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[Dredd]

Well after some Lego and tea to allow the thrill receptors to cool back to the catch up.

This time not much to write here really is there. As its just as you were.

Dredd actually I'm getting into this more and more. I mean its nowt news but its really good fun.

Aquila just magnificent opeatic fun.

Brink actually I might have to save my last visit with Briget until tomorrow so I can saver it more! So good.

Indigo Prime - still immense fun.

Proteus Vex - still even immenseier fun - just so, so fun, just not quite Brink good.

You know what this Prog might be even better than the last. I think I've save 2380 until tomorrow as three of these in once day is just going to lead to thrillchaffing isn't it.

[Dredd]

Finally my replacement copy loads (went to eBay as I gave up hope of my sub turning up which means it will land Monday - its happened before!

Anyway that makes this potentially a three prog day so I'll review each as I go quickly to try to give my thrillbuffers the chance to cool (I mean I'm 52 years old and I still buy into this Tharg stuff. Is that wrong of me?).

Anyway enough waffle to the meat of the matter.

Dredd fun but utter standard fare. Guera gives good snow wasteland mind.

Brink f88k you Royal Mail for making me wait three weeks to have Bridget back in my life. Oh God its such a joyous reunion. The only good thing about the wait is I'm up for it three times in one day!

Aquila brilliant fun. Everyone is so mean and hard and brooding but its made to work wonderfully!

Indigo Prime ha! it slips and it slides, nothing can be taken at face value and its immense.

Proteus Vex but immense as IP is PV is even immenseier, its immenourmus... but still its Bridget I'm looking forward seeing again most.

So I may have been made to wait but I'm so glad its a Prog like this I've returned to. Another Prog to really nail home that when its at its best there really isn't a genra comic as good as Tharg's mighty organ. We always know we're in a good place when Dredd is the weakest thing in the House of Tharg and even that was pretty good!

Funnily enough I recently discovered My Marvellous Year too, it's excellent - the hosts have that jokey/laughter-based dynamic that works so well for Fox and Conrad. I'm still listening back to the end of year round-ups and have only made it to 1984 - long way to go!

Yeah the relationship between Dave and Zack and later added to by Charlotte is just great. Their chemistry makes this a good substituion from my long missing favourite. I actually started in 'my era' and skipped straight to the early 80s and have reached 93. It makes a good companion piece to my slow reading of back issues of Comics International I've been slowly picking up.

Nice! That podcast sounds fun too.

Defo work checking out as Marvel is something you enjoy.

That said, I'm guessing I might be less into the crossover heavy 1990 end of the run when I get there one day, but that sounds fun in its own way as well.

That's interesting as I'm currently listening to an interesting Podcast 'My Marvelous Year' which goes through Marvel history year by year reflecting on important and key comics and story arcs. I'm up to this period now and when they talk about the X-Men from a period I'd dropped out of comics altogether they sound so of their time. full of EVENTS and significance and explosions that I have no desire to check out the comics.

Yet my interest in hearing about them remains, there's still an absolute fascination for me in superhero comics...I'm just not sure I want to read them! I'm intrigued by folks really doing deep cuts on comics that don't sound like they stand up to any deep analysis, yet get that in very interesting ways. It will be fascinating to hear what you think when you get there.

Jordan Thomas (Weird Work, XINO) & Shaky Kane (Bulletproof Coffin, The Beef) will be signing copies of their latest collection The Man From Maybe on Tuesday 28th May from 6-7pm!

https://goshlondon.com/the-gosh-blog/man-from-maybe-signing-with-shaky-kane-and-jordan-thomas/

I picked that series up and its pretty good. Its no Bulletproof Coffin but good fun. Defo pop in if you are in the area.

I love the 'fade out' of the action on the back cover and it really leds into the power of the action on the cover.

And boy oh boy even on a glossy cover the colour lose from that original is quite something!

I did eventaully read pretty much all the Claremont stuff as an adult, thanks to the Panini Pocket Books (excellent value comics in small size!), and it's good clean superhero soap opera comics.

These are great comics and bang for your bukc. Last time I tried the Morriosn X-Men run it was via these.

...especially the 'Classic X-Men' back ups. But I find these were more of a signpost to me that I should read more Vertigo comics, that do this kind of thing better, and in more depth.

Yeah those shorts are defo my fav X-Men stories these days. And John Bolton just knocked it out the park with them. I think you can get them in a seperate collection now that I should try out.

Everyone knows that Nightcrawler is the best, right? He just looks (and, frankly, acts) cooler than any other Marvel character by miles.

Nightcrawler is definitely the best! I always liked Colossus too.

YEH! Nightcrawler love in da house. He's such a cool and charming character. I'm always a bit amazed no one has found a way to give him a decent series of his own. I always pick them up and quickly pass. Mind the recent Uncanny Spider-man by our own Spurrioso was pretty good and I guess that counts.

The characters I actually think are pretty well crafted - they're all very distinct, with clear roles in the psuedo-family dynamic. I'm not sure about the forced nature of them, that might require a re-read. Again there's some nostalgia involved here.

Yeah I think many folks geton better with that. The family dynamic he went for worked so much better in Power Pack for me, hence dropping this one here. I'm guessing that won't work for many folks though. Mind I was chuffed with the positive reaction to that one I have to say.

[Part 2 - Not on the list Uncanny X-Men]

Part 2 - Not on the list Uncanny X-Men

His run worked to a formula and he worked and manipulated that to move with the times that his exceptional run covered. He experimented with ideas and character rosters, restlessly playing with that formula, though never really moving too far from it. As a teenager introduced to his work in the mid 80s these comics spoke to me so much and outside Daredevil, these were my favourite of that time.

Yet now, for all that, I can barely read them these days.

I don't really enjoy these comics as an adult at all. Why is that? Well for me they are so of their time and indeed my time then, but they don't hold up to my older eye. I see the formula, can't read past the cracks and the hookey dialogue. I see that crafted formula exposed so clearly and it isn't for me any more. The fact that they were so perfectly crafted for his audience of the time and age they were, means they simply don't translate to me as the reader I am now. There is no room in them to entertain the different reader I have become.

In my entry for Power Pack I talked about how I felt the characters there were honest, they felt real and I trusted them and their place in the story. It truly felt like the characters came first, the story developed from there. With Claremont's X-Men I just don't feel that any more, I don't trust the characters as drivers. The craft and skills behind them shows through, but not in a good way. In the way that makes me see what strings they are trying to pull, what aspect of the audience they are playing to. How they are being used to key into some element of teenage life that will make them appeal to the target audience.

I mean it's done brilliantly, it really works and it worked like billio on me when I was that audience. Now however I feel I see behind the curtain and the characters feel almost cynically built to pull certain emotional triggers. A large part of that is possibly the dialogue as well. I find it almost impenetrable these days. It's almost as bad as Stan Lees, it's hyperbolic and there's just so much of it. But written in a way that feels like it's sculpted to evoke a specific response, rather than feeling natural and evoking that response organically.

Fair to say all dialogue, all story will do this, I just feel with Claremont's work I can now see how he's pulling the strings. As said as well there's just too much of it, so many words, often not saying that much. It feels so written and underlines points which could have better been served by 'show not tell'. I do wonder how good it might have been if John Wagner had been a script editor and just chipped away at things to expose the essence of what was being said, not underline it three or four times.

It's a real shame as one thing Claremont does better than almost any superhero writer is craft combat to do just that. To evoke tension and excitement in very deliberate ways. With his action pieces though he gets away with it much better as he whisks you along at pace, whereas the dialogue drags the character moments back. In the combat sections you genuinely feel our heroes are in danger and the fight is hard and they have to be creative to win the day. Or often not, defeats happened and so the danger in these superhero tussles was palpable. Not so with the character moments where nothing feels earnt, to me at least these days.

I accept I'm very much an outlier on this and folks either see past the cracks that I perceive to glory in the great plotting. Or the stories have such a foundational part in their reading they don't care. OR they see the craft as so good they don't even notice what I perceive as forced characters I don't trust. I mean none of us can ignore the countless dangling plot threads, but they never really mattered, they were part of the fun wondering when some long forgotten idea would spring back to life. 

My not liking Claremont's Uncanny run is another case of the reader bringing different desires to the table and therefore getting a different reaction to what they read. I do completely get what folks see in them, but they are just not for me these days. And for me this one is a case of not just thinking these comics are good, just not that good. Rather I just don't get on with them anymore at all, wonderful art aside.

It doesn't matter how important you are if I don't trust you, you're not getting my vote.

[Part 1 - Not on the list Uncanny X-Men]

Part 1 - Not on the list Uncanny X-Men

Not on the list - Uncanny X-Men by Chris Claremont

While we're talking about 80s Marvel comics let's talk about probably the biggest of them of all and why


Copyright Marvel Comics

Doesn't make the list.

Chris Claremont took over the then recently relaunched Uncanny X-Men (then just X-Men actually. It always surprises me how late the 'Uncanny' was added - actually issue 142 I think) from issue 96 in 1975 and started a 16 year run on the title covering well over 300 issues across all X-titles. I ain't going to try to work out how many issues, there were, like, almost 200 issues of Uncanny and countless Annuals, Specials, minis, spinoff titles and Xavier knows what else! These comics have a very good claim to be the most important in mainstream US comics beyond Action Comics 1, Detective 27 and say FF 1. Let's not get into that debate. Suffice to say this run fundamentally reshaped the comics landscape for Marvel and DC and those that followed in their wake.

His run played heavily into the outsider feeling many comics fans feel. It built a soap opera around the superhero shenanigans in a way that built on what Stan, Jack and Steve did and laid the template for almost all the comics from the 'big two' to follow. He understood how to engage and speak to his teen audience like few others, to appeal to a need for thrills and spills, bolstered by 'real' human stories to connect with his readers.

He did this supported by an astonishing line of artists who define for so many what good comic book art should look like. This run with John Byrne is seminal. He has a short time with Paul Smith that is insanely popular with those in the know. He then moved onto my favourite, John Romita Jr to continue things, before Mark Silvestri and Jim Lee blew fans' minds in the late 80s early 90s. Amongst all that there were numerous other fantastic artists involved. For me most significantly there are some stellar comics by Barry Windsor Smith dotted about, which even today stand out as the highlights of his tenure.

He took newly introduced characters created by others and shaped those rough drafts into some of the biggest superhero names in comics. Wolverine is the obvious one, but everyone who read these comics will have a favourite, Nightcrawler was mine, so many love Storm or Kitty Pryde, a few stand by straight edge Cyclops, I'd guess a few even have Professor X as their fav. All those characters spoke to someone. Not resting on his laurels though he'd go on to create a host of others that would reach similar levels of acclaim and adoration.

Early 80's Marvel does seem to be its hey-day.  By the late 80's they seem to have crawled up their own backsides before completely losing the plot in the speculator boom of the 90's. (trillion's of covers, holograms, card covers, die cut covers, cover covers ...)

This is my feeling on Marvel too, although I did wonder if it was nostalgia telling me this. It's nice to see others of this opinion!

Nostalgia could well be a part of this, but look at what sustains and the quality of experimentation and innovation that fuels any nostaglia and I do reckon there's something there.

Hi,hope no-one minds me putting this here,but if anyone wants to buy or trade for a collection of Powerpack comics then let me know,I have a bunch of them in the attic that will have to go as recycling or charity shop
Thanks
Matt

Obviously with deals etc to consider this is an offer defo worth checkin' out... as I'm about to say why not trade in those old Uncanny comics for something more interesting...

And to think that people don't se AI as the future! 

Early 80's Marvel does seem to be its hey-day.  By the late 80's they seem to have crawled up their own backsides before completely losing the plot in the speculator boom of the 90's. (trillion's of covers, holograms, card covers, die cut covers, cover covers ...)

I've talked about this elsewhere on the internet recently as it goes and I'm left speculating how much Jim Shooter was such an important creative force for Marvel during his time as Editor in Chief. He gets a lot of bad press for how he handled relationships with the creative talent but there's little denying how he acted as a person during his time in charge Marvel was so much more innovative and brave creatively.

Well damn this one arrived yesterday but still waiting for 2378! Hate when that happens.

Cool read, I'll have to check out some Power Pack now! I've been enjoying Claremont X-Men, I'm in the 170s, and Power Pack #27 is coming up in a crossover there. And Louise Simonson sounds cool on podcasts, seems like the 80s was a real high point for Marvel.

Ah... you ain't going to like my next post!

This post makes me want to go buy Power Pack. But I know I own Power Pack in a longbox already. Oh I wonder how much effort it would be to find them. And which I have. Not a complete run I don't think. But enough to stop me spaffing ££ on eBay today that's for sure. The TBPs would have to be complete for me to go that route. No Epics, Marvel? Come on!

Oh digging is half the fun surely... or is that just me? Yeah shame there isn't an option beyond the Omnibus really these days. They didn't even get an Essential Collection.

What's your thoughts on Runaways? I thought the first arc of that was excellent although I gave up soon after that.

I've not read Runaways - always meant to as a fan of Brain K Vaughan and this one always looked good and was talked about very positively when I got back into comics. Just never got to it - as I keep saying too damned many comics to read.

As I move away from superhero stuff these days have to be honest not sure I'm likely to get to it now, but you never know.