Marvel Comics blabbery

He still dictates Marvel's one-bathroom-per-gender and no-backlist-of-books policies.

Is there a-n-y-t-h-i-n-g good happening / worth reading on the Marvel front at the moment?? I’m totally out of it.

The new Hulk book is good, and I like TNC's new Captain America - he's definitely improved since his terrible start on Black Panther. Aaron's Avengers comic is meh so far, annoyingly.

I'm inching eeeeever closer to the present day, caught up to the beginning of last year now. Shit got political, I see (particularly Waid's Champions, of what I've read thus far). I hope they kept it up.

I’m reading everything marvel published in 1975, month by month. I’m up to March. This really is THE way to read 70s marvel despite the time investment. I’m only ‘allowed’ to skip reprints. Ultimate goal is to complete 1975-1984 aka the original span of my time as a marvel kid.

(Obviously a friend with sick torrenting skills is involved in this opportunity)

In terms of volume, old-school Marvel seems to be the saner option wrt these hardcore reading projects. It took me less time to make my way through the entire silver age than it has for me to catch up on 2013-present.

1975 is at least 20% horror and 10% martial arts, I really love that fact. So many black and white mag titles! SO MANY DOUG MOENCH SCRIPTS PER MONTH! He must have been tweaking.

This is my favorite era of comics, the Marvel auteur "dreaded deadline doom" years before Shooter came in and fucked up the trains by making them run on time.

My favorite too. Five hippyish nerds who have all read lovecraft writing a whole comics company

Well more than five. Eight or nine.

I started Gerber's Defenders last week and it's just as odd as I could have hoped for

is there a good TPB of that...?

several times over the last few years I have idly considered attempting to read everything published by the DC and Marvel in the 70s but it would be too hard (and probably not worth it) to track down some stuff

All of Gerber's stuff was collected in the Essential Defenders volumes. All of the Essentials are technically out of print at this point, but some of them are still cheap on the secondary market.

There’s no way to do it without downloads, so much of this stuff was only printed the once.

Marvel Essential was overall a pretty decently complete reprint series of the 60s and 70s comics. It's as close as they ever came to reprinting the line. Nick Fury Agent of Shield is probably the biggest title they did not do at all in an Essential, although they did put it out in the Masterworks series.

I'd say if you want to get a few Essentials, look for the Warlock one. That is one of the best ones. They did a decent job reprinting some of the monster mag stuff in essential volumes too.

I hate those b&w reprints tho :(

They seem to be going all-in on the Epic collections. They release a couple a month and they're very quickly closing gaps in the as-yet-unreprinted old-school material (not to mention retreading Essentials ground, but now in color!). Unfortunately wrt this particular conversation, they've only put out a few volumes of post-Gerber Defenders thus far.

several times over the last few years I have idly considered attempting to read everything published by the DC and Marvel in the 70s

This would be an insane number of comics!

not as insane as the '80s or '00s

I'm sure you're right. I was trying to do the math for the 70s - say Marvel and DC brought out 50 comics/mags a month between them, that would be 600 comics a year, over 7,000 comics in a decade. Some of those would be reprint titles, but even so...

This is my favorite era of comics, the Marvel auteur "dreaded deadline doom" years before Shooter came in and fucked up the trains by making them run on time.

That Marvel Comics: The Untold Story book did a really good job of evoking that era and making it seem like Marvel's peak. Like a comics equivalent of the psychedelic-into-prog era.

^^^EXACTLY

I've gone back to the original Lee/Kirby/Ditko (?) issues of Incredible Hulk, prompted by the lettercols in Al's new (excellent!) Hulk comic.

The first issue is astoundingly fun and relatively light on dialogue for a Stan Lee comic. Highly recommended if you've got Unlimited.

Ditko co-created The Leader and Glenn Talbot, that alone is a big influence on the Hulk series. Might be a stretch to my memory of last reading them, but I think there was a bit more cold war paranoia in those issues too than the first ones.

Marvel needs to scrape out all those modern looks and finally get back to giving The Leader back his big head. I kinda like the later Sal Buscema flat top version, but he was the artist back when I was a kid on the Hulk.

https://usercontent2.hubstatic.com/5762687_f496.jpg

https://78.media.tumblr.com/1d6fcf03271b8667a7d146837f746e0a/tumblr_n2z2whuAIV1twc725o1_1280.jpg

I like broccoli head Leader.

It’s funny to me how even the Leader isn’t intelligent enough to overcome male pattern baldness.

Might be a stretch to my memory of last reading them, but I think there was a bit more cold war paranoia in those issues too than the first ones.

There is a great cold war baddie in the very first issue. I groaned when I first saw him and thought it would derail the story, but then there's also an UNEXPECTED TWIST

the leader looks like such a doughy middle-aged sad sack in that panel earlnash posted

it’s like i’m looking in a mirror tbh

bg, stay calm, I'm calling emergency services 4 u because u should not be that color bro

exactly the kind of cloddish response i'd expect from an inferior mind such as yours

Bah! I am but an oaf, ever-striving but ever-failing to comprehend the mysteries of your verdant hide! Curses!

https://proxy.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.writeups.org%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2FLeader-Hulk-Marvel-Comics-Doc-Samson-h3.jpg&f=1

How did you know I was wearing my 'Pathetic Human Trash' t-shirt today, oh right, all-powerful broccoli brain.

SHEK!

mods, ‘broccoli brain’ is hate speech - please temp-ban this user until i can work the kinks out of the accursed targeting system of this array of gamma bombs i have in low-earth orbit and i can arrange a more... permanent ban of my own

*tents fingers, laughs maniacally*

"Subliminal Bonds" = cool album name

Somebody tell Gary U.S. Bonds

To me, that original visage of The Leader looks a bit Mike Mignola to me or at least you could see a character like that in Hellboy.

The music is hella annoying, but looks potentially cool:

https://youtu.be/Z1BCujX3pw8 (Capt. Marvel trailer)

There’s gonna be sooooo many “omg it’s the ‘90s” jokes

Also over on Captain Marvel (2019), dir. Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck

ILE = Elseworlds (to me)

Warning, deep-dive nerdgasm printing talk commencing...now: Marvel has switched to some a new glossy paper stock this month, some weird velvety marshmallowy shit that barely feels like anything and that my fingertips find suuuuuuuuper unpleasant. And this right on the heels of Marvel starting to send their trades to some new print shop that's fucking up the spines and using some kind of cover stock that starts curling upon exposure to the air.

Okay, done complaining about things only I care about.

Has this already happened? I thought something was.. off about the comics i picked up this month, at least the covers felt different somehow

That stinks... the trades, too?!

Long shot and niche request but are there any good podcasts out there discussing 60s/70s/80s Marvel comics in a nerdy way, or podcasts with good interviews with creators from that era?

Maybe the new cover stock is supposed to function like those red cellophane fortune telling novelties? Depending on which way it curls and/or torsions itself, you will fall in love or be afflicted with a terrible illness etc

There's that Baxter Building podcast by the Wait, What? people that goes through all the Fantastic Four in order. Never listened to it because I give no shits for the Fantastic Four, but ymmv.

Thanks James!

I’m tempted to check out Marvel’s new “Wolverine” podcast, if only to hear the SFX when he pops his claws.