Comments on: John Seavey’s Storytelling Engines: Silver Surfer

By: comixkid2099

comixkid2099 — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 05:07:53 +0000

“Problem here is that Stan Leeâ€™s Siver Surfer series was good, while Englehartâ€™s was pretty bad.”

How? the Englehart series had better villains, a better suporting cast, and still characterised everyone acurately. the only thing that might have been better about the stan lee series is the art, which was by Jack Kirby, if i am not mistaken.

By: John Seavey

John Seavey — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 13:00:49 +0000

Right–and they reprinted that first issue in Marvel Fanfare, even though it was now totally out of continuity, as both an interesting look at “what might have been” and as a look at some excellent Buscema artwork (the delays while they decided whether or not to keep the Surfer on Earth meant that Buscema had to drop out, to be replaced by the late Marshall Rogers.) The Marvel Fanfare story is also reprinted in ‘Essential Silver Surfer Volume Two’, as mentioned above, along with some appearances of the Silver Surfer that fit in between the two series.

Also worth mentioning is that one of the reasons there were so few Silver Surfer appearances between his old series and new is that for a long time, Stan Lee reserved the right to script all of the Surfer’s appearances himself; it was apparently the character he was most fond of, and he wanted to work on him a lot more often than he got to. Eventually, recognizing the impracticality of the demand, Lee retracted it.

By: Brian Cronin

Brian Cronin — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 05:50:59 +0000

No, it was, as John mentioned, ORIGINALLY mandated that he NOT leave Earth, and Englehart wrote the first issue under that mandate, but then Shooter changed his mind.

By: Stephane Savoie

Stephane Savoie — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 04:02:44 +0000

Didn’t a recent Comic Book Urban legends column claim that it was an editorially mandated decision to get the Surfer off Earth, rather than Englehart’s own?

By: Pedro BouÃ§a

Pedro BouÃ§a — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 09:52:46 +0000

Problem here is that Stan Lee’s Siver Surfer series was good, while Englehart’s was pretty bad.

It sold more, yeah, but sales are hardly good measures of quality. I mean, Rob Liefeld’s X-Force easily outsold both Silver Surfer series…

Best,
Hunter (Pedro BouÃ§a)

By: Luke

Luke — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 21:24:48 +0000

The second volume of “Silver Surfer” was the first comic book I ever seriously collected, and remains (generally speaking) a favorite of mine to this day. Very cool, open-ended stuff which could really be pushed in any direction thanks to his new space-faring ways. Great post, thanks!