Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon.
***
Easter's come and gone but Tuesdays will always be with us.
And that means just one thing.
The site's run out of ideas and it's time, once more, to demand them of its readers.
It could involve sport, art, films, flans, books, cooks, nooks, rocks, music, mucous, fairy tales, fairy lights, Fairy Liquid, fairy cakes, Eccles cakes, myth, moths, maths, magic, tragedy, comedy, dromedaries, murder, mystery, mayhem, Moorcock, May Day, Christmas Day, New Year's Day, Doris Day, Marvin Gaye, the Equinox, sofas, sodas, sausages, eggs, whisky, broth, Bath, baths, Garth Marenghi, Garth Brooks, Garth Crooks, Bruno Brookes, Bruno Mars, Mars Bars, wine bars, flip-flops, flim-flam, flapjacks, see-saws, jigsaws, dominoes, dunderheads, flowerpots, flour pots, bread bins, bin bags, body bags, body horror, shoddy horror, doggy bags, bean bags, coal sacks, cola, cocoa, pancakes, pizzas, baking soda, sci-fi, Wi-Fi, Hi-Fi, sewage, saunas, suet, Silurians, Sontarans, Sea Devils, sins, suns, sans, sense, sludge, slime or sandcastles.
Then again, it might not.
Only you - and fate - can decide.
Posts
22 comments:
Steve, you've done a few posts on artists - who's your fave, who was the best for which series etc - but not about writers (that I can recall off hand anyway).
Which is probably because of the period the blog is focused on, as comic book writing took a real leap forward in the 80s.
So... what about writers of the 70s? Who - if any - did you rate, and why?
-sean
I liked Gerry Conway on AMAZING SPIDER-MAN — a LOT — but not nearly as much on FF and THOR. The Conway / Andru run (124-149) are my favorite Spidey Stories of all-time. I’m sure nostalgia plays a huge part in that, but I also think Conway’s take on Peter Parker was pretty close to perfect. Smart, funny, neurotic, struggling with depression and self-esteem issues — he was flawed and relatable. Also, his version of MJ has never been topped.
I don’t think Conway ‘got’ the FF or Thor to the same degree.
I liked Don McGregor’s work on Killraven and The Black Panther quite a bit. Sure, he was prolix AF, and his reach certainly exceeded his grasp fairly often, but I appreciated that he was swinging for the fences practically every time he stepped up to the plate. He was combining Wide-screen Epic Adventure storytelling with more nuanced, ‘dimensionalized’ characterization, and was actually pretty successful at it. I re-read most of his Killraven run over the holidays and was surprised how well they held up (full disclosure, I did end up skimming a lot of the captions).
I liked Roy Thomas’ stuff way more then than I do now. I do think his run on CONAN still holds up.
Steve Englehart’s runs on CAPTAIN AMERICA and THE AVENGERS were big favorites back in the day. The flaws jump out at me more now but I still enjoy them.
We’ve discussed Steve Gerber here before. For the record, I think his stuff was fascinating and weird. His Man-Thing and Defenders stories could be hit and Miss, but every now and then he’d turn in something just flat out brilliant.
b.t.
Really wracking my brains to think of a 70s writer I’d rate.
I’ve been reading a lot of US 70s stuff for the first time recently - for the art, really - and I’m struggling to find anything I’d call good. It all feels like it’s literally made up as it goes along. Even the ambitious stuff like Denny O’Neill and Jim Starlin is pretty ramshackle.
Can I have British writers? Is that a cheat? Pat Mills? He does have a tendency to flog things way past their sell-by date (Nemesis Book 10 etc). But the initial runs of Ro-Busters and ABC Warriors felt like they had actual arcs, and were exciting and funny and surprising.
Roy Thomas was my favourite writer on 1970s comics. His long run on the Hulk with Trimpe and Severin was just wonderful but my favourite of his specific comic book runs were:
1: Skull Kree Wars in Avengers 89 -97 and in particular Avengers issue 93 this Beach-Head Earth and issue 96 The Andromeda Swarm. And of course Avengers 57 Behold….the Vision
2; On Conan again so many great stories my favourites being Savage Tales issue 3 – Conan - Red Nails and Conan the Barbarian issue 23 – The song of Red Sonja
Other favourites were:
3: Denny O’Neil on Green Lantern issues 85 and 86 (the Speedy on drugs issues)
4; Gerry Conway with Amazing Spider-man issues 1221, 122 - The Night Gwen Stacy Died
5: Len Wien with Justice League of America issues 100- 102 - The return of the Seven Soldiers of Victory and of course Swamp Thing issue 1-10
Personally, I thought that for the most part 1970s mainstream (ie DC, Marvel etc) comic book writing was when done right highly entertaining. The 1980s/90's (the odd exceptions to the rules being the likes of Miller , Moore etc) for me was overly gritty ,violent and adult for the sake of it - ok I’ll get my coat!
Matthew, its Steve's blog so I guess its up to him, but as far as I'm concerned you can definitely have Pat Mills, because I will too.
I don't begrudge him going on and on with his hit series at all because... well, he doesn't own the rights so its nice he can still earn a living from them, and I don't have to keep reading (given current events what are the odds he's currently working on yet more back story to the Volgan wars?)
Mills' stuff in the early progs - Flesh, Shako, the Visible Man - doesn't have much in the way of arcs, but I really enjoy the misanthropic nihilism. And Charley's War in Battle rises above the tedious British war comics of the era.
My fave American comics of the 70s - OMAC, Kamandi, Warlock - were written by the people who drew them. Actually, come to think of it, with one notable exception thats true of the 80s too - Love & Rockets, American Flagg, Cerebus, Simonson's Thor...
But anyway, I go with b.t. on Steve Gerber. He wrote a lot of rubbish, but that was true of all the writers back then - they generally seemed to have a pet project they put some effort into, and churned out formula the rest of the time (for instance, I loved Englehart's Dr Strange but nothing else he wrote ever did anything for me, and even Marv Wolfman was acceptable on Tomb of Dracula).
I read Gerber's Omega the Unknown run a few years ago - so nostalgia glasses don't really come into it - and the first couple of issues were really good by any standard (a 'couple of issues' might sound like faint praise, but thats more than else was doing at that level then). And his Phantom Zone mini-series with Gene Colan was the best pre-Moore Superman story.
Against my better judgement, I'm also going with b.t. on dauntless Don too. He doesn't hold up so well now I'm not 12 anymore, but I was well into Killraven and the Black Panther at the time. Also, McGregor gets points from me for being ahead of the curve on what would now be called 'diversity'.
And - achtung, curve ball - I like a fair bit of Robert Kanigher's stuff. Hey, he could write proper stories with a beginning, middle AND end, in a variety of genres - from Lois Lane to Haunted Tank - without boring the reader, which is more than you can say for most comic book writers.
-sean
Thanks for the topic, Sean. I'd have to go along with Bt and McScotty and name Don McGregor, Steve Gerber, Steve Englehart, Gerry Conway and Roy Thomas as the writers I always gravitated towards. I'd also read anything Jim Starlin produced.
Matthew, I'm sure you're allowed to select writers from any part of the world. The more the merrier.
Well, seeing as it seems to be ok here post-Brexit, I'm going to add Jean-Michel Charlier for his 70s Blueberry books, which are still a great read.
-sean
Fine topic Sean!
My 70's favorites were many. Really liked Steve Gerber, mainly for Man-Thing and Defenders. The all too brief Gerber/Ploog Man-Thing run was fantastic.
Also greatly appreciated Steve Englehart, his Avengers and Dr. Strange were classic.
In the 80's I really loved John Byrne's Fantastic Four, both for story and art. Also thoroughly enjoyed William Messner-Loebs, his "Journey " was epic, fascinating historical fiction. And his take on "Jonny Quest " was Aces.
More recently, Kurt Busiek, Peter David, Paul Dini and Ryan North are always good.
Then there's Don Rosa, another artist/writer. His Duck books are wonderful, as rich as (dare I say it?) the master Carl Barks! "The Life and Times of Scrooge Mcduck " is perhaps the best thing I've read in years.
Oh, and McScotty- I'm with you on the "Grim and Gritty ". Hard pass.
Sean makes a good point about writers being ‘selectively good’ at times. Marv on TOMB OF DRACULA is the perfect example. TOD is so head-and-shoulders superior to the majority of his other works, it might as well have been written be a completely different person.
Doug Moench is similar, to me. His long run on MASTER OF KUNG FU is mostly pretty damn good (and quite often excellent when he and Gulacy were working together and found their groove), but his other stuff rarely rose to that level (for me, anyway).
I forgot about Steve Englehart’s DR. STRANGE. Yes, I think it’s one of his better comics of the period, and still holds up in all its Groovy Age trippy-ness. The book got much less Psychadelic once Gene Colan replaced Frank Brunner on the art, but it was still a fun read. Englehart’s first Shang-chi story (with Judo Jim Starlin) is pretty great too, but I don’t think their next three or four stories are nearly as good.
b.t.
Oh, and I love the last Englehart/ Colan Dr. Strange story, a quirky, subversive Bicentennial tale like no other. Cracks me up that Marv takes over the book and literally the first thing he does is to instantly retcon the previous issue: ‘Nope, nope, nope, Clea did NOT just cuckold Stephen Strange with one of the Founding Fathers, it was all just an hallucination, got it? Right, carry on then.’
b.t.
Yeah b.t., Moench and MOKF is a good example of the writer with one book in him.
Actually thats not quite fair, as I liked some of his Planet of the Apes stuff, and - now I think about it - I even recall enjoying Marv Wolfman's Night Force too. But its close enough.
Paul, these days that 'relevant' Green Lantern run doesn't seem as highly regarded as it once was, which is a shame because I still think its one of the better comics of that time. Although for me the heroin issues are the weakest, as the subject doesn't lend itself to superhero stories at all and O'Neil and Adams really were too heavy handed with those ones (just an opinion obviously - not knocking yours).
-sean
No love for Chris Claremont round these parts then...?
-sean
B.t , Sean I agree regarding Moench on MOKF that was a great book in its prime.
Sean, I know what you mean regarding the GL/GA drug issues but personally I still think they are pretty strong stories to the point and not needlessly gritty things gave of course changed today with drugs being more widely used but for its time it still holds up for me
SEAN - Thank you for mentioning BLUEBERRY by CHARLIER! His books were a staple in the French household, aside TINTIN (another Belge) and ASTERIX!
I do wonder why that style of book (hardback, bigger than a comic book) never caught on here?
Also Charlie would add CORTO MALTESE by Hugo PRATT (Italien). I think the first one I was gifted was Corto in Siberia which, as I google, was published in 1974.
You chaps seem to have nicely summarized the 70s!!
It would be curious to be able to talk to a writer and ask them their perception regarding why one run seems to be epic and others boilerplate.
Charlie tends to think it is part nostalgia, part timing. Marvel had only been around for roughly 10 years when we had great runs like Avengers 90 thru 100 ish or the DD-Black Widow run from 85 - 100 ish.
The first Kree-Skrull war (with insane art) is probably going to be the best just because it was the first?
The first superhero to team up with a female is perhaps going to be the best just because it was the first?
That said... my favorite JLA-JSA team up was around 100 - 103 with the 7 Soldiers of Victory. Yet, the JLA-JSA thing had been done several times before.
So... Charlie is a bag of contradictions?
RED! Charlie digs your comments on Rosa and the Duck! Great stuff indeed!
Is Charlie crazy or did EISNER also do some original Spirit in the 70s? Charlie gobbled up the Spirit mags in the 70s and thought there was original work mixed in with the reprints?
Sean:
I tend to sling some snark Claremont’s way , but I do have a lot of respect for his work, and actually quite liked his stuff right out of the gate. He wrote the lead stories in two issues of GIANT-SIZE DRACULA which seemed above average at the time. Each had a dynamic female character opposing Dracula, one a police inspector and the other a former lover / female vampire out for revenge. It seemed very unusual and interesting and dare I say, ‘progressive’ for the time. It was all wildly melodramatic of course, but the characterizations at least had the appearance of feeling a fair bit more dimensional than the norm. Re-reading them today, they haven’t exactly aged gracefully: in each case, the lady doesn’t just want to destroy Dracula but actually somewhat in love with him and even (uh-oh) yearns to be dominated by him, to a degree. Which, in retrospect, we know is a problematic story trope that he ended up using a bit more often than he should have. But I’m telling ya, by 1975 standards, it felt positively ‘grown up’.
Even more so, a three-part Satana story drawn by Vicente Alcazar, meant for HAUNT OF HORROR but eventually published as a ‘Book Length Novel’ in MARVEL PREVIEW, seemed REALLY ‘adult’ for a Marvel Comic of the period, and not just for the shocking violence and flashes of bare flesh. It made quite an impression. Again, the story is somewhat problematic in retrospect. It may have been the first instance of one of Claremont’s favorite story springboards: a powerful Warrior Woman is brainwashed (by a male), believes she’s a mild-mannered haus-frau, eventually discovers the soul-searing deception, asserts her True Nature and comes back roaring. Down with the Patriarchy! It’s still a powerful story, only spoiled by Claremont’s going back to that same well with other female characters, several times too often.
I guess Iron Fist must have been his first regular ‘ongoing’ gig. He had the good fortune to follow a fairly shambolic run by Tony Isabella, so Claremont’s tight plotting and enhanced characterization seemed like a huge leap in quality, by comparison. After two issues drawn by Pat Broderick, John Byrne took over the visuals and the rest is history. To me, they really are like the Lennon / McCarthy of Comics — though each did good-to-excellent work with other collaborators (in Byrne’s case, often all by himself) the work they did as a duo is just Lightning In A Bottle CRAZY good.
So, despite all my griping about the guy, I do consider myself a ‘fan’.
b.t.
Oh, and I liked Moench’s wacky PLANET OF THE APES stuff too, plus some of his b/w DOC SAVAGE stories, and even his utterly gonzo GODZILLA series with Herb Trimpe. Seriously, that one is super-fun. It’s not like MASTER OF KUNG FU was his ONLY series of any value, but it did seem like his most consistently excellent work.
b.t.
b.t., I liked the stuff Claremont did with Byrne at the time - more a Milligan/McCarthy-type partnership than a Lennon one (; - but it seemed to me that, say, the X-Men lost whatever it had when Cockrum returned.
I entirely accept that might be because I was at the right age for losing interest... except I did enjoy Byrne's FF, so I'm inclined to think the 'co-plotter' credit covered a significant contribution, and gripe.
Not familiar with that Satana story (the only one I recall reading was a b&w by Steve Gerber that was not good).
But anyway, don't get me started on the 'Claremont woman' or I'll bring up that time Ms Marvel had the hots for Modok (!) after being possessed by his mind-ripper beam.
-sean
Charlie, no thoughts on Gerry Conway then...?
You're right to bring up Asterix. The early 70s ones, like 'Mansions of the Gods' and 'The Laurel Wreath', are particularly good, and theres nothing like the ones that Uderzo did on his own - not to mention the recent ones by completely new people - did to underline what a skilled writer Rene Goscinny was.
French humour thats still actually readable - thats hard to do!
-sean
Sean’s mentioning of Bob Kanigher reminds me that I haven’t mentioned any 70s DC writers.
I liked Len Wein’s SWAMP THING (and David Michelinie’s too). I adored Len’s Phantom Stranger stuff back in the day, but every time i re-read any of them now, I’m like ‘Wait, what happened? These used to be amazing but now they’re really corny and kinda dumb’. I hate when that happens.
I didn’t read the Goodwin/ Simonson Manhunter series until many years later, but it’s one of those legendary runs that pretty well lives up to its exalted reputation. I mostly knew of Archie via his short one-off stories in the Warren mags and in DC’s war books. ‘Burma Sky’ in OUR FIGHTING FORCES (drawn by Alex Toth) was brilliant, a genuine Epic in miniature. So I tended to automatically associate his name with ‘Quality’. His work on the first three issues of Atlas’ DESTRUCTOR took me a bit by surprise — it was undeniably fun but seemed kinda lowbrow and tacky compared to his other stuff. But I always looked forward to seeing his name in the credits.
THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD was one of the few DC books I bought regularly, expressly for Jim Aparo’s art. I appreciate Bob Haney’s Bizarro World storylines more now than I did back in the day.
I’m embarrassed to admit that I wasn’t a huge fan of Kirby’s 70s output at the time. Comparing his then-current Demon, Mr. Miracle, Kamandi and Omac comics to the vintage FF and Thor and Captain America stories I’d see in Marvel’s reprint titles, I thought i detected a steep decline in quality. I was occasionally (reluctantly!) impressed by things like the Klik-klak and Red Baron/ Inspector Zeel / Seeway stories in KAMANDI. Like many fans, I grumbled about his eccentric dialogue and stylized visual gimmicks. All those squiggles and squared fingers, bah! (Oh, to be 13 and stupid again…) Still, I bought everything of his that I could find out in the wild, and grudgingly followed him when he returned to Marvel. His 2001 A SPACE ODYSSEY Treasury seriously blew me away, and I found myself re-evaluating my stance on his stuff, both as a writer and artist. ALL of it reads much better to me now than it did in the mid-to-late 70s.
b.t.
Jack Kirby is very under-rated as a writer imo, probably because of his er... lets say singular approach to grammar and dialogue. But that matches his artwork!
I never understood the idea that his stories would be better if someone else scripted them. That worked (sort of) in the 60s because Stan Lee's scripting was similarly over the top, but one of those 70s writers? Not a good idea imo - Kirby's solo stuff holds up well partly because it ISN'T like anything else from that time.
Mind you, I tend to the opinion that generally (there are obvious exceptions) the better comics are written by the same people that drew them.
Which reminds me of another writer I liked - Jan Strnad (even though he clearly had a problem with vowels). Most of what I've read by him was done with the mighty Richard Corben, and its hard to say what he bought to the partnership. Except that Corben's stuff was better with him than without.
Strnad did a great Atom mini-series - 'Sword of the Atom' - with Gil Kane. Its sooo Kane I came to the conclusion that his general method must have been to find out what an artist liked drawing, get them to do it and then add readable word balloons. Thats how to be a good comic book writer I reckon!
-sean
Post a Comment