iFlashback! April 14th, 2004

It’s time for an iFlashback, a weekly feature in which we take a look at some comics that were on sale nine years ago. Why nine and not ten? Well, the Wednesdays of 2004 USED to line up with our Mondays, but it was also a leap year so now it is off by a day. We won’t let that stop us from jogging down memory lane. The date is April 14th, 2004 the number one film at the box office is once again The Passion of the Christ and these are some of the books that are on the stands at your local comic shop.

ActionComics814

Action Comics #814

By Chuck Austen, Ivan Reis, Marc Campos

marvelKnightsSpiderman1

Marvel Knights Spider-Man #1

By Mark Millar, Terry Dodson, Rachel Dodson

stormwatchteamachilles21

Stormwatch: Team Achilles #21

By Micah Ian Wright, Clemente Sauve, Eric Nguyen

InvicibleIronMan79

The Invincible Iron Man #79

By John J. Miller, Philip Tan

HackSlash1

Hack / Slash #1

By Tim Seeley, Stefano Caselli, Sunder Raj

BiteCLub1

Bite Club #1

By Howard Chaykin, David Tischman, David Hahn

Touch1

Touch #1

By John Francis Moore, Wes Craig, Prentis Rollins

SHeHulk2

She-Hulk #2

By Dan Slott, Juan Bobillo, Marcello Sosa

ItsABird

It’s a Bird…

By Steven T. Seagle, Teddy Kristiansen

That was the week that was in comics. If you are a Superman fan then you owe it to yourself to get a copy of that Steven Seagle/Teddy Kristiansen OGN. It was great. Also, cult favorite comic Hack Slash has its first issue and Chuck Austen takes over Action Comics. So, did you read anything that came out this week? If you did let us know what you thought of it.


Comments

  1. I loved that MK Spider-Man series but all I can find right now is volume 1, I want to find out how it ends.

  2. Just one, It’s a Bird – What a load of not getting what I really wanted, Superman “in” Vertigo…not a bad read tho.

  3. huh, I’ll have to track down “It’s a bird”.

    I got She-Hulk and Iron Man. None of the rest, though. Slott’s She-Hulk is a classic, top of my list of “get this run bound” comics.

  4. I, sadly, am not a Superman. :p

  5. Bite Club was dreadful.

    • Team Achilles was equally bad. As were all of the Stormwatch incarnations after the original runs.

    • Oh, I most heartily disagree on Team Achilles. I thought it was awesome. A great and varied team of well developed characters, the Project Entry universe, Devil, Baron Chaos, Citizen Soldier… this was great stuff. Kurt Busiek called it “Sgt. Rock, but with Superheroes.” I was SO pissed when the last issue wasn’t published. I read the script, but it’s not the same. There’s a permanent hole in my collection. 🙁

  6. that issue of Action Comics was my first ever Superman comic, it was fun, but looking back it does NOT hold up

  7. AND MK Spider-Man was my first Spider-Man comic!

  8. Hack/Slash was awesome. Issue 25 should of been stretched out so it could end this week. For an exact 10 year run.

  9. Damn, is that a Art Adams Action cover? Nice. It’s a bird was the first Seagle I ever read and next to Morrison’s All-Star, one of a few books from that era really helped me rediscover and appreciate Superman…

    I purged all most of my Millar trades recently, but the MK Spidey was one of the things he did that made the cut. The whole run holds up pretty well as one big Spidey story of the 2000s. And enjoy it today from the standpoint that he was still married in this story and that wasn’t a problem being a kid of the Michelinie/McFarlane era… This and Ultimates 1 & 2 as well as 1985 remind me that Millar’s actually pretty good when held to hard PG-13 as opposed to stuff like Wanted, Kick-Ass, or Nemesis where it gets into an area find mean-spirited.

    • MK Spidey is the only thing I read on this list but have to disagree about Millar on coming off as mean spirited. I thought Kick-Ass, Kick-Ass 2 & Hit-Girl,are pure fun, violent fun but not mean spirited. Nemesis is a villain so I expected that to be mean, hyper-ciolent and over the top which it was, not the most sophisticated or intricate plot but don’t think it wanted to be, it was Gringhouse style B movie madness in the form of a comic book. Old Man Logan, Wolverine: Enemy of the State, Supermn:Red Son, and his work on The Authority are some of my favorites though. Curious to read Supercrooks to see how he jived with Dave Gibbons.

    • Okay, I may have spoken a little to strongly about Kick-Ass, Nemesis, and Wanted but I’m more than willing to admit that this is a matter of personal taste. Those books don’t seem mean-spirited to me compared to something like say, the “Crossed” serie(s) from Avatar (whether Lapham or Ennis) but for me there’s a line between hyper-violence and grindhouse style and just being nasty. Warren Ellis, Brian Azzarello, and Jason Aaron (well, “Scalped” Jason Aaron) are guys who seem to know my line on this kinda thing.

      But yeah, we all like what we like and you’ll find no argument from me on Millar’s “Red Son”, “Old Man Logan”, or “Authority” (and yeah, I know this one kinda invalidates everything I said above, but how can I not like something with art by Frank Quitely?)…

      I thought “Supercrooks” had Yu on art and “Secret Service” had Gibbons?

    • Oh yeah, Secret Service did have Gibbons, that’s what I meant, I confuse that one with Supercrooks cause they were released relatively close I believe.

  10. It’s A Bird is fantastic. I really love it.

  11. Was Ivan Reis considered a great artist back then? Or was he like Dave Eaglesham or Steve Epting where it took time for him to blossom into an artist we all love?

    Here are some other big events, births, and deaths to occur on April 14th:

    Events
    -1865: Abraham Lincoln is shot in Ford’s Theater by John Wilkes Booth. He would succumb to the bullet the next day.
    -1912: The Titanic hits an iceberg in the North Atlantic, it would sink several hours later.
    -1939: The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck is published.
    -2003: The Human Genome Project is completed with 99% of the human genome mapped out.

    Births
    -1941: Pete Rose

    Deaths
    -2008: Ollie Johnston