Millennium reading event continues...

4 different covers of the same issue. I like the action figure cover.

The first once has Liefeld Feet.

Millennium reading event continues...

From what I remember, Millennium was supposed to have each DC book reveal a long-time supporting character as a Manhunter in disguise. Which most of the editors understandably balked at and largely ignored. Millennium issues haunted quarter bins for most of the 1990s. As I mentioned earlier somewhere, something must have happened to DC's printers during this time (around 1988) because their regular, non-Baxter paper comics all look a bit different in person than either before or after in quality. Maybe they experimented with cheaper inks/dyes. Marvel didn't have the same dip in quality.

Millennium reading event continues...

The covers are all so incredibly dull to me, which kinda goes well with the series since I remember it being quite boring and laborious to read.

It's like everyone is in crossover fatigue after having the huge Crisis event and then Legends following right after it. Following up with a 45-issue event that feels uninspired just feels like so much overkill.

RIP Sam Kieth

Millennium reading event (finally) concludes...







Millennium definitely seems overtly religious in its covers at least, but I remember nothing about the series. I looked it up and it appears that was very much intended and by design. Maybe that is why I have forgotten it and all the boring, unnecessary crossovers wasn;t the only reason I found my way out of the collecting bug at the time.

Sneak preview of the next reading crossover reading event! (it's a short one)

They had Perez for Crisis and Byrne for Legends, so the art was a big step down in quality. DC crossovers would grow increasingly useless the next couple of years with Invasion and War of the Gods. It wouldn't be for another few years when Zero Hour came around that a company-wide crossover really mattered. Armageddon 2001 would have been important if they had stuck with the intended Monarch reveal.

I’ve mentioned here previously that these two were/are my absolute favorites. I partly learned to draw from copying them. I often read books whose characters and histories I didn’t understand simply because they drew them, then dropped those books when they stopped. My only real DC experience at the time – aside from knowing the company’s biggest heroes by name – was reading New Teen Titans, entirely because Perez’s art was so cool. Reading Crisis was a strange experience because I knew so little about the kajillions of characters in it, and generally didn’t care, but I pored over that artwork repeatedly between issues. I’d followed/studied Byrne’s various Marvel projects for a while at that point, so when he switched to DC I picked up his various books there, but much like Crisis, the story and characters in Legends were a little beyond me, but staring at Byrne’s artwork (and his elegant storytelling style at the time) made it a pleasure. I also picked up the first Secret Wars series almost entirely on the strength of Mike Zeck’s artwork, who I hadn’t really known about previously. I didn’t think the story was all that hot, but I liked the clean way he drew his characters, even if his background details left something to be desired. Aside from those three ‘event’ books, I never touched another one. I flipped through issues of Secret Wars II and Millennium in the shops back then and really disliked the cheap, hasty-looking artwork. Series like those and the journeymen hacks who drew them were probably contributing factors to me abandoning the comparatively modest involvement I’d had in comics up to that point.

Next reading event:

Kraven's Last Hunt

Kraven hunts down Spider-Man, defeats him, and seemingly shoots him dead. Kraven then buries him, and donning a copy of Spider-Man’s costume, seeks to prove himself superior at his adversary’s former activities.

Year Published: 1987
Issues total: 7

This was all included in the recent Web of Spider-Man Vol 1 omnibus. Which only came out last year and already expensive since Marvel is short-printing all their omnibuses now.

I think a decent argument can be made that monthly superhero art peaked under Perez and Byrne in the 80s. Both were on fire for a solid 6-7 years. The Image guys were ambitious but their ability to handle monthly issues was always suspect.

Kraven's Last Hunt reading event concludes!









Preview of next crossover reading event!

I dunno, under Marvel editorial all of those guys: Lee, Silvestri, Liefeld, McFarlane, Larsen, Portacio, and even Valentino, were workhorses who produced a lot of comics. It wasn't until Image where the combination of additional work on the creative/publisher side, along with nobody reigning their impulses in to draw a billion lines a page, made them just continually late. But for all the flack the 90s got you had some great art, and a lot of it because the Image guys and others pushed the envelope. I posted it before but there's an interview about Todd where the older guys basically hated his guts because he drew so many details (plus he drew off model, notably Mary Jane) and they were all like "we're just trying to make a paycheck here not kill ourselves).

DC was not as artist focused but they still had the likes of Truman, Mandrake, Wieringo, Aparo, Breyfogle, Ha, Alex Ross, Grummett, McGuire, Kitson, Sale, Sprouse and even as much as I didn't appreciate him at the time, Jurgens. I still wish someone other than Porter got Morrison's JLA though.

Of course Perez was just a madman who seemed to thrive the more characters he was allowed to draw. I loved Byrne but I think I always underestimated what inkers like Austin did for him, particularly in those later years when he tackled stuff like Wonder Woman on his own. Same for Claremont, when he went to DC it just wasn't the same as his X-stuff.

Totally agree on latter-day Byrne. With the right inker, his stuff was spectacular, especially in the late 70’s to mid-80’s. His layout style was still unmistakable even in later years but so much of that material (like the Wonder Woman you mentioned) tended to look like he just skipped a step and just drew everything with ink instead of doing it all in pencil first. I know that probably wasn’t the case but his inking just seemed kinda thick annd harsh and hasty throughout much of his later books. By then I was out of comics anyway, so I only picked up his work from that period later on in Omnibus format when I could find them cheap. I may or may not keep some of those long term.