Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION Dr. Gym'll's Cultural Rarities Re-Reads (Now Reading: Swamp Thing: 1971 through 1985)

BB, I think you're thinking of Final Crisis, which came out a few years ago (2009 I think?). We're talking about Crisis on Infinite Earths, which came out in 1985-86.

You're read on Final Crisis is pretty accurate. A ton of in-jokes and meta-commentary that takes a lot of effort and insider-knowledge on the reader's part to enjoy.

I hated Final Crisis. I could never understand what was going on.

And as Cobie and Blacula described, COIE was one of the last crossovers that actually put some thought into the characters they introduced. I loved how they gave us just enough background to know who was who and what powers they had!

Compare to Final Crisis, in which most heroes were interchangeable and the splash pages were meaningless because you couldn't tell who was who without a scorecard - in COIE at least you had characters interact with one another, call each other by name, and actually work together!

I am a big fan of Grant Morrison's 21st century DCU work but I completely agree that Final Crisis was a huge let-down. It has some good moments like most stories do but they were lost in a sea of mess that had one of the most ridiculously stupid endings ever.

And don't get me started on how terribly Morrison treated his side-characters compared to the way Wolfman did. Many blog-posts have been devoted to Wonder Woman's troubling usage here. And just look at the different ways the two creators treated their book's victims - in CoIE, Wolfman gave every single casualty, no matter how minor, their last little moment of heroism or attention - think Nighthawk's final struggle, Kole protecting Robin and Huntress, Dove saving the children, Lori Lemaris swooping in with her gun, the Crime Syndicate's whole amazing opening, and so on; and compare them to that one crappy panel showing Count Vertigo, Mr Bones, Negative Woman, etc. lying dead on the ground with no build-up and no follow-up. Or Martian Manhunter's similar one panel death.

Of course, another big difference is that Marv Wolfman had Paul Levitz as an editor at the time; while Grant Morrison's editor was a didiotic Manchurian Candidate sent by Marvel to destroy DC from within.

...and it's working, too.

Oh Yeah! I loved "COIE." I knew just enough about the various characters to follow and the heroes were real. Of course, I cheered a bit more when a Legionnaire was in the spotlight.

"Final" Crisis. I hope so. It gets a bit better with each read but I think I'll look up some annotations if I ever decide it's relevant. Round about that time, DC was throwing event after event spread over so many books, that's when I dropped most everything DC I was reading. I figured, if they can't tell me the story in a book a month = not interested. COIE seemed to find a better balance. The 12 books were all very coherent as I recall.

CoIE did crossover into pretty much every book in the DC line but the main maxi itself was almost completely self-contained so that you didn't need to read anything else but it.

The only two small side story lines that I remember being annoyed by because they seemed to be set up in the main book but then continued on in another were 1) whatever happened to Blue Devil after he disappeared off the JLA satellite in issue #8, and 2) whatever Dr Fate did with Amethyst after they disappeared in #11 or so.

Unlike Final Crisis where if you didn't read Superman Beyond then you would have been completely bewildered.

I can barely remember anything that happened in Final Crisis because I didn't understand much of it. I can barely remember any "wow" moments for any of the characters in it either!

I agree with you Blacula, got bothered by the Blue Devil and Amethyst side stories too. There was another with Firehawk and Wonder Girl venturing into the "warp zone" (issue 8 I think); but among these three only the Amethyst one was left hanging. Firehawk, Donna and Blue Devil all showed up alive and well in later issues so we know they were alright.

Oh, and the JLA Detroit's Steel was also teleported away by Warp to parts unknown - that was another hanging plotline. I have no idea where Steel ended up.

Steels story continued in Justice League of America #245

http://www.comics.org/issue/900745/

Actually all the stories you mentioned were touched on in various comics at the time.

I think they were talking about how well CoIE resolved its own stories internally, without having to read outside books. I may be wrong about that, I was just an observer for that part of the conversation.

Wasn't 100% sure...

I know Ibby said he didn't know where Steel ended up, which is why I referenced the JLA comic. Then I reread his full comment, and didn't really know if he had read, or knew of the resolutions to the plotlines he referenced.

This is correct, although IB seemed not to know where Steel's story ended up so I'm sure Dev's post was helpful on that front. And it's always a pleasure to see some nice old Luke McDonnell art (an artist that I appreciate a lot more now than I did when I was younger).

Thanks for the info, Dev

I really didn't know where Steel ended up, although since I knew he eventually died in the pages of JLA I knew he was okay. What irked me about that was there was no blurb saying "follow Steel into the pages of so-and-so comic".

And as with Blacula, I was also mildly annoyed at how COIE didn't reveal what had happened to Amethyst.

Throwing out another good reread. JLA/Titans: The Technis Imperative.

Here's another mini-series that juggles dozens of characters, but manages to give everyone something to do and some good bits of characterization. Joto and Minion are probably the only Titans who has not one line of dialogue; each scene reveals a little something about the characters involved; we get mini-profiles for all the Titans past and present including real names, powers and Titans team joined; and the story itself provides all the background information that is essential to understand the plot. Even deceased Titans get mini-profiles when "Cyberion" sends out drones to seek help!

The story itself is exciting. We're hit right away with a great threat that "swallows" the Moon and drives the JLA from the Watchtower! All the bases are covered; the JLA's emotional connection to the Titans is explored; the various emergencies wrought by the Moon's gravity explain why more heroes do not get involved in the cataclysm; and the 118-page story certainly takes much more than 15 minutes to read.

When I finished this story, I had a good sense of who each and every single featured Titan was (even obscure ones like Flamebird or Azrael).

Wolfman's love and passion really shone in COIE. I heard that he and George Perez took care to research each and every character they featured, and it showed. All the Legionnaires (whether spotlighted heavily like Wildfire, Dawnstar or Blok, or just featured in a page or two like Phantom Girl or Colossal Boy) was written very well.

Forgot to check in that I went ahead and re-read the Miller/JRJr. Daredevil: The Man Without Far mini about two weeks ago. This one may have fallen slightly short of my memory of it, but it was still quite awesome. I especially enjoyed the extended looks at Matt's childhood and his early relationship with Elektra.

The Romita Jr. art was really terrific. I especially enjoyed his depiction of wild-haired young Matt and young, devil-may-care Elektra. DD is just one of those characters that brings out the best in Romita...and obviously Miller as well. This even despite the fact that Matt never appears in either of his familiar costumes until the very last page.

What struck me is how grim the subject matter could be at times. I mean, even beyond the brutal death of Jack Murdock, the main threat turns out to be a child-trafficking ring. And Matt basically commits manslaughter or even first-degree murder several times as he learns the ropes and pursues vengeance. There's one particular death that occurs in his earliest rampage that haunts him thru the rest of the story.

At times, these elements seemed more suitable to other non-superhero works of Miller and not so much to DD's world, especially if this is supposed to serve as the character's definitive origin. They almost define this story as out of continuity. Otherwise, why wouldn't at least the one particular death never be mentioned again? So that took me out of the story slightly, probably more than it did when I first read this since I didn't recall it beforehand.

But, hey, every retelling/expansion of an existing origin features retcons, right? Certainly, Elektra's prior relationship with Matt was a retcon itself, for example. So it doesn't ruin the story, but it feels out of place. I wouldn't mind at all if DD's current writer would reference this story at some point and put it firmly in continuity. There's one character who Frank and Romita created here that would be an especially good one to revisit...

And as far as re-reads go, they're currently on hold (except for the ongoing LSH Archives project, of course) as I juggle reading Lone Wolf & Cub Omnibuses and wading through my three-month backlog of "new" comics. It won't be too long, I think, 'til my next re-read. Currently debating between House of Secrets or Sandman Mystery Theatre. If the latter, I might do 1-3 arcs at a time instead of a straight read-through. then again, it could be another project entirely! Been getting that Uncanny X-men itch lately....

I've been on an 80s kick lately, re-reading stuff like Nexus, Dreadstar, Twisted Tales, Eclipse Monthly, Sable, Mars, Sabre, Whisper, the Badger, Byrne's FF run, American Flagg, Zot!, Tales of Terror, the nicely colored collections of Wrightson's and Brunner's Warren work...the point being that IMO even the weakest books from Pacific, Eclipse and First (and a few others) blows just about everything being published today out of the water, with a few notable exceptions like Saga and Fables.

Herm, I'm sorry to say that I missed out on those classic, pioneering indies (and others) that comprise most of your list. I certainly hope to get to many of them eventually. At least, I have a Sable TPB waiting for me to dive in when the time's right....

One re-read I did recently was a run which Lardy and Peebs mentioned earlier in this thread, the Roger Stern/John Buscema Avengers.

That run is second only to the Bob Harras/Steve Epting Avengers as my favorite Avengers run. After the scattershot ugliness of Jim Shooter's second Avengers run, Stern took the Avengers back to basics without coming on like a nostalgia merchant, and with a respect for everything that had come before, good or bad. The first half of Stern's nearly 60 issue run found him still gaining a foothold, and hamstrung by Al Milgrom's terrible artwork. Stern found his Avengers voice on the arc that culminated the long-running subplot about the Vision losing the plot and endangering the world while trying to save it; that arc was adequately drawn by Bob Hall, who also drew Stern's excellent 4-issue West Coast Avengers mini-series.

Then came John Buscema, who had been away from superheroes for several years and was now returning to the book on which he had first made his name. Even though Buscema professed to "hate" superheroes, I've always been of the opinion that he exaggerated that "hate" to wind people up and that he secretly enjoyed the challenge of drawing a team book.

This was, starting with issue 255, when the Avengers came alive like they hadn't been since the mid-1970s. Stern wrote sharp, exciting stories that took familiar Avengers tropes (space opera, Kang, the Masters of Evil) and found fresh new angles. Buscema illustrated beautifully throughout, particularly on what turned out to be Stern's last arc, where the Avengers clash with the Olympian Gods.

Something else else about Stern that, for some reason, he never seems to get enough credit for, is that he was the first Avengers writer since Steve Englehart who knew how to write female characters. Janet Van Dyne, Jennifer Walters, and Stern's own creation Monica Rambeau all shined. Stern also created the awesome female villain Nebula, and the morally ambiguous Rita De Mara, the second Yellowjacket.

It was only a 29-issue run (30 counting the fill-in issue by Bob Harras and Bob Hall in which Jarvis reflects on his time with the Avengers as he convalesces after having been tortured during the Masters of Evil arc), but I'm grateful we got even that relatively small number of issues out of such a great creative team as Roger Stern and John Buscema.

Still filling in that era of my Avengers collection.

It's the era of the Avengers that I grew up on, so it has a special place in my heart. It's hard to beat the years that Stern wrote Avengers and Englehart wrote WCA in my recollection. You are correct that Stern/Buscema/Palmer was the highlight of stern's time on the main title. Indeed, a re-read of these will definitely be in order at some point in the future.

Going back to the Claremont X-Men re-read, I bought softcover editions of Uncanny X-Men Masterworks Vols. 2 & 3 to complement HC Volume 1 that I re-read earlier this year or late last year. I know I have few if any individual issues contained in those three collections. I need to find out how much of Volume 4 (which highlights the Proteus saga) and forward I own in floppies before figuring out whether I'll be buying further volumes. I've always used one of the first TPBs known to Marvel, encompassing the Dark Phoenix saga, as the stopgap which delineates where my individual run is uninterrupted, so we'll see if that's how I roll.

In any case I doubt I'll re-read the whole Claremont run in one massive, uninterrupted project. I'll probably figure out a way to split it up into chunks. Maybe 101-138 first? Or end it with Byrne at 143? (Keep in mind that I won't be re-reading GS 1 and 94-100 since that Masterwork wasn't read long ago at all.)

Lardy, I recommend you read them by era of artist. That's a nice way to dilineate and also see how each artist still backed some fantastic stories.

Fanfie, you know I love that era just like you, but I want to also pipe in and express my very high opinion of the Stern Avengers run, especially with Big John. Just fantastic stuff on all levels, and with a consistent feel of breaking new ground.

Lardy, I'm very interested to find out how that era of Avengers holds up for you, so I hope your re-read will be soon; and please remember to include Stern's WCA mini-series, which is essential.

Cobie, well said. I've always felt Stern's Avengers run is comparable to Paul Levitz's second tenure on the LSH. Both highlights of the 1980s.

And I'll second Cobie's recommendation to split up the Claremont X-Men era into each particular artist's sub-era, but with one caveat: Dave Cockrum left both times with the stories unfinished, so you might want to read the resolutions drawn by Byrne and Smith, respectively, before you take a break.