My Collection - ADVENTURE COMICS [1938 Series]

Adventure Comics [1938 series]
42 issues [1948 - 1982]
127, 292, 317, 333, 372, 375, 390, 416, 428 - 431, 445, 458, 460, 463, 465 - 490

This is the long-running book which took over the numbering from NEW ADVENTURE, which in turn continued from NEW COMICS, the first comic from the company that became DC. Ran a variety of features through the years, including a long run of Legion of Super-Heroes, and was eventually renamed to ADVENTURE COMICS DIGEST with #491, lasting 13 issues with that name.

I was buying this towards the end, through several changes in format. The last few "Dollar Comic" format issues, when it was a general over-sized anthology, then a run where it had the Ditko/Levitz Starman, which I liked, plus some okay Plastic Man and later Aquaman stuff. Then it changed format to the "Dial H For Hero" format, which featured two kids who temporarily tranform to reader designed super-heroes. I liked those at the time, but I was 11 at the time. Some of them still hold up as dopey fun.

Picked up a few back-issues later. Low grade Legion of Super-Heroes issues, a few issues with Sheldon Mayer writing on Black Orchid and the like.

Not too many I'd get rid of among these. I wouldn't mind picking up the few "Dollar Comic" issues I'm missing at some point, but they're absurdly overpriced.

Notable issues:

#428 - #430 - Sheldon Mayer introducing the Black Orchid, with Tony DeZuniga artwork, a lot of fun, a kind of golden-age throwback character.

#431 - the first Aparo/Fleisher Spectre, plus one of my favourite comic stories ever as the backup, Mayer and Alex Toth on "Is a Snerl Human?"

#467 - #478 - The Ditko/Levitz Starman, which is a nice little space-opera, with constant twists and new surprises every issue.

TABOO and Bissette links

After a few days of technical difficulties, updates are showing up on Steve Bissette's blog, so there's a lot to read now, including some stuff about his early days in the Kubert School.

He also points to an interview he did earlier this year about his classic horror anthology, TABOO, which includes a complete index and comments on the 10 issues, plus lots of background on the creative and business side.

Make your own modern analogy..

Not even close...

Now if you told me the vice-president was really Lex Luthor, that would be credible.

Swan/Adams from 1969

EC - A Timely Shock (Kamen)

A Timely Shock
art by Jack Kamen, story by Al Feldstein
Weird Fantasy #10 (1951)

This Jack Kamen illustrated story has a mineralogist going out on a fishing trip in the woods. Despite his desire to get away from his work, he notices an odd outcropping of a quartz-like material. As he examines a sample, a storm comes up and he's struck by lightning.

Recovering, he sees his fishing rod and the rock are gone, and he finds an attractive young woman in the water nearby. She's sure there's no cabin other than hers in the woods, and as she suspects the location of his cabin is empty. Going to her cabin, he also finds out she's a pretty direct woman, wasting no time in proposing. The next day they find out that he's in fact come 100 years into the future thanks to an experimental rock she was working on, and he finds out that a lot of things have changed in the future.

Pretty decent story with an odd surprise ending. As usual for a Kamen story, he takes any chance to draw a woman in a sexy pose, sometimes in quite unlikely ways. I also liked his view of futuristic architecture and design.

Stuff of Interest - November 2005

The Kirby-centric version of this list is here.

PLANET BRONX PRODUCTIONS

Have I told you enough yet how strongly I recommend you buy this? As mentioned before, available now from the publisher directly, but order if from your local comic shop if you think that'll get them to order a few for the shelf.

FANTAGRAPHICS

I've read this in a previous edition, and it's a very good, easy to read silent classic, well worth picking up.

DYNAMIC FORCES

It's a bit overblown for a guy who's still very recent and still working, but I do like Pérez's artwork, and if I ever see a used copy of this in the $10 range (or they release a paperback in that range) I might pick it up.

CLAYPOOL COMICS

I read and enjoyed this book for the longest time, but sort of drifted away in the last few years. I'm impressed that David and Howell and company have made it up to #75, and might track down some recent issues to see what's going on.

CHECKER BOOK PUBLISHING GROUP

The temptation to write my comments in doggerel for this...

Nice cover, I'll probably pick up at least one volume of this series at some point. I always love early work from artists whose later work is so much a part of the fabric of pop culture.

AMAZE INK/SLAVE LABOR GRAPHIC

Have I mentioned in the past few weeks how much I like Roberts' work? One of my favourite modern creators.

AIRWAVE COMICS

Don't know anything about this series other than what I read and see here, but it looks cute enough, and DeCarlo's another of those artists whose later work is ingrained in pop culture.

DARK HORSE

It's USAGI, that's enough. Sakai does good conclusions to epics.

DARK HORSE

Not going to pick it up, but kudos for the "Pekar meets the Escapist" concept.

DARK HORSE

A great series of reprints, with some of the flaws of the early volumes fixed in the more recent releases.

Also, DC reprints some early JONAH HEX stories in their new Essential format, which should just be worth the price to me. Image promises to finally release their "10th Anniversary" book, of interest to me only for the Larry Marder introduction, so I'll probably try to borrow it for that at some point. Also from Image, Colleen Doran releases the fourth A DISTANT SOIL book, which I'll pick up eventually.

Fraggle Rock - Sprocket's Big Adventure (71)

Continuing the occasional looks at various Jim Henson related projects with the 71st episode of FRAGGLE ROCK, the season 4 debut.

Sprocket's Big Adventure

An unusual episode, one of the few I've seen where the Sprocket, the dog, takes center stage. In earlier episodes he'd finally made friends with Gobo, although still having no luck convincing Doc of the existence of furry creatures beyond the hole in the wall. However, plumbing problems lead to a hole in the floor, which allows Sprocket to dig through to Fraggle Rock, where he encounters Doozers (in a Gulliver's Travel type scene), Gorgs and the Trash Heap before finally returning home. Busy day.

I especially liked some of the extended Doozer scenes (including of course Cotterpin) in this episode, as they're one of my favourite bits of the show, with that odd way they look and move and are operated, which makes them a bit different from the everyday muppets. I also thought it was a nice touch that they remembered to do a few camera affects to make Sprocket smaller than he would normally be in relationship to the Gorgs naturally (as they always use smaller full-figure models of the Fraggles when they interact directly with the Gorgs).

As mentioned before, the first season of FRAGGLE ROCK is being released next week. Based on the stuff I've been watching in the past few weeks, I'm leaning towards picking it up, as most of my favourite MUPPET SHOW episodes are in later seasons, while the FRAGGLE ROCK stuff starts off stronger (but I'll probably also pick up the final FRAGGLE set, as about two-thirds of the episodes I've never seen will be on there).

Random fact and fiction

Some stuff I've read lately, in lieu of horseback riding, either books I bought or library copies, recounting events both real and imagined from through time and space.

EMBROIDERIES by Marjane Satrapi - I'd been hearing a lot of praise for Satrapi's work, so I picked this up when I saw it in the library. It's a fairly straight-forward story about a group of Iranian women of several generations exchanging stories and gossip about sex and marriage. It's an interesting read, with a look at an aspect of the culture of the region that doesn't get a lot of exposure. I wasn't overwhelmed, the art was kind of loose (though sometimes clever) and found the story a bit tedious towards the end as it became clear that it was just a series of anecdotes without a unifying point, but I will probably try her PERSEPOLIS volumes, which I gather are much more detailed in both art and plot.


300 by Frank Miller is a quick telling of the story of Spartan King Leonidas at the Battle of Thermopylae, told in big drawings (the original serialized version was composed of all double page spreads, which are each printed as a single page in this double-wide format). I'm not a huge fan of the stuff Miller writes and draws himself, my favourites of his stuff have always been the David Mazzucchelli illustrated stories and a few early stories he drew but didn't write. This didn't change my mind, but I did think the artwork was a lot better than stuff like SIN CITY or DARK KNIGHT STRIKES AGAIN. Especially DKSA. It's pretty clear that he was into the story and it suits his art. Unfortunately the story was terribly light, a quick read without giving any real details of the story (I had to consult a few independent sources to find out what he was actually trying to tell us) and full of lots of stupid macho bravado disguised as characterization. Worth the time reading, but I'm glad I got it from the library.

The latest volume of Osamu Tezuka fanciful history of Siddhartha is BUDDHA v5 - DEER PARK (Budda Dai Gokan Rokuyaon). Still one of Tezuka's oddest work, with a lot of his odd sense of humour, anachronisms and extreme situations. The first half of this book deals with a lot of the characters we had met in previous volumes suddenly finding their paths interacting, as Tatta getting involved in Devadatta's schemes. Later on the focus goes back to Siddhartha, now known as Buddha (the Enlightened One), as he begins preaching the philosophy of life to deer. Boy, I see why they need that note in every issue about having characters and events not from the historical record. I always enjoy the wackiness, but I do wonder how Tezuka will tie it all in for the ending (three more volumes to go, all of which should be out by the end of the year).

More Tezuka, this time returning to the future with his loosely linked Phoenix saga in PHOENIX v5 - RESURRECTION, a pretty complicated story about a man in the 25th century who falls out of an air-car and is saved by a new medical procedure that makes him partly a robot and affects his perceptions, so he sees living beings as abstract shapes and a robot as human. And it gets weirder from there. Jumps back and forth in time and has a few characters who appear in the earlier volumes set further in the future, so I'll have to re-read those with that in mind. I've been preferring the PHOENIX stuff set in the past to those in the future, but there's always some thoughtful and delightful stuff in every volume. I mean, come on, a robot zipping around on its butt?

THE R. CRUMB HANDBOOK by Robert Crumb and Peter Poplaski is a nice thick 400+ page, compact sampler of Crumb's work from through his life, along with various auto-biographical notes from Crumb and a lot of photos. I've never been a huge fan of Crumb, but I find some of his stuff interesting, and it's nice to have a single book with a survey of his career, with bits from sketchbooks, commercial work, gallery shows and early work in addition to the comics. I was a bit sorry that it didn't include "Meatball", probably my favourite Crumb story, and of course a lot of the stuff included does go into the uncomfortable sides of Crumb's attitudes (without getting into the discussion of whether his work actually shows him to be racist and sexist or just comments on racism and sexism). I could have done with fewer photos and such and more comics, but it's a good intro to Crumb for the price. Also includes a CD of Crumb playing music, but I haven't listened to that.