Quarter Bin 69 "Eight Below"

As always, "Quarter Bin" is a figurative term.  This is a back issues feature.

The title of this edition comes from the fact that I bought the following comics from the store Five Below (basically another dollar store), two different packs of four comics each.  These are not the first comics I've gotten from Five Below, and not even the first bargain packs I've picked up in the last few months, but there's one excellent, and several good ones, reason to write about this set first (I'll get to the others later).  Namely, it gave me my first look at one of Grant Morrison's Marvel projects I hadn't gotten around to yet.  Without further adieu, let's dive in:

New Avengers: Illuminati (Marvel)
From September 2006.
Civil War was kind of better in a handful of one-shots specials than it was for the event itself or the comics that followed it.  Here I'm mostly thinking about the ones concerning the death of Captain America (I'm sorry, "death"), but this is another of the literate stories Marvel let slip through, Brian Michael Bendis getting to write about the Marvel landscape in frank terms, setting up a cabal (that kind of went nowhere but was intended to be more significant), a meeting of the heads of the big guns before everyone started to become Avengers (even before the movies made it cool).  I guess I'll never understand why Namor has been such a tough nut for Marvel to crack, I guess just too difficult to reconcile with the more juvenile instincts of the company, even though he's one of its founding creations.  He's a standout here.  Conspicuous by his absence?  Captain America.

Daredevil #253 (Marvel)
From April 1988.
I thought this would be a Frank Miller issue (shows how much I know, I guess), but it ended up being Ann Nocenti, one of the more long-lived female comic book creators who has been involved in DC's New 52 initiative recently, writing Green Arrow and such.  She writes about what you'd expect from Daredevil.  It's telling, what fans were thinking, or at least what Marvel was thinking, from the letters in the back lamenting the grim turn in then recent years, which would be the Frank Miller era, which was not yet completely over.  The editor suggests to readers still searching for a good Kingpin story Daredevil: Love and War, Miller's graphic novel from two years earlier.  Well, anyway, what's perhaps best to talk about is the debuting artist in the issue, none other than John Romita, Jr., at least as described in the letters column (which was always months behind), actually three issues into his run at this point.  Romita would go on to make quite the name for himself (probably known at the time very much as "Junior"), and a distinctive style.  Which is hard to find in the work here.  So I spent perhaps more time trying to find the Romita I know than to anything else.  But it was still worth checking out for all three reasons.

DC Universe Presents #11 (DC)
From September 2012.
James Robinson, just starting his comeback, though everyone seemed to ignore The Shade (despite its generally excellent quality), writing a Vandal Savage arc, uniquely featuring him as something other than the villain, trying to make peace with a rebellious daughter while trying to avoid the sins of his past.  As the antagonist of Legends of Tomorrow and having apparently resurfaced in the Superman titles recently, Savage is experiencing a renaissance of significance lately.  He's a compelling character, and Robinson certainly helps sell him better than the norm. 

Fantastic Four: 1234 #4 (Marvel)
From January 2001.
I assume Marvel did a roundabout second printing of this, because the copyright fine print says "Vol. 2" and the cover features a 9/11 memorial logo, even though the publication date still lists it as the beginning of the year...Either way, this is the first time I've read anything from this Grant Morrison's project.  Morrison's Marvel work is better known for his New X-Men and Marvel Boy, but there's also this to consider.  And now having read some of it firsthand, I would almost consider it his response to Marvelman/Miracleman, a dystopian twist on a traditional superhero property.  Aside from a classic comic book twist that undoes it, the issue features Dr. Doom turning the team against each other, against themselves, all of that, in ways Alan Moore's opus never adequately explained, except that he just didn't understand superheroes anymore and wanted them to "grow up."  This is  a whole thing among fans, the relationship between Moore and Morrison, how Morrison tried to write in his own contribution to Moore's work on that property (to be printed years later by Marvel), and how they've been "rivals" ever since.  It's a fairly one-sided creative conversation, though.  Morrison did his version of Watchmen in Pax Americana (within the greater Multiversity construct).  But few observers seem to have perceived 1234's commentary.  It even makes Dr. Doom credible for the first time...ever.  So that's good to read, too.  Now on to Skrull Kill Krew!

Force Works (Marvel)
From January 1995.
The Image explosion caused chaos across the board, and one of the weirdest effects was forcing (heh) Marvel and DC to try and ape the style approach, which meant as much about the art as the less subtle storytelling (which eventually gave way to more subtle storytelling, so on the whole it was probably a good thing).  DC created a Justice League that starred in the series Extreme Justice, Marvel created an Avengers called Force Works.  I originally learned about the latter in a calendar I had as a teenager.  I admit, I liked the title.  So now I read an issue for the first time ever.  Scarlet Witch is taken semi-seriously, in a kind of stripper-with-a-heart-of-gold kind of way.  U.S.Agent is in a costume I don't recognize.  There's a Mandarin story that doesn't really feature Mandarin all too well (Iron Man 3  wants its plot back!), and Tony Stark is being a shmuck.  On the whole, seems about right.

Hawkeye #11 (Marvel)
From August 2013.
I think I've read this issue already.  Or maybe Matt Fraction used the dog gimmick again later?  Either way, this is the dog gimmick issue, which features a dog and the only words the reader gets to read are the ones in the dialogue the dog would understand.  Otherwise, it's the various associations the dogs would make, conveyed via icons.  I don't want to underestimate the uniqueness of the artistry, certainly in a mainstream work, that Fraction manages to bring to Hawkeye.  In any other era, this would have been hailed as the second coming of Frank Miller.  For whatever reason, that just never happened with this series.  I don't think anything groundbreaking was achieved, except to highlight that no one really has a definitive Hawkeye story they figure is worth telling (except, you know, that he debuted as a villain?), which even the movies acknowledge, so that Fraction literally could do anything, like this dog issue.  But that's still a breakthrough for a mainstream superhero comic.

Prime #3 (Malibu)
From December 1995.
I used to think that Prime was basically a Captain Marvel) (DC version) ripoff, but after this issue, I guess he's kind of more like the Spectre, a powerful entity that needs a human host to anchor it.  Which obviously was otherwise poorly conveyed.  In hindsight, Prime is just too comically overmuscled.  I mean, was that deliberate? 

Professor Xavier and the X-Men #1 (Marvel)
From November 1995.
I think I got this comic back in the '90s.  I guess it doesn't particularly matter.  It's a '90s version of the early X-Men years.  It still baffles me that Marvel has never considered using Jean Grey more productively.  Here's a character who used to be known as Marvel Girl.  She's the center of one of the most famous X-Men, if not Marvel in general, stories ever in "The Dark Phoenix Saga."  And even the movies had her as second lead after Wolverine.  She's the lead character in this issue, too.  And still...Nothing.  Talk about missing a golden opportunity.