Will get back to regular posting of the usual nonsense soon. In the meantime, as a bit of a Halloween treat, enjoy this quickie sketch of Godzilla I got from Steve Bissette a few years back. I love the way Bissette draws the big G.
More Blessed to Give...
art by Bernard Krigstein, story by Jack Oleck
Crime SuspenStories #24 (1954)
A pretty conventional story about a married couple who simultaneously decide to kill each other, made a little more interesting by some of the split-page narration tracing the murder plans (rat poison in the liquor and a bomb in a cake, exchanged on their anniversary. Not the most subtle couple). Even more of interest is some of Krigstein's artwork, as this is one of the stories where he somewhat rebelled against the strict layouts and tight pagecounts of the EC house style and played around with cutting single panels into multiple frames to get some different effects. Of course he'd continue that kind of experimentation in later stories, so that's the kind of thing he's best known for now, as well as the usual sharply detailed artwork.
Of course the story ends with the kind of unlikely twist that you'd expect, but the trip there both in writing and art makes it better than the usual such story.
Green Lantern [1976 series]
40 issues [1977 - 1986]
95, 99, 112, 130 - 132, 136 - 156, 158, 160 - 162, 165, 167, 169 - 172, 186, 188, 203
This series continued the numbering from the Silver Age series starting with #90, continuing until the title was officially changed to GREEN LANTERN CORPS in 1986. I liked the character and started reading it in the early 1980s, when the creative team was Marv Wolfman and Joe Staton, which I liked a lot. Really fast moving and fanciful, using the history of the character and new ideas. I thought it was a shame they didn't stick around too long past #150, where the storyline moved GL off Earth for a while, and I still picked up a few issues but missed quite a few and didn't really make an effort to find them.
Later I picked up some back issues, a few of the early Dennis O'Neil ones were good. I also liked some of the back up stories, a few Adam Strange ones and I always like the idea of Green Lantern Corps story even more than I like GL. A 3600 member alien army, each with their own stories.
Keeping all of these, I guess, but not getting too many back-issues unless I can find the other O'Neil ones really cheap.
Particular favourites:
#112 - Two Green Lanterns and an Arrow. That was nice
#144 - The Tattooed Man, what a great comic-book villain
#188 - "Mogo Doesn't Socialize", one of the best GLC stories, by Dave Gibbons and Alan Moore
News comes that the BBC has ordered up a spin-off series for DOCTOR WHO to air next year, following the second season of the new series, called TORCHWOOD and featuring Captain Jack Harkness as part of a "crack team investigating alien activities and crime in modern-day Britain".
Might be interesting, though a bit too X-FILES sounding.
TORCHWOOD, as the article mentions, is an anagram for DOCTOR WHO. So I guess if it does well we can look forward to CROWD HOOT, DOW COHORT and HOTROD COW in years to come (at right, what you see if you google one of those phrases).
Publisher's Weekly has an article about upcoming books from Fantagraphics. Most noteworthy, and somewhat surprisingly, a collection of Walt Kelly's stories from Dell's OUR GANG comic of the 1940s. Should be good, especially since it's his comic work that I'm least familiar with. Something to tide us over until they begin a complete Pogo library (one hopes).
Also of note, a complete to date volume of Linda Medley's CASTLE WAITING followed by a new series. That was a fun book.
To update an old post, Steve Bissette has just gotten a copy of the 1961 TREASURE CHEST comic about dinosaurs. Read about it and other dinosaur related comics on his blog.
The GCD's list of daily uploaded cover scans almost never fails to provide at least one good laugh. This bit of absurdity from 1946 is definitely it for today.
I'd be afraid to see what Nancy's going to do with the rest of those tools.
Technically speaking, this three-part story falls before the 1989 Annual crossover with Green Arrow covered earlier, as this is where Myra leaves the hospital, and she's already out and running the city by the Annuals. However, as I recall, the publishing schedule for the book really slipped around this time, so I tend to think of them in this order.
#28 - "A Place for the Arts" brings Shiva back to Hub City, in her never-ending quest for some sort of challenging combat. She's a great character in these stories, and of course has become a somewhat more major supporting character in the Batman family of books based on it, but as far as I've read never written quite as good as in these stories. In this story, Myra tries to bring some order to the city by bringing in the leaders of two rival gangs and making them the de facto police for the city. Bad idea, of course, but I really like O'Neil's writing of the two gang leaders.
Interesting stuff, images of the same, as well as the solicitations and some of my comments.
THE BEST OF THE SPIRIT TP
Written by Will Eisner
Art and cover by Eisner
DC Comics is proud to present its first-ever collection celebrating the greatest stories by comics mastermind Will Eisner starring one of the most indelible characters ever created: The Spirit! THE BEST OF THE SPIRIT reprints 22 Spirit sections from 1940-1950, featuring famous first appearances, classic confrontations, human interest tales, and all those magnificent splash pages!
Eisner's blue-suit-clad, fedora-wearing crimefighter starred in hundreds of newspaper adventure stories that thrilled readers with Eisner's groundbreaking style. Eisner was a master of utilizing the comics format to its greatest strengths, and his Spirit stories are some of his finest examples!
This volume also features an introduction by New York Times best-selling novelist Neil Gaiman (THE SANDMAN).
On sale December 14 • 192 pg, FC, $14.99 US
Good to finally get an affordable volume of Eisner's classic. Hopefully the story selection will be smart enough to capture the variety of Eisner's best work.
A TREASURY OF VICTORIAN MURDER VOLUME 7: THE MURDER OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN SCI'm quite behind on these (I think I just have the first three), but I love Geary's artwork and look forward to reading this someday.
NAT TURNER #3Read the first volume of this, and enjoyed it quite a bit, a lot more than some other recent Baker work. Good price, I'll probably continue picking up the individual issues rather than wait for the collection
AMELIA RULES! VOLUME 3: SUPERHEROES TPI've enjoyed the early issues of this I've read, so very good to see it coming out from a mainstream publisher.
DEADBEATS #75I've only read this occasionally, but it was pretty fun, and thought that Howell and Villagran getting up to 75 issues was worth a mention. You don't hear that noted often when long runs on comics are mentioned.
JACK STAFF #11Yeah, there's no way #11 will be out by then. Still, a fun book whenever it does manage to straggle in.
AGE OF BRONZE #22I'll probably stick with the eventual collections of this, but Shanower does manage to make each issue a satisfying and dense read for those who don't want to wait. Also he seems to be getting the issues out a bit faster now, which is nice to see.
PUNISHER: THE TYGERI'll leaf through this for the Severin art, I'm not sure I'll buy it because of the Ennis writing, though. It'll have to be really top notch Severin. I do think the idea of stories of the Punisher as a 10-year-old is funny.
SHOWCASE PRESENTS: JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA VOL. 1 TPLoves me some early JLA, and nice to see the MYSTERY IN SPACE crossover issue with Adam Strange included.
CRISIS ON MULTIPLE EARTHS: THE TEAM-UPS VOL. 1 TPA great idea for a companion to the MULTIPLE EARTHS collections of JLA/JSA crossovers, I'm especially looking forward to some of those FLASH issues and the GREEN LANTERN, which I don't think I've read.
According the Michael Ryan's Palaeoblog today marks 100 years since the initial description of the Tyrannosaurus rex was published. Seemed like a good excuse to post this cover:
Doesn't look a day over 65 Million...
(art from Steve Bissette's TYRANT #3 (1995), of course)
