I mentioned the Byrne issues of this series a couple of posts back. The series did turn up on the spinner rack in my local variety store, fortunately, and even at 12-13 I was emulating his art to develop my own, so he was a primary influence and seeing him on this new series was really cool, until issue #3 hit the rack and I saw it was by another artist, so I just kept those first two issues.

The Byrne issues (and presumably the series) weren’t adapted from RAIDERS, but I do recall having this first issue of the actual adaptation for a while back then. Can’t remember if I ever got the second issue of it, though.





Those two was by great match. I think a couple of the inkers who worked on his Superman revamps in the 80’s were also pretty good for his style.

One of the things that soured me somewhat on Byrne later on – and another reason I was generally glad to be out of comics – was him inking his own work later in his career. His visual storytelling was always solid, but as time went on if often seemed like he was drawing books straight-up with an ink pen or marker instead of pencilling layouts first, making them feel rushed and sketchy. I don’t know if that’s what he was really doing, but by 90’s and into the turn of the century he was certainly adept enough that he probably could have pulled it off to save time. So while I have a lot of his omnibuses now, I either avoid some of his later stuff or grab it only if it’s reduced significantly in price.

I went through a lot of FOMO as a kid in the 60s. It felt like you better buy it now or it would be gone forever. You come back a week later and that issue is gone but the next one is out already. I had three different drugstores I made the rounds of on Saturdays. I go to one and they just got FF #64. The next one just got # 65 the same week. Other times there would be three consecutive issues of a title on the rack at once.All told I was pretty successful. I had a system. The only flaw was having the money when two months worth of comics drop the same week. It seems that by the time of Marvel expansion in '68 I could one stop shop once a month and get all titles. The rare occasion I'd cross paths with a comic from before I started collecting, or one I had missed, at a garage sale or something, it was finding The Lost Ark. I remember the classified ads advertising back issues but never pursued it. I bought all the 25 cent giant reprint titles (Marvel Tales, Marvel Collector's Item Classics, etc), and felt blessed to at least get the reprints. Never heard of or was in a comic shop until 1976.

Speaking of Raiders of the Lost Ark, I had a copy of the Marvel adaption when I was a kid. Now this is a weird one... I know that Marvel put it out as a three issue series and as a Marvel Super Special Magazine. The thing is, I'm pretty sure I got it from one of those Scholastic book catalogs we had at school. From what I remember, the comic I had was comic-sized and printed on Baxter paper. Not sure what the Super Special Magazine was printed on, but the one I had for Empire Strikes Back was magazine-sized and printed on cheaper paper. Anyone remember this?

And here's the ad for the Further Adventures of Indiana Jones comic I remember seeing:



Between then an publication, it looks they put a shirt on Indie, and shoes on both of them.

And on that same website, I found this little gem of art from Byrne and Austin that also promised great things:



I'm not sure where these two previews came from... I thought it might have been the adaption of Temple of Doom, but that came out in 1984, and I think the Further Adventures series came out before that. (Yeah, mikesamazingworld confirms that the Temple of Doom Super Special came out when the Further Adventures was at #18.)

Bespin Han Solo is a Top Ten Action Figure, right there.

Looks like they changed the story title too. In the first issue it became “The Ikons of Ikammanen”, followed by “22-Karat Doom” in the second issue with that art on the cover.

I was looking up some of the later issues in the series and it was really a mishmash of mostly hack artists after those first two issues, with (perhaps not surprisingly) outdated Steve Ditko turning up inside a lot of the later issues when it presumably was on life-support.

I did notice Howard Chaykin did the cover and interiors on #6 so I may have briefly owned that one because his art was quite stylish (and I did get into a few of his later pieces, American Flagg, Times Squared, and Blackhawks, before I got out of comics). Looks like he did covers for Indiana Jones #’s 8-10, and those definitely rang a bell, but I never bothered with them because the guts were standard journeyman stuff.

As a kid these were an equal priority as the current issues

I mentioned this earlier, but FOMO probably drove a lot of comic sales, for both collectors who had to have continuous runs and people like me who just wanted to read a story. Miss it and the comic probably won't be there the next time. And it wasn't getting collected. For better or worse (better for us, I think), that's almost completely gone now, most things are collected (although those go out of print too) or are available digitally, and if you don't feel like keeping up with the Joneses in terms of continuity, it's arguably a much better experience to read things after they're completed because you have an idea of the relative quality of the work and you know whether or not it's actually, you know, complete.

I remember in the 2000s there was some kind of Green Lantern specials with team ups with various heroes, and I thought it looked cool: I bought almost all of them because I knew it wasn't getting collected and there's no way I'd see all of them again because who knew how many the comic shop bought. Maybe two of them were decent and I can't even remember what the specials were about.

The downside is that it seems like the weekly periodical market is driven by collectibility as a result hence the various covers and going back to gimmicks.

A similar thing has happened with TV shows in regards to FOMO, waiting to watch a series instead of watching it week to week, not being able to have meaningful discussions in real time because of it, and then it being completely forgotten in the backlog because something else new and shiny is coming out.

What a lame crossover event, its issues haunted quarter bins for years and years. You get the feeling comic shops ordered thinking it would be another Crisis-level success. Let me mention DC must have cheaped out when printing Millennium - what dull ink that lost its luster almost immediately. Back issues to this day look worse than pretty much any other series DC or Marvel published in the 1980s. Something is off in the inks or paper used.

I'd say the events which started really souring me on collecting were the Spider-Man clone saga and Age of Apocalypse. As a completist Marvel made it quite difficult collecting entire storylines without spending a fortune. Right as cover prices were tripling in price. Led to my eventual exit from the hobby for years.

I feel like Age of Apocalypse was great. Replace all titles for a few months and commit to this alternate reality concept, and you really didn't NEED to collect all the titles unlike previous X-crossovers. I'm sure it was a pain in the rear for comic shops though.

The original art version has Reed's fist going through Red Ghost's head instead of shoulder. Really cool looking. May have changed it for code reasons. It's freaky looking. Couldn't find a picture of it.

Yeah AoA was not a story where you needed all of them, they weren't numbered or parts or anything. I got most cause I was already getting most but you only really needed Alpha and Omega and the middle was what you wanted to keep up with.

That FF cover is all the proof one needs that it will be difficult for CGI to replicate Reed Richards stretching powers in the FF film. That is a great cover and Reed Richard's stretching abilities is often times drawn so well on the cover of comics in particular that highlight Reed Richards abilities that it makes him look quite kinetic and visually striking to look at. His powers brought to life by CGI just do not provide your eyes with the same visual treat you would get from say seeing RR in action on this FF 197 cover.

I say this as someone who tends not to trash CGI in comic book films, but Richard's power just doesn't have the same "pop" on a tv/movie screen as say watching Thor call down lightning from the heavens.

Also, completely off-topic, but is there a general comic book news/story thread, I went 10 pages deep and could not find a thread that seemed to match what I am looking for (it is also funny that going 10 pages deep brings you back to thread from I think 2018, showing that it is only in the past few years in which this Comic forum has become much more livelier than it used to be).

The reason I ask is that I was just watching a youtube story about a comic book store break in (that turned out to be part of a series of store break-ins around the Bay Area) and how at least one of the thieves was caught that I thought would be a good fit to re-post/embed the story in the appropriate comic book thread. The store in the news story is Crush Comics in Castro Valley. Doh, that is where my brother lives and for some reason I thought the store was in the Castro part of San Francisco, I have passed that store many a time visiting my brother and always wanted to check it out. I should give them a visit soon.

Post it! Certainly won't hurt anything and I remember that so I wouldn't mind watching it. Or it may go better in the "random comic book pic" thread.

Did you know that Reed Richards was Indiana Jones before becoming "Stretcho" and hung out with Tomb Raider?

Feature films are a far cry from even Netflix productions but if they just animate him like Luffy from One Piece I'm sure it'll be perfectly fine, especially with international fans.

The store featured in this news story is Crush Comics in Castro Valley, CA. Due to the efforts of the stores owners they were also able to help the police solve another crime involving stolen lego figures/sets. Pretty cool.

My only real complain about Age of Apocalypse is that they renumbered all of the issues; I really wish they would have kept the legacy numbering on them.

Even when they had X-Man crossover and continue is series, they still could have kept the series numbering at #21 from when Cable re-started; or just given X-Man a new #1.

X-man continued on with issue #5 I believe and Cable returned with issues #21?

Yeah, I would have preferred CABLE #20 -> X-MAN #21 -> X-MAN #22 -> X-MAN #23 -> X-MAN #24 -> CABLE #25; then either keep going X-MAN with #25 or restart with a new X-MAN #1 once AoA was over. I think it would have been neater if they kept the old numbering when they retitled the eight X-books, then went back to the old titles while continuing the numbering.

Did some searching as I enjoy crossover stories. Seems this is a cover only and no actual story exists.

I get that but my completest mentality likes that I can pull all of my AoA titles out and group them together and not have a hole from Cable #20 jumping to Cable #25. None of this matters now however as they would just go from Cable #20 to X-Man #1 and then after 4 months give us a new Cable #1 as well and an X-Man #1 as they don't care about the long term collector mentality anymore.