Quarter Bin #34 "Cave of Forgotten Dreams"

THE FOOT SOLDIERS #1 (Image)
From September 1997:
There really was a time where Jim Krueger was a writer people might have actually cared about. Before he got sucked into being Alex Ross’s hapless collaborator, Krueger was a rising star, whose FOOT SOLDIERS seemed to be a lightning rod, attracting the best artists in the business and surviving apparent fan apathy, landing at Image at the dawn of its reinvention as a virtual indy graveyard. (Yes, I sound like I’m insulting everyone.) FOOT SOLDIERS was a passion project for Krueger, a vision of the next generation of superheroes. Stumbling on a comic like this (I’d heard of the series before, but had never read it) is like discovering a treasure that might easily have been appreciated, in different circumstances. He was probably a decade early, and it’s just a shame, because there’s so much hope and potential here, an impact that could have meant something. Well, it’s not inconceivable that he could someday return to it, and maybe getting Ross to collaborate with him on this rather than someone else’s vision would be the trick necessary to make it work (both success for the Foot Soldiers and getting something valuable out of this relationship). The artists represented in this issue, by the way, are Steve Yeowell, Phil Hester, and the late Mike Parobeck. See what I mean now? Along with the other two comics in this column, this was found at an antiques marketplace, the kind of place I like to visit every now and again with the hope of finding some interesting comics. It worked this time!

MARTIAN MANHUNTER #4 (DC)
From August 1988:
I seriously believe that as a single character, Martian Manhunter is responsible for more of my comics reading pleasure than any other superhero. This is partly because he receives minimal attention, only the sporadic attempts at solo adventures, but when he gets it, the material is almost universally fascinating, and from a wide variety of writers. It’s a safe bet that J.M. DeMatteis is responsible for this, which was a terrific thing to discover at the aforementioned antiques marketplace, because I had no idea this mini-series existed, probably the ancestor story for the modern interpretation of J’onn Jonzz, on the heels of the “Bwa-Ha-Ha League” making its initial splash (which Jenette Kahn in all seriousness compares in importance with DARK KNIGHT RETURNS and WATCHMEN on the inside cover), which famously featured J’onn becoming addicted to Oreos. I think Martian Manhunter’s future could have been drastically altered if he’d become one of the characters drafted into the Vertigo movement. Actually, I would argue that DC could do worse than revive that particular trend, new interpretations of deserving characters within its Vertigo line. I’m not saying that it has to change the Vertigo mandate entirely, but that there’s still considerable virtue to what the original impulse was able to accomplish.

GATECRASHER #1 (Black Bull)
From March 2000:
Mark Waid is one of those creators who seems to function best when he’s in a controlled environment, but he’d got this impulse to break free from such confines at random moments in his career, and it’s to the detriment of anyone who appreciates one of modern comics’ masters at his best. GATECRASHER is one of those examples. Black Bull was a vanity project for Gareb Shamus of Wizard fame, and while he might have thought it was cool to run his own comic book company, I think if he’s willing to do so, he’ll admit now that it was not something he should have been doing. Waid’s vision, as always, is pretty fantastic, a story about soldiers guarding against aliens who have access to what I will call Stargates (well, actually, once I put it like that, that’s exactly what this series was, his version of the Stargate franchise), yet the execution doesn’t really do it any favors, immature so that it can be edgy, or at least that it’s edgy, unfocused, centered on some interesting characters, but not presented in a way that the reader is compelled to take any of them seriously. The artist, perhaps naturally, is Amanda Conner, who does not believe in subtlety, and usually that’s a good thing, but not in this case. Waid is a creator who grew up as a fanboy, and that’s how he writes best, better than anyone except Geoff Johns or Grant Morrison (which made it fitting that he worked with both of them in the seminal 52). There’s a real sense that he’s trying to figure out what it means to be a writer of his own vision, but he tries to throw too much at the canvas without really considering the structure, like his ongoing Plutonian project at Boom!, which in anyone else’s hands would have naturally been a mini-series, except Waid is so hungry to prove himself outside of the Big Two system (which he invariably needs to revert to in order to remind readers why they like him, as he’s done again with DAREDEVIL) that he can’t take the necessary time to figure out what that essential story is, what is actually personal to him. As an early step in the process, GATECRASHER is certainly interesting to look at, but it’s also an example of what he needs to avoid. Let’s hope he eventually succeeds.