Tuesday Morning find for comic fans

[Trekker 42]

Through the magic of Tuesday Morning I now have the complete Fantastic 4 up until 2004 on CD. As far as I could tell, they did not have any other Marvel heroes. But honestly it would be worth a look. It was 15 dollars and includes every annual and every issue of Fantastic 4 up until 2004. Good deal I must say.

[TM2 Dinobot]

Yeah, saw that a few weeks ago.

[karamazov80]

I don't have any interest in reading comics on the computer, but that would be cool for screen captures.

[SErge]

my friend has the avengers and spiderman ones, he got em off amazon

[buttheadsmate]

Things may have moved on but I got Spider-Man as a present from the GF years ago & it was a disappointment to say the least.

[karamazov80]

It what way? Quality of the images?

[buttheadsmate]

I suppose it was my expectation & the fact that I was a printer. I understand better than most the limitations of 'print' & nothing exposes its weaknesses better (?) than reproducing half-tones & tints on a computer screen. When I say I understand better than most....remember I spent 30 odd years as a printer

Check out Andy Warhol's 'Blam' or whatever it's called ......he accentuated the dots & the lines of 'print' & called it pop art. That's what I see when I see comics from bye-gone days reproduced on a computer screen . The eye is deceived only when it sees these dots & lines on paper & if the original is blown up by the tiniest margin the whole impact is lost .

This situation has ,to a degree, been eliminated by the sophistication of printing techniques & glossy paper.For the record it took me some while for me to warm to modern comics & the likes of Kirby & Buscema (my heroes) whose styles so suited 'the old way' might struggle today. I doubt that they'd struggle for long however & please don't believe that I'm knocking or mocking them. It is just different now.

[Trekker 42]

It what way? Quality of the images?

I read that the Spider-Man one was direct scans, no touchup. Fantastic Four has had some touchup done thankfully.

[buttheadsmate]

I also made the mistake of starting from #1 . I still enjoyed reading them but 'going back'..... with anything in life actually....is generally a disappointment . I mentioned it a couple of years back but I amassed most everything ,comic, 'Captain America' subsequent to Tales of Suspense by buying up a comic collection . Some of it is awesome but there are literally years of absolute drivel. Come the launch of the movie it'll all be sold.

[Shanester]

Comics are such a different beast now than they were 20 years ago. Both art and story methods are drastically different.

Anyone ever read the original Marvel adaptation of Star Wars ANH? You'll laugh until you cry.

[Trekker 42]

Comics are such a different beast now than they were 20 years ago. Both art and story methods are drastically different.

Anyone ever read the original Marvel adaptation of Star Wars ANH? You'll laugh until you cry.

Yeah I have. I laughed until I cried. And then tried not to piss myself laughing. Thank God I succeeded.

[hellpop]

Personally, I feel that Silver Age Marvel Comics read a lot better as stand-alone issues. Collections tend to highlight the flaws in Stan's scripting, and the neverending hype wears on you. Also, as buttheadsmate touched on, modern printing techniques really do these comics no favors. The dirty little secret of Silver Age Marvel is that the art just wasn't very good, certainly not on par with DC, where you had the likes of Infantino, Kane, Anderson, Kubert, Heath, Toth, Orlando plying their trade. Comparatively, the likes of Heck and Ayers, and even Kirby, Ditko, and Romita, just don't compare. Of course, I've always been a DC guy, so it might just be my bias showing.

I first read those old FF comics in the black and white Essentials books, and they just did not live up to my expectations. For as long as they worked together, I don't think that Kirby and Lee ever were fully in tune with each other; Kirby was all action, Lee all pathos, and they both had to try to squeeze in their preferences around the other's. Plus, most of Kirby's inkers back then weren't very good, with Sinnot clearly being the best. Ditko's Spider-Man holds up a lot better, in part because he was able to ink himself.

Comics are very different these days, though not necessarily better. Certainly the storytelling is more sophisticated, but that often leads to lifeless, unengaging comics. At least we've come a long way back from the wasteland that was (mostly) the '90s, even if our Minimates are suddenly living in that time again.

Comics are such a different beast now than they were 20 years ago. Both art and story methods are drastically different.

Anyone ever read the original Marvel adaptation of Star Wars ANH? You'll laugh until you cry.

Yeah I have. I laughed until I cried. And then tried not to piss myself laughing. Thank God I succeeded.

BTW, that Star Wars comic is more like 40 years old, not 20.

[karamazov80]

Kirby, Ditko, and Romita, just don't compare.

BLASPHEMER!!!

[buttheadsmate]

I think we all need to realise that the comic-artists of the Silver Age had to draw the comics as line-drawings as this was the only way that the print processes available at that time could reproduce the art. They'd start with a line drawing which had the screens/tints added by the colourist . You mention the Essentials which would be exactly as the line drawings that Kirby (e.g) & his contemporaries would initially produce in B on W. That was the onlyway it could be done.

In the same way you guys are laughing at the Star Wars ANH would be the way any modern printer would laugh at the way we used to produce print in the years prior to mass-availability of colour scanning....I laugh myself but it was the only way it could be done (inexpensively) at the time. To put things in perspective ,today , any sill sod can produce 4 colour CYMB transparencies of full colour photos or artwork in his own front-room . If Kirby had had access to this technology I am certain he would have embraced it. I use Kirby purely as an example of a SA artist .

Edited December 16, 2010 by buttheadsmate

[TBT!]

Interesting topic,

I totally agree that we've come a long way both in terms of technology and comic storylines in general. Rob is right, technology has made printing a completely different game now than it was even 10-15 years ago.

The older comcis in these collections weren't scanned very well I'm assuming it was done inhouse at Marvel by the coffee boy, but they are readable.

As for these collections, I own (surprise surprise!) the Iron Man Collection and actually enjoy dipping into older stuff occasionally, stuff from the the early 80's onwards stands up pretty well IMO, I don't know if that is because of the overaching storylines from that era were kind of epic or just that I remember them fondly but arcs such as the issues with drink, losing Stark Ent. Rhodey taking over as IM, Stark (armor)Wars etc but once I start I find my self getting lost and loosing huge chunks of time to it.

Having said that I do have a huge complaint about these volumes: They don't cross over, you get one title start to end(ish) and anything that crosses over into other books you miss out on. This is esp frustrating during the 90's where EVERYTHING crossed over just about all the time. It's not so bad for IM but can't imagine how bad that must be for an xmen series!

Of course what they really need is a decent color kindle or tablet PC and then these volumes will really shine.

T.

[youbastards]

I've been a proponent of Marvel/DC releasing comics on DVD or made available online, but I would like for them to have an option to purchase everything by year, that way you can get all of the titles that the publisher released that year. You get fewer issues of each series, but you would get all of the story in the case of crossover events, except for the rare occasion where something spilled over to the next year.

Obviously, the biggest hurdle to this would be getting the lesser-known or less-popular titles into a digital format, but I would dump my entire back issue collection for something in this format.