Not all horror comics but just a bunch of things I said on another forum that I want to add here.
Don't know why some of this is in bold.
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I've always wondered how many elements of Marvel/DC superhero comics cannot be substituted for their fans. Is there nothing else that would satisfy those itches?
It taken me a very long time to realise what it was the attracted me to horror, I've sorted out what kind of horror I prefer but I'm still wondering what superheroes would look like if I subtracted everything I don't like.
Thinking back to when I got into superheroes a lot of it probably was the now embarrassing angsty brooding. I can still look back on the Spiderman Clone Saga knowing it was awful but still enjoy how dark, serious and sexy it seemed to me at 9-10. The Siekiewicz inks are still great.
How could someone distill the colourful acrobatic characters, the rainy nocturnal settings and the atmosphere into something better?
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I'm actually really enjoying that Clone Saga behind the scenes thing that Old Lunch (ilxor forum member) linked on the other thread. I think it's interesting that so many people who hated it thought it had some ideas with a lot of potential, I kind of agree.
So much of it sounds utterly stupid in summary.
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In further search of what appealed to me about Marvel superheroes as a kid, I've been looking at Marvel Masterpieces cards. Trading cards of comic characters were huge for me, but I wish they had just been art books instead of all that waste of paper (doublers) and people buying insane amounts just to get rare cards.
I know some people hate them but I think the Hildebrandt brothers could create really powerful colours and lighting.
I'm not sure I would have got into superheroes through most of the popular DC characters. Maybe the colour designs of Marvel characters deserves more credit. Maybe the more defined anatomy of modern superheroes was important, the night time settings definitely were (maybe Frank Miller deserves that credit?).
I kind of wish I had my superhero phase later on in life. I'm glad I came to metal later on because I probably would have heard so much more crap metal if I started young.
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Re: Clone Saga again. I like how the deeply tortured Kaine must have sat down and designed a costume that expressed his despair but made room for his lovely hair. It must have taken him ages to get the veins right when he was knitting.
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When I was 9 or 10 at my first comic shop visit, these Bissette covers taken a while to process. Especially the farting part.
GCD :: Banned IP Notice
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Still reading that series about the 90s Clone Saga. Seems like I wasn't crazy in being excited by the early parts of it (although it had problems from the start).
I've never understood why so many writers persisted for years in trying to keep Aunt May alive and trying to get rid of Mary Jane. I don't remember anyone ever doing anything interesting with Aunt May, the explanation for her revival is extremely bad. They gave her a good send-off then ruined it.
Editors blame the marketing department for continually extending the Clone Saga when it was selling extremely well. It was only supposed to last a few months, then by extending it they created problems that taken them much longer to undo.
This is a quote from Tom DeFalco I found interesting. He's addressing the complaint of Marvel having too many similar characters, including Fantastic Force.
As for his belief that a SCARLET SPIDER book would have eventually failed, he is entitled to his opinion. I certainly believe that the powers-that-were at Marvel would have eventually cancelled the book even if it was selling...just like they cancelled THUNDERSTRIKE and WAR MACHINE even though both books were profitable. Since I had access to the actual sales during that period, I can attest to the fact that at the time it was canceled THUNDERSTRIKE was actually selling more copies than both THOR and AVENGERS combined. Why were profitable titles like THUNDERSTRIKE, WAR MACHINE and all the 2099 books cancelled? The answer I was given was that the guy in charge of marketing had decided that these additional titles were hurting the core company franchises. He believed that the sales on THOR would go up as soon as THUNDERSTRIKE was cancelled, and AMAZING SPIDER-MAN would increase with SPIDER-MAN 2099 gone. Nice theory...but I still think it was nonsense."
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Indian comics for the XTREEM 90s
https://comicvine.gamespot.com/bheriya/4050-31910/?page=1&sortBy=asc
MONSTER BRAINS: Hindi Comic Covers
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I think my preferred way of enjoying comics is listening to Joe McCulloch talk about something ridiculous and obscure that I couldn't be bothered reading the whole way through. I love listening to him talk about trashy comics. In an ideal world he'd make a good living from talking about pulpy comics he'd dug up.
If you're wondering where you can listen to McCulloch, just go to the menu on this video and select episodes. He's just one of four people in the podcasts, but he often dominates.
This Week In Comics (RIP) - The Factual Opinion
I listened to the Eros comics history with Tom Spurgeon, heaven I tell ya! Some funny stories in there.
Never heard of those Carter & Rydyr comics before, that's some of the weirdest shit I've seen in a while.
By the way, there are two episodes with Eros in the title. The One I was talking about is Inside The Tent: Memories Of Eros Comix.
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I'm both pleased and annoyed that Richard Corben is doing a sequel to Murky World in Heavy Metal for THREE YEARS!
Pleased because he'll probably be more sustained with his better techniques.
Annoyed because since I can't wait til 2020 for a collected edition, I'll be buying each issue with probably 90% content I'm not interested in. It's never been a cheap magazine.
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I would love to see what superhero and superheroesque genres would be like today if they had evolved without DC and Marvel from the 70s onwards. What would they keep, what would they throw away?
Something that is much more apparent to me now, especially reading summaries (admittedly the summaries may not explain motivations well) is how often stories are compromised by the understandable demand for regular fights.
When I was a big superhero fan, one of my pet hates was seeing heroes fighting each other on the covers. It made them seem incredibly stupid. They're supposed to be admirable and intelligent but they find more reasons to fight than drunk sports fans.
A lot of the best villains are really smart too, so Dr Doom and Magneto should be difficult to provoke.
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Every so often I forget how anxious many comic artists and illustrators are about having an old fashioned style. I've seen many people fret about that. Neal Adams has said he had bad dreams about people criticizing him for not drawing like manga.
I think this is part of why so much comic and book illustration and even films look so ugly because for a lot of them modern = the newest kind of shiny and fake.
Been thinking about how many musicians regret trying to keep up with trends and that maybe a lot of them skipped over a well of great music because they felt they had to keep reinventing themselves with each album.
I appreciated some of the points in Reynolds Retromania but there should also be a book exploring what a cancer it can be to be scared of looking stuck in the past.
How many of you have seen Herb Trimpe's horrible 90s art? I later heard it was an intentional parody of the 90s "hot" artist style but it was truly awful and I'd guess kind of a fuck you to the pressure put on older artists who were afraid of looking uncool. Several years ago Jerry Ordway wrote a blog about feeling left behind and editors responded to it and gave him more work.
As much as I feel sorry for these older artists and think they were usually superior to the "hot" artists, I don't think comic companies were obligated to give them work. I think Gene Colan was one of those under pressure but even at his wonkiest (I think there were health and eyesight problems) he was one of their best artists. Like Neal Adams, he never seemed old fashioned to me.
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Saw that Doris Sutherland wrote a short article about Lady Death in Belladonna magazine, I had a surprisingly exciting dream about huge thick collections of the Chaos era stories (I told Sutherland about this too) as I never thought I'd give any of this another look and despite knowing there's a good chance I'd regret buying the small 90s collections, I couldn't kick the craving, I bought four of them.
Don't know why the craving remained. Steven Hughes was one of the better artists of his type and his main colorist was decent as far as these things go(I don't care for the later artists). Might have been the unexpectedly cool plot synopses, there's enough ideas in there for a really good sword and sorcery novel.
There's no way the ideas will be given their full potential in these comics (so many demons wearing bikinis might be a clue) but it's a stark contrast to recently reading through the last decade of Spiderman synopses that surely can't be as stupid as they sound.
If I'm ever going to get them, it might as well be now because they might never be reprinted. Pulido had to sell most of his characters and another publisher nearly stole Lady Death from him a few years ago, so I don't think he or anyone else has the rights to reprint Chaos Comics.
A big part of the retrospective appeal of this era of comics is that I think most people who bought them did not follow them consistently enough to follow the story and they didn't get collected editions often.
Which is part of why listening to Joe McCulloch's review of the Faust 777 series was so fun. How many people read Faust 777 from start to finish?
I think I heard McCulloch (or maybe one of his associates?) remark how silly Ms Mystic was. Would love to hear his overview of that series.
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There's a listing for Breccia's Mort Cinder from Fantagraphics in July.
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Santiperez recently had American comics come out but despite his skills I'm not totally into it.
This guy Corominas was also from the Toutain version of Creepy and this book of his looks awesome. The bad guy looks quite Trumpish on the cover too.
Arion's Archaic Art: Tragaldabas - Enrique Jiménez Corominas
His version of Dorian Grey is quite something too.
https://corominas.viewbook.com/album/doriangray
New Locatelli book.
: My comicbook Persephone is out in France. It has...
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GCD :: Banned IP Notice
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Been looking at the art of Jorge Zaffino and Nestor Infante, good stuff. Infante did a bunch of daft looking Continuity comics, very 90s but also done quite well.
I like Kaja Saudek but the only thing I can find is a massive book in a Czech online store. I only discovered him recently, but I've always been a fan of his brilliant photographer brother Jan Saudek.
Considering buying a lot of comics I didn't think I'd be interested in again. This could easily be another elaborate form of procrastination, I constantly change my mind about what kind of comics I can get along with. So many things I've bought I just can't be bothered reading after I've had a look at the art, like Tipping Point from Humanoids, which had a pretty solid line-up. I just wasn't in the mood for Akira and was happy to read the synopsis.
Want to buy the first Marvel release in ages, their Horror Magazine Collection. It's not in colour so I don't think they can ruin it.
Whole bunch of Joe Kubert, Mort Meskin, Civiello (never been quite sure what to make of), Arthur Ranson, Russ Heath, Blutch, Mizuki's Kitaro books, Lone Wolf & Cub, Samurai Executioner, maybe some Planet Comics, Mystery In Space and similar science fantasy.
Reason I've been previously put off is because their drawings, taken individually don't stand up to as much scrutiny as I would like. But I've started thinking maybe that doesn't matter as much as the overall feel of their drawing styles.
Got an eye on the Showcase and Essential collections because they're getting a bit more scarce now and these comics might never be packaged so cheap and nice again.
I've never been a fan of most of the old DC artists, especially Infantino, Swan, Boring and Plastino. But I've never read enough of the really crazy old DC comics so I'm hoping Atomic Knights, Strange Adventures, Metamorpho, Metal Men and maybe even Aquaman, Martian Manhunter, Hawkman and Green Lantern will do. Throw in Amethyst (much newer), Sea Devils and a bunch of anthologies. Some decent Kubert, Heath, Ramona Fradon and Nick Cardy in there too.
The reason I'm more likely to try golden/early silver age versions of superheroes with art I'm not crazy about is there's less attempts to make characters emotional in a way the artist can't deliver, less continuity heavy long arcs and there's less attempts to be hip (although I've been told to be wary of Bob Haney in this regard). With the Showcase collections I don't need to worry about bad digital colour.
I'll never read all this and can't afford it all but I'll do what I can.
