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thehefnerSo how did I celebrate getting the Winnipeg Traffic Authority to forgive my $50 ticket for parking illegally on their ill-marked and confusing streets?
I rarely ever buy back issues anymore, as I'm firmly a trade paperback guy. Hell, the LAST thing I need are more old comics, when I very much need to sell off the contents of at least six of my twelve long boxes. That's roughly 2,500 comics I have from over the years.
And here I go, throwing an assload of new ones onto the pile. Shit, I need to buy a new box for them. Counter-intuitive, Hefner!
What really started this was my desire to catch-up with a series absolutely beloved by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
angrylemur, the post-Crisis reboot of Hawkman, HAWKWORLD, starting with the original mini-series by Tim Truman:
... followed by the first twenty-five issues of the ongoing series by the great John Ostrander, Truman, and terrible early art from the eventually-great Graham Nolan.
Going in, I knew virtually nothing about Katar Hol, and even less about Shayera. Superheroes from a fascist planet, that was about it. My entire Hawkman knowledge was pretty much rooted in Carter Hall's reintroduction to the DCU by Geoff Johns in JSA.
I was never a fan of Hawkman per se, but I always had a strong appreciation for Carter, who could be like Conan the Barbarian with wings. If I were a bad guy and I saw Carter coming for me, I'd shit myself. I really would. He is the kind of guy who will fly headfirst into a plane's cockpit, smashing through the windshield and bashing a terrorist's skull in with a huge fucking mace. Hawkman will fuck your shit up with his feathery beaked justice.
But then there's Katar, and all the brain-hurting continuity problems he introduced. On top of that, there's Post-Crisis Katar, from the late 80's. This means yet another take on a shiny Silver Age character, redone in the grim 'n gritty grr argh angst/violence/boobies/angst era of comics. I went into HAWKWORLD with a healthy dose of skepticism, you understand. And I ended up absolutely loving it.
What mainly sells the series is not just the vivid depiction of Thanagar itself, but particularly the character dynamics of Katar and Shayera, which is one of the most fascinating and complex partnerships I've ever seen in superhero comics. It's the kind of treatment I'd really love to see done with Hal and Ollie, as well as the Green Lantern Corps in general. Neither Katar nor Shayera come off as mouthpieces for the writer's views in the way Green Arrow did, the way so many others do in comics that tackle thinly-veiled metaphors for society. They're more complex and nuanced than that, which is hardly surprising, given it's John Ostrander at the helm.
Ostrander: one of the most underappreciated comic writers ever, if I do say so myself. It's a shame that he's not held in higher esteem today. To make matters worse, he may be losing his eyesight to glaucoma. Here's hoping they'll be able to raise the funds, because as Warren Ellis pointed out, there are few things scarier for a writer than the prospect of going blind. Hopefully he'll be all right, and furthermore, hopefully the word spread about this will ultimately lead to more work and greater appreciation of him in the comics community.
The man salvaged Barbara Gordon after her horrifically dehumanizing treatment in THE KILLING JOKE and subsequently made her more awesome than ever by creating Oracle in the pages of SUICIDE SQUAD, an excellent series that gave us richly awesome and layered badasses with Amanda Waller, Floyd "Deadshot" Lawton, and Boomerbutt. Okay, Boomerbutt wasn't exactly layered and badass, but he was awesome in his own skeezy back-stabby way. That's because Ostrander understands character dynamics in a way few other mainstream comic writers do, given layers and levels of interaction and humanity to even the most gaudily-dressed superfolk.
Which made my next acquisition all the more intriguing:
GOTHAM NIGHTS #1-4, and GOTHAM NIGHTS II #1-4, two mini-series by Ostrander that explore a handful of average Gotham citizens in their daily lives. Kind of like SHORT CUTS in Gotham City, with Batman himself making little more than a cameo apparance.
I liked the first mini-series better than the second, which was less about citizens of Gotham as a whole and more about people involved with a rusted-down old theme park located in an island in the Harbor. Still, both stories are way better done than they could have been in the hands of most other writers, and the closest we've seen since is, like, GOTHAM CENTRAL. I'm an absolute sucker for down-to-earth character-based stories in my superhero comics, and wish there could be more of that amidst the fisticuffs and action. Ostrander is one of those rare writers who can excel at both.
But since we're already in Gotham, we'd be remiss to leave out the Bat-family entirely. Check out this three-part gem I found:
I'm willing to guess that about three of you shuddered in geekgasm at the night of this cover. The rest of you probably wondered why anyone would see fit to write Batman's darkest secrets into an impractically giant book or anyone to discover. Maybe the logic went, "I'll make it so big that no one will be able to lift the cover! You'd need like, THREE people to read it! No one will ever think of that!" Or maybe it's a normal book, and these are Lilliputian tiny Bat-villains. Either way, it strikes me that writing a book of this is a bad idea.
My history with THE UNTOLD LEGEND OF THE BATMAN stretches back to 1989, when six-year-old John Hefner procured miniturized versions of issues #2 and #3 as prizes in the BATMAN breakfast cereal. It's retained a place in my heart ever since, even though I'd never read the first part until last week. UNTOLD is essentially the Ultimate Pre-Crisis Batman story, covering the 40-year-history of Batman, his allies, and his enemies in a way that makes a fine introduction to newbies.
Part #2 was the second comic book I ever read. The first was the third part of "A Lonely Place of Dying." What do the two have in common? Jim motherfucking Aparo drawing Batman, and also introducing little Heffie to a strangely intriguing new character by the name of... wait for it... yes, you guessed it: Harvey Dent. These were the comics that, in one fell swoop, introduced me to the Bat-world in general and Two-Face in particular.
I think a whole generation identifies Aparo as THE Batman artist. In the years since, I've come to see that he was far from perfect. His Joker particularly is one of the most notably less-impressive ones out there, which is all the more regrettable considering Aparo drew A DEATH IN THE FAMILY. And yet, going back to UNTOLD LEGEND, I was treated to three issues of Aparo on the very top of his game, and my head was spinning from a giddy combination of childhood nostalgia and modern geekgasm.
And then, there's Aparo's Harvey. I never realized till I reread this just why it is I love his take on Two-Face. I mean, sure, the scarring is your classic cheesy green lumpy scarring, and Aparo was known to dress Harvey up in white turtlenecks for some reason. And yet, his unscarred side was... I dunno, there was always something so sad about Aparo's Harvey. It's the same pained, tortured, haunted look that Aaron Eckhart had on that poster for THE DARK KNIGHT, the all-too-human aspect of the character that's so often lost in the interest of just making him a one-note bad guy with a generically handsome-ish "good side."
I mean, really, if you want a perfect origin of Pre-Crisis Two-Face, you won't find any better than this page from UNTOLD LEGEND OF THE BATMAN # 2:
Cheesy? Sure, in the way that the best classic superhero comics are! And for an impressionable little Hefner, it was this page that started what would grow into a lifelong adoration. That it should be included in what is pretty much one of the best Bat-comics ever, period. In its way.
Plus, it has Alfred playing Hamlet. So there.
Okay, this has gotten WAY more long-winded than I intended. Let's keep the rest short and sweet, shall we?
The last of the DC comics I procured, there's the AQUAMAN mini-series by Keith Giffen, Robert Loren Flemming, Curt Swan, and Al Vey:
I wish there were a better scan of that cover, because wow, between that and the creative team, how the hell could I *not* have been intrigued? Sadly, the story was seriously "meh." I had hoped to find a classic Aquaman story that I could finally use as proof of the character's awesomeness, just as I now can use HAWKWORLD to introduce folks to that mythos. But it wasn't to be. What a disappointment.
But DC's not the only one prone to disappointment:
SPIDER-MAN: THE DEATH OF JEAN DEWOLFE is the other great, famous, classic dark SPIDER-MAN story, right alongside KRAVEN'S LAST HUNT (it'd be my favorite Spider-Man story if it weren't such an atypical Spider-Man story so as not to really count). I'd always wanted to read it, but it was out of print. Now, at a discount price of $6.50, here was my chance.
What a piece of shit.
Seriously. What a goddamned fucking piece of shit.
I expected much, much better from Peter David. He, like Ostrander, is a writer whose name on a cover is usually a guarantee of quality, or at least having some worth. Not so here. Instead, we have one of the ugliest, most pointless fridgings of a female character I have ever seen, ignominiously killed off-panel at the start of the first issue, and why? For no goddamned reason other than cheap shock value.
I know, I know, we've heard this before, but I'm telling you, this is the most blatant time I've EVER seen it done. I know nothing about Jean, nor her contributions to the Spider-Man mythos at this point, but this outdoes Kyle's girlfriend being shoved in a refrigerator. There was literally no reason for her death. Her killer is a nut in the SEVEN mold called the Sin-Eater, killing people he considers to be sinners: a Judge who "coddles" criminals, a priest who opposed capital punishment, even going after J. Jonah Jameson for opposing masked vigilantes... but why Jean? What was her "sin"? Why did the Sin-Eater target Jean? "Because I felt like it."
Translation: so we could shock readers and grab attention by killing off a notable female supporting character. We'll think of an actual reason later.
Which they did, according to Peter David's notes. Something to do with the Sin-Eater being her spurred lover or something. The typical bullshit. I can't believe I wasted $6.50 on this crap.
But don't worry, Marvel did not fall out of my good graces entirely this haul. For there is one last comic I did have:
FUCK.
YES.
I'd read bits and pieces of this on scans_daily back in the day, and wanted to own it ever since. In it, Doom manages to manipulate the mind-controlling powers of the Purple Man to bend even the strongest wills to his own, including Namor and (most of) the Avengers themselves!
So what happens when Doctor Doom tries to take over the world... and succeeds?
The result is world peace, a thriving global economy, universal prosperity... and a very bored dictator. Because when your whole goal has been conquest, what kind of victory is one without any more challenge? This leads to a rather conflicted Doom defending his throne against the newly-awakened Avengers fighting to bring him down.
I'd be tempted to hold this up as the ultimate Dr. Doom story, if it weren't for one thing: the entire lack of Reed Richards and the Fantastic Four. They make only the barest of cameos at the very end, making nary a blip on Doom's radar while the Avengers (and frickin' Wonder Man, of all people) prose the greatest thorns in his side here. Look, I know it's debatable how much Doom defines himself against Richards, but at the end of the day, Doom and the FF are so inexorably tied that it's downright glaring that Richards doesn't even get so much as an off-handed dismissal in this story. Have him be Doom's footrest or something! Sheesh!
But that aside, this is still one of the great DOOM epics, right alongside DOCTOR STRANGE/DOCTOR DOOM: TRIUMPH AND TORMENT. A fascinating depiction of he who is perhaps the greatest supervillain of them all.
So yes, a pretty awesome haul, all considered. Even the bad stuff has given me food for thought, which is the best one can hope for when it comes to bad stuff. If you've read any of the above, do post your own impressions and recommendations as to where to go from here!
I rarely ever buy back issues anymore, as I'm firmly a trade paperback guy. Hell, the LAST thing I need are more old comics, when I very much need to sell off the contents of at least six of my twelve long boxes. That's roughly 2,500 comics I have from over the years.
And here I go, throwing an assload of new ones onto the pile. Shit, I need to buy a new box for them. Counter-intuitive, Hefner!
What really started this was my desire to catch-up with a series absolutely beloved by
angrylemur, the post-Crisis reboot of Hawkman, HAWKWORLD, starting with the original mini-series by Tim Truman:... followed by the first twenty-five issues of the ongoing series by the great John Ostrander, Truman, and terrible early art from the eventually-great Graham Nolan.
Going in, I knew virtually nothing about Katar Hol, and even less about Shayera. Superheroes from a fascist planet, that was about it. My entire Hawkman knowledge was pretty much rooted in Carter Hall's reintroduction to the DCU by Geoff Johns in JSA.
I was never a fan of Hawkman per se, but I always had a strong appreciation for Carter, who could be like Conan the Barbarian with wings. If I were a bad guy and I saw Carter coming for me, I'd shit myself. I really would. He is the kind of guy who will fly headfirst into a plane's cockpit, smashing through the windshield and bashing a terrorist's skull in with a huge fucking mace. Hawkman will fuck your shit up with his feathery beaked justice.
But then there's Katar, and all the brain-hurting continuity problems he introduced. On top of that, there's Post-Crisis Katar, from the late 80's. This means yet another take on a shiny Silver Age character, redone in the grim 'n gritty grr argh angst/violence/boobies/angst era of comics. I went into HAWKWORLD with a healthy dose of skepticism, you understand. And I ended up absolutely loving it.
What mainly sells the series is not just the vivid depiction of Thanagar itself, but particularly the character dynamics of Katar and Shayera, which is one of the most fascinating and complex partnerships I've ever seen in superhero comics. It's the kind of treatment I'd really love to see done with Hal and Ollie, as well as the Green Lantern Corps in general. Neither Katar nor Shayera come off as mouthpieces for the writer's views in the way Green Arrow did, the way so many others do in comics that tackle thinly-veiled metaphors for society. They're more complex and nuanced than that, which is hardly surprising, given it's John Ostrander at the helm.
Ostrander: one of the most underappreciated comic writers ever, if I do say so myself. It's a shame that he's not held in higher esteem today. To make matters worse, he may be losing his eyesight to glaucoma. Here's hoping they'll be able to raise the funds, because as Warren Ellis pointed out, there are few things scarier for a writer than the prospect of going blind. Hopefully he'll be all right, and furthermore, hopefully the word spread about this will ultimately lead to more work and greater appreciation of him in the comics community.
The man salvaged Barbara Gordon after her horrifically dehumanizing treatment in THE KILLING JOKE and subsequently made her more awesome than ever by creating Oracle in the pages of SUICIDE SQUAD, an excellent series that gave us richly awesome and layered badasses with Amanda Waller, Floyd "Deadshot" Lawton, and Boomerbutt. Okay, Boomerbutt wasn't exactly layered and badass, but he was awesome in his own skeezy back-stabby way. That's because Ostrander understands character dynamics in a way few other mainstream comic writers do, given layers and levels of interaction and humanity to even the most gaudily-dressed superfolk.
Which made my next acquisition all the more intriguing:
GOTHAM NIGHTS #1-4, and GOTHAM NIGHTS II #1-4, two mini-series by Ostrander that explore a handful of average Gotham citizens in their daily lives. Kind of like SHORT CUTS in Gotham City, with Batman himself making little more than a cameo apparance.
I liked the first mini-series better than the second, which was less about citizens of Gotham as a whole and more about people involved with a rusted-down old theme park located in an island in the Harbor. Still, both stories are way better done than they could have been in the hands of most other writers, and the closest we've seen since is, like, GOTHAM CENTRAL. I'm an absolute sucker for down-to-earth character-based stories in my superhero comics, and wish there could be more of that amidst the fisticuffs and action. Ostrander is one of those rare writers who can excel at both.
But since we're already in Gotham, we'd be remiss to leave out the Bat-family entirely. Check out this three-part gem I found:
I'm willing to guess that about three of you shuddered in geekgasm at the night of this cover. The rest of you probably wondered why anyone would see fit to write Batman's darkest secrets into an impractically giant book or anyone to discover. Maybe the logic went, "I'll make it so big that no one will be able to lift the cover! You'd need like, THREE people to read it! No one will ever think of that!" Or maybe it's a normal book, and these are Lilliputian tiny Bat-villains. Either way, it strikes me that writing a book of this is a bad idea.
My history with THE UNTOLD LEGEND OF THE BATMAN stretches back to 1989, when six-year-old John Hefner procured miniturized versions of issues #2 and #3 as prizes in the BATMAN breakfast cereal. It's retained a place in my heart ever since, even though I'd never read the first part until last week. UNTOLD is essentially the Ultimate Pre-Crisis Batman story, covering the 40-year-history of Batman, his allies, and his enemies in a way that makes a fine introduction to newbies.
Part #2 was the second comic book I ever read. The first was the third part of "A Lonely Place of Dying." What do the two have in common? Jim motherfucking Aparo drawing Batman, and also introducing little Heffie to a strangely intriguing new character by the name of... wait for it... yes, you guessed it: Harvey Dent. These were the comics that, in one fell swoop, introduced me to the Bat-world in general and Two-Face in particular.
I think a whole generation identifies Aparo as THE Batman artist. In the years since, I've come to see that he was far from perfect. His Joker particularly is one of the most notably less-impressive ones out there, which is all the more regrettable considering Aparo drew A DEATH IN THE FAMILY. And yet, going back to UNTOLD LEGEND, I was treated to three issues of Aparo on the very top of his game, and my head was spinning from a giddy combination of childhood nostalgia and modern geekgasm.
And then, there's Aparo's Harvey. I never realized till I reread this just why it is I love his take on Two-Face. I mean, sure, the scarring is your classic cheesy green lumpy scarring, and Aparo was known to dress Harvey up in white turtlenecks for some reason. And yet, his unscarred side was... I dunno, there was always something so sad about Aparo's Harvey. It's the same pained, tortured, haunted look that Aaron Eckhart had on that poster for THE DARK KNIGHT, the all-too-human aspect of the character that's so often lost in the interest of just making him a one-note bad guy with a generically handsome-ish "good side."
I mean, really, if you want a perfect origin of Pre-Crisis Two-Face, you won't find any better than this page from UNTOLD LEGEND OF THE BATMAN # 2:
Cheesy? Sure, in the way that the best classic superhero comics are! And for an impressionable little Hefner, it was this page that started what would grow into a lifelong adoration. That it should be included in what is pretty much one of the best Bat-comics ever, period. In its way.
Plus, it has Alfred playing Hamlet. So there.
Okay, this has gotten WAY more long-winded than I intended. Let's keep the rest short and sweet, shall we?
The last of the DC comics I procured, there's the AQUAMAN mini-series by Keith Giffen, Robert Loren Flemming, Curt Swan, and Al Vey:
I wish there were a better scan of that cover, because wow, between that and the creative team, how the hell could I *not* have been intrigued? Sadly, the story was seriously "meh." I had hoped to find a classic Aquaman story that I could finally use as proof of the character's awesomeness, just as I now can use HAWKWORLD to introduce folks to that mythos. But it wasn't to be. What a disappointment.
But DC's not the only one prone to disappointment:
SPIDER-MAN: THE DEATH OF JEAN DEWOLFE is the other great, famous, classic dark SPIDER-MAN story, right alongside KRAVEN'S LAST HUNT (it'd be my favorite Spider-Man story if it weren't such an atypical Spider-Man story so as not to really count). I'd always wanted to read it, but it was out of print. Now, at a discount price of $6.50, here was my chance.
What a piece of shit.
Seriously. What a goddamned fucking piece of shit.
I expected much, much better from Peter David. He, like Ostrander, is a writer whose name on a cover is usually a guarantee of quality, or at least having some worth. Not so here. Instead, we have one of the ugliest, most pointless fridgings of a female character I have ever seen, ignominiously killed off-panel at the start of the first issue, and why? For no goddamned reason other than cheap shock value.
I know, I know, we've heard this before, but I'm telling you, this is the most blatant time I've EVER seen it done. I know nothing about Jean, nor her contributions to the Spider-Man mythos at this point, but this outdoes Kyle's girlfriend being shoved in a refrigerator. There was literally no reason for her death. Her killer is a nut in the SEVEN mold called the Sin-Eater, killing people he considers to be sinners: a Judge who "coddles" criminals, a priest who opposed capital punishment, even going after J. Jonah Jameson for opposing masked vigilantes... but why Jean? What was her "sin"? Why did the Sin-Eater target Jean? "Because I felt like it."
Translation: so we could shock readers and grab attention by killing off a notable female supporting character. We'll think of an actual reason later.
Which they did, according to Peter David's notes. Something to do with the Sin-Eater being her spurred lover or something. The typical bullshit. I can't believe I wasted $6.50 on this crap.
But don't worry, Marvel did not fall out of my good graces entirely this haul. For there is one last comic I did have:
FUCK.
YES.
I'd read bits and pieces of this on scans_daily back in the day, and wanted to own it ever since. In it, Doom manages to manipulate the mind-controlling powers of the Purple Man to bend even the strongest wills to his own, including Namor and (most of) the Avengers themselves!
So what happens when Doctor Doom tries to take over the world... and succeeds?
The result is world peace, a thriving global economy, universal prosperity... and a very bored dictator. Because when your whole goal has been conquest, what kind of victory is one without any more challenge? This leads to a rather conflicted Doom defending his throne against the newly-awakened Avengers fighting to bring him down.
I'd be tempted to hold this up as the ultimate Dr. Doom story, if it weren't for one thing: the entire lack of Reed Richards and the Fantastic Four. They make only the barest of cameos at the very end, making nary a blip on Doom's radar while the Avengers (and frickin' Wonder Man, of all people) prose the greatest thorns in his side here. Look, I know it's debatable how much Doom defines himself against Richards, but at the end of the day, Doom and the FF are so inexorably tied that it's downright glaring that Richards doesn't even get so much as an off-handed dismissal in this story. Have him be Doom's footrest or something! Sheesh!
But that aside, this is still one of the great DOOM epics, right alongside DOCTOR STRANGE/DOCTOR DOOM: TRIUMPH AND TORMENT. A fascinating depiction of he who is perhaps the greatest supervillain of them all.
So yes, a pretty awesome haul, all considered. Even the bad stuff has given me food for thought, which is the best one can hope for when it comes to bad stuff. If you've read any of the above, do post your own impressions and recommendations as to where to go from here!
