Category: Back-Issue Gold
Those Old 80’s Marvel Comics….Photo Covers?!!
Man oh man how I love a good comic book cover! So much that I dedicate blog posts as often as possible focusing on my favorite comic book covers of all time. Well I’m not sure if you remember way back in the 1980’s but they had a string of issues where there was no cover artist. Instead they decided that they’d give us some live action superhero action! Now this sounds like a wonderful idea today, but back then it was a bit more difficult to really get the superhero look down on film. However these issues were ones as a kid I never forgot so let’s take another quick look at those legendary Marvel “photo” covers!
Comic Book Cover of the Week: Don’t Fear The Man-Thing!
I’ve gotta say I just fucking love The Man-Thing! So here’s a great comic book cover, an oldie but goodie! This rad cover features a truly frightening scenario of our favorite swamp dwelling superhero as some unsuspecting couple from the 70’s stumble upon The Man-Thing! Damn I mean can you imagine opening the door and seeing that guy standing there! I’m still hoping we’ll get to see a kick ass version of Man-Thing in a Marvel movie. They attempted it once with less than stellar results, but get the right FX team behind the Man-Thing and you could have one amazing creepy ass horror hero! Check this rad classic cover by Gil Kane!
Comic Book Cover of the Week: PLASTIC MAN Vs. Monster Sewer Sludge?!
I had thoughts this morning for some reason about the 1979 Plastic Man cartoon! It made me wanna feature a cool old classic Plastic Man cover. This one from 1966 sees Plastic Man caught down in the sewers battling a creature created from meat by products and sludge?! Yep! Yuck! Plastic Man had some weird ass stories and villains back in the day and this cover is one of the coolest from that era wonderfully drawn by Ramona Fradon.
While we’re on topic lets take a peek back at that Plastic Man Cartoon!
And let’s not forget there was an elastic Plastic Man action figure too:
also here’s Robert Smith from The Cure as Plastic Man for the hell of it:
Also Plastic Man on the Superfriends! Whatta team up!
and some live action Plastic Man!
Comic Cover of the Week: When John Byrne Tried to Draw Every Marvel Character EVER!!
One of my favorite comic books of the 1980’s was “The Official Handbook of The Marvel Universe” (Deluxe Edition)! Yeah it wasn’t a real comic book per say but damn was it amazing! Back in 1985 all the way through 1988 Marvel released this 20 issue deluxe edition which featured EVERYTHING you could ever want to know about pretty much EVERY character in Marvel comics. This included their real names, specific powers, how much they could bench press, their history, their hometown, yeah I mean EVERYTHING. I spent hours and hours of my time reading these and brushing up on my favorite characters history. This must have taken some serious time to document as it listed the main life events of the heroes and villains that took place in the pages of the comic books. A complete history up until that point. This was a time when Marvel was truly an amazing company…
Each character was drawn by a different comic book artist and it included pictures of the characters in action taken from panels in the comics they’d appeared in. But my whole point here was to talk about the covers which the majority of them were drawn by my personal favorite John Byrne! The cool thing about the covers was that they could all be connected as one super duper long cover of the characters running. So Byrne pretty much tried to include all the characters from each alphabetical issue!! I’d love to see a video montage that follows each issue until it’s end! But until then I’ll include as many of these covers I can find right here! Check this out!
Comic Book Cover of the Week: Dale Keown Rules The Hulk!!!
We’ve got some artists in the comic book industry who really were meant to draw certain characters and one who always needs mention when it comes to The Incredible Hulk is Dale Keown!! Yep it really doesn’t get much better than Keown’s version of the Hulk & from 1990 to ’92 when he took over the art on the title it was clear his version of the Hulk would go down in history as one of the best. He’s right up there with Sal Buscema and John Byrne in my book as all time best Hulksters. In fact back in 1990 his artwork on Hulk reminded me a lot of Byrne’s version of the character. Keown would go on to Image to introduce us all to his own “Hulk” type character, “Pitt”. Anyway Here’s a great Keown cover from 1990 that shows he’s one of the best Hulk artists of all time!!
Oh and if you still don’t think Keown was one of the best Hulk artists ever here’s a few more images to prove my point!
Comic Book Cover of the Week: When Cerebus Met Wolverine…I mean Wolveroach!
Back in the 1980’s I loved the indie comic Cerebus, mainly for the artwork, because quite honestly it’s content seemed quite a bit over my head back in those days. Dave Sim is an incredible artist and the creator of Cerebus the Aardvark which ran from 1977 all the way to 2004. In the comic one of the supporting characters was The Roach which Sim used to parody several Marvel & DC characters. I remember back in the 80’s seeing these cool covers as Cerebus was a comic book my older brother collected. I was always intrigued by them and posting these covers is making me wonder if it is indeed time to give Cerebus another shot now that I’m older and supposedly wiser. Check these out as they feature The Wolveroach in all of his glory!
Hey Hugh Jackman, Here’s Why ‘Old Man Logan’ SHOULDN’T be the “Final” Wolverine Movie!
Ok, So Hugh Jackman went on Twitter the other day asking the fans exactly what they wanna see for the “final” Wolverine movie. So listen up Hugh I’m a real fan of Wolverine and here’s my real thoughts on your final movie outing as the character! First let me get this out of the way, I loved the “Old Man Logan” storyline and that is why this next Wolverine movie should absolutely NOT be based on it. Primarily Hugh you’re just not OLD enough yet!! Seriously, you should do “Old Man Logan” ten years to fifteen years from now. How rad would that be to see you come back for this when you are actually an older guy?!
Hugh you’re still too young for this one…
Right now focus on the final flick being just a great Wolverine story that can be done right giving the fans exactly what they want. Second ‘Old Man Logan’ done right would feature Clint Barton (Hawkeye) and The Incredible Hulk. That at the moment just does not seem possible due to legal reasons so HOLD OFF on this until it IS the right time where you can really do the story justice. Don’t fuck this up Hugh!! Work on getting these things figured out and then come back and give the fans what they truly deserve. There’s no Rush for this storyline.
Ok now let’s get onto what I have seen the fans asking for. Number one of most all the comments I have read want to see you suit up in one of the classic costumes!! I can say personally that I agree with this. Give us the classic comic Wolverine before you sign off on the character. Fans have been asking for this forever, it’s a no brainer. Do it Hugh. You might wanna consider the black, brown and tan costume or the version worn in X-Force which would probably translate better to film. Let’s face it the blue, yellow and black one might be a bit much.
Alright then, the other most common comment I’ve seen is concerns about the rating of the movie. Fans want and R-rated Wolverine movie dammit! Seriously we need to see what a real bezerker rage would look like from a guy with unbreakable metal claws would really look like. Wolverine needs to stab, slice and dice like he does in the comics. It’s crazy how little blood is seen on screen from an enraged animalistic mutant. Let’s really see wolverine go nuts one last time . I think this WILL happen once the studio sees how Deadpool fares. No more mediocre, watered down Wolverine go out with a real bang!
Lastly give us a truly great villain for him to face! Let’s see Lady Deathstrike come back looking more like she did in the comics along with The Reavers! How awesome would that be?
Or have Wolverine head off to Madripoor to retire and face off against Razorfist, Bloodsport and Roughhouse! That was a super cool & huge part of Logan’s past and could include some great almost Indiana Jones style of jungle adventure.
Or how about Omega Red tracking down Logan he’d be quite a sight on the big screen and a great classic villain!
Or have Wolverine head off to the woods of Canada to get away from it all and end up trying to survive and save innocents from The Wendigo?! Now that’d be intensely creepy adventure…
Or Lastly have Wolverine tracked down by Alpha Flight, this would be a great way to introduce a new team franchise and an intense part of Logan’s history that has yet to be told or even mentioned.
So there you have it thoughts from a real fan! Make this shit happen already!! What do you all think would be the best Wolverine story for Hugh to star in as his “final” appearance?
Comic Book Cover of the Week: The Hulk’s Vintage Magazine Career!!
So this week I wanted to take a trip down memory lane and showcase some of my favorite comic covers that are actually covers from the Hulk’s magazine career back in the late 1970’s. There were two, The Rampaging Hulk and The Hulk were both in magazine format and usually featured back up stories from lesser know superheroes or extra’s on the Hulk and many times his villains. These were extra special because the covers were almost always super spectacular paintings of the big ol’ green guy! So here a re some of my favorites check em’ out-they just don’t make em’ like this any more! These are truly INCREDIBLE!
Sal Buscema’s Greatest Hits: Anatomy of the Most Powerful Comic Book Punches!!
Sal Buscema has been one of my all time favorite comic book artists ever since I was just a little kid! His name is synonymous with The Incredible Hulk as one of the longest artists ever on the classic book as well as drawing much of the Hulk-ified Defenders comics way back in the day. The guy is a legend. Period. Well one of my favorite things about his artwork in the comics is the classic Buscema powerful punch! He loves to draw incredibly painful punches that send both heroes and villains flying upside down in the air straight at the reader! It’s really his trademark, so let’s take a good long look at some of Buscema’s greatest hits in all their glory!!!
And finally just a few non-flying Sal Buscema punches that totally look like they hurt big time!
Phew! My head hurst just looking at all these painful punches! Thanks to 80 Page Giant Blog for many of the images!!
Comic Book Cover of the Week: The Other Thor!
This awesome comic book cover from 1983 has gotta be one of my favorites ever! Thor #337 features my favorite character from the norse god’s mythos-Beta Ray Bill! This super weird character made his first appearance in this issue and as odd as this guy looked he was deemed worthy of Thor’s hammer! So Beta Ray to me is just as cool as Thor, even more so I’d dig it if rather than a woman Thor, we’d just get him to take place of the character completely for a while instead. Also Walt Simonson uses simplicity to make this one of the coolest covers ever for The Mighty Thor comic series. I also really love it when characters affect the comic book covers logo’s and such-I’ve gotta sit down and dig this one out of my collection and give it another read pronto!! They need to put this guy into the next Thor flick dammit!
Universal Dork 