I just finished Copra (Round One collection). I've been eyeing these books for a few years because of the quality of the books. The books are an absolute joy to hold in your hand! But unfortunately I found the story to be an utterly boring mess. Won't be picking up Round Two.
I am a big fan of EC comics. Picked up an original Tales From The Crypt issue 23. All EC comic covers shown are art by the amazing Al Feldstein. Reprint copy from 1994 with original from 1951,
Cool, nice to see the comparison. I have the Russ Cochran oversized hardback slipcover collections of Haunt, Vault and Crypt. Not to everyone's taste because they are b/w but i think they are great. The only downside of EC publications i can see, is the ridiculous over-use of exclamation marks. They!! Do!! My!! Head!! In!!
Now that's just cool as fuck to look at in general! I get all warm and fuzzy looking at old comic book art from everything before it all became digital. You gotta appreciate the love of the craft and the time used to make each comic book in those era's.
Yeah man, especially TV tie-in stuff that is actually pretty well drawn and printed. Some of that stuff can be pretty dire.
More of a fun novelty than a truly decent comic (its OK). Picked this up a while ago randomly in a charity shop. Harvey Comics 1993. I would say whoever designed the cover is a Queen fan!
I bought this ZOIDS annual at a boot sale for 20p. I was pleasantly surprised how good the contents and artwork were, better than the average tie-in annual to be sure. Published by Marvel (London) 1986
i haven’t been up on all the happenings in marvel/dc, but i just picked up immortal hulk, and holy shit, it is so good! a friend recommended it to me without telling me anything. i was pretty hesitant since most of the hulk arcs i’ve tried have fallen flat for me. but this one, this one is awesome and i think most of the comic-reading people on this board would dig it. don’t want to give away anything if anyone’s not in the know already
Best part of that Strange Tales cover is the ogling villains they've added. That is beachside surf story just waiting to be told. Too short to really be of great value or interest, but at least (from appearances) I would say this AF #15 looks to be a good deal better than 'fair' to me. Man sells comic collection worth £350k
Long, long, long-time fave of mine, Herr Allison. Great to see him on a real come-up, of late... well-deserved!
I bought an old Avengers Annual 1978 (published in Great Britain) the other day which features the stories 'The Name is Yellowjacket' and 'Til Death do us Part'. Weirdly at the back is a Conan story 'The Song of Red Sonya'. I assume this was random filler to get the page count up to Annual size or does Conan the Barbarian have a connection to the Avengers in some way?
The Marvel versus of Conan was heavily linked to the Avengers titles in the 70s and 80s. Most of the publication in the UK was done in the B&W reprints of the Marvel stories, published as 'The Mighty World of Marvel' (see this link [and 2 and 3] for some brief info), which went through cycles in actual print title, but featured several iterations with the Conan stories (mostly Savage Sword as I recall). The title was lead for a short period by it's own comic, but then became absorbed into the Avengers weekly. Since these reprints during the late 70s actually encompassed a plethora of stories/titles (depending on the period), alongside the featured ones (with Hulk and Spider-Man), including Fantastic Four, Daredevil, Luke Cage, Nick Fury, etc., Conan stories were a regular component. I think by the time Spider-Man took over/gained prominence sword and sorcery had had its day and it started having more features with X-men which were more popular. The weeklies themselves can actually still be found very cheaply, are great reads from silver and bronze age titles, feature some amazing classic art and great stories. I actually like seeing some of the B&W prints (and what is really interesting is how some cover art was actually changed from the US printing**). Anyhow..... back to Conan, some examples below of the different versions this was incorporated: Conan standalone title: Conan w/ the Avengers title: Hulk title w/ Conan story inside: So I think that it likely something connected to the annuals as well, i.e. they were trying to increase visibility to a title they already had publishing rights to, but which was decided the market wouldn't go in for on its own. * caveat - I am not a knowledgeable comic nerd, this is just my understanding as I was unfamiliar with these titles until moving here ** more on that for anyone that wants it
@ultrakaiju Interesting stuff mate, thanks. I bought a biggish pile of good condition 'Savage Sword' a few years ago at a boot sale, they are so much more fun to read than the Dark Horse paperback collection I already had. The actual comics are a bit larger format too, which is cool.
No worries man. Always happy to share and discuss such things. As I said I only learned this myself from having discovered these cool weeklies and, being fascinated, did a bit of research on them. Because they are so abundant, you can easily get a decent run together to follow some storylines. And because they are larger size and thicker (more pages) than standard US comics, you can really get some decent fun out of them. When I was out of work, I was regularly picking up reading copies for just over 1£ at my local secondhand bookshop, which helped pass the time and keep my sane; I even found some 10p bargains. In fact, I actually have a stack sitting next to me as I type this. Always been a massive Conan fan since I was very young. Since the Savage Sword title did not have to conform to the CCA restrictions (being a 'magazine') you can really get some really great stories there.
Okay, just one more short post on the matter, because this set off another round of rabbit-hole reading for me once upon a time, so why not? An example: A classic cover, as I am sure is generally agreed. However, this raises so many questions for me. Aside from the decision to make changes for different audiences/markets, how does this mesh with integrity and respect to the artists? Were Trimpe/Romita/Saladino informed of the change (did they even know these exist)? Who were these nameless (?) artists reworking some of the masters for the UK weeklies? It's a head scratcher. The issues covering the Wolverine origin story (#198 and 199) did have a new splash pages added (by Ron Wilson) into the second, so maybe there is a connection there.
@ultrakaiju Nice. Couldn't that be the same artist reworking it? Like a redo if they see things they don't like in the original, and they had to redo it anyway because the film was lost? Or something like that. Its a cool comparison, thanks for sharing! Its funny, I noticed something similar a while ago. I have a 1973 paperback 'Asterix in Switzerland' and also a 1976 smaller format version of the same title. The covers appear the same at first glance but when i looked closer, i could see the light source on the 1973 is much stronger, so i assumed the colourist had reworked the colour around the original line art. But when you look even closer its evident that many little details in the original work have been changed, either that or the whole cover has been drawn again extremely closely to the original but with many small adjustments. Its the first time ive noticed this between older and newer Asterix books. They both certainly look drawn by Uderzo, I wonder why he had to change it?
Yeah, it could totally be the same artist as well, I really don't know. Outside of the obvious, e.g. the wider magazine format actually allowing a 'widescreen' shot of the same scene, I figure that the tone (i.e. of Hulk) was tamed out a bit to make it a little more kid-friendly for the UK. Which is sort of unfortunate, given what an impressive cover it is. I think the art isn't quite matching, but certainly it could be by the same hand perhaps. What I find especially interesting is though, it does not just appear to be a redo of this one component, as you can notice a lot of little details (e.g. background around Wendigo, and his body angle) which seem to have been altered between the two versions. I could be that these were two original proofs done by the artist (maybe one as an earlier sketch), and Marvel decided to use one as the final cover version. There could be loads of these, and the UK weeklies have some amazing action-oriented covers (to grab those sales) so I am sure there are other examples as well; this was just one I pulled out from firsthand experience. I have a fair number of the Star Wars weeklies too, and they tended to have completely unique artwork (some much better than others), oftentimes unrelated to the story inside! https://manvspink.com/blog/star-wars-weekly-marvel-uk-comic-1978/ https://www.starwars.com/news/9-marvel-star-wars-covers-youve-never-seen
Still digging black hammer and today I started Saga Vol 1. I flipped through issue one years ago and I thought it was dumb HOWEVER..after finishing volume 1, I'm hooked.
^ Word. Such a well-written yarn, front to back. I highly recommend tracking down affordable copies of the hardback, they make for a most luxurious read. Just oversized enough and beautifully designed. Are you reading Vaughn's other current SF soap, Paper Girls? Very different but equally, if not more so, satisfying as Saga. Splash o' the day: Git yr Ziritt on.