Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon.
***
Many artists have suffered for their art but few have gone as far as setting their own hair on fire.
Michael Jackson did.
He did it in January 1984, by accident, while making an advert for Pepsi. Happily, the singer and the soft drink both survived the experience.
Another man making the news was Steve Jobs who, that month, launched his Macintosh personal computer in the United States.
Meanwhile, in the world of finance, the FTSE 100 Index was launched on the London Stock Exchange to let us know just how our investments were performing.
However well that might be, they probably weren't doing as well as the following set of songs because each of them topped the UK singles chart, that January.
The first to manage it was the Flying Pickets' Only You which was then replaced by Paul McCartney's Pipes of Peace. But, then, a veritable juggernaut was unleashed, as Frankie Goes to Hollywood's Relax stormed to the top of the listings, thanks to the BBC's banning of it. Which just goes to show that banning things doesn't work.
Over on the accompanying LP chart, the month kicked off with Now That's What I Call Music bossing things before it was dethroned by Paul Young's No Parlez. However, Now fought back to reclaim the top spot before it was once more deposed. This time, by Michael Jackon's Thriller which then had to finish the month by being overtaken by the Eurythmics' Touch.
For some reason, there's no issue of Starburst, this time round. Therefore, we only have three monthlies attempting to part us from our pocket money. I have, however, no doubt they'll be more than up to the task.
We're in Japan where Wolverine has a final showdown with Shingen. Not only that but Mariko and he are all set to marry which, of course, leads them to send a suitable invitation to the X-Men.
Back in the UK, Jim Jaspers' Beetles are digging around in the rubble of Braddock Manor when they unwittingly free the Fury. The daft fools.
Aggravated by Jim having turned the country into a living nightmare, the Vixen decides it's time to assassinate him but that plan soon goes belly-up.
Next, there's a two-page tale called Zip Rodgers, Hero of the Universe supplied to us by the talents of Dave Howard and Paul Loney.
At last, the greatest Doctor Who of them all - Peter Cushing - gets the acclaim that's always been his by right, as the magazine dedicated to time-travelling phone boxes takes a good long hard look at the two Amicus films of the 1960s!
And we close with the finale of the Night-Raven tale the world knows as Quiet Town.
But there's more. We also get news of a week-long Doctor Who festival in Newcastle, a new comic strip called The Moderator and a look back at the Tom Baker adventure The Ribos Operation which I think was the story which first introduced Romana to the show.
All I know about this month's lead tale is it's a 43-page epic called Dominion of the Bat! and is conferred upon us by the ever-vigorous Michael Fleisher and John Buscema.
I note the thing on the cover seems to be a pterosaur, rather than a bat, and can only conclude the paleontologically-challenged Hyborians are guilty of a case of mistaken monster identity.
Posts
25 comments:
Naturally I had that MWOM. It was a really good one as it had the last chapter of the Wolverine mini-series which was enlivened by the astonishing colour work of Lynn Farley. Was this her first work on a Miller comic? On ANY comic?
She did do DD 191, but that was a little later, right?
I do remember really sitting up and noticing the colours on this chapter [those pages that were reprinted here in full colour, as it was the same botched job as ever with Marvel UK].
I only very recently noticed she did the colour on the first few issues of American Flagg, too. I wonder what she's up to now?
CB has a solid but not amazing chapter. I do feel these next few chapters that lead up to the Endgame tread water just a little bit. Anyone else get that impression...?
I definitely had that issue of Dr Who, as well. Though I have no idea why... maybe because it has Steve Dillon art? But I wasn't really that big a Dillon fan. Casual purchase? Definitely had it, though, the cover is loudly ringing a bell.
There was a Starburst that month, apparently. It was a Disney special. Zzzz. Still, don't give up Starburst - things pick up for SF movies in 1984, as you have Dune, 2010, Star Trek 3, The Terminator, Brazil etc to look forward to.
*Varley.
Thank you, auto-correct.
Didn't we cover Brazil quite recently here, in the last 2000ad post? I was a bit surprised no-one else had anything to say about it.
Steve, I don't think the Beetles freed the Fury so much as turned up when it had finished regenerating itself.
That Captain Brexit episode isn't as strong as last month's 'Candlelight Dialogues', and its hard to think of a really striking image or bit of dialogue that linger in the mind like with the better Daredevils episodes... but I wouldn't say it was treading water either. Maybe the problem was the focus on moving the plot forward, with a shorter page count?
The curious aspect for me is that it ends with CB being all patriotic.
Surveying the mess made of things by Thatche... sorry, Jim Jaspers' rise, he decides its still his country! And he's going to take it back! Or something like that. Different from the somewhat useless 'Tim-nice-but-dim' type character we've seen so far anyway.
Moore makes it readable, but still - character development, or falling back on superhero cliché?
-sean
You know, Steve, I don't think that Savage Sword of Conan cover specifically refers to a story. Its actually the second time Marvel UK have reprinted it - I forget which issue number the first time, but it had the second part of 'People of the Black Circle' and some of 'Worms of the Earth' in it, as did the US SSOC #17 where it was first used.
Neither of those stories featured a pterosaur - or even a giant bat - so it seems safe to say its just some random painting of Conan with a comely wench clinging to his leg.
Btw, Matthew - I think Lynn Varley's first comic work was an early 80s Batman annual drawn by Trevor von Eeden (I recall him mentioning it in an interview).
-sean
PS Here you go Matthew, I found the one -
https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/Batman_Annual_Vol_1_8
-sean
Gents! A sincere thank you for the well wishes, yesterday! It was a wonderful event. 75 days to go til Grandpa Charlie!
DW - I’ll work on a Hammer shirt, lol.
MP - Rachel loves the UK’s Dennis the Menace, Jack Cole’s Plastic Man, and Archie! Alas… traditional men-in-tights and thus Jack Kirby have never caught on! Though, I could try Jack’s Love stories from the 50s?
Or possibly the Dingbats, Charlie?
-sean
I meant introducing your future grandchild to Kirby, Charlie, not your daughter.
At least, anyway, when the time is right. Maybe at age seven.
I think that was about the age when I first became cosmically aware.
As for Rachel, I like anybody who likes Plastic Man!
Give her my best.
M.P.
I’ll chinwag about Brazil if you like. I saw it on the cinema screen for the first time fairly recently so it’s fresh in my mind (my first viewing was on BBC2 around Christmas 1989ish, and various home video incarnations since then).
It’s great - still great to this day. Possibly runs out of steam and flails a bit in the last 20 minutes, but endlessly witty and keeps throwing up mind-boggling in-camera imagery all the way through.
De Niro’s quite bad comedy performance was definitely the shape of things to come though. I like Palin in this a lot - his diaries through the 70s and 80s are wonderful: someone doing really good work they enjoy and thoroughly enjoying every aspect of his life.
Thanks for the heads up on the Batman annual: I’ll see if it’s been reprinted anywhere, otherwise I’ll definitely pick that one up. I liked Von Eeden in the 80s - Thriller and a couple of newsstand Batman & Superman issues that were bonkers.
Re: CB - yeah, maybe it was going back to 8 pages per episode and there being fewer eccentric flourishes for a few months but I did feel it dragged a bit.
Still, the ending made it worth the wait.
WHY did I have that issue of Dr Who?
I’m going to need to dig out my Panini reprints of the comics to see if it was a particularly memorable or good-looking strip that month. Maybe I was just bored.
...on a completely different note, Steve, you mentioned Wolverine.
Marvel Comic's answer to Yosemite Sam.
Claremont explained to the reader (over and over) what a tough guy that character was.
A lotta verbiage in Claremont's X-Men.
Wolverine even drank beer and smoked cigars! Clearly, he's a badass.
...I hate Wolverine.
M.P.
-Matthew
I'm really wearing out my welcome here tonight at SDC, but you mentioned Von Eeden.
I'm a big fan of D.C. in the '80's, and I think I read an issue or two of Thriller.
I didn't understand it.
I still don't. I think I googled it a couple years back just out of curiosity.
What were they going for with that, do you think? I couldn't dope it out.
At any rate, D.C. was taking a lotta chances and becoming more experimental in the '80's. There was a new energy there, like Marvel had in the '60's.
M.P.
MP -
Don't worry - more is better, as far as I'm concerned.
Yeah, Thriller was pretty incoherent and berserk. But I like it for that reason. weirdly, it made more sense to me as a 12-year-old back then than it does now, but that crazed experimental quality is what made it special. If difficult to follow.
A contemporary comparison would be something like Tradd Moore's stuff - can't tell what's going on, but it sure looks pretty and fun.
As you say, DC were experimenting a fair bit then - things like Thriller and Angel Love and even Gemm: Son Of Saturn weren't what you'd expect to see from a big comics company.
Matthew-
Ah, maybe I get it. As with you, anything that was weird and mysterious to me at that age was compelling. The weirder the better.
The challenge was trying to figure it out.
But then if ya did, you lose the magic...
M.P.
SEAN! DINGBATS is like the Holy Grail! One must be pure of heart and spirit and mind and then seek it out. One cannot be merely given Dingbats. Like KING ARTHUR pulling Excalibur out of the Stone!
“Many are called! But few are chosen…”
MP- the granchild will know Kirby! Soon as I secretly baptize her!
Hi, Matthew, I did nearly include that Starburst Disney Special but, at the last moment, discovered that its insides gave it a December 1973 publication date.
Oops! That should have been a December 1983 publication date.
M.P. and Matthew: if I may butt in on your Von Eeden discussion …
Trevor began experimenting with his page layouts in that BATMAN ANNUAL . My nerd friends and I couldn’t believe that dynamic story was drawn by the same guy who’d been doing solid-but-unexceptional work at DC for years, but we made sure to keep an eye out for his work in the future.
A few months later he pencilled a 4-issue Green Arrow mini-series that was a bit more traditional layout-wise but was still much more dynamic than the stuff he’d been doing prior to the Annual. At the time it seemed like he was right on the cusp of becoming a major comics artist, right up there with Miller, Simonson, Byrne etc.
He then drew a few issues of WORLD’S FINEST that were extremely bizarre, almost avant - garde (I’ve always thought he was influenced by the stuff Sienkiewicz was doing around that time) — they were fun to look at but so stylized that were hard to follow, nearly incomprehensible.
By the time he started drawing THRILLER, he seemed to be pulling back on the experimental page layouts but now his draftsmanship was slipping — the panel-to-panel continuity was easier to follow but the individual drawings tended to look rushed and sloppy. I think the writing was really what made that series a confusing mess. I never could figure out what it was about, the characters were poorly defined (the lead character seemed at times to not even be the lead character). I bought the entire run, hoping that the creators would get their act together but they never did.
After that, Trevor did a few assorted fill-in issues and an under-whelming 4-part Black Canary mini, then just disappeared. He had so much potential, and then —pffft. Very sad.
Anyhow, that’s my take on Trevor Von Eeden.
b.t.
BT -
I picked up those Worlds Finest comics. I'm really surprised they ever saw the light of day. I'm not sure if it was those or Thriller that were the first things of his I saw. I was a Sienkiewicz fan so anything eccentric like that I went for. If I'd seen Ted McKeever's stuff back then I'd have gone for it as well.
Yeah, after Thriller imploded, he seemed to disappear from mainstream comics, though he did do a few personal - and very well received - books afterwards.
I didn't mind Thriller's eccentricities. I kind of felt that 90% of comics back then were just flavourless stooge, so anything as mad as Thriller was welcome. I do understand that different people's mileage may vary, though.
*stodge.
MM
Matthew—
I just read the Wikipedia article on TVE and it seems like he didn’t actually disappear as I’d thought, he continued to work in the industry, just in venues that were off my radar (HEAVY METAL etc). I’m glad he’s not digging ditches for a living.
Apparently, Frank Miller wanted him to draw BATMAN YEAR ONE, but TVE declined. Interesting…
I also read the Wikipedia article on THRILLER. Wow. Just the bare bones descriptions of the characters has my head spinning. Sounds like a re-imagining/ deconstruction of classic pulp hero genre, like Buckaroo Banzai or something.The big difference being that all the “crew” have really far-out backstories, each has interesting powers and abilities, none of them seem like real people. It’s a lot.
It does sound intriguing — I’m tempted to dig through my boxes and give the series another try. It’s been 40 years since I last read any of it, maybe it’ll make more sense to me now.
b.t.
Oh, and I take back what I said about TVE’s layouts being more conventional on THRILLER. Just saw a handful of scans on the internets and they’re INSANE😆
I definitely need to revisit that series.
b.t.
b.t.-
I mostly just remember the bad guy from that series, Scabbard.
And the reason I remember him is because he fought Ambush Bug.
Sort of, anyway.
He had been decapitated in Thriller and the cops were using his head for an ashtray. Then he woke up and came back for it.
M.P.
Frank Farian has passed. Well that is one German who really left his mark on the music world: Boney M,
Milli Vanilli.
Matthew, I've not actually seen Brazil for quite a while, so good to know that it holds up after a recent viewing (something I've been meaning to do myself for a while).
I don't particularly recall it running out of steam near the end... If there was a weakness to the film, it was the main female character being completely two dimensional, little more than an than an object of desire for Sam to be obsessed with.
Although I got around that by reading their relationship as being largely in his head, part of the fantasy world he was retreating into.
Completely agree about Michael Palin in it. The cast generally - Ian Holm, Peter Vaughan, Katherine Helmond, Ian Richardson - were very good.
DeNiro's ok in it. Although the character he plays is the one bit of the film that doesn't really sit well with me. I mean, he's basically outsourced scab labour, right?
-sean
Post a Comment