It was cool that X-Men: First Class featured Hank McCoy in both his human and beastly forms. I would have like to have seen the oversized hands to go along with his big feet though. I remember the Amazing Adventures serial that featured the Beast as he first made his transformation to the blue furry look fondly. I finally tracked down all the issues after reading about him as an Avenger as well as a founding member of the X-Men. It was cool to see the bridge between the two eras. I really liked his original blue look, and the more cat-like appearance he adopted during the Grant Morrison X-Men run doesn't work nearly as well for me. I'm kind of surprised the haven't gone back to the classic look by now,
Dave sez,
ReplyDeleteAfter seeing Cap's line-up on the Captain America cartoon, and in a few back issue reprints; the late '70's early '80's line-up with Beast and Wonder Man was pretty cool. I wasn't an X-Men fan, so I had no idea where Hank was originally from.
I never understood or liked Marvel's "ok, all the mutants on this side, and all OTHER superheroes who received their powers some other way on THIS SIDE" philosophy. A segregated superhero universe? WTF? I glad DC never really went that route, although they pathetically flirted with it during their INVASION cross-over summer, with the meta-human storyline. It was the dumbest idea ever, and apparently, soon forgotten.
ReplyDeleteMarvel didn't separate their mutants because of a philosophy. It was a poorly thought out approach to marketing that the company adopted after it became publicly traded in the late 1980's and a controlling interest wound up with a cabal of investors who made their money in other lines of business and insisted on forcing those models on a pop media company with disastrous results. For the previous 25-30 years Marvel's mutant characters appeared in all the other titles and vice versa. But in the 1990's, the idea was to cancel whatever sold least, even if it was profitable, and replace it with a shoddy imitation of whatever sold best. That might work if you're selling perfumes or lawn mowers, but not when you're selling literature. That's why bargain bins are now filled with Spider-Man and X-men titles, something inconceivable 20 years ago.
ReplyDelete@pblfsda. Very good take on what happened to the industry during the 1990's. In my opinion, it was the worst time to be a comic fan. Chris Claremont, Mike W. Barr and Marv Wolfman pretty much burning out of ideas and ruining the titles they created, Marvel cloning Spidey and X-Men, DC doing their best to follow suit. IMAGE putting out rubbish. The industry became a sad funhouse. The positive was that it DROVE a lot of people towards the smaller independent titles like Love & Rockets and toward specialty shops. In the NYC area, comics virtually disappeared from newstands and candy stores and would now be sold exclusively at megastores like Barnes & Nobles/Borders and Specialty Shops.
ReplyDelete@Anonymous: DC's worst idea was the original "Crisis On Infinite Earths." "Invasion' was just adding insult to injury.
ReplyDeleteON the upside, though, that _is_ a gorgeous woman Batman is rescuing from the water. But, I doubt she's a "maiden" (if you know what I mean).
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