Shockwave wrote:
Not outright, but you sure as hell implied it. Or at least that's how you came across. It just seems like every time someone brings up even the option of reading something old you get some sort of knee jerk reaction to just say that it sucks and then I start to wonder about the practical side of someone like yourself maintaining a huge comic book collection full of books that you only read once and then never again because now they're old and therefore, suck.
As time passes, and the bar gets raised, fewer old books are going to make the cut. Even with a low bar, the further back one looks, the less worth-while comics one is likely to find.
I buy more comics than I keep with the intention of finding and keeping the best stuff.
"Crisis on Infinite Earths" is showing its age, but it still set important precedents for the industry, so it stays. But, other, less important, stuff does not stay.
Shockwave wrote:
Not outright, but you sure as hell implied it. Or at least that's how you came across. It just seems like every time someone brings up even the option of reading something old you get some sort of knee jerk reaction to just say that it sucks and then I start to wonder about the practical side of someone like yourself maintaining a huge comic book collection full of books that you only read once and then never again because now they're old and therefore, suck.
As time passes, and the bar gets raised, fewer old books are going to make the cut. Even with a low bar, the further back one looks, the less worth-while comics one is likely to find.
I buy more comics than I keep with the intention of finding and keeping the best stuff.
"Crisis on Infinite Earths" is showing its age, but it still set important precedents for the industry, so it stays. But, other, less important, stuff does not stay.
Eh, maybe I just have a lower, ahem... different standard. As long as I can still be entertained and can consistently go back and be entertained by something I will usually hang onto it. I also have a tendancy to judge quality based on what could be done at the time. The first issue of the Marvel US run had the introduction splash pages with characters randomly introducing themselves. It was cringe worthy at the time, but it was Marvel editorial mandate so Budiansky had no choice but to put it in there. When I go back and read it again, I usually skip over those parts. The artwork in the US was only at a certain level at the time and the UK was years ahead of it, which is probably a large part of why I like those stories better (to say nothing of reminding me of my time in England, easily one of the best times in my life). The use of shading, texture, all the background characters having the correct coloring were a stark contrast to the US versions "everyone in the background is blue" approach. I even remember wondering if Nelson Yomtov (the US colorist) was color blind because of it.
When you get rid of comics, how do you do it? Do you take them back to the store for credit, or sell to other collectors, give them to friends? I ask only because comics are something I've had difficulty purging. The last time when I purged anything not TF or MOTU related, I gave them to a friend who wanted to start reading more comics. But, my only other outlet for that has been taking them back to the comic shop for credit. I tried selling some TF comics on the TFW forums, but basically wound up getting screwed (I did not even recover the cover price of the comics).
I generally pass them along to friend or use them so sweeten on-line transactions.
For example, tomorrow, a friend of mine is going to get a comic enema consisting of my run of "Earth 2" along with some random issues of "Uber" (which I am done with after Avatar's latest low pitch) and "Injustice" (which is awesome, but I am holding out for compilations).
Shockwave wrote: As long as I can still be entertained and can consistently go back and be entertained by something I will usually hang onto it. I also have a tendancy to judge quality based on what could be done at the time.
This is pretty much my approach, though what I'm entertained by has changed over time. But I agree, you certainly have to make some allowances for when something was produced.
Yesterday, I pitched over 50 books and passed them to a friend.
Most of it was "Earth 2". But, there were some random issues of "Uber" in there and a few issues of "Injustice" (which I am waiting for the compilation on.
Now, I can start putting more of the back-log in to my "to purge" box.
So, for this week's retro comics since it's his 75th anniversary, how about some Jay Garrick Flash Comics.
Flash Comics #1 - The origin story has lots of good character moments in it, and those are my favorite parts. Joan is a little shallow for preferring the football captain to Jay, but she feels he's not really trying so there's a bit more to it than just going after the best athlete. I think it's hilarious that Jay is talking a smoke break, in the lab, surrounded by chemicals when he collapses and inhales the fumes and gains his speed. And he spends time in the hospital, which is a nice touch. After that he's wooing Joan and showing out at sports, and it's only when someone tries to kill Joan that he turns to crimefighting and creates the costume and identity of the Flash. Say what you will about the hat, I love it. And the costume looks like something that could be created at home, for the most part anyway. The actual criminals aren't all that impressive, but it does give a chance for Jay to learn the ropes. And I like the depiction of speed all through the story. Sometimes we see people react, sometimes Jay is too fast to see, and sometimes he's catching bullets. Fun stuff all around. And it's good to see Joan in on the secret from the very beginning. Like Sandman, Hawkman and Dr. Fate, sometimes it can really add to the story when the hero isn't trying to hide his heroic activities from his girlfriend, but instead looks to her for help and support.
Flash Comics #2 - A showgirl is murdered, and her friend is a college friend of Joan's, so Jay gets involved in the case. Crooks are terrorizing the local entertainment scene in an attempt to extort money and gain control. They try to kill several showgirls at around the same time, but Flash is able to intercept all the killers. There's a lot of humor in the story (which is one of the things I like so much about this series), such as Jay looking in a taxi as he runs past and freaking the passengers out, or Jay stealing all of an assassin's clothes so he can't run away until the police arrive. There's more smoking as Jay is able to track Joan down at one point because he finds one of her cigarettes on the road. The plot isn't exceptional, but it's serviceable. It's the humor and character interactions that makes this story fun for me.
Flash Comics #3 - Joan's father, Major Williams, is framed as a spy. The Flash goes to visit the paper that printed the news, and by a lucky coincidence (those seem to happen often) overhears the editor tell a man to make sure Williams is found guilty. In a scene that reminds me of the current Flash tv series, Flash runs and enters the cab so fast that he appears almost out of nowhere. He steals the guys clothes leaving him in his underwear (guy: "Hey, those are my clothes!" Flash: "You won't need them where you're going!") and takes him to the top of a the Empire State Building for questioning. The guy can't take the cold, but Flash leaves him for a few minutes and goes to see Major Williams in jail, promising help. Flash returns and learns enough to track down the real villain, recording his chat with some underlings until he gets a confession and is able to clear Major Williams. He even gets a kiss from Joan at the end. The story continues the trend of having people freak out as the Flash runs by (if they see him) or wonder where that wind came from if he's going really fast.
With all of these stories, it's the fun and characters that keep them a few steps above a lot of contemporary characters. Gardner Fox took the light approach and it pays off.
Flash Comics #4 - The Flash is on patrol at the docks when he rescues a woman from drowning. This leads into a plot about a gambling ship anchored offshore, where the woman's fiance is being held prisoner. Jay has fun messing with the gambling on board ship using his speed. He finds the kidnapped man and learns that it's all a scheme to force a local politician to drop his opposition to gambling. Flash rescues everyone and has his usual good time scaring the villains into turning themselves in.
Flash Comics #5 - Flash rescues an artist who just won an award with his painting. The villain of the story, the Vandal, kills artists after he's bought their paintings in order to increase the value of his collection. Jay goes to work to stop the guy, and part of his plan involves learning to sculpt clay at super speed. The Vandal is no match for Flash at all, who could have caught him in five minutes if he wasn't so busy messing with the guy's head.
Flash Comics #6 - It's a sports plotline involving the Olympics, but since it's track and field I'm more interested than I am in football or boxing. The best runners have been losing, and it's clear to both the reader and Jay that they've been drugged somehow. He decides to try out himself. There's some nice continuity as his football past is mentioned, and as Jay does some drug testing in his laboratory. And here's where it becomes apparent that the writers still aren't all that concerned about Jay having a secret identity yet, because he uses his superhuman speed to win all the races he enters. As the announcer says at one point: "Jay Garrick just ran eight laps in less than thirty seconds!! If you don't mind, I'm going to faint now." Of course the gamblers who have been behind this whole scheme try to take care of Jay, but Jay of course takes care of them and obtains yet more confessions for the police. Will all these forced confessions hold up in court? Beats me. But of course, Jay won't actually compete in the Olympics despite winning because "they spent years developing speed, and to ask them to race against my scientific freak gift would be unsportsmanlike and unamerican!"
Flash Comics #7 - Another sports related story, though with a sci-fi twist. An inventor has a machine that disintegrates metal, and a crook forces the man to use it to destroy cars so he can clean up on auto race gambling. It's a little odd to see Jay Garrick driving somewhere instead of running, but his car is among those destroyed, which is what draws him into the storyline. And I love the villain's name: Black Mike. It's not quite as much fun as "Burly Billy" from All-Star #3, but it gets the job done.
Flash Comics #8 – August 1940
“The Building Swindle”
This issue feels like an early Superman plotline, with a crooked builder using inferior materials to cut corners. But sometimes it’s interesting to see two different characters approach the same problem using their own unique approach.
Jay is out running around the city when he spots a woman about to be crushed by a collapsing wall. He rescues her, scolds her for standing near a building that’s being demolished, and learns that it’s actually under construction. Jay decides to investigate, and this leads to a story where Jay is basically following the trail of evidence from one crook to another, moving higher up the chain until he gets all the way to the top, where he forces a confession out of the main culprit by tossing him up into the air and catching him until he is so freaked out that he’s ready to admit to everything. Those forced confessions are standard procedure for these Golden Age heroes, aren’t they?
Jay spends a lot of time using his invisibility trick in this story. And by that I mean he stays in roughly the same place but is moving back and forth so rapidly that he’s not in one spot long enough to be seen. I’m not sure that would actually work, but in any case it’s a stealth trick that seems unique to Jay. I can’t recall Barry or Wally having ever employed it. It’s a little odd to think of the Flash employing stealth, but in any case, it leads to some fun instances of crooks freaking out about the invisible man stalking them. Jay actually gets caught once because he runs smack into Omsab, the manservant of one of the villains, but he punches the guy in the jaw and knocks him out, with a text panel helpfully explaining the Flash’s 800 mph punch. Ouch. You’re going to need some dental work, Omsab.
Flash Comics #9 – September 1940
“The Giant Animals”
After eight issues of the typical Golden Age spies and gangsters as villains, we get something new in Flash Comics #9: giant lizards!! I’m amused by the mix of craziness and banality in this story as scientist Dr. Tyler invents a formula that turns animals into giants, and yet when some crooks find out and force Tyler to put his invention to work for them, what do they do? They use the giant lizards as a distraction while they rob a bank. Come on fellas, why not sell the formula and make millions? Think of how much more steak we could get from giant cows. Why not sell the giant lizards to zoos? It seems to me that there are plenty of ways to legally make money from such an invention, but the unimaginative crooks default back to just robbing banks.
Jay still isn’t bothering with a secret identity, because his friend Jim Evans writes him asking for the Flash’s help. Jay runs 1700 miles in two hours, which astonishes his friend but which seems a little slow for the Flash. I love the small details of his trip like the panel of him blowing through a checkpoint on the Canadian border. Jay mainly keeps himself busy once he agrees to help by pulling people out of the path of the giant lizards when they’re turned loose in town. He then foils the bank robbery, and finally goes to the Canadian Air Force and has them bomb the animals and kill them. I would have expected a scientist like Jay Garrick to be more interested in the animals themselves and how the growth formula worked, but he’s not.
Oddly enough, when he rescues Dr. Tyler, Tyler expresses a scientific interest in how the Flash got his speed, and Jay actually tells him exactly how it happened. You’d think that not only would Jay want to keep that a secret, but that a experimenter like Tyler would use that information to try and give other people super speed, but I don’t think we see a plotline like that until the Rival turns up, years down the road. I guess there was something unique about the hard water Jay was experimenting with.
I enjoy finding out forgotten or unknown facts about a character from old comics. Anyone who's read my comments or JT's comments about Batman Chronicles volume 1 knows that in the early Batman comics Bruce Wayne had a fiance named Julie Madison. She shows up in a few stories, but is never really an important character, oddly. I had assumed that she was just dropped and forgotten, given the lax continuity of the 40s, but I was wrong. She is actually written out of the series in Detective Comics #49, the second Clayface story, where she breaks off the engagement to Bruce Wayne because he won't do anything with his life. She sees him acting like the bored, idle playboy he pretends to be and she's not willing to go along for the ride. It's not an acrimonious split at all, and she tells him she'd be happy to come back if he ever changes his ways, and he says to let him know if she ever needs anything. And that's pretty much it. Neither one seems all that upset about it.
Bruce is probably relieved. It's a whole lot easier to be Batman without having to worry about a fiance on the side.
So good for the writers of the day, taking the time to actually account for a character that logically should have been an important figure in Bruce Wayne's life, rather than just forgetting she existed and moving on.
Some interesting early GL Corps facts from GL #6 (since I'm not the only GL reader on the board!)
- Early on, apparently the Lanterns work in relative isolation in their sectors, according to Tomar-Re, who meets Hal for the first time. Tomar-Re "has been allowed" to know the names and locations of a few other Lanterns in case he needs help, as he does in issue 6
- none of them have met the Guardians face to face or know where their planet is. The Guardians give instructions through the lanterns. Hal learns about them for the first time here.
- sector 2814 is mentioned for the first time.
It's quite a contrast with later origins where Hal is taken to Oa for extensive training very early on. I kind of like the setup with the Guardians being isolated and hidden, only occasionally sending a Lantern on a mission but otherwise allowing the Corps members to act independently. Three issues of Showcase and six issues of his own series in, and Hal has never met the Guardians, and never met any other GLs except Abin Sur and Tomar-Re.
andersonh1 wrote:- Early on, apparently the Lanterns work in relative isolation in their sectors, according to Tomar-Re, who meets Hal for the first time. Tomar-Re "has been allowed" to know the names and locations of a few other Lanterns in case he needs help, as he does in issue 6
Yeah, as I recall it was reasoned because the Green Lanterns are equipped with the most powerful weapon in the universe, they should be able to deal with any situation single-handedly. Not sure when the Corps was allowed to work more freely with one another. And it wasn't until Johns that they officially got sector partners.
andersonh1 wrote:- Early on, apparently the Lanterns work in relative isolation in their sectors, according to Tomar-Re, who meets Hal for the first time. Tomar-Re "has been allowed" to know the names and locations of a few other Lanterns in case he needs help, as he does in issue 6
Yeah, as I recall it was reasoned because the Green Lanterns are equipped with the most powerful weapon in the universe, they should be able to deal with any situation single-handedly. Not sure when the Corps was allowed to work more freely with one another. And it wasn't until Johns that they officially got sector partners.
The two GL omnibus books they've published run through GL #45, so I'm curious to see how the idea of the Green Lantern Corps develops over time. I've only read through issue 6 so far, where Tomar-Re first appears. Issue 7 looks like Sinestro's first appearance. I don't think it's all that long before we get to see multiple GLs together or Hal meeting the Guardians, so it seems like the concept behind the Corps evolved fairly quickly in those early days.
Do you remember Ganthet telling everyone during Blackest Night that the rings allowed them to deputize someone for 24 hours? I don't know if Geoff Johns was aware of it, but that also is an early concept. In Hector Hammond's first issue (where he still looks normal, without the giant head), Hal needs to keep him distracted for awhile, so he uses his ring to disguse Tom Kalmaku as himself, and gives him a fully functioning GL ring that will last for 24 hours. At one point in the story Hammond is able to obtain the duplicate ring and use it as well.
