We have the  Best Comics of 2008 meta-list!  (based on a methodology devised by our own Chad Nevett)

Thanks to Sandy over at the I Love Rob Liefeld who finally got the results tabulated, after the guy who did it last year disappeared.  (I hope he's not dead.)

Dash Shaw's Bottomless Belly Button is number one.

Which means that, while my post on last years (07) list was enthusiastic and happy and all about explaining the logic as I see it, THIS years list is gonna be a lot more "What the hell are you people thinking?"

This was gonna cover the top ten, but it ran long and complain-y.  So just the top five for today.  More before the end of the year.

1)  Bottomless Belly Button -  By Dash Shaw.

Why.  Why...why...why....why...why?  Does it take.  One hundred and seventeen panels.   For.  ANYTHING.   To. Happen.  It juuuuussssst gooooeossss soooooooo slooooooowwww.  How many pages do we need to show a guy running?  Or that epic, gripping, three mastrubation*-onto-doll-clothes sequence?

E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G takes F-O-R-E-V-E-R to H-A-P-P-E-N and by the end it was  driving me nuts.   We have here a seven-hundred-some-odd brick of a book that could have easily been sliced right in half.

And what's worse:  This  approach to pacing seemed to work against the theme  of the book.  The plot of the book - The  Three grown children with their various spouses and offspring in tow return to their ancestral home on the eve of their now-borderline-elderly parents divorce - depicts a deeply claustrophobic situation.  A bunch of no-longer-familiar people all crammed together into an unfamiliar situation.

But the lackadaisical pacing totally undermines this.  In taking so much space to tell a story, if gives the book a sense of open-ness of being unconstrained.  And that just doesn't seem to fit with the actual story.

Which, I should add, WORKS.  It sets out to show how the five main characters respond to trauma (and to each other) and, by God, we end up knowing how they respond to trauma (and each other.)  And there were individual elements of craft I thought were cool: The graphs, architectural diagrams, and the neat little "Types of Sand" po-essay at the start of the book all worked as cool visuals unto themselves and helped to hand-hold the story along.  The light magical-realism type touches in the art worked well, not overwhelming the book with unbeleivable fanatasy but providing some cool visuals.

But this is SO NOT BOOK OF THE YEAR.  This ain't even the best comic I've read in 2008 by Dash Shaw! (The first half of Bodyworld was better.)

And it's more'n slightly frustrating that a good but deeply flawed comic by a guy who's obviously going on to do much better work is getting this kind of praise.

Unless, of course, I'm totally missing anything.

Am I missing something?

*  Aw, c'mon spell-check.  You do so know that word.

2)  Acme Novelty Library #  19 by Chris Ware

This

is one damned Chris-Ware-y comic.  You but it, know what your getting.

Hint:  Not happy sunshine-fun day at the candy farm.

This is part three of the Rusty Brown serial, the life and times of a dude who's REALLY into his action figures, to the exclusion of ever having a life.  And, yeah, it's bloody-damn depressing.

But... But it's also great comics.  It's not that the drawing is immediatelyimpressive, but Ware just GETS the comic form in his soul on an intrinsic level.  Pretty much every panel is an effective composition into itself.  AND THEN, all those panels fit together to create a unique, grabbing, overall page design.  AND THEN all those pages are, Watchmen-like, designed to reflect on and support each other, meaning you have to flip through his stuff multiple times to admire all the interesting visual contrasts.   And the whole She-Bang is just beautifully colored, mournful but still downright pretty.

(And there are plenty of comic artists who can draw someone's heart gettin' yanked out their unmentionables by a zombie, but couldn't do pretty if their lives depended on it.)

And, in all of this, the nitty-gritty of tellin' a  story is never lost.  There's no Gary Panter-ian abstract design for-the-sake-of design.

AND THEN  Ware's goddamn good at figuring out interesting, unique formal tricks that only work with comics.  One of the main characters breaks his glasses, see, and for a while every panel from his POV is half fractured scratchy smear, see, because he can't SEE everything because he broke his glasses....

And there are people who'll work in the comic industry their whole lives that'll never come up with a stoytelling  trick that clever.  (For example.  Most of them.)

Fifteen years ago I'd be praising this thing to high heavens.

But.

(And you KNEW there was gonna be a but)

Today it's just another Chris Ware comic. It's not even a COMPLETED Chris Ware comic, exactly.  Sure, part of the story is a (fake) reprinted fifties pulp Sci-Fi story - supposedly written by Rusty's father, who was more into pulp sci-fi than superhero action figures* - but it's one damned Chris Ware-y Sci-fi story.  SPOILERS:  Dead Dogs.  SPOILERS:  Cuckoldry.  BARELY SPOILERS:  Heartbreak and melancholy and enniu.

Here's the thing.  It's 2009.  There's a REAL good chance that this is the high-point for comics, printed on paper, aimed at adults.  We've cycled up to here, we're probably going to cycle back down as people stop buying graphic novels, or the way we read is going to undergo a technologically induced sea change or the zombie take over and we're to busy not getting our hearts ripped out through our unmentionables -  But the good times don't last forever.

Which means that  I want to see a number two best comic of the year that's a god-damn revolutionary game-changer.   And this isn't it.  Another Chris Ware comic this good is still just another Chris Ware comic a part three of eight, that's more-or-less as good as the last few Chris Ware comics.  Wake me up when the story's done and between two covers.

* BUT THERE ARE PARALLELS.

3) All Star Superman Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely.

Hey, look!  It's a corporate published superhero comic with an actual ending!   This needs to be rewarded based on novelty alone!

Also.  I read this right after Bottomless Belly Button. And I'm really impressed with the design of the thing.  Quitely doesn't vary his "camera placement" much -  It's mostly "widescreen" chest-high medium shots, but it achieves the same effect as the drawn out (*ahem*) "Action Sequences" in Bottomless Belly Button. But with ASS there's a REASON for it.  The comic has a sense of openess, a sense of possibilities realized, a sense of "Hey, the main character can freakin' fly, how freakin' cool is THAT!"

And it takes less time, too.*  Dash Shaw achieved this effect by taking lots of panels to show a single action.  Quitely does the same trick by making bigger (or at least wider) panels.  Every panel looks like a movie screen abd that means BIG and awesome.

And Quitely's up there with Acme Novelty Library as well.  One example:  Lookit what he's doing with  vertical and horizontal symmetry.  When he's trying to make something look nice or pleasing to the eye, everything in the panel is all nicely aligned and balanced.  When he's drawing Bizzaro, everything is  all asymmetritcal and jaggedy amd off-putting.   And he's good with negative space and really USING those splash panels to have an impact, and...  dude is just a GOOD at applying the formal stuff they teach you in painting class.

And, again, much of the book is just pretty. I'm a fan of pretty.

Gettin' back to the comparison -  BBB is probably the stronger concept -  At least   "Defining the family unit at one point in time plus bonus magic frog" strikes me as more original and interesting "let's recycle some old Superman comics."   But since they both end up using similar effects, the execution is so much better here.

And Morrison and Quitely give us a pitch-freakin'-perfect Jimmy Olsen.  My God, it's been soooo long.

*  I define comics by time.  I can explain it, but not here, and I need charts and sock puppets for the full effect.

4)  Too Cool to Be Forgotten by Alex Robinson

Aaaaaaand the most improved award goes tooooooo...

This puppy right here.

Not gonna lie to you people.  I thought Robinson's comic output up to this point has been a Big, Hot, Tranny Mess.  I read his Box Office Poison and found a bunch of plot-lines that didn't really connect with each other or lead anywhere interesting -  But some nice character bits.  And I read Tricked and was needly enough about how sloppy the writing was that I didn't even NOTICE if there were some nice character bits.

But Too Cool?  This is good.  The narrative is stripped down and tightened up, and there's only ONE main charcter praise the good Lord hallelujah.  The drawing is more fluid, there's some nice E.E. Cummings'y formal experimentation, and the whole package just looks better.

What makes this all the more impressive is that Robinson's working with story-types that are notoriously difficult to pull off.   (A) It's a time travel story which (B) by it's nature means that Robinson has to flesh out two main POV characters (one older, one younger) at the same time, AND compare and contrast the way both of 'em view the world.

So maybe it's NOT just one one major character, at that.

But the whole thing comes along nicely until the end and

Boom

Secrets are revealed and there's a complete shift in tone from hi-school hi-jinx to deadly serious. And, cause Robinson is ABSOLUTELY assured in his command of narrative, it all works, lending some poignancy to everything that's happened before.

And best of all, of course,  is the design of the book -  smaller than an average comic and closer to a pack of smokes - is  pure congealed joy-sauce.

If there's a weakness here it's only by comparison. There are folks on the list who are gonna be considered the greatest cartoonists of their generations, and Alex Robinson (as of now) is only very, very good.

5) What It Is by Lynda Barry

A checklist of factors that need to be taken into account before we head on into the review proper.

• Ernie Pook's Comeek is my favorite comic strip.  One!  Hundred!  Demons! is my favorite graphic novel ever. Lynda Barry ismy favorite creator ever to work in comics.
• What It Is is, by my big critical standards (Quality of Craft, Originality of the Work, and Thematic/Intellectual Content) the most impressive work to show up in the top ten.
• It's also not my favorite Lynda Barry work.  By a long shot.  And not my favorite thing on the list.
• But holy shit you guys...

I bitch about Acme Novelty Library being just another Chris Ware book, and this is the opposite of that.  ICollage! The whole thing is low tech, crap-glued-to-notebook-paper collage!  Who else is even going to THINK of this?  How many artists in any form E-V-E-R question the Standard Operating Procedures of artistic creation.  Or, to hammer the point home, how many of the other works on this top  one hundred list are created via photoshop or pen and bristol board.  (I haven't read 'em all, but I'd guestimate at least 98.)

And on top of the simple, obvious, process  stuff, there's a kind of scope and ambition here which no-one else is matching.  Bottomless Belly Button is a diagram of family dynamics.  Too Cool to Be Forgotten is a time travel story with a Carpe Diem! type of theme.

What It Is is a visual transcription of a writing seminar AND a memoir AND a pure art book AND a  direct pathway to the author's unconscious.  Which is full of monkeys and squids.   It's just trying to DO more STUFF than the other books on the list.

Did I mention the monkeys?   I'd cheertully pay 30 bones for a book of just Lynda Barry monkey drawings.

But.  (Here it is again.)

Honestly, and this might just be me, I'm not sure this works as well as "lessons on how to write" as much as "lessons on how to write like Lynda Barry."

I tried really hard to do the exercises contained here.  Swear to God I did.  (Incidentally, this is the only book in the top five I paid actual cash money for.)  I'd be all enthusiasm, think really hard, get discouraged, got bored, and wander off to play the flash game where you put the penguin on top of the mountain.  (I only like video games in the genre of Penguin and Mountain.)

And, again, the problem MIGHT just be with me.  But my personal field-test failed.  (And got slightly too you-can-do-it self-help-book-y for my cynical ass towards the end.)

But I can't say it's not brilliant.  I won't say it doesn't deserve to be mentioned as one of the best comics of the year.  And I'm glad that it sold pretty well -  It was on the Amazon charts for a LONG time -  and that Lynda's makin' some money off it.

But I'm probably not going to sign up for her writing class, either.

MONKEY!

Er... I mean...

That's it for next time.  I'll try to look at Ganges #2, the Alcoholic, Skyscrapers of the Midwest, The huge-ass latest Kramer's Ergot and Capacity next time.   Two of 'em I liked.

7 Comments

• At November 15, 2009, garbonzo wrote:

  So far I read three of these (Bottomless Belly Button, All-Star Superman, and Too Cool to be Forgotten). I ...

• At November 16, 2009, winterteeth wrote:

  Seriously not trying to be a jerk here but you reversed the u and the r in masturbation so that ...

• At November 16, 2009, Michael wrote:

  The spellcheck knows "masturbation." It does not know "mastrubation."

• At November 16, 2009, Ed Buskirk wrote:

  Thank you so much for this article. It's a nice breath of fresh air after the endless superhero worship this ...

• At November 16, 2009, chasdom wrote:

  I completely disagree with you on the pacing of Bottomless Belly Button. The pacing of the book captured, for me, ...

• At November 16, 2009, tekende wrote:

  Bottomless Belly Button is a brilliant work. I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to just say that you're definitively, ...

• At November 16, 2009, MarkAndrew wrote:

  Spelling is hard.

  Chasdom - See, now, that's a GOOD point. (Which wasn't mentioned in any of the reviews I ...

(For a very specific definition of best.)

1)  Bob Haney (writer) and Jim Aparo (artist) on Brave and the Bold (1971-1979)

Issues:  98, 100-102, 104-125,  I think he's the inker on 126,, 127-136, 138-145, 148-152, 154-155 and 157.  Whew.  A whopping 53 issues.

Team-Ups: Batman with:  Green Arrow (6 times), the Metal Men (4 times), Wonder Woman, Mister Miracle, Black Canary, Green Lantern, Metamorpho, the Atom, Sgt. Rock, Aquaman and Wildcat.  (3 times each), Plastic Man, the Joker, the Flash, Teen Titans, the Phantom Stranger, Deadman and Kamandi (twice each) and Robin, the Demon, the Spectre, Man-Bat, Swamp Thing, Two-Face, Richard Dragon, Hawkman and the Creeper.  (Once each.)  Note that some of these issues had more than one character per story.   Issue # 100 guest-starred Robin AND Green Lantern AND Green Arrow AND Black Canary, ferinstance.

Obviously, I'm a member of the comics blogsphere.  And, as such, I have to love these comics like my 53 first born children, and can talk about it for days on end, not pausing for food or sleep or bathroom breaks.

But in the interests of brevity and good taste, I will limit myself to ten-ish reasons why it's the best.

Why This Run is Numbero Uno:

1)  Plot.  "Not," he hastens to add, "that these are extraordinarily well planned-out stories, or stories with far-reaching implications for the "DC Universe" or stories that build, as a unit, to a grand pay-off 37 issues down the road.".... But they ARE high-concept, original, fast moving, unpredictable, and ridiculously entertaining, with everything from characterization to setting (this might be the globe-trottingest Batman ever) rendered flexible in the service of story!  Story!  STORY!

Flat-out, folks, I think this is the most entertaining bunch of STORIES (story!  Story!) of any comic run I've read.

For example let's turn to the Wildcat team-up in Brave and the Bold # 118.

Batman and Wildcat are forced into boxing (complete with ring) each other with Cestus (spiked metal gloves from the Roman Colliseum, apparently) to stop the Joker from shooting THE ONLY PUPPY IN THE WORLD who's blood contains anti-bodies can save a prison full of sick inmates, including one former boxer who lost the title to Wildcat on a technicality and is now a henchman of the Joker, posisoned so he can't talk.

You `know what that's called in a Haney/Aparo story?  Page 13.

("Hell of a lot more content in those thirteen pages than in entire 8 issue mini-series we get now-a-days"  hrummps your infirm and aging host.)

2)  Tone.

I imagine the actual creative PROCESS for these issues involved lots of snickering and air-fist-pumping and cries of "HELLS YEAH!"

But the actual stories themselves are played absolutely straight.

=  And this may be the oddest/craziest/wonderfullest thing about this run. While most Silver and Bronze age superhero writers held themselves at a sniggering distance from the kiddie stuff they were cranking out, H & A didn't even adopt the camp vibe of the old '60s TV show.  This stuff is treated like  Russian Literature, which (A) means that the dark, moody, serious sequences (and they DO exist) can work credibly well (B)  when the plot gets... interesting, it's an absolute blindside.

(From Brave and the Bold # 140.)

To get all lit-major-y (and keep in mind Haney had a BA in English) the ontrast between the autorial approach to the stories (dead serious) and the CONTENT of the stories (Whack-a-ding-dong insane) makes for a delicious application of reverse romatic-irony.

(Yeah, yeah, yeah.  I know.  But I'm outta school right now and have to keep my bullshit muscles in shape.)

3)  VIOLENCE!  Jim Aparo draws punchin' and kickin' and bitin' and gougin' better than any artist ever, with Batman all hitting people so hard they explode.

(From Brave and the Bold # 132.)

4)  Aparo's inking himself for much of the run.  The big problem with the penciller/inker system in comics is that, often, inkers are overly afraid to obfuscate the penciled art, which means you never get big 'ol gobs of black all over everything, like SO.

(From Brave and the Bold # 110.)

5)  I really, really (REALLY) dig Haney's approach to Batman.  It's probably the most... normal, and well-adjusted take on the character ever.  I've always suspected that the "Grim, obsessed, creature of the night" schtick has always worked contrary to one of Batman's innate strengths as a character - The fact that he really IS the "hero who could be you."

Haney's Batman, on the other hand.....  Really could.

(A slightly edited panel from Brave and the Bold # 102, borrowed from Mark Waid's site.)

One non-Aparo example from B &B 99.   Here Batman confronts the deaths of his parents, goes through some angst, GETS THE HELL OVER IT, and ends with a riff on "Goodnight Moon."

(From Brave and the Bold # 99, drawn by Bob Brown.  Nick Cardy Inker.  Thanks to Every Day is Like Wednesday for the Scan.)

6)  These aren't, by and large, strictly superhero comics.  At least they're not bound by the cliches and storytelling structure of most supehero books.  War comics?   Sure.  International espionage comics?  Absolutely.  Gothic romance books?  Betcher bottom dollar.  Hot, Indiana Jones style archeologist action?  'Sooolutely!  But there's very, very little of the "Hero on patrol encounters random villain, almost loses, comes back and kicks butt" stuff that makes up 97% of the plots in the other "street level hero" type books of the day.  This kind of facile genre hopping garuantees that you don't ever QUITE know what you're gonna get in any given issue, and keeps the whole run lively, and far less predictable and repetetetetetive than... well, again, pretty much any other run of comics, ever.

(From Brave and the Bold # 135, a romance/legal thriller between a caveman (who might be a robot) and a female tycoon.  Guest starring the Metal Men, like there's any room for them.)

7)  Haney's a genuinely smart dude, and his stories are full of interesting historical/biological/archeological tid-bits and trivia. ADULT me has actually learned stuff about the real world from these comics.

It might be a little strange that the Atom is controlling Batman's dead body like a puppet..

(From Brave and the Bold # 115)

But you can be sure he's researched and assigned the correct functions to the different regions of the brain.

(For proof, I'll refer you to the medically-minded Scott over at Polite Dissent. It's definitely worth clicking the "Bob Haney" tag at the bottom, as well.)

8)  Haney and Aparo were doing meta-fiction before Grant Morrison could even spell it.

And just for balance sake, here's Bob Haney from the same issue.

(Yes, OBVIOUSLY, Bob Haney lives in a cabin out in the middle of the woods, has a big hunting dog, and his best friend owns a lighthouse.  This is common sense.)

9)  100 Pages!  Now it's been scientifically proven beyond the benefit of a doubt that the 100 page floppy is the optimal format for comics, and this run provides six of 'em, every issue between 112 and 117. Checkout all the cool stuff you get in just one issue!

(From Brave and the Bold # 116.  Batman by Nick Cardy.)

Beautiful.

10) The early issues of this run are absolutely superbly colored, although the colorist isn't listed and even the Grand Comic Book Database doesn't know who it is.  The Hooded Utilitarian does a side-by-side comparison of the original Deadman team-up in issue # 104 with the Black and White reprint, so I'll just quote him:

And I love the way the touch of red shading makes Deadman's path out of the body here more solid; it's almost like he's at the end of a twisty ectoplasmic fabric; an effect which is present, but more muted, in the black and white:

And, OK, I was tryin' for just ten, but I got one more.

11)  The best Alfred in the last fifty years.  He doesn't regularly show up till late in the run, but Haney's Alfred isa man who's  both ready with a self-deprecating wise-crack

(From Brave and the Bold # 141.)

AND he's hip to all the latest dance-steps.

(From Brave and the Bold # 151)

On the Other Hand: Blah...blah... blah... inconsistent, some issues are boring (105) some are fairly terrible (134) blah...blah..blah editorial muddling and co-writing with Cary Burkett before he was any good and Blah Blah Blah gets worse as the run goes on.  And sometimes other, lesser, creators failed to follow/understand the one true continuity as laid down by Bob Haney and Jim Aparo, and made the DC Universe look inconsistent as a result.

But still, on the whole, pretty damned brilliant.

Bonus Links! (Man, we could be here all day.)

ASIDE from the people I've already linked to:

Here's Tucker Stone of the Factual Opion on B&B 100-102

Here's Graeme McMillan giving an "Excellent" rating to the Black and White Showcase Rerprint of 109- 134.

Here's Rob! of the Aquaman Shrine on Brave and the Bold 126.

And here's Rob!'s Phantom Stranger sie sister-site on the Phantom Stranger in 145.

And Chris Sims of the ISB on the Atom/Dead Batman team-up from 115.

And Sims again on Batman and Richard Dragon from B &B 132.

Scroll down for "H" of the Comic Treadmill reviewing pretty much the whole damn series.

Here's some Commisioned Jim Aparo art from an eminently tasteful dude calling himself "Aparofan."

And, heck, here's CSBGs' Bill Reed on Bob Haney.

(The best part about all these links? Liberally borrowing scans from the above bloggers. Saved me a lot of work, guys.)

Next: After some recovery time I'll discuss the runners up. (Basically the OTHER twenty-or-so team-up book runs I really like. Soon!)

31 Comments

• At September 26, 2009, Andrew Wahl wrote:

  Loved this pick for the top spot. I smiled throughout the whole article, especially at the "Page 13" crack in ...

• At September 27, 2009, jazzbo wrote:

  Yeah, this was a no-brainer for the #1 spot. And DC 100 page comics are one of my favorite things ...

• At September 27, 2009, Mr. M wrote:

  No complaint here. I only have #135 (Metal Men) and #155 (Green Lantern), but now I look forward to seeking ...

• At September 27, 2009, Ralf H. wrote:

  Let's not forget #111 - for me one of the best, perhaps THE best Joker story ever written ("Death hast ...

• At September 27, 2009, Johnny Bacardi wrote:

  I did #80 a couple of years ago... I bought many, many issues of B&B from the early 70's ...

• At September 27, 2009, sgt rawk wrote:

  I had that Batman/Sgt Rock issue when I was a kid and couldn't make heads or tails of it. Loved ...

• At September 27, 2009, NoahB wrote:

  Thanks Mark. This was great.

• At September 27, 2009, The Mutt wrote:

  For a long time, B&B was the only Batman title I bought. Aparo is THE Batman artist.

• At September 27, 2009, Edo Bosnar wrote:

  Pretty much expecting this as the top pick, although it was only when I saw your list of the issues ...

• At September 27, 2009, Greg Hatcher wrote:

  Worth noting -- for many years, Aparo not only did his own inking, but his own lettering, as well. It's ...

• At September 27, 2009, stealthwise wrote:

  Cool stuff, any chance they've put it into a Showcase volume, tpb or hardcover?

• At September 27, 2009, Ray wrote:

  B&B is my favorite comic of all time, and "Small War of the Super Rifles" (the Sgt. Rock/Haney/Aparo/Boltinoff team up ...

• At September 27, 2009, Ethan Shuster wrote:

  "Batman, Wonder Woman and Batgirl- The eternal triangle -- one man, and the two women who want him!"

  Damn, Batman, ...

• At September 27, 2009, Jacob T. Levy wrote:

  In the first two issues of this run I acquired as a kid (98 and 145, the Phantom Stranger appearances):

  98) ...

• At September 27, 2009, Sijo wrote:

  Mark Andrew Blah blah blah failed to cover the criticisms blah blah blah cop out blah blah blah not a ...

• At September 27, 2009, T. wrote:

  I want to read these issues SO badly but absolutely refuse to read them uncolored. Are there any old ...

• At September 27, 2009, Matt D wrote:

  For someone reading all of these comics now for the first time, some things age a lot better than others. ...

• At September 27, 2009, Wade AuCoin wrote:

  This is the series that I voted on for the top spot, so I strongly support your choice.

  I have ...

• At September 27, 2009, Mary Warner wrote:

  How has that panel from #102 been 'slightly edited'?

• At September 27, 2009, Wesley Smith wrote:

  Haney was just a little bit before my time (I started collecting B&B about a year before it ended), but ...

• At September 27, 2009, Rob Schmidt wrote:

  I'd probably go with the Claremont/Byrne MTU over this, but it's a solid choice. Like the Mutt, this was ...

• At September 27, 2009, Rob Schmidt wrote:

  Re the panel from #102:

  Batman's original thoughts were: "What am I doing here? Can't remember...must have ...

• At September 27, 2009, Dave Lane wrote:

  There was a B&B where Bob Haney had Batman (not Bruce Wayne or in disguise) flying on a commercial airliner ...

• At September 27, 2009, MarkAndrew wrote:

  Here's the original sequence from Brave and the Bold # 102.

  http://www.daveexmachina.com/gfx/bmdtd.jpg

  The only difference is that one caption was ...

• At September 27, 2009, MarkAndrew wrote:

  Johnny Bacardi

  I did #80 a couple of years ago... I bought many, many issues of B&B from the early 70's ...

• At September 27, 2009, Rob Schmidt wrote:

  Hey, that reminds me. I think my only appearance in a letters page was in a Haney/Aparo BRAVE & ...

• At September 27, 2009, "O" the Humanatee! wrote:

  In B&B #111 there's a page where Batman arrives at some kind of canal lock and finds there one of ...

• At September 27, 2009, Bill Reed wrote:

  Totally one of the best comic runs ever.

• At September 27, 2009, DanLarkin wrote:

  The only possible #1. This has been an entertaining feature.

• At September 27, 2009, Travis wrote:

  Definitely... Aparo, was a brilliant artist. I found him while collecting the Manhunter Detectives... and He's in my top ...

• At September 28, 2009, Vincent Paul Bartilucci wrote:

  Brave & Bold by Haney and Aparo! The obvious choice. The only choice.

  And forget the "Batman" ...

Let's just get THAT out of the way.

DC Comics and Milestone.  Kind of a MESS, huh?

I've wracked my brains about this and I can only come up with two options: Bad planning bordering on incompetence, or someone or someone at DC comics... Excuse me, DC ENTERTAINMENT... are going out of their way to fuck with their creative talent for precious little benefit to themselves.

I'll run through my thought process in detail down at the bottom, but that's what all the options I'm seeing boil down to.

You guys got any other ideas?

Let's recap. The Milestone Comics line (or Dakota Universe) was originally launched way back in the halcyon days of 1993. The objective was to up the profile of minority (not just black) characters in superhero comics. The line was, yes, published through DC comics and had a respectable - albeit not bestselling-  run before closing up shop in 1997.

Then, in 2000,  one of the Milestone characters broke out big; the Static Shock animated series enjoyed a four year run on the WB - and continues to be shown in syndication.

Simultaneously, based on general comic nerd word-'o-mouth, I started following the defunct Milestone line.  Hooray for the fifty cent bins!

And they were GOOD.  I've read... I've read a lot of comics, people.  And the Milestone books are some of my favorite favorite superhero comics ever.  (Except for Blood Syndicate, which never did much for me.)

So, yes, I am biased here. I AM a fan of these properties.

Sidenote: In theory I'm all for diversity in comics. In practice this doesn't affect my buying or reading habits in the slightest. I thought the Milestone comics were an engaging 'an well-put-together line of books, especially good at slammin' together some cool and unique character dynamics. (ESPECIALLY Icon. Man, I love Icon.)

Fast forward. At the '08 San Diego comic convention, DC executive editor Dan Didio announced that DC comics has reacquired the license to the Milestone characters and will be publishing new comics featuring them. Didio is effusive in his praise for the line, all - "always a fan" and "great addition to our line." The Milestone characters were coming back, albeit absorbed into the DC Universe.

As a fan of these properties, I'm excited and hopeful.

Then.... Not much.

Static ends up in the Teen Titans. There are a few guest appearances from Milestone characters in Justice League and Brave and the Bold. Static and Icon trades are re-printed, and a Hardware TPB is due on the schedule for March, 2010. Also, a Dakota-verse wrap-up mini-series is underway.

Then,  on August 24th, this.

SHIT!

In a fan-question based interview Dan Didio announces there are "No New projects" involving the Milestone stable  in the works.  The best he can offer is the possibility of a  Static-centric story in Teen Titans at an unconfirmed date in the future.

As a fan of the Milestone line, I'm pissed. Is DC SPECIFICALLY trying to jerk me around?

But I get over that.  And start thinking as a writer with a big 'ol historical interest in the comics medium.

Now, I'm confused.

What's the POINT of shepherding the deal through for such little returns? Is DC happy with this?   Milestone editor and Chief Dwayne McDuffie wasn't, and publicly expressed frustration.

I KNOW that a decent amount of time, expense, and money was spent by the Milestone creators. I assume that a goodly amount of same was tossed around on the DC side of the fence.  All this for a POSSIBLE Static-related storyline?

What. The. Hell. Were. They. Thinking?

So in the interests of research I trundled around the net and came up with some possibilities.

I gotta tell you.  None of these make DC editorially look pretty good.  At best it feels like extraordinarily poor planning on DC's part.  At worst, it feels like a downright malignant brush-off to the creators and fans of the Milestone properties.

Let's head down the depressing list.

Possibility 1) Simple miscommunication.  Didio is wrong, and the door is, in fact, open for new Milestone-related comics project at DC. I'd *like* for this to be true, and - The Dakota wrap-up series - is in the pipeline.  And DC will probably release it.

Still, overall, this is unlikely, given the unhappiness on the Milestone side, this is extremely unlikely.  McDuffie certainly doesn't think this is the case.   But maybe?  Please?

Possibility 2) DC HAD big plans for the Milestone characters.  These plans were changed due to the vagaries of corporate publishing..

(Which doesn't ABSOLUTELY mean "bad or incompetent planning."

Probably.

I guess.)

OR these plans were changed to "punish"Dwayne McDuffie for comments made on his message board regarding his work writing Justice League of America. Here's a quote from McDuffie on the JLA firing, via his message board via the Beat:

Nope, it was my own doing. I was fired when “Lying in the Gutters” ran a compilation of two years or so of my answers to fans’ questions on the DC Comics discussion boards. I’m told my removal had nothing to with either the quality of my work or the level of sales, rather with my revelation of behind-the-scenes creative discussions.

Honestly, I don't have much of an opinion on the above. DC can fire anyone for whatever reason they want, and I'm sure that all experienced freelancers understand the business and the risks.

Still, these are two completely separate projects, with different editors, creators, and fan-bases.  If this is true we're assuming that DC is capable of screwing over EVERYONE involved with Milestone to punish one guy.    If so - and remember, this is all absolutely hypothetical -  this is both incredibly petty, and potentially damaging to the quality of future DC projects:

"Dear freelances. If you tell the truth about your experiences working at DC, we will do EVERYTHING in our power to fuck with your life" is not a corporate attitude that results in a happy, productive work environment.

Possibility 3) DC REALLY, REALLY, REALLY wanted Static in the Teen Titans and didn't care about the rest of the line at all.

If so... Well, mission accomplished, in an extremely inefficient and  round-a-bout way.  McDuffie considered this possibility on his forum.

Based on their actions, they never really wanted to publish the Milestone stuff, they wasted my time. We could have done a little deal for them to use Static without me having to spend so much money on lawyers.

Of all the likely possibilities, this is the one that casts DC in the best light.  It makes them seem silly and muddled, but not actively out to screw with people's lives.

Sidenote, for what it's worth: I just read both the Terror Titans mini-series and the most recent Titans TPB. Writer Sean McKeever and artist Joe Bennett are doing a fine job with Static. No complaints.

Possibility 4) DC's publishing strategy is "Let's throw crap at the wall and see what sticks." (Granted this is, to some extent, EVERYONE'S publishing strategy.)  DC was hoping for a huge sales/publicity bump on the first few Milestone appearances. When this failed to happen, they decided to shelve all plans and pool their resources into more potentially profitable venues.

Like a Magog series. Or relaunching the Doom Patrol for the 16th time this year.

(OK, I bought both of these.  But still....)

In other words:  Poor planning and bad faith lying.

Possibility 5) Was, I believe, originally floated by Tony Isabella over on Dwayne McDuffie's message board.

Call me cynical, but I still think the main reason DC makes deals to publish characters like the Milestone characters, the Archie super-heroes, Doc Savage, etc. is to keep someone else from publishing them. They already get their butts kicked by the Marvel super-heroes and they don't want any more competition.

So. DC management is saying, here "WE don't want to play with these toys, but we damn sure don't want anyone else to play with them, either." This would obviously make them assholes, but worse...

STUPID, too.

(A) By screwing the Milestone guys over, DC has clearly and obviously reduced it's chances at this kind of future publishing deal. DC, unsurprisingly, seems much more concerned with the profitability and visibility of the characters that they own than the characters that they don't. Which is, on a corporate-greed level sensible enough, BUT it doesn't make them a particularly inviting home for folks who want their active characters to appear in actual comic books. The DC/Milestone alliance was an epic failure. The DC/Wildstorm alliance certainly wasn't a success - Among other things, editorial meddling from DC led to Alan Moore seeking employment elsewhere.  At this point it seems like the height of idiocy for any outside company to want to function as a DC imprint.l

You keep this up, nobody's gonna want to work with you.

(B) I don't, honestly, see any other superhero universe posing much of a threat to DC and Marvel in the near future. DC HAS to know this too. Given the near-impossibility of selling non DC/Marvel superhero titles in the current direct market, all of this seems like wasted effort. In the last ten years there's been, what? Invincible? And.... Yeah. I'm tapped.

Possibility 6) DC Comics is actively trying to alienate minority readers/hates black people/has an actively racist agenda. I've seen this one tossed around on message boards a decent amount.

I'm not seeing any corroborating evidence, so let's let this one go.

Possibility 7)   (Suggested by Rob Tevis below.)

<blockquote>

McDuffie changed the deal after getting fired and DC's hands are tied. He is big on creative control. If he felt like he wouldn't get that after being let go, he could have decided to change things at the last minute. Dan D. probably ran his mouth too soon on the news before things were officially set up.

</blockquote>

Possibility Some combination of the above.

So.  That's what I came up with.

I fully realize that even if DC had given the Milestone line it's full support it could have crashed and burned creatively. (I'm all-sorts of unsure about the creative potential of mixing the Milestone and DC universes together.) And the odds strongly favor that it would crash and burn and explode and salt the earth commercially - It's incredibly rare for Marvel or DC to successfully launch ANY new in universe title, and the few that do succeed tend to be re-brandings of existing titles. (See: Dark Avengers.) Most fans prefer to stick with their favorite characters, and even modestly successful re-launches like Outsiders and She-Hulk are rare.

Of course, DC could have just avoided the whole deal in the first place.

And the Milestone line seems to be designed to target y an audience DC feels they don't understand or have no real chance of reaching in decent numbers.

And, really, I'm not sure the REASON matters as much as the result:  A lot of people -  Creators and fans, including yours truly, - feels jerked around, fucked with, and angry.

So that's my spiel.  Let me end with four questions:

1) Is there ANY way that DC could have dealt with the Milestone characters like they did that isn't stupid or shady?

2) Can McDuffie and the other Milestoners pull out and work with a company that actually seems to like and WANT to produce Milestone comics?

3) Who has the merchandising rights to the Milestone characters now? Is DC in any position to make money off Static Shock lunchboxes?

4) Am I missing anything that might possibly result in new Milestone products? Throw me a bone here!

I am genuinelly curious here.  If anyone at DC or Milestone wants to respond with comments or clarification, please e-mail me at MarkAndrewCSBG at gmail.com.  Thanks.

57 Comments

• At September 22, 2009, Shkspr wrote:

  8. DC is running out of their own heroes to kill off, and buying the Milestone characters means that ...

• At September 22, 2009, Randy wrote:

  They need to get on good terms with mcduffie.

• At September 22, 2009, Scott wrote:

  Personally, I think the most likely possibilities are Numbers 4 and 5 -- DC throws stuff up hoping they'll get ...

• At September 22, 2009, Michael P. wrote:

  I would guess that possibility 4 is most likely.

• At September 22, 2009, Craig wrote:

  1) I don't think a non-stupid, non-shady option exists for DC's handling of the Milestone characters. I firmly believe that ...

• At September 22, 2009, Jack Tango wrote:

  You know, I had originally written a very long response to your post disagreeing point-by-point, but I realize now it's ...

• At September 22, 2009, Basara wrote:

  How about the most likely scenario

  Possibility 8: The economy is forcing a minor constriction, and this would not be the ...

• At September 22, 2009, kalorama wrote:

  The "punish Dwayne McDuffie" theory seems highly unlikely given that he still gets paid when they use Static. Granted, he ...

• At September 22, 2009, Squashua wrote:

  The JLA crossover was poorly written following a poor writing stint on JLA itself. Yes, I've read the comments ...

• At September 22, 2009, kalorama wrote:

  Possibility 4) DC's publishing strategy is "Let's throw crap at the wall and see what sticks." (Granted this is, to ...

• At September 22, 2009, Dean wrote:

  I think that there is an explanation that you are missing. If you look at this chart (http://tiny.cc/NMnbG), then ...

• At September 22, 2009, Les Fontenelle wrote:

  I think Basara is closer to the truth than any assumptions about DC cruelly planned to "buy all the toys ...

• At September 22, 2009, Ted wrote:

  By screwing the Milestone guys over, DC has clearly and obviously reduced it's chances at this kind of future publishing ...

• At September 23, 2009, Greg Hatcher wrote:

  My gut feeling is that the projects got pulled or canceled in a panic when the initial offerings didn't set ...

• At September 23, 2009, Gavin wrote:

  I totally agree with the 4 & 5 combination platter. They will give something a shot and if it ...

• At September 23, 2009, dl316bh wrote:

  I must be missing the big problem here. Things change. It happens with just about any business. By all means, ...

• At September 23, 2009, acespot wrote:

  You mentioned Invincible, but forgot to mention Atomic Robo (R5)! Or Proof (Image). Or any of the Hellboy ...

• At September 23, 2009, T. wrote:

  As a Milestone fan, I for one was ecstatic that Didio was too incompetent to plan and pull off anything ...

• At September 23, 2009, googum wrote:

  Well, DC editorial seemed to think Milestone should be folded into the DC Universe proper. OK, but rather than ...

• At September 23, 2009, Dan Bailey wrote:

  As I posted when you accidentally posted an earlier draft a couple of days, my default position is to attribute ...

• At September 23, 2009, Matt D wrote:

  Seriously, this gives DC way too much credit. The DCU as a whole has been directionless and editorially incoherent since ...

• At September 23, 2009, indy24la wrote:

  If we are talking about a business (and we are), you always look at money as the biggest motivating factor. ...

• At September 23, 2009, chad wrote:

  i would say its a combination of all the things mentions dc is just throwing stuff to see what sticks ...

• At September 23, 2009, T. wrote:

  Dan Bailey and Matt D are right. Occam's Razor and all that. Also, that rule that says never ...

• At September 23, 2009, Douglas wrote:

  A little bit of 4, a little bit of 5.

  Big corporations need to acquire properties and hold on to them. ...

• At September 23, 2009, T. wrote:

  All the conspiracy theories (DC is trying to punish so-in-so, DC is racist, DC is run by idiots) are ...

• At September 23, 2009, MarkAndrew wrote:

  basara

  Possibility 8: The economy is forcing a minor constriction, and this would not be the best time to launching new ...

• At September 23, 2009, Dan Bailey wrote:

  >>All the conspiracy theories (DC is trying to punish so-&-so, DC is racist, DC is run by idiots) are just ...

• At September 23, 2009, Dan Bailey wrote:

  Ahhhh ... what is it they say on the interwebs? I owe T. a coke.

• At September 23, 2009, joecab wrote:

  Ditto 4 and 5. I doubt any personal attacks involved: this is business, and money beats vendettas.

  It's hard not to ...

• At September 23, 2009, beta ray steve wrote:

  I'd say it was more of a corporate investment, rather than a publishing one. I think future movie rights are ...

• At September 23, 2009, Douglas wrote:

  Hmm. Good thoughts.

  Still, I can't help thinking that this comes down to a difference in values, not a lack of ...

• At September 23, 2009, MarkAndrew wrote:

  Sasquatcha

  The JLA crossover was poorly written following a poor writing stint on JLA itself. Yes, I've read the comments that ...

• At September 23, 2009, Dan Bailey wrote:

  >>They get up every morning, pay their bills, and tie their shoes. They aren't idiots, they just see the world ...

• At September 23, 2009, T. wrote:

  They get up every morning, pay their bills, and tie their shoes. They aren't idiots,

  I've known plenty of people ...

• At September 23, 2009, T. wrote:

  Re: Dan Bailey - I agree, and there's a reason why there are rabid followings for movies like Office Space, ...

• At September 23, 2009, Aaron Thall wrote:

  And while all this nonsense is going on, I can't help but notice a distinct lack of Static Shock boxsets ...

• At September 23, 2009, kalorama wrote:

  In film, sure, but not in comics. And in film - Well, did I miss a memo? Is anyone NOT ...

• At September 23, 2009, Thok wrote:

  I sort of wonder if part of the lack of Milestone projects is DC wanting McDuffie to lead the new ...

• At September 23, 2009, kalorama wrote:

  And, for the record, I don't actually think that DC bought the properties with the specific intention to bury them. ...

• At September 23, 2009, Cisco Kid wrote:

  I would agree that it has everything to do with DC scooping up properties to keep in their back pocket. ...

• At September 23, 2009, Douglas wrote:

  Great points everyone.... (I don't think I've ever gotten into a comic book discussion thread before.) I'm still going to ...

• At September 23, 2009, MarkAndrew wrote:

  kalorama

  Whether or not it's been common practice in comics until now is irrelevant to the point.

  No, it's really not. ...

• At September 23, 2009, kalorama wrote:

  No, it's really not.

  Screenwriting for Hollywood strikes me as analagous to writing (and getting fired from) Justice League comics. ...

• At September 23, 2009, Kevin Hellions wrote:

  I think DC, in the constant "who copied who first rivalry with Marvel" remembered that Marvel bought out the Ultraverse ...

• At September 23, 2009, Douglas wrote:

  RE Kevin, (I think "doing nothing with my universe" should be a line in a poem)

• At September 23, 2009, MarkAndrew wrote:

  Kevin - Ha! (Although there was certainly a bigger Ultraverse push from Marvel and Marvel was essentially buying their ...

• At September 23, 2009, MarkAndrew wrote:

  Kalrorama - I'm just not following your logic, and I don't think I'm ever going to be - You ...

• At September 23, 2009, FunkyGreenJerusalem wrote:

  I'm not sure if this is a reason DC had or not, but you know where those characters could really ...

• At September 23, 2009, stealthwise wrote:

  I agree with the theory about the "no one else can have them" mentality. There are a ton of ...

• At September 24, 2009, Comics Should Be Good! @ Comic Book Resources » Wednesday Comics: Hey, Wait, We Have One More Page Left! wrote:

  [...] that whole thing together! He has trouble tying his shoes/running a publishing company, from what I hear. We should ...

• At September 24, 2009, kalorama wrote:

  Kalrorama - I'm just not following your logic, and I don't think I'm ever going to be - You don't ...

• At September 24, 2009, kalorama wrote:

  Kalrorama - I'm just not following your logic, and I don't think I'm ever going to be - You don't ...

• At September 24, 2009, Rob Tevis wrote:

  What about this option?

  McDuffie changed the deal after getting fired and DC's hands are tied. He is big on ...

• At September 24, 2009, MarkAndrew wrote:

  karlorama -

  (B) violates absolutely no legal, moral, or ethical business codes

  I'm not sure what a "business code" is in this ...

• At October 8, 2009, Martin wrote:

  @scott

  I think Rocket would be a better fit for Teen Titans then JLA. She is Icon's Teenage side kick ...

• At October 16, 2009, Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? « Call and Response wrote:

  [...] that many. That aforementioned afro-diasporan metahuman contingent isn’t much bigger today. The promise of revisiting the Milestone Media characters ...

3)  Brian Michael Bendis (writer) on Ultimate Marvel Team-Up (2001-2002)

Issues:  1-16 and a special (17 issues) Matt "Grendel" Wagner, Phil "the Coffin/Green Arrow" Hester, Mike "Madman/X-Statix" Allred, Bill "New Mutants/Voodoo Child" SIN-KEV-VITCH, Jim (Grrl Schouts) Mahfood, John "Swamp Thing" Totleben, Chynna "Blue Monday" Clugston-Major/Florez, Ted "Metropol" McKeever, Terry "Strangers in Paradise/Runaways" Moore, Rick and David "Kabuki" Mays and Mackartists.

With short pieces from Alex "Daredevil" Maleev, Dan "Nocturnals" Brereton , John "Spider-man!" Romita.  Senior (!), Frank "Avengers/Liberty Meadows" Cho, Scott "Tiger! Tiger! Tiger!" Morse, Craig "Blankets and the much better Goodbye Chunky Rice" Thompson, Michael Avon "Powers" Oeming, Jason "aBody Bags" Pearson, Sean "Sleeper/Criminal" Phillips, Mark "Spider-man/Trinity" Bagely, P. Craig "Sandman/Ring of the Nibelung" Russel, Jason "Scars/Crossed" Burrows, Leonard "Agents of Atlas" Kirk, Dave "Wonder Woman Annual" Gibbons, Michael "Alias" Gaydos, James "Sketchbook Diaries" Kolchaka, David "Kabuki" Mack, Bret "Shot Callerz (Which MarkAndrew liked a lot)" Weldele, Ashley "Spawn/Automatic Kafka" Wood.

Team-Ups: Spider-man with:  Wolverine, the Hulk, Iron Man, Punisher, Daredevil, Punisher & Daredevil, Fantastic Four, Man-Thing, X-men, Doctor Strange, Black Widow, Shang-Chi, and cameos by Blade, Mary Jane Watson, Elektra, Captain America, the Human Torch, the Ultimates and Iceman.

Y'know, it took 200-some-odd words but I think my point is proven.  How can you argue with talent like that?

<b>Why This Run Rocks</b>

1) This series is basically my platonic ideal of how a team-up run should work.  One writer lends a basic consistency to the scripts, but each individual issue looks different as the types of stories change.  The earliest Brave and the Bold team-ups used the same sort of method, but the results were wildly uneven.  (Although Brave and the Bold # 52 is one of the very best issues of the entire run.)

So, anyway, TERRY MOORE ON THE BLACK WIDOW!

JOHN TOTELBEN ON THE MAN-THING VS. THE LIZARD!

Lord, lord, lord.  Beauty.

(From Ultimate Marvel Team-Up # 8.  Bill Sienkiewicz artist.)

2)  There are some really interesting, mixed-media, Watchmen-ish storytelling tricks in some of these stories.    The John Totelben Man-Thing is intercut with a love letter between a guy and his wife, and it's still kind of sweet even though he turned himself into an evil lizard.    The last super-size "Special" issue is essentially "Peter Parker does his homework and runs into superheroes along the way."  The Punisher/Daredevil story itself is only, like, five scenes,  a couple days, three issues, but it's interspersed with flashbacks that deal with YEARS worth of back-story.  The Fantastic Four story... Well, it is an issue of Ambush Bug, basically, complete with porous fourth wall.  And here's a nice dual-narrative story from the Allred Iron Man issue.

(From Ultimate Marvel Team-Up # 4.  Mike Allred artist.  Man, scans from squarebound comics always come out gooshy.  I wish I had the floppies.)

3)  Back to the art:  It's fairly clear that Bendis has tailored the story to his specific artist -

Hey, there's no Luke Cage, Spider-Woman, or Nick Fury team-ups.  So all us New Avengers readers KNOW he's not just picking his favorite characters.  (And I believe that Matt Wagner said he chose Wolverine with no input, 'though I can't find the quote.)  And, yeah, it's possible to TRY to tailor a story to an artists strengths and fail, but Bendis does a commendable job responding to the skillsets of over a dozen wildly different artists.

(From UMTU # 1.  Matt Wagner artist.)

4)  "Wildly different" is something of an understatement.  To give some quick examples:   Scott Morse does weirldy lumpy magical realism.  Chynna Clugston-whatever's best known for foul-mouthed teenage soap-opera.  Frank Cho was, at the time, best known for drawing a funny animal comic strip. The number of different styles on display is what really seals this run in the "GREAT" category.

(From Ultimate Marvel Team-Up Special.  Jim Mahfood Artist.)

On the Other Hand: This series messed up Ultimate Universe continuity forever.  Check the Wikipedia article -  Which is 86% continuity bitching and doesn't even mention the Marvel Fanfare inspired concept for this series - for more information.  And as annoyingly anal as wiki is  it doesn't even MENTION the most egrigious error -  In her cameo appearance BLUE Finnegan from BLUE Monday has RED hair.  I' a a reasonable guy.  Idon't often advocate the tar-and-feathering of colorists and editors, but some errors are just inexcusable.

Much less importantly, one of Bendis' big strengths as a writer come from his long-term plotting - his stories usually offer pay-offs months, even years, down the road.   Unfortunately, he has no chance to show off here, and his single issue scripts are relatively weak.  There DOES seem to be a long-term meta-plot involving Doctor Doom in the making here, but the series was cancelled long before it reached fruition.  Another strike against.  Still -  It is the best conceived and team-up book over the long haul, and that's worth a # 3.

Bonus Link! Here's Brad Curran from a while back on the Jim Mahfood penned Fantastic Four issue.

2)  John Byrne (artist/co-plotter) and Chris Claremont (writer) on Marvel Team-Up (1976-1980)

Issues:  59-70, 75, 79 and part of 100. (14 annahaf issues.)

Team-Ups: Spider-man and:  Yellowjacket and the Wasp (the ONLY appearance for either of 'em as featured players in a team-up book),  the Human Torch, Ms. Marvel, Iron Fist, the Daughters of the Dragon, Captain Britain, Tigra, the Man-Thing, Havok, Thor, Luke Cage, Red Sonja (!) and a Spider-man-less Storm and Black Panther back-up feature.

Why This Run Rocks:

1)

Some general thoughts:

Team-up books feature a bunch of different characters.  (Fine, OBVIOUSLY.  But I'm building here.)   Since stories are based on characters, this means that the wily team-up book creators must work with a variety of story-types.  All writers and artists have their genre-based strengths and weaknesses.  Which means that the quality of team-up books tends to be a HAYULL of a lot more variable than most comics.

Which is why this run is a little miracle.  Every single darn issue is GOOD.   *Bam*  *Bam*  You hear that?  That's rock solid baby.  And that's not something I'd say of any of the 15 other runs mentioned.

Or, to put it another way, the Claremont/Byrne run has, by far, the best worst issue of any of the hot 16.

(From Marvel Team-Up # 70.  Tony Dezuinga inker.)

2)   Characterization.  Miraculously, the two starring characters have relationships that feel (more-or-less) like actual human relationships.  Captain Britain and Spider-man start out regarding each other with suspicion, but some intense experiences turn this into trust.  Spider-man and Thor have a professional's regard for each other's work.  Luke Cage and Peter Parker share an instant, and easy camraderie.  Storm and the Black Panther want to get it on till the break 'o dawn.   You know who fails to do this?   Pretty much everyone else who's ever written a team-up book, ever.

(From MTU # 75.  Al Gordon inker.)

3)  Friggin' S-p-e-c-t-a-c-u-l-a-r fight scenes.  Honestly, I'd never been that much of a Byrne fan before collecting these issues, but his MTU just sold me.  His fight correography is up there with anyone in the business.   The Super Skrull issue - which I left at (my scanner-less) home 'cause I'm an idiot - was especially good.  But here's Spider-man vs. Tigra to make up for it.

(From Team-Up # 68.  Bob Wiacek inker.)

4)  Spider-man and Red Sonja.  Byrne and Austin.

On the Other Hand: The plotting is tight.  Each character is distinct.  The coloring is perfectly effective.  The sequential story-telling is well thought out.  The individual panels are nicely designed.  Geez.  I can't t think of anything bad to say.The aren't my favorite covers ever, I suppose.  Honestly, I got no complaints:  For my money this is as good as the duo's X-men run.

Which means we've eliminated fifteen of sixteen runs...  And I'm an English major so this is hard for me, but I believe there's only one left.

God knows how long it'll take me to re-read all this stuff, and I think I'll have a lot to write about.  Seeya...  I'll try for Sunday-ish, OK?

27 Comments

• At September 17, 2009, joecab wrote:

  The image isn't coming through, but was that the issue with Havok and the Living Monolith? I liked it. What ...

• At September 17, 2009, kalorama wrote:

  The Byrne/Claremont run on MTU was, as a whole, much more entertaining than their X-Men stuff.

• At September 17, 2009, Michael P. wrote:

  Ultimate Marvel Team-Up: The exact moment that anal-retentive nerds began to ruin the Ultimate Universe.

• At September 17, 2009, MJ wrote:

  The Claremont/Byrne Team-Up issues are what really turned me on to comics. MTU #61 was my first comic I ...

• At September 17, 2009, Dan Felty wrote:

  Holy shit, that's an awesome roster on UMTU!!!

  For some reason I never read ultimate comics, but I need to start ...

• At September 17, 2009, MarkAndrew wrote:

  MJ - You're right about the Warlock, down to the issue number. But issue 55 was written by ...

• At September 17, 2009, Mike Loughlin wrote:

  Chunky Rice has the better-constructed story, better characters, and tighter plotting. I would call it the better of the two. ...

• At September 17, 2009, Ethan Shuster wrote:

  So, who worked on Marvel Team-Up with Spider-Man and the cast of SNL?

• At September 17, 2009, Anonymous wrote:

  I loooove the Claremont/Byrne run!

  Ethan - MTU #74 was written by Claremont, pencilled by Bob Hall and inked ...

• At September 17, 2009, Mr. M wrote:

  Sorry - I didn't leave my name in the post directly above.

• At September 18, 2009, Philip Ayres wrote:

  Wooo ! Byrne/Claremont ! Superb run, some great team ups. This has just been (mostly) ...

• At September 18, 2009, Edo Bosnar wrote:

  MTU #79 is one of my favorite team-up issues ever. A perfect, action-packed, beautifully drawn done-in-one story - I like ...

• At September 18, 2009, MJ wrote:

  Wow. I can't believe it was Mantlo who wrote that Warlock issue. It was Claremont all the way ...

• At September 18, 2009, Philip Ayres wrote:

  A word for Dave Hunt's inking of Byrne. Everyone raves about Austin doing Byrne but the Hunt inking early ...

• At September 18, 2009, Matt Beahan wrote:

  I'd have put the Claremont/Byrne MTU at #1, but that's just me.

  Here in the UK Ultimate Team-Up was the backup ...

• At September 18, 2009, BDaly wrote:

  Mike Loughlin:

  I just wanted to agree with you that Voodoo Child is firggin' awesome. It's beyond awesome. I think it ...

• At September 18, 2009, Graham Vingoe wrote:

  I've never investigated the Bendis MTU run but it sounds a lot of fun, but Byrne/Claremont on MTU is only ...

• At September 18, 2009, Sijo wrote:

  "Ultimate Marvel Team-Up: The exact moment that anal-retentive nerds began to ruin the Ultimate Universe."

  I could argue that Ultimate Marvel ...

• At September 18, 2009, john wrote:

  Very cool stuff... Thank you so much for this post, I really enjoyed it!

• At September 18, 2009, DC Guy wrote:

  Glad to see so much love those great MTU issues - that Yellowjacket?wasp story was one of my favorites as ...

• At September 18, 2009, MarkAndrew wrote:

  Mike Loughlin - Thanks! I'll edit those in. (I thought it would be funnier if I didn't use ...

• At September 19, 2009, Philip Ayres wrote:

  MTU 79 has a sequel of sorts in Uncanny X-Men (190-191 iirc) I'd read those issues years ago ...

• At September 19, 2009, Julian wrote:

  I recently sold all my Ultimate books. No nostalgia left for them. But I saved all my UMTU issues because ...

• At September 19, 2009, Brad Curran wrote:

  Do you consider Power Man and Iron Fist a team up book at all? Wait, no you don't . Moving ...

• At September 19, 2009, MarkAndrew wrote:

  There are two team-up book series (that I know of) that I haven't read any of.

  One is "Richie ...

• At September 20, 2009, hueysheridan wrote:

  Great article. It looks like Kirkman's MTU won't get a mention, but I'm hoping you discuss it in your promised ...

• At September 23, 2009, JSpec wrote:

  Great stuff. Was a huge fan of the Claremont / Byrne MTU!

  I've really enjoyed the column, but have to ...

Anyway, here are the first few parts of the list.

15-14
13-11
10-9
8-7

Aaaaand Onward!

6) J. M. DeMatteis (writer) and Kerry Gammill (artist) on Marvel Team-Up (1982-1983)

Issues: 119-125, 127-129, 131 (11 issues)

Team-Ups: The Gargoyle, Dominic Fortune, Human Torch, Daredevil, the Man-Thing, the Beast, Tigra, Watcher, Captain America, the Vision and Frog-Man.  Yes, Frog Man.  I'll prove it.

Why This Run Rocks: 'Cause the first months of the J. M. DeMatteis written Marvel Team-Up were (let's be extremely charitable here) somewhat uneven...

1) Yeah, OK. Charitable ain't my bag. Some of those JMD/Trimpe issues were down-right-the-hell Godawful. I have Vietnam style fetal-position screaming flashbacks to the that Devil Slayer/Defenders mess in # 111 and 112.

But then Kerry Gammill

(most often paired with "finisher" Mike Esposito) kick-started the book to life. Gammill was packin' a speedy, kinetic style that was particularly effective at defining the relationship between the characters and they're environment. Check out (A) how well the character's moods and personalities come through in the panels below...

(From Marvel Team-Up # 124.  Mike Esposito inker.)

And (B) the way Gammill manages to show three different figures in motion... What they're trying to accomplish, what they're moving towards, and how they're interacting.

(From Marvel Team-Up # 121.  Esposito again.)

2) J.M.'s thoughtful, literary approach to writing. These here comics serve as much as a philosophical treatise on the idea of "family" as they do a superhero punch-em-up. Frog-Man wants to redeem his father's old super-villain identity. The Gargoyle teaches the necessity of letting go of loved ones. The Beast reconnects with his estranged parents while the evil villain Anthony Power tries to completely sublimate his kid. And a few issues after Gammill's departure, the evil Doctor Faustus is laid low by the IDEA of his critical, domineering mother. Traditional superheroics this ain't.

(From MTU # 127.  Guess who inker.)

3) On a similar note: Many of the villains aren't overcome through violence, but through leading the baddies to self-realization.  After a hunret an' twenty odd issues of Stegron and the City Stealers getting kicked in the face, this is...

Well, pretty damned impressive writing, is what it is.

(Team-Up # 125 again.)

4) The supporting cast! Not only DOES JMD give the Marvel-Team-Up version of Spider-man his own supporting cast, they're (as far as I can tell) completely unique in the history of comics. They're an entertaining bunch, presented in broad strokes (a poet, a "Lockhorns" style married couple, a couple 'o cougar types who are WAY into Peter Parker) but you get the sense that JMD was ready to flesh 'em out at a moment's notice. Let's meet them.

(And # 127 once more.  Esposito.)

Wow. Actual old people in comics.  It's a Christman Miracle!

On the Other Hand: Folks, I've read a lot of superhero comics.  I've built up a toleranece for melodrama like you wouldn't believe.  But these.... these got a bit much.  It's SMART melodrama, and it's melodrama punctuated with humor, but the plot of EVERY ISSUE feels like a Russian-novel, and the plot of EVERY ISSUE is full of Surprising and Life-Changing Character Revlations and...

It all starts to run together after a while.  A little bit of a lighter touch on some of these stories woulda done wonders for the run as a whole, and would've made the Russian novel issues stand out.  And while Gammill's a fine, criminally underrated artist, the folks further up the list are all absolutely world class, like....

5)  Keith Giffen (artist) on DC Comics Presents (1982-1985)

Issues:  52, 59. 81, 87 and my notes say he's SOMEHOW involved with the Amethyst team-up in # 63 - which I own, but left at my friend's house up North before I got a chance to read it.  So 5-ish issues. (Paul Kupperberg, Paul Levitz, Robert Loren Fleming and Steve Engelhart writers.  And maybe Mishkin and Cohn.)

Team-Ups:  The Doom Patrol (the Bad Version)  the Legion of Substitute Heroes, (The BEST version), Ambush Bug, the Creeper.  And MAYBE Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld.

Reasons Why This Run Rocks:

1) AMBUSH BUG!

(From DC Comics Presents # 59.  Kurt Schaffenberg inker.)

2)   The chance to view Giffen's stylistic evolution as an artist over the course of a couple years.  Mr. G's  original style was more-than-a-little Kirbyish, but by the time '82 rolled around his work is all odd angles, strange layouts, and absurdist images,

(From DCCP # 52.  Sal Trapini inker.)

But just nine issue later, it's quite-a-bit different.  The line-work is a little looser and less cluttered - And his Superman is the spitting image of the '39 original.

(DCCP # 59 and Schaffenberg again.)

And by '85, a scant couple years later, it's completely pared down and abstract.

If you wanna follow the career evolution of an important artist in four issues, it doesn't get any better'n these.

3) MORE Ambush Bug!

(From DC Comics Presents # 81.  Bob Oksner inker.)

4) Show of hands. Anyone ELSE ever tried to sit down and read a bunch of team-up books all in one go? Yes?  Then you've noticed that they all tendta follow the same structure with minimal variation.   There are nine-or-ten story "beats" that are common to almost all of them. The Action Sequence introduction. The heroes meet, but have a misunderstanding and fight or argue. The "both heroes combine their resources to beat the villain" ending. So it's a relief, really, to find team-up comics that not only look different, but have a unique tone, and follow a story-structure that ain't the traditional superhero narrative. Of ALL the comics in our little countdown here, I'd call DCCP 59 and 81 the most innovative and originally conceived.

5) Issue # 81.   See, due to Red Kryptonite exposure, Superman and Ambush Bug switch bodies, ala Freaky Friday....

(Oksner inks.)

And bring a slightly different set of priorities to their jobs....

(Ditto.)

Honestly, folks this is one of the three-or-four funniest comics I have ever, E-V-E-R read.

On the Other Hand: it IS only four-or-maybe-five issues, and the "Buggy" humor doesn't really kick in 'till his second appearance.  This is probably my personal favorite run on the list, but as much as I dig it there just ain't enough of it to put it higher'n # 5 against competition like....

BONUS LINK!  Here's FoldedSoup from The Want List on DCCP # 81.

No... No wait.  I meant competition like.....

4) Neal Adams (artist) on Brave and the Bold (1968-1972)

Issues: 79-86, 93, and inker on 102 a little less than half on 102.  (I'm not sure who the inker I couldn't recognize actually was.)

Team-Ups: Deadman (twice!), the Creeper, Flash, Aquaman, the Teen Titans, Sgt. Rock, Green Arrow, and (sweartoGod) the House of Mystery.

Reasons Why This Run Rocks:

1) Well, I did list "historical importance" as a list-criterion a while back.  And this here run not only introduces the revamped and bearded Green Arrow, it's the  first interior work from Neal Adams for DC Comics!  If historical impact were the SOLE criteria, this'd be an easy # 1.

(From Brave and the Bold # 79.)

Look at that! Judged by TODAY'S cinema-drenched standards that's a nice sequence. In 1968(!) this was a freakin' revelation.  Huge, widescreen panels!  Eerie, noir-drenched coloring!  And completely silent!  I can just imagine the jaws hittin' the floor when this issue dropped.   The previous issue, where Batgirl and Wonder Woman both fall in love with Batman ala Betty and Veronica did not prepare anyone for this!

2) Hyper-realism.  What Kirby did for alien landscapes and Gods, Neal Adams did for people. He made 'em bigger, more impressive, larger than life...  And, come t'think, he wasn't so shabby at cosmic landscapes, neither.

(From B &B # 86.)

3) And he shifted between "quiet" and "loud" art styles better'n anyone in the business, ever.  The noir-ish sequence up-top is a good example of "quiet."   Here's some "loud" for ya'.

(From Brave and the Bold # 83.)

4)  Forgive the awful scan here -  I swear I gotta color reprint of this issue SOMEWHERE, but I can't find it.

But I gotta point this out special:  The Batman/Deadman fight which kicks off issue # 86 contains one of THE very best fight scenes I've ever seen in comics.  Hopefully my crappy from-the-Showcase-volume scan of the first page can give you a LITTLE taste of what N.A. was doing.

(From B & B # 86.)

On the Other Hand: Adams would get better.  And did, during this run.   The last two issues in this run are l'il miracles.  On the other:  The first seven have some major balance problems, as the flashy page layouts make it hard to tell what's actually going on quite a bit of the time.  Likewise, the Neal Adams who's so good at drawing PLACE - Picture his sweeping desert vistas in the R'as Al Ghul storylines - isn't quite here yet.  The FIGURE drawing is superb, but there are some times when you don't get a sense of the figures interacting with their environment.

And then there's the writing.

When Haney and Adams are delivering straight-ahead supernatural, noir, or war stories it's generally pretty solid.  It's not Haney's best work, but it's leagues ahead of the Adam West inspired mish-mash from the last year or two of Brave and the Bold.    But when Haney and Adams try to incorporate Julie Schwartzian Science Fiction

Well, see this here  Bonus Link! to Chris Sims at the ISB.

Late Addition:  Here's Johnny Bacardi on the Creeper Team-up in # 80.

And here's another quite a bit more complimentary Bonus Link! from Pat at Silver Age Comics. (Who I blatantly ripped most of the color scans offa.)

Next:

One run that EVERONE wanted, one that got just a handful of mentions in the comments.  Aiming for 3-2 on Monday/Tuesday-ish.  This time I mean it.  Really.

19 Comments

• At September 11, 2009, Matt Bird wrote:

  Thanks for another great article. I love that DeMatteis/Gammill run.

  Two notes: for number five you start off ...

• At September 11, 2009, MarkAndrew wrote:

  Oh yeah. Geez. Totally wasn't thinking there. I ever read most of his Deadman stuff when I ...

• At September 11, 2009, Aaron Thall wrote:

  Hmmm... I dunno... Not enough White Rabbit for my tastes.

• At September 11, 2009, steev wrote:

  I was starting to think this article got abandonded.

  As far as the Giffen issues go, I wouldn't really count ...

• At September 11, 2009, stephen cade wrote:

  Back during the JLA/JLE/JLI days whenever anybody expressed surprise or amazement that DeMatteis was scripting a very funny book, an ...

• At September 12, 2009, Mary Warner wrote:

  I was one of the first people to mention the White Rabbit here, so I hope you're not too upset ...

• At September 12, 2009, The Crazed Spruce wrote:

  That Substitute Heroes teamup is one of my all-time favourite comics, hands down. I didn't think Giffen did enough ...

• At September 12, 2009, Michael P. wrote:

  As I remember, Marvel editorial at the time effectively split the Spider-Man supporting cast between the three books, giving the ...

• At September 12, 2009, Greg Burgas wrote:

  When I write the X-Men (still waiting for the phone call, Joey Q!), I have a nifty idea for the ...

• At September 12, 2009, Sijo wrote:

  I used to love Keith Giffen's stuff. When he was funny, he was FUN-NY! But when he was bad, O-BOY... ...

• At September 12, 2009, Bill Reed wrote:

  Wow, DeMatteis pulled a lot of stuff from his MTU days into his later run on Spectacular, didn't he? Neat.

  I've ...

• At September 12, 2009, David wrote:

  That first Batman/Deadman Adams was a revelation at the time, returning Batman to being a detective and mysterious, after the ...

• At September 12, 2009, Matt D wrote:

  I'm pretty sure FVL just mentioned he's bringing back White Rabbit in ASM (past her minor role in Mr. Negative) ...

• At September 12, 2009, chad wrote:

  loved the ambush bug teams ups espically the one where he switched bodies with supes and supes learned how hard ...

• At September 12, 2009, doctor bob wrote:

  I thought Neal Adams did more than ink B&B 102 - I was under the impression he did the majority ...

• At September 12, 2009, Edo Bosnar wrote:

  Hmmm, not that I didn't like the Giffen issues in DCCP (they're probably my favorites right up there with the ...

• At September 13, 2009, hueysheridan wrote:

  I'm guessing that its way too late, but here's my vote for Robert Kirkman's Marvel Team-Up run to be included ...

• At September 13, 2009, MarkAndrew wrote:

  Damn it!

  Doctor Bob's right about B & B 102. I don't have a copy anymore (it got stolen along ...

• At September 18, 2009, Blackjak wrote:

  I LOVE the Cerebus blloon, floating along behind the Superman one!

13-11 HERE.

10-9 HERE.

Everyone caught up?  Then let's go....

Todd Dezago (writer) on Marvel Age Spider-Man Team-Up (2004-2005)

Issues: 1-5 (Five Issues) Michael O' Hare, Lou Kang, Jonboy Meyers, Ron Lim, and Valentine Delandro artists

Team-Ups: Fantastic Four, Captain America, Thor, Kitty Pryde and Storm-with Rogue half-heartedly playing the villain.

I know, I know... MASMTU (to it's friends) is a fairly obscure and almost immediately canceled series from the failed Marvel Age line that didn't manage to retain a single artist for more than one issue. Worse yet, the first four issues are re-makes of old Spider-man and Marvel Team-Up issues - And not the ones that made this list (With one exception.)

So, the question becomes doubly important:

Why This Run Rocks:

1) I'm not ALL that familiar with Dezago's work (I know he's written Spider-man before, and I liked TELOS quite a bit) but Sheeeeooooot, this is some nice scripting. Each issue is a perfect little recipe for effective comic-booking, perfectly measured, portioned, and seasoned. Let's take a look at what each-and-every issue offers up. (A) A fast-paced plot with a definite beginning, middle, and end? Check.

(B) Humor? Plenty of it, but not SO much that it detracts from the plot.

Since this is a comic aimed at younger kids - (C) A lesson at the end about tolerance or what it means to be an American or what-have-you? Well, not EVERY issues got this, but three of the five of 'em do.

If reading hundreds and hundreds (I'd guestimate somewhere between six and seven) of these darn team-up books has tought me anything, it's this: Man, it's REALLY EASY to screw these books up. You can fail to create a relationship between the two team-up-ites, concentrate too much on character or action to the detriment of the other two, you can drag the whole story down with a lame-arsed villain, you can have Hercules dragging the Island of Manhattan around with a chain... There are thousands of ways you can screw team-up books up. But Dezago DOESN'T. Given a bottom-of-the-barrel assignment that would be easy to sluff off, he makes every story work on darn near every level.

(From Marvel Age Spider-Man Team-Up # 5. Valentine Delanro Pencils. Pat Davidson inks.)

2) Surprisingly good art comin' mostly from folks I've never heard of. Ron Lim did a bunch of work on Silver Surfer and the Starlin penned Thanos stories circa 1990 or so... (And here he is with a tricky-to-pull-off but quite effective Spidey/Thor page.)

(From MASMTU # 4. Scott Koblish inks.)

but the other guys flew right under my radar. But they've all really effective storytellers, and most of 'em have a little bit of a Manga flavor to their work. (I like it when comics from 2004 feel like comics from 2004 instead of, say, Spider-Girl.) I'm especially impressed with JonBoy Meyers skill at cartoony facial expressions.

(From MASMTU # 3. Nathan Massengil and David Newbold Inks.)

3) Every time when MASMTUP re-tells an older Marvel Team-Up story, the remake is much, much, much(!) better. (And the Rogue/Storm original story is good too.) The first, Fantastic Four story is a mash-up of the second Stan Lee/Steve Ditko story from Amazing Spider-man # 1 and... Well, I can't tell. # 1 wasn't the best Spidey story ever by a long shot, but Ditko's Spider-man is pretty much my favorite batch of superhero comics ever, so I'm too hopelessly biased to judge. I WILL say that the original story loses points 'cause it didn't have this exchange...

(From MASMTU # 1. Michael 'O Hare Pencils. Derek Fridolfs Inks.)

4) It works as kid's comics. Frank Man over at Spider-fan has a REALLY good point. (He doesn't care for the book much in general, though, the poor man.)

So as I was saying about those narration dialogue boxes...They seem to be built for adults to read to their kids or for kids who have just started reading to get past the exposition of the story and into the rising action easier. Good thinking, writers.

On the Other Hand: I've got one big complaint and a few nitpicks, but let's start with a non-complaint.  Sure, the stories might be a little simple and some of the humor might be a little dopey.  BUT IT'S A COMIC AIMED AT YOUNG KIDS.  So both of these seem like a PLUS in a lot of ways.  More problematically there are a couple logical lapses (Which the Spider-fan reviewers hammer on endlessly, the boring ol' sicks-in-the-mud) and there's a few issues  the creative team could have spend more time introducing the guest star and establishing their milleu...

But all of that pales before the real problem. Captain America looks like this.

You know who I blame?  Nazis.

Jim Starlin (Artist and plotter) on DC Comics Presents (1980-1981)

Issues: 26-29, 36,37. (6 issues) Marv Wolfman, Len Wein, Paul Levitz and Roy Thomas Scripters

Team-Ups: Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter, Supergirl, Spectre, Hawkgirl and Starman. No, not THAT Starman. Or that other Starman. Some Starman who's all into alien politics. (I'd never heard of him before. )

Why This Run Rocks:

1) Villains. Well, at least VILLAIN. Well at least MONGUL.

Here is a list of the top five most re-used/important villains (not counting Mongul. Or Stegron) who originated in a team-up book.

1) Superboy Prime - DC Comics Presents # 87 (Although he's not a villain in REAL life.)
2) Arcade - Marvel Team-Up # 65
3) Silver Banshee - Action Comics # 585
4) Moses Magnum - Giant-Size Spider-Man # 4
5) .... Well, apparently the Blood Brothers and the Griffin showed up before appearing in Marvel Team-Up and Marvel Feature. (Which had some Thing team-ups.) So I got nothing.

I;ve said it before, I'll say it again.  This is a problematic format to work with.  As a team-up book writer, you have to incorporate the storytelling mileus of two characters into 17-22 pages, which means that you've got limited space to devote to the villains, so is it surprising that some of the made-for-team-up antaganists come off... A little lame?   So when Starlin comes up with a villain who not only provides an effective challenge for the Pre-Crisis Superman on physical, mental, and emotional levels, but who also sticks around to turn up important player in major storylines 25 + years later... That's kind of a big deal.

So everyone say "Hi" to Mongul and his amazing Cosmic Cube.

(From DC Comics Presents # 27.  "Quickdraw" inker -  Anyone know what this Quickdraw business is all about?  Len Wein Script.)

2) Starlin's a really funny cartoonist. Lookit' Mongul piloting his giant death star in his widdle hat.
So cute!

(From DCCP # 28.  Romeo Tanghal co-artist.  Len Wein Script.)

AND he's a really funny cartoonist in the midst of this huge, world-shattering cosmic storyline, which speaks well to his faith in his skills. Most creators, when workin' the "cataclysmic end of the world" angle, spend every iota of their storytelling prowess trying to convince us of the bigness and badness and epicness of their premise. Here Starlin KNOWS he can do all that, and doesn't mind varying the emotional tone a little bit.

3) DC Team-Up! Superman and God!

(From DCCP # 29.  Romeo Tanghal co-illustrator.  Len Wein Script.)

Also the Spectre, and stains from where I spilled my coffee.

4) Hawkgirl (at least the comic book version) will probably never be this bad-ass again.

(From DC Comics Presents # 37.   Roy Thonas Script.)

5) Sijo mentioned this in the comments as a negative but I... I kind of like Starlin's "Huge Jerk" take on Superman. He Learns His Lesson at the end of the issue, but I can use a break from the Big Blue Boyscout every now 'n again.

(From DCCP # 27, with "Quickdraw" again.  Len Wein script.)

On the Other Hand: Starlin's art is usually pretty solid, but these books do contain the occasional off-model character, and the humor is generally well done -  But sometimes it shifts down into "annoyingly cutesy.  And I had some problems with specific issues -  The Starman issue is almost half exposition, and the Green Lantern team-up isn't particularly thoughtful or... well, GOOD. But, sadly, the higher we move up the list the less I find to complain about.

Next Up:

Two runs that, if my countin' fingers are working, received only one vote EACH in the comments.  And that's a darn shame.  Let's see if we can net 'em a little love.  Wednsday-ish.

15 Comments

• At August 30, 2009, Bill Reed wrote:

  There was a Marvel Age Team-Up? Huh.

• At August 30, 2009, Mary Warner wrote:

  The White Rabbit debuted in a team-up book. (Marvel Team-Up) She's pretty cool.

  Well, at least I think so.

• At August 30, 2009, Derek J. Goodman wrote:

  I've always loved the White Rabbit. Really.

  Hey Brian, when are we going to get a Cool Comic ...

• At August 30, 2009, Mary Warner wrote:

  If Brian needs a suggestion, there's a really cool moment in the new Mister Negative series where she was singing ...

• At August 30, 2009, buttler wrote:

  The Grapplers first showed up in Marvel Two-in-One. I'm not going to advocate too strongly for Poundcakes, but Songbird ...

• At August 31, 2009, Comics Should Be Good! @ Comic Book Resources » The Top 16 Best … | Spiderman 4 | Wallpapers | Comics | Photos | Pictures | DVD Movie | Trailer | Clips | Icons | Games | PSP | Xbox wrote:

  [...] posted here: Comics Should Be Good! @ Comic Book Resources » The Top 16 Best … AKPC_IDS += "1078,";Popularity: ...

• At August 31, 2009, Edo Bosnar wrote:

  Never heard of Levitz/Ditko's Starman before? For shame. He's personally my favorite Starman, and, as I've said many times before, ...

• At August 31, 2009, Mike Loughlin wrote:

  Let's see, what's left?

  Ultimate Marvel Team-Up: some of the best artwork to ever grace a team-up book.

  Claremont & Byrne Marvel ...

• At August 31, 2009, Matt D wrote:

  Wait, what's better than Starlin on DC Presents? Really? That's probably my favorite Superman stuff ever not written by either ...

• At August 31, 2009, Brad Curran wrote:

  "There was a Marvel Age Team-Up? Huh."

  Target had a magazine sized reprint of all five of these. I remember thumbing ...

• At August 31, 2009, joecab wrote:

  Quckdraw I assume is like Crusty Bunkers: code for "deadlines got tight so a bunch of people chipped in to ...

• At August 31, 2009, MarkAndrew wrote:

  Wow. That's.... that's a lot of love for the White Rabbit. I'm surprised. And somewhat scared. ...

• At September 11, 2009, Comics Should Be Good! @ Comic Book Resources » The 16 Best Team-Up Book Runs: # 6-4 wrote:

  [...] 15-14 13-11 10-9 8-7 [...]

• At September 12, 2009, Sijo wrote:

  Well, glad to see the Starlin DCCP run finally covered! Thanks, Mark.

  But I gotta disagree re: Starlin's Jerk Superman. I ...

• At September 12, 2009, buttler wrote:

  I knew some of the Serpent Squaders debuted in MTIO, but I was too lazy to look up which ones. ...

So. hey, top ten, here, now! But first let me explain a little bit about how the list is put together.

The runs are generally "scored" based on the following loose criteria, listed in order of importance.

1) Quality of craft. Are these comics well written and well drawn (and less importantly, well inked, colored, even lettered/) Are they doing something unique and original?

In general, I'll score a run that's uneven - with some spectacular highs and some outright failures - higher than a run that's consistently good but not "OHMY%^&*ING GOD!" A bunch of Ds and As will likely be scored higher than a similar grouping of Bs and Cs.

2) Are the runs critically well received and well remembered? Are they talked about a lot? Are they mentioned in the comments?

This criteria cost the Tom Defalco Two-In-One run three or four slots. I couldn't find a decent link to anyone talking about them at all except for Annual # 7.

3) Is the run considered historically important?

4) Are they considered a major work in a specific artists' career?

5) Do they have team-ups, villains, and supporting characters that I, personally, think are cool? Yeah, it's completely subjective. This rule is a little reward to myself for doing all this freakin' scanning.

So, into the top ten, starting with:

10) Mark Gruenwald and/or Ralph Maccio (writers) on Marvel Two-In-One (1979-1981)

Issues: 53-58, 60-74 (21 issues) Ron Wilson, John Byrne(!), George Perez(!!), Jerry Bingham, Frank Springer and Mike Nasser artists.

Team-Ups: Quasar, Deathlok, Bill Foster(Giant-Man), Wundarr/Aquarian, the Impossible Man, Starhawk, Moondragon, Warlock-except-not-really, Stingray, Triton, Scarlet Witch, Hyperion, Angel. the Guardians of the Galaxy, Mystery Guest, Mr. Fantastic, the Inhumans, and the Puppet Master.

Reasons Why This Run Rocks:

1) The art. These issues provide the the absolute best eye-candy in all of MTIO. You got your John Byrne

(From Marvel Two-In-One # 53. Joe Sinnott inker.)

Your George Perez

(From Marvel Two-In-One # 56. Gene Day co-artist.)

and... I'll get back to the art later.

2) Long term planning. Recurring locations! Villains who aren't defeated after one issue, or even one arc! Multi-part stories! Ongoing subplots, people! ONGOING SUBPLOTS!

This is the most modern-feeling run on the list. While yer average team-up book is going to score between "little" and "none" in the issue-to-issue continuity department, Ralph and Gru's MTIO is just suffused with the stuff. It kicks off with "Project Pegasus" a big 'ol six issue arc dealing with shenanigans at a government sponsored supervillian containment project. Now six issues might not sound like a noteworthy event in these decompressed days, back in the 'early '80s a story this long was rarity. The letter pages in later issues strongly imply that this was heavily hyped and considered a pretty damn big deal. And it worked as a big event, setting up story-lines that would play out throughout the rest of the run. p. The whole thing felt quite a bit like a modern dramatic TV show. Not every issue was part of the overall story-arc, but there was a larger story being constructed if you were patient.

3) The art! Man, even Ron Wilson who I bagged on before knocks it outta the park.

(From Marvel Two-In-One # 67. Gene Day and "friends" inker.)

4) The team-ups: I love, love, drooly-tounge-kiss-nose-rub LOVE all these funky team-ups. No Spider-mans, Hulks, or Wolverine here! It's all Thundra, the Impossible Man, and (Huzzah!) Wundarr! baby! The closest thing to a major guest star is Mr. Fantastic, or maybe the Scarlet Witch. I also dig how many of these guys have previous ties to the Fantastic Four, making it feel a bit like old-home week. And there's a mystery guest, and a villain team-up with the Puppet Master, two of my favorite special categories of teams. (But ONLY when the villain team-up is done right and the villain and the hero actually work together -as they did here. Otherwise it's cheating.)

5) The Art: Man, I can't remember seeing Jerry Bingham's art before (I am old, and my brain is sort of mushy) but he's firing on all cylinders here. There's a slightly earthier John Buscema look to his stuff. I'm also really appreciating the consistency of Gene Day's inking on most of these issues - It helps a lot to make this run feel like part of a whole. And dig the shading in this panel below. Creepy.

(From MTIO # 66. Gene Day inker.)

On the Other Hand: You notice how I've been concentrating on the art here? It's 'cause quite a few of these issues have major story flaws. The Project Pegasus arc doesn't feel like there's quite enough story to fill six non-decompressed issues. The Inhumans story is the opposite. It's four issues (plus) of comics in a two issue bag, and the writers have to jam every available nook and cranny full of expository text just to work through all the plot - Which, come to think, is true of the Warlock three-parter as well. And there's the Impossible Man story which is 16 pages of awesome and an ending that *POPUPS* outta nowhere, and doesn't relate back to the rest of the story. None of these comics are awful- There's SOMETHING cool, or more often four or five cool somethings in every issue - But there are a lot of individual writing hiccoughs as well.

Sidenote: I said a run had to be five issues. I THOUGHT Brennert wrote five issues, until I looked at the credits to # 184. Which is a pretty great Earth-Two Huntress team-up written, sadly, by Mike W. Barr. But this stuff is SO important and influential that I'd feel like my list wouldn't really work without it there. So I'm leaving within.

9) Alan Brennert (writer) on Brave and the Bold (1981-1983)

Issues: 178, 181-182, 197 (4 Issues) Jim Aparo and Joe Staton artists.

Team-Ups The Creeper, Hawk and the Dove, Earth-Two Robin, and Earth-Two Batman with Earth-Two Catwoman. Yep. 100% Steve Ditko and E2 Batfamily. Way to find a niche and work it, Alan!


Why This Run Rocks: C-h-a-r-a-c-t-e-r-i-z-a-t-i-o-n. More than any other team-up book writer - and more than 98% of comic writers in general - Brennert wrote characters who acted like real people. Brennert's specialty is the flawed hero - Not gun-toting psychopathic anti-heroes, but genuinely good folks who are just ever-so-slightly-messed-up: Angry, (Hawk) neurotic, (Dove), prejudiced, (Clayton Wetley, the villain from "Paperchase") scared, (Batman, of all people) and then there's EVERYONE from "Interlude on Earth-Two" which we'll get to in a sec. And the heroic victory over adversity is far from garuanteed. They might recover and conquer their weaknesses, OR they might be consumed and torn down by 'em, as Hawk and the Dove were. Brennert went out of his way to avoid the simple moral tropes of heroic fiction, and that's why we're still fighting about these stories today. (See below.....)

(From Brave and the Bold # 181)

2) Since Greg Hatcher already talked about this:

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.
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.

Right. Brennert was the first guy to realize that this whole "Alternate Universe" thing - The idea that there's another person out there who's almost you... Except maybe evil, or dead, or a superhero - Is really fairly terrifying, and could scramble up your mind right proper.

(From Brave and the Bold # 182)

3) Everyone hard-core nerd who's aware of this run has a favorite A B written B 'n B story. But very rarely do two people have the SAME favorite Alan Brennert team-up. Well... sort of. There are only five of them. I'm a "Paperchase" guy, myself - The Creeper team-up which features a combination of two of my favorite superhero tropes: Heroes vs. metaphor for universal evil (In this case intolerance and prejudice) and heroes defeat their enemies with KICKING and FIRE. (And, Ok, some personal revelation of the part of the story's villain and blah...blah...blah. But mostly KICKING and FIRE. Take that Evil! Right in the GUT!)

But I don't expect anyone to agree with me.

On the other hand: 18 pages. 19. 23 at the absolute MAX. This complaint isn't so much about Brennert as a writer as it is with the format. But Brennert's overwhelming emphasis on building and defining his charactters meant that the plots here could be a little... perfunctory. Hawk and Dove fight generic thugs. Batman and the Catwoman overcome their Scarecow induced fears and.... the Scarecrow gets captured off-panel. Every issue here would work just fine as a three issue mini-series, thinks I, but in their current form they're cramped for space.

And while I appreciate the Bob Haney-ness of just tossing a new character in at random with no regards to continuity but... Why the Hell is there an Earth-Two Batwoman?! Does this mean all of Batman's '50 and early '60s stories happened on Earth-Two AND Earth-One? How does that reconcile with the darker tone of what Brennert's doing here.

This is the sort of thing that keeps me awake at nights. Pity, PITY the uber-nerd.

Bonus Link! Here's more from Greg Hatcher on B&B 182.

And here's Scott (Of the Classic Comics Corner) the Four Famous Co-Stars B &B review page on # 197.

Next:

Join me Saturday-ish for the one run y'all will NEVER GUESS EVER.

And another one you already did in the comments. More than once. I thought no-one would mention it but now the surprise is ruined and I hope you're happy.

Next time.

23 Comments

• At August 27, 2009, Greg Burgas wrote:

  Jerry Bingham has done a lot of work, but the first time I saw his work was on the Batman ...

• At August 27, 2009, McE wrote:

  I remember Jerry Bingham from the tail end of the first Black Panther run back in the late 70s (13-15). ...

• At August 27, 2009, MarkAndrew wrote:

  Yah crap. Now that I actually LOOK AT THE CREDITS in my comics, Brennert didn't write # 184. ...

• At August 27, 2009, MarkAndrew wrote:

  Son of the Demon is the one Morrison picked up and ran with and now we have Damien, right? ...

• At August 27, 2009, AdamJahnke wrote:

  Thank you for reminding me why Marvel Two-In-One was one of my favorite comics back then! I remember loving ...

• At August 27, 2009, MarkAndrew wrote:

  Was I too hard on PP? It was epic and it always did feel like it was building to ...

• At August 27, 2009, torp wrote:

  Jerry Bingham's masterpiece is his Beowulf graphic novel that First comics published. Beautiful work.

• At August 27, 2009, Michael P. wrote:

  Why is Gwen Stacy wearing Madonna's cone bra?

  Also: singular, criterion; plural, criteria.

• At August 28, 2009, Philip Ayres wrote:

  Just read the MTIO issues in Essential MTIOv3.

  Essential Marvel team Up v3 has just shown up to ...

• At August 28, 2009, Tonio wrote:

  You must remember that Gruenwald and Macchio wrote each one one page of each mag (odd or even ones). It ...

• At August 28, 2009, Edo Bosnar wrote:

  Like I said in an earlier comment, I initially liked the team-up books back in the day because they most ...

• At August 28, 2009, MJ wrote:

  Yes! That Black Widow story in MTU is an overlooked gem! I always had a soft spot for ...

• At August 28, 2009, Tally wrote:

  Ah yes, the REAL Earth-2. How we've missed you. Those two issues of B&B made me find every Earth-2 Batman ...

• At August 28, 2009, Mason King wrote:

  Aparo deserves some serious love. His 1970s work was outstanding — passionate, dynamic, ripe with character. Even though he got ...

• At August 28, 2009, Jeff R. wrote:

  I still want to see Wein's DCCP run. (That gets you the Starlin issues, which there aren't enough of ...

• At August 28, 2009, jackdaw53 wrote:

  On the few occasions I actually go to a physical comic shop I always make a point of seeing if ...

• At August 28, 2009, Ruler Bulon wrote:

  As far as the one nobody will never ever guess goes, I'm gonna guess Tom Peyer's 1997-8 run on Marvel ...

• At August 28, 2009, Brian wrote:

  Bingham also did some good work on Iron Man in the late seventies/early eighties, between John Romita, Jr.'s two runs ...

• At August 29, 2009, Sijo wrote:

  I used to collect all four team-up titles- DC Presents, Brave & Bold, Marvel Team-Up and Marvel Two-In-One- during the ...

• At August 29, 2009, MarkAndrew wrote:

  *Sigh*

  Agh! Busy! # 8-7 should be up sunday the 30th, barring unforseen disasters.

• At August 29, 2009, MarkAndrew wrote:

  You must remember that Gruenwald and Macchio wrote each one one page of each mag (odd or even ones). It ...

• At August 29, 2009, MarkAndrew wrote:

  Also: There's no overlap between the runs, so since Len Wein showed up with J L Garcia Lopez, he ...

• At September 11, 2009, Comics Should Be Good! @ Comic Book Resources » The 16 Best Team-Up Book Runs: # 6-4 wrote:

  [...] 13-11 10-9 [...]

Worth Noting: While I know what the top runs are, the ORDER of the top five or six isn't set in stone yet. If you have a favorite team-up run, lemme know in the comments and it might effect the outcome.

13) Nick Cardy(Artist and Inker) on Brave and the Bold (1970-1971)

Issues: 91-92, 94-96 and inker on # 97 over Bob Brown(6 Issues) Bob Haney writer.

Team-Ups: Batman with the Black Canary, the Teen Titans, Sgt. Rock, Wildcat, a Mystery Guest, and the Bat Squad - a Haney creation that had never appeared before. Or since.

Reasons Why This Run Rocks:

1) Nick "Sex legs" Cardy.

2) Nick "No! NO! NOOOOOO!" Cardy

3) Nick "VROOOOO KRAAAAAaaaaCCCKKKK!" Cardy

(All panels from Brave and the Bold # 91)

Sometimes, there are no words. Also...

(From Brave and the Bold # 96)

4) In the very specific area of writing dialog spoken by people who are really, REALLY angry Bob Haney is the best writer comics have ever seen.

On the Other-Hand: In general, Haney's writing tends to improve as he's writing for an older audience. His worst Brave and the Bold team-up writing is his earliest - semi-traditional Silver Age stories aimed at young children. His best is later on in the mid-to-late '70s, aimed at teenagers and college kids. The Cardy issues... Well, he didn't seem to know WHO his audience was, and there's a little bit of tonal floundering. Also, while Cardy's always SOME kinda great, his work definitely gets progressively less good (more rushed?) as his short run commences... Hence all the panels from his first issue.

Bonus link! Here's Noah Berlatsky on the first two issues of this run (and a Neal Adams joint tossed in for good measure) and Tucker Stone on the last three.

12) Tom Defalco(Writer) on Marvel Two-In-One(1981-1982)

Issues: 75-87, 91-93, 96 and Annual 7 (18 issues) David Michelinie co-writer on 76 and 78. Jerry Bingham, Alan Kupperberg, and (mostly) Ron Wilson artists.

Team-Ups: Oh boy. The Thing meets Iceman, the Man-Thing AND Nicky Fury and his Howling Commandos, Wonder Man, the Blue Diamond, Ghost Rider, Sub-Mariner, Captain America, Sasquatch solo, Sasquatch with Alpha Flight, Spider-Woman (Jessica Drew), Sandman, Ant-Man, Batma... I mean the Spynx, Jocasta, Machine Man, and ALL of the Avengers... Which, surprisingly, isn't the most guest-star cluttered issue of Defalco's run....

Reasons why this Run Rocks
1) Tom Deflaco is the best Marvel Two-In-One writer the book's ever seen, and he's regularly doin' stuff on a technical/literary level I've never seen from any other team-up book writer. (And I've read a lot.) Why? Actual, honest-to Buddah character development. Defalco doesn't Not just introduce the character and their milleu to the audience, but allows for actual change and growth. Spider-villain the Sandman decides to retire from evil-doing over a beer with Ben Grimm. Machine Man finds, and loses, true love. The Bill Foster version of Giant Man confronts and conquers his fear of death over a multi-issue sub-plot. The Blue Diamond overcomes his feelings of inferiority, finds true love, and ascends to psedo God-hood. (You GO boy!) It may not be especially, y'know, subtle character development... But it's more than you're gettin' from any of Defalco's peers.

(From MTIO # 79. Ron Wilson artist. Chic Stone inker.

2) If Defalco's stuck with a character firmly under the control of another writer and CAN'T do progressive characterization... At least he has everyone fight MODOK.

(From Marvel Two-In-One # 81. Ron Wilson Penciler. Chic Stone inker.)

3) There's quite a range of emotional textures to the individual comics, from the Epic space opera of the Avengers team-up to the initmate "Two guys talking in a bar" Sandman story. Then there's the just plain goofy Wonder-Man story (Wherin this guy...

uses a children's television show based on the Thing to try to conquer the world) to...

(From MTIO # 82. Ron Wilson artist. Chic Stone inker.)

stories that seem to be intended to exist ONLY to invoke suicidal depression in their audience. Defalco's not just paying a lot of attention to establishing a specific mood and tone for his stories, he's really working to present a variety of 'em.

4) And, of course, this run contains the Greatest Comic of All Time (scroll down.)

On the Other hand: There's a goodly number of clunkers here, like Ant-man's guest spot in # 78 and the unispired Iceman team-up in # 76. More troubling, while artist-for-16-of-these-18 issues Ron Wilson is my favorite COVER artist for MTIO - even ahead of George Perez, John Byrne, and "King" Kirby- his interior pencils are somtimes a tad chunky and stiff... And the whole effect is further devalued by the "A crowd scene? Just color it all yellow!" approach to production values that held sway at Jim Shooter's Marvel.

Bonus Link! Here's Cronin again on the greatest comic ever.  Edit:  And Chad Nevett, too.

And, what the hell, Bill Reed and Brian Hughes on Modok.

11) Mark Waid(Writer) and George Perez (Artist) on Brave and the Bold - Second Ongoing Series(2007-2008)

Issues: 1-10 (10 issues)

Team-Ups: There's no "set" hero that appears in every issue, as Superman did in DC Comics Presents. It went: Batman and Green Lantern, Green Lantern and Supergirl, Batman and Blue Beetle, Supergirl and Lobo, Batman vs. the Legion of Superheroes, Batman and Green Lantern again, Wonder Woman and Power Girl, the Flash and the Doom Patrol, The Boy Commandos AND the Blackhawks AND the Atom AND Hawkman AND Dial "H" for Hero AND the Metal Men, and finally Superman AND the Silent Knight AND Aquaman AND the Teen Titans - With Metamorpho, Adam Strange, the Challengers of the Unknown and freaking Destiny of the Endless (and probably a half-dozen dudes I forgot to mention) running around in supporting roles. Sheesh.

Reasons Why this Run Rocked:

1) George Perez and his insane page design skills. Yes, that is an entire Superman/Silent Knight team-up adventure, shrunk down and reflected in the Knight's helmet. Even if you don't share my PERFECTY RATIONAL love for the Silent Knight (who showed up in Brave and the Bold even before it was a team-up book) or my excitement at seeing him again, it's still an indisputably great page.

(From Brave and the Bold # 10. Bob Wiacek inker.)

You guys twisted my arm. Here's 0ne more Perez full pager. Supergirl and Green Lantern in other-space Las Vegas.

(From Brave and the Bold # 2. Bob Wiacek inker.)

2) Mark Waid has the time of his life making and exposing the subtle connections in the DC Universe. The Challengers of the Unknown escaped Death, and aren't in Destiny's book. The H-E-R-O dial turns Tin of the Metal Men into an overconfident jerk. Wally "Flash" West's kids amalgamate with the Doom Patrol....

(From Brave and the Bold # 8. Bob Wiacek inker.)

3) And, for the love of God don't tell anyone, but Waid and Perez made me kind of like Lobo. Just a little bit.

(From Brave and the Bold # 4. Wiacek inker, again. Tom Smith does the fine coloring on all of these, BTW.)

On the Other Hand: Perez work, do to it's extreme detail, can get ever-so-slightly cluttered and hard to follow, and his figures sometimes come off a little.. TOO realistic and slightly plasicine looking. And the intense love for the DC Universe is fine, I mean I like Metamorpho too, but there comes a point where you're making connections instead of telling as tory and it does get a little bit... what I'm trying to say is... y'know... All this..... this... continuity...
THAT'S NOT WHAT BOB HANEY WOULD DO HOT-DAMMIT!

Just doesn't feel right.

Bonus Link! Here's the Comic Treadmill in excruciating deal on issues 1-6. I was going to link to Joe Rice complaining about this series (for a nice change of pace from all the praise, praise, praise) but, man, something messed a bunch of old CSBG posts up, so I won't. Just take my word that it was funny.

So, that's it for THIS go-round. Next time, when I get around to it (probably a couple of days) we'll start out the top ten with two famous and popular runs, and a couple days after THAT we'll have numbers eight and seven, one obscure-but-great run you guys'll probably never guess, and one that you'll definitely never guess.

26 Comments

• At August 25, 2009, Chad Nevett wrote:

  Marvel Two-in-One Annual #7 is indeed fantastic. I wrote a piece on its brilliance on my blog a couple of ...

• At August 25, 2009, Scott MacIver wrote:

  Marvel Two-in-One Annual #7 is easily the greatest comic ever written. I concur.

• At August 25, 2009, Bill Reed wrote:

  Man, I wish Marvel Two-in-One still existed.

  I also found the Waid/Perez B&B to be fun, as well.

  And if Haney/Aparo ain't ...

• At August 25, 2009, MJ wrote:

  Ugh. You're all insane. The DeFalco MTIO's were unreadable. When reading through my 3000+ issues 1960s- late ...

• At August 25, 2009, HammerHeart wrote:

  Two observations about the Waid/Perez Brave and the Bold:

  First, even though many readers were creeped out by Supergirl flirting with ...

• At August 25, 2009, Brian wrote:

  17

  17

  17

  I laugh everytime I think about that scene. Poor Hal. Wonder if that's why he did the three ...

• At August 25, 2009, Neal K wrote:

  I have to give a nod to Bendis' run on Ultimate Marvel Team-up. He was working with some really ...

• At August 25, 2009, Thok wrote:

  Waid's writing for the first 6 issues of Brave and the Bold was very good. The Megistus/Challengers stuff in ...

• At August 25, 2009, chad wrote:

  nice choices for oved the story with the thing and the champion and also the george perez and greg ruka ...

• At August 25, 2009, jazzbo wrote:

  Apparantly my comment didn't go through, but what I want to know is, who was the "Mystery Guest"? Don't leave ...

• At August 25, 2009, Matt Bird wrote:

  MTIO Annual #7 is overrated, but DeFalco's other double-sized story, MTIO #75 (Ben and the Avengers vs. Annihillus and Blastaar), ...

• At August 25, 2009, Sijo wrote:

  I've always liked team-up stories. Specially in the old days, when most series were so self-contained, in some cases the ...

• At August 25, 2009, MarkAndrew wrote:

  The surprise guest star was, in fact, Plastic Man. Batman was hired to track him down without knowing who ...

• At August 25, 2009, stephen cade wrote:

  DeFalco's MTIO stuff deserves better--it was the first run I thought of for this list.

  And I am a much bigger ...

• At August 25, 2009, dhole wrote:

  I'm assuming Claremont and Byrne's Marvel Team-Up will rank high on this list, and rightly so.

  I am curious to see ...

• At August 25, 2009, Dave Lane wrote:

  Hey, Sijo, nice shout out to the Starlin DCCP issues (I posted a comment about those issues on part one ...

• At August 25, 2009, Black Manta wrote:

  I like Defalco, but he wasn't the best MTIO writer. What about the Serpent Crown Affair or Project Pegasus?

  I really ...

• At August 26, 2009, Prevatte wrote:

  I loved the Cartoon "Dial M for Monkey" homage to Marvel Two-in-One Annual #7. I wonder if there ...

• At August 27, 2009, Brad Curran wrote:

  "such as creating an analog for his own creation Thanos in Mongul"

  He was? Does that make him an analog of ...

• At August 27, 2009, Comics Should Be Good! @ Comic Book Resources » The Top 16 Team-Up Book Runs: # 10-9 wrote:

  [...] 15-14 and explanation here. Numbers 13-11 are over here [...]

• At August 29, 2009, Jack Norris wrote:

  The DeFalco run on MTIO is the worst run of that title, taking place as it does in DeFalco's early ...

• At August 30, 2009, Comics Should Be Good! @ Comic Book Resources » The Top 16 Best Team-Up Runs: # 8-7 wrote:

  [...] 13-11 HERE. [...]

• At September 3, 2009, Wade AuCoin wrote:

  My votes are for the following:

  1. Haney and Aparo on Brave and Bold

  2. Claremont and Byrne on Marvel Team-up

  3. ...

• At September 3, 2009, MarkAndrew wrote:

  Wade - One of those already showed up at the link below (in a bit broader form.)

  http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2009/08/27/the-top-16-team-up-book-runs-10-9/

• At September 11, 2009, Comics Should Be Good! @ Comic Book Resources » The 16 Best Team-Up Book Runs: # 6-4 wrote:

  [...] 13-11 10-9 [...]

• At September 22, 2009, Comics Should Be Good! @ Comic Book Resources » Dear Mark Waid RE: Brave, Bold Back Issues wrote:

  [...] by the other great Mark in comics, I picked up a bunch of your Brave and the Bold run ...

Ah, the team-up book! These are a strain of comic, most popular in the '70s and early '80s, where a sales-grabbing "A" list character - Superman or Spider-man, say - would be paired with a succession of less-popular co-stars in hopes of expanding the audience for (and salability of) the current guest.

Sadly, this doesn't make for an especially stable storytelling engine, and, as much as I love them - (*choke*) Many of these comics just aren't very good. Sure, you might get Alan Moore to do one issue of DC Comics Presents, or Jack Kirby to do a few covers for Marvel Two-In-One...

But these dudes aren't gonna stick around working on Marvel Team-Up month in and month out. So a really good multi-issue RUN on one of these books is something of a rarity.

Let's look at some.

So in the spirit of last years Top 100 Comic Runs - But without all that inconvenient "voting" - let's take at the very BEST work done on the team-up book titles by the few, the proud, the folks who were doing great work in a

difficult to work with,

low-publicity format,

for an extended period of time (defined in this case as "five or more issues, Edit due to unfortunate error on my part: 4 or more issues)

that some fans (Well, at least ME) have great affection for.

Ready?

15) TIE: J. L. Garcia-Lopez (artist) on DC Comics Presents (1979-1982)

Issues: 1-4, 17, 20, 24, 31, 41 (9 issues) Martin Pasko, Gerry Conway, Denny O'Neil and Len Wein, writers.

Team-Ups: Superman with the Flash, Adam Strange, Metal Men, Firestorm, Green Arrow, Deadman, and Robin. Aside from the Flash, it's a solid solid mix of second stringers who couldn't quite hold down their own book. With, ohyeah, the Joker tossed in at the end to mess wit' ya.

Why JLGL on DCCP Rocks:

1) Garcia Lopez is, oddly, best known as the bronze age artist who most deserves to be better known. He's got a legion of in-the-industry fans, but that never translated into the culture at large acclaim you'd figure this gent deserves. He's GOOD, and I'm going to try to prove that *you* should join the fan-chorus.

Notice, here, his unparalleled and somewhat frightening skill at making his character pop right off the page.

(From DC Comics Presents # 4)

Superman is doing MATH at YOU!

2) Garcia-Lopez is also a very proficient CARTOONIST. Many design-heavy illustrators aren't particularly skilled at reflecting the emotional state of their characters but, well...

Check out Superman's facial expressions in the panel below. Anger, denial, sadness, shock... It's like someone killed his puppy.

(From DC Comics Presents # 17. Steve Mitchell Co-Artist)

3) Panel design and composition!!! I could talk about this next page all day, but in the interest of brevity lemme hit just three of it's salient virtues. Notice the symmetrical balance between the left and right side of the page, the cock-eyed camera angle in the top panel, and the way that everywhere you look on this page there's SOMETHIN' cool happening.

Notice, and Marvel.

(From DC Comics Presents # 41.Frank McGlaughlin Inker)

Now imagine that damnnear every page is drawn with this kind of compositional acumen. The only question we need to ask is....

Why So Low On the List? In a word, writing. The Firestorm, Metal Men, and Joker team-ups shown above are all decently, if not spectacularly, conceived and executed. But the rest of these ... hooooo boy. Especially turgid is the overly-wrought and confusing Flash team-up from the first two issues. If the writing matched the art this would easily be near the top. But it don't. So it ain't.

Bonus Link: Here's an entry on our man from CSBG's Month of Art Stars by Brian Cronin.

15) TIE: Gil Kane (artist) on Marvel Team-Up (1972-1974)

Issues: 4-6, 13, 14, 16-19, 23 (10 issues) Gerry Conway and Len Wein, writers.

Team-Ups: Spider-Man plus The Vision, the Thing, Captain America, the Sub-Mariner, Ka-Zar, and Captain Marvel. Also, and most notably, the X-men show up during their period of semi-cancellation. The last two issues were Human Torch stories sans Spidey, pairing him with the Hulk and Iceman.

Why Gil Kane's Team-Up is the pick of the Litter:

1)

Gil Kane was the guy we all swiped from because he had superhero anatomy all figured out. If you were trying to compose a page with two guys punching each other and one of them flying towards the camera, you'd dig out your Gil Kane comics to see how he did that, to see how he constructed the figures.

Kevin Nowlan, artist: Jack B. Quick and Superman vs. Aliens.

(From Marvel Team-Up # 14. Wayne Howard Inker)

2) There's fewer'n a babies hand-ful of artists as adept at depicting the delicate, breathtaking ballet of superhero foot meeting bad-guy face than Gil Kane. Let's see the maestro at work.

(From Marvel Team-Up # 23. Mike Esposito Inker.)

3) These comics are decently-well written, which is a nice change. Tighter editorial control of these books allowed for continuing stories and sub-plots, which in turn allowed greater depth of characterization. Also, Wein and Conway do a commendable job populating these comics with interesting one-shot background characters - Drunks and cabbies, holiday shoppers and Midwestern tourists - all with a specific, unique voice. (Sadly, these vivid, funny supporting players seem to have all moved out of Marvel New York in the last couple decades. They're sorely missed.)

4) This run introduces the GREATEST MARVEL CHARACTER EVER..... (Hint: Not Spider-Man.)

(Someday I'll get around to writing that "Stegron! The Charlie Brown of supervillains!" essay.)

5) And Kane treats us to the following panel, self-explanatory in it's awesomeness:

(From Marvel Team-Up # 4. Steve Mitchell Inker.)

Why So Low On the List? The relatively low Marvel production values and highly inconsistent inking - SweartoGod, issue # 17 is credited to "EVERYBODY!!!" - stop this from ranking up there with Blackmark or the Atom as the best of Kane's work. And while the writing is BETTER than the DCCP run listed above it's still a far cry from Shakespearean.

Bonus Link: Here's Plok on the Human Torch/Iceman issue pictured above.

14) Steve Gerber(writer) on Marvel Two-In-One (1973)

Issues: 1-8 (8 Issues) Gil Kane, Sal Buscema and George Tuska artists.

Team-Ups: Man-Thing, a couple Defenders, Daredevil, the Sub-Mariner, the Guardians of the Galaxy... All characters Gerber was writing or had written in his career. Also Captain America and Ghost Rider show up. Sadly, there's no Howard the Duck. Waugh.

Reasons I dig these books:

1) Steve Gerber is, flat out, my single favorite scripter to work in comics... well, EVER, really. At it's best he brings a worldview both well-thought-out and humanistic, combined with possibly THE Most. Freaking. B-I-Z-A-R-R-E visual imagination ever to work in comics. Which leads to sequences like this-

Wherein Matt "Secret Identity of Daredevil" Murdock and his current Saturday night squeeze are heading out to take in a show, when they're confronted by -

(From Marvel Two-In-One # 3. Sal Buscema artist. Joe Sinnott inker.)

2) And panels like this. From the Christmas issue:

Which, yes, IS the Thing and Ghost Rider as 2/3rds of the three wise men.

3) And there's some nicely refined character work, especially from the Valkyrie team-up in # 7, a heady little story about the definition and fluidity of identity that ends up being all thought-provoking and quite sad by the end.

4) AND, WOOO-HOOO! These here comic have WUNDARR, the mentally deficient Superman in them!

He's poignant, trapped in a world he doesn't understand! He hangs out with the Sub-mariner's cutie-pie cousin Narmorita! And, most importantly, he's funny!

The final punchline on the joke: I've heard (although can't find a reliable source) that the Powers That Be at DC were actually upset by lovable ol' Wundarr!

On the Other-Hand: Like Gil Kane above, nobody's gonna argue that this is Gerber's best work. The final three solo-penned issues are great, but the first five are downright... dare I say it? Traditional?!!!! And sometimes kind of boring. Only 3/8ths of 'em rank as "great" in my estimation. Good for 14th.

Bonus Links:
Here's Chris Sims on that Thing and Ghost Rider team-up.

And a two-fer here's a long and thougtful essay on existentialism (really!) and the Thing/Valkyrie team-up.
And one on WUNDARR! hizzown bad self.

Tomorrow:

13-11!

30 Comments

• At August 24, 2009, stephen cade wrote:

  I have some issues from each above.

  Some issues of team up books were so bad, they were good--but not how ...

• At August 24, 2009, Bill Reed wrote:

  "Get hip, schweinhunds!" Great to see you getting some posts up, Mark.

• At August 24, 2009, Mary Warner wrote:

  I'm confused. We're you talking about Marvel Two-In-One or Man-Thing? Or was that Man-Thing cover the only picture ...

• At August 24, 2009, Michael P. wrote:

  If those early Marvel Team-Ups are *better* than those early DCPs, then I don't ever want to read the latter.

  And ...

• At August 24, 2009, Da Fug wrote:

  I usually go for writers these days. But every time someone posts a page by Garcia-Lopez on this blog, ...

• At August 24, 2009, buttler wrote:

  That particular run of DC Comics Presents is what got me hooked on comics as a kid. No joke.

• At August 25, 2009, fourthworlder wrote:

  I remember enjoying the Project Pegasus and Serpent Crown issues from MTIO.

  I should dig them out sometime.

• At August 25, 2009, Black Manta wrote:

  At the top I'm going to go with Claremont/Bryne on Team-Up. Would issue 100 be included in that run? That ...

• At August 25, 2009, Edo Bosnar wrote:

  I always loved the team-up titles put out by the big two in the '70s and early '80s - these ...

• At August 25, 2009, The Crazed Spruce wrote:

  As good as Clairemont & Byrne's run on MTU was, I'd be amazed if it pushed Aparo's B&B out of ...

• At August 25, 2009, Bernard the Poet wrote:

  Haney & Adams at no.1. Haney & Aparo at no.2. Any other result would be insanity.

• At August 25, 2009, wrecksracer wrote:

  I remember reading my brother's collection of Supervillain Team Up when I was a kid. Doom and Namor! I really ...

• At August 25, 2009, Matthew Johnson wrote:

  Why doesn't Ghost Rider's headdress catch fire?

• At August 25, 2009, Michael Xavier wrote:

  I wonder if The Thing, who is Jewish, is confronted at the religious dilemma of being one of the three ...

• At August 25, 2009, Jeff R. wrote:

  I'll be the blasphemer here and say that I'd personally put Bendis above either Haney run.

  But as long as the ...

• At August 25, 2009, chad wrote:

  never much liked marvel two in one execpt for the thing giving Valkerie a shoulder to cry on and find ...

• At August 25, 2009, MarkAndrew wrote:

  Mary Warner- I don't have any access to any color Wundarr stories, and that was the best picture I could ...

• At August 25, 2009, Dave Lane wrote:

  For every really good Garcia-Lopez issue of DCCP, there were way too many issues of not so good art, sadly ...

• At August 25, 2009, Brad Curran wrote:

  I bough the first Marvel Two-In-One trade for the Gerber stories. Really dig those, and I'm not a huge team ...

• At August 26, 2009, T. wrote:

  Garcia Lopez is, oddly, best known as the bronze age artist who most deserves to be better known. He's got ...

• At August 26, 2009, Scott D! wrote:

  Great lists! I think Claremont and Byrne's run on Marvel Team-Up should be pretty high.

• At August 26, 2009, Anonymous wrote:

  ...why is Stegron rubbing his crotch against Spidey's bum?

• At August 27, 2009, Comics Should Be Good! @ Comic Book Resources » Wednesday Comics Ranked: Week 8 Top 10 wrote:

  [...] would by a Metal Men ongoing from this creative team? Also, this may finally get JLGL that love MarkAndrew ...

• At August 27, 2009, MarkAndrew wrote:

  ...why is Stegron rubbing his crotch against Spidey's bum?

  It means "I AM AWESOME!" in Stegosaurian.

• At August 27, 2009, Comics Should Be Good! @ Comic Book Resources » The Top 16 Team-Up Book Runs: # 10-9 wrote:

  [...] 15-14 and explanation here. Numbers 13-11 are over here [...]

• At August 30, 2009, Wade AuCoin wrote:

  My votes are the following:

  1. Bob Haney and Jim Aparo's Brave and the Bold

  2. Claremont and Byrne on Marvel Team-up

  3. ...

• At August 30, 2009, Comics Should Be Good! @ Comic Book Resources » The Top 16 Best Team-Up Runs: # 8-7 wrote:

  [...] 15-14 HERE. [...]

• At September 11, 2009, Comics Should Be Good! @ Comic Book Resources » The 16 Best Team-Up Book Runs: # 6-4 wrote:

  [...] 15-14 13-11 10-9 8-7 [...]

• At September 11, 2009, kalorama wrote:

  Impressive list, but in the name of accuracy I feel compelled to point out that the panel of Stegron and ...

• At September 27, 2009, Ray wrote:

  I appear to be in the minority here, but I loved the Superman/Flash story from the first two issues of ...

(Which is raising money for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund and it would be swell if you'd GO DONATE!, and tell Chad via a comment on his blog that you did.)

Man, I hated these comics.

1) Well, y'know, I actually library dropped New Avengers. "Library dropping? What's that, MarkAndrew?" Due to the unfortunate combination of (A) really liking comics, (B) being REALLY cheap, and (C) being REALLY broke, I tend to read most of my NEW Marvel and DC comics through borrowing the trades off unsuspecting friends, plopping my fat arse down in Barnes and Noble or (mostly) from the Iowa City public library or interlibrary loan at my school. (This waste of academic resources might make me a bad person. On the other hand, I was paying out of state tuition.)

The upside: I read a lot of comics. The downside: My memory is like a 50 cent Goodwill discount sieve. So I ran by the Iowa City library, grabbed everything in their Avengers section in stock, and thought I'd settle down for a little pretend conversation with C. Nevett.

Hey, did I say donate? Go DONATE! I thought I'd catch myself up, and toss off some comments on Chad's work at the same time.

HE'S covering everything even cross-wise tangentally related to Bendis' New Avengers, including issues of Punisher War Journal, the Pulse, Captain America, and Ladies Golf Quarterly but I'm only responding to the strictly New Avengers-y stuff. So you're spared my "Why Brubaker's Captain America run doesn't work as a Captain America story" piece until a later day.

When I quote Chad at GraphiContent, his thoughts will be in beautiful italics.

Blogathon 2: Avengers Dissasembled

Chad: I've gone back and read in trades, so I don't have a firsthand experience with Avengers Disassembled, a story that I'm told may have pissed off a lot of the hardcore Avengers fanbase. If that's the case, then I love it even more. Pissing off the fanbase is good, it shakes it up a bit. You shouldn't cater to them anyway, you should be doing new things and making people feel uneasy.

While Chad seemed to rate this book in the solid "B minus" range, I'd personally lean towards the latter part of the alphabet, grade-wise.

BUT that doesn't mean I disagree with ALL his points. It was almost worth reading 'em to here the wailing and gnashing of teeth - Honestly, while I have a really-strong-and-potentially-unhealthy-emotional connection to ARTISTS who's work I enjoy...

I am honestly somewhat terrified by people that freak-the-fuck out when a fictional character is presented in a way they don't like? Well, them folks make me all sorts of nervous. And being (again) kind of a bad person, I enjoy the silly, silly pain they undergo when a character they like is presented in a way they don't like.

So watching the classic Avengers fans flip out almost made reading these books worthwhile. But not quite:

1) There's David Finch's art, which is REALLY shaky in it's depiction of emotion and panel-to-panel movement.

2) It wasn't too cool for Bendis' FIRST Avengers gig to involve taking the team apart. It feels to me that you should have to prove that you can write a decent Avengers story before dissasembling 'em. I wasn't a huge fan of Busiek's Avengers, neither, but I feel he (or Geoff Johns, or Chuck Austen) had earned the right to kill the team off in a way Bendis didn't.

3) We get a few glimpses of Bendis's attempts at team writing and he's still new at it, so it's not great.

Yeah, see, that's what killed the book for me. Everybody... like... talks the same. ("Talks the Same? Yeah. The Same? Yep. Oh.") The rhythms and structures of their dialog is recognizably Bendis, but it does very little to define the character. On the books that revolve around a single, man character this doesn't bother me so much. Here, though, it drives me nuts.

Blogathon 04: Secret War

I lied when I said I was only responding to the New Avengers posts.

Secret War plays to Bendis's strengths: a compelling story grounded in real characters told in a slow series of reveals. I think it's him at his best

Again, I don't actually REMEMBER much 'bout it, exept the photo-realistic art bothered me. But I did locate my critical notes ion the story.

Well, GOSH. If this comic was ice cream it would be chocolate chip sucky-butt flavored.

I am nothing if not succinct.

Now SECRET WAR features one of my favorite superhero story types, all random heroes thrust together and taken out of there element - I loved the crap outta Art Adams and Walt Simonson's New Fantastic Four and Dwayne MacDuffie and Skott Kolins Beyond. And there's always a chance I was Boy-PMSing when I read the book the first time. What d'you guys think? Worth a re-read?

Blogathon 06: New Avengers Breakout

Luke Cage and Spider-Woman are Bendis's pet characters and every new team line-up has those -- every one, so don't pretend like Bendis invented it.

yes. Yes. YES! Good. Freaking. Point. Roger Stern had Captain Marvel, Hercules, and Doctor Druid. Roy Thomas turned a character he created into the heart-and-soul of the Avengers. Steve Engelhart brought in the Beast and Moondragon. Jim Shooter... OK, actually now that I think of it probably really hated Ms. Marvel. Bad example.

Anyway, Breakout. When I read this, I wasn't bone-crushed by The Awesome!, but I thought it had some decent potential to evolve into somethin'. Chad says Especially as Bendis goes out of his way to have Captain America spell out for us that this is just like that first time! It's fate! And, yeah, THAT all got on my nerves, but they run around fighting dinosaurs (Yay!) and a Black Widow that didn't seem to have all that much to do with the Black Widow from that cool Bill Sienkiewicz Black Widow series from a while back (much less Yay!)

But Spider-man was FINALLY on the Avengers, and I'll forgive a hell of a lot for that. (Why wasn't Spider-man on the Avengers in the first place? I heard it was 'cause Kirby didn't want to draw the Ditko characters, but the King's drawn Spider-man hell of times. No logic! No sense!)

Anyway, you could feel Bendis getting his team-book sea legs, and I liked Finch slightly better here than in the past. These weren't GOOD comics per-se, but...

I'd loved Jinx, and Fortune and Glory, and Powers and Ultimate Spider-man and Daredevil and I figured it would all work out fine.

Blogathon 08: New Avengers: The Sentry

Until we had an Avengers story where only the Sentry and Emma Frost ended up with anything interesting to do.

While I had high hopes for Bendis bringing back the Sentry, he falls down here. It is just brutal how much he screws this up through worthless, bullshit changes that don't add anything.

Annnnd about that "fine" thing? I was wrong. On every level. Mr. Nevett is, if anything, overly charitable here. Head over to GraphiContent, 'cause C.N. does quite a commendable job of tearing this sick, drippy puppy a new bottom-hole, and I gots nuttin' to add.

Blogathon 10: Blogathon 10: New Avengers: Secrets & Lies

The library had a copy in stock, so I JUST re-read this one. So no going off half-fomed and probably inaccurate memories here.

It was sometimes kinda good, sometimes kinda bad. This is what "C minuses" were invented for.

In the content/promise of content area, this trade/set of issues does a decent job. A kind of lacklustre "Ronin" story sets up two character-based issues that tell good stories. All that's set up is Spider-Woman's possible betrayal in the future and that there's a new Avengers team.

Not only do I agree with this, but I think it's indicative of how the series as a whole works. The action sequences as a whole, can be represented by the "climatic" final scene where Iron Man zaps a bunch of ninjas and they fall down and then the whole thing is stupid. The down-time character pieces are, conversely, generally quite good and often somewhat moving.

But I believe we speak for bloggers everywhere when we say "Reading Ms. Marvel's attempt at a blog was painful. Make the hurting stop, please.")

Blogathon 12: New Avengers: The Collective

And here's where I library dropped the damn thing.

We're fast approaching the end of the pre-Civil War New Avengers run and all of a week has passed. It was during my reading of this arc that I realised that. Decompressed storytelling in action, folks. A GODDAMN WEEK HAS PASSED!

That's a GOOD point, and it's one that really bugs me 'bout this book. Historically, the Avengers have been a series of fast-paced, Epic adventures. It's a dangerous world with an ever-changing status quo. In New Avengers...

Everything happens veeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrryy slowwwwwwllllllly. (In this issue: Wolverine finally completes his epic quest to lace up his right boot! Next Issue: Will he start on the left?)

And there seems to be an inverse relationship in these books between tension and narrative speed. If the story takes to long to tell, all the tension leaks right out and the result is... kinda boring. Since I can't work up any epic hate about how "OMG! My Avengers that I grew up on are being destroyded!" I didn't have much of a reason to care.

Now, the brutal slaughter of Alpha Flight? That is cheap. This guy kills them in two seconds and yet doesn't kill a single Avenger? That's not good writing and the worthless sacrifice of characters for no reason other than an "Oh wow cool awesome!" moment.

But this... This got my dander up.

I have a theory about comic writing: If you're going to kill characters off, you should show you understand them first. (J.M. Dematties and Mike Zeck's spectacular Kraven's Last Hunt storyline is my go-to example for how to do this right.) If we adopt the oft used metaphor of the "Toybox" of Marvel concepts, the creative team on New Avengers is grabbing toys and random and jumping up and down on them and flushing them down the toilet. PLAY with your toys first. Then you can decide if you want to break 'em.

Blogathon 18: New Avengers: Disassembled

Damn, Chad is REALLY fast. It would take me waaaay longer'n half an hour to write an equivalent sized post and spell everything right and be mostly correct grammar-wise.

I'm reading these issues for the first time today - I'd previously got 'em out of the library, but decided "no" when it came time to sit down and actually read 'em - And the statistical mean of the five very different stories is "not bad." Although I've already forgotten what happened in the Sentry one.

By far the best issue in this arc and one of the best New Avengers issues period is #22, the Luke Cage/Jessica Jones issue (those issues are always damn good).

Bendis has really done some nice work with the former-blacksploitation stereotype Power Man. (Although I miss the yellow shirt and pretty, pretty, princess tiara.) When these books move towards "characters try to make sense of their lives" and less towards "big action-y set-pieces" everything goes down SO much smoother.

Also: I completely disagree with Scott Harris in the comments, and I think this comes down to (again) me being a fan or artists more than characters. Or me having sat down and plowed through nigh-on hundred issues of Captain America in the space of a week and liked most of 'em a hell of a lot, but realized that the various interpretations (Englehart, Bynre, Kirby, and Dematties among 'em) don't even TRY to match up. I don't really need to see linear character development in my superhero comics. I don't see these as real "characters" per se, and I don't expect them to develop as I would in self-contained or single author works. They're more as a big cluster of themes and ideas. And what's interesting to me is to see which of these themes are important to certain authors. Or, in another sense, it's interesting to see which of the past writers they choose to "collaborate" (so ta speak ) with and who they choose to ignore.

Blogathon 21: New Avengers: Revolution

I've never read this one, and the library copy, while SUPPOSEDLY checked in, is not physically there. Since I'm not doing anything drastic like buying a New Avengers comic, I'm gonna pass.

Blogathon 23: Thunderbolts: Faith in Monsters.

Warren Ellis's Thunderbolts stuff with Mike Deodato are the best comics I will discuss today. Out of around 230 comics, these 12 make up the best without question.

I know I was only going to cover the New Avengers stuff, but I just gotta nod in agreement here. What a great, brillom evil, black-hearted, NASTY, but somehow less-cynical-than-much-of-Marvel's-output-these-days line 'o books. *I* spent actual money on these comics. (Bought the trades used for 1/2 price. But still....)

Blogathon 26: New Avengers: The Trust

Sigh. Puns make me sad.

Yu continues to do some great art. I like his rough style here. His character don't always look how they do elsewhere, but that doesn't bother me.

I'm still sitting here going "Move faster, Story! GiddddeeeYUP!" but I'm certainly enjoying these issues more than the first few, and I'm chalking 'at up as much to the change in the artist as I am to the altered tone of the stories. The Hood comes out lookin' decently freaky. (I like him more here than the Kyle Holtz or Skott Kolins versions, both of which were nifty in their own ways.) And the big-beat splash pages seem to MEAN something. (Which is not true of every volume of this series.)

So, hey, I'm caught up! (And the library only had one more volume anyway.)

So, let's summarize:

Chad liked the Bendis/Cho/Finch/Yu/Maleev/Gaydos/McNiven stories more than I did, but I liked them more than I expected or remembered.

EXCEPT for the Collective, which was truly horrible.

Even still, none of this is as good as the GOOD Bendis work, and it's kind of depressing that everybody's buying this when they didn't shell out for Powers or Daredevil

And it still moves too slowly.

But how many years did it take Lee and Kirby to turn Fantastic Four into a great book? Y'all READ those first 20-or-so issues? Yeesh.

So all the Avengers books are at least back on my "library pull-list."

There is, of course, a HELL of a lot more over on GraphiContent. Read commentary on Civil War! House of M! Matt Fractions Iron Man! And the worst mini-series of 2007 coming... right....now!

Also. You can donate.

23 Comments

• At August 22, 2009, Mary Warner wrote:

  I think it was Michelinie that really hated Ms Marvel, not Shooter.

• At August 22, 2009, ykw wrote:

  Shooter hated Hank Pym.

• At August 22, 2009, Chad Nevett wrote:

  I love this post. It was just what I needed to give me some extra encouragement right now. Thanks a ...

• At August 22, 2009, Nitz the Bloody wrote:

  " Bendis has really done some nice work with the former-blacksploitation stereotype Power Man. (Although I miss the yellow shirt ...

• At August 22, 2009, Michael P. wrote:

  "But how many years did it take Lee and Kirby to turn Fantastic Four into a great book? Y'all READ ...

• At August 22, 2009, Ron wrote:

  oh god you left the italics tag on

• At August 22, 2009, Nitz the Bloody wrote:

  " No argument, but Bendis has had a lot longer on the Avengers at this point than it took Stan ...

• At August 22, 2009, Scott Harris wrote:

  I have two different responses, so I'm going to split them up into two comments. I hope that doesn't breach ...

• At August 22, 2009, Scott Harris wrote:

  The other thing I wanted to comment on is this:

  "I've gone back and read in trades, so I don't have ...

• At August 22, 2009, Mike Blake wrote:

  Interesting comments. I admit to getting a lot of trades from the library myself.

• At August 23, 2009, Tim wrote:

  Why have Americans started writing "arse" instead of "ass"? Do you say it like that as well? I hope not.

• At August 23, 2009, Tim wrote:

  "Ass" was one of my favourite things about you.

• At August 23, 2009, Tim wrote:

  I would seriously like to know.

• At August 23, 2009, Greg Burgas wrote:

  Tim: When I spent five months in Australia lo those many years ago, a lot of the Yanks started affecting ...

• At August 23, 2009, sgt pepper wrote:

  Easy: writing "ass" is funny. Writing "arse" is funnier.

• At August 23, 2009, sgt pepper wrote:

  Easy: writing "ass" is funny. Writing "arse" is funnier.

  Oops...forgot to say great post! Looking forward to your next ...

• At August 23, 2009, MarkAndrew wrote:

  I thought the whole Ms. Marvel pregnancy thing WAS all Jim Shooter, and it was most definitely NOT what Michelinie ...

• At August 24, 2009, Taylor b wrote:

  what was the worst mini series in 2007? I was new to comics so i wouldnt know...

• At August 24, 2009, Chad Nevett wrote:

  I called New Avengers: Illuminati the worst comic of 2007 back when I was doing the best of 2007 (out ...

• At August 24, 2009, Jeff Holland wrote:

  As a fellow library-reader (everybody give it up for the Chester County Library System!), I will say it's a LOT ...

• At August 24, 2009, Scott Harris wrote:

  "That said, I like Bendis's IDEAS for stories, even if his execution is off. I like the IDEA of a ...

• At August 24, 2009, FunkyGreenJerusalem wrote:

  I just wanted to point out that in reading the Nick Fury and the Secret Warriors review where Chad said ...

• At August 25, 2009, Tim wrote:

  Thanks Greg that was a good answer. Appreciate it.

Here producer James Tucker says

We don’t have permission at this time to use Wonder Woman or Superman.

We also got this post from a poster who goes by Captain Canada, saying that Paul Dini couldn't use Wonder Woman in Batman Beyond, and that Wonder Girl was blocked from appearing in Teen Titans. (Can anyone verify?)

So. What gives? Does anyone have actual documented proof as to why Wonder Woman has never shown up as a "guest star?" The whole thing seems more'n a little silly to me, but is there a decent reason?

57 Comments

• At April 7, 2009, Trey wrote:

  someone must own the TV rights, maybe going back to the Linda Carter show?

• At April 7, 2009, Brian Cronin wrote:

  The leading theory (stress "theory") is that when DC bought the Wonder Woman character, they had some clause where Wonder ...

• At April 7, 2009, Strong guy wrote:

  How does that work for Justice League or Superfriends then?

• At April 7, 2009, Anonymous wrote:

  Pretty sure the animated Wonder Woman project that is apparently not-that-bad likely predated Brave & The Bold, and somehow lead ...

• At April 7, 2009, Brian Cronin wrote:

  How does that work for Justice League or Superfriends then?

  The theory is that she WAS one of the leads in ...

• At April 7, 2009, Brian Cronin wrote:

  Pretty sure the animated Wonder Woman project that is apparently not-that-bad likely predated Brave & The Bold, and somehow lead ...

• At April 7, 2009, Omar Karindu, with the power of SUPER-hypocrisy! wrote:

  Between the animated WW feature and the upcoming film that's been in development hell forever, I suspect the nonsensical idea ...

• At April 7, 2009, chad wrote:

  actually James stated wonder woman and superman are not going to appear on brave and bold since the show ...

• At April 7, 2009, Paul Smith wrote:

  I agree, its really become ridiculous... Wonder Woman has been a great smybol for over 60 (!!!) years, she's one ...

• At April 7, 2009, Daniel wrote:

  I suspect it is more along the lines of conflicting pre-sale of adaptation rights. Superman couldn't be used in "Batman" ...

• At April 7, 2009, MarkAndrew wrote:

  The leading theory (stress “theory”) is that when DC bought the Wonder Woman character, they had some clause where Wonder ...

• At April 7, 2009, jccalhoun wrote:

  Sounds like we have an urban legend in need of revealing regarding Wonder Woman and the rights to her.

• At April 7, 2009, Paul Smith wrote:

  Did anyone watch that interview I posted? It really might help weigh the fact with the fiction in this argument

• At April 7, 2009, Brian Cronin wrote:

  What interview?

• At April 7, 2009, Paul Smith wrote:

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUZ3acZq_so

• At April 7, 2009, M Bloom wrote:

  I doubt we'd see Wonder Woman on Brave and the Bold anyway, considering they're completely ignoring DC's female superheroes (Fire ...

• At April 7, 2009, Brian Cronin wrote:

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUZ3acZq_so That is not a link to an interview.

• At April 7, 2009, Brian Cronin wrote:

  I doubt we’d see Wonder Woman on Brave and the Bold anyway, considering they’re completely ignoring DC’s female superheroes (Fire ...

• At April 7, 2009, neonightrider wrote:

  I don't think that Wonder Woman guest star thing holds up. I mean what about the short lived 1988 Superman ...

• At April 7, 2009, Brian Cronin wrote:

  I don’t think that Wonder Woman guest star thing holds up. I mean what about the short lived 1988 Superman ...

• At April 7, 2009, T. wrote:

  I was just going to mention that Wonder Woman guest-starred in the Ruby-Spears Superman animated series in 1989. Clip ...

• At April 7, 2009, Brian Cronin wrote:

  Hahahahaha… oh my God, Im so sorry. That’s so embarrasing. I was watching that video on another tab, and I ...

• At April 7, 2009, Craig wrote:

  I'm more confused after reading the comments than I was before, and I was pretty lost before. Why is Cronin ...

• At April 7, 2009, Brian Cronin wrote:

  Hehe, I am not the one asking!

  But yeah, it's a primo legend for sure, but it's also one I don't ...

• At April 7, 2009, T. wrote:

  Oops, should have read all comments before I posted. Seems I was beaten to the punch.

• At April 7, 2009, Loren wrote:

  The theory is that she WAS one of the leads in those two cartoons.

  I don't have a source for this ...

• At April 7, 2009, Stephen wrote:

  Funny thing how, during Justice League, Blue Beetle was basically the only DC hero (outside the Batman family) that was ...

• At April 7, 2009, Brian Cronin wrote:

  According to Wikipedia, Wonder Woman did guest-star in an episode of The Brady Kids cartoon, and Wonder Girl guested in ...

• At April 7, 2009, Anthony Cheng wrote:

  It took me WAYY too long to figure out we weren't talking about Brave & the Bold the comic..

  Anyway, this ...

• At April 7, 2009, MarkAndrew wrote:

  Yeah, I'm not Cronin, who would probably do original research or something if confronted with a similar problem.

  And, dammit, I'm ...

• At April 7, 2009, Brian Cronin wrote:

  Anyway, this Wonder Woman theory doesn’t make sense cuz they can’t use Superman either.

  This just sounds like the rights were/are ...

• At April 7, 2009, chad wrote:

  it should also be noted that the creators of smallville have been denied wonder woman also since day one. ...

• At April 7, 2009, JackKing wrote:

  Who owned WW before '88?

• At April 7, 2009, Brian Cronin wrote:

  In the past, DC owned Wonder Woman through an arrangement with the estate of William Moulton Marston, who created Wonder ...

• At April 8, 2009, Evan Waters wrote:

  "I suspect it is more along the lines of conflicting pre-sale of adaptation rights. Superman couldn’t be used in “Batman” ...

• At April 8, 2009, red Ricky wrote:

  Wonder Woman appeared as a guest star (for one episode) in the CBS Saturday Morning Superman Cartoon. This was ...

• At April 8, 2009, red Ricky wrote:

  Well, never mind. Hal Jordan and Wonder Woman can’t be used in B&B because of their solo direct-to-video features. (The ...

• At April 8, 2009, Smokescreen wrote:

  >>Well, never mind. Hal Jordan and Wonder Woman can’t be used in B&B because of their solo direct-to-video features. (The ...

• At April 8, 2009, Craig wrote:

  On the Time Warner using other Time Warner licenses, I remember the story about Kevin Smith trying to reference Powderpuff ...

• At April 8, 2009, Carl wrote:

  While I don't know the specifics of the case, there are usually a number of reasons for situations like this. ...

• At April 8, 2009, jccalhoun wrote:

  I would like some substantial evidence of the whole "DC didn't own Wonder Woman, they only licensed the character" thing. ...

• At April 8, 2009, Sijo wrote:

  The big irony here is that, while some people are worried about a property's popularity getting "diluted" if it appears ...

• At April 8, 2009, C. Adams wrote:

  Then how about Wonder Woman in the "New Frontier" DVD. She isn't a lead in that.

• At April 8, 2009, Squashua wrote:

  That may be true of the film itself, but not so according to the trailer and promotional material.

• At April 8, 2009, Scavenger wrote:

  What an awesome thread! This is comics fandom in a nutshell!

  Tons of wild speculation and outright wrongness presented as ...

• At April 8, 2009, The Mutt wrote:

  I'd rather not see Superman or Wonder Woman on Brave & Bold. I've seen them plenty elsewhere. Seeing characters like ...

• At April 8, 2009, Mafu wrote:

  The Mutt

  April 8, 2009 at 12:20 pm

  I’d rather not see Superman or Wonder Woman on Brave & Bold. I’ve seen ...

• At April 8, 2009, Bob wrote:

  I agree with Mafu. B&B seems to be about Batman using his screen-cred to boost characters who would not normally ...

• At April 9, 2009, Carl wrote:

  "The big irony here is that, while some people are worried about a property’s popularity getting “diluted” if it appears ...

• At April 9, 2009, Sijo wrote:

  Carl said: "Maybe so, but it probably wouldn’t happen enough to justify the risk of overexposure. These decisions aren’t made ...

• At April 9, 2009, Thenodrin wrote:

  Sijo, in this instance you are confusing the show with potential marketability from the show.

  If someone has the rights to ...

• At April 9, 2009, MarkAndrew wrote:

  If someone has the rights to produce a Wonder Woman animated show, DVD, or movie, and they want to do ...

• At April 9, 2009, Sijo wrote:

  "Wonder Woman hasn’t proven that she can do that. So, there could be a legitimate concern."

  And if she's NEVER given ...

• At April 9, 2009, chad wrote:

  matel had plans for an aborted wonder woman and the star raiders line of toys along with a never ...

• At April 9, 2009, kid meh wrote:

  i always thought it was the "not the lead, can't star in it then" thing with Diana, but the more ...

• At April 10, 2009, MarkAndrew wrote:

  Chad - Yep. There was a Comic Book Urban Legends that covered that, not too long ago.

  http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2009/03/27/comic-book-legends-revealed-200-part-3/

  still, it ...

• At April 12, 2009, Marionette wrote:

  And yet classic Batman was still appearing in Justice League when The Batman started, and that;s barely over before we ...

Answer Waaaaayyyyy down at the bottom.

Klek    Klek   Klek   Klek   Klek    Klek    Klek.

Heh heh.

So, folks, welcome to PANEL MADNESS WEEK (Because we don't talk enough about the art) a ten part jaunt round the comics blogsphere where everyone picks one ONE panel, or book cover, or any image that is a small part of a larger work, and talks about it.  The whole she-bang was organized by my good virtual buddy Plok of Trout In The Milk fame, and he'll report to work monday with the final piece of the puzzle.

Before we get into it, a word of w-a-r-n-i-n-g.   This is gonna get nerdy, and nerdy in a "Obsessively interested in graphic design and the philosophy of information" way. What's more, it's gonna deal with stuff that you (seasoned and cynical comic reader that you are) already know. Anyway, this here post is enough different from most CSBG content as to merit a disclaimer.

So.

One panel.

One panel by itself isn't really a functional thing, so-ta-speak.  It's not doing what a comic panel is supposed to do; IE pleasure the eye long enough to impart 1/145 of a story's worth of information.  (Or 1/24th in an Ed McGuiness Hulk comic.  Whatevs.)

In a lot of ways one, panel is like an amputated limb, all cut off from the main story and flopping and dripping and spurting.  In OTHER ways, though...  There's a lot of interesting stuff going down here.

So what IS an individual panel?

Here's five answers.  This panel is a...

Story Unto Itself: Most panels imply -  If very rarely show - enough action that they can serve as a  small story unto themselves, complete with a beginning and an end.  The story here is "A woman is walking briskly through a city at night.  She's alone."  The story begins at one edge of the page and ends at the other.

Unit of TIme: Or "How long does the story take?"  While a single panel implies only the briefest sliver of time, there's usually (again) implied action before and after the stuff we see on the page.  This panel, ferinstance

Takes around 30 seconds, as Superman swoops down, says his piece, and Lana replies.

OUR panel probably takes around 15 seconds, or 9 klecks worth.  Often the panels that take the most time are the most important (and biggest) on the page.

Abstract Composition: We all know Whistler's Mother right?

Except that it's not.  Whistler was always adamant about this.  "It's not my mother!  It's just paint splattered on a canvas!'   In fact, The actual name of the above painting is disappointingly un-poetic: "Arrangement In Grey and Black."

And comics panels are not Whistler's Mother either.  OUR panel is lines and colors on paper that we interpret as buildings and a human figure, but that's because we're trained in a language of visual abstraction.  All it really is... is lines on paper and colors.   And what-the-artist-is-DOING with lines on paper (other than, y'know, drawing stuff) can be important, too.  So if we actively ignore Whistler's Mother, and focus on the lines and colors, what do we see?

Black and white.  Lots of blacks and whites fighting it out on top, with a BIG chunka black in the middle - both horizontally and vertically.  Noting but negative space at the bottom, which makes the shocking red in the lower right really stand out.

What else?    Lots of sharp, pointy shapes.  Everything here looks like it has an edge on it.  Even the street lamps are more angular than rounded.  The only "safe" place in the painting is the female figure, but even her scarf looks like a knife blade...  And there's a reason for this, it's setting the

Mood Indicator/Foreshadower: Ominous, right?  The reason there's a lot of deep, deep blacks and uncomfortable contrasts and sharp, pointy angles is that that stuff looks FREAKY.  In fact, y'all probably won't be too surprised when I pull out the full panel....

A vampire story.  That's hardly a surprise. The story has a woman, totally alone, at night, in an urban setting.  We've all seen enough movies to tie THAT particular sequence of events to a particular genre, and it ain't romantic comedy.  And, on top of that, the artist is going out of his way to draw off-kilter, pointy, dangerous looking imagery.

Some of you might have even put the city as London, which would, in 90% of horror films, mean either Jack the Ripper or Dracula.

But on the other hand... the letters... bright yellow?  The stutter?   And, come to think, the klek...klek..klek sound effects are more than a little tongue in cheek as well.  Somethings not right here.

One Element of the Overall Page:

Now we have MORE panels, each of them a story, a unit of time, an abstract composition, a mood setter, and an element of the overall page.  OUR panel is an establishing shot, setting the scene before we get a better look at the woman below.  Thinking in Whistler's Mother terms, it's worth noting that the bright red, (and the immediately recognizable human form wearing it)   are probably going to be the first thing we look at before we get to the top panel which is more abstract, less immediately eye-catching, and full of boring words.

I don't want to spend too much time here, but one more cool thing:  In the first panel the woman is walking into the light.  In the bottom panels, she's proceeding on into the dark.

The Panel as Cultural History: New game!

imagine that it's three hundred years in the future, comics have long since died out and all entertainment media is distributed via telep-o-vision.

You are seeing a comic, this comic, for the first time.

What can you tell me about the bizzare, alien culture that produced this image?  Specifically, what can you tell me about (A) the societal role of women and (B) their media's approach to sexuality?

What?  I'm not going to answer for ya.  That's what comments are for.

Art always, always mirrors/is defined by/defines the culture it's part of.  Even one single panel of one comic book.

The Panel as Comics History:

And there you have it. It's a story from back when venerable ol' MAD was an EC comic book, 57 years ago.  This particular panel is drawn by the great Wally Wood.

This image is reprinted, and has been substantially altered -  re-colored and re-printed on larger and better quality paper - so many of the technological cues that might tell us when this comic was originally published are absent...

But I bet there's still plenty of you who recognize this page, OR the style of the artist, Or the content, level of detail and general tone of the image with sufficient acuity to be able to tell me WHEN this comic was published, and the company that published it.  Plok actually knew the artist, series title, and issue number.  And being part of a specific story by a specific artist in a specific school in a specific time of history in a specific medium in (again) a specific culture -  All of those things make it a little chunk of history.

So this panel is a teeny part of the whole "V-Vampires!" narrative, and it's a teeny part of a lot of other stories as well. The "How the absurdist satire in Mad shaped the anti-authoritarian culture of the '60s" The "How Harvey Kurtzman influenced Spiegelman and Crumb and kind of created alternative comics" story. The "Why the hell did Wally Wood kill himself?" story.

And the ACTUAL story, which we've been so steadfastly ignoring?

(Scanned from the MAD Archives vol. 1.  Written and edited by Harvey Kurtzman.)

Gets pretty silly.  I'm a huge fan of the art in EC Comics.  The writing?  Not so much.  But even when the stories ain't up to snuff I've got 1,116 individual panels to look at.

Panel Madness Recap: (Click on the panels to be transported.)

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

Day 6

Day 7

Day 7 anna Half

And we'll be heading back to Plok one more time for Day 9.

24 Comments

• At February 22, 2009, Panel Madness Day Seven-Point-Five « A Trout In The Milk wrote:

  [...] you, Harvey! A fine contribution, and great pinch-hitting! Not to mention a wonderful segue over to MarkAndrew, who has ...

• At February 22, 2009, Manglr wrote:

  The first panel on its own was really reminding me of something P. Craig Russel would draw...the slightly surreal cityscape ...

• At February 22, 2009, plok wrote:

  Dandy stuff, MarkAndrew! Your veering off into the panel as little piece o' historical context was nicely unanticipated by ...

• At February 22, 2009, plok wrote:

  Not to mention, a nice symmetry with the substance of my own piece...among others...

• At February 22, 2009, Tom Fitzpatrick wrote:

  That first panel, if you hadn't mentioned the artist being Wally Wood, I might have guessed Will Eisner.

  However, I do ...

• At February 22, 2009, salamurai wrote:

  I thought this was drawn by Tim Sale at first.

• At February 22, 2009, hdo wrote:

  Yeah, I thought Eisner at first - other than that I thought it was EC. Cool article.

• At February 22, 2009, Sijo wrote:

  Speaking of spotting story-related details in a panel, the Superman one has Supes wearing Clark Kent's glasses! (either that or ...

• At February 22, 2009, DubipR wrote:

  Good article I think I got the panel aritists down.

  1. P Craig Russell (maybe Killraven)

  2. Sean Phillips (Criminal)

  3. Kirby (Challengers ...

• At February 22, 2009, MarkAndrew wrote:

  DubipR you're 6 for 8. # 1 is a paper-back book cover, not a comic panel. It IS ...

• At February 22, 2009, Kirayoshi wrote:

  The Superman Panel("Burn!") was from Superman Annual #8, "For The Man Who Has Everything", by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons(who ...

• At February 22, 2009, T. wrote:

  I guessed Wally Wood soon as I saw it. No one draws women so beautifully and distinctly except for ...

• At February 22, 2009, onion3000 wrote:

  1. Steranko.

• At February 22, 2009, DubipR wrote:

  Wait....Panel 1..... Steranko?

• At February 22, 2009, onion3000 wrote:

  Once upon a time, DC would occasionally produce a competition in their comics. For example, they had a whole story ...

• At February 22, 2009, Daniel Best wrote:

  You can find the Gibbons panel and my write up here: http://ohdannyboy.blogspot.com/2009/02/panel-madness-on-seventh-day.html Guess the link slipped by MarkAndrew.

  With the ...

• At February 22, 2009, Mike wrote:

  Wood was in high school most of WWII, and then signed up himself in its last year. Eisner hired Wood ...

• At February 22, 2009, MarkAndrew wrote:

  onion - Very nice. That was a tough one, unless you hit the link.

  T - Ha! ...

• At February 22, 2009, MarkAndrew wrote:

  Or not, sine I can't figure out how to edit comments anymore. But Mike's absolutely right.

• At February 22, 2009, Mike wrote:

  I remember hearing Eisner comment on how Wood's talent was ahead of its time, and would have flourished during the ...

• At February 23, 2009, Exit Strategy: Panel Madness Day Nine (Or Is That Ten?) « A Trout In The Milk wrote:

  [...] end of Panel Madness. If you’ve got a moment you might like to click backwards one step to MarkAndrew, ...

• At February 23, 2009, Richard J. Marcej wrote:

  Wally Wood was a master cartoonist.

• At February 24, 2009, Destroy All Comics!!! - Here Endeth The Lesson « Strange Ink wrote:

  [...] as how I just tackled my piece for the fun of it. The easiest way to catch up would ...

• At May 5, 2009, Destroy All Comics!!! - Here Endeth The Lesson wrote:

  [...] as how I just tackled my piece for the fun of it. The easiest way to catch up would ...

This cover is pretty much my favorite thing ever.

I'm starting with some background.  Feel free to skip down to below Maggie if you're not new to L 'n R.

Love and Rockets is the long-running brainchild of brothers Jaime, Gilbert, and (occasionally) Mario Hernandez.  I've heard it called a pseudo-anthology, and I thought it was a good description. as each issue contains a couple different stories, many of 'em chapters in Jaime and Gilbert's long running "Maggie/Hoppers" or "Palomar/Luba" narratives, respectively.  Jaime and Gilbert do work seperately for the most-part, and their work has a different tone, but both of 'em switch back and forth between slice of life (Love) and sci-fi/surrealism (Rockets) -type material often within the space of a single story.  Hence the name.

Jaime's Hoppers stories work in real time and tends to be more focused -  IE, there are only, like, 20 main characters compared to Gilbert's 314. It's really tough to pigeonhole, which is why it's taken me a week and a half to write a simple damn review.  I will say it pulls about equally from comedy, drama, quest narrative and even soap opera, with a big 'ol "Will they or Won't They" hanging over main characters Maggie and Hopey at all times.

Gilbert's stuff is generally more epic in scope, and even harder to describe in terms of simple genre.  It's about equal parts "lively and humanistic" and "dark and nasty."    There are, as I said, LOTS of Palomar characters to keep track of, and when Luba does get to America we're introduced to three generations of her brood.  On the one hand this kind of cohesive-universe building has got to be applauded.  On the other... Well, I'm a huge fan, I've been reading this stuff for YEARS, and I gotta check my notes to figure out who's doing what to who on the regular.  It IS great, mind, but it takes some work to get into.

Which Gilbert and brother are aware of.  Hence the New # 1 reboot, with a buncha easily accessable tales don't require prior knowledge.

Everybody with me?

This is actually Love and Rockets second re-numbering.

With the First renumbering (volume 1 to volume 2) the book shrunk down from magazine sized to standard- comic size. This here second renumbering (from volume 2 to volume 3) again brings a format switch - Love and Rockets is now a 100 page large-ish digest size thing.  It's shorter but wider than a standard comic.

The most important thing to note about the new format is that it's terrible, horrible, and pretty much all-round sucks badgers.

Here's why.

1) It's Annual. 100 pages of Love and Rockets = (more or less) the page count of the thrice yearly comic p, but it also makes it far, far easier for collectors to forget about the book.

But, c'mon... D'you think any but a teeny majority of us hardcore fans are going to welcome the long, slow, painful, ponderous twelve month wait between issues?  I've read most of the reviews of this ish linked on the Fanta blog and elsewhere, and I haven't seen one person express happiness with the year-long-wait.  ('Though many were neutral.)

2) The New Format is Going to Make Future Collections Redundant.

One of the coolest things about Love and Rockets, 'side from generally bein' really good, is the number of formats the books are available in.

Most of Love and Rockets Volume 1 is available in singe issues:

Larger Size Trades:

MASSIVE hardcovers that double as blunt objects:

And, relatively teeny but cheap digest size collections

The NEW Love and Rockets comes in 100 page graphic novels, which will, according to this announcement from Fantagraphics

eventually be collected into logical graphic novels/collections, most likely in the same format as the "smaller, thicker" series of collections that debuted earlier this year.

So.

To sum up.

The REGULAR issues of Love and Rockets will be released in largish digest size collections.

The COLLECTED editions of Love and Rockets will be released in largish digest sized collections.

If this isn't exactly the same thing twice, it's darn close.

Unless the collection plans are changed between now and the, what, 5(!) Years (!) it'll take for Los. Bros. to fill 250 pages worth of material for two separate digest size collections, we not only have an obnoxious repetition of format... But Los. Bros. and Fanta have chosen the least awesome of all alternatives!

Sure, the digests are cheap, but the art is scaled down and bland not big and glorious.  I'm all for Essential/Showcase style economy, but there's absolutely no reason this shoud be the only option.

Alright.  I'm done with "anti" new format.  Let's look at the validity of summa the "pro" arguments.

A) Creative

Here's Gilbert Hernandez, from the link above.

......I don't have to worry about editing 24 page stories to 14 or 12 pages any more. I've got 50 pages to go wild with in Vol. III, #1. Later I might do a whole 50 page story in one issue, and return some of the Palomar characters in long single pieces. I planned to stop with the Palomar characters but only because of the serializing problem; now it's a different game. I am very, very inspired here!

Well, I'm glad Gilbert's inspired, and I can't challenge personal inspiration....

But... butbutbutbutbut...

Gilbert, in the past, has done plenty of great stuff that genesised in serial format.

'Fact, much of the work that Gilbert's done in 10-20 page chunks is BETTER than the work he did in "unrestrained" graphic novel format. Poison River, ferinstance, was a heck of a lot better than Sloth. (Sloth was actually pretty great, mind.) And we in the Official Love and Rockets fan community (Members: Me and the cat) still consider the originally-serialized Human Diastrophism the single greatest work by ANY Hernandez Brother... and one of the top five works of fiction in comics form, Ever, Full Stop.

Which brings me to my second criticism.  Over the last few years Gilbert, who's way-the-hell faster than his brother, has been producing FAR more material than he CAN serialize in Love and Rockets if the two are to keep their contributions more-or-less equal.   And it seems that, given Gilbert's prodigious output through a multitude of publishers, that he has the cache to publish his "excess" work in whatever format he damnwell feels like. In just the last few years:  There's been the Sloth Graphic Novel through Vertigo, the Chance in Hell GN through Fantagraphics, Speak of the Devil , a six-issue mini-series through Dark Horse, and the end of not one but TWO Luba-centric comics.  And he made a movie.

Note that none of this was serialized in Love and Rockets.

So, if he's feeling cramped, what's to stop him from doin' what he's been doin'?

And, thirdly.  If the above argument is true:  Why are NONE of his contributions to this current issue of Love and Rockets longer than twelve pages?

(HA!  HAHA!  I WIN!)

B) The Bookstore Market. And since I'm rejecting arguments, lemme take aim at this one too 'n try for a kewpie dol.

Fact:  Fantagraphics noted that the recent digest size collections of previously serialized material sold very well in bookstores.

Speculation:  Therefore, theoretically, Los. Bros. and Fantagraphics want to focus their efforts on reaching the bookstore market with the new comic series.  Presumably this new series is an attempt to get more Love and Rockets product, in similar format, into bookstores before the new digest fans forget the series existed.

*HERE* I understand the logic.

Except....

ALL of Love and Rockets volume 1 is collected in digests.  The one digest I own (Amore Y Cohetes) is not numbered, though others in the series may be.  These digests offer more-or-less complete stories.

NONE.  I repeat.  Not one panel of Love and Rockets volume 2 is collected in digests.  None of the material published seperately between volume 1 and volume 2  is collected in digests.

So, correct me if I'm wrong here...

Wouldn't it make more sense to finish collecting the extant Love and Rockets material in digest form before dumping a bunch of NEW material on an unsuspecting audience?  This volume 2 material should satiate the potential New Love and Rockets fan, right?  (Especially since the lead story in Volume 3 is a direct sequel to that interim material.)

Collect everything. THEN reboot.

Again, I'm mystified by the logic here.

So, in conclusion, the format changes suck, as previously stated, badgers and should die. Thank y..

Oh.

The actual comic?

It was OK.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Alright. Little more.

Jaime rules, Gilbert is confusing.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Alright Alright. Full review.

Everybody and their dog has already reviewed this, but I guess I got some stuffs to say.

Crappy new format. 100 Pages. Jaime does half, a large-scale superhero tale - The first blatantly capes 'n tights story I remember seein' in Love and Rockets, since, like issue 4(-ish?) of the first series, way back in the early eighties.  Gilbert, as mentioned above, dishes out a melange of short pieces, some sort of interconnected, some not interconnected... And some barely anything.

Let's start with the superheroes. This ain't absolute top of the line Xaime - It's not as deft in it's emotional texturing as Death of Speedy or Ghost of Hoppers...

But it is consistently engaging and enjoyable and well-thought out for what you'd assume to be a throw-away gag.

Here's something I haven't seen mentioned in any of the other reviews:  I'm wondering if J.H. has been reading his Alan Moore. This ain't just a superhero story, it's a generation spanning superhero EPIC, with invented legacy heroes ala Watchmen or Top Ten, and I get a bit of a Kid Miracleman vibe from the grief-mad Penny Century.  There seems to be a very Alan-esque approach to the material, at least:  It's not so much a simple superhero morality play as one piece of invented history.  There's the same sense of Bigness I always get from Afable Al's superhero stuff.

On the other hand. despite the cosmic scope of the book -  Which contrasts with the recent, more slice-of-lifey stuff that ended volume two -   this book still couldn't be written by anyone else.  Let's look for Xaime trademarks:  ALL the superhereos are women. Characters are given precedence over plot. And there's a Tex Avery/John Stanley whacky 'an absurdist streak to the proceedings that manifests in physical comedy and some very welcome sight gags.

Which (and here I gush) are carried off perfectly, 'cause Jaime is one of the best sequential artists and best *artist* artists working in comics. He's equally adept at both naturalistic and cartoony styles, and it's not just that he draws great lookin' women (although, shit, he draws some G-R-E-A-T lookin' women) but he's got a damn near unrivaled eye for body language and panel composition.

Proof?

It's not just the use of negative space that flattens me here.  It's how much of the characters personality Jaime communicates through Hopey's stance, dress, and actions here.  And we can't even see her face!

Speaking o Hopey, she doesn't show up in this story, and other-main-character Maggie only gets a couple pages to show off her comic book knowledge before gettin' hustled off-screen to make room for the superheroics.  But I didn't miss 'em as much as I thought I would, and I have a hunch Maggie'll be back to save the day later.

This story is ... Well, it's FUN is what it is.

And now, if Mark Waid is correct, none of you are gonna buy it.

So, in Jaime's defense I'll point out that there is some genuine pathos in Penny Century's rage against the destruction of her family.   And, by simply being set in the Locas-verse, where physical and emotional harm are real and are permanent serves to up the stakes beyond your typical DC or Marvel "The World Will Never Be the Same (for three weeks)" style crossover epic.  Good stuff.  I wish I didn't have to wait a fucking year for part two.

But, y'know, as much as I admire Jaime's work, I'm more pro-'Gilbert of the two brothers.   Jaime's the better artist and has delivered a more cohesive body of work, but Gilbert's stuff can get stranger, darker, and more blatantly experimental.  It feels less cuddly.  Less safe.  More emotional range.  I like that.

The DOWNSIDE of this propensity for whacky-arsed experimentation is that sometimes... his stuff comes off like this here. Abandoning Luba and the rest of his Palomar-native characters, he gives us six short stories and one page of short strips.

Not much of any of 'em worked for me.

Is it bad? I dunno.

Hypothetically: I get some piecea crap comic by, say, Brad Metzler and Greg Land and I'll be comfortable judging it bad. Or, (since this is hypothetical) good. In either case I can be fairly sure there ain't gonna be any subtleties to their work that I'm missing.

Gilbert, however, is a damnsite smarter than I am. If HE thinks we need super-powered Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis analogues massacaring vaguely Blue Meanie-esque aliens with spears... Shit. Maybe he's right, and I'm just not evolved enough to get it.  But I didn't get it.  I was more puzzled than anything.  And this was a running theme throughout.

What else we got:

1)A Palomar-esque story about a dude wandering through... Mexico (maybe?) and gettin' sick with worms,

2) a sad little 6 pager where a nude dancer leaves his lover to go wandering, again, through... Mexico (maybe?) leaving everything he knows behind because... we never know.   (And, OK, it was quiet and subtle and I had to read it a few times, but I did like this one.)

3) 5 pages of semi-connected non-narrative surrealism.   Including shots of a giant, floaty balloon thing with eyes and some ducks,

4) A surprisingly ballsy comedy(!) about Indian Land rights,

5) And, on a *much* lighter note...

Kangaroo in Vegas!  Kangaroo in Vegas!

Maybe I'm being too harsh.  None of Gilbert's work here is unreadable or godawful or anything.

But.  Butbutbut.

I'm thinking that 'Beto's simply better in writing longer stories, whether serialized or not. He doesn't quite have Jaime's talent for creating instantly understanable characters ala Hopey above, so he needs a couple dozen pages to really give us a sense of who his people are.  Similarly, his very best stuff tends to rely on constantly escalating tension throughout the story.  Which, again, is tough to pull off in seven pages.

Despite all my bitchin' this is still good comics.  I don't understand or see the need for the new format, but at the end of the day I was happy to drop my 15 bones to get a big-ass superhero story from Jaime and Kangaroo in Vegas!

Recommended

12 Comments

• At September 29, 2008, Tom Fitzpatrick wrote:

  Waid was right.

  I'm never gonna buy it.

  I've never bought it.

  Waid was right.

• At September 29, 2008, R. J. Sterling wrote:

  Oh, come on; don't let him be right.

• At September 29, 2008, Jim Turoczy wrote:

  Actually you need only have to wait until the San Diego Comic Con. This was available at the Fantagraphics Booth, ...

• At September 29, 2008, Alan Coil wrote:

  Alright

  AIN'T A WORD!

  .

• At September 29, 2008, Fortress Keeper wrote:

  Never bought and never will buy Love & Rockets?

  Your loss.

• At September 29, 2008, Andrew Collins wrote:

  I discovered L&R recently in those digest formats and wanted to wait until the rest of the series came out ...

• At September 29, 2008, Rusty Priske wrote:

  You are forgetting what they said when they announced the new format:

  Nobody was buying the individual issues any more. (At ...

• At September 29, 2008, Philip A Moore wrote:

  I Injoyed the annual . it would have been better if we could have seen more Luba . on the ...

• At September 29, 2008, DubipR wrote:

  To me, this was the Book of the Year. As a lifelong L&R fan, this was the one book ...

• At September 29, 2008, Jack Norris wrote:

  Fortress Keeper said:

  "Never bought and never will buy Love & Rockets?

  Your loss."

  Heartily seconded. To actually proclaim, apparently with pride, that ...

• At September 30, 2008, K. Ross wrote:

  I like the digests they are what got into read L&R. The larger trades and the hardcovers were too, ...

• At April 7, 2009, B. Sigmund wrote:

  A great interview with the Hernandez siblings here... they really clear up alot of the questions I had about the ...

December 17th, 2008

7 Comments

• At September 21, 2008, The Mad Monkey wrote:

  Agreed.

• At September 21, 2008, Tom Fitzpatrick wrote:

  GRAN'MA'PA!!!!

• At September 21, 2008, Colin wrote:

  Any idea when all this is out and about? I'm right in thinking that there's due to be a new ...

• At September 21, 2008, MarkAndrew wrote:

  All-New (!) Beanworld Holiday Special, December 17th, 2008.

  Dark Horse is also re-formatting and re-publishing all 21 issues in hardcovers. ...

• At September 21, 2008, stealthwise wrote:

  Cool. I've never read it, but Mark's incessant ranting about it makes me at least mildly interested.

• At September 22, 2008, Michael Mayket wrote:

  You're welcome.

  After not having worked on Bean World for awhile I attended the San Diego Comic Con in 1994 where ...

• At September 22, 2008, Pól Rua wrote:

  YES.

Well, I thought I'd do a series of posts 'em.

Let's start with

A little Q & A

'Q:  *All* the team-up books," you ask?  "How many comics is that?"

A:  "My records are a bit of a mess right ATM.  I believe i've got 704 comics on my to-be-collected list.  Maybe 705.  I think there's been a new Brave and the Bold from DC since I updated.  I think I said 710 last time, but my count keeps changing.

Q: "704!  Dear God!  You gone howling-at-the-moon-outside-sans-pants-crazy?"

A: "Quite Possibly.  I DID have over 600 of them, though, although I moved, and some got stolen, and some got disorganized and buried.  So I'm not sure what the current count is.

Q: "That's... that's a lot,  What are you calling a team-up book, anyway?"

A: I am sooooo glad you asked.  In it's most common form, a team-up book features one lead character, such as Spider-man in Marvel Team-up or Superman in DC Comics Presents pairing up with a different co-star each issue.  In one comic the Thing might meet Daredevil, in the next Captain America, then the Guardians of the Galaxy, and then Doctor Strange, and so on an' on and on with the Thing and a different guest-star every issue.  There are other variants, such as the current (fourth) Brave and the Bold series where BOTH guest stars change every issue. Also, and here's where it gets sticky...  I'm also collecting anything that FEELS like a team-up book.

Q: i don't even wanna ask...

A: I'll ignore that.   Basically, I made a list of 710 comics (and counting) that share some similar characteristics.  Not all of the books share ALL of the characteristics, but MOST share most of them.

Which brings me to my:

Guidelines For Making My List of Team-Up Books

RULE 1!) A team-up book features a rotating cast of two starring characters (or one character and one team) in the lead story.

RULE 1 SUBSECTION A!) Optimally these lead characters should have their NAMES in BIG ASSED LETTERS on the cover.

RULE 1 SUBSECTION B!) Complete sets of titles are good.  There are a few scattered issues of some team-up series that feature more than 2 characters in an issue.

For instance:  There were 100 issues of Marvel Two-In-One published.  Of those, 96 have two characters in starring roles with their names in big letters on the cover.

Four do not. One of these notes that it features "Special Guest-Star Franklin Richards."   Although poor Frank is only given a small blurb under the picture of the Thing, unlike Doc Strange up there who gets HIS logo printed in bigger letters than the title of the book.  But still, that almost counts.

2 of these feature MORE than two characters, like # 51 below, with a whopping FIVE guest stars.

And one, issue 91, STRONGLY implies, but does not credit, a certain pointy-eared guest star on the cover.

(Spoilers:  It ain't who you're thinking it is, Buttercup.)

So, since all of these have a bit of a team-up book-y feel, and since I didn't want to break up my run of Marvel Two-In-One, they all count as team-up books.

Q: Why the two character rule?

A: So I don't have to collect Secret Defenders.

RULE 2!A team-up book features a rotating cast.

Superman/Batman, Power Man and Iron Fist, Captain America and the Falcon, and Cable/Deadpool (among others) don't count.    It's the same two guys teaming up all the time, and that's boring.  You suck, World's Finest!  (Except for 13 issues published between 1971 and 1973.)

RULE 2 SUBSECTION 1!) Likewise, any comic that features only one character in the title is not a team-up book.  Wonder Woman, Marvel Adventures:  Hulk, and Deadpool have all had multiple issue runs as near team-up books, but none of 'em count, because the titular character is given precedence.  Spider-Man Family is an exception, because "Family."

RULE 3!) A team-up book has serial nature.  I spent ten minutes trying to define serial nature, and didn't come up with anything comprehensible.  (Really.  My BEST attempt was like: Serial Nature that a team-up book is part of an ongoing series, even if not all issues of a specific series are team-up books.  This makes things SO much clearer eyerollsmileyface.)

For all PRACTICAL purposes, this rule exists to exclude one-shots like the one below.

RULE 3! is slightly arbitrary, but I thought that even assembling a list of all these one-shots would be a lot of work, and I am fundamentally lazy.  Inter-company cross-overs of all types are out as well -  They seem too Big Eventy for team-up books.)

RULE 4!) Any comic with "Team-Up in the title is a team-up book.

RULE 4 SUBSECTION I!) RULE 4! takes precedence over RULE 3!

RULE 5!) Reprints count.  I'm just trying to get every STORY contained in every team-up book, not every actual team-up book.  If, for instance, I own Marvel Treasury Edition # 22 which reprints Marvel Team-up 19, 20 and 21, I don't need to own actual, original copies of MTU 19, 20, and 21.  However, I don't need trade collection of reprints with "team-up" in the title.

Essential/Showcase volumes are a Godsend.  I'm a damn school bus driver.  I ain't made of money.

Q: So. 704 comics, huh? Why? I mean, aren't some -even most - of them going to be pretty much crap-on-stick? Did anyone really pour their heart into writing Super-Team Family?

A: Well, quality varied.  But If you just read the main four long-running team-up titles you'll find work by Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons, (separately) Chris Claremont, John Byrne (together) Frank Miller, George Perez, Jack Kirby, Neal Adams,  EC's Johnny Craig, Steve Gerber, the under-appreciated Ramona Fradon, Alex Toth, Joe Kubert, Howard Chaykin, J. M. Dematties, Kieth Giffen, Gil Kane, Law and Order's Alan Brennert, Jim Aparo...  And the list goes on.  Lots of talented folks, although only a few of the dudes I listed had way long runs.  Aparo.  Claremont and Byrne were on Marvel Team-Up for a decent while.

But, yeah, if I wanted to read quality comics I'd probably be better off tracking down, say, Simonson's Thor run.  Or the Kitchen Sink Spirit reprints.  Or Peter Bagge's Neat Stuff.   (All of which are on my list.)  But I'm a format and genre fetishist, I guess.  I don't follow characters so much (exceptions:  Stegron, the Kryptonian Thought Beast and Infectious Lass)  but I'll buy any damn comic with a pirate on the cover.  And I'll generally be very happy with my purchase -  My critical standards drop to damn near 'nill when dealing with formats I have a thing for.

On a sociological sense, it's probably derived from some kind of screwed up hunter gatherer instinct, and some kind of strange type-A need to create orderly patterns.  On an intellectual level, I realize that owning 710 team-up books will not make me more spiritually fulfilled or make me more attractive to women or anything.  But I'm compelled to do it.  I'm afraid that if I examine my motivations here too closely I'll find out there's something really wrong with me.  (Nervous chuckle.)

There's a few more reasons:  They're relatively cheap:  I've dug somewhere in the neighborhood of 250 applicable books out of the 25/33/50/75 cent boxes.  And they're not hard to track down -  I only used the internet for 3 out of my 600+ issue collection -  The rest came from comic shops and cons in the Michigan/Iowa/Illinois area.

There's some small utility to having big, long, fairly-unbroken-'cept-for-a-couple-reprints-runs of a given series.   As a comics history fan, it's useful to have fairly long, fairly complete runs of DC and Marvel titles, just to get a sense of stuff like the changing production values, page counts, and the different types of advertisements that ran in the books.

But, honestly, that's like .013% of the reason I'm doing this.  I just enjoy the heck outta reading damn things.

Here's the list.  If any of you have any alterations of suggestions, I'd like too hear them.

1-17:  Action Comics 584-600
18: Action Comics Annual # 1
19-166: Brave and the Bold (1st Series) 50-56, 59, 61-200
167-182: Brave and the Bold (4th Series) 1-16
167-283: DC Comics Presents # 1-97
284-287: DC Comics Presents Annual # 1-4
288-293: Dead Again 1-5
294: Deadpool Team-Up Featuring Widdle Wade
295: DC Special Series # 8
296-297: DC Super-Stars 15, 18
298-303: Giant Size Spider-Man 1-6
304-305: Giant Size Super-Villain Team-Up 1-2
306-310: Marvel Age Spider-Man Team-Up 1-5
311: Marvel Age Spider-Man Team-Up Special
312-313: Marvel Feature 11-12
314-463: Marvel Team-Up (1st Series) 1-150
464-474: Marvel Team-Up (2cd Series) 1-11
475-499: Marvel Team-Up (3rd Series) 1-25
500-506: Marvel Team-Up Annual 1-7
507-606: Marvel Two-In-One 1-100
607-613: Marvel Two-In-One Annual 1-7
614-626: Plus Books (Various 1 and 2 shots from 1997)
627-628: Showcase 55-56
629: Shuriken Team-Up 1
630: Spider-Boy Team-Up
631-637: Spider-Man Family (2cd Series) 2-9
638-644: Spider-Man Team-Up 1-7
645: Superman vs. Muhammad Ali Treasury
646: Superman vs. Shazam! Treasury
647: Superman vs. Wonder Woman Treasury
648-654: Super-Team Family 2-3, 11-15
655-671: Super-Villain Team-Up 1-17
672-676: Super-Villain Team-Up: Modok's 11 1-5
677-679: Tales of the Thing 1-3
680-695: Ultimate Marvel Team-Up 1-16
696: Ultimate Marvel Team-up Special
697: Western Team-Up
698-710: World's Finest Comics 198-201, 203-205, 208-210,212-214

Edited to Add:

711-715: Crossroads 1-5
716-722: _____ and Deadpool 43-49
723-726:  DC Double Shots
727-774: Marvel Comics Presents No. 48-50, 52-61, 64-71, 96-122

So in the next few weeks, months, or years, I'll go down the list, explaining WHY some things are there and others aren't, and also doing kind of a group review of the various runs.

And, hey, if I'm missing anything, let me know!

In the next couple months I'll go down the list... Or sideways through it, offerin' some critical-type commentary and defending my choices in regards to the above rules.  And complaining about how I CAN NOT find Deadpool Team-Up anywhere in the real world.

It'll be fun!  (At least for me.)

31 Comments

• At September 14, 2008, Ajit wrote:

  How about Secret Society of Super-Villains, which for all practical purposes was Captain Comet + guest star vs. the Secret ...

• At September 14, 2008, Patient Boy wrote:

  So who was the guest star in the Marvel Two-in-One?

  I'm guessing Black Panther?

• At September 14, 2008, Chris Tolworthy wrote:

  Sphinx?

• At September 14, 2008, MJ wrote:

  It was the Sphinx. I remember buying that book and I was convinced that Batman was going to meet ...

• At September 14, 2008, Greg Hatcher wrote:

  I’m compelled to do it. I’m afraid that if I examine my motivations here too closely I’ll find out ...

• At September 14, 2008, Sijo wrote:

  I used to collect DC Presents, Marvel Team Up, Marvel-Two-in-One and Brave & The Bold, and wouldn't mind completing my ...

• At September 14, 2008, Vic wrote:

  What about the issues of Cable/Deadpool when Cable was thought dead and Deadpool teamed up with a different character each ...

• At September 14, 2008, Mike Loughlin wrote:

  What about DC's '90s Showcase series? Although many issues led with a solo story, sometimes they a Batman supporting ...

• At September 14, 2008, Relias wrote:

  How about Marvel Action Universe. It has Spider-Man, Iceman and Firestar.

• At September 14, 2008, Relias wrote:

  I don't know but I think you could also add Marvel Comics Presents to that list. It had team up ...

• At September 14, 2008, Random Stranger wrote:

  Yeah, there was a period of a couple of years where Marvel Comics Presents was a Wolverine team up on ...

• At September 14, 2008, Relias wrote:

  Oh and try Alpha Flight No. 15 and 16. Now before you say wait a minute Alpha Flight, understand I ...

• At September 14, 2008, MarkAndrew wrote:

  Gah. Stupid Underline tags. I don't understand why Wordpress does that weird grey thing when I try to ...

• At September 14, 2008, sterg wrote:

  Thanks for sharing, MarkAndrew! I remember an issue of Back Issue from a few years back that had a pretty ...

• At September 14, 2008, MarkAndrew wrote:

  Yeah, Back Issue # 6 I think. Pretty great issue. (My checklist is much, much more comprehensive, though.) ...

• At September 14, 2008, Lee wrote:

  That's funny.... when I first saw the cover for MTIO 91, my first thought was, "It's the Sphinx." I *never* ...

• At September 15, 2008, Dunc wrote:

  I used to have a thing for hoovering up all the crossovers I could find (either inter company or inter ...

• At September 15, 2008, gaastra wrote:

  Don't forget the web of spider-man issues with the outlaws. Plus superman vs spider-man and didn't spidey team up ...

• At September 15, 2008, gaastra wrote:

  "The GI Joe/Transformers set in WW2 is great " They also team-up a bunch of times in the 80s and ...

• At September 15, 2008, Anonymous wrote:

  "and in two issues of the uk transformers saved the real ghostbusters from starcream!"

  Holy f-ing god. That's the kind of ...

• At September 15, 2008, Dunc wrote:

  that last one was me.

• At September 15, 2008, gaastra wrote:

  Oops i misspelled starscream. Sorry.

• At September 15, 2008, Tom wrote:

  How about DC's Double-Shot specials from the 90's? There were about 4 from 98...they weren't bad.

• At September 15, 2008, Lynxara wrote:

  At one point I owned a perfectly bizarre "The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Meet Archie" comic, from back when the ...

• At September 15, 2008, Brad Curran wrote:

  I still have that somewhere. That's really all I have to say, and my dog is quite adamant that I ...

• At September 16, 2008, Relias wrote:

  I think the issues are as follows. Marvel Comics Presents No. 48-50, 52-61, 64-71, 96-122. There was a run ...

• At September 16, 2008, Relias wrote:

  Black Panther 10 Luke Cage, 11 Shang Chi, and 12 Blade. It may not say Black Panther and but ...

• At September 16, 2008, Relias wrote:

  Not Eligible never mind.

• At September 16, 2008, MarkAndrew wrote:

  Thanks Relias. That's another agh... 49 books for my list, making MCP this the largest single group of team-up ...

• At September 17, 2008, Relias wrote:

  Also try this... DC Superstars No. 2 Adam Strange and Hawkman and No. 10 Superman and Batman.

• At September 17, 2008, MarkAndrew wrote:

  I own # 2. It's a reprint of old Adam Strange stories, so I don't think I can count ...

"Obsessive" as in, "I'm trying to collect all the team-up books."

But my cheerful insanity and the master list of all 710 team-up books I painstakingly assembled for the hunting is a topic for PART II!, which is coming tomorrow.

But to kick the series off, I thought it would be fun to do some quick reviews and commentary on (departing ) Brave and the Bold  (4th Series) writer Mark Waid's favorite team-up issues of Brave and the Bold (1st Series) taken from Wizard Magazine, which I found via this George Perez news-site here.

I figured a relatively short, poppy review post might ease us into the team-up book waters before we get into the shark infested rapids of full blown fanaticism.

5. BATMAN AND Superboy (Brave and the Bold #192) Mike Barr (w), Jim Aparo (a)

Mark Waid:  "This issue is just jaw-droppingly poignant.  It was absolutely the first time any writer underscored the profound difference between inexperienced Superboy and experienced Superman."

MarkAndrew:The main plot with the two heroes fighting Ira "I.Q." Quimby was super-lame, mostly due to only having 15 pages for the lead feature.  But the character interaction was solid, and Long-time B & B penciller/inker Jim Aparo was in absolutely top form here as well, delivering both his characteristic face-punching goodness and some genuine sadness.  Still.  Only Top 50 (outta 148, minus 6 or 7 I haven't read)  MAYBE top 40 on my "favorites" list, for big problems with the "A" plot.

4. BATMAN AND SGT ROCK (Brave and the Bold #124) Bob Haney (w), Jim Aparo (a)

Mark Waid: It's one of the strangest DC Comics of all time. The villains decide the best way to defeat Batman and Sgt. Rock is to force artist Jim Aparo to alter the story to progress to their advantage. Re-reading it was a great primer for working with Grant Morrison, to whom that sort of thing happens five times a week and is no big deal."

MarkAndrew: Yeah, this one's pretty great.  But, given the Bronze Age DC background it was comin' from... well, it wasn't THAT weird.  The Flash was taking the cosmic treadmill to Earth Prime every other week and real-life writer Cary Bates was a JLA villain for a bit.  Unlike the majority of Haney's plots, this one had the slightest whiff of "It's all been done" emanating from it's pages.  Still, the executions three notches above any other pomo DC comic between the golden age and Animal Man, so this is almost certainly a Top Ten on the MarkAndrew list.

3. BATMAN AND BLACK CANARY (Brave and the Bold #91) Bob Haney (w)

Mark Waid:It is one of the very best-drawn comics of all time. It was drawn by Nick Cardy, who was at the absolute peak of his form here. At conventions I'll buy up copies and hand them to my artist friends just to watch their jaws drop.

MarkAndrew: I am in total agreement re:  Nick Cardy being an underrated genius who should be gifted with gold myrh and sacraficaial lambs for his general awesomeness.  But, we have a but.  Cardy's lush, slightly-psychedelic line-work wasn't... Well, alright.  It was pretty damn great on Batman, but not AS fitting for the dark and brooding Bat-Dude as Aquaman, Bat Lash, or any of the romance Books that Cardy provided covers for in his decades long career.

Also the story here in # 91 here was all about Earth-Two, which just feels weird in a Bob Haney tale.

But here's a but to counter that first but:  Cardy might well be the best Black Canary artist EVER, 'cepting the dude who drew # 2 below, and this is one of.... Nah, this is THE greatest cover of the whole series, according to no less an authority than me.    Top 20.

2. ATOM AND FLASH (Brave and the Bold #52) (Actually it's 53.  Gosh.  Wizard was WRONG about something pertaining to comics history.  Imagine.) Bob Haney (w)

Mark Waid: It doesn't have a particularly memorable plot, but is one of the very best-drawn comics of all time, period. This issue is by Alex Toth, one of the finest comics artist who ever lived but drew only one Brave and the Bold."

MarkAndrew: This one loses points with me for an arse-ugly cover where you can barely see the Atom, and, yeah, for the ridiculous (even by Haney standards) plot.  But  once you get past the cover this whole book is loveley from page one to finish.  Top 25.

Sidebar: And it's a damned shame how little of Toth's work has been reprinted, and what little of the stuff that IS out there has ended up in Price-Gouge-A-Rific Archive Editions.  But thank you, Image, for that neat Zorro collection a couple years back.

Sidebar 2: If anyone can secure the rights, I'd.... I'd actually, albeing grudgingly, pay the stoopid fifty bucks for an Alex Toth Hot Wheels Archive.

1. BATMAN AND HAWK & DOVE (Brave and the Bold #181) Jim Aparo (a)

Mark Waid: Top of their list would have to be any of the Alan Brennert-scripted issues of the early 1980s. But my favorite is issue ##181. It's a story about two former teenage heroes who've grown up and have to deal with a world that's not the 1960s anymore.

MarkAndrew: I admit, I have some pretty specific tastes with regards to superhero comics.  In general, I'm a plot guy, less a fan of soap opera tinged super-tales and more about the giant genetically modified three headed space octopuses with explodo-vision holding New Zealand hostage style style comics.

And Brennert's stuff... It leans toward the more character-driven and octopus-free side of the spectrum, for sure.

Still, it's hard to be TOO down on a superhero book that's as patently opposed to Claremont-style bombast and as quietly thoughtful as this one, and it does my heart good to see another writer playin' as fast and loose with continuity as Haney in his prime.  And Jim Aparo is, like, even excellent-er then per usual for this outing.  Top 25, easy.

Postscript: My top five B&B team-ups?  Still working on it, and as I noted above there are a couple issues I haven't read.  But here's some of the nominees: 

# 52: Sgt. Rock, Lt. Cloud and Jeb Stuart, (Because Joe Kubert) 

# 86: Batman and Deadman (Because Neal Adams)

# 96: Batman and Sgt. Rock (NIck Cardy, and Sgt. Rock vs. the devil)

# 112: Batman and Mister Miracle: (Haney and Aparo, with the world's greatest escape artists vs. the Great Damn Pyramid)

# 115: Batman and the Atom (Batman dies, and the Atom animates his corpse to track down the killers by kicking it in the brain)

# 118: Batman and Wildcat (The single greatest plot in the history of comics, which I am unworthy to even attempt to describe)

# 150 Batman and "?" (The last great Haney/Aparo Joint.  And I'm a sucker for the mystery guest bit)  #

# 171 Batman and Scalphunter (I kind of hate the guest-star, but I absolutely loves me some Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez art) and

# 178 Batman and the Creeper (the Bob Haney-est of the Alan Brennert written issues)

9 Comments

• At September 11, 2008, layne wrote:

  Praise for it these days is coals to Newcastle, but reading the Batman/Rock/Aparo B&B totally broke my brain in a ...

• At September 12, 2008, edc wrote:

  4 and 3 look great.. will keep an eye out for those.

• At September 12, 2008, Dan_Gerous wrote:

  I like how New Zealand got a mention....

• At September 12, 2008, Craig wrote:

  That #115 is awesomely weird; it's basically Grant Morrison-like in its audacity.

• At September 12, 2008, Sijo wrote:

  I loved team-up books too, especially DC Comics Presents and Marvel Team-Up; I didn't like Brave and Bold as much ...

• At September 13, 2008, edc wrote:

  morrison is swiping loony tunes!

• At September 13, 2008, Tom wrote:

  No love for issue 197 or 182? Great Earth-2 stories...

• At September 14, 2008, Jbird wrote:

  I hate to be a dick, but do you proofread at all?

• At September 14, 2008, joecab wrote:

  Alan Brennert was always fantastic. A great breadth of knowledge and respect for past continuity and still creating great stories. ...

Sooo I'm pretty much required to post it here.

Doug's the guy with the glasses. (Not Batgirl, Catwoman, or Prisoner # 45678.)

Also: More snotty-ass reviews of Entertainment Weekly's favorite albums from me and Jonathan Bogart here, (We had a troll for a while, even. Which was annoying, and also strangely validating. It's like we were causing the internet to work like it's supposed to.)

And I'll try to get an actual POST post up in the next day or two, with actual content. Been thinkin' about Image comics lately.

(P.S. Man, I had to edit this thing like six times after I hit "Save to Site." Say no to 3:30 AM blogging, kids.

6 Comments

• At July 31, 2008, Mer wrote:

  RE: the webcomic. Heh. I appreciate anything that reinforces the suckitude that is XF2.

• At July 31, 2008, Mer wrote:

  Oops, I'm referring to the comic that can be accessed through Mark's hyperlink.

• At August 4, 2008, Douglas wrote:

  I had no idea you were a Comic Blogger.

  Actually, I had no idea you were into comics.

  Clearly, we need to ...

• At August 4, 2008, Douglas wrote:

  ...okay, after flipping through your blog, I'm beginning to think that maybe you AREN'T who I thought you were... which ...

• At August 4, 2008, Douglas wrote:

  Okay,

  and now I've gone through and found that YES, indeed, you are my best friend from high school.

  Holy flipping haystacks, ...

• At September 27, 2008, MarkAndrew wrote:

  Oh crap.

  Hey Doug!

  I totally forgot I posted this. Usually I check my comments, like, 163 times a day. ...

Head on over to The Stranger for the replies.

2 Comments

• At July 27, 2008, Da Fug wrote:

  Me like. Despondent Hulk funny.

• At July 28, 2008, Tom Russell wrote:

  I liked Despondent Hulk, but I have to say I found the John McCain quote on the same page to ...

We're commenting on Entertainment Weekly's list of "The 100 best albums from 1983 to 2008."

Being that it's an Entertainment Weekly list it's not very diverse. Or very good.

But Blogger Johnny Bacardi posted the list and I felt mystically/spiritually compelled to comment/rip on it. At length. And somehow I roped Jonathan Bogart who's done some really good music writing in the past into helping me.

So we're going five by five, down the whole list, through George Michael and Tupac and Christina Aguilera and Tom Waits and Nirvana and Madonna (And sorry Greg. No Abba.) all the way to number one.

Some teaser quotes on the first batch o' five.

# 100:

And [the video]does change the context, by showing us who's the real star here.

GEORGE MICHAEL'S ASS! guest starring George Michael.

# 97: That narrative, of course, is that Britney Spears is a blank slate, a plastic doll which various producers, critics, and the fascinated, gluttonous, self-righteous public can dress up in whatever costume they wish - and only her complete vacuum of personality has enabled her to successfully embody the spirit of the age.

# 98:

Whhhoooo! P! J! P! J! P! J! I'm listening to the even numbered albums tonight, and this more than (crossed out) almost (crossed out) EXACTLY makes upfor Death Cab back at # 98. It's nice to see someone who's recorded work I'm intimately familiar with, and also am kind of in love with a lot.

# 96: I'd dispute Mark's characterization of this as "emo," though; at least compared to crap like Dashboard Confessional, it's far more melodic and interested in sonic details that emo tends to bury under layers of "passionate" guitars, and Gibbard's lyrics are less self-pitying than oblique (which is a triumph, in my book). In fact, there's a family resemblance to the Shins (and why the fuck isn't Chutes Too Narrow on the list?

So, hey. Come read! Argue with us! Leave comments! It'll be fun.

9 Comments

• At July 19, 2008, Brad Curran wrote:

  I did not see a single thing about team-up comics, Steve Gerber, Dave Sim, Kim Deitch, or dropped letters at ...

• At July 19, 2008, Greg Burgas wrote:

  ABBA broke up in 1982, or else they would have DOMINATED this list.

• At July 19, 2008, Stefan wrote:

  Enjoyed some of the comments, but the Death Cab For Cutie hate is inexplicable, aside from the obvious (and understandable) ...

• At July 19, 2008, MarkAndrew wrote:

  "Murmur" was 1983, but I figured it was early enough to miss the 25 year deadline.

  "Synchronicity" (June of ...

• At July 20, 2008, Stefan wrote:

  I prefer Life's Rich Pageant to Murmur myself, although it's pretty close, and if I were choosing any REM album ...

• At July 20, 2008, Mike Loughlin wrote:

  Hell, I like Reckoning more than Murmur. Suck it, indie snobs even snobbier than I!

• At July 20, 2008, Mike Loughlin wrote:

  And I like Stories From the City... _because_ it was such a departure from PJ Harvey's usual sounds, even if ...

• At July 20, 2008, MarkAndrew wrote:

  I guess it's been a couple years (pushing a decade) since I've listened to Life's Rich Pageant. I ...

• At July 21, 2008, Shade wrote:

  It's EW so they don't venture to far out of the mainstream obviously. I would have liked them include ...

There've been some pretty HUGE floods in my neck of the woods.

Iowa City, where I live, got hit pretty bad: The gas station five blocks down the road is far enough underwater that I can't see the gas pumps, the bus barn where I worked as a school bus driver 'till the season ended is underwater, and we, and every apartment on our floor, has a flood refugee on the couch.

On the upside:  The waters are heading down now, and the worst is most definitely over.

And Iowa City got off easy compared to Cedar Rapids, a bigger town, home of Quaker Oats which is  30 miles north of IC.   According to the Associated Press, 1300 city blocks over 9.2 square miles were flooded, twenty-four thousand people were evacuated, and property damage tallies at 736 million. And, more importantly (if you're me) I've got a bunch of first-name-only level friends: "Bobby my pool playing buddy? you Ok?"   "Lauren Scotto, who sat next to me in non-fiction writing...  You alive?"

Scary.

But... um... on the upside, I did make it to the back-issue comic store and the library before they were erased. Aaaaaaannnnd Yeah, OK, this is a pretty transient attempt to stay on topic - Mostly I just wanted to brag/fret about the big-ass disaster I was involved in before a wide audience. But here's what I got, mostly from the 50 cent bins, mostly stained and beat to crap.

Still.  50 comics, 38 bucks.  I'm happy.

Action Comics #560 (Featuring Ambush Bug!)

Attack # 36: ( Willi Franz Scripter, Sam Glanzman Pencils)

Boris the Bear Instant Color Classics # 1, Brave and the Bold 168, 196 (12 issues away from a complete run.), Daredevil 359, 360, 361, 363 (Heard good things about these Karl Kessel written issues, and I'm a big 'ol DD fan. And Gene mfing Colan drew # 360!), DC COmics Presents 5, 7, 13, 25, 70, 74, 79, 85 (14 issues away from a complete run. FINALLY tracked down the Alan Moore written and Rick Veitch penciled # 85.), DC Comics Presents Annual 3 (Super-powered Doctor Sivana vs. Superman of Earth-one, Superman of Earth-Two, and Captain Marvel... all drawn by Gil Kane! Pretty awesome.)

The Falcon # 2, # 4, Icon # 15 (Milestone/DC)( I'm not always a huge Dwayne Macduffie (w) fan, but I really dig this series, and I'm way excited when I find back issues in the cheap box. This issue was, unfortunately, part 17 of a 145 part cross-over with the regular DC universe.)  , Kona, Monarch of Monster Isle # 17 (I love giant monster comics like some men love they mama), Marvel Team-Up 129, 130, 140, 150 (Completed my run! Between Essentials volumes, reprints, and original issues, I have the stories from all 150 issues) Sludge # 5-8 (Malibu comics) (Steve Gerber, who's generally my favorite scripter wrote these: Sadly, not very good), Marvel Two-In-One 62 (11 Issues from a complete run.) Spidey Super-Stories # 13

(Well, y'know... I have Electric Company Nostalgia. And this had the Falcon in it. I dig the Falcon.), Suicide Squad # 10, 15, 26, 27, 28, 29. 30, 35, 36, 38 (I have about 2/3rds of the whole series.  Never paid more than 75 cents an issue), Spider-Man's Tangled Web # 14 (Spider-man stories without Spider-man. Great idea, one of my favorite mainstream series of recent years), Wonder Woman # 64, Young Justice # 21.

And, shit, now C &C's probably gone.  (I'm sure the 50 cent boxes didn't make it.)

Weird and sad.

Anyway, I got wind that the flood was coming so I stayed an extra day in Cedar Rapids to help put sandbags around buildings, which...

ummm....

I'm not sure HOW the process works.

Does it create an air-tight seal?  Absorb water?  Give us volunteers that "productive and useful in the face of crisis" feeling.It seems to be the thing to do in case of flood.  Anyway, I spent the Tuesday night and Wednesday morning sandbagging downtown Cedar Rapids, but jumped on the bus outta town Wednesday afternoon.  Which was lucky, because it's now a three/four hour drive from Iowa City to Cedar Rapids -  The flood-waters have pretty much blocked every remotely direct route.

Oh yeah -  I got some comics out of the Cedar Rapids library, too.  (The Alias (Bendis version) Omnibus, Swamp Thing vol. 7, Albert and the Others, Chicken with Plums, and the Forty Years of Amazing Spider-man DVD-Rom.)

So, hey, if you take comics and CDs out of the library, and then the library gets flooded into non-entityness, if I get to keep the stuff I checked-out?

So, went back to Iowa City.  A couple more days of sandbagging, Wednesday night at the trailer park, usin' sandbags to make the river-banks taller.  Thursday in the park by the mall making sandbags which went... somewhere, and did... something.  Friday and Saturday at University of Iowa, where I go to school. And Saturday night in a human chain, moving the inventory of the Haunted Bookshop out of the basement, while trying to keep the sections organized -  meaning the person on the bottom fills a small shopping basket of books and says "Chinese History" or "Nature" or "Sci Fi," and the next person in the chain passes the basket to the person behind THEM and says "Chinese History" or "Nature" or "Sci Fi" (which we pronounced SKEEFEE) all the way to the attic, where the books are (hopefully, sort of) organized.

Best line of the night:

First Person in Chain:  "Storms and Disasters."  (Passes basket of books up.)

Second Person in Chain: "Storms and Disasters"  (Passes basket of books up.)

Third Person in Chain: "Storms and Disasters."  (Passes basket of books up.)

Top of the Chain:  "Irony."  (Passes basket of books to be organized.)

Sandbagging was actually fairly fun, although my old, flabby self was SEVERELY achy for several days.  It was enjoyable in a feeling part-of-the-community kinda sense, and I learned how to swear in Irish ("Dogs bollocks" and some (clean) military cadences from the army guys.

I'm not sure if I actually ACCOMPLISHED much of anything.  Cedar Rapids was pretty much royally screwed, and I'm not sure the sandbags accomplished much.  The trailer park was evacuated the next day.   Later and luckily, the flood waters in Iowa city crested  earlier and lower than expected, so the buildings on campus I sandbagged and the bookstore were pretty well untouched.

And tomorrow they're calling for volunteers to de-sandbag.

Alright, I went pretty far off-topic.  But it's not like I don't do that anyway.  And I wanted to let everyone know I'm here and OK.

(And, hey, Danielle...  Are you out there?  Doing alright?)

16 Comments

• At June 17, 2008, stealthwise wrote:

  Maybe vampires had taken over, and Swamp Thing had to take you out before it spread.

• At June 17, 2008, Colin wrote:

  Are you talking about CR Collectibles? I live in the area to and I love that place. I ...

• At June 17, 2008, MarkAndrew wrote:

  Yeah, CR Collectibles! (I should put that in the piece.) I go up there every couple months and ...

• At June 17, 2008, Da Fug wrote:

  Good to hear you're OK. And it's always good to hear first hand accounts of major disasters even if ...

• At June 17, 2008, Brian Cronin wrote:

  Good to hear all is well, Mark (and as a side note to you readers out there, due to this ...

• At June 18, 2008, felgekarp wrote:

  We've had a few floods here in the Uk in recent times and they always hand sandbags out but not ...

• At June 18, 2008, Alan Coil wrote:

  Sandbags, if there are enough of them, will hold the water back just as a levee does. If there are ...

• At June 18, 2008, Danielle Leigh wrote:

  hi MarkAndrew! Glad to hear you are okay (if now achey-mc-acherson thanks to all the good sand-bagging deeds you ...

• At June 18, 2008, The Mutt wrote:

  Citizen!

  Is your Comic Book collection Evac-Ready?

  How many Long Boxes can your car hold?

  Remember, children can swim; Comics can not.

  Do your ...

• At June 18, 2008, Greg Hatcher wrote:

  I'm just glad you are both all right. Considering the foofaraw around here the last couple of days it's nice ...

• At June 18, 2008, Craig B. wrote:

  You know, I faced a similar issue in the Oakland Hills fire back in 1989 - back then, I was ...

• At June 18, 2008, Colin wrote:

  I went by CR Collectibles today to see how bad it was. To my surprise, the store was open ...

• At June 18, 2008, MarkAndrew wrote:

  Oh awesome!

• At June 19, 2008, Grico wrote:

  That's good to hear the shop is alright.

• At June 19, 2008, Skott wrote:

  It must have been two years ago that I was at WonderCon and my girlfriend and I were browsing and ...

• At July 31, 2008, Comics Should Be Good! » A Comic Nerd’s Hurricane Diary- Reviews, Chris Sims Obession, Comic Con Dissing, And General Trivialization Of A Natural Disaster wrote:

  [...] gotta come clean; I wanted to do a play on words on this title, but even I found that ...