Quarter Bin #5 "From an Actual Quarter Bin, Part 2"

This is the other great batch of actual quarter bin comics, the second haul from last summer, when I really buckled down with the targeted picks. Once again, the selections are from Escape Velocity in downtown Colorado Springs. Because there are so many, I will skip further introductions and dive right in:

THE 99 SPECIAL (Teshkeel Comics)
From 2007; I had originally selected this one in anticipation of the then-upcoming DC book that saw this team return in a mash-up with the JLA, so obviously the topicality has come and gone. In many ways, I still wish Fabian Nicieza were the dominant creative voice here, since there’s so much potential that just sort of gets left on the floor, a problem that continues to this day. This particular comic, though, was a good find, because it’s an origin issue, so I was at least able to dive rather directly into the 99’s story.

AMERICA’S BEST COMICS PREVIEW (Wizard)
From 1999 (originally presented with WIZARD #91); I suppose in hindsight Alan Moore’s ABC comics were even more important than they seemed at the time, since they represent the last time he was truly committed to the mainstream, before he became completely disillusioned with one too many movie adaptations he felt didn’t do his comics justice. Is it an irony that no one ever moved to make a film of this work?

AMERICAN CENTURY #9 (Vertigo)
From January 2002; Howard Chaykin is an icon who has completely transcended every traditional comic book expectation, and I’m still waiting for him to truly receive his due. This book, however, possibly because he doesn’t supply the art, doesn’t help do him justice.

ANIMAL MAN #22-24 (DC)
From April, May, and June 1990; these were among my happiest finds, some of Grant Morrison’s later issues in his acclaimed run. I was all of nine years old when these were originally released, so even if I had been reading comics at the time, there’s no way I would have been reading them, or at least appreciating them. The book that made Grant’s reputation is of such mind-boggling scope that it’s little wonder that he struggled for years to find a proper follow-up (he’d presented his masterpiece, ARKHAM ASYLUM, a year earlier, but I hope to write more about that at a later date), spending time with the surrealistic odyssey THE INVISIBLES before going mainstream with JLA in anticipation of his Batman work a decade later. I didn’t have any experience with ANIMAL MAN until reading the DEUS EX MACHINA trade only a few years ago, and these issues represent part of the arc collected in that climactic story that shattered storytelling boundaries. Having apparently peaked so early (what other writer has ever approached such transcendent material?), Grant then had to tackle the matter of how to make the traditional material better than it’s ever been. Well, that’s my argument, anyway…

ASH #1 (Event)
From November 1994; now that he’s stepped down as the head honcho at Marvel, maybe Joe Quesada will go back to making comics on a regular basis. Do you even remember this one? After the blockbuster creation of Azrael at DC, Joe set out to create his own company, outside of the Image revolution, but relying on the same art-driven mandate that drove much of that decade crazy. You can see for yourself with this issue how completely overblown Joe’s concept was. Event’s only real success was Painkiller Jane, which actually became a short-lived TV show. Joe’s own art took radical steps away from the style presented here. Would anyone be interested in revisiting Ash today?

ASTRO CITY ½ (Image)
ASTRO CITY #18 (WildStorm)
ASTRO CITY: LOCAL HEROES #1 (WildStorm)
ASTRO CITY: THE DARK AGE - BOOK ONE #4 (WildStorm)
From January 1998, August 1999, April 2003, and December 2005, respectively; Kurt Busiek shot to instant acclaim with MARVELS, a project that revisited the storied origins of, well, Marvel’s most famous superheroes, and their earliest and most iconic adventures. He eventually parlayed that success into an ongoing project that explored his own creations, though the tone didn’t really change (the controversial and extended DARK AGE is famously based on what would have been his actual sequel to MARVELS). Like Alan Moore, Busiek doesn’t write comics so much as stories that reveal his love for the medium (and while Moore eventually branched out into history and other established literary figures, Busiek maintains his first love). Arguably, while this is the big strength for both creators, it has often hindered their potential (I would argue that it eventually caused Moore’s bitter split with the mainstream; in that vein, his frustrations with Hollywood adaptations of his work is actually a manifestation of his bafflement that other people really don’t understand what he’s doing; in essence, Frank Miller making a movie out of Will Eisner’s Spirit is closer to his goal than anything else). Still, the ASTRO CITY comics I found in those bins were happy, happy finds, since I’ve only recently begun reading Busiek’s passion project, and my appreciation has grown.

FLASH & GREEN LANTERN: THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD #1 (DC)
From October 1999; this one is such a throwback, here in 2011, for so many reasons. For starters, Barry Allen and Hal Jordan were both dead and buried in 1999, and now they’re both back and headlining DC. The title “The Brave and the Bold” was another thing that was extinct in 1999, but was brought back for an extended run last decade. Then there’s Mark Waid. In many ways, Waid fit’s the Moore/Busiek mold I was discussing above perfectly, achieving much of his early success drawing extensively from the past. With his famous “Return of Barry Allen” arc, that not only made his run in THE FLASH but also finally solidified Wally West’s right to succession, he made Barry relevant for a whole generation of reading, and paved the way for his return. But while Moore and Busiek constantly look backward, Waid kept looking forward, and anticipated the rise of Geoff Johns, a man often accused of building all his stories on the bones of the past. But what other creator has done more to forge the future of an entire company?

BREACH #11 (DC)
From January 2006; the fact that Bob Harras was synonymous with Marvel prior to his work on this short-lived book (this is actually the final issue) is perhaps the least interesting thing to talk about here. What greater concerns me is DC’s continual efforts to introduce new superheroes, which DC’s readers are constantly rejecting. I love reading on the Interweb how there’s been a lack of new characters in recent decades with staying power. Well, Interweb, it’s exactly your fault. The very demographic, or description of demographic, that’s supposed to support such initiatives fit’s the description of the Interweb: a small but vocal representation of an audience. The problem, almost the whole Interweb seems exclusively interested in bitching about things rather than expressing an actual interest in things. I would suggest many things would have been different for many characters created at DC and elsewhere over the last fifteen years if the Interweb had set a better example. One of the reasons Marvel and DC are bringing back letters columns is that they finally realized that the quality of conversation available on a letters page is infinitely greater than anything that has manifested on the Interweb since they attempted the transition, to “keep up with the times.” This is not to say that letters columns breed success for new ideas, but that message boards, tweets, profile updates, and the like certainly do not. “Progress” doesn’t always mean what it seems to. And for the record, Breach was another in a long line of interesting concepts that fans, if they were utilizing technology the way most people assume they do, or could, should have had a longer shelf life. The good news is that if he can be located in a quarter bin, that increases his chances of staying clear of that limbo Grant Morrison wrote about.

CAPTAIN AMERICA #5 (Marvel)
From March 1997; if you’ve done your math, you’ve no doubt realized that this comic comes from the Heroes Reborn era, and so yes, this is a Rob Liefeld book, female Bucky (since imported back into the mainstream), eagle-instead-of-A, and exaggerated figures all around. At some future date, I hope to represent here just how much I contradict the popular view of Liefeld, but suffice it to say…

CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN #2, 4, 5 (DC)
From April, June, and July 1991; if you revisit Quarter Bin #2 you might note for the record that CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN #4 was also represented in the first Escape Velocity quarter bin haul, and that was my introduction to this first, seminal teaming between Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale, what you might consider the start of a quest, which led to these purchases, and eventually, the whole trade collection, which I will write more about later. Such has my appreciation of this work grown that I now consider it to be one of the great undiscovered masterpieces of comics.

DEADMAN #1 (Vertigo)
From October 2006; in a different reality, this title eventually achieved the same reputation as Neil Gaiman’s SANDMAN, another title that took the name of an established DC superhero and completely reimagined it. I first became acquainted with Bruce Jones during his run with THE HULK, when he did some of the most interesting work with that character since Lou Ferrigno. Somehow Jones was never quite viewed as a comics master, possibly because of his work on NIGHTWING in which he went all Lovecraftian on Jason Todd.

GENERATION X #27 (Marvel)
From May 1997; I thought this was a pretty clever find, since Bastion is the villain here, as he was last year in “Second Coming.” Hey, remember Generation X?

RAGMAN #4 (DC)
From January 1992; even though I hadn’t really read him until SHADOWPACT, Ragman was a favorite character of mine since I collected his trading card. The original and ultimately more interesting Spawn, Rory Reagan also has the distinction of being the most famous Jewish superhero in comics, a fact that only periodically seems to come up. This is one of those times.

SEAGUY #3 (Vertigo)
From September 2004; when I read the SLAVES OF MICKEY EYE mini-series, it was without having read its predecessor, so mostly I got a kick out of Grant Morrison more or less parodying his own work in FINAL CRISIS. I had no idea how long fans of Seaguy had actually waited for the adventure promised at the end of this very issue. It’s also funny to note that Cameron Stewart’s art style actually changed between books.

SPELLJAMMER #8 (DC)
From April 1991; there’s no other reason for this one other than, once again, Joe Quesada, whose art is unrecognizable, either from ASH or his most recent work. So, props for evolving, Joe.

YOUNG AVENGERS #4, 6, 7 (Marvel)
From July, September, and October 2005; this book and Ed Brubaker’s then-nascent CAPTAIN AMERICA is the work that finally got this life-long DC man to finally read Marvel on a regular basis. Allan Heinberg approached his material just as if he were writing a continuous and personal odyssey for a set of characters that were, through the duration of his original run, exclusively his, and he took every opportunity to create the very best stories he could, utterly devoid of the typical Marvel inability to make any lasting impact on old superheroes. Granted, this was possible because Brian Michael Bendis had set the stage (which he then removed, only to set a wider stage for the same old status quo) with “Avengers Disassembled.” I knew much of the earliest developments with the Young Avengers through Marvel’s efforts to recap previous stories at the start of each issue (still the smartest thing the company has ever done), so to actually read some of them was nice. I’m still baffled that AVENGERS: THE CHILDREN’S CRUSADE has met only apathy.