Comments on: Top 158 Comic Book Runs #148-139

By: Elliot Kane

Elliot Kane — Fri, 16 May 2008 04:00:14 +0000

7 Soldiers is absolutely great, but I did not personally count it as a run. If there's ever a top 100 mini-series poll, though, I'd think several of the mini series that make it up will do really well.

By: Lorendiac

Lorendiac — Mon, 12 May 2008 04:43:18 +0000

I think I have some familiarity with almost all of these runs -- although I'm not sure I've ever read any reprints of Shooter's early work on the Legion. (I do own the first "Showcase" volume for the Legion, but I believe that stops short of when Shooter started selling scripts about them.)

On the other hand, I believe I own much -- maybe all; I'd have to check -- of his work on the Superboy title in the 1970s when he was basically doing a "second run" on the Legion characters (I think it was around that time that the title got changed from just plain "Superboy" to "Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes". Later on, the Legion simply elbowed Superboy out of his own book and it became "Legion of Super-Heroes." I swear, a few friends show up at your front door asking if you can give them a place to stay, you say sure . . . and before you know it they're pretending to own the place!).

It surprises me that Gerry Conway's entire JLA run got votes -- if I had voted for any portion of it, I would have to phrase it in a way that made it clear as crystal that I was not voting for the "Detroit Era" from the last couple of years of that title before it was cancelled.

Incidentally, after I saw people complaining that Carl Barks on Uncle Scrooge had not made the Top 100, I finally (probably for the first time in a long, long while) reread some of the stories I have from his run, as reprints in later issues of "Uncle Scrooge" and the like. I admit he had something going for him! But it had been so long since I really looked at any of his stuff that he didn't qualify for "Top 10 Favorites" on my ballot, although back around the early 1980s, the younger me really enjoyed those epic adventures of Uncle Scrooge and his younger kinfolk!

By: Joshua Nelson

Joshua Nelson — Sun, 11 May 2008 18:22:15 +0000

There are some favorites of mine in this stretch. "Supreme Power" was good while it lasted (Geez, did that go downhill once they put out those minis) and Millar's "Authority" did for that property what NBC did for the "The Office", honored it's previous incarnation while complexifying its world as a whole... Oh, and I'm glad Bark's "Scrooge" made the list, although don't underestimate Don Rosa's run.

By: Matt Bird

Matt Bird — Sat, 10 May 2008 02:22:11 +0000

Okay, now I can see what you're saying, Jack. The art did have more solidity to it on that first run, but that's not very important to me. Different people judge pencils using different metrics.

By: Tommy

Tommy — Fri, 09 May 2008 23:43:06 +0000

Whoa, I have Gerry Conway's first issue of Justice League! And I bought out of a 3 for a dollar bin!

By: Jack Norris

Jack Norris — Fri, 09 May 2008 20:42:19 +0000

Depth and texture, depth and texture. The panels of Cockrum's first run have a real 3d feel to them, like they have depth beyond the thickness of the page. The second run stuff, however, is never more than lines on paper to me. Everything looks like a preliminary sketch in the second run, while it looks finished and complete in the first. The stances and other factors you cite barely register with me compared to this. It's a visual effect I consider very "80s" and associate with an accommodation to the cheap printing of the time, especially compared to what I'll admit is the "cherished" 70s look of my childhood.

By: Matt Bird

Matt Bird — Fri, 09 May 2008 20:20:36 +0000

Yeah, Cockrum was a master at costume-design. (and I agree about Kirby too... but Perez?? I consider costumes to be his greatest weakness! His achilles heel if you will. Jericho? Nightwing's first costume? I must protest!)

By: Patrick Lemaire

Patrick Lemaire — Fri, 09 May 2008 18:30:18 +0000

Quite a few favorites here. Conan by Roy Thomas. The DD run should have included Al Williamson, he was an integral part to th esuccess of the series. He's the best inker ever of JR Jr (even better than Danny Miki)
Uncle Scrooge :Carl Barks is celebrated as a genius in northern Europe. A few years ago he had more fanzines dedicated to him than Kirby.
Gerry Conway's JLA is the definitive version, it's not often cited and I guess not many people he stayed on that for a hundred issues. It's the only part of the post Crisis that had not been rebooted. Actually the modern DC was built around JLA.
Cockrum was such a good designer of costumes, ranking as high as Kirby and Perez. They had panache.

By: Bernard the Poet

Bernard the Poet — Fri, 09 May 2008 17:14:02 +0000

I think you are being too kind, Rene. Cockrum's work doesn't look bad in comparison to Byrne and Smith. It is bad in its own right. Certainly, he is not helped that Claremont's work during this period was very patchy: the Magneto story was well written and the McCleod-pencilled Hellfire Club story had its moments, but the Brood saga seemed never-ending and the Dr Doom story was just plain bad. But that doesn't detract from the fact that Cockrum couldn't draw more than three facial expressions or imbue his figures with any sense of movement or motion.

By: Rene

Rene — Fri, 09 May 2008 15:20:36 +0000

I wouldn't go so far as to say Dave Cockrum's runs were rubbish, but it's true that John Byrne and Paul Smith were much, much better. Cockrum was a perfectly competent and creative penciller, but the other two are geniuses.

I feel a bit sorry for Cockrum. The guy co-created the new X-Men, but then John Byrne came along and the book took a quantum leap in both quality and popularity. Suddenly, Byrne and Claremont were superstars, while Cockrum was almost forgotten. Then he comes back to the book he co-created, but he was seen as a second-stringer replacing a god. No surprise that in many interviews Dave Cockrum sounded so bitter.

By: Bombie

Bombie — Fri, 09 May 2008 14:24:00 +0000

Such a shame the US has forgotten about Barks' beautiful universe. In Germany Duck-comics are still quite popular (especially Don Rosa's the "Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck", a great comic if I've ever seen one)

By: comb & razor

comb & razor — Fri, 09 May 2008 12:40:47 +0000

Rene -

yeah, Conan comics were HUGE in West Africa, too. probably much more than they were in the States.

By: Comics Should Be Good! » Comic Book Urban Legends Revealed #154

Comics Should Be Good! » Comic Book Urban Legends Revealed #154 — Fri, 09 May 2008 12:14:36 +0000

[...] of Superheroes (which he began when he was 14 years old) is still an acclaimed run by fans (it was in the Top 150 Comic Book Runs, as voted on by Comics Should be Good readers), but what is especially remarkable is how much his [...]

By: BDaly

BDaly — Fri, 09 May 2008 12:05:56 +0000

All I've read of these is X-Men and Supreme Power.

X-Men: Loved it, but it's certainly no Claremont/Byrne

Supreme Power: Loved it. Great story and great art. I assumed it was ineligible. \wasn't it planned as 18 issues?

By: Bernard the Poet

Bernard the Poet — Fri, 09 May 2008 09:49:56 +0000

No, Byrne has never drawn the Brood, as far as I know. I was thinking of other Cockrum designs that Byrne utilised well, particularly Nightcrawler and Phoenix.

I thought Cockrum drew Wolverine and Storm to be about ten younger than Byrne's versions.

By: wwk5d

wwk5d — Fri, 09 May 2008 09:09:00 +0000

One other thing, the Brood were introduced during Cockrum's 2nd run, long after Byrne had left. I don' recall Byrne ever using those characters at all during the 1980s.

By: wwk5d

wwk5d — Fri, 09 May 2008 09:05:57 +0000

But Bernard, tell us how you really feel about Cockrum's run lol I dunno, his Wolverine and Storm never seemed to look like teenagers, and his Nightcrawler didn't look all that different from Byrne's. I don't know if they were older than the originals as much as they were OLDER when they joined the X-men... Sorry you didn't like Kitty's Fairy tale, but I felt it was a nice change of pace from the angst that had preceded it, and the characters really needed a good laugh, at the time. Different strokes, I guess...

By: Bernard the Poet

Bernard the Poet — Fri, 09 May 2008 08:54:14 +0000

Wow, all this enthusiasitic banter regarding which of Cockrum's runs was best. Personally, I thought they were both rubbish. The second run shades it as being worse than the first, because Cockrum persisted in drawing the X-Men as teenagers despite the fact that Byrne had established them as being much older than the original team.

Cockrum did do some good character design - The Brood are uniquely alien - but it took work from Byrne and Smith to really show how good those designs were.

Oh yes, and Kitty's Fairy Tale is an abomination.

By: Matt Bird

Matt Bird — Fri, 09 May 2008 06:05:28 +0000

Jack, I'm equally baffled by your preference for the first run.

During the first run, the faces (esp. Wolverine and Nightcrawler) were inconsistent, the figures stiff, and the anatomy awkward. Characters would frequent stand with their legs so far apart it makes me wince. And the villains keep stretching their arms and fingers out in the air as far as they'll go.

The second run was, well, utterly masterful. I love the way he drew just about everything:
--half-melted Garokk
--Magneto's island
--the costumes the X-Men wear on the island
--the fairy tale (c'mon! can you seriously look at the issue and think he's phoning it in?")
--the brood (a character-design that gets more popular every year, right? Well, he invented it here)

What a great run. Beautifully and passionately pencilled. SO much better than his first run. Join us here on Neptune! The weather's fine!

By: Rene

Rene — Fri, 09 May 2008 02:31:27 +0000

I was wondering how much of a comic book nerd I am, so I actually counted how many runs I've read, from the 122 listed so far. Turns out I've read about half of them.

- 62 runs I've read most or all of it
- 14 runs I've read partially
- 46 runs I've never read or read very little