iFlashback! May, 5th, 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? Our Mondays and Wednesdays used to sync up, but 2004 was a leap year so we are off by a day. So jog down memory lane with me. The date is May 5th, 2004 the number one film at the box office is Mean Girls and these are some of the books that are on the stands at your local comic shop.

AlphaFlight3

Alpha Flight #3

By Scott Lobdell, Clayton Henry, Mark Morales

PlasticMan6

Plastic Man #6

By Kyle Baker

Thor78

Thor #78

By Dan Jurgens, Scot Eaton, Drew Geraci

Swamp Thing 3

Swamp Thing #3

By Andy Diggle, Enrique Breccia

MarvelAgeSpider-Man3

Marvel Age: Spider-Man #3

By Daniel Quantz, Jonboy Meyers

Spider-girl73

Spider-Girl #73

By Tom DeFalco, Ron Frenz, Sal Buscema

firestorm1

Firestorm #1

By Dan Jolley, ChrisCross, John Dell

WildCats21

Wildcats 3.0 #21

By Joe Casey, Duncan Rouleau, John Dell

Uncanny444

Uncanny X-Men #444

By Chris Claremont, Alan Davis, Mark Farmer

That was the week that was in comics! There was some interesting stuff this week. Plastic Man was a  joy, Claremont takes on the flagship X-Men title, and Wildcats 3.0 is showcased again because that book was fantastic. Joe Casey really was ahead of his time on that one. So, did you read any of the books that came out this week? If you did, be sure to let us know what you thought of them!

Comments

  1. Wildcats 3.0 is the only real highlight in this week’s Flashback. Claremont sucked the life out of X-Men when he came back, which says a lot when he was following Chuck Austen.

    • I didn’t mind Claremont’s return!

    • Yeah, I thought THIS return of Claremont was pretty good, overall. The issues with Davis on art were solid; you had great characterizations and stuff with X23 and Sage that was actually interesting. Then there were all of the issues with Rachel Grey drawn by Bachalo. It was great stuff. I won’t say there weren’t some clunker issues, but as is usual the case with Claremont these days… I think people forget the good stuff.

    • I just didn’t like when he basically retconned everything from Grant Morrison’s amazing run

    • Art wise the run was excellent but Claremont just didn’t click for me this time. Really felt the Excalibur stuff looked promising, but even when it spun into its own series again it was a let down.

  2. The anatomy of Spidergirl on that cover looks ridiculous!

  3. I remember dropping Thor because I found Jurgens to he overly preachy with the book, and dropping X-Men because Claremont had become a parody of himself t this point. This was kind of a bad week for me 🙁

  4. I really liked that Alpha Flight run. It was so Canadian.

  5. I loved that Uncanny cover, so good! You can see the fur on Kurt’s tail!

  6. I read “Plastic Man On the Lam”, didn’t care for it. It reminded me too much of a show on FOX KIDS called “The Ripping Friends” (I need to check to see if Kyle Baker created that show, they literally have the exact same style) and it was very kiddy. Nothing wrong with that, I just didn’t think it was the best way to make a Plastic Man book catch on.

  7. Swamp Thing run by Andy Diggle, was it any good?

  8. This is the first list like this where I read exactly none of the titles listed!

  9. Looks like Thor was it for me.

    I love Frenz (I got him to sign my very first issue of Spider-Man a few years ago and just about cried as I chatted with him about it) but that Spider-Girl is indeed a little off, heh.

    • I have been a big Thor fan for a few years now, but have only read his stuff starting with JMS (apart from Simonsons run of course) and always wondered if Jurgens run is worth checking out. How was it? I liked Jurgens on Supes in the 90s.

  10. I miss Nightcrawler.

  11. I remember this day vividly! This was the first Wednesday I ever went to my comic book store!
    I had been thinking about getting into comics since loving X-Men 2, and heard that this was a jumping on point, so I went out to get this Uncanny X-Men issue.
    9 years later and I’m still buying and loving comics.

  12. Was that Swamp Thing run by Diggle any good? I remember reading the prelude to the Brian K. Vaughan run in one of those DC Anthology one-shots a while back. It was pretty good and the art was also pretty good as well. So I was wondering if it was the same with Diggle.

    Here are some of the other events, births. and deaths to occur on May 5th:

    Events
    -1866: The first Memorial Day is celebrated.
    -1934: The first Three Stooges short, WOMEN HATERS, is released.

    Births
    -1818: Karl Marx
    -1943: Michael Palin
    -1988: Adele

    Deaths
    -1821: Napoleon

  13. ChrisRobinson (@chrisrobinson) says:

    The best part of iFlashback is seeing books I passed on that I would drop everything to read nowadays

  14. I miss Nightcrawler around… The real Kurt Wagner, not daughers, nor clones, nor paralel universes versions…