Whats everyone reading?

[Theblazeuk]

Alien Legion is great, was so lucky to have a few volumes knocking around my library system.

[Fungus]

Just read The Vision #12.
Final issue of a stunning run, it's sad to see it end but this way the quality never dipped, I suppose... And Tom King's titles are all wonderful; he's not going anywhere.
Yeah - best thing I've read in years.

[Colin YNWA]

A friend of mine raved about The Visions and indeed Tom King to me recently as well. One to watch out for it would seem.

[The Adventurer]

Hmmm. Okay. Took a shot at King's Omega Men run while DC is still having their 50% off sale. We'll see what he does for DC cosmic.

[TordelBack]

Captain Britain, the Moore/Davis run from Daredevils etc, courtesy of one of those Marvel fortnightly hardback collection thingies going cheap (cheep! cheep!) in a secondhand book shop.  Amazingly this is one of the big gaps in my Moore collection, and I approached the purchase as a completionist, but I would have sworn I had at least read most of it: apparently not, it's almost all new to me, especially the characteristic 'everything you know is wrong' opening chapters, with all those cool dead British comics 'superheroes' in the background.  Rick Risk and Colonel Tusker indeed, if you listen closely Stone-Tape-fashion you can actually hear Grant Morrison scribbling notes in his jotter!  Bloody good stuff, both men visibly growing into their craft from panel to panel.

[Eamonn Clarke]

Captain Britain, the Moore/Davis run from Daredevils etc, courtesy of one of those Marvel fortnightly hardback collection thingies going cheap (cheep! cheep!) in a secondhand book shop.  Amazingly this is one of the big gaps in my Moore collection, and I approached the purchase as a completionist, but I would have sworn I had at least read most of it: apparently not, it's almost all new to me, especially the characteristic 'everything you know is wrong' opening chapters, with all those cool dead British comics 'superheroes' in the background.  Rick Risk and Colonel Tusker indeed, if you listen closely Stone-Tape-fashion you can actually hear Grant Morrison scribbling notes in his jotter!  Bloody good stuff, both men visibly growing into their craft from panel to panel.

Great run, and fun. Duncan Nimmo and I recorded an episode of the book club about the Moore/Davis Captain Britain at Thought Bubble. Admitedly this is straying off the 2000AD prairie but we invoked the Kevin Bacon rule and it will be out in January.

[Smith]

Captain Britain, the Moore/Davis run from Daredevils etc, courtesy of one of those Marvel fortnightly hardback collection thingies going cheap (cheep! cheep!) in a secondhand book shop.  Amazingly this is one of the big gaps in my Moore collection, and I approached the purchase as a completionist, but I would have sworn I had at least read most of it: apparently not, it's almost all new to me, especially the characteristic 'everything you know is wrong' opening chapters, with all those cool dead British comics 'superheroes' in the background.  Rick Risk and Colonel Tusker indeed, if you listen closely Stone-Tape-fashion you can actually hear Grant Morrison scribbling notes in his jotter!  Bloody good stuff, both men visibly growing into their craft from panel to panel.

I second that emotion.Fun Fact: Earth 616 designation(for Marvels primary universe and setting),first showed up here.Because Earth 1 would be too mainstream. :-)

[TordelBack]

Duncan Nimmo and I recorded an episode of the book club about the Moore/Davis Captain Britain at Thought Bubble. Admitedly this is straying off the 2000AD prairie but we invoked the Kevin Bacon rule and it will be out in January.

Look forward to listening to that!  I'm actually reading stuff by Moore from both ends of his career at the same time, as I close in on the final chapters of Jerusalem (after being stuck for almost 3 weeks deciphering the Finnegan's Wake chapter at a best-pace of less than 2 pages a day, dear Glycon preserve us).  Two things are clear: the man really is an exquisite craftsman and a bloody-minded genius, then and now; and he has a core set of ideas that he has been coming back to again and again in his work since the start.  Not a complaint, I find it fascinating to see him explore things from different angles (geddit) and in different media, but reading these two otherwise different works at the same time really hammers it home.

[Colin YNWA]

I remember being blown away by this back in the day (ish) I was lent in my a friend in the mid-eights a little after it had come out. On re-read a few years ago I was pleasantly surprised by how well it held up, if it has dated a little and sufferers from numerous stories that have built on its foundations since.

That said it is a delight to see people growing in the job and as you say Tordelback both Moore and Davis do that in spades on Captain Britain.

[SuperSurfer]

I'm curious to know if the original art for the first Moore/Davis Captain Britain episode was ever reproduced in its intended form.

Marvel Super-heroes was a page short so the artwork had to be chopped up to lose a page.

Kind of made sense when I found that out. The front cover was brilliant but something didn't seem quite right with the interior art.

[Colin YNWA]

I did not know that. I want to get it out again and have a look at it to see what went on there. Very interesting.

[Tony Angelino]

I think the Moore/Davis Captain Britain is definitely Alan Moore's best work. Its also his only major early story that I never read at the time. I picked it up in a 7 issue Marvel US reprint series in the late 1990's. Moore has probably disowned it at some stage though.

[SuperSurfer]

I did not know that. I want to get it out again and have a look at it to see what went on there. Very interesting.

I just remembered of course, the first Alan Davis Captain Britain wasn't written by Alan Moore, but Dave Thorpe.

Seems I had it the page count problem the other way round. The episode had to be stretched from five to six pages according to this:

"Meanwhile, during the nine months in which Warrior was under development, Marvel had decided to try again with Captain Britain, picking up where Steve Parkhouse had left the character in his Black Knight serial, namely being sent back to Earth accompanied by the elf Jackdaw. Helming the strip were a pair of fresh faces - Dave Thorpe, who had mulled around Marvel UK's editorial staff for a year and change waiting for a writing gig to open, and Alan Davis, making his artistic debut. Like many British comics creators of the time, Davis was a part-timer who came to comics as a second job, in Davis's case alongside driving forklifts for a warehouse. Famously, Davis was unaware that comics pages were typically drawn on oversized sheets and shrunk down for reproduction and so drew the art for his first issue at print size, resulting in there not being enough room for the dialogue and in the strip having to be printed in six pages instead of the intended five."
Eruditorumpress.com

[Fungus]

Thanks for the link, SuperSurfer. Early Alan Davis is nice to see.
And for me too, Moore & Davis is a bit of a Dream Team...

[SuperSurfer]

Thanks for the link, SuperSurfer. Early Alan Davis is nice to see.
And for me too, Moore & Davis is a bit of a Dream Team...

No probs.

That was a great time to be into comics. I must revisit some of that old Marvel UK output such as Black Knight.