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Post by Prince Hal on Feb 24, 2019 16:16:35 GMT -5
Yeah, I guess enough time had gone by...
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Feb 24, 2019 16:29:53 GMT -5
Ha! I never got #134. And yeah, at that point I was still picking up comics pretty haphazardly - the deciding factor was usually how nice I thought the cover was and/or if the book had Spider-man in it. Yep. Batman or Spider-Man on the cover was the number one consideration. After that was if the cover appealed to me.
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Post by Prince Hal on Feb 24, 2019 16:36:48 GMT -5
Ha! I never got #134. And yeah, at that point I was still picking up comics pretty haphazardly - the deciding factor was usually how nice I thought the cover was and/or if the book had Spider-man in it. Yep. Batman or Spider-Man on the cover was the number one consideration. After that was if the cover appealed to me. Yeah. And how can anyone have resisted the allure of Ernie... (Every friendship has its challenges. Ernie is ours.)
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Feb 24, 2019 16:39:33 GMT -5
Yep. Batman or Spider-Man on the cover was the number one consideration. After that was if the cover appealed to me. Yeah. And how can anyone have resisted the allure of Ernie... (Every friendship has its challenges. Ernie is ours.) This is truth. Ernie's covers were genius.
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Post by Prince Hal on Feb 24, 2019 17:11:09 GMT -5
Yeah. And how can anyone have resisted the allure of Ernie... (Every friendship has its challenges. Ernie is ours.) This is truth. Ernie's covers were genius. You're strumming my pain with your fingers.
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Post by EdoBosnar on Feb 24, 2019 17:20:53 GMT -5
Don't get the hate for Chan's covers - and I see there's even another thread with a poll on this topic now. He probably wasn't the best cover artist back in the 1970s, but he certainly wasn't the worst. And I rather like the cover to JLA #133.
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Post by tarkintino on Feb 24, 2019 17:32:31 GMT -5
JLA #131-132 “Sonar” (June-July 1976)Covers That Lie: At no point are the JLA locked up in a zoo. I gave it a pass, because DC had a long history of covers not matching the content. Forgivable if the story was good... ..anyway, we all know its a simple sales pitch that worked in the right hands.
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Post by rberman on Feb 25, 2019 10:39:34 GMT -5
JLA #135-137 “Crisis on Earth-Shazam” (October-December 1976) Creative Team: Plot by E. Nelson Bridwell. Script by Martin Pasko. Art by Dick Dillin and Frank McLaughlin. #135 “Crisis in Eternity”: Earth-S villain King Kull, a hi-tech Neanderthal “Lord of the Beast Men” in a loincloth, paralyzes the gods on the Rock of Eternity. Only Mercury escapes to assemble the JLA, JSA, and assorted Earth-S heroes, dispatching them in mixed squads to the three Earths. Squad One: Superman-One, Wonder Woman-Two, Green Arrow-One, and Spy Smasher head to Atlantis-Two, where desposed Queen Clea has The Penguin, IBAC, and Blockbuster on her side. Clea slips a mind-control girdle on Superman, but Wonder Woman finds that it makes Superman susceptible to commands from anyone, not just Queen Clea. Not a very useful device! Spy-Smasher tricks IBAC into saying his name, which reverts him to powerless human form. This is a more common trope than it should be. A “Densor-Cloud” drops rain which causes Atlantis to sink into the ocean; Superman freezes the cloud and flings it into space before it can sink any more continents. #136 “Crisis on Earth-S!”: Squad Two: on Earth-S, Hawkman, Hawkgirl, Bulletman, and Bulletgirl deal with an erupting volcano and people mysteriously turned to volcanic stone. All over the world, similar events are happening—some inanimate object comes to life, and nearby people are being converted in to the substance it’s made of. Squad Three: Batman-One, Robin-Two, and Mr. Scarlet and his unfortunately named sidekick Pinky foil the aging Joker-Two and The Weeper during a diamond store heist. Batman and Mr. Scarlet start turning to diamond, and Batman’s speech gets less and less intelligible as the story progresses. Squads Four and Five: The members of Squads Two and Three reconvene. Mr. Shade is causing the sunny side of the Earth to be dark with a shadow satellite, while Doctor Light is causing the night side of the Earth to be lit up with a bright satellite. The heroes mix up their squads and defeat the two villains at the Louvre in Paris (“City of Lights”) and Yellowstone Park—but again the heroes are affected, starting to turn to canvas and petrified wood. Only by smashing the two satellites into each other is everyone returned to normal. #137 “Crisis in Tomorrow!”: Squad Six: On Earth-One, King Kull attacks the experimental planned city of Tomorrow with a giant robot named Mr. Atom. Green Lanterns-One and –Two, Flashes-One and –Two, the god Mercury, and Ibis are on the case. GL-1 and Ibis track the robot’s control signal to a flying saucer, where they defeat Braniac. Then they deactivate a machine which was accelerating the Earth’s rotation, causing people to fly off the surface. Mr. Atom finally defeats himself when his attempt to steal and use Ibis’ “Ibistick” backfires, shooting the robot off into a distant star. Squad Seven: All the heroes converge on the Rock of Eternity. King Kull uses Red Kryptonite to send Superman on a rampage against his friends. Back on Earth –S, Johnny Thunder uses Thunderbolt to transform the Captain Marvel Family into their super-forms. They too fly to the Rock of Infinity, defeat King Kull, and use Shazam’s lightning strike to shock Superman out of his Red-K madness. Happy ending! Dillin makes an unusual effort to render Billy Batson in a classic Fawcett art style. My Two Cents: DC continues its trend of using the JSA team-ups to rejuvenate archive characters, this time from the Fawcett library. Makes sense, what with the Shazam live-action show airing on American TV on Saturday mornings. Cross-promote! This three-issue series has classic team-up plotting from Bridwell, clear goals, and non-stop action by multiple worlds of heroes, setting the stage for stories like Crisis on Infinite Earths. I bet the crowd shots of mingled teams were pretty exciting back in the day. Just don’t ask yourself why King Kull the caveman was so tech-adept, or what motivated all the villains to join his scheme to subjugate humanity (and divinity!). Issue #136 may have a pathetic white-background cover, but it has a really cool splash page with giant heroes peeling back a planet’s crust and splashing in its watery core. Ibis makes fun of the expositional dialogue. Who can argue?
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Post by MDG on Feb 25, 2019 11:28:18 GMT -5
JLA #135-137 “Crisis on Earth-Shazam” (October-December 1976) You get the feeling that when Dillin came up with Clea's costume he wasn't thinking "okay, how will I handle gravity if she's on her back?"
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Post by codystarbuck on Feb 26, 2019 1:25:45 GMT -5
I'm not 100% sure; but, I believe this was the only DC appearance of Mr Scarlet & Pinky. Bullet Man and Bullet Girl appeared in one or two Shazam stories (I know one was during the Worlds Finest Dollar Comic phase); might have been Spy Smasher's, too. Not really sure about Ibis, as I think he got a story or two elsewhere; but, he was pretty similar to Sargon, in appearance, so I may be mis-remembering. Not seen here was Minute Man, who got an appearance late in the Shazam run, before the comic ended. Kid Eternity would have to wait for the Worlds Finest back-ups, when he met up with brother Freddy Freeman (beautifully handled by Don Newton), though there was at least one Kid Eternity story in one of the DC 100-Pg comics.
DC only licensed the Fawcett characters, at first; eventually outright buying the Marvel Family. I know, at one point, they couldn't use any of the others, then they turned up in power of Shazam and (new versions) in Kingdom Come.
Minute Man would have been a more interesting character, for the story, than Mr Scarlet. Scarlet was even downgraded at Fawcett, removed from cover status, which probably led to cancelling his Republic Pictures serial, which (it is believed) was modified into the script for Captain America.
The use of the Earth-2 Joker was interesting and he would make a reappearance, in the Huntress back-up stories, in Wonder Woman (which also brought the E-2 Robin back).
Bridwell was about the only one at DC who "got" the Marvel Family and the comic greatly improved when he came aboard. He was a huge fan and even homaged earlier stories. It's a shame he couldn't have been the writer working with CC Beck, before he quit, over how DC was handling the characters. I like Denny O'Neil; but, he was a bad fit for this stuff.
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Post by rberman on Feb 26, 2019 7:30:50 GMT -5
I'm not 100% sure; but, I believe this was the only DC appearance of Mr Scarlet & Pinky. Bullet Man and Bullet Girl appeared in one or two Shazam stories (I know one was during the Worlds Finest Dollar Comic phase); might have been Spy Smasher's, too. Not really sure about Ibis, as I think he got a story or two elsewhere; but, he was pretty similar to Sargon, in appearance, so I may be mis-remembering. Not seen here was Minute Man, who got an appearance late in the Shazam run, before the comic ended. Kid Eternity would have to wait for the Worlds Finest back-ups, when he met up with brother Freddy Freeman (beautifully handled by Don Newton), though there was at least one Kid Eternity story in one of the DC 100-Pg comics. Bridwell had hoped to fit a Minute Man/Hourman team-up into this JLA story, but there wasn't room. The Dollar Comic of which you speak is World's Finest #254, in which Bridwell gives the Fawcett pantheon a two panel cameo.
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Post by rberman on Feb 26, 2019 7:39:02 GMT -5
JLA #138-139 “Adam Strange and Kanjar Ro… Again” (Jan-Feb 1977)
Creative Team: Written by Cary Bates. Art by Dick Dillin and Frank McLaughlin. #138 “Adam Strange – Puppet of Time!”: Adam Strange’s Zeta Beam somehow transports him to the 73rd century, so his wife Alanna seeks help from the JLA. A Green Lantern of the 73rd Century assists the JLA once they arrive. Adam Strange has been driven bonkers by his experience, and his gun has been powered up to insane levels. He wreaks havoc on the future city and causes a lot of problems for the JLA until his gun runs out of juice. His sanity returns at the same time. #139 “The Cosmic Conspiracy Against Adam Strange!”: The JLA members return from the future to an unpleasant surprise: They are ghosts, immaterial and intangible to their hero friends. Adam Strange is not afflicted; he brings the rest of the JLA to the 73rd century, where they fight an army that instantly adapts to each attack. Adam Strange eventually figures out a setting on his gun to restore the ghostly JLA members to full material status. Superman is now able to act, turning off the attacking army’s ability with his heat vision, and they are swiftly defeated. In one final plot twist, the future alien Green Lantern from last issue turns out to be Kanjar Ro in disguise. I guess he is taken prisoner? Hard to say; the issue ends one panel later. Continuity Notes: Adam Strange and Alanna’s wedding: “It happened in JLA #121!” Adam Strange had a cameo during his trip to the future “as shown on the cover of Flash #210.” My Two Cents: It’s not been that long since the last Strange/Kanjar story in #120-121. The “future Green Lantern is Kanjar Ro” comes out of left field and entirely on the final page with a very rushed wrap-up, making me suspect that this element entered the story very late in the production cycle, replacing some other ending. The Green Lanter (really Kanjar Ro apparently) helps Aquaman defeat Adam Strange by shooting a gush of water for him to swim up into the air. Kinda goofy, but OK… I feel like “One guy with a gun fends off the entire JLA” should not happen, but it seems to happen a lot. The ghost plot in #139 was more interesting, including a fake-out in which the JLA mistakenly believed that seeing their friends in peril could release adrenaline that caused one ghost (but only one ghost) to convert back to material form. Batman’s job in the final fight appears to be…. Holding hands with Black Canary and Wonder Woman? Neal Adams turns in a fabulous cover for #138. Miss ya, Neal! But wait, there’s more: The price on #139 was 50 cents, compared with 30 cents for #138, because #139 contained a second new full-length JLA story by Steve Englehart which we will cover… next time.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 26, 2019 9:33:01 GMT -5
JLA #38Has my favorite Logo ... the Best of the Best Logo in Justice League of America History.
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Post by badwolf on Feb 26, 2019 10:22:29 GMT -5
Batman’s job in the final fight appears to be…. Holding hands with Black Canary and Wonder Woman? "Now's my chance--while everyone else is distracted!"
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Post by Prince Hal on Feb 26, 2019 11:21:08 GMT -5
You have to respect what Dick Dillin, maybe the world's most reliable penciller, faced every month for all those years on JLA, with dozens of characters, cosmic settings, and I know they wanted a consistent look on JLA and that it apparently was a title artists wanted little to do with because of the obvious challenges, but how dd DC allow what seems to have been one of their showcase titles to look so unappealing for all those years?
(Notice I'm not mentioning the banality of the years of Ernie Chan covers?)
I always thought Dillin was a far better artist than his inkers on JLA allowed him to be. Giordano (who only filled in a couple of times) and Frank McLaughlin had similar styles: sharp-edged, thin lines and with a tendency to make Dillin's already long heads, faces and bodies look even longer. Neither added much in the way of detail to faces or expressions, which made it difficult to tell individuals from each other. Dillin also tended to draw thick bodies, which flew in the face of the leanness with which Infantino had drawn both Flashes, characters Dillin never got quite right.
By comparison, Dillin's long (at least 15 years' worth) run on Blackhawk, another comic with multiple characters, weird menaces and lots on monsters, looks far better thanks to the inks of Chuck Cuidera. Yes, his dark, heavy lines could at times overpower a penciler's work at times, but he also softened Dillin's pencils and helped to give some dynamism to his stilted, posed figures. And you never had trouble telling one Blackhawk from the other, either.
You have to marvel at Dillin's work-ethic. He picked up JLA immediately after Blackhawk was canceled in 1968 and went on to draw it for 12 years.
Why couldn't DC have found a more suitable inker for the guy?
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