Since I've been teaching this course at Lehman on films of the 1970s, I've been thinking a lot about the american comics of the decade. while the 80s (justifiably) get the credit for revisionary works like Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns, it seems to me that there was a lot of cool and weird stuff being published by Marvel and DC during the preceding decade. A brief list:
Tomb of Dracula; Omega the Unknown; Howard the Duck; Steve Englehart's Captain America run; The Defenders/Avengers war; Cary Bates and Elliot S Maggin's Superman runs; the Rhas Al Ghul Batman stories; Gwen Stacy's death; Green Lantern/Green Arrow; Chris Claremont's X-Men
Anyone want to post their favorite 70s era comics memories?
31 Qualified Granite Slab Prices Per Square Foot
6 years ago
Forgot the President's fave: Conan
ReplyDeleteIs the Englehart run where he stops being Captain America and becomes Nomad? Because it seems like Marvel (the superhero stuff) hit it's stride with 'Change' as their mantra, whereas DC pushes their characters in more subtle ways.
ReplyDeleteThe Nomad storyline is the resolution, I guess, of the englehart run I was thinking of (still written by him, I believe), when Cap finally traces the sinister conspiracy towards world domination that he has been fighting for a dozen or so issues to the White House, and a thinly-masked version of Nixon as its leader. It is this revelation that leads Cap to reject his moniker, and adopt the Nomad "Man without a Country) identity.
ReplyDeleteI agree that Marvel's approach of big change (Gwen Stacy's death, the Spiderclone, etc.) is ultimately less interesting and less influential on subsequent stuff than DC's subtler take (Denny O"Neal/Neal Adamks Batman comes to mind, as ral precursors of Frank Miller).
It's weird that Marvel couldn't keep it's oddities like Conan, Howard the Duck and the horror stuff going. It could have been like the Vertigo line 20 years earlier.
ReplyDeleteI think Marvel tried to do something vertigo-like two times in the seventies. Both involved larger, magazine-like publication formats (I think in order to get around the Comics code). First was the Conan-oriented Savage Tales, Savage Sword of Conan, and Deadly Hands of Kung Fu mags; later came the Epic line. I remember both had more "adult" content, but not quite as far as Vertigo. More sex and violence for Conan and Kung Fu; more erotic Science-Fiction art in Epic, a la Heavy Metal. Anyone else remember these?
ReplyDelete