Superman Through the Ages! Forum

So what are some of the comics that prehaps people here might be shocked that you love?

The kind that would make Superman strike a pose like this:

(http://superman.nu/tales3/return0/banner.gif)


So show your shame with pride folks
 :twisted:  :oops:  :twisted:

uh..any Star Spangles War Comic that has dinosaurs no matter how stupid-- especially beloved are those involving giant white gorillas. :roll:

Since everyone here already knows I love any and all Silver Age Superman family comics, I will have to dredge up other guilty pleasures.

In general I love all comics, their history and art.  I don't feel guilty about reading most comics (I can always claim I'm interested from an academic point of view, even though I'm not in academia).  I'm not a big fan of North American superhero comics made after 1986 or so, but that's about it (I have read the occasional back issue of Wizard in a thrift store while looking over my shoulder).


Still, I'm somewhat ashamed that I enjoy returning to 70s stuff like Marvel 2-in-1 starring the Thing in Project Pegasus (which I think is now available as a trade).

I love Archie comics and collect old digests (even recent ones have old strips).  Silver Age Archie and Josie comics are great and have a lot in common with Superman.

Lately I have been feeling nostalgic for those old Beetle Bailey collections which I first discovered in my grandmother's house.  BB is a crappy strip.

Anyone familiar with my image here as a conservative, stodgy champion of Silver Age values might be surprised to learn that I was a huge fan of Howard Chaykin's sex-crazed, left-leaning "American Flagg!"...at least for the first dozen and a half issues or so.

As someone who hates the very idea of comics sold to promote toy lines, I have to admit a great fondness for Bill Mantlo and Michael Golden's old "Micronauts" series.

And as a lover of classic pulps, I nonetheless broke ranks in enjoying Andy Helfer and Kyle Baker's heretical treatment of "The Shadow," a book the character's angry copyright owners finally forced DC to cancel or risk losing the license.  But boy, what hilarious, disgusting fun it gave us!

Since I started it, most people here know I have a thing for old classic EC comics. Weird Fantasy may have been the greatest Sci-Fi comic book of all time!

Maybe not all that shameful :wink:  I know there have other fans here. You have to be crazy not to like those old books!

Ok, ok, this is about real trash that most people hate. While most would agree that the best Marvel comics came during the Sliver Age, I must say that as a kid I got a real kick out of those outrageous 70's marvel tales. It was a weird time for Marvel as they were combing Horror comics with Super heroes and thus creating a new genre that was way ahead of it time, but unlike current dark age comics which take themselves far too serious and thus making them boring and insulting. Those old marvel comics were pure cheese and and just plain dumb, so dumb in fact that they were brilliant. All of my old comics are long gone however.

With that in mind, I nearly flipped when I saw this:

Essential Horror TPB
List Price:  $16.99
Price:    $11.04

By Gary Friedrich, Steve Gerber, Mike Friedrich, Chris Claremont, John Warner, Bill Mantlo, Gerry Conway, Roy Thomas, Tony Isabella, Tom Sutton, Herb Trimpe, Jim Mooney, Gene Colan, Sal Buscema, Bob McLeod, Jim Starlin, Sonny Trinidad, Craig Russell, Ed Hannigan, Russ Heath

What's it like to be the son and the daughter of the Father of Lies? Find out as Daimon Hellstrom and his sister, Satana, face the worst of two worlds! Can they save their souls along with the world? Featuring Exorcists, Cyclists, Nihilists and Ice Demons! Secrets of Ancient Atlantis revealed! Guest-starring Spider-Man, the Thing and the Human Torch! Collects Ghost Rider #1-2; Marvel Spotlight #12-24; SoS #1-8; MTIO #14; MTU #32,80-81; Vampire Tales #2-3; HoH #2,4-5 and Marvel Premiere #27

Paperback: 608 pages
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Release Date: November 1, 2006

EC Fans brace yourselves!!!!

http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/8975.html

I guess if guys like Steven Spielberg and George Lucas are writing intros to the new hard covers, it can't be called guilty, I guess they are finally legit now ;)

Hey, we really can meet halfway! I really liked the way American Flagg tickled my leftwing sensibilities, but then the conservative in me said "Do all these ladies really have to wear frilly underwear all the time?"

I am also gulity of liking that series (and ashamed that I bite my tongue when I hear it bad mouthed).  Chaykin wrote a great Alex Toth obit for the Comics Journal this month.

The thing about American Flagg that is shameful is not the wild politics, sci-fi and T & A combined with a quirky, confusing post-Neal Adams art style but the fact that it was held up as the next step in comics evolution --an adult comic to rival Maus, Robert Crumb, Love and Rockets, etc.  All of these claims have dated, in a way.

Is a guilty pressure something you read in the bathroom?

Popular Mechanics?

I lust for steam tech!

Now we're talking!

The best issue of MARVEL TWO-IN-ONE for me has to be the Marv Wolfman two-part story featuring the Thing, whose airplane is sent down in 65 million BC by the very same Bermuda Triangle portal used by Skull the Slayer. There, he and Skull the Slayer team-up. It was interesting because it was really, the finale of the short-lived Skull the Slayer series, giving it a wrap-up and closure, something rarely seen in serial comics.

If you want evidence that comics are fundamentally pre-pubescent in mindset, look at the TWO-IN-ONE with the Thing and She-Hulk at Diablo Reactor. The She-Hulk is an aggressive femme whose master plan involves getting the Thing laid. Yet, somehow, that makes her a sinister figure that Ben Grimm is terrified of and avoids. Paging Dr. Freud!



I could never get into ARCHIE, for the same reason I did not "get" or like the Marvel Star Comics line either (HEATHCLIFF, MADBALLS, TERRY IN SPACE, STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKE), and why, to this day, I can't stand the POWERPUFF GIRLS. Because I've always thought that the best comic books, especially superhero comic books, are ones that can be read and appreciated by both children AND adults, a fact proven time and again by very talented writers.

Superhero/science fiction/adventure comics just for children are just as insincere and ugly as comic books that are just for adults. There should be something there that children (and the child in us) can appreciate: monsters, powers, flashy action, and things that adults (and very discerning, intelligent children) can enjoy too: smart unpredictable plotting, good characterization, and clean, correct plots.

All of our favorite books as children are books we can read and appreciate as adults, not just for nostalgia, but because there's something THERE that's there.

A movie like BEAUTY AND THE BEAST is an extraordinary film because it has surprisingly complicated characters, every moment is sincere and not histrionic, and it is able to create the illusion of doubt for a story that even children already know the outcome of.

One might also argue that it was the last great Disney film, because once there was ALADDIN set up the formula for destruction that so many kids films afterward would follow: Robin Williams mugging the camera, cloyingly cute/sassy talking animals and emphasis on celebrity voices instead of trained voice actors. The whole emphasis on sincerity and real characters seen in LITTLE MERMAID and B&B gave way to too hip for its own good tongue-in-cheek and smarmy references to modern day.



Wow. I never would have guessed in a million years.



Hear-hear! I wouldn't call MICRONAUTS a guilty pleasure, because it's GOOD, not "so-bad-it's-good," though. Truly, MICRONAUTS, along with CHAMPIONS, and the Midas story arc in IRON MAN are Mantlo at the height of his creative powers.

The very IDEA of a universe inside of an atom is so idiosyncratic it is deserving of praise. Like so many great 70s creators, Mantlo took the stuff you think about when stoned and transformed it into a series.

I love MICRONAUTS. It was STAR WARS space opera thrill from start to finish: swordfights in space, a living "bioship," prison planets where the uniform is zoot suits, serpent-tanks, a race of bugs with a sexy bug queen, and a Darth Vader type that can transform into a robot centaur. It also does STAR WARS one better: it explains why there are people that are willing to be cannon fodder for the Evil Empire: they have access to clone banks, ensuring immortality for their minions.

Don't forget the characters: Bug, the Farrah Fawcett-haired Marionette, Prince Acroyear, and the blobby, inhuman "Living Weapon."



Be very, very suspicious of anyone outright deified in lettercolumns as being "the next big thing." Remember when it was Don MacGregor? Don't get me wrong, I love his JUNGLE ACTION and ZORRO, but his small-press books like SABLE were the most  infuriatingly pretentious things ever written, and I'm including Jim Starlin's "Adam Warlock, Space Christ" in this equation. Here's a speech from, I think, SABLE (to be honest, the small press Mantlo stuff just runs together for me), that I have paraphrased but I swear, not by that much: "Why does war happen? Why can't we learn to love each other? For love is beautiful, even for lesbians."

As for me and my guilty pleasures?

The ultimate guilty pleasure for me, is the book I know it's bad, but I love it anyway: Claremont's IRON FIST. It was absurd, it was outright stupid at times (boomerangs that only home on people with Kung Fu training?), but it was fun - I'd rank it higher even than the Byrne/Claremont UNCANNY X-MEN. And the Byrne art was incredible: that guy could do the most dynamic fight scenes this side of Buscema or Kirby. What a sense of speed and acrobatics!

Speaking of fight scenes, as loathesome as he is both as a writer and as a human being, Todd McFarlane is a very, very gifted artist. His AMAZING SPIDER-MAN in the eighties is a guilty pleasure of mine. One need look no further than his three-dimensional panels, faces that could be given to personalities, and his va-va-voomworthy Mary Jane and Black Cat never looked better.

Allow me to launch a pre-emptive strike: no, Archie's MIGHTY CRUSADERS was not any good. Yes, I know, it's not possible to have a "wrong" opinion, but...c'mon. The Crusaders, on facing certain doom, had one of their members say "Wait...I have the ability to teleport, but I've never mentioned it before...and I can only use it ONCE!"

Speaking of Archie, I've often talked before about the Impact! Comics JAGUAR, particularly under William Messner-Loebs, however, I wouldn't count it as a guillty pleasure (at least in the usual sense of "guilty pleasure," e.g. XENA: WARRIOR PRINCESS or a Nick Carter novel) because it was honestly a well-written book with a likeable female heroine, fun stories, and tons of cool monsters and the most interestingly written supporting cast since the Lee/Ditko SPIDER-MAN.

One guilty pleasure is the 1972 Sword and Sorcery action comic, DAGAR THE INVINCIBLE, by the Whitman Western Publishing Company. These are the guys that in the early 1970s got the rights to do TUROK: SON OF STONE and MIGHTY SAMPSON. DAGAR THE INVINCIBLE featured Mac Raboy-clone art, over the top purple prose and fruity half-assed philisophy like "There was a time when GODS and DEMONS walked the earth as men - and certain men possessed the best and worst of BOTH!" This book also had a fight with an elephant skeleton come to life, Princesses in need of rescuing that were (SHOCK!) revealed to have been GHOSTS ALL ALONG (SPOOKY!), and a hero that looks a lot like the lead singer of Styx.

THE SCORPION by Atlas Comics is another great guilty pleasure book, and is pretty much what you'd expect from a company founded by Stan Lee's less talented brother. It features swinging seventies-haired hero the Scorpion saying "Man, this CIA business is downright fascistic! Get me the president!" It also has a Rabbi kidnapped by Neo-Nazi groups to raise dead Nazis from the grave.

The early 1980s miniseries AMETHYST: PRINCESS OF GEMWORLD is the sort of book that smiles at you and makes you smile back. Unca Cheeks, the most terminally unfunny man on the internet, loves this book and did a whole article about it where he compares it to Harry Potter, a surprisingly astute observation. And if a book can bring guys like me and Unca Cheeks together, it's GOT to be good.

Any time Tom DeFalco writes MIGHTY THOR, magic happens. Really, really cheesy magic. The guy just GOT what Thor was about. From the Thor Corps to his best work, the Silver Age Flashback issue of JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY, featuring Balder and Sif, in a display of a dysfunctionally insane understanding of reality, saving all creation by preventing rats from chewing at the root of Ygdrasil.

For me, the greatest guilty pleasure I can think of is the Malibu PRIME and HARDCASE. Not because the series was any good (it wasn't) but it explored two interesting ideas: the Captain Marvel-type kid hero Prime, but who unlike the Big Red Cheese, acted like a real thirteen year old kid: stupid, inarticulate, and horny. Likewise, HARDCASE was about a haunted, Los Angeles celebrity superhero. Though the plots dragged and were nothing to write home about, as someone that reads to read about interesting places, HARDCASE did for the superficial Los Angeles what Englehart's COYOTE did for Las Vegas.

Does it count as a guilty pleasure if you enjoy work by an otherwise lousy writer? For instance, I can't think of a single bad thing to say about Gerry Conway's seventies run on Spider-Man. Or his Justice League of America, for that matter, though maybe the Don Heck art worked. Even Byrne, usually a terrible writer, delivered, at least the first few issues of his original SENSATIONAL SHE-HULK series featuring the Ringmaster, before Byrne reverted to type as a creepy, broken pervert and did nonsense like have her jump rope naked for an issue and childishly insert himself as a godlike character.

Hell, even the accursed Ron Marz has done two things I like: the first is an Elseworlds that has Superman become a Green Lantern (yes, for the umpteenth time, but it was a space opera story with an interesting resolution), and the Green Lantern PULP HEROES annual, featuring Kyle Rayner as a John Carter type hero in a world of Glass Men, and "breathing seas."

Then of course we have Jack Kirby and his CAPTAIN VICTORY. I can't find it in my heart to hate anything with a Fighting Fetus.

EC isnt a guilty pleasure - its mainstream comics history/

BUT Marvel's pre-super hero line of monsters yarns by the likes of Ditko, Kirby et all NOW that's guilty pleasure - Behold for I am Orrgo the Unconquerable Alien!  And I will make you tremble -- nay, quiver with fear as I appear at a circus! Ha hahah ha!

That and DC romance comics during the 60s - man were those chicks hot!

Julian, you've just describe why I love Archie --clever plotting, humour, charm, and great art.  Both Superman and Archie are based on a romantic triangle with an incredibly strong supporting cast.  Smallville:Riverdale, which is better?
 



Be very, very suspicious of anyone outright deified in lettercolumns as being "the next big thing." Remember when it was Don MacGregor? Don't get me wrong, I love his JUNGLE ACTION and ZORRO, but his small-press books like SABLE were the most  infuriatingly pretentious things ever written, and I'm including Jim Starlin's "Adam Warlock, Space Christ" in this equation. Here's a speech from, I think, SABLE (to be honest, the small press Mantlo stuff just runs together for me), that I have paraphrased but I swear, not by that much: "Why does war happen? Why can't we learn to love each other? For love is beautiful, even for lesbians."

As for me and my guilty pleasures?

The ultimate guilty pleasure for me, is the book I know it's bad, but I love it anyway: Claremont's IRON FIST. It was absurd, it was outright stupid at times (boomerangs that only home on people with Kung Fu training?), but it was fun - I'd rank it higher even than the Byrne/Claremont UNCANNY X-MEN. And the Byrne art was incredible: that guy could do the most dynamic fight scenes this side of Buscema or Kirby. What a sense of speed and acrobatics!

Speaking of fight scenes, as loathesome as he is both as a writer and as a human being, Todd McFarlane is a very, very gifted artist. His AMAZING SPIDER-MAN in the eighties is a guilty pleasure of mine. One need look no further than his three-dimensional panels, faces that could be given to personalities, and his va-va-voomworthy Mary Jane and Black Cat never looked better.

Allow me to launch a pre-emptive strike: no, Archie's MIGHTY CRUSADERS was not any good. Yes, I know, it's not possible to have a "wrong" opinion, but...c'mon. The Crusaders, on facing certain doom, had one of their members say "Wait...I have the ability to teleport, but I've never mentioned it before...and I can only use it ONCE!"

Speaking of Archie, I've often talked before about the Impact! Comics JAGUAR, particularly under William Messner-Loebs, however, I wouldn't count it as a guillty pleasure (at least in the usual sense of "guilty pleasure," e.g. XENA: WARRIOR PRINCESS or a Nick Carter novel) because it was honestly a well-written book with a likeable female heroine, fun stories, and tons of cool monsters and the most interestingly written supporting cast since the Lee/Ditko SPIDER-MAN.

One guilty pleasure is the 1972 Sword and Sorcery action comic, DAGAR THE INVINCIBLE, by the Whitman Western Publishing Company. These are the guys that in the early 1970s got the rights to do TUROK: SON OF STONE and MIGHTY SAMPSON. DAGAR THE INVINCIBLE featured Mac Raboy-clone art, over the top purple prose and fruity half-assed philisophy like "There was a time when GODS and DEMONS walked the earth as men - and certain men possessed the best and worst of BOTH!" This book also had a fight with an elephant skeleton come to life, Princesses in need of rescuing that were (SHOCK!) revealed to have been GHOSTS ALL ALONG (SPOOKY!), and a hero that looks a lot like the lead singer of Styx.

THE SCORPION by Atlas Comics is another great guilty pleasure book, and is pretty much what you'd expect from a company founded by Stan Lee's less talented brother. It features swinging seventies-haired hero the Scorpion saying "Man, this CIA business is downright fascistic! Get me the president!" It also has a Rabbi kidnapped by Neo-Nazi groups to raise dead Nazis from the grave.

The early 1980s miniseries AMETHYST: PRINCESS OF GEMWORLD is the sort of book that smiles at you and makes you smile back. Unca Cheeks, the most terminally unfunny man on the internet, loves this book and did a whole article about it where he compares it to Harry Potter, a surprisingly astute observation. And if a book can bring guys like me and Unca Cheeks together, it's GOT to be good.

Any time Tom DeFalco writes MIGHTY THOR, magic happens. Really, really cheesy magic. The guy just GOT what Thor was about. From the Thor Corps to his best work, the Silver Age Flashback issue of JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY, featuring Balder and Sif, in a display of a dysfunctionally insane understanding of reality, saving all creation by preventing rats from chewing at the root of Ygdrasil.

For me, the greatest guilty pleasure I can think of is the Malibu PRIME and HARDCASE. Not because the series was any good (it wasn't) but it explored two interesting ideas: the Captain Marvel-type kid hero Prime, but who unlike the Big Red Cheese, acted like a real thirteen year old kid: stupid, inarticulate, and horny. Likewise, HARDCASE was about a haunted, Los Angeles celebrity superhero. Though the plots dragged and were nothing to write home about, as someone that reads to read about interesting places, HARDCASE did for the superficial Los Angeles what Englehart's COYOTE did for Las Vegas.

Does it count as a guilty pleasure if you enjoy work by an otherwise lousy writer? For instance, I can't think of a single bad thing to say about Gerry Conway's seventies run on Spider-Man. Or his Justice League of America, for that matter, though maybe the Don Heck art worked. Even Byrne, usually a terrible writer, delivered, at least the first few issues of his original SENSATIONAL SHE-HULK series featuring the Ringmaster, before Byrne reverted to type as a creepy, broken pervert and did nonsense like have her jump rope naked for an issue and childishly insert himself as a godlike character.

Heck, even the accursed Ron Marz has done two things I like: the first is an Elseworlds that has Superman become a Green Lantern (yes, for the umpteenth time, but it was a space opera story with an interesting resolution), and the Green Lantern PULP HEROES annual, featuring Kyle Rayner as a John Carter type hero in a world of Glass Men, and "breathing seas."

Then of course we have Jack Kirby and his CAPTAIN VICTORY. I can't find it in my heart to hate anything with a Fighting Fetus.[/quote]

Actually Telle, Atlas Comics was founded by former Marvel owner Martin Goodman who put his son Chip in charge.  There were two editors there - Larrupin Larry brother of Stan and Jeff Rovin.

Jeff handled the Scorpion, the Phoenix and put Ernie Colon on Grim Ghost and Tiger Man! All of the first two issues produced under Rovin were tops and then after he left the company, the third issues became son of  marvel clones.

The cover of Tiger Man 1 was worth the cost of admission
"Yeah Tiger man - we killed your sister -- SO WHAT?!"   The Atlas line that was handled by Rovin saw a new direction in 'realism' -- violence & vigilantism - that was prevalent in the films of the time -- Death Wish and Dirty Harry. Thrilling Adventure Stories 1& 2 a B&W action packed mag actually had Tiger Man's origin and feature art by the likes of Russ Heath & Frank Thorne!

Although Chaykin's Scorpion aka Dominic Fortune was another excuse for Howie to draw Errol Flynn in a 1930s setting.  Not that Im complaining but my favorite was The Phoenix and if you want biblical imagery in comics, this was the place to be --(Yes predating Marvels Dark Phoenix by several years)  Your referring to the 3rd ish of The Scorpion which made him some sort of Ditko character.

I was also fond of Dell and later Gold Keys Turok and Mighty Samson books - I guess I was a sucker for painted covers and DINOSAURS!

Klar, I think your responding to Julian --I quoted his previous post in mine but forgot to cut out the end of his post.  I could go and edit my post but then yours would make even less sense... :oops:

To whit:



I think at one time (late-70s) Chaykin had legitimate claim to "next big thing" in the adventure/superhero comics world.  But you can only be the next big thing for so long.  But that's beside my original point: What I was referring to was the claim made, not in letercols, but in the popular media and by DC publicists that Frank Miller, Alan Moore, and Art Spiegelman were the holy trinity of adult comics and that things like Fish Police, American Flagg! and Love and Rockets (ie, comic wildly different in audience and quality --only one of which (L&R) has stood the test of time) constituted an emerging vanguard of awesomeness that would once and for all prove that comics were legitimate art/not for kids/etc.  American Flagg! was mentioned in places like Time & Rolling Stone and by people like Harlan Ellison as one of these Maus-heirs, when in fact Maus was and is relatively unique in its impact and place in the culture.

Actually, I just re-read my Ron Marz 1997 GREEN LANTERN ANNUAL and it wasn't as good as I say it was.

For one thing, one really important developments (GL befriending the Amphib) is covered in narrative caption! And though Marz keeps on saying that the Princess "can take care of herself," the only point we see her do anything is in an ASTRO CITY-style single panel in the middle of a "tell-don't-show" montage sequence. In fact, there are all sorts of things that just don't matter: you could take out the encounter with the Balloon Fish and the eating plant and the story would be EXACTLY THE SAME.

And then we have Marz's torturous use of first-person caption boxes. It's a miracle that my wrists remain unslitted after experiencing such psychic masturbation as "Sometimes I feel I'm in competition with myself, the artist vs. the hero. But I need to know I can do both." GAH!

And it's another one of those Green Lantern stories, the worst kind, where all is lost, but then Green Lantern fires from his ring some sort of dubious ray that fixes everything.

Also: look for the mount of Ookla the Mok in the Throne Room of the God-Mage on pg. 49!

As for Archie's plots and humor...

Again, I have only vague memories of Archie, but I principally remember inane gags like this one:

ARCHIE: "Gee, Jughead, I can't believe Veronica left without me to the Caribbean!"
JUGHEAD: "Jamaica?"
ARCHIE: "No, she wanted to go!"[/list]

I suspect this is why, even up to the 1980s, Archie's jalopy was still a Model T: because if you upgrade Archie's car, you're denied priceless "my car is a piece of crap" humor.

Me, though, I'm more a "Veronica" kind of guy than a "Betty" guy. She seemed feistier and had more personality than Betty, who was something of a doormat, a female Clark Kent. With her, you just need a little backbone, that's all.

On a brighter note, though, the Archies were a much more talented fake band than the Monkees were.



Though I have never thought much of MAUS, this is an interesting point. Like Kirby, MAUS was a unique work. Go to a bookstore and ask for "something like MAUS" and they won't give you anything.

Julian Perez wrote:



As a kid, I always shunned the stuff obviously aimed at kids, like "Richie Rich," "Hot Stuff", "Casper" and so on.  The only kid I knew who liked that stuff was a female cousin.  She was the right target age, but other than her, every kid I've ever known wants to read a bit higher than their age.  How many 7-year-olds, if it were up to them, would buy a book written for 7-year-olds (or rather, what a bunch of 40- and 50-somethings think a 7-year-old is?)  Wouldn't they buy something aimed at 10- or 12-year-olds at least?

This is how it was for me, anyway.  I wouldn't call 70s Superman or Batman "adult fare" by any stretch, but to read comics in the late Silver and Bronze Ages as a grade-schooler was to take on a bit of challenge.  I can't begin to count the contributions comics made to my vocabulary over the years...I was probably the only second-grader who called another kid a "witless cretin" instead of, say, a "doo-doo head."  And those reprints in the Super-Spectaculars taught me what World War II was, how to survive if I fell into quicksand, how Telegraph Birds make a sound just like a rattlesnake, the finer points of fingerprint identification (and the lengths criminals would go to beat it), what things like fedoras and running boards and vacuum tubes were, and so on.  The point being, comics back then made me feel "grown up" in a good way; they taught me stuff, and not the stuff modern comics "teach"...like what a grown woman looks like naked, or what someone looks like with their head ripped off.

Anyway, "Archie," for me, was at best a canny book for 7-year-olds.  It understood that many 7-year olds would rather read about 16-year-olds than about other 7-year-olds.  Kids like to "experience" their own future through Archie and Betty and the gang, a future where they'll have a little more freedom and can date and drive and all that cool stuff. It's the same appeal as Barbie, a doll in her late teens marketed to girls under 10.  Few actual high-schoolers would want to read Archie, just as there probably aren't a lot of 17-year-olds who spend hours rearranging the furniture in Barbie's Townhouse.  

Something about Archie always seemed deliberately superficial and over-polished to me, like the Brady Bunch...some grown-up's idea of what teenagers ought to be like.  I never detected anything particularly significant or multi-layered in Archie comics.  Which might sound like a funny to expect anyway, but I'd argue that most comics or strips that hang around for decades usually have something going on under the surface that lets them outlast any trends.  For example, compare Archie to "Peanuts" or "Krazy Kat" or any one of a dozen classic comic strips that worked as mindless, inoffensive fun on the surface, yet had enough going on underneath to inspire decades of analysis and study to this day.  Or for that matter, even Ernie Bushmiller's "Nancy," which doesn't tell us anything insightful about the human condition, but was so downright WEIRD that you couldn't take your eyes away.  Archie was too polished, slick and committee-produced to even offer that "oddball" factor.  Once I got the basic jokes -- Jughead was lazy and always hungry, Moose was a dumb jock, Reggie was a snob, Archie couldn't choose a girlfriend and Mr Weatherbee had the worst toupee in history -- there wasn't much reason to come back month after month.




Indeed.  It irritates me to no end to hear the standard industry response to criticism that comics are unsuitable for kids.  "We print a line of kid comics, let 'em read those!"  To me, this says, (1) we reserve the right to print any sort of depravity or filfth we like in our "mainstream" comics and it's the parents' fault if kids stumble over them, (2) we view children as a sub-group unworthy of our full attention and (3) we couldn't write for a broad audience if our lives depended on it.



The masterstroke of that book was bringing the Micronauts into our universe, where they were the same size as the toys in the stores!  I still remember that ship flying around the legs of skaters in a skate park and barrelling down the Florida highway causing all manner of mayhem as motorists freaked out!  This was a brilliant twist on things and some really fun summer reading.

I actually preferred Karza to Vader, except for those weird iron dredlocks or whatever hanging down behind his head.  The big surprise was Arcturus Rann, who as the square-jawed "Captain Kirk" of the piece would normally have been a shoe-in for my favorite character (you're talking to a guy whose favorite X-Man is Cyclops, remember), but in fact he was such a non-entity I never took to him at all.  I did dig bug and Acroyear, though.

The last great idea before the book went south was Captain Universe, a cosmically powerful character who was someone different with each appearance...it could be a muscleman, or it could be some fat slob or an old lady or a kid.  It wasn't really the sort of thing that fit in a Marvel comic, but what I wouldn't have given to see guys like Otto Binder and CC Beck take the concept and run.  (Would've been better than Fatman the Human Flying Saucer, anyway!  :lol: )



I've seen the "ESSENTIAL" volume of this at my local library a few times and I have to say that even though it would cost me nothing to check it out, I have put it back on the shelf every time.  Personally, just scanning through it the art is terrible.  I was as excited as anyone about Byrne when "X-Men" took off, but I soon found that most of his stuff before it had a clumsy, amateurish, "fanzine" look to it.  And everything after it got scratchy, homely and repetitive.  Basically when it comes to Byrne, for me it's X-Men or nothing.  The rest makes my eyeballs bleed.



We're gonna have to disagree on this one, too.  McFarlane did do some fun stuff with Spidey, and made me pick up the book for the first time since the mid-70s...and for that matter, made me buy more than 3 issues in a row for the first time in EVER...but he couldn't draw faces worth spit.  One reason he was so great on Spider-Man is that the character's face is completely hidden.  As soon as the mask came off, things got ugly.  Really ugly.  Peter Parker didn't even look human.  It's no coincidence that his signature character "Spawn" also has no face...even without a mask!  

In his favor, though, Todd was the first guy in forever who understood the appeal of seeing Spidey's body contorted six ways to Sunday.  Not since Ditko did we see such incredibly fun, goofy poses...great stuff.  (Much as I loved the slick pencils of Romita, Sr., I think in retrospect he destroyed something essential to the look and feel of the book, and it took many years to get it back).



Ha!  That's wonderful!  The sort of thing you expect to see in a "Radioactive Man" comic on the Simpsons.

Speaking of which, I love the bit in Bongo's "Radioactive Man Annual" (or whatever) where a bunch of supers are moving giant lab equipment and a huge gizmo starts to fall on one of the heroes.  His word balloon: "No time to move out of the way!  Only time to talk about it!"   :D That's Marvel all over.



This is the same dillemma that keeps Neal Adams up at night.  But I have faith he can re-write tectonic theory and still churn out those five comic covers a year.  You go, Neal.

I didn't read Archie as a kid.  Almost straightaway a Marvel Zombie.  Marvel, Mego and tv were my 3 pop culture poles: Herculoids, Micronauts, and Fantastic Four --I could never decide which I loved more.

The only Archie reader I knew was an older boy in junior high (he let me listen to his KISS records) who once put me down for reading comics that had nothing to do with real life.

My experience since then is the same as Nightwing's --younger preteens, especially girls, enjoy the skewed view of adolescence they get from Archie.

As a so-called adult I discovered the Archie world to be an infuriating mix of dopiness and highly competent art (Dan DeCarlo is one of my 3 fave 60s mainstream cartoonists, the others being Kirby and Swan).  The perfect mindless entertainment for the back porch in summer.  I often imagine things like Kurt Schaffenberger drawing Archie or DeCarlo doing Lois Lane.  Archie was not quite as sophisticated as Superman comics but it had its fair share weird philosophy, blackout gags, mystery, romance, morality, time-travel and enough oddball moments to give Scott Shaw a second career.  For my money, a Betty & Veronica Giant or early Josie from the 60s is just about the perfect kids comic.

I've flipped through Archie comics occasionally at the store, and still think they'd be OK for younger children to read---obviously not cerebral, but seemed like it'd be ok "fluff" reading. The "Sabrina" comic seems to be making a stab at an older audience lately (with its current manga-drawn style and continuing plotlines)...

As a kid, I mostly read newspaper comic strips (and still do), not really getting heavily into comic books until high school (when I had more money). Probably got plenty of exposure to politics/the concept of political satire via "Bloom County" and "Doonesbury"...

This is a paraphrase of a very old British vaudeville routine:

MAN #1: "My wife went to the Caribbean for her holiday."
MAN #2: "Jamaica?"
MAN #1: "No, she went of her own accord!"