CSBG Archive
Friday’s Single-Issue Classic Countdown – part 2
As explained in last week’s column, I’m taking a look at my personal top ten favorite single issues of ongoing super-hero series. Last week we did ten, nine, and eight… this week we count down seven, six, five, and four.
My criteria for these picks are pretty simple. No mini-series or one-shots, just single issues of an ongoing series; the issue is something I bought off the stands on impulse, meaning the book sold itself on the strength of what I saw right there in the actual comic; and, though I neglected to mention it last week, each of the ten comics on this list holds some kind of personal meaning for me, each one led me to other stuff or was somehow significant in some other way. And in deference to the game on the CBR Classics Forum where this all started, all of these books are over twenty years old.
Quick recap:
#10 – Defenders #21. Which was a gateway book for me to 70′s Marvel, as well as my introduction to my favorite mainstream comics writer ever, Steve Gerber.
#9 – Savage Sword of Conan #14. My gateway book to Marvel’s magazine black-and-white books, as well as my introduction to Robert E. Howard and other pulp paperback fantasy that dominated spinner racks in the 70′s.
#8 – Marvel’s Greatest Comics #25. My first encounter with the Lee-Kirby Fantastic Four, as well as my first look at classic Iron Man, Captain America, and Ditko-era Dr. Strange.
That was last week. And now…
In the number seven spot is Miracleman #2.
Comics in the 80′s… man, that was a great time. It seemed like anything was possible and there was that same feeling of anything-goes, let’s-try-this-and-see-where-it-leads that I had so loved about Marvel Comics in the early 70′s. Only now it was DC and, especially, all these new independent publishers that were leading the charge. In particular, this Cat Yronwode woman that I remembered wrote all those blathering letters to Dr. Strange…. she was apparently editing or publishing now or something, and not only did she get guys like Steve Englehart and Don McGregor and Marshall Rogers and Paul Gulacy doing stuff for her new Eclipse thing, she also went and found this British fellow Alan Moore. I had read some squib in Amazing Heroes or somewhere about how there was this British superhero strip that Eclipse was using to inaugurate its cheap color comics line and when I saw this, I was annoyed that I’d missed the first one but it looked interesting enough that I thought I’d give it a shot anyway.
Now, you have to remember that I hadn’t been reading Swamp Thing. I had no idea who this Alan Moore guy was.
But this book just blew me out of my chair. I immediately got on a bus back into downtown to start hitting the comics shops to track down #1 from the month before… found it at my second stop and I was a Moore believer for life. Never missed an issue of Miracleman from that point on, and within the next few weeks I’d tracked down all of his Swamp Thing too. No one was more ready for Watchmen than me when that started, a year or so later.
But nothing ever gave me the charge that I got from the Eclipse comics reprinting the original Warrior installments of “Miracleman,” with that incredible Garry Leach/Alan Davis art.
Because it took me so completely by surprise. I don’t know how to put across what a shock it was to read Alan Moore comics back when no one knew it was an Alan Moore comic, if that makes sense. It just came at you out of nowhere.
I don’t really know what I was expecting but this wasn’t it. The story of a grown-up Michael Moran, married, plagued by migraines, having dreams of flying, and unable to remember the word that had such significance in his dreams… and when Mike finally does remember his magic word, speaking it transforms him into a godlike superbeing. Mike and his wife Liz having to suddenly cope with Mike’s former life as the superhero Miracleman was a story unlike anything I’d ever seen in comics before.
I mean, I’d seen lots of super-hero fights, I’d grown up on Jack Kirby for God’s sake… but nothing I’d ever read had looked like this. Suddenly the bystanders weren’t just window dressing, they were real people in real danger. Johnny Bates, the former “Kid Miracleman” grown up into a superpowered sociopath, smirking at an awestruck little kid. “Why yes, I CAN fly… would YOU like to fly too?” and then Bates grabbing and throwing him, Miracleman racing to catch him, barely saving the kid’s life but the impact still breaks the child’s arm, the mother screaming at him …man. That still gives me the chills. I’d been reading about super-hero slugfests for over a decade and a half but that was the first time it hit home to me how scary one would be to witness in real life.
And Miracleman doesn’t even win. Bates cleans his clock. He’s just so busy gloating he forgets and says his magic word and is turned back to mortal Johnny.
And the innovation just kept coming. This magnificent fight scene only was the first third of the book or so. The story continued on with Mike Moran and his wife trying to figure out exactly how Miracleman’s powers functioned…
…while we readers were introduced to British government hitman Evelyn Cream, who is tasked with finding Mike Moran.
I didn’t even mind the cliffhanger ending with Cream drugging Moran in the elevator, because there was so much going on, it’s one of the densest comics I’ve ever read. This was probably a function of the fact that the strip originally had appeared in Warrior magazine in seven-page installments, but it was that ultra-compression that actually sold me on the book and made me a fan. When Moore eventually teamed with Rick Veitch and then John Totleben to finish the story, it turned into a very different kind of strip. It was still brilliant, but the adrenaline rush of those early chapters was gone… it was a more philosophical, meandering kind of story. To this day my favorite issues of Miracleman are the first three, reprinting the initial Warrior arc.
I miss Eclipse and First and the 80′s independent-publisher scene, all those guys that had grown up on the same stuff I did and were dying to give it a shot themselves.
But I still have Miracleman. It’s a damn shame the rights are such a mess because more people should see it. I’m just glad the book caught my eye, all those years ago.
*
At number six, we have The Brave and the Bold #182.
When I started re-assembling my run of The Brave and the Bold, this was the first or second one I went after. I knew I wanted something from Brave & Bold and something with Earth-2 on the list I was putting together here, and this is easily my favorite example of both.
One of the most powerful concepts of the DC Universe to me when I was growing up was their parallel-worlds idea. I especially loved the tales of Earth-2, which was a slightly askew version of the DC world I knew with its Golden-Age counterparts of the Flash and Green Lantern and so on. And this story is, I think, the single strongest one DC ever did with the concept.
The story is simple enough– our Batman is mysteriously brought to the Gotham City of Earth-Two, where he helps their Dick Grayson and Kathy Kane catch Dr. Hugo Strange.
But summing it up that way does the story a grave disservice. Because the power in this story comes from Alan Brennert’s willingness to explore the sheer weirdness of how it would be to meet a parallel-earth doppelganger of a person you’ve known for years and have them almost be the same… but not entirely. It works especially well here because at this point in the larger DC continuity, Paul Levitz had just killed off Earth-2′s Batman, which allowed Alan Brennert to do a story showing a Robin and Batwoman that were still raw with grief over it.
Brennert really milks it, showing Dick and Kathy suddenly having to see a Bruce Wayne that was in his prime and we can see both their joy at having a Batman back and the bitterness underneath that it can only be temporary.
The whole story is about acceptance and letting go, it’s the lesson everyone has to learn by the end. Even nasty old Hugo Strange. All that and it’s still a rousing Bat-adventure, too.
The art is from Jim Aparo and though I don’t think it’s his best work ever, it’s still damn good. It should be noted that Alan Brennert only ever wrote five or six Batman stories for DC and almost all of them have been included in various best-of collections. All but this one, because shortly afterward DC published the original Crisis on Infinite Earths and rendered this story no longer in continuity. Which is a shame, because it’s my favorite of those Brennert stories and it deserves a wider readership. But you can pick it up pretty cheap from quite a few dealers.
*
At number five is Marvel Premiere #32.
What initially sold me on this was the art. Just flipping through it at the newsstand I was impressed, and I liked science-fiction stories anyway.
Howard Chaykin never gets credit for this, but I think he is the man that pioneered modern comics-page design. Most of the books we see from the 1970′s tend to look a little dated and old-school to modern eyes, with the standard six-panel grids and heavy exposition. But Chaykin’s pages here look as fresh as if they’d been published this week. Look at how he’s playing with composition and panel design in this recap of Monark’s origins.
This isn’t a superhero story, strictly speaking. But it’s close enough that I included it on the list. Monark Starstalker is more of a prototype of the hero that Chaykin would go on to perfect in books like Cody Starbuck and American Flagg… a ruthless, cynical loner with a dark sense of humor and a deeply-camouflaged sense of decency. Despite its science fiction trappings, there’s a real old-West vibe about this story, with its story of a vicious outlaw’s mining-rights scam and the cowardly townspeople that are depending on Monark the bounty hunter to save them.
I’d only seen one other Chaykin piece before this one, “Judgment Day” in Detective #441. But this was miles beyond that. The angular faces and figures, the amazing use of spot blacks… seeing this kind of design work combined with my simultaneous discovery of paperback artists like Robert McGinnis and the stuff Steranko was doing on Weird Heroes crystallized my own approach to drawing. That movie-poster, in-your-face look became what I aspired to do with my own stuff and eventually led to my own career in commercial art. It all started here.
These stories are largely forgotten by most fans, but it was the chance of lucking into this kind of oddity that kept me hanging in there with the tryout books like Premiere and Spotlight and First Issue Special. Those are some of my favorite comics and this particular one tops the list. This story has never been reprinted, which is a damn shame because the paper the comic’s printed on is so awful. I would love to see this get a nice new edition on paper that doesn’t soak up ink like a Kleenex. Maybe someday Marvel will do a trade paperback collection of the stories featuring the also-ran characters like Monark…. after all, in a world where there’s an Essential edition starring Brother Voodoo and groovy Diana Prince reprint books are flying off store shelves, anything’s possible.
*
In the number four position is The Flash #178.
This is on my list for one simple reason. It was the First.
First comic I ever bought, the first one I spent one of those shiny quarters on that I talked about in an earlier pick. Cover-dated May 1968, which put it on newsstands in Feburary of that year, I imagine. I read this to tatters when I was a kid and replaced it at a show about a decade ago for $15, which would normally be way over my budget for a single issue of anything. But I had to have this one. It was the First.
Take a look at what’s in there. The first story had: Giants. Dinosaurs. Kid Flash. Time travel.
The second story: Parallel earths. Jay Garrick and the JSA. Captain Cold and the Trickster.
And we wrapped up with: The Green Lantern Corps. Alien takeover of earth.
What’s not to love there?
“Double Danger on Earth” was reprinted in Crisis on Multiple Earths: The Team-Ups volume one, and you’ll find all three of them in Showcase Presents the Flash volume two. Or you could probably get the original Giant Flash #178 without too much trouble, if you prefer; you see it from dealers for between five and twenty dollars or so depending on the condition.
Just a quick aside– note, again, the date. In February 1968 I was about 6 years old…. okay, 6 and a quarter. My only previous exposure to superheroes was Adam West as Batman on TV, and some Saturday-morning cartoons. And I had no problem with the concept of Earth-2. It was very clear and easy to follow for me and I was six years old. The only thing that didn’t dawn on me until about four years later, when Golden Age reprints became more common, was that the JSA were originally from the 1940′s and it suddenly became clear to me that they used to be the ‘regular’ comic characters. Up to that point I’d thought Earth-Two was a parallel world Fox and Infantino made up from scratch and the differences just made it weird and cool.
To be honest, the only thing that threw my six-year-old self a little as I was reading that 80-page issue of Flash was that Kid Flash looked different than he did in the cartoons. But I got over it.
That’s why I am so sneeringly skeptical when fans defend the Crisis as necessary to make DC “easier to understand.” I understood parallel Earths when I was six. But I’m damned if I can make sense of much of DC’s post-Crisis continuity, especially after all the “fixes” they’ve made to it in the years since, and I’m 47 now. Somebody missed a step somewhere.
But that’s a rant for another time. The point is that this was the book that sucked me into buying comics and thus changed my life. It’s possible that if I’d picked up a different superhero book in early 1968 I’d still have gotten hooked on comics. But this was the one that actually did it and that’s what makes it special for me.
*
And that’s the countdown for this week. See you back here next Friday with the top three, and in the meantime, those playing at home can feel free to chime in with choices of your own.
31 Comments
sgt rawk
January 23, 2009 at 6:14 am
These are all awesome. I love early Chaykin. I own them all except the Flash. Miracleman – just read these a few months ago and they’re just as good as they were then. Personally, I like the later issues best but it’s all good, as the kids say. Aparo’s Batman is always a treat. Keep ‘em comin’!
Brian
January 23, 2009 at 7:05 am
Its been ages since I read the story, but one of the strong points for me in the B&B issue was the fact that Kathy Kane had died on Earth-1 not too long before – not only were the Earth-2 characters disturbed by a ghost in their midst, but our Batman wasn’t too comfortable either. Can anyone tell me where it fits in continuity as far as Jason Todd goes? I’m certain the fallout with Dick had already happened, but was Todd being trained by this point?
Cheers,
B
Blackjak
January 23, 2009 at 7:34 am
Your comment about the density of the Miracleman/Marvelman stories is a perfect example of the reason I hate de-compression… I was used to the British weekly method of eight pages of story a week, crammed together with mini-clifhangers each week… Eagle, Action, Battle, Tiger, and later 2000AD… Spreading one story over six months that could have been done in 30pages really seems wasteful to me…
Greg Hatcher
January 23, 2009 at 8:01 am
Damn, I had to go look that up. My gut hunch was that it was before Jason…. and the GCD bears me out, but it was a lot closer than I’d thought. It was literally RIGHT before…. January 1982, about when Conway/Colan/Newton came on the Bat-books. Dick Grayson had returned to the cast as a regular and Bruce was about to move back to Wayne Manor from the penthouse where he spent the seventies, if that helps place it for you.
comb & razor
January 23, 2009 at 8:41 am
Wow, this entry is so evocative of that feeling of the 80s… the “anything goes” approach coming from DC and the independents… the excitement of seeing a new stylist like Chaykin departing from the established Kirby and Neal Adams models…
Great times!
comb & razor
January 23, 2009 at 8:43 am
Oh yeah… I agree with you completely about the parallel Earths: I thought it was an interesting concept that opened up avenues for really cool stories and I never thought it was too complicated at all. I understood it perfectly when I was a pre-teen and I have no clue what’s going on now.
Perry Holley
January 23, 2009 at 8:51 am
Mid- to late-70′s Chaykin is always a treat for me… Monark Starstalker, his Solomon Kane two-parter, Cody Starbuck, the Scorpion, and of course his Dominic Fortune stories – I *really* wish Marvel would print a collection of all of the various Fortune stories that Chaykin did, it was really great stuff.
And to this day, those early Miracleman stories still give me chills.
John Seavey
January 23, 2009 at 8:59 am
I remember that as a kid, I was always confused and weirded out whenever I picked up a DC comic, and I didn’t really start buying DC until after Crisis. So yes, DC’s editorial staff was right in thinking that there were people who were turned away by the dense continuity. Basically, I’m pretty much the poster child for the idea, to be honest. It did exactly what it was intended to do–forced DC to start thinking in terms of stories, brought in fresh talent, and created a real air of excitement about their comics that attracted new readers like me.
I’ve since gone back and read a ton of Silver Age DC (I have the Showcase Presents the Flash volume you mentioned), and I’ve got a lot more appreciation for it than I did, but then again it was really the Bronze Age where it got extra-confusing. So I’ll tell you what I think when I see “Showcase Presents the Flash Volume Eight” or so.
Cei-U!
January 23, 2009 at 9:13 am
I’m enjoying your expanded coverage of your list, Greg. I did want to mention, though, that the original game was not limited to super-heroes. My list, for example, included Zap #0, a Gold Key Rocky & Bullwinkle, and Sam & Max, Freelance Police Special #1.
Sijo
January 23, 2009 at 9:22 am
Great selection, Greg. Except Miracleman. I actually skipped ahead at that part. I understand why it is so admired, it was well written and innovative stuff for its time… but it is too DISTURBING, the king of stuff I read comics to get AWAY from. So, you’ll excuse me if I avoid it. Just as I respect other people’s right to like it, I expect my reaction to be respected. (That’s for the fans who might *ahem* SWARM me with reasons why I should see it.)
Moving on to FUN stuff, I recall that among my first comic books (Spanish reprints) was a Justice League story featuring the whole Parallel Earth concept (it was the one that had writer Cary Bates as the villain!
) and while at first puzzled, I DID understand and love the idea. So yeah, the Multiple Earths thing was NEVER that confusing, specially in comics that featured such wild stuff as time travel, bizarre transformations etc. on a regular basis. Let’s face it, DC got rid of its multiverse just because Marv Wolfman wanted to. Now, I can understand some of his reasons; but come on, blaming it as necessary FOR US FANS to “get it” was a very lame excuse. (The fact they KEPT coming up with ways to do alternate reality stories over the years (such as with “Hypertime”) proved it.)
Thanks for another great column, Mr. Hatcher!
Brian
January 23, 2009 at 9:24 am
Thanks, Greg!
Cheers,
B
Teebore
January 23, 2009 at 9:46 am
That’s why I am so sneeringly skeptical when fans defend the Crisis as necessary to make DC “easier to understand.”
I know how you feel, but with a different example.
I was maybe ten or eleven when I first started reading comic books, and the first issue I read was an X-Men issue circa 1992, the height of the pre-Image Departure Jim Lee era, and I had absolutely no trouble following what was going on.
People say what they will about the quality of the book around that time, but when they say it was impenetrable or confusing for new readers, I say hogwash. I was ten (a little older than Greg’s six, granted) but I had no problems figuring out what was going on. Kids are, I think, a lot smarter than people give them credit for.
As far as Earth 2 is concerned, obviously, by the time I actually starting reading DC Comics (as opposed to my passing familiarity with the characters as a kid thanks to all the multimedia/licensed stuff) the Crisis was all well and past, so I had little reason to consider Earth-2 and the multiverse good or bad, but I can certainly say, at ten, the concept of multiple earths wasn’t a strange one to me. The idea of “here’s one world, here’s another where things happened differently” was something that, as a kid, I was familiar with long before I started reading comics. I’d imagine other kids were in the same boat.
Edo Bosnar
January 23, 2009 at 9:58 am
Yes! Yes! Yes!
Someone else likes that ‘Monark Starstalker’ issue of Marvel Premiere as much as I do! That is definitely one of the picks for my personal list, as well. Anyway, I guess this answers the question I posed last week about whether team-up series and titles like “Marvel Premiere” are eligible.
The other choices are also great: I completely agree with the early Marvelman/Miracleman, and now I want to go and find a copy of that issue of ‘Brave & the Bold’ – I had completely missed that one back in the day, even though B&B was the only Batman title I semi-regularly bought just because I liked Jim Aparo’s art so much. Somewhat ironically, though, my personal favorite issue of ‘Brave & the Bold’ is #196 – the oft-mentioned Earth 2 Batman and Catwoman team-up, which Aparo did not draw…
jazzbo
January 23, 2009 at 11:42 am
I got Miracleman #2 as part of a grab bag of comics my local shop sold when I was a kid. I also didn’t know who this Alan Moore guy was when I read it. It was an eye opener. It was the first time I realized that comic books could be more than just guys in tights beating each other up. It was amazing. Unfortunately, I got it well after the series had ended, and it’s the only issue I’ve ever owned or read. I really wish they’d get the legal crap sorted out so we can get a proper collection of this title.
Graeme Burk
January 23, 2009 at 12:45 pm
Thank you. The same is true for me. One of my first comics I read was an issue of The Flash which had Jay visiting Barry and I totally understood the concept and went with it. I was six as well.
I love Alan Brennert’s issues of Brave and the Bold. From ’80 to ’82 he had an annual Batman story in B&B (plus the headline story in Detective 500) that was like an event for me. The Batman/Robin/Batwoman one is good but I actually prefer the Hawk and Dove one– which messed up continuity obsessed fans because it placed Hawk and Dove in the 60s and now grown up in 1981– but it was a bittersweet story about growing up in the shadow of the 1960s. Great stuff. His Batman/Catwoman story is deservedly one of the best Batman stories ever written.
Bill Reed
January 23, 2009 at 2:31 pm
I always wondered what the hell Monark Starstalker was. Awesome to see it here.
Tony
January 23, 2009 at 3:39 pm
Re: Jason Todd’s timeline and that Batman story- If it was right before the original Crisis Jason was Robin or it was very shortly before his first appearance. IIRC, Jason was the Robin in COIE.
Ken Carriere
January 23, 2009 at 3:49 pm
“That’s why I am so sneeringly skeptical when fans defend the Crisis as necessary to make DC “easier to understand.” I understood parallel Earths when I was six. But I’m damned if I can make sense of much of DC’s post-Crisis continuity, especially after all the “fixes” they’ve made to it in the years since, and I’m 47 now. Somebody missed a step somewhere.”
Absolutely. Well said.
Tom Fitzpatrick
January 23, 2009 at 3:53 pm
“You spilled the coffee, Joannie …
You spilled the coffee” and Kid Miracleman killed the secretary with his eye-lasers.
A prelude to Miracleman # 15.
A classic.
stealthwise
January 23, 2009 at 10:07 pm
Man, I really miss the Earth-2 stories. They were what the Ultimate line should have strove towards, being another universe where anything could happen, in terms of long-term relationships between characters, actual status quo changes, and exciting stories that escaped the corporate comics mold.
red-Ricky
January 24, 2009 at 2:13 am
Kathy Kane was killed by the Bronze Tiger & the League of Assasins in the pages of Detective Comics #485. This was soon after the original Rogers/Englehart run; when ‘Tec became an anthology book.
Pre-Crisis Jason Todd didn’t start showing up (blonde hair and all) until issue #525. So at the time of Kathy’s death, not only was Dick Grayson the jorneyman Robin; but Jason Todd wasn’t even a glimmer on DC’s eye. Hell, we are talking about the days of the old Harlequin, Duela Dent; that means the Old Teen Titans hadn’t even broken up.
Hope this helped.
red-Ricky
January 24, 2009 at 2:47 am
D’oh!
I just realized that you are asking about who was the Earth-1 Robin during this particular issue and not when Kathy died.
Well, just in case, the answer is still Dick Grayson.
Brave and the Bold ended with issue #200 and afterwards, Batman & the Outsiders became Batman’s “Team-Up” book. When Brave & the Bold #182 came out, the New Teen Titans were about a year old (I’m thinking issue #15) and Nightwing didn’t show up until issue 44.
So there’s still a 3 year window.
By the way, if you don’t mind me asking; is there a reason why you’re asking? I mean… I haven’t been reading a lot of comics lately; so I’m wondering… has DC tried to shoehorn a connection between Kathy Kane and Jason Todd? To be honest, I stopped reading Batman just before that whole Red Hood/Superboy-Punch fiasco; so if there is a reason/connection, it’s just not that obvious to me.
MarkAndrew
January 24, 2009 at 11:35 pm
I *just* read the early Miracleman for the first time and… I dunno. I think it loses something 25 years after the fact. It was half ALAN MOORE! and half Chris Claremont.
And, c’mon, why choose one of the five B & B team-ups I’ve never read. I call foul.
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Jesse
January 25, 2009 at 6:23 pm
Love your choices for comics. Have to respectfully disagree about the “I could understand it when I was six” comment, though. Maybe the Silver Age comics were that easy to understand, but I think that’s a *bad* thing. I can certainly be critical about horrible DC continuity recently (Countdown and Final Crisis), but I honestly don’t want my entertainment to be understandable by six-year-olds. I mean, I can’t think of novels I read, or TV shows I enjoy, that six-year-olds would as well. (Should they make comics for kids? Sure, just different ones.) I have no complaints if comics are too complex. As long as they’re still well-written.
AtomicDwarf
January 26, 2009 at 8:56 am
Greg, I agree with you completely on the dubious reasons DC gave for “Crisis on Infinite Earths”. I, Like you, am also 47. I came to DC Comics a little later than you did, but when I got hooked, I was really hooked! My first introduction to the concept of multiple earths was when I picked up a JLA book which happened to be one of the regular JLA/JSA crossovers. In it, they had a Mercury-helmeted speedster they called “Flash”, however, in the previous issue, a sleek costumed character was called “Flash”. I just had to figure it out! To make a long story short (too late), I eventually realized there were multiple Earths and I was terribly excited.
I began catalogging the various characters and separated them into their different universes. I created a book that I called “DC Fact File”. I had a great time keeping it up to date.
Then DC came along with “Crisis on Infinite Earths” and completely destroyed my concept of DC’s reality. After that, I was no longer interested in reading any of the new stuff.
To make it even worse, since then, DC has apparently completely redefined their universe several times. Now, it’s completely incomprehensible to me! I won’t read any of the new stuff, partly because DC could, at any time completely remake it again! So, I just stick with Pre-Crisis back-issues.
Thanks for the great blog! As long as you occaisionally revisit the classics, I’ll keep reading.
Brian
January 26, 2009 at 9:37 am
red-Ricky, and all the others who provided insight, I thank you very much. My interest in Kathy Kane came from recently purchasing Detective 485, and then I remembered Batman mentioning in B&B 182 she had died. I thought the timeline was closer to Dick becoming Nightwing, which is why I wasn’t sure when Jason Todd appeared.
I don’t think DC would really bring Kathy back into the current timeline, or connect her to Kate in any way. Perhaps she’s still alive in the Earth-2 timeline in JSA?
If you read the Kingdom one-shot Planet Krypton in the late ’90s, there’s a panel where Kathy appears to Batman, and he says her neme – and doesn’t know why. Nice moment.
Again, thanks to everyone who wrote, and this is a really great series of articles. Looking forward to the top 3!
Cheers,
B
FunkyGreenJerusalem
January 27, 2009 at 7:31 pm
You’re not the o0nly one who thinks that about Chaykin Greg!
I think the reason he gets less credit is that he influenced the artists who influenced the next generation.
That said, I believe there was a Permanent Damage column where Steven Grant was saying that whilst reading Civil War, all he could think about was how Chaykin had totally inspired modern comics layouts.
Rob Allen
January 28, 2009 at 5:46 pm
You write:
“Monark Starstalker is more of a prototype of the hero that Chaykin would go on to perfect in books like Cody Starbuck and American Flagg…”
Cody Starbuck debuted in Star*Reach #1, April 1974; Monark Starstalker in Marvel Premiere #32, October 1976. Which was the prototype?
Greg Hatcher
January 28, 2009 at 6:45 pm
You got me, Rob. I was thinking of this one, from 1978. But you are correct that the character came first.
Honestly, I tend to think of Star*Reach as being all from 1978-79, though I know it was around a lot longer than that. But that’s when I got all mine, off the same spinner rack at Looking Glass Books. It created the illusion they were only a few months apart.
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