Comic Book Resources

Flex Mentallo is probably the best love letter, though it’s to comics in general rather than a specific run.

I’d almost count the Casey/McGuinness Majestic series as a love letter to bombastic comics, but that may be a bit of a stretch.

New Frontier has been described as a love letter to Silver Age DC. I don’t know if I’m totally on board with that, but I’ve heard it called that many times.

Your mileage may vary, but I do love Fantastic Four: The World’s Greatest Comic Magazine, the twelve-issue miniseries that was a tribute to Stan and Jack’s end-of-run FF and was a continuity implant that fell in between, if i’m remembering, FF #102 and 103. Nearly every hero from the Marvel Universe was in and a whole lotta villains, all in a faux-Jack style that irritated some but which I thought was pretty cool.

Alan Moore’s Supreme was an exceptional love letter to the silver age Superman. Flex Mentallo and New Frontier were great too.

Of course, Alan Moore, Grant Morrison and Darwyn Cooke are somewhat more talented than Brian Michael Bendis and David Mack.

I’ve always thought that Willingham’s FABLES was a love letter to Gaiman’s SANDMAN.

What about All-Star Superman? I’m pretty sure Morrison’s described that as a 60′s Silver Age ‘love letter’.

I think Identity Crisis was more hate mail than a love letter. Your average love letter doesn’t go “Dear Silver Age, I love your characters but you’re too simple. You need more rape and brainwashing. Love, Brad.”

How about Alan Moore’s 1963 series? That was definitely a love letter to the ’60′s.

Grant Morrison said New X-Men was his love letter to Claremont & Byrne’s X-Men.

I got the feeling that Morrison’s 7 Soldiers of Victory, was a love letter to Silver Age DC, with the Manhattan Guardian issues in particular being quite obviously dedicated to Jack Kirby specifically.

Marvels is a basically a four-issue love letter to classic Marvel comics, and I love it. Wonderful series.

Personally, I think my objection to “love letter” comics is less that they’re necessarily more often bad — although they may be, I don’t really know — but that they’re, by nature, backwards-looking and not terribly adventurous comics. Essentially, they all come down to “Hey, remember when _______ happened? Wasn’t that awesome?!?” which is kind of a creatively bankrupt way to approach stories.

Astro City

“Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?”

Starman

Walt Simonson’s Orion may or may not be a 4th World love letter, but it was excellent.

Jeff Smith’s Shazam series, which I have yet to read, is getting all kinds of love.

As the responses here show, there are plenty of good love letters. Wasn’t Alan Moore’s Supreme a love letter too?

I think the problem is that Brad Meltzer’s comics are a different category of comic that often gets mistaken for a love letter – the Stalker Note. Stalkers believe they love the target, even after they finish raping and killing them. Stalker notes are rarely good.

Identity Crisis and Justice League were not the same. Justice League felt like a love letter what with every single character possible showing up and each and every one of them being shown as totally bad-ass.

That reminds me, Alex Ross’s JUSTICE is a love letter to the SUPERFRIENDS.

Seaguy is totally a love letter to comics, which makes it a companion piece to Flex Mentallo.

Clearly, some of the best regarded work in comics can be called love letters. Writing tributes themselves are not bad per se.

The question is how you do it. In the Moore and Morrison examples, they work to recapture the style of the originals, to look at them again through fresh eyes and a renewed sense of wonder. Meltzer’s problem is that he recycles character names and events. Can anyone imagine a silver age JLA/JSA/LSH crossover in which the Legion is just running around tricking the other heroes so they can resurrect the Flash?

“Can anyone imagine a silver age JLA/JSA/LSH crossover in which the Legion is just running around tricking the other heroes so they can resurrect the Flash?”

Ummm. yes, sadly. Too many Superman stories from the late 50s involve someone tricking someone else. Hell, just look at the first Legion appearance.
Don’t get me wrong tho: Meltzer’s JLA was awful.

“Personally, I think my objection to ‘love letter’ comics is less that they’re necessarily more often bad — although they may be, I don’t really know — but that they’re, by nature, backwards-looking and not terribly adventurous comics. Essentially, they all come down to ‘Hey, remember when _______ happened? Wasn’t that awesome?!?’ which is kind of a creatively bankrupt way to approach stories.”

Well said, Patrick. It kind of reminds me of a line Bendis once wrote from Daredevil #41: “Nostalgia is a state of inarticulate contempt to the present and a fear of the future.”

Which seems to capture the thinking behind “love letter” comics, I think. That “fear of the future” seems to have been around in comics for a little while now. Last time I interviewed for an assistant editor’s job at Marvel, Brevoort actually asked me: “So, why would you want to work in a dying industry?”

But speaking of which…does it seem to anyone else that “love letter” is one of those terms we’ve been hearing a LOT of lately? Much like that period of time when we were constantly hearing about genies going back in bottles?

Personally, it’s that sort of stuff that burns me out on comics from time to time.

BUT, in answer to the original question? I’d say “Earth’s Mightiest Heroes” I and II qualify as love letters to the Avengers as (arguably) they SHOULD be written.

I think the Steve Englehart/Marshall Rogers run on Detective Comics in the 70s was a definite love letter to the Golden Age Batman – it brought back the the Batcave, Hugo Strange, Deadshot, Robin… even 1940s style captions.

How about the “Hush” storyline in Batman a couple of years ago. That was all about the love of the character and (more importantly) the rogue’s gallery.

I don’t remember what it’s title is but that last story in the Darwyn Cooke ‘Batman: Ego and other tails’ hardcover was a retelling of the first Batman comic he ever read. That seems like a loveletter.

All the Loeb/Sale “color” books are love letters. The best of course being Spider-Man Blue.

Oh, and Kevin Smith’s MK run on Daredevil felt like a love letter comic as well.

Yeah but is that Kevin Smith Daredevil stuff even remotely readable? I remember reading it at the same time that Bendis was entering his second year on DD and I remember it being just brutal.

Hush may be a love letter to the Batman villains, but that doesn’t stop it from being an absolutely awful one.

I will say this, ATOM – you probably stuck Bendis’ DD out longer than I was able to!

Here’s a question: When a comic book story/run is being PROMOTED as a “love letter” to a fondly remembered period on a comic book title, does it effect your opinion of the story in any way, as opposed to a comic book story/run that is heavily INFLUENCED by a fondly remembered period on a comic book title?

All the Loeb/Sale “color” books are love letters. The best of course being Spider-Man Blue.

I’d call it more of a lazy remix disguised as a love letter. From what I’ve seen, it basically just takes really good Lee/Romita stories, and replaces the good Lee dialogue with awful Loeb dialogue (not that there’s any other kind of Loeb dialogue).

How about the “Hush” storyline in Batman a couple of years ago. That was all about the love of the character and (more importantly) the rogue’s gallery.

yes, but the challenge was to find a GOOD love letter.

Mayeb there can be a one-year moratorium on love letters and tributes and pastiches and homages. Just tell a story, folks. In thirty years no one is going to create a loving tribute to Flex Mentallo.

How about X-Men: Hidden Years by John Byrne? It wasn’t a great series, but I thought it was pretty good and entertaining. Nothing terribly Earth-shattering, but a fun romp through the Neal Adams era from the original series.

Of course, I know others who felt it was a terrible book, so obviously your milage may vary.

X-men Hidden Years was pretty clearly Byrne’s love letter to Neal Adams. I think he even said in one letters page that since Tom Palmer was inking, Byrne felt like he was filling in for Roy Thomas and Neal Adams.

I can see why Byrne enjoyed doing it, but all the stories fell flat. It didn’t help that he did Savage Land, Sentinel and Magneto stories, or that he decided to fit a Magneto story in-between the panels of Fantastic Four 102-104. Talk about needlessly self-indulgent! I put Hidden Years one step above fan-fiction. But, if I was Neal Adams, I’d be pretty flattered.

But there was another question asked in this post… “What do you think is the percentage of good comics that were described as “love letters” to a specific comic book character or time period?”

Ummm… 18 percent? Does that feel about right?

“Mayeb there can be a one-year moratorium on love letters and tributes and pastiches and homages. Just tell a story, folks. In thirty years no one is going to create a loving tribute to Flex Mentallo.”

Why shouldn’t they? It’s worthy and timeless.

“I will say this, ATOM – you probably stuck Bendis’ DD out longer than I was able to! ”

Maybe it was the gloss of NU MARVEL blinding me but I felt like a lot of the stuff they were doing at the time, Daredevil, Alias, snagging Richard Corben to do one-offs, X-Force/X-Statix, Cable/Soldier X and New X-Men, Ultimate Spiderman, etc. was really awesome. All that stuff got me back into reading superhero comics to begin with.

I really thought Bendis’ Daredevil was awesome, even if it kinda turned over the apple cart for Matt Murdock and left the next writer with a mess to clean up. Also, I could give less than a shit about whatever legal inconsistencies Bendis put in the book because I’m not a lawyer.

….

I’m not thinking of any I liked. Ever.

Flex Mentallo was great, but it wasn’t a homage to specific characters.

I liked Hush alright, but it wasn’t a homage to a specific time period.

Marvels… Well, I dunno. My tolerance for completely humorless superhero comics presented without irony is pretty low. Even lower without bigass explosions and crap.

And again, not a homage to a SPECIFIC character.

So I’m pretty much going with “What is 0 %, Alex.”

[quote]My tolerance for completely humorless superhero comics presented without irony is pretty low.[/quote]

I’d say that final page of Marvels 4, with Phil getting his picture taken by Dan Ketch, poster boy of the anti-Marvels age of grim & gritty, was plenty irony.

And as for Kevin Smith’s Daredevil run, it wasn’t a love letter. It was him going, “Lookit me! I’m Frank Miller! Look! Look! Look! You’re not looking, look!”

I think a lot of the responses here show that “love letters” don’t have a low success rate, but rather, stories by hacks like Meltzer have a low success rate. (Well, it sells like hotcakes, so maybe it is successful, God knows why)

“The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck” by Don Rosa.

“The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck” by Don Rosa.

Hehe…in a review of that for the blog, I called that “The Don Rosa Exception.”

Hmmm….. Kingdom Come is a love letter to the silver age and that’s quite good. Marvels is excellent and a blatant love letter as is Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow.

I’m not feeling quite so much love for Supreme, New Frontier and 1963 but I think that’s largely because they’re love letters.

Oh and Fables is completely not a love letter to Sandman. It has a slight similarity in that it merges different fairy tales, but that much they both have in common with Shrek and umpteen other stories.