The Comics Rack

NICK FURY: WHO IS SCORPIO?

   Probably no one comic artist has a reputation that rests on such a small body of work as Jim Steranko. In the same vein, however, there is probably no comic artist who accomplished as much in such a small body of work as Jim Steranko. Outside of a handful of covers and a couple of stories, Steranko's whole career in comics is mainly reflected in his Nick Fury stories that ran in Strange Tales and in the Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. solo book.
   Nick Fury: Who is Scorpio? is a rather slim volume that completes the reprinting of all of Steranko's Nick Fury work, these stories coming from issues 1-3 and 5 of Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., and they are quite a mixed bag. The first, third and fourth stories in the volume are some of Steranko at his best, with the third story, "Dark Moon Rise, Hell Hound Kill!" being the most satisfying and probably one of the finest single stories to be produced by Marvel. Conversely, the second story in the volume, "So shall Ye Reap Death", is one of the worst stories I have ever read and one has to wonder whether, as Tom has suggested, Marvel cut the number of pages available for the story, or whether Steranko had a much longer story in mind and attempted to shoe horn it into a single issue. The first and fourth stories both deal with Scorpio and the mystery of why he and Fury are at odds, a plot line that was never resolved by Steranko, but was later resurrected in The Defenders, where it was set forth that Scorpio was Nick's brother.
   Looking back on these stories, I think Steranko was more comfortable with the shorter story length of the Strange Tales stories. The pacing of the longer stories in this book seem forced and, at times, the text is more abundant than the art. Of course, Steranko has been ever vocal about the dis-satisfaction he had with Marvel at the time over pay rates and deadlines and this may also account for some of the style of the stories.
   I would recommend the earlier volume of Nick Fury stories to you over this one, simply because the pacing of the stories is better. However, there are some good moments in this volume, particularly where Steranko combines his love of film with the super-spy adventures of Nick and Co. For sheer influence on later comic writers and artists (particularly Doug Mench and Paul Gulacy in the Master of Kung-Fu strip) Steranko's work is not to be ignored. Good, but not great, comics.
   An addendum: The coloring on this volume is much better than the previous Nick Fury volume, but Marvel should be slapped around severely for the terrible cover reproductions found in the back of the volume. Simply awful!
   Nick Fury: Who is Scorpio? retails for $12.95 and can be found in most of the usual outlets.

THE ESSENTIAL CONAN

   I don't often recommend the Marvel Essentials line of reprints, since they are in black and white and, much to my dismay, the stories reprinted in each volume are from a variety of sources and the art is often shot directly from the comics page with no retouching or clean up, resulting in a muddy look. The Essential Conan, however, is worthy of your attention, since it reprints all the Barry Windsor-Smith material from Conan #1-24, with the first John Buscema job in #25 thrown in for good measure.
   Why these stories have never been given the Cadillac treatment they deserve (good paper, meticulous printing, tasteful coloring) I will never know, but this collection is one of the best ways to view one of the premiere comic artists of the last 30 years.
   Admittedly, the first few issues are rather crudely done and Windsor-Smith's development as an artist seems rather slow (I do recall something I read somewhere that said the first few stories were printed out of the order they were originally drawn, but I can't give you particulars). In the early days, Windsor-Smith's art looks like it was cloned from Kirby, which is how all early Windsor-Smith work looked. By issue #4, "The Tower of the Elephant," the first traces of his ability begin to show and by issue #8, the detail, figure placement, and power one has come to expect from Windsor-Smith is in place. From that point on you can just sit back and enjoy the ride, through the introduction of Elric to the Marvel Universe, the edited reprint "Frost Giant's Daughter" (no nudity) which originally appeared in Savage Tales #1. Why the reprint? Well that takes a bit of history to explain.
   Windsor-Smith left Conan after issue #15 to pursue other interests. Gil Kane, never one of my favorites, did issues 17 and 18 and then Windsor-Smith returned with #19 to finish the run with #24, skipping #22 due to deadline problems. I don't recall all the reasons WS listed for his leaving, but one problem may have been the treatment his art received when it came to inkers. WS put a great deal of detail into each page of Conan and it shows...most of the time. But, under the hand of less competent inkers, his pencils look downright wretched, and this may have been one of the reasons he left.
   Marvel cannot be completely blamed for the inking problem, after all, they were, and still are, in the business of producing comic magazines on a rigid schedule and deadlines are deadlines. Smith often pushed each deadline to the limit. The books need to go to the printer and only inker "X" is available, so that's who gets the job. It's just a shame that more care wasn't applied to the books and that they weren't treated as the work of art that they were, and are. Much of WS's best work appears in #19-24 and the splapdash hack job it got in #21 is criminal, even though WS is credited with layouts only. In the dimness of my memory, I also recall that there were deadline problems during this period, Dan Adkins was assigned the inking duties on the book and he became ill, hence the attempt in #19 to reproduce the art directly from Smith's pencils (it was only semi-sucessful). It just follows the American comic book credo that it is "only comics."
   Until someone at Marvel comes to their senses and releases a full collection of these stories as described above, this is your best bet. The reproduction in the book is as good as the comics, Roy Thomas never wrote a better strip, and tracing the development of Windsor-Smith as an artist is a joy to behold. All the covers are thrown in for good measure as well.
   The Essential Conan retails for $14.95, can be found for less if you shop around and should really be purchased by one and all.

A DC UNIVERSE CHRISTMAS

   Occasionally, a book slips under my reviewing radar. One such instance is A DC Universe Christmas, a slim trade paperback that was released last November, but that I didn't seek out until this past summer, and then only at Tom's insistence. And you know what? I've been kicking myself ever since I read it, not because it is bad, but because I didn't grab this one off the shelves as soon as it came out.
   DC has a long history of publishing Christmas themed stories and has even released a number of holiday themed specials. This book is sort of a "Best of" collection of these stories, but with the added bonus of 4 Golden Age Christmas stories, featuring Wonder Woman, Superman, Captain Marvel, and Simon and Kirby's version of The Sandman.
   Overall, I must admit, there is nary a clinker in the bunch. Editor Michael Wright has chosen wisely from the many stories available to him and they cover all the main DC heroes, including Enemy Ace and Jonah Hex, although I could have done without yet another reprinting of "Wanted: Santa Claus-Dead or Alive!," since the only reason this story keeps cropping up is that it was illustrated by Frank Miller. Outside of the Golden Age stories, other welcome surprises are a Christmas story illustrated by Berni Wrightson (with a title page that looks like a collaboration between Wrightson and Kaluta), a Teen Titans story by Nick Cardy and a Legion story illustrated by the vastly underrated artist Jose Garcia-Lopez.
   An excellent collection that belongs on your bookshelf (put it on your Christmas list) and the bookshelf of a friend (never too early to do your Christmas shopping), A DC Universe Christmas retails for $19.95, but can be had for less is you shop around.

CAPTAIN BRITAIN

   Beginning in the 1970s and continuing into the 90s, Marvel published a line of books for distribution in the United Kingdom. These books originally started as reprints of older Marvel stories and eventually began to take on a life of their own, with new stories and artwork:  some about established Marvel characters and others about new characters created exclusively for the line.
   One of the characters created during this time was Captain Britain, an English version of Captain America, whose costume was a variation of the Union Jack and whose origins were tied into English myth and history. Eventually, Captain Britain was incorporated into the Marvel US line as a part of Excabilur, one of the interminable X-Men tie-in books that Marvel insisted on producing prior to their near bankruptcy, and probably would have disappeared into the great beyond, had not two justly famous gentlemen worked on crafting his adventures: Alan Moore and Alan Davis.
   It is the Moore/Davis work that led me to purchase Captain Britain, and, if one is interested in the early work of comic creators, this is the book for you (according to the introduction by Moore, this was only his 3rd or 4th strip and, although it is not made clear in the introduction, but implied, this may have been the first work of Davis). By the third story, Davis moves from the cramped and dark panels at the start of the book to the open layouts and fluid figures that we associate with him today. Moore's scripts start out kind of slow and clumsy, but soon show the attention to detail, and the inventiveness, that have made him one of the best current comic writers. Yet, as a whole, the book falls rather flat, reading like one long transition that expunges the excess baggage that Moore and Davis inherited when they took over the storyline, but is only setting the stage for what is to come.
   Marvel's packaging of the book also leaves much to be desired. Except for the proclamation on the back cover that this reprints the "Jasper's Warp storyline..available here in one book for the first time" there are no other editorial remarks to set the stage for the story we are reading. For example: What year did the strips originally appear? Did Moore and Davis continue on the strip? If they did, how long did they work on the strip and why didn't you just publish their entire run in one volume?? These are the type of questions I had when I finished (and contrary to Marvel's statements in the indicia, X-Men Archives #2-7 were not the original magazine appearances of these stories!).
   So, there you have it. A fair read with some interesting bits of business, particularly the Fury("an amalgam of man and machine, it kills super-heroes"), the British version of S.H.I.E.L.D., Captain Britains from alternate worlds and Moore's take on Merlin. Overall, however, I have to say that this volume is for completists only. If you really want to read early Alan Moore, pick up the DC trade edition that reprints his early efforts on Swamp Thing.
   Captain Britain retails for $19.95, but you know how to get it cheaper, don't you?

LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES ARCHIVES Vol. 10

   One of the first comics I consciously bought as a child (with my own money, yet) was Adventure Comics #312, the one with the cover that featured a group of Legionaires standing around a glass coffin holding metal rods to the sky and wondering whose rod the lightning would strike to revive their comrade, Lightning Lad, whose lifeless body resided in the coffin. "Wow," I thought. "Who are these people? What are they doing?" and to this day the original Legion of Super-Heroes has been one of my favorite groups.
   Today, thanks to the DC Archives, I have been able to relive the fondly remembered adventures of the Legion and Legion of Super-Heroes Archives Vol. 10 has only continued my trip down memory lane. This volume contains the Legion appearances from the early 1970s, when they appeared as a back-up in Superboy (and eventually squeezed him out of his own book in much the same way they squeezed him out of Adventure Comics about a decade before) and features all of the work Dave Cockrum (aided and abetted by Cary Bates) did on the strip.
   The Legion grew up during this period. They became more adult and their attitudes and actions were reflective of the age of the creators. Relationships blossomed among the Legion members (the marriage of 2 of the members, Bouncing Boy and Duo Damsel, is included in this volume) and they all function as young adults, rather than the teen-agers of the earlier incarnation. Cockrum also re-designed the Earth of the 30th century during this period, making the environment that the Legion functions in sleek and modern. He also gave many of the characters new costumes, some that were just downright sexy.
   The stories still read well today, even though there is the occasional lapse of logic here and there. Older villains, such as Starfinger, the Fatal Five, and Dr. Regulus make return engagements, along with some new characters, such as Tyr and Orion. Cockrum's art is uniformly excellent with excellent layout and composition and is, at time, reminiscent of both Murphy Anderson and Wally Wood. It also does not have the hurried quality that seemed to haunt his later work on X-Men.
   Under Bates and Cockrum, the Legion is about the wonder and adventure of the future. The characters may have doubts, but they are heroes and carry on in an heroic manner. The future, according to the stories in this volume, is a nice place and one we would like to live in. All in all, this is probably some of the best Legion material that was ever produced.
   Legion of Super-Heroes Archives Vol. 10 retails for $49.95 and can be found for less if you shop around.