Articles with the Tag Gene Colan

Fifty Essentials in Fifty Days 43: Essential Doctor Strange Vol. 03

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Essential Doctor Strange Vol. 03
Steve Englehart, Marv Wolfman, Jim Starlin, Frank Brunner, Gene Colan and friends
Reprints: Dr Strange #1-29, Annual 1 and Tomb of Dracula #44-45 (June 1974- June 1978)
Get this for: Englehart and co trying to recapture the Ditko magic — three stars

I think it’s fair to say that every writer on Doctor Strange has tried to get out from under the shadow of Steve Ditko. In the first volume of
Essential Doctor Strange they did not succeed, but perhaps the writers in the third volume will fare better. They’re certainly not the least writers: Steve Englehart, Marv Wolfman, Jim Starlin and Roger Stern all have a go at Doctor Strange here.

Of the writers featured here, Englehart has the best chances. He was after all responsible for getting Dr Strange his own series again, together with Frank Brunner, through their work on Marvel Premiere. He starts strong, introducing Silver Dagger, a Catholic cardinal turned magician hunter, who in the first issue kills Doctor Strange and kidnaps Clea, his lover and disciple. Strange gets better of course, but it takes him five issues to put Silver Dagger away. In the sixth issue Gene Colan returns on the art duties, as do longtime Strange villains Umar and Dormammu in a plot to not only restore the latter one’s powers, but to make him master of Earth. In the end he’s only defeated by the powers of Gaea and every living creature on Earth — including the people reading the story…

The threats only get bigger for poor old Doctor Strange, having to face off against Eternity next for the fate of the Earth, failing to stop the destruction of the world in #12, only for it to be recreated the next issue. Everybody literally died that time, but was reborn a second time, something that would later in the volume be retconned by Marv Wolfman. It’s not the last time the universe is seemingly destroyed only to be recreated again — Wolfman does it as well, as does Jim Starlin in his Creators saga. This is no coincidence, as each writer has their own cosmic epic story to tell and what is more epic than the end of everything and only Doctor Strange remaining to put things right?

Yet lesser threats can work as well, as the crossover with Tomb of Dracula shows. When Strange’s servant Wong is bit and killed by Dracula, Doctor Strange goes looking for revenge only to fall victim to the vampire himself. He manages to escape in his astral body, but still has a hard time getting both himself and Wong cured and fails in destroying Dracula. After that it’s back to the big, existential menaces however, as Doc fights Satan, timetravels through America’s colonial history in honor of the bicentennial and confronts the menace of the Quadriverse and the Creators saga.

Reading this volume in one setting, rather than having read the individual issues spread out over four years, it’s not hard to see some patterns emerging — it’s not just the periodical destruction and recreation of the universe. There’s also the frequent depowering of Doctor Strange, as each writer finds reasons why he cannot use his magic this time. It is of course always difficult to write an almost omnipotent character like Doc Strange, who could end most threats with a handy spell or two. So either the villains need a power up or Strange needs a power down. Personally I feel either is a lazy choice and that’s the difference with the Lee/Ditko Doctor Strange; they didn’t take the easy way out. It takes effort and skill to keep Strange’s powers consistent and not cheat in getting him out of plot holes.

Another common plot device here is seeing Doc Strange being killed only to discover later that he managed to flee his body first in his astral form. I’ve got fewer problems with this, it is one of his established powers after all, but when used to much it can again be a crutch. The same goes for the eye of Agamotto, which is less used here however.

Frank Brunner starts out as the artist here and he’s is well suited to the title, as are his main succesors, Gene Colan, Jim Starlin, Ruby Nebres and Tom Sutton. Each of those artists is on the atmospheric end of the scale rather than the realistic, especially Colan. Lovely work by all of them and gorgeous to look at, even if some of it is hampered by the transition to black and white, as is the case with the P. Craig Russel drawn annual.

Some good tries, but the Ditko Doctor Strange is not equalled here.

Fifty Essentials in Fifty Days 40: Essential Captain America Vol. 03

books and books review, Comix
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Essential Captain America Vol. 03
Stan Lee, Gary Friedrich, Steve Englehart, Gene Colan and friends
Reprints: Captain America #127-156 (July 1970 – December 1972)
Get this for: Captain America goes relevant — four stars

The previous volumes of Essential Captain America were heavy on the action, with Cap fighting enemies like the Red Skull and his Sleepers, Hydra, Baron Zemo, A.I.M. and Modok, often working together with Nick Fury and SHIELD. These were all fairly uncomplicated stories, but while the action continues in this volume, something does change as Captain America goes relevant. Stan Lee had dropped hints before that Cap was unhappy with his life and in #128 he went to find himself by touring America — somewhat of a cliche yes, but not so much when Cap did it.

And even on the road he’s not free of his old enemies, as he’s attacked by Batroc’s Brigade and runs into the Red Skull yet again. Nothing much changed there then, but like in Spider-Man at the same time, Lee does notice and comments on the changing attitudes of seventies America, having Cap interfere in a campus dispute and such, though as usual it turns out some supervillain was behind it. The same was of course the case with the return of Bucky Barnes. While Captain America has once again met with the disappointment of not having Bucky back, his next partner does stick around.

In issue 133 the Falcon, introduced in the previous volume, returns. The very next issue the series changed name to Captain America and the Falcon, showing how important this partnership was. The stories change again, becoming more gritty and streetlevel, centered on New York and Harlem though of course the supervillains are never far behind. Much of the background tension in the series at this point is provided by the race issue, as the Falcon has to find his place as what the world sees as a Black sidekick to a white man. It’s all very heavyhanded of course, both under Lee and his successor Gary Friedrich. So for example in #143 there’s the People’s Militia wanting to burn Harlem to the ground to “send a message to the honkies” that the Black man won’t be confined to the ghetto anymore, who turn out to have been manipulated by the Red Skull.

Old winghead goes through a lot of writers this volume btw. Starting with Lee for fifteen issues, then Gary Friedrich takes over for seven, then Gerry Conway gets to do four and ending with Steve Englehart for another four. Conway’s short run is the worst, with a complete mischaracterisation of Cap’s and Nick Fury’s relationship. Englehart starts strong, bringing back the fifties Captain America and Bucky as paranoid rightwing bigots. Friedrich was his usual self, a slightly hipper, with-it Stan Lee.

Artwise, this volume starts off well, with Gene Colan being a good match for Cap’s adventures. He’s succeeded by John Romita, who is slightly too clean cut for my liking here. Sal Buscema is the last artist to grace this volume, he’s doing alright but not great. It’s always been that way with Captain America, never a title to be considered for its art, save for some brief shining moments.

Somewhat of a mixed volume here then, not unmissable but for the hardcore fan. Like me.

Fifty Essentials in Fifty Days 39: Essential Howard the Duck Vol. 01

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cover of Howard the Duck Vol. 01


Essential Howard the Duck Vol. 01
Steve Gerber, Gene Colan and friends
Reprints: Howard the Duck #1-27, annual 1, Marvel Treasury #12 and more (January 1976 – September 1978)
Get this for: Gerber’s best work for Marvel — five stars

Get down America! Essential Howard the Duck Vol. 1 collects the complete original run of Steve Gerber’s Howard the Duck, the greatest cult hero of seventies Marvel, the one comic that captured the spirit of the seventies. Whether that still makes it interesting thirty years onwards is another question entirely. A question everybody needs to answer themselves, but for me I found these stories still surprisingly relevant and good.

As you probably know, Howard got his start with a cameo appearance in an early issue of Gerber’s Man-Thing, just one casualty in a reality war, taken from his own Earth and trapped in a world he never made. He was an instant hit, got two solo adventures in Giant-Size Man-Thing (no sniggering please), then his own series. Steve Gerber wrote all his appearances, including a teamup with The Defenders in Marvel Treasury Edition #12. The series took off, became a cult hit and more than that, one of the few real breakout titles Marvel had in the late seventies, popular enough to get a newspaper strip and much later a not very good movie. But that was after Gerber had left, as Marvel’s higher management fucked him over. All his writing on Howard was of course work for hire and hence continued by other hands after he quit, but none of it was any good. Howard the Duck only worked for Gerber, because he was Gerber.

It looks so easy, the Howard the Duck formula. Create some absurd villain, add a dash of parody, mix in a bit of social commentary and don’t forget the cynicism, add an ill humoured duck (or drake rather) and his girlfriend, then serve it all up with standard Marvel superhero soap opera plots. Yet only for Gerber would this work. Most other writers would just overdo the parody elements, making the Duck into a secondrate Mad imitator or got too absurd and Howard stopped to make sense. It’s the easiest trap to fall into as a writer, to think satire and humour are easy, that you can use a formula to produce it, that all it takes is some obvious parodies and some dime a dozen absurdity to make a Howard the Duck story.

It’s the same as with the old Batman television series, often imitated but never equalled by both other tv shows or comics, because none of those imitators ever got their heads round the idea that the secret was to treat Batman and his world seriously, that there are rules. In Howard’s case the menaces might be even more absurd but Howard still has to deal with them: a nine foot ginger bread man can still kill him if he doesn’t eat him first. Gerber wrote Howard the Duck exactly as he would a more “serious” superhero series and Howard’s villains like Space Turnip Man might be dumb or crazy, but they make sense in their own context. More importantly, Howard always is more than just a comic fowl (sorry), but a true tragic figure, a reverse Ben Grimm, a human trapped in a world of monstrous talking hairless apes.

What made Gerber’s Howard the Duck more than just the lazy parody his successors turned it into is that it was the story of his own struggle of living in seventies America. He can be incredibly blatant in this, (e.g. the Reverend Yucc and his Yuccies) and there is a lot of angst about politicians and Madison Avenue brainwashing and all that, but these are just the most obvious ways in which Gerber’s own emotions seep in the stories. The infamous issue sixteen, a fill-in issue needed because Gerber was blowing his deadlines, is the best example. Instead of the usual reprint or inventory issue, Gerber instead offers a stream of consciousness illustrated essay on his own hangups about Howard, a dialogue between the writer and his creation. It’s the highlight of the series.

Though Gerber was the driving force behind Howard the Duck Gene Colan should be mentioned as well. He portrayed all absurdities with the same ease as he would’ve illustrated a Daredevil or Tomb of Dracula story, without drawing undue attention to the wackiness. It doesn’t hurt that the man could draw either.

Howard the Duck was perhaps the best Marvel put out in the seventies. You need to have this volume.

Fifty Essentials in Fifty Days 19: Captain America vol 02

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Essential Captain America vol 02
Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Jim Steranko, Gene Colan and friends
Reprints: Captain America #103-126 and more (July 1968 – June 1970)
Get this for: Steranko and the old guard changeth — Four stars

Essential Captain America vol. 2 starts where the first volume left off: with slam bang action by Lee and Kirby. They put poor old Cap through his paces, fighting the Red Skull and his band of Nazi cutthroats, Batroc, the Swordsman and the Living Laser, a robot double of himself, the mighty Trapster and his own worst fears manipulated by Dr Faustus. Lee and Kirby fit a lot in every issue, but keep the subplots to a minimum, the only continuing storyline being the romance of Cap and Sharon Carter. You feel they have a formula here for old Cap that, while not as original as Fantastic Four or Spider-Man could be kept up indefinitely. But then everything changes with #110, when Jim Steranko comes aboard.

You could call Steranko the first Image artist, the first one to make his art more important than the story. If you look at Kirby, even his wildest experiments here or elsewhere are always in service to the plot, with even the splash pages determined by it. With Steranko this is no longer the case. In his just four issues of Captain America he has more splash pages almost than Kirby had over his entire previous run, all more concerned with the Rule of Cool than the demands of the story. In fact, in some cases they work actively against the story, as with the Big Reveal in his last issue. But damn if it doesn’t look gorgeous.

Steranko gets away with that sort of stuff because he’s such a good artist. You remember his covers and his splash pages, but his other pages are gorgeous too. Much more than Kirby or any other artist working back then he also consciously designs his pages and panel layout as a whole. So in the opening page of issue 113, he translates the recap of the previous issue into a television report on the death of Cap, with a page filling shot of the camera man and reporter, a line of inset panels in the shape of tv screens through the middle. Later on he has Madame Hydra recalling her origin, with one big panel at the top of the page showing her in control of HYDRA, followed by a quick succession of smaller panels closing up on details of her face as she looks at the horrifically scarred right hand side of her face (only hinted at), to explode in the last panel, short but wide, as we see she has shattered the mirror. Steranko is great at establishing mood this way, using cinametic influences on the comics page in a way that nobody else does at the time. It brings a grandeur to these somewhat silly stories not seen before or since.

Not that the artist coming after him are bad. There’s two fill in issues by John Romita and John Buscema respectively, before Gene Colan takes over, another great mood artist. He stays around for the rest of the issues reprinted here, which means he’s around for the introduction of the Falcon, another pioneering Black superhero and actually the first proper African-American superhero. He’s introduced here without fuzz, without calling out his Blackness, but just as an ally for Captain America at his very lowest, with the Red Skull holding the reality warping Cosmic Cube, having swapped bodies with him and dropped him back on Exile Island, where his old Nazi “friends” are itching to kill who they think is the Skull. Falcon rescues Cap, Cap returns the favour by training him into a superhero and together they defeat but the Nazis and the Skull…

On a certain level these stories are on the dumb side, pure entertainment without the sophistication of Marvel’s flagship titles. To me that’s part of their charm though. About the only thing that really annoys me here is Cap’s attitude to Sharon Carter, his love interest and SHIELD field agent, who he wants to give up her dangerous work to protect her from suffering the same fate at his old partner Bucky. Male chauvenist pig.