Paul Kirk Manhunter 100 Page Super Spectacular

Continuing my series of Lost 100 Pager Super Spectaculars from the 70's, I present this edition featuring the Archie Goodwin, Walt Simonson version of Paul Kirk, Manhunter.

The main artwork was created by the incredibly talented Jan "Reno" Maniquis, a name some regular visitors may recognize as Reno is a longstanding commenter on the FBU. In order to get the illustration to fit in my 100 Pager format, I had to crop it in such a way that some of the cool details Reno provided are missing, so below, I present the uncropped version for everyone to enjoy. (Click to enlarge)

 You can check out more of Reno's art at his website: http://capsulezone.wordpress.com/

As we were working on this art, Reno picked the Irv Novick version of Talia's costume to use for this illustration - a costume I only vaguely remembered. I tend to think of Talia as always dressed as she was on the cover of Detective 444 (another 100 Pager). I think Reno's choice was the better selection as purple costume has a more Eastern flair.

As to why I chose Paul Kirk, Manhunter for a 100 pager - I must admit to wanting to read more of his adventures. I've talked about my love for that series before, but it's far better that he remain dead. I don't think the current editorial climate at DC is quite the right place for a comic like the old Archie Goodwin, Walt Simonson Manhunter.

On the flipside, I will say that Dynamite's current The Shadow series has done a good job of capturing some of the old Bronze Age Manhunter feel. While the artwork is not as exciting as Simonson's, the exotic locales and intrigue often remind of what I enjoyed so much in the old Manhunter stories.


Feel free to post a suggestion for another Lost 100 Pager in the comments section!

- Jim

Download Maskarado Adventures for Free

Today we have a new Free Comic ready for download courtesy of longtime friend of the FBU Jan "Reno" Maniquis. Some of you may be familiar with Reno's work from seeing it here on our Lost 100 Pagers series, but you may not be aware that besides being a fan of classic comics, Reno is also an established comic professional with an impressive list of industry work. Today's comic is an original creation written and drawn by Reno featuring a character called Maskarado.


[ Download Maskarado Here ]

Here's Reno's overview of the character:

Maskarado's powers were bequeathed to him by a benevolent alien (kind of like Green Lantern), which comes from the mask he wears. He can fly, has super strength (around Spider-Man level) and is an excellent hand-to-hand combatant.

The current Maskarado is actually the second one, selected after the first one retired to raise a family. The first Maskarado's adventures (he was a cop) were published in 1992 in comic strip form for a local daily newspaper, Tempo. It ran for 170 issues. I resurrected it as an independent comic around 2000 or thereabouts, passing on the mask and the torch to a much younger guy named Raymond Pacheco (a creative director in an advertising agency). He's been Maskarado ever since.

The ad at the end of the book is for the collected edition (in English!) of the first four issues of the independent comic, which can be purchased at flipreads.com, a Filipino digital book distributor, although anyone around the world can purchase books there. It retails at their site for around $4 (give or take) so it's not a bad deal. :)

I agree. 4 issues for $4 is not a bad deal at all!

Thank you for the free preview issue Reno!

- Jim

Swamp Thing Lost 100 Page Super Spectacular

Today I've got a new cover from my collection of Lost 100 Pagers. This one is another spectacular contribution from Reno, who blessed us with the wonderful Paul Kirk, Manhunter 100 Pager last month. This one features DC's two classic swamp monsters caught in a life and death struggle: Swamp Thing and Solomon Grundy! I've also included some of my other favorite DC Hulks - Blockbuster, The Shaggy Man and The Invulnerable Enemy!

As with the last entry Reno gave us, I'm also including the original artwork so you can see it in all of its glory here below. (Click to see full size.)

Strangely, with their shared environs, you would think that Grundy and Swampy would have battled quite a few times over the years (decades) but the only instance that I can find didn't even occur in Swamp Thing's book, but was instead in DC Presents with Superman.

My memories of this particular story are a bit vague but I remember it being interesting with the Alec Holland Swamp Thing running experiments on Solomon Grundy's biochemistry to determine what kept him alive, only to discover he wasn't really alive - an answer which really only leads to more questions.

I've always had a soft spot for Solomon Grundy as he appeared in one of the first comics I ever bought. Over the years, there have been many different writers takes on the character (as one might imagine for a popular villain from the Golden Age) The writer who did the best job resolving the disparity between all these different takes was James Robinson in the pages of Starman, wherein he showed us that Grundy was sort of a roulette wheel of personality variations and each time he died, he came back with a different personality.

Recently, James Robinson created another incarnation of Grundy for the New 52 Earth 2 comic. This one has him as a sort of gothy version of Swamp Thing  who talks like a sci-fi channel demon and refers to himself as the Man Of Grey.

This is really Grundy in name only, as outside of the decaying white skin, there's not much else that is recognizable about the character. And while a lot of old school comic fans have written off the character as dead upon seeing this latest version, we all know you can't kill Grundy that easy. He'll be back in old form before you know it.

- Jim

World Of Krypton Lost 100 Pager

This weekend in the US, we are celebrating Father's Day, a holiday where we honor our patriarchs by giving them Home Depot gift cards, Burn Notice DVD sets and Glenn Beck books. ;)

In honor of this grand tradition, I have devised a special Father's Day themed Lost 100 Pager featuring artwork by the ever amazing Jan "Reno" Maniquis:

While I came up with the initial concept of a gladiatorial battle between Jor-El and Thomas Wayne, Reno really exceeded my expectations! The addition of the cheering Khunds in the background was his idea and an magnificent addition. I really like how he used a subdued color scheme for the Khunds which allowed the Dominator to stand out appropriately. Check out the original version (sans captions and logos) here (click to enlarge):

For those of you who may not recognize it, Thomas Wayne is wearing his Masquerade Ball Bat costume from Detective Comics 235. [ full synopsis from ComicVine.com ]

I originally thought that was the only appearance of that costume, but while googling for references for this cover, I found it showed up other places.

Here it was in Untold Legends of the Batman 1 drawn by John Byrne.

And more recently it showed up in the animated Brave and the Bold cartoon:

While the original existence of this proto-Bat suit was erased by 1985's Crisis on Infinite Earths, I wouldn't put it past someone to revisit this idea.  (As recent Batman scribe Scott Snyder reintroduced the Bronze Age concept of Batman having a long lost brother.)

As to World of Krypton, that's a post for another day.

Have a great weekend!

- Jim

Introducing the Collected Classics Wishlist

No blog from Pierre as he's knee deep mopping up a mess at the animation studio. I don't have a lot of details on the problem except that involves some snafu with backgrounds. So, I'm going to use today to introduce a new feature to this blog in my usual, rambling way. ;)

It start with this - Monday in the comments section, I wondered what Bob Harris, the new Editor in Chief at DC had been doing since he left Marvel back in 2000, and Reno filled me in (Thank You Reno!)...
Harras was in charge of DCs collections (TPBs, hardcovers, and the like) for the past five years (I think)

In thinking about it - that makes a lot of sense to me as I can see how DC has made several improvements to their collected editions in the past 5 years with a couple that feel like they were ideas borrowed from Marvel's collected editions.

For one, the big black and white DC Showcase editions must have been inspired by the Marvel Essentials editions. Unless I'm mistaken, the first one was the 2005 Jonah Hex DC Showcase which came out the same week the new Jonah Hex comic was launched. (I've always thought that was especially well executed publishing launch.)



The other idea area Marvel seems to have influenced DC is in the idea of collecting classic storylines in hard cover collections. Marvel does this with their excellent Marvel Classic Premiere editions and DC has a few in their DC Classics Library.

I'm a total sucker for these collected editions! I love getting all of the old stories bound in a hardcover with nice paper (though you could argue the Marvel paper is better than the DC versions...) And while Marvel seems to be doing a great job putting out new ones (at a pretty brisk clip) DC is painfully slow updating their catalogue. (Which reminds me - I wonder if Harras was the guy who cancelled the Captain Marvel vs the Monster Society collected edition?)

And this brings me (finally) to the point of today's post: I have a few requests for storylines I would like to see collected. For instance, how about one that collects the fun-filled Futureshock storyline from Marvel Team Up?



For those of you not familiar with this bit of Marvel history, this was a time travel story that starts with Spider-man and the Scarlet Witch journeying back to the Salem Witch trials to stop a villain named the Dark Rider. As the story progresses, the battle is joined by the Vision, Dr. Doom and Moondragon. While the heroes are triumphant in defeating the Dark Rider, there is a subplot involving Cotton Mather that ends in an especially Bronze Age fashion that has always stayed with me. (I won't give it away here.)

After the fight, Dr. Doom thanks Spider-man for his assistance in the battle by having his time machine bounce the webslinger into the future Marvel universe of Killraven (and eventually) Deathlok.

Spanning six issues this strikes me as the perfect length to be collected in a Marvel Classics Premiere hardcover. Here's my mockup of the cover...



I think the timing to put out such a volume would be perfect as Brian Bendis (of all people) just *recently* referred to this storyline in the pages of the recent Avengers...



I don't know if Marvel will actually make this MCP hardcover, but if they do, I have more when they are done.

How about you? What classic storylines from Marvel or DC would you add to the Collected Classics Wishlist?

- Jim

Zatanna Lost 100 Pager

It's been a while since I've presented a new entry in my Lost 100 Page Super Spectaculars, but at the request of some of the guys in the Back Issue Facebook group, I decided to commission my favorite Lost 100 Pager artist, Reno Maniquis to come up with art for a Zatanna 100 Pager! (Click to see the full sized version.)

This time, Reno went the extra mile and came up with dialogue for the cover, so the clever play on the word Fate is his idea. Here is his original artwork. 

We actually ended up with two versions of this cover because Zatanna wore several different outfits during the Bronze Age. Here is a second version in a different outfit.

We both said we disliked the black jump suit/pony tail combo. While it's probably more true to the Bronze Age, it was just a horrible design.  Here's how it looked on the cover of Justice League in the issue it was introduced.

 As you can see, it was better off the way it was.

- Jim

More Unseen Art

In the comments on Monday's Post, artist Reno Maniquis noted that he's worked on some projects that never came to fruition. I did some digging and found the art he was talking about.

The first up was going to be a Zuda pitch called hell-bent but Zuda folded before this project got going good.

The other was a possible Artifact story with a new character called Jet Pack Jenny

While neither of those projects panned out, I've enjoyed working with Reno on the Lost 100 Pagers he's created. He never fails to impress me with his work on those Bronze Age homages.


Another artist who I've worked with in the past (and most recently completed the So Falls The World Flashback Universe story is Jerry Hinds. Here are some awesome character sketches he developed for a sort of Jim Starlin Adam Warlock type of project. Again, this would have been a good project for Zuda.

The star to the story was a character called Judas Moonstone

His Allies were the enchantress Baba Yaga

And an imp named Toadflax

The villain of the series was a character called Nightshade

I still have more unseen art, but I'll save it for another day.

- Jim

Collected Comics: The Return of the New Gods

Last week I introduced a new series called the Collected Classics Wishlist where I bring up classic comic runs from the past that I think should be collected in a hard cover. At the end of the article I asked for suggestions for other such collections and Reno and Trey both nominated the Gerry Conway/Don Newton Return of the New Gods series from 1978.

Here is my cover for such an edition.



Because buying comics from Spinner Racks was such a haphazard affair back in the 70's, I missed out on most of this run, only picking up the DC First Issue Special and the very last issue. Apparently, I missed 5 other issues with artwork by Mike Vosburg and Rich Buckler as well as Newton.



The career of Don Newton is one of those sad stories in comics in that I think that poor health, distance from New York and an untimely death at the age of 50 kept him from being a bigger star in the industry. Some of his best remembered work was on this New Gods series as well as his classic work on DC's Captain Marvel and his long run on the Batman series.

As Trey mentioned last week, this run is most likely not considered part of DC Continuity anymore, but the Don Newton artwork inked by Joe Rubinstein in makes it well worth collecting!

My Phantom Revamp

Last week, Cash Gorman mentioned that both Dynamite AND the SyFy channel had Phantom revamps in the works.

Well, this week, some art from the Dynamite series was released, and it was met with quite the number of moans and groans from comic fans. And not just old geezers like me. If you haven't seen the images in question, then behold...



Now, I don't actually think this comic is going to feature Lee Falk's character running through the jungle in nothing but a loin cloth and leather boots - this just strikes me as a the type of evocative image Alex Ross likes to use (like Captain America with a scarred back.) What I'm more concerned with is the story concept as detailed at Newsarama...

As we begin the series, there is no Phantom. The historic line stops at Kit Walker the 21st, who has forsaken the mantle of The Ghost Who Walks and is enjoying a life with a growing family, while handling the day-to-day affairs of the Walkabout Foundation, a philanthropy created by one of the previous Walkers/Phantoms to help support charities benefiting Bengala, and the surrounding nations of continental Africa...

This seems right in line with what the SyFy Channel is pitching...



I don't know - doesn't that show look more like M.A.N.T.I.S. than jungle adventuring Phantom?

Now I understand my fanboy sensibilities are completely at odds with what the kids want (though I don't think Hollywood is any closer to figuring that out than I am...) but this whole tact of main character who rejects his legacy and then must accept it - not only is that played, it's shortsighted.

That's not enough to build a series on. It's what you PITCH the series with. After that, once the hero has made his journey of self discovery or whatever and accepted the mantle of The Phantom (or Green Hornet or Captain Midnight or whoever) then all you have is Roger Corman's Black Scorpion - it takes more than that to build a series.

What really confuses me is that SyFy was savy enough to green light the groundbreaking Battlestar Galatica series, but damn if they have presented anything with the same verve and vigor since then.

Really, I think a better *modern* treatment of the Phantom would be this:

Jim Shelley's Phantom Revamp Pitch:
A small airplane crashes in the jungle with 12 people surviving. Their only chance to survive is to travel through the jungle on their own to reach civilization. Like Lost, we discover things about the 12 as the series goes on. The Phantom is ever on the perimeter - doing his own thing, watching over them, but his motivations are unknown to us. When he appears it's a moment that can cause fear or relief for our travelers - depending on who they might be. He's the Others and the Smoke Monster rolled up in one. We also get the occaisional anachronistic dinosaur or Roman Soldier ruled lost city thrown in.

See? You get a Phantom that can be true to the original idea, but you also get modern day angst and conflict. The trick is to keep The Phantom mysterious and wonderous. Not turn him into just another vigilante with a gun.

As to the Dynamite version, does anyone know if this means that Moonstone will have to stop publishing their version? I would think the answer would be yes, but in the recent past the Phantom liscensing wasn't always exclusive.

Of late, Moonstone has done some really nice things with the character, most recently was the cool Captain Action/Phantom team up drawn by FBU friend Reno Maniquis



Strangely, the Moonstone Publishing site doesn't seem to be available today. I hope this is just a momentary glitch and not a sign of some other problems. I know Moonstone recently upgraded their website (for much the better) so it's probably just a server error.

Anyway, for today's free comics, I present two issues of a guy who (as far as I know) has thankfully not gone through a recent revamping...Captain Midnight.


[ Captain Midnight 23 ]

[ Captain Midnight 46 ]
- Enjoy!

Aquaman (and Namor) vs the Creature of the Black Lagoon

Here's one of two Lost 100 Pagers I'm presenting this month in honor of Halloween. This one features the undersea battle we would a like to see but probably never will: Aquaman vs The Creature of the Black Lagoon!



The artwork for this cover comes to us from the talented Randy Valiente who was recommended to me by Reno.

Here is the actual art without the cover embellishments:


If you want to see more of Randy's art, check out his website and deviant art page at:
www.randyvaliente.carbonmade.com  and www.randyvaliente.deviantart.com

Bonus: While looking for reference materials for this cover artwork, I stumbled across what looks like someones mock ups for a Sub-Mariner vs Creature of the Black Lagoon movie. Does anyone know the origin of these images:




I also found something I remembered seeing before - some panels from a actual Sub-Mariner comic story (Sub-Mariner #35 published in 1954) in which he fought a CotBL looking opponent.


On the DC side, the closest approximation or analogue to the CotBL didn't appear in Aquaman (as far as I know) but rather in the Legion of Super-heroes issue 202...

Where we were introduced to the Dave Cockrum designed Devil Fish (albeit, this creature lacks a lot of the distinctive elements of the Universal sea beast. I suspect that was partly intentional.)

If anyone knows of a better DC cameo by the Creature please let me know.

- Jim

The Demon vs The Phantom Stranger

Continuing my Halloween themed Lost 100 Pagers, I present a cover featuring two of my favorite Bronze Age arcane adventurers:  Jack Kirby's Demon and the mysterious Phantom Stranger.

 

The art for this cover was designed and created by FBU Goto Artist Reno Maniquis, who came up with the interesting notion of Etrigan trapping the Phantom Stranger in a pentagram (which strikes me as something that might actually work given that the Stranger is often alluded to as being a fallen angel of some sort.)

Here is the original artwork without my 100 Pager embellishments:

As I was working on this cover, I thought about how many times DC has presented the Demon in a regular title. As a refresher, here's what I recalled:

First there was his initial run by creator Jack Kirby (click to see this page in full size)

Sadly, Kirby's run didn't last nearly long enough. After Kirby left DC to go back to Marvel, the character would languish only appearing in a few Brave and the Bolds (which is where I discovered him.)

His next solo series - which I was eagerly waiting for upon first hearing about in the mid 80's was with rising star Matt Wagner, creator of Mage, an independent series I had enjoyed.

 

I had high hopes for this series, but was greatly disappointed by it at the time. To be honest, I don't remember much about it (I have a vague memory of the Etrigan and Jason Blood being separated, which is always a mistake) but other than that, no details stand out. I should check it out again to see if it was really as bad as I my younger self thought.

From there, the character would make a few cameos in some 80's comics with his most notable being in Alan Moore's Swamp Thing run. It would be awhile (1990) before he got another run in a full blown series - this time written by Alan Grant and pencilled by Val Semeiks.

I tried a few issues from this run, but it never really struck a chord with me. It may have been a bit too jokey for my tastes (perhaps emulating the jovial tone of Giffen's Justice League?) On the other hand, I've seen it convincingly argued that this version of the Demon is this most definitive (outside of the Kirby run) and my tastes in comics and art have changed quite a bit in the last 20 years, so it's possible I would enjoy the series more now. I will probably round up the first 12 issues and give it another go.

Next up is another near miss I'm afraid (based on the short length of the run) when John Byrne took a shot at the character.

This run wasn't bad (as most Byrne stuff tends to be pretty solid) but the title didn't really ignite with modern readers, most of which were only familiar with Byrne as that crazy guy who is always getting his rather incendiary message board post reported on Bleeding Cool.

The last entry in the list presented a non-rhyming Etrigan who was mostly Demon In Name Only. Paul Cornell's Demon Knights.

The premise of this series really had me excited but the overly large cast of characters (none of which really seemed to actually IN character) grew wearisome. The series felt a bit like it was a story Cornell had dreamed up with other characters and he was shoe horning elements of the DC universe into it to fulfill his monthly obligations.

Which brings us to now? With so many incarnations of the Demon having come before (and only the 90's version lasting very long) one has to wonder what will the next one be like? And how long will it last?

Only time will tell.

Happy Halloween!

- Jim