Retrofan

April 12, 2010 2:37 am

Thank you for the great article, Tom. I know what you mean. I’m thrilled by the old books as well.

Every decade of comic book history has its great artists and storytellers (along with its lesser talents). Even the Golden, Silver, and Bronze Ages had their respective giants. Sure, I love the art of Jo Chen and Adi Granov, but Creig Flessel’s best covers for DC blow me away, particularly the cover of Detective Comics #13 (March 1938). His use of light and shadow and the dramatic intensity he created are astonishing to me. One of the purest pleasures that I have had was in reading the humorous, opening story in Lady Luck #86 (Dec. 1949), written and illustrated by the talented Klaus Nordling. Who stripped away the camp and made Batman the terrifying creature of the night he had been in the beginning? The amazing artist Neal Adams returned the Dark Knight to his roots, beginning in the late sixties and into the seventies, with a little help from writers like Denny O’Neil. One of the best X-Men stories I’ve ever read can be found in the pages of Uncanny X-Men 141-142 (1980). John Byrne illustrated it with Terry Austin and co-plotted it with writer Chris Claremont. The fact that a Dr. Who episode inspired it makes it that much sweeter.

I love something from every period, but I must confess that most of my favorite comic books were published before 1990.

I’m sorry to hear of your back troubles. I hope that you recover soon.

March 23, 2010 1:17 am @Howl4Me: From one Dr. S fan to another, YES! Doctor Strange's adventures in the pages of Strange Tales were among the best comic book stories of the sixties IMO. (Of course many sixties comic book stories were positively cringeworthy, not to name names, but the doctor was never in that category or close to it.) I even enjoyed the first telling of his origin story.

March 9, 2010 12:33 pm

It looks like we may have another winner. There is much to love in the trailers, including Johansson as Black Widow, Whiplash looking scarier by far than he did the last time I saw him in the comic books (late seventies in the odd orange and purple costume), suitcase armor, as in the seventies comic books, War Machine, etc. But I am really excited by the inclusion of the wealthy and devious Justin Hammer (played by Sam Rockwell). That is a formidable foe. In the late seventies he sent three supervillains after Iron Man and seized control over Iron Man's armor remotely to frame him for murder. Eventually, we learned that Hammer has his own supervillain army. It is interesting that Hammer, who is typically an old man in the comic books, is so much younger in the movie. I gather that the idea was to make Stark's enemy (in business and in battle) more Stark-like.

February 24, 2010 1:29 pm @MacAoidh: The cover art is based on a panel inside. Superman isn't scaring "decent folk." He is scaring the hoodlum Butch Matson and his two buddies. Matson, the dastardly so-and-so, had just abducted Lois. Admittedly, Supes is overreacting, but no innocents were terrorized. (Unless you count Lois, who was literally shaken out of the car, along with the bad guys!)