fujishig

Finally got my Secret Invasion trade, along with the last Mighty Avengers trade. I can't believe that they spent nearly a year's worth of issues of Mighty Avengers on Secret Invasion side stories.

edited to add:
the latest New Avengers trade is also nothing to do with the New Avengers, but just Secret Invasion tie ins. I pity the person who actually wanted to read about a team called the Avengers in the last year or so. Geez.

The Man with the Golden Doujinshi

I decided to cheat in my comic reading mission and jump ahead with Marvel to when they started Spider-Man and the others. The only thing I'm reading before then to get caught up is reading the stuff that was also still being published by that time, like Journey into Mystery which is up to around #83 when the superheroes started coming out.

I already read Strange Tales and some of the others up to that point. I think I can be caught up by the end of next week.

Once I'm caught up, I plan on reading Marvel at home and DC at work. I just so tired of reading golden age DC and Marvel, especially DC. On one hand, it's cool seeing the beginnings of guys like Green Lantern, and to a lesser extent, Aquaman, but it's just one lame story after another for the most part. They either fight gangsters or axis guys for each story.

Back to Marvel, as I'm reading these horror and mystery stories to catch up, I'm not paying close attention to the cover to notice when the comic code ruined them but I've so far noticed the second issue after it's taken effect with each series.

I mean, I'm reading one issue where a guy has an ugly face and goes to a witch that summons the devil and he makes a deal with him. The devil says he'll give him a new face.

The guy wakes up and has his new, attractive face but he also has his old face on the other side of his head.

Or another story where some lady is cheating on her husband with his best friend, who is a plastic surgeon. The wife wants him to kill her husband but he doesn't want to commit murder. Instead, he kidnaps the husband and makes him look like the doctor and the doctor makes himself look like the husband.

The husband wakes up and the doctor says that by doing it this way they can easily continue their lives. If the husband tries to tell people what really happened, they'll think he's crazy and lock him up. The doctor then calls the wife over, who doesn't know what went on.

When she shows up, the husband says that she was right and wants the doctor dead. He gets shot and then the husband shoots her.

Then the comic code came.

Now we have stories like 2 guys that are trying to get property to lay some railroad tracks. The sneaky guy gets it surveyed first which upsets the other guy since he should've been the guy to do it. Whoever surveys it first gets to claim the property.

The loser takes him to court and the judge upholds the sneaky guy.

The loser rebuilt some trains and wants the sneaky guy to buy them since he has no use for them now but the sneaky guy already has trains and doesn't need more.

The twist of the story is at the end, the ghost train of the loser rides the tracks in the middle of the night.

I'd say there's a slight change in quality following the comic code taking effect.

Bronkster

I've been reading a lot of Golden Age Superman and Action books recently. I love these for what they are, but agree that too many at one time gets frustrating due to the bland stories. But it's this exposure that causes me to toss near God-like status on Stan Lee for the complete revolution he started with the Fantastic Four and Spider-man in the early '60s. There's been a truckload written about it, but every time I go back to the old comics my appreciation for Lee increases. Again, I'm not dumping on the Golden Age - it has its place in history and those old books are still damn fun to read.

FantasticVSDoom

Yep, and the reason Ive dropped both Mighty and New Avengers... I enjoyed Secret Invasion for the most part, and the early Avengers with the SI in it filled in the story nicely, then it got old really fast.

The Man with the Golden Doujinshi

Once in a while, there'll be something that really stands out in those golden age books. The last one I remember was when they introduced the Joker. That entire book was pretty good and much better than fighting generic gangster #763.