Artifacts: Baby Cards 2

A lot of these baby cards are pretty classy.  There's actual lace and ribbon on some of these cards.  Was it the event or was it the time they were produced (1969)?  Unfortunately, these cards were glued into scrapbooks, so some have been a bit damaged when I removed them for scanning.

Artifacts: Baby Cards 1

Get comfortable.  This may take awhile.  I inherited a large box of stuff with my name on it after my mom's death.  Among the things inside were some large scrapbooks full of cards.  Mom had saved a bunch greeting cards that I'd received from the whole time I was living at home. 

I'm just posting some of the better ones.  I'll be putting in some comments here and there.  First up, we'll start at the very beginning with some baby cards from the year 1969. 

Some Late Comic Book Reviews: New Comics-Robin, Legion, Spider-Woman

After going to the used bookstore, I next went over to Zia Comics.  I’d gone looking specifically for this 100-page Robin anniversary comic.  I am a big fan of Dick Grayson and Tim Drake (the others, not so much).  I was not disappointed with the Grayson material.  There were four stories featuring him.  I didn’t think much of the Jason Todd/Red Hood story.  There were two Drake stories, one of which was okay.  The Stephanie Brown story was your basic “Girl Power” story.  Lastly, there were two Damian Wayne stories.  One was a team up with the new Superboy, Superman’s kid.  What?  When did this happen?  Hasn’t Lois read Man of Steel/Women of Kleenex?  The last story ties into Batman’s current storyline (I guess).  Damian has a master plan for dealing with Gotham’s villains once and for all.  Dad might not like it.  Unfortunately, no explanation was forthcoming.  It was a tease.

The question is: Was this worth $10?  Probably not.  The stories were too short to be satisfying.  The artwork was all over the place in quality and style, some really good, some average, some bad.  Overall, this was a missed opportunity.  What would have made it great would have been an overarching story that spanned all the Robins and the way they individually dealt with the conflict, perhaps joining forces at the end.  There still could have been different writers and artists working on it.  Ah, this kind coordination would have required a good editor, a kind of person DC and Marvel don’t seem to have any interest in employing.

What?  Why did I buy this?  What was I thinking?  I know it’s the Legion of Superheroes, one of my very favorite superhero groups, but there’s no G-D cover on this thing! 

Okay, inside the outer cover, there was a normal cover with artwork, but I couldn’t have known that until I bought it and opened it.  (I know.  The blank cover is for going to a convention and commissioning an artist to draw something.  As if anybody, much less me, is going to be doing that any time soon.)  This then brings up another issue: Why am I buying yet another LSH reboot?  I’ve lost count of the number of do-overs since Crisis on Infinite Earths indirectly did away with Superboy (with John Byrne’s Superman reboot), thus invalidating the Legion’s entire history.  Since then, it’s never been quite right and sometimes it’s been very wrong.  (And ironically, there’s been a successful “Superboy” TV series, Smallville, in the meantime.) 

I’ve attempted to suffer through a couple of the reboots.  Much like the many recent versions of Supergirl in the comics, the original version was always the best.  Oh, I wish I’d never bothered buying any of those dumb new Supergirl comics even more than the Legion reboots (9-30-18).  This new LSH #1 is unfortunately no different than the rest, if not worse. 

The story starts and ends in the same manner: incomprehensible.  For being a #1 issue, clearly this comic calls back to some other recent comics for its foundation.  It didn’t list them, not that I’d care to track them down anyway.  There’s no actual story.  It’s the new Superboy (him again?) being introduced to the Legion along with some setup for a scary new villain threat.  Whatever.  They even brought back the artificial earth nonsense and made it worse.  Lightning Lad is also now randomly black.  I guess this is so he can have a racially diverse relationship with Saturn Girl just like any given prime time TV commercial or CW show. 

Hey, but the issue was not a total loss.  The artwork was good.  It didn’t help tell the story, what there was of it, but it looked nice.  No, the highlights were these throwback ads.  Disco 70’s Dick Grayson is too cool.  Then there’s Svengoolie meeting Wonder Woman and the Joker.  I watch him on the weekends sometimes.  These were truly a delight to find in this otherwise crummy comic.  It’s almost like they were written for me, in which case, why wasn’t the rest of the comic written that way. 

Bottom line: There is no escape from the Legion!  No wait, that’s from a French Foreign Legion movie.  Take two.  There is no fixing the Legion at this point.  Even long-time Legion writer Paul Levitz couldn’t do it when he came back to it.  Please let this dumb version die quickly like the others and just leave it dead, until generations from now in the 31-st century when they can do a Legion of Superheroes comic properly.

Isn’t this a nice J. Scott Campbell cover?  Spider-Woman’s in her classic costume and everything.  Oh, this is another #1 issue, sure to be a collector’s item.  (Is “collector’s item” even a term even still applied to comic books?)  Inside, she’s mostly wearing another suit.  It’s not a bad look.  It’s just not iconic like the original and makes her look like yet another knockoff Spider-Man. 

For a story, she beats up some random armed goons and a helpless teenage boy.  The difference between the opponents is that she really enjoyed taking it out on the teen.  It was like it was almost personal . . . for the woman writing the comic.  It was like she was working out some issues on paper like I am with this blog. 

In the second story, there’s a flashback of what I came for (is that a double entendre?), Spider-Woman in the correct suit with better artwork.  (Is that Wesley Snipes there in the frame?  It’s like when they ripped off Samuel L. Jackson’s likeness as Nick Fury years before the Avengers movies, but this time in reverse.)  Jessica Drew also had to take a cab home from the battle, because she couldn’t afford the fare because she’s a hard luck loser . . . just like Peter Parker. 

Why has Marvel basically ruined one of their most valuable properties, Spider-Man, by constantly copying him on to other spider-ish characters?  Do you want an enumerated list?  Can you figure it out for yourself?  In any case, this comic was just dumb.  The only thing dumber was me buying it based on the cover, especially when I could likely be sure it was going to suck because it’s a new Marvel comic.  You can’t spell Marvel without using the letters SWJ.  You people can’t create; you can only destroy and call it “stunning and brave.” 

So much for trying to help out a local business.  Will I be back after this crisis is over/civilization falls and has to be rebuilt from scratch?  I just don’t know.  Until Zia Comics puts out a bin of dollar comics from the 80’s and 90’s, there may not be anything there for me.    

Some Late Comic Book Reviews: Dollar Bin and an Art Book

The day before the shutdown order for “non-essential” businesses here in New Mexico two months ago, I went out to a local used bookstore and the comic book store downtown.  I’d sort of had a heads up on the shutdown and wanted to give them some business before it happened.  I almost said something to the people running the stores, but didn’t, just in case I was wrong.  I doubt a warning would have made any difference. 

I read everything I picked up fairly quickly, but didn’t write up anything about them until now.  I didn’t exactly forget about doing it.  I have been pretty busy scanning other stuff for the blog.  Maybe I didn’t want to do any extra scanning while I was in the middle of a huge stack of scan.  (I have a whole bunch more to post from that stack.)  Maybe I was kind of disappointed in the new comics and didn’t want to go to the trouble of writing anything.

The Coas used bookstore has a couple of bins of old comics.  It still boggles my mind that the nearby comic bookstore doesn’t have something similar.  I’d come with the intention of buying something, so I wasn’t as picky as I’d usually be.  I picked up eight comics that caught my interest.

Two were Witchblade comics the early 2000’s.  I’d had some experience with the character from the 90’s in a trade paperback.  Those were probably from Michael Turner’s run.  It was okay, but while the book had a great price, it was so cheaply put together that it came apart on my first reading.  Unfortunately, while the artwork in two issues I got (#’s 56 and 90) was good, but it wasn’t near Michael Turner-level quality. 

I appreciated the concept of a cop with supernatural powers and that it is played like a realistic TV cop show.  (Which admittedly isn’t very realistic.  I’ve been watching a lot of Chicago P.D. lately in syndication.  I blame Sophia Bush.)  That said, it’s hard to imagine this setup running for 90 issues without some changes to the premise.  How much weird magical stuff could a NYC detective be in the middle of before everybody noticed the connection?

Everything else was from the 80’s.  I grabbed four issues of DC’s The Warlord.  I’m not sure if I’ve ever read any issues before, but I knew about the concept of an Air Force pilot trapped in the mythical countries of the hollow earth.  (Obviously, this is fantasy.  Everyone knows the earth is flat, not hollow.)  I managed to get most of a complete storyline from #77, 78, 79, and Annual #3.  It had the beginning and end of a trippy time travel loop story involving the Art Bell-ish trope of the Philadelphia Experiment.

Needless to say, this was the kind of fun stuff that comics should be all about.  (Having a fetish-y cat-girl character named Shakira didn’t hurt either.)  Admittedly, they were a bit simplistic.  I partly blame the convention of the time in DC comics of having a backup feature.  That space should have been devoted to adding more characterization and story to the main feature.  The Barren Earth second feature was okay.  It made the most out getting only six pages per story.   

I showed these to my friend Ron.  I think he enjoyed the old comic book ads from the time more than the story.  One of the issues published a fan letter asking about the number of rounds Morgan has available for his gun in this fantasy world.  Answer: a lot.  2,016 bullets at best estimate.   

Nexus #48 got me one issue closer to collecting the whole six-part bowl-shaped world (another weird world) saga.  Maybe someday.  This was peak Steve Rude artwork right here.  Lastly, there’s Kull the Conqueror #6.  He’s another Robert E. Howard creation, kind of like a more thoughtful version of Conan, but from an earlier era.  The story was pretty good, but I really enjoyed the artwork by John Buscema and the distinctive inking and coloring of Klaus Janson. 

Then I saw this.  It was on display on a shelf.  I’m not normally that much into art books, but this one immediately caught my eye.  Thankfully, the book wasn’t sealed up, so I was able to take a look inside.  I was sold immediately.  This was a new book, so I even paid full price for it.  You can look at the artist’s, Ilya Kuvshinov, artwork on his website.  The book’s intended purpose succeeded with me, as it inspired me to draw a little after several years of not picking up a pencil. 

Interesting, I picked up eight comic books and an artbook and none of this was conventional superhero stuff.