RKMBs Forums .::Robegories::. Comic Books Prometheus and Grimm's Misfit Island of Comic Images

GRIMM FAIRY TALES 117 ("VIP exclusive" limited variant cover).
A fun (and sexy) take on Norman Rockwell's self-portrait.

An exceptional Byrne page:





A nice slice of the Marvel characters fighting Fin Fang Foom.

OOPS!

Super-size!



Some of my favorite Superman covers remain those by Neal Adams,
from the 60's/70's period.

Here's one of the later ones, from SUPERMAN 307.

And SUPERMAN 317



Adams had been out of comics for a few years, nice that he came back
to be a DC cover artist again in 1977. I think the last work he did
for DC was the SUPERMAN VS MUHAMMAD ALI treasury.

Which I initially resisted because of the goofy title, but when I
finally read it, was actually quite good. Over 70 original pages, the most
Adams ever did in one book!

A 70's convention drawing of Big Barda by Mike Royer.
While a solo job, it looks as if he were inking Kirby!
Possibly from the first year of their collaboration, when Royer's inks were at their cleanest.

A nice film-noir-ish sketch of Daredevil by Kevin Nowlan.

A striking and original composition, but still reminiscent
of Frank Miller's version of the character.

Reminds me a little of Mignola too

I always thought one of DC's biggest mistakes in the 70s was not mending fences with Adams/paying him sufficently that he could have been their regular (across the line) cover artist.

He would have been a damn site better than Ernie Chan (who was great on Conan but never that good at superheroes), who was the closest thing DC had to that role back in the day.

I can see the comparison to Mignola, although that didn't occur to me
before you said it.

I don't know the reason Adams ceased doing work for DC in 1978. I
always assumed he was just making far more with Continuity associates, his own company.
I noticed Adams stopped doing work after his SUPERMAN VS MUHAMMAD ALI special, that seemed
(for a while) to be his grand finale to comics.
Years later in 1982, Adams finally produced MS MYSTIC # 1, and despite lucrative creator-owned
contracts at that point, a second issue was many years in the making.

I said back in the Ernie Chan obituary topic that I thought Chan was the absolute worst cover artist
DC ever had (circa Aug 1975-Oct 1976), at a time they had that awful pseudo-Marvel banner
across the top of their covers as well.
The one series I really liked Chan's art was CLAW (a pseudo-Conan book) and I'm hard
pressed to name anything else I liked by him. Even on CONAN and SAVAGE SWORD I preferred
other inkers like Alcala and Dezuniga.

And I don't understand why Chan was ever chosen as a cover-artist. At that time, they had Grell,
Buckler, Ross Andru, Garcia-Lopez, Rogers, Aparo, and several other far superior artists to do the job.

Yes to all of the above.

Chan is a great Sword and sorcery artist and a shitty superhero artist.

I'm ripping on Chan quite a bit. So here's one of the books I liked
by Chan, CLAW #1 (1975). With a script by Dave Michelinie, it was
actually quite good, at least the first few issues.



As I recall, Chan did art on the first 7 issues, then Keith Giffen
began pencilling the book. Michelinie scripted (and created) the
entire series (which was interrupted for a while by the DC Implosion).

I forgot, after the series was ended by the DC Implosion, there were
two more issues (illustrated by Romeo Tanghal) that were published in
CANCELLED COMIC CAVALCADE.

I think the covers Chan did on BATMAN (roughly 262-283) demonstrate
what both of us disliked in Chan's work. It was especially a blow for me
when the creative team went from O'Neil/Novick/Giordano to David V.
Reed/Chan. Few series have taken such a dive in quality. BATMAN in
one issue (266 to 267) went from being my favorite book to one I
intensely hated. I especially hated Chan for being O'Neil and
Novick's replacement.

Although I didn't have as much resistance to Chan while he was inked
by Giordano in BATMAN 262-264, where his art was less of a jolt from
what I was used to. His pencils (also inked by Giordano) in
DETECTIVE 447-448 were also fairly nice and consistent with the
Novick/Giordano/Aparo runs.

Yeah, Reed was probably the worst Batman writer in history.

While the quality of David V. Reed's stories was consistently low (especially relative to O'Neil's established high standard) I have to admit
that Reed did write a few good stories.

Two I can think of offhand are BATMAN 300 (an "imaginary" story where in the future Batman retires,
and Bruce Wayne continues his war against crime as a U.S. senator.) With art by Walt Simonson.

And a story in DC SPECIAL SERIES 15 (BATMAN SPECTACULAR) the opening story by Reed and Mike Nasser/Rubinstein,
along with an O'Neil/Golden R'as Al Gul story, And an O'Neil/Rogers pulp-ish text story.

I also liked Reed stories in BATMAN 296 (art by Sal Almendola), and BATMAN 297 (Buckler/Colletta art).

Reed wrote most stories from Batman 267-304 (1976-1978). I read a profile of Reed once, he was a 1950's Batman writer,
who came back decades later for this 3-year stint.

Are you sure you're not remembering those stories more fondly because of the better than average art (Simonson, Nasser, Almendola, Buckler)?

After you posted your question, I re-read DC SPECIAL SERIES 15, and BATMAN 297.

While they aren't exactly Alan Moore in peak form (and what is, with rare exception, from that period?) I thought both were fun and charming
stories with some interesting twists.

DC SPECIAL 15 focused on a ghost writer who tricks Batman into investigating the murder of his author friend. Some sentimental moments
that I thought were well played. Certainly on this story, the Nasser/Rubinstein art made it infinitely more memorable.

In the BATMAN 297 story, I especially like the concluding scene, where Bruce Wayne, after first coming across as a coward during the opening
scene robbery of Bruce Wayne and a female companion in a romantic carriage ride through Central Park, in the final scene Bruce Wayne returns
the stolen items and is scoring points with the girl in a repeat of their initial romantic carriage ride. I thought it was about as witty
and well played as a story with the Mad Hatter character could have been pulled off.

As I said, Reed (a k a, David Vern) is not one of my favorite writers, but I still give him credit for telling a few enjoyable stories.
Especially relative to writers in that period (1979-1981) like O'Neil, Wein and Conway, who were doing less than their best work on titles
like BATMAN, DETECTIVE and WORLD'S FINEST.

BATMAN 300 is (at least in memory, not read recently) one of my favorite "imaginary" stories, one of the few that allows Batman to end
his career on a positive note.
(I'd love to read some that do a good job of portraying Bruce Wayne marrying Selina Kyle, retiring and having children. I don't know if it's
ever been done, or even better done well, or just suggested as something that occurred without an actual story being told of how it went down.)

The closest thing I can think of would be Alan Brennerts story about how the Earth 2 Batman married Catwoman

That was at the end of the BRAVE & THE BOLD run, with art by George Freeman?

I honestly was a bit disappointed with that one, despite Brennert being an overall very good writer. I loved his Elseworlds-ish "imaginary story"
of Batman's origin retold in DETECTIVE 500, with art by Dick Giordano.

Brennert did a number of exceptional one-shot Batman and Daredevil stories.

He also scripted several episodes of the Buck Rogers in the 25th Century TV series. Martin Pasko as well!

1966-1967-era Neal Adams (around the time he was doing work for CREEPY and EERIE, before he made it over to DC) ?
Even if it's not Neal, it's quite nice.

In a COMIC BOOK MARKETPLACE interview, Neal Adams let on that he'd wanted to leave his early/mid 1960's Ben Casey strip to pursue
magazine illustration, and when the agency lost his portfolio, Adams decided to have a go at comic books as a plan B option.

Imagine the treasures we'd never have seen, if that portfolio had not been lost!

Holy shit is Neal Adams talented!

And this is his earliest series work on Ben Casey (1962-1966), before he made it to DC in 1967 and started doing
STRANGE ADVENTURES/Deadman, SPECTRE, BRAVE & THE BOLD and his later more developed Batman work.

More Neal Adams Ben Casey comic strips, this batch are expanded Sunday pages.

Here's a black-and-white version of the new wraparound cover by Wrightson for DC SPECIAL SERIES in 1978 (reprinting issues 3 and 4).
Comic art doesn't get any better than that of Wrightson.





And here's a Berni Wrightson version of John Carpenter's The Thing.

Wrightson does a nice job adding his touch to this creature.

Talent?

What the fuck!?

Holy cow!

Neal Adams, from a series of covers he did for the Edgar Rice Burroughs TARZAN novels, in the late 1970's.
I think there were 24 books total in the series.

Here's a photo of Neal Adams with Superman creators Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel, circa 1975, in the period right before
the first Superman movie, when he was struggling to get them compensation from DC/Warner.

Some interesting behind the scenes text of how thoroughly Shuster and Siegel were screwed over the rights to Superman.


Here's another photo showing Adams with Shuster, Siegel and Jerry Robinson. Apparently they first met and got to know
each other at ACBA meetings.

The DC house ad illustrated by Neal Adams, announcing their winners from the 1970 annual Alley awards.
Running in virtually all DC titles that month, I know them from JIMMY OLSEN 134, Dec 1970.

And here's the Adams-illustrated DC house ad announcing the first annual ACBA winners from BATMAN 236, and other Nov 1971 DC titles.

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You don't have permission to access /images/acbaawards.jpg on this server.
Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

Oopsie. I'll try and fix that.

Something else I found in my internet travels, from June of last year:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdeazgdWFP0

https://www.cnbc.com/2016/06/22/jay-lenos-garage-crimefighters-gallery.html#slide=1

I'm feeling a bit psychedelic today. Here's an early 70's Quicksilver concert poster by underground artist Rick Griffin.

He did quite a few similar posters for various bands playing in local concert halls in the San Francisco Bay area.
A book about 20 years ago titled THE ART OF THE FILLMORE collected a whole bunch of them. The Fillmore was a
concert auditorium a lot of these posters promoted.

I don't know where this image is from, but I thought it was pretty damn cool.

It came up when I googled images for NOCTURNE.

Related to our David V. Reed conversation earlier, I found out recently that another writer in 1970's DC books, Coram Nobis is actually David V. Reed.
I particularly remember him writing a few stories under this name for PLOP.



Some other pseudonyms you might not know:

Boris Zabok, & Ted P. Skimmer = Bob Rozakis

Barry Jameson = David Michelinie

Sergius O'Shaugnessy = Dennis O'Neil

And

Al Case = Murray Boltinoff
Bill Dennehy = Murray Boltinoff

Jack Phillips = George Kashdan

Cal Walker = Carl Wessler
Charles Williams = Carl Wessler

All from early 1970's issues of THE UNEXPECTED.

From earlier in the topic: