Saturday, October 4, 2008

Favorite and Least Favorite Comics

I Vampire - a run I shared with my friend Shauna who was the 2nd person who I got to admit that comics could be cool. And how awesome to share with a girl the story of a 400 year old vampire with a soul and lost of ennui - emo vampires are the best kind I think. From Winkipedia...

In 1591, after being turned into a vampire himself, Lord Andrew Bennett turned his lover, Mary Seward, into a vampire, and she became corrupted by the power. She took the name Mary, Queen of Blood and created a group of vampires called The Blood Red Moon bent on taking over the world. The series followed Bennett into the modern day as he tried to undo his mistake and take down Mary and The Blood Red Moon.

He was helped by his two companions Deborah Dancer, a beautiful young woman who Bennett saved from Mary at Woodstock (and was also his girlfriend) and Dmitri Mishkin, a Russian man whom Bennett had rescued from Mary when Mishkin was a child.

To try and keep his humanity, Bennett made a vow to only drink the blood of animals and bottled human blood (which created a subtext of alcoholism).

Bennett has attempted suicide on several occasions to end his curse, and has also been brought back to life after each attempt due to a higher power, as seen in the 1988 run of Doctor Fate. During this run, we also see Andrew Bennett interact with the Lords of Chaos and Order to seek an end to time, which does occur due to the vampire's involvement but is later reversed. He also appeared in Day of Vengeance as a background character in the Oblivion Bar, which became Shadowpact's headquarters. He appears as a supporting character in Doctor Thirteen backup stories in the 2006 miniseries Tales of the Unexpected.




Atomic Robo - such a great concept well executed with steady concistantly good artwork.

Captain America - there was a time when Uncle Ben and Bucky were the only two characters in comics who were imune to be resurected but creating the character of the Winter Soldier to bring back Bucky was the single greatest character revival in the the past 25 years if not all time.

Rom - Spaceknight

For a comic book based on a toy Marvel Comics got a surprisingly amount of milage out of this concept.To build interest in the toy, Parker Brothers licensed the character to Marvel Comics which created a comic book featuring Rom. The comic expanded on the simple premise that Rom was a cyborg and gave him an origin, personality, set of supporting characters, villains, and one other vital ingredient -interaction with the rest of the Marvel Universe.Rom was a member of a group of humanoids who gave up their humanity and bodies to be reborn as space robots with the powwer they needed to rid both their solar system and others from the vicious DIRE WRAITHS; a shaped shifting alien species. He was armed with two devices - An ANALYZER to identify the hidden wraiths and a NEUTRALIZER to banish them all to LIMBO. He also had a convenient UNIVERSAL TRANSLATOR. This simple concept allowed Rom to move around the planet and interact with all the characters in the Marvel universe. This all led up to his eventual reuniting with the other spaceknights and his quest to regain his long lost and lamented humanity. I actually have a letter published in an issue of ROM that was read by a Vietnam vet who was spending his last months in a V.A. Hospital in Michigan. We wrote to each other (in the days before the internet) and talked comic books and life and after he died I recieved his last letter in a package that contained the first 35 issues of ROM. I had mentioned in my letter to the comic that I was searching for back issues of ROM and I guess he chose me to give that part of his collection to. The hospital told me that he had a storage locker full of comic long boxes and much of his collection went to hospitals and orphanages overseas.







Age of Apocalypse

Least Favorite

I am growing increasingly weary of these "events" like Secret Invasion and all of DC's latest Crisis projects. The suprise and joy seems to be sucked out of the big two but maybe that is because I have seen it all before.

No comments: