415 years ago today...

 Remember, remember

 the fifth of November

The gunpowder treason and plot.

I see no reason

why the gunpowder treason

Should ever be forgot.

(with thanks to David Lloyd, Alan Moore, Alan Grant, Norm Breyfogle, Jack Kirby, Joe Simon and whoever drew BUSTER)

Dark Horse Twenty Years [2006] (Random Comics Theatre)

Random Comics Theatre

Dark Horse Twenty Years [2006]

This is a one shot pin-up book priced at just 25 cents which, as the title makes clear, celebrates two decades of Dark Horse publishing, going back to DARK HORSE PRESENTS #1 back in 1986. Mike Mignola handles the cover, with a cluttered desktop with action figures and imagery from some two dozen or so Dark Horse published features.

For most of the book the pattern is that each pin-up features a character associated with the artist of the previous page. So after Mignola's cover, the character is Hellboy, drawn by Adam Hughes, then the Hughes-designed Ghost with art by Arthur Adams, and continuing from there. This pattern breaks down a bit in the last few pages, after Rick Geary draws Tony Millionaire's Sock Monkey, with the last two pairs being straight switches (Joss Whedon drawing Emily The Strange while an artist for that, Buzz Parker, draw's Whedon's Fray, then Stan Sakai does a Sin City piece to pair with a reprint of a Frank Miller drawing of Usagi Yojimbo from a few years before).

This is an interesting little curiosity, well worth the original cover price, but probably not too much more.  The highlight is definitely Sergio Aragonés drawing Conan, long before the actual GROO VS. CONAN book actually came out (and in that one, Tom Yeates drew the Conan figures).  That's in the middle of a nice stretch of the book, with then Conan artist Cary Nord doing a nice Aliens piece ahead of it and Paul Chadwick taking the next page to draw Aragonés' Groo. There's also some nice work by Matt Wagner and others.

Worth picking up if you can find it cheap. It'll almost certainly never be put out digitally, with several of the licensed and creator-owned features having left Dark Horse in the intervening years.

Gumby #2 [2006] (Random Comics Theatre)

Random Comics Theatre

Gumby #2 [2006]

Gumby was a claymation cartoon created by Art Clokey in the 1950s, with cartoons created into the 1960s and some later revivals. I have no memory of ever seeing it as a child, although I did see (and usually actively avoided) Clokey's other famous claymation series Davey and Goliath. Like most of my generation, I think I first encountered the character in the rather absurd version of the character Eddie Murphy did on Saturday Night Live.

For some reason the character appeared in comics in the late 1980s, most famously in two one-shots drawn by Arthur Adams, one written by Bob Burden and the other by Steve Purcell. Then in 2006 Burden returned to the character for this series with artist Rick Geary (the two had worked together one two issues of JUNIOR CARROT PATROL in 1989/90).  Looks like it was planned to continue at last one more issue but only lasted three. Burden even did one of the covers for this issue, which very much feels like a FLAMING CARROT cover.

Each of the three issues is a standalone story, with some light continuity around the girl introduced in the first issue, Cuddles. In this one, Gumby wants to get a fancy pair of boots to impress Cuddles, working some odd jobs and eventually winding up in the same circus where he had an adventure in #1, this time getting a job as a clown and then later getting turned into a golem. And then it starts to get really weird.

A pretty decent story, a long 34-pages in a packed issue which also has a frontispiece (which kind of gives away the ending of the story), a letter column and a biography of Geary plugging his various other works.

The Wasteland [1989] (Random Comics Theatre)

Random Comics Theatre

The Wasteland [1989] 

THE WASTELAND is a one-shot comic of single page comics by Dan Sweetman and Dave Louapre, published in 1989 by DC's short-lived Piranha Press imprint in the first year of its brief existence. The publisher was already several months into Sweetman and Louapre on-going title BEAUTIFUL STORIES FOR UGLY CHILDREN (the imprint's only on-going book) when this came out. Louapre's foreword is deliberately oblique on the source of the comics (being more concerned with the seemingly persistent comparisons of the strip to Garfield, instead of the obviously preferred Family Circus pedigree he aspires to), except to note that they were created over a four year period. Checking around, it seems they appeared in publications like FANGORIA and THE L.A. WEEKLY.  The result is 124 single panel comics, plus cover and foreword.

Other than the aforementioned Family Circus, the most obvious comparison for the comics is to the work of Gahan Wilson, in particular his gag strips for magazines like PLAYBOY and THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION. There's a similar macabre sensibility, especially in looking at the more mundane aspects of normal life and giving them a dark twist, often predicated on a small bit of wordplay. That kind of work might be best known today from probably also Wilson-influenced newspaper strips like The Far Side and Bizarro, although taking it in a more extreme and explicit direction than you can in syndicate-approved comics.

Like any such collection, it doesn't always hit, but there are a number of excellent strips which I remembered vividly ever since I first read this some 30 years ago, even if I didn't always remember this is where I read them (one particular strip I always think of when I hear expression "leisure suit"). Sweetman's art goes through a few phases, as you'd expect from a four-year creation process (I don't think the strips are presented in anything resembling the order of creation), a lot of places you can see him settling into a few of the many styles he'd use for BSFUC.

John Lewis, R.I.P.

Few things can spoil a day more than waking up to hear that John Lewis passed away. Far from the top of any list of his accomplishments over 80 years was the comic book work that he did in the last decade of his life, the autobiographical MARCH, published in three volumes from 2013 to 2016 with collaborators Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell  I wrote a bit about the first one back here, and will just add that the later ones are even better, it might be the best comic of the past decade. His earlier prose memoir WALKING WITH THE WIND is also highly recommended.

(a free sampler with excerpts from all three volumes of MARCH is available here, along the full volumes available half-price right now, and you can probably read them here if your local library offers digital books through Hoopla or here if they offer them through OverDrive)

And of course it's literally impossible to say any words about him better than his own, here's a bit from the aforementioned MARCH, of Lewis's speech of August 28, 1963 in Washington. A 23-year-old man gave that speech almost 57 years ago, and it's still relevant today.

Linking around

Links around the internet

So, Evan Dorkin, Roger Langridge and Ed Solomon are getting together to do BILL & TED ARE DOOMED, a prequel to the unlikely third installment of the film series (co-written by Solomon, co-creator of the characters) that is theoretically going to be released later this year. I'm not sure if I ever saw the second film, and haven't seen the first one all the way through since it was released, but I did enjoy the comic book adaptation of the second film and follow-up original series that Dorkin did back in the early 1990s, and Langridge is always fun and a great choice for the artwork (see link for his cover to #1).

Mark Evanier has been filling the newly open time in his schedule he'd usually be spending moderating comics and animation panels at now-cancelled conventions with moderating comics and animation panels on-line. His YouTube channel is here, including discussions with Sergio Aragones, Scott Shaw!, Leonard Maltin and others.

Brian Hibbs presents his look at the 2019 sales of comics recorded through BookScan, which is always interesting. Basically a lot more young readers and a lot more Japanese comics than the direct market is able to sell (or at least that the direct market chooses not to buy from Diamond).

Mike Sterling, most likely to be the last comics blogger standing in the end, goes over some of his on-line history here. He's also raising some money for some medical bills over here so check that out.

Lars Ingebrigtsen, who previously did re-readings of comics published by Fantagraphics, Eclipse and Pacific recently finished up the same for Marvel's Epic imprint, reading everything they published over the course of seven months. Man, that must have been a lot to take. I mean, there are undeniably some gems in there, some of the best comics of the 1980s, but there's also a lot of stuff best left forgotten. Anyway, should join the previous series of posts as a valuable resource.

Discussion between Dave Sim and Todd Klein about comic book lettering, as part of a discussion about the use of some Cerebus pages in an upcoming Klein book about the history of comic book lettering. In other news, Todd Klein has a book called "The Art and History of Lettering Comics" coming out next year. Anyway, it's always interesting when Sim steps away from some of  his other obsessions and talks about the craft and history of comic book creation, and the posts have some good examples of some of his more ostentatious displays of virtuoso lettering.

Speaking of lettering, Harry Mendryk returned to his excellent Simon & Kirby Blog for a detailed seven post series about the lettering in those classic golden age comics, in particular the work of Howard Ferguson and Ben Oda.  Start with part 1 here.

And reminder, check out updates of various comic book weblogs over here. I'm only intermittently able to add links to that list, but this appears to be one of the times when I can, so if you have any recommendations feel free to let me know, either here to tweet to @bobh1970 (note it must have a compatible RSS feed, which some newer platforms don't seem to provide)

Random Realities 2020.07.07

So, in the interests of this not being solely an obituary and TV weblog...

Fanzine cover this time is a nice painted Magnus by Bruce Timm, podcast recommendation is he daily news satire The Last Post, then a quick look at a young adult comic set in the 1970s, SUNNY ROLES THE DICE and, okay, maybe this is a TV weblog now because some discussion of THE SIMPSONS.

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On the Fanzine Cover Files, lets look at something more recent than most of the previous entries, COMIC BOOK ARTIST #22 [2002] and its painted cover of Magnus Robot Fighter by Bruce Timm.

CBA was the first general interest comics magazine that TwoMorrows launched after a few years of publishing the more specialized JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR, running 25 issues from 1998 to 2003 under editor Jon Cooke, who then relaunched it from Top Shelf for the second series, then returned to TwoMorrows with the renamed COMIC BOOK CREATOR, still on-going. Most issues took a particular publisher or artist or genre and present a variety of interviews and articles on that theme. Usually very interesting, with a few mis-steps.

This issue obviously has a focus on Gold Key Comics, and that makes Magnus the natural choice for cover feature, maybe the best known original property to come out from the company. The feature was created by Russ Manning in 1963 and drew it for 21 issues, often reprinted over the years, and has been revived numerous times since, with mixed results.  The artist is Bruce Timm, best known for his animation work on various DC properties, starting with BATMAN - THE ANIMATED SERIES in 1992. It's a great looking image, combining his style with Manning's designs, makes you wish there was a Magnus cartoon.

Lots of good reading and rare art inside, including a 1969 interview with Manning, a talk with Dan Spiegle (co-creator of SPACE FAMILY ROBINSON, the other best known Gold Key original, and artist of many more books from the publisher), Mark Evanier explaining the whole Dell/Western/Gold Key thing and his own experiences working there in the 1970s, Mike Royer on working with Manning and more. As far as I know there's never been a dedicated book to the history of Gold Key, so until that comes along this will have to do (still available digitally from the publisher).

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On the podcast recommendation front, The Last Post is a spinoff podcast from the previously (and still) recommended The Bugle, coming out daily (actually daily, not that lazy five-days-a-week that most people try to pass off as daily) since the beginning of this year. And what a year it's been. It's hosted by Alice Fraser, one of the most frequent of the rotating guests of The Bugle, and features most of the Bugle regulars as guests. It's a hilarious 10-15 minutes a day of the bizarre goings-on of a parallel dimension (listen to a few and that'll make sense). Just the number of variations that Fraser has done on an ad for half a glass of water is amazing.

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SUNNY ROLES THE DICE is a comic from last year by  Jennifer L. Holm and Matthew Holm, the third book in their series about Sunny Lewin, a middle school girl growing up in 1977 suburban Pennsylvania.  I haven't read the previous two books yet, but after this I definitely will. The Holms are best known for their BABYMOUSE series for younger readers, which seemed entertaining but not really my speed.

In this particular book, seventh grader Sunny has to deal with her worries about fitting in to what teen society sees as cool (or "groovy", in the vernacular of the teen magazines that dictate trends of the time), as well as her introduction to the decidedly non-groovy world of role playing games.  I'm about six years younger than the character, and was considerably less groovy when I got to her age in the 1980s, but living in a similar suburban world just a few hundred miles north, so there's a lot of nostalgia baked into the book, and most of the themes are pretty timeless.

Really enjoyed it, I'll definitely be reading the previous two books and any future ones soon, and maybe after that give BABYMOUSE another look and check out some of the other Holm work over the years.

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Let's see, slowed down a bit on the television from early pandemic days. Been watching some early MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW lately, which is a joy. I also have Disney+ for a month, mostly to watch HAMILTON (which I have and will again, and might get a separate post). There's not much else on there I'm that interested in that's not available elsewhere, other than THE MANDALORIAN, which I'll probably watch before the month is out. What I have been watching is THE SIMPSONS. Now, if I set my DVR I could probably get a dozen SIMPSONS episodes every day on there, but I haven't done that in a while, I think it's been a few years since I watched a complete episode. Now with almost all 31 seasons available, I figured I'd take a look at them, starting with what seem to be the consensus highlights of the run, which are pretty much all in the first 10 seasons. I think I've probably seen about half of those before, and they're pretty decent so far. Maybe after that I'll take a look at what seem to be the better later episodes, which will almost all be new to me.

If anyone has any recommendations on what else might be worth watching on Disney+, I'm open to suggestions.

Carl Reiner, R.I.P.

Wanted to just quickly note the passing of Carl Reiner at age 98 earlier this week. At this point a lot of people who know his work a lot better than I do have already spoken of his work. I suppose my first encounter with him was on repeats of THE DICK VAN DYKE SHOW, which he created and worked on from 1961 to 1966. It was less frequent on the syndication circuit than many of the other shows I watched, but I enjoyed it when I saw it, and in recent years I've been revisiting it (I've seen about half of the episodes so far), and frequently I see something that brings back a rush of memories. While some sitcoms from the 1950s, like I LOVE LUCY and THE HONEYMOONERS, remain enjoyable, they very much are period pieces. THE DICK VAN DYKE SHOW is probably the earliest that still feels thoroughly modern, and very much set the template for many of my favourite later shows.

The next big thing I probably knew from him was something I didn't even realize was from him until after he passed away. Turns out he directed the movie OH, GOD! in 1977, starring George Burns and John Denver. Not sure when I first saw it, but it was definitely on TV frequently for a while, and I remember loving it and watching it several times. Haven't seen it in decades, which I'll rectify soon. I did know about several of his other movies, especially those with Steve Martin in the 1980s, and enjoyed those.

In the mid-1980s, there were a few weekend shows on the radio locally which played comedy bits, stand-up clips, songs and the like, and one of my favourites of those were the Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks "2000 Year Old Man" skits. Just loved those. Didn't realize until now that there was an animated TV special made of them in 1975, which is a lot of fun, and should be embedded below

Although, looking at it, I remember that my local library had a book based on the concept, and looking around quickly I see that it was illustrated in the same style as the animated special.

Anyway, a remarkable talent, I'me looking forward to revisiting a lot of his work for years to come.

Jay Hosler's CLAN APIS returns in colour as WAY OF THE HIVE

Great news that Jay Hosler's excellent CLAN APIS book is being republished next year from from a major publisher, in colour and with a new less latiny title THE WAY OF THE HIVE. I've long been a huge fan of the book, wrote about it on the early days of this weblog. In fact, shortly after writing that post I went out and got the rest of the original series, despite already having the collection, so when I get this new one it'll be my third copy of the series. Happy to have it. The colour looks really good, check over here for more samples.

Joe Sinnott, R.I.P.

Sad to hear about the passing of comic book artist Joe Sinnott.  While I was mostly a DC reader as a kid, one Marvel book I read for quite a while was FANTASTIC FOUR. In retrospect, a lot of that had to do with the steady hand of Sinnott's inks over a variety of pencillers, from George Perez to Keith Pollard to John Byrne to Bill Sienkiewicz.  Later on of course I'd discover that a lot of what he was bringing to the work was what he learned on his long collaboration with the creator of the book, Jack Kirby, and without a doubt the best pages of FF that Kirby did were the ones inked by Sinnott. Over 1000 of them, so that's quite a bit to pick from. Also loved their other work together, including some great Thor, Captain America and Silver Surfer stories and numerous covers. I also always loved him over other artists, so up top are two of the more unusual examples, Sinnott over Curt Swan on his signature character, Superman, and over Sergio Aragones on a Fantastic Four story.

And here he is on some more familiar ground, Kirby pencils, but on images you might not have seen. The FF cover is an unused 1960s Kirby cover that he inked later, and the New Gods sketch is from the 1970s. The Satan's Six page is a creator-owned feature by Kirby, probably drawn in the 1970s and published in 1993.

The only Kirby originals I've been lucky enough to be able to take an extended look at up close were pages inked by Sinnott, a pair of 1960s FF pages and a 1970s cover. They were even more impressive in person, just so flawlessly smooth and precise, capturing the power in Kirby's work while also capturing subtle details in the facial expressions and fully rendering the backgrounds in a way that doesn't overpower the foreground.

From The Warp of Dennis O'Neil

Sure, there's a lot of Batman, Question, Green Lantern, Daredevil, Iron Man, Spider-Man, Superman and others of that ilk in Dennis O'Neil's oeuvre that you'll hear a lot about, often from me, but here are a few others from O'Neil's over half-century in comics.

Frank Miller draws O'Neil's story "Philistine" in BIZARRE ADVENTURES #31 [1982], a short lived anthology title from Marvel that O'Neil also edited. Miller and O'Neil's paths would cross often in comics, with O'Neil writing the first Batman story Miller drew and two memorable Spider-Man annuals, O'Neil editing most of Miller's first run on Daredevil, including Miller's transition to writing the book in addition to drawing it, working together on a short bit on Will Eisner's The Spirit "jam" story and O'Neil editing the "Batman Year One" story.  The theme of this issue was "Violence", and this story delivers with a clever conceit of a silent traveler in an art museum where the pieces come to life and attack him while the curator narrates.

Speaking of Will Eisner's creation, as briefly mentioned before, O'Neil wrote the character two more times in addition to the "Spirit Jam" contribution, when DC was publishing new stories of the character. In THE SPIRIT #13 [2008] we have "Family Treasure" with art by Ty Templeton, very much an old-school Eisner take on the feature, with the Spirit helping a woman who is trying to find a hidden inheritance from her uncle ahead of some thieves. O'Neil would come back to the character one more time for a more frantic take with Bill Sienkiewicz artwork a few years later.

THE UNEXPECTED #195 [1980] features "Deadly Homecoming", a long 25-page Madame Xanadu story with artwork by Johnny Craig, about a pair of soldiers making along delayed return from Vietnam, but may have brought something more sinister back with them. It's a nice sort of Twilight Zone story, or maybe like an old EC story with room to breathe (which is appropriate, given the artist).

While working for Marvel early on, O'Neil also picked up some work for Charlton, using the pen-name "Sergius O'Shaughnessy".  One of the most memorable is "Children Of Doom", a full-length story drawn by Pat Boyette in CHARLTON PREMIERE #2 [1967].  Set after a global catastrophe that killed most of humanity and left some of the survivors with mutant powers. A very thoughtful story with a lot of levels, and really elevated by Pat Boyette's artwork, which uses a lot of black and white sections to good effect (apparently this was partly a production issue as the story was a last minute substitute for another one that fell through, but whatever the reason it works visually).

SPACE ADVENTURES #2 [1968] is another Charlton story by "Sergius", and actually a sequel to a story published the previous year in SPACE ADVENTURES #60.  Yeah, that's Charlton for you. The three part story is illustrated by Jim Aparo (the page shown), Steve Ditko and Pat Boyette, three remarkable artists that Charlton somehow got with their low page rates and didn't do justice to with their sub-par printing. The story involves Paul Mann, a reporter who gets mixed up with warring time-travelers from the year 4000 AD.  Quite memorable, and each of the artists gets a few points to really shine visually.

REAL WAR STORIES #1 [1987] was an anthology edited by Joyce Brabner for the Central Committee For Conscientious Objectors and published by Eclipse, presenting various biographical and journalistic stories about war and its effects on actual people. O'Neil wrote and Steve Leialoha drew "The Decision - Andy Mager's Story" based on the case of a man who was tried and convicted for refusing to register for the draft. O'Neil's biography in the back reads "I've written a lot of comic book stories - something over 700. The one included here is a kind of atonement for some others I'm not proud of".

O'Neil co-wrote a novel, DRAGON'S FISTS, in 1974 with Jim Berry, introducing the character Richard Dragon. The novel was later adapted by O'Neil for a comic book series at DC and then continued after that, with the character eventually becoming a regular supporting character in various books. RICHARD DRAGON, KUNG FU FIGHTER #5 [1976] is the first issue after the adaptation of the novel, drawn by Ric Estrada and Wallace Wood, and is notable for introducing Lady Shiva, who became a regular in the book and a major supporting character in other DC books years later. It's a pretty fun series, overall, a bit uneven at times (especially as the page count gets down to 17 pages an issue).

Azrael was probably the character O'Neil wrote the most in his career, starting with the co-creation of the character in 1992 with Joe Quesada, when he was introduced with the intention of temporarily taking over as Batman the next year. After that storyline (edited and partly written by O'Neil) was done the character got a solo series, which O'Neil wrote for 100 issues, three annuals and three specials, which is probably close to, if not more than, the amount of solo Batman O'Neil wrote.  I read the series on and off, tending to drift away when it got too entwined with the Batman books, but usually enjoyed it. AZRAEL ANNUAL #1 [1995] (drawn by David Ammerman, with a framing sequence by Barry Kitson, the first regular artist on the series) might be the highlight of what I've read of the series. It provides some backstory and contextualization for the first appearance of the character, exploring the last mission of his father, the previous Azrael. It neatly explains a few anomalies in the original story so well that I was always curious if the revelation in this issue was planned from the start. 

O'Neil wrote ten of the twelves issues of the mid-1970s comic book incarnation of Walter Gibson's pulp vigilante character The Shadow. Half of them were drawn by Michael Kaluta and got re-printed in the 1980s, but the rest didn't, THE SHADOW #10 [1975] features "The Night of the Killers" with art by E. R. Cruz has the Shadow go after a family of killers who have injured one of his helpers.  I remember back when I first read some of these stories I went back and read some of the original pulps, and these seemed very true to the spirit of those. O'Neil also write a Batman crossover with the Shadow in this era, which sadly hasn't been reprinted, and returned to the character with Kaluta (inked by Russ Heath) for a long story at Marvel in 1988.

CHAMBER OF DARKNESS #5 [1970] has the short story "The Beast from the Bog" drawn by Paul Reinman, about an old couple who encounter an alien creature in a remote swamp. A nice echo of the monster stories that were Marvel's bread and butter for a while a decade before, with a then-modern twist.

In his early days at Marvel, O'Neil mostly wrote for the teen books like MILLIE THE MODEL and westerns, like this story from RAWHIDE KID #54 [1966].  "The Passenger" is drawn by Don Heck and Bill Everett and features a fancy pants journalist on the Mississippi who encounters some river pirates determined to blow up a settlement across the river. It's kind of silly, mostly set up to reveal what famous historical figure the journalist is.

O'Neil's career intersected with Steve Ditko a few times over the years, in addition to some of his most memorable work being done on characters Ditko created.  Early on, O'Neil scripted the last few Doctor Strange stories that Ditko wrote and drew over at Marvel. Then over at Charlton they worked together on a handful of stories, including a chapter of the science fiction epic above and this horror story. At around the same time O'Neil was also scripting BEWARE THE CREEPER over at DC. In the 1980s they worked on an IRON MAN issue together, which is a whole other story.  Anyway, GHOSTLY TALES #69 [1968] features "Music Of Murder" drawn by Ditko and written by "Sergius" (credited in a later letter column), a story of witchcraft set in late 19th century England (and featuring a cameo by a notable detective of that era). It's a fun little example of the genre, with a lot of humourous asides and little gags featuring the host Mr. Dedd in a slightly more active role than in most of his stories. (more on O'Neil/Ditko collaborations)

Bat Lash was a roguish western character introduced by Sergio Aragonés and Nick Cardy in an issue of SHOWCASE before getting his own book for seven issues. O'Neil came aboard to do scripts over Aragonés' stories on the regular series.  BAT LASH #7 [1969] concludes the series on a high note, with Bat encountering a young man who, unknown to either of them, is his long lost brother. A nicely constructed little story that plays up the melodrama of the situation. And man, just look at that Nick Cardy art. O'Neil would return to the character once in the 1970s for an entertaining story.

Dennis O'Neil, R.I.P.

Very sad to hear about the passing of Dennis O'Neil at age 81. O'Neil was a key creator in American comics going back to the mid-1960s, doing a lot of celebrated work in long stays as both writer and editor at DC and Marvel, as well as some early pseudonymous work at Charlton and a few other places.

He was pretty prolific at DC in the late 1970s, so I probably read a bunch of his stories early on, but the first one I remember clearly was DYNAMIC CLASSICS #1 from 1978, a reprint title from the short-lived "DC Explosion" which ended up being a one-shot thanks to the subsequent "DC Implosion". It features a reprint of the 1970 story "Secret Of The Waiting Graves", the first solo Batman story O'Neil wrote, as well as his first collaboration with artist Neal Adams. By this time the O'Neil/Adams work had long been the template for the newer Batman stories I was reading, but the quality of this one, combined with the presentation in this series as a historically important story made it quite memorable. So did teaming it up with the first chapter of the Simonson/Goodwin Manhunter, man did this book make you want more, which sadly wasn't quickly forthcoming.

I probably next began to notice O'Neil's name on some of the digest comics I was buying from DC at the time. An O'Neil credited story would almost always be a highlight of any issue it appeared in. The most key of those was a collection of a good chunk of the O'Neil/Adams run on GREEN LANTERN from the early 1970s.  It was quite a rarity back then for the names of creators to be featured so prominently on the cover of an American super-hero comic, and the stories definitely lived up to the hype.

It was around this time that O'Neil moved over to Marvel for a while, and while I was more of a DC fan at the time, I do remember really liking some of the Spider-Man comics that O'Neil wrote in the early 1980s, especially a pair of annuals he did with Frank Miller, which I'd probably still rank as my favourite post-Ditko Spider-Man stories.

So among my early comics, those were among the ones I would re-read frequently, and I'd note O'Neil's name in any others I had, a GREEN LANTERN here, a WORLD'S FINEST there, and some editorial credits as well.  After I stopped buying comics for a few years when the newsstand sources dried up I finally started making regular trips to comic stores around 1988, and among the delights I found was that in the interim DC had graduated from digest reprints to their deluxe full-sized "Baxter paper" reprint line, and I was lucky enough to get most of the issues of GREEN LANTERN / GREEN ARROW reprinting the rest of those stories I sampled in the digest, in much better form, and all of THE SAGA OF RA'S AL GHUL, which scratched that longtime itch that DYNAMIC CLASSICS had given me (and as a bonus I also got the reprint of the Manhunter story in that series of reprints). Well, that pretty much made it clear I was a Dennis O'Neil fan.

After a few months back in comics, I was mostly buying back issues, sampling some new releases, but nothing had really clicked as a regular on-going purchase yet. But with O'Neil on the brain his name really popped off the very striking cover to THE QUESTION #21. That clicked, instantly and completely. Tracking down all those earlier issues and making sure I got each new one made regular trips to the comic shop a requirement, and helped me find a lot more.

(I documented one of my many re-reads of THE QUESTION in an early series of posts on this weblog, including listing all of O'Neil's Recommended Reading List from the letter columns)

From there it just expands. Pretty soon I was also aware that O'Neil was the Batman editor of the time, as well as occasionally writing the character, and I was pretty all-in on the Batman books for a while. I also found out more about the past, and started picking up things like his 1980s DAREDEVIL run, some 1970s SUPERMAN issues with Curt Swan and a lot more. As reprints shifted from single issues to actual books, I discovered even more of his earlier work, and there were so many little things to discover. And I loved a lot of his later work. I'll try to highlight a few of them in another post soon.

Anyway, Dennis O'Neil was undoubtedly my favourite writer in comics among those who don't draw their own stories, and close to the top even without that qualification. As you can see from this particular section of my collection, there's a lot to discover.

How I spent my quarantine... (TV overdose edition 2.0)

Continuing to watch too much TV for a second month. I think I'm going to slow down on that for a while. Maybe do some more reading. Unfortunately my eyes kind of began to go south early this year, so I have a lot more problems reading, especially older books and comics on newsprint. Some non-prescription reading glasses I got a while ago help a bit, as does reading in bright light (ideally natural sunlight), but I think I need something more when going to the optometrist is an option again.

Most of what I watched this time was on Amazon Prime, since I had to mail order some stuff and it made sense to get Prime for a month to save on shipping. I generally do that about once or twice a year and catch up with some shows when I do that.

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The show I watched the most was PARKS AND RECREATION, which I'd only seen a few times before. I started hearing more and more good things about it over the years since it ended in 2015, and of course I was a big fan of co-creator Michael Schur's THE GOOD PLACE over the last few years. I ended up watching about half of the 125 episodes over a month, mostly in random order. I really liked most of it, although the first two years are definitely weaker than average, and the first year in particular is almost another show (I'm pretty sure I tried it at least once in that first year when it first aired). Loved the bulk of it, oddly I find that watching it out of order worked pretty good, despite the frequent running jokes and callbacks.

In a pleasant bit of timing, about half-way through the month there was a reunion special for PARKS AND RECREATION, set in the current quarantine, written and produced from the homes of the cast and crew. When it came out I had seen just enough of the show to appreciate it (in a nice bit of timing I'd seen two episodes with Li'l Sebastian on the morning of the day of the special, which really helped to appreciate the big closing scene).  This link should lead to the special in the US, or over here for some highlights and extended scenes.

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Also watched a bunch of 30 ROCK episodes, as I have a few times before. It was also a show with a somewhat rough start, and is pretty uneven throughout, but there are a lot of really good episodes. A few of the characters are tough to take in large doses, so when it comes around to a show where the spotlight is on them it's not great.

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3rd ROCK FROM THE SUN is a show I watched on occasion when it was new and in syndication since, but never on a regular basis. Most of it is still new to me, and it's a pretty decent diversion. After about a dozen random episodes I watched the first few and the last few, which were all new to me. It gets a bit formulaic at times, so it's good to take a break, but I think by the next time I have it available I'll be ready to watch another bunch of episodes. It's a bit odd to watch something more recent done in the multi-camera studio audience style, which dominated the older sitcoms I watched last month.

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I've been watching new episodes of SUPERSTORE in the last few months, and it's pretty decent, so it was nice to have the first four seasons available. It's pretty decent, occasionally very good. I'm looking forward to watching the rest of it someday.

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SCRUBS was added to the service late in the month I had it, and I've already seen every episode of the show, sometimes multiple times, but it was nice to revisit a dozen or so favourites from throughout the run.

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PARTY DOWN was a short lived comedy from about a decade ago, only lasting 20 episodes over two seasons. I'd heard a few good things about it, and it was pretty entertaining for the most part. It was quite a bit of a departure from all the previous comedies that I was watching, as it was done for a cable channel and was more than liberal with the sex and swearing than any network prime-time show could be. Got through the entire short run, and really wish there were more.

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BOSCH is Amazon Prime's long-running police drama. Seems every time I subscribe to the service there's another season of ten episodes, just the right length to fill a month of viewing. Nothing revolutionary, but a better acted and produced version of the standard network police procedural, with a few long running cases dominating the season and a few side trips and subplots along the way.  Just checking and I see there's one more season coming, eventually, so I guess maybe next time I get the service I'll re-watch the existing episodes to get ready for it.

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COUNTERPART is a recent sci-fi/espionage drama which lasted for two seasons. I was kind of slow to start it, and wasn't sure I'd keep going, but towards the end I really liked it and rushed to finish up the first season before the month was up. I might even have "binged" ::shudder:: the second season if I didn't check and see the local library has it available, so I'll get that when the shutdown ends. It's a parallel Earth's story, which could get a bit confusing at times, but I think I have it figured out.

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HIGH FIDELITY is a new show, based on the book by Nick Hornby. Some background on this for me. I went to see the 2000 movie based on the book, based primarily on my love of a previous movie by the star (John Cusack) and screenwriters (Cusack, D.V. DeVincentis & Steve Pink), GROSSE POINT BLANK. I walked out of the theatre straight into a bookstore and picked up the Hornby novel, which I started reading on the subway and finished at about 4AM the next morning. So you know, you could say I liked it. I've read the book a few times over the years, and it might be the movie I've watched the most over that last 20 years. So I was kind of curious but also a bit wary about the idea of a new take on the story, with the main character changed to a woman and set in modern day New York.

For the most part I was pleasantly surprised. I'm so familiar with the source material and the prior screen adaptation that it feels, appropriately, like a cover version of the original, done in a completely different genre and with some odd choices, but also hitting all of the expected  and familiar beats, sometimes in unusual places. I'd be really curious about how someone who hasn't seen the movie or read the book (or, as I just discovered, seen the stage version, which I'm listening to the Broadway cast recording of now). I'm also really curious if there'll be a second season, moving into uncharted territory, and how I'll feel about that. I definitely liked this one enough to check it out if and when.

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UPLOAD is another new show, this one created by Greg Daniels, who co-created the aforementioned PARKS AND RECREATION, as well as the American version of THE OFFICE. This is quite a bit different from his previous work, almost more of a long comedy/adventure/sci-fi hybrid movie cut into half hour chunks. The story it about a near future where people can be copied on their death to a digital afterlife, where they can continue to interact with the living. I'd say I'm of two minds about it on first viewing. It can be very funny at times, and clever, but sometimes it goes for the easy joke which might get in the way of coherent world-building. The story also takes a few odd twists, and then ends setting up a second season. Which, just checking, it's going to get, although with what's going on in the world who knows when. I'll be there to check it out.

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JACK RYAN is the latest version of the Tom Clancy's unlikely character of a CIA analyst who gets involved in all sorts of international conspiracies, previously appearing in five movies with four actors, now played by John Krasinski. I watched the first season, and it was okay. The second I liked far less. It's pretty much just an over-long adventure film, with too many of the usual chases and firefights of the genre, all going on far too long, but never really innovating. Eight one hour episodes is probably more than twice what the story needs, I'd love to have the option of a tight 2-3 hour cut. since that won't happen, I think I'm out for next year. Unless it comes out in the 20th month of the pandemic, in which case I'll probably be willing to watch anything.

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THE CAPTURE is a British TV crime series from last year, which starts off as a fairly routine drama but become more concerned with espionage, conspiracies and technology as it goes on. It's pretty well done, but becomes a bit confusing and less than plausible by the end. Also, a bit annoyingly, I found out late in that it was six one hour episodes in the original but Amazon cuts it to eight 45-minute episodes. I thought the pacing was weird, with dramatic minutes in the middle of episodes and scenes split at odd places. Completely unnecessary bit of editing. Anyway, not sure if it'll ever continue, but I probably won't be around if it does.

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A few other random bits. I saw the first few episodes of HUNTERS, the series about 1970s Nazi hunters who uncover a vast Nazi conspiracy, and it was pretty good, but I couldn't really get motivated to finish it. Just not what my mind needs right now. Maybe next time. I saw that THE NANNY was available, and remembered hearing that there was an episode where Fran Drescher played her Spinal Tap character Bobbi Flekman as well as her usual gig as the titular nanny. That episode was okay, I think they could have done a bit more with it instead of wasting time with a musical guest and other sub-plots. I ended up watching another half dozen episodes, and it was a surprisingly decent old-school sitcom, you could see the DNA of shows like I LOVE LUCY and LAVERNE AND SHIRLEY in it. Next time I have the service it might be one of my "doing something else" shows. I watched a few DICK VAN DYKE SHOW episodes, which were great, but I can get those from the library post-shutdown, as I did for a few seasons last year. ELECTRIC DREAMS, an anthology loosely based on Philip K. Dick stories, seemed decent if I was in a different mood. Watched a handful of SMALLVILLE episodes, and it's pretty amazing how far visual effects in super-hero TV shows have come since then.