"Post No. 617"

Best Wishes to fellow blogger, "Johnny Bacardi" (alias, Dave Jones) who's currently trying to recover with a boute of the flu! Hope you get better soon!

At the flea market this past Sunday I found yet another person with a stack of modern comics for sale, and, as usual, I bought the entire lot dirt cheap. Lord knows how many people went into buying comics in the early 1990's, but I usually find that their interest wained after about 4-5 years, so most of what you'll see in that sort of situation are titles from companies which published between 1993-1997 (some a little earlier and some a little later).

More than the usual amount of this stack got consigned to my yard sale quarter box, keeping just a handful this time around to read or re-read.

A few of the more interesting ones included a copy of The Advs. of Superman (DC) #546(1997), from the silly experiment of changing Supes powers and splitting him into the "Superman Red-Superman Blue" characters, neither of which had his usual powers, and quite a difference in his costume design. Thank The Lord this era didn't last very long, but I did like the artwork it contained by one of my favorites, Stuart Immonen.

Aquaman (DC) #19 was when Aquie still had that trident hand and long hair, and running around with "Dolphin", who confessed she was in love with him. This issue wasn't too bad as he fought The Ocean Master, and Garth (the original "AquaBOY") returned at its conclusion.

Bloodstone (Marvel) #1 (actually a comic published in 2001) wasn't all that bad from the Marvel crew, tying up some loose ends from their old bronze-age adventure hero & monster hunter, replacing him with a female version. The painted artwork seemed to fit the story well, but the over-all app. of the comic looked more like something an alternate company would have come up with at the time.

B-Movie Presents (B-Movie Comics,1986) #2 was, I'm sure, a valiant attempt at self-publishing ones own comic book, but the creators really should have kept their money in their pockets and waited a few more years down the line as their style improved. Interesting concept, however.

Six-String Samurai (Awesome-Hyperwerks) #1 (1997) was an attempt by Rob Liefeld to adapt this cult movie where the USSR has dropped the bomb and America has fallen-back into a less technical time, and Elvis has been The King of Las Vegas for 40 years. According to the opening of this comic, "Every guitar picking sword swinging opportunist, including Death himself, hears the call echoing across the wastelands. Vegas needs a new king." I was always amazed that there wasn't a truck-load of really bad sequels made to the flick.

Starlord (Marvel) #1 (1996) is a poor shadow of the character from the 1970's, not that the script (by Tim Zahn) or the painted artwork (by Dan Lawlis) wasn't decent, but it's a title that just seems out-of-place with the rest of the Marvel U. If you like so-so written sci-fi, you might like this, but I liked the original versions better.

Strange Combat Tales (Epic-Marvel) #1 (1993) would have been more interesting had perhaps they picked a different artist than Dave Matthews, whose work seems lost amid some really bad coloring by Phil Felix. The story was fine; allied soldiers fighting dead germans turned zombies, but the art just distracted too much from the script.

Some of the other contents from this stack incldued fun issues of the Amalgam "Spider-Boy", "Bat-Thing" and "Dark Claw Adventures", which I wish DC & Marvel had continued a few more years annually.

Also there was some issues of First Comics "Grim Jack" which is always a good read.

That same morning I had several silver-age DC comics dropped off that I had purchased from a local collector, and they were real treats. The like of Showcase #37 (1962), which, of course, is the first app. & origin of "The Metal Men". The MM was a title I read all the way until it was finally cancelled, through every so-bad-it-was-good story, even through the time they were all turned into humans rather than robots, and into the 1970's when Walt Simonson took over the title shortly.

Then there was the first five silver-age app.'s of "Zatanna", starting with a copy of Hawkman #4 (1964), progressing onto copies of The Atom #19, Green Lantern 42, Justice League 51, and Detective Comics #355, all of which are classics from the 1960's featuring some wonderful artwork the like of Murphy Anderson, Gil Kane, Mike Sekowsky and Carmine Infantino, and wonderful writing by Gardner Fox among others. It's sort'a neat to see how that character progressed, especially her hair style which started out rather curly, then went "wavy". (You just gotta luv dem fishnets!) Never did like the way she was later depicted in the new costume even with the artwork of Gray Morrow in the special on her. Just took too much of the charm away from those early tales.

In today's mail... was about 50 misc. modern comics, mostly Marvel, including such things as Amazing Spider-man 534 & v2 #38, Fantastic Four #'s 531, 536 & 537, and Thor V3 #6 (all written by Straczynski), Captain Marvel Limited series (2008) #1, Civil War #5. Invincible Iron Man #2 (Warren Ellis), New Avengers 2 thru 12, 16, 17 & 19 (all by Bendis), Secret War L.S. 1-5, Supreme Power 1 thru 12, Ultimate war #1, Wildcats V2 (Wildstorm) #1 (Morrison, Jim Lee & Scott Williams), and 4 misc. issues of V2 each of Iron Man & The Avengers. Plus a friend of mine that went to the NYC Convention recently sent me a package of freebies: comics, posters, cards, etc., so lots'a good reading and reviews ahead.