by now, eh?)