Comic Book Resources

The biggest problem I have with Moench on Batman in the 1980s is keeping track of what’s going on. He wrote both titles and basically pulled a Claremont, turning them into a soap opera. Back in the day when I tried to find back issues, I could only fill up the collection in spots, and whenever I read them I felt I was missing a lot because I didn’t have the issues around that particular one. But I certainly enjoyed them. And, of course, Moench came back and wrote a brilliant Batman with Kelley Jones in the 1990s. Another great run that hasn’t been collected and probably never will be.

Great column as always, Greg.

Couldn’t agree more about the Pasko/Yeates Swamp Thing. Good solid work marginalized by the bedazzlement that followed. Shame.

My only encounter with Don Kraar’s work was Brave and the Bold #183, a Batman/Riddler team-up. Good story once you get past the ugly Infantino/DeCarlo art.

I too like Frank Robbins’ Batman a lot (I prefer his Shadow over Kaluta’s) but I’m afraid I don’t share your enthusiasm for the Doug Moench material. I find it horribly overwritten, particularly the turgid, would-be poetics that filled the pades whenever Nocturna and the Thief of Night showed up. But then outside of Master of Kung Fu, I’ve never been a Moench fan.

Also, correct me if I’m wrong but wasn’t Harvey Bullock introduced during Gerry Conway’s run on the Bat-books?

Most sources list Doug Moench as Harvey Bullock’s creator, but this being the internet, they might all very well be cribbing from each other. *I* remember him as being introduced early in the Moench-Newton run, though. It was either the Riddler story or possibly the Skull story that led into it.

Wow! Somebody else loves that Kraar/Severin Conan the Reaver OGN!

That was the first Conan story I ever read, after years of ignoring the comics. I saw it in a corner bin and bought it for the Severin art. WOW! Kraar’s beautifully written story destroyed my little mind. Since then, I’ve re-read it hundreds of times and I’ve read most of the other Conan comics as well, hoping to find something else as good. Nothing compares. I love that book. Who are you, Don Kraar?

When Martin Pasko’s Swamp Thing came out, I read it for a few issues and gave up becaue it was so dull. 2 years later – The Anatomy Lesson – wow!

When Doug Moench’s Batman was around, I read the occasional issue, but gave up because it was essentially dull. 2 years later – Batman Year 1 – wow!

Anyone who enjoyed Len Wein and John Buscema’s work obviously had never read Lee/Kirby (which wasn’t easy when I was young and this came out).

Feel free to celebrate the mediocre, but I’m tired of waste my time and money on crap comics.

And as for the Who, I leave you to guess my biases…

Speaking of MOKF, Gene Day could be considered of a victim of the Entwistle syndrome, since his work on that series tends to be overshadowed by that of Paul Gulacy and Mike Zeck. Which is odd, since Day was probably better than Zeck.

And besides Tom Yeates, Nestor Redondo and Rick Veitch are two other great Swamp Thing artists whose work is often forgotten because they were the replacements for more famous creative teams.

I can’t remember the exact issue numbers, but I do remember seeing Don Kraar’s name on some of the later run issues of The Shadow Strikes! from DC in the early 90′s.

Pasko’s ‘Blackhawk’ run also gets criminally underrated, mainly because it follows on from the far better known Chaykin mini-series.

Well now, I’m glad to see Wein and Buscema get some kudos for their work on Thor. I enjoyed these immensely, because this is when I was just starting to get into comics at the tender age of fifteen. I’d barely even HEARD of Kirby and Lee at that point.

Besides, they had the Warriors Three…and I LOVED the Warriors Three. Of course I also had a mad crush on John Denver at the time, so the taste of a fifteen year old is somewhat suspect.

Year Two, really? I like what they did with Leslie Thompkins, but otherwise… ugh. It’s sort of related to an Entwistle I guess, but I’d think of it more as a “Phantom Menace.” A below average work that, because it’s associated by name with a much greater work, becomes hated by me.

I double-checked and I was wrong. Moench and Newton did create Harvey Bullock. My bad.

Concerning the Pasko/Yeates SWAMP THING, I felt they started off on the wrong foot, because the first issue included a big disclaimer to the effect, “Ignore the fact that Swampy reverted to Alec Holland at the end of his original series.” This was totally unnecessary as it had proven temporary in a revival of CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN that became known as a haven for homeless heroes (Deadman and Rip Hunter, Time Master turned up there as well). Of course, what Moore did later required throwing all that out anyway, but that doesn’t justify the note in #1 in its own context.

Huh. I’m not sure I’ve EVER heard anyone mention the Marv Wolfman Daredevil before. That was a quite solid run.

Swamp Thing–Judging from the letter columns from SotST around the time Moore took over (i.e., before Moore’s issues were commented upon), Pasko’s work wasn’t well-received at all. A lot of it centered on his tenure being an overly-long, meandering arc of something like 11 issues. Some of the Entwistles you mention could be considered better comics now than when they were released due to a changing comics landscape. Comics, and the judgment of their quality, are rooted in context. Analyses of comics will change with time due to these differing contexts. For example, a long arc in 1982 and one in 2007 would elicit much different reactions from their contemporary readers. A reader in 2007 would approach an older arc with a differing expectation of long-form comics storytelling. Importantly, only the 2007 reader could compare the two, so an analysis such as the one here must move the 1982 story into a new context. It may be that some of the works discussed are good comics now, but weren’t upon their release. It’s a complex consideration, as these comics, and the reactions to them, directly shape the context in which we now examine them. The printed comics haven’t been changed, but comics are more than the printed page; they are an interaction between the page and the reader. As the reader is altered, the comic effectually changes (consider disagreements over quality on this page or re-reading childhood favorites).

It is difficult, and likely counterproductive, to create a story with a goal of making popular at some undetermined point in the future. What is a component of good storytelling, however, is creating a comic with regard to one’s predecessors and the expectations of the audience. Recognizing one’s contribution to the future of comics is also important, but I think it’s more effective to develop a stong work that guides comics towards better stories than creating something that one thinks will be a better work in some envisioned future context. Those stories that have overshadowed these (The Townsends, I suppose) simply work better in the current comics context, by design or serendipity. Part of their success is due to their strong role in determining this context. Frank Miller’s Batman informs much of the current Batman because it was so well-received, and Frank Miller’s Batman continues to be popular because it resembles the current Batman. Moench’s Batman contributed less to today’s Batman, so regard for his stories is less strong.

The Dark Knight Project sounds interesting. Got title / issue numbers for that so I can go a-hunting on EBay?

And here I thought I was the only one who liked Jurgen’s Flash Gordon mini.

Which is somewhat odd, as I don’t really care for his other stuff that much.

It’s blasphemy I’m sure to say, but I actually prefer Frank Robbins’ art in DC’s 70s Shadow revival than Mike Kaluta. And I really like Kaluta. And Robbins got absolutely no respect for his work on that or Batman, which I always thought was disappointing.

An interesting-Entwistling-the-Entwistled would be Alan Moore’s first issue on Swamp Thing which is never reprinted but is actually very good in how it actually ties up all the loose ends of Pasko’s run and sets up the things in it he’ll revisit later. (It’s actually the issue that got me hooked on Moore– an Aunt gave it to me for my birthday and I didn’t need the next issue to sell me that this was a book to start collecting). Virtually every collection of Moore’s work starts with The Anatomy Lesson so it’s the Entwistle of his own work.

I don’t think he qualifies as an Entwistle because he never was overshadowed by anything better with that character, but I do think a criminally overlooked creator is Cary Bates. When the first Greatest Flash Stories ever told volume came out in the 1990s they reprinted stories by Fox, Broome and all the usual suspects and did not reprint virtually anything by the man who wrote the character for almost a decade and a half! And that amnesia is still there– his work has never been reprinted or even acknowledged, even though practically everything he brought to the Barry Allen Flash is still referenced!

Daredevil, by Karl Kesel–it was a run just before Kevin Smith and the relaunch of the series, and it took the character very much back to his roots as a wise-cracking adventurer. Which meant, apparently, that everyone hated it because it wasn’t Frank Miller’s DD. But I thought it was great–Matt Murdock clearing Mr. Hyde of a crime he didn’t commit, the introduction of Rosalind Sharpe…good, good stuff that got totally overshadowed by the relaunch.

Haven’t read enough of Moench’s 1st Bat to form an opinion, but I’m with Burgas, his 2nd run with Kelley Jones is totally Enwistle (in the sense that it got overshadowed by both crossover-itis and Dixon’s work). Other Enwistle’s:

William Messner-Loebs’s pre-Waid FLASH. I know it’s blasphemy, but I thought Bill actually wrote a better Wally than Waid (though Waid definitely wrote better stories and was more epic).

Dan Jurgens/JRJr THOR. Jurgens got a little beyond his capacity with the “Lord of Asgard” stuff, but he was surprisingly brilliant early on with JRJr. It’s weird how, even if you took away Kirby and Simonson, there’d still be at least three pretty awesome runs of Thor that people would still talk about today.

Ann Nocenti’s DD. This has been picking up attention in recent years, and much deserved. She took the very narrow template Miller gave her and broadened it to the wider MU, a textbook example of how to follow a legendary reimagining. JRJr didn’t hurt, either. In fact, I’d argue Bendis and Bru owe a greater debt to her than to Miller.

Scott Lobdell’s UNCANNY. Okay, it pales against Claremont, but who wouldn’t? Lobdell was actually a pretty good scripter (better than CC, at any rate) and brought a great deal of sophistication to otherwise crap stories. If you can look through the heavy-handed editorial mandates (and overlook some of Scott’s more unfortunate character directions), there’s some craft at work here.

I really liked Jurgens’ Flash Gordon too. Another curiosity of a lot of this “Entwistle Syndrome” stuff is that it’s just *ignored* I don’t remember anyone especially denigrating Jurgens’ series, for instance; it just didn’t seem to make any impact good or bad.

You could do a lot worse (and it looks like the Sci-Fi Channel has) than use his series as a template for a “modernized” Flash Gordon.

I don’t think he qualifies as an Entwistle because he never was overshadowed by anything better with that character, but I do think a criminally overlooked creator is Cary Bates.

This comment is really embarrassing to read. Believe it or not, I had a whole bit I was going to do on the 80′s Charlton reboots, with Cary Bates and his Captain Atom (and also Wein and Cullins’ Blue Beetle) getting Entwistle’d by O’Neil’s re-imagined Question, but somehow I left it out of the final draft. I usually load the cover images first and they serve as prompts for me when I’m writing. I was sure I’d loaded Captain Atom and Blue Beetle but apparently I forgot. Even in the comics blogosphere the books can’t get a break.

But I completely agree about Cary Bates. He did a lot of good work, not just on the Flash. But all anyone remembers is “Oh, God, he’s the one that had that Flash trial stretch on forever,” and that wasn’t Bates’ doing, that was editorial, Bates wanted to end it sooner. And you are absolutely right that throwing out the fifteen years of Flash that came before is really unfair… not to mention Superman, Captain Atom and Silverblade, all of which were good Bates books as well.

Also, Paperghost, Brubaker and McDaniel’s “Dark Knight Project” story appeared in Batman #584. Which makes it, yikes, actually more like seven years ago.

Brubaker’s Batman run sort of got Entwistle’d, come to think of it — that was a good run crippled by crossover stupidity. Every time he started to get something good going he’d have to pause and tie in to some giant continuity thing. But he had some good stories in between and this was one of them. GCD entry here.

I’ve never read Flash Gordon, but I can’t agree on Jurgens’ other books. Certainly there are worse offenders out there, but everything I’ve read of his (both writing and art) was just deadly dull.

Hmmm…I take it back…there was one book…it was one of the Doomsday mini’s that came out in the mid-90′s…Superman fought the monster with a baby strapped to his back. I thought that was kinda cool.

Wow. I never thought I’d see someone extolling the virtues of Jurgen’s Thor or Lobdell’s Uncanny. I wouldn’t call Lobdell’s run sophisticated, so much as clusterfucked. There were always a couple subplots too many and yet, somehow, none of them got resolved in less than a year and a half. The characters were one-dimensional, too.

As for Jurgen’s Thor, I don’t remember a whole lot of it, but I remember being bored out of my skull trying to get through the issues. It didn’t help that JRJR was at one of his boxiest stages, but I could have survived it if the writing wasn’t so predictable and cliched.

I’m a big fan of most of the Entwhistles of Comics mentioned here.

Jurgens’ Thor run, especially at the end, was great. I thought it was a very nice examination of power corrupting, and how of doing what you think is the right thing can lead to losing everything. I’ve long thought that if Jurgens had written a story with the same emotional beats about a guy becoming the manager of a video store, The Comics Journal crowd would have loved it. Defintitely hampered by changing artists, though.

The Moench Batman helped get me back into comics. Sadly underrated, as are the Gerry Conway issues that immediately preceded them. A very good example of the comic series as a continuing narrative, not as a single 4 or 6 part story. That’s a style that doesn’t work for everyone, but one I enjoyed when it was the dominant form and miss now that its day has mostly passed.