Post Crisis DC

mwhitt80

@mphil made this comment in another thread when talking about post Crisis DC runs or when DC was firing on all cylinders.

mphil said:

@Tonebone @mwhitt80 I would love such a list if you would be willing to write it down. I'm all for little-known 80s runs...

Let's get the list up and break some bank accounts.

mwhitt80

I'll start. Some on these lists are known properties that a lot of people my age and younger probably haven't read.

Legion of Superheroes (1984) this starts a little before but it I'm reading through the run and it is really good.

Green Arrow Longbow Hunters & Green Arrow (1987) - Mike Grell recreates Green Arrow from Robin Hood Batman into a new hero.

Flash (1987) - I love early Wally West Flash

Cosmic Odyssey - a good Jim Starling & Mike Mignola that takes the DCU to a cosmic race for the Anti-Life Equation

Gilgamesh II - this is an odd (but good) retelling of the Gilgamesh story again by Jim Starling

Blackhawk (1988) - Howard Chaykin revives the BlackHawks in a very adult way that only Chaykin can do.

Peter

My wheel house.

Suicide Squad 1-66. All of it. Even the not so good issues.

The Question 1-36. Had this stuck around a few more years, I wonder if this series might have moved over to Vertigo just like Doom Patrol, Swamp Thing, etc.

Animal Man 1-26 (and beyond): Grant Morrison's first American work. The foundation for just about everything that followed in his work. I have yet to read beyond issue 26 - which I hear was also stellar. I need to correct that.

Young All Stars 1-31. This title replaced the Pre-Crisis All Star Squadron. Set in the same time period, most of this stuff got pushed out of DC canon. Not totally obscure of a title, but interesting for the most part.

Spectre 1-31. By writer Doug Moench. Not as popular as the next volume by John Ostrander & Tom Mandrake, but still a worthy read. Early artists include Gene Colan and Gray Morrow.

The Prestige book format for mini-series was strong post-Crisis. Along with the ones mentioned above, check out the following. They have all been traded as well:

Hawkworld by Tim Truman
Twilight by Howard Chaykin & Jose Luis Garcia Lopez
Batman: the Cult by Jim Starlin & Bernie Wrightson

I could go on for days for '80s DC. :love:

mwhitt80

Peter said:

My wheel house.


The Question 1-36. Had this stuck around a few more years, I wonder if this series might have moved over to Vertigo just like Doom Patrol, Swamp Thing, etc.

I could go on for days for '80s DC. :love:

The Question is fantastic! @Peter I really should have tagged you. I can't think of a better person to throw out recommendations most of my list will be comics you have talked about over the years.
This might be a great CGS episode to do.

Peter said:

The Prestige book format for mini-series was strong post-Crisis. Along with the ones mentioned above, check out the following. They have all been traded as well:

I love these. You can just about pick any prestige book or mini series by DC and get a really good story with really good art.

mwhitt80

@mphil if you start reading any Legion of Superheroes (1984) @Peter does a deep dive on his Daily Rios show ( Legion Project episodes). His The Tower is dive into New Teen Titans.

nweathington

And I'll add one more to the late ’80s, because I can’t talk about that period without mentioning my love for the J.M. DeMatteis/Shawn McManus Dr. Fate series. I’ve said it before many times on the forum, but this is the book that drew me back into the comic shop during my freshman year of college after not reading many comics during my high school days. I saw a poster for it on the wall of the shop as I walked by and had to check it out. It's so very different than anything else DC was putting out even at that time. And unlike a lot of the titles listed above, it’s never been collected.

nweathington

I'll also add L.E.G.I.O.N.to the list. It spun out of Invasion!, and was really good for two or three years.

Peter

mwhitt80 said:

The Question is fantastic! @Peter I really should have tagged you. I can't think of a better person to throw out recommendations most of my list will be comics you have talked about over the years.
This might be a great CGS episode to do.

Check out Denys Cowan's twitter for great Question artwork:
https://twitter.com/DenysCowan/media?lang=en

nweathington said:

And I'll add one more to the late ’80s, because I can’t talk about that period without mentioning my love for the J.M. DeMatteis/Shawn McManus Dr. Fate series.

That series and the Mister Miracle volume that ran around that time don't get enough credit for bucking the 80s "dark" trend. Not to mention, they would, on some level, be the forerunners for things like James Robinson's Starman, Tom King's Vision, Matt Fraction's Hawkeye, the current Mister Miracle, etc. Larger than life characters who are used for smaller, personal stories. Nice choice, Eric!

nweathington

Peter said:

That series and the Mister Miracle volume that ran around that time don't get enough credit for bucking the 80s "dark" trend.

That Mister Miracle series—also written by DeMatteis—and the Steve Rude-drawn special that preceded it were both a whole lot of fun. Arrgh! I should have remembered to mention it too!

DeMatteis really was a beacon of warmth and light at DC during that time (especially when you throw in Justice League).

mwhitt80

Thanks @peter
I really enjoyed both Mister Miracle and Dr. Fate. DeMatteis did a lot of books I loved.


The Mister Miracle series never gets talked about but is really good.
@nweathington and I talked about how good JM's Dr. Fate Flash backups were in the cover thread.

mwhitt80

John Ostrander.

Suicide Squad (Peter mentioned that)

Firestorm The Nuclear Man (1986) issues 65-100

Legends (1986) this is the miniseries that kicked off a lot of Post Crisis DC series.

Spectre (1991) - one of my all time favorites.


I never read his manhunter series was it good?

nweathington

mwhitt80 said:

@nweathington and I talked about how good JM's Dr. Fate Flash backups were in the cover thread.

Those back-ups were written by Marty Pasko, and were reprinted as two issues of the Immortal Dr. Fate miniseries a couple of years later. But DeMatteis did write a four-issue miniseries (drawn by Giffen) which introduced Eric and Linda Strauss and led into the ongoing series.

nweathington

mwhitt80 said:

I never read his manhunter series was it good?

Manhunter was okay. I didn’t care for it as much as Suicide Squad though. Or along the same lines, I think Checkmate (written by Paul Kupperberg) was also better than Manhunter.

mwhitt80

Doh! I knew that. Giffen drew those backups.

Giffen and DeMatteis... Brain went think bad.

Peter

The Lords of Order/Chaos concept was all over mid-late 80s comics thanks to Giffen and company.

Amethyst 1-4 - the second mini with art by Esteban Maroto. Continued Giffen's origin retcon from the series. Plus, added a connection to the Legion of Super-Heroes (and the beginning of the Robinson JSA series).
http://www.comicbookdb.com/title_covergallery.php?ID=570

Phantom Stranger 1-4. By Paul Kupperberg. Art by Mike Mignola! More Lords of Order/Chaos stuff.
http://www.comicbookdb.com/title_covergallery.php?ID=106

They also showed up to rework the origins of Hawk & Dove but I'm not sure I would call that mini/ongoing series a must read. :)

Matt

Peter said:

Batman: the Cult by Jim Starlin & Bernie Wrightson

This is easily my second favorite Batman storyline of all time. Close second to Year One.

nweathington

Peter said:

They also showed up to rework the origins of Hawk & Dove but I'm not sure I would call that mini/ongoing series a must read. :)

Maybe not a must read, but I actually liked that series better than some of the stuff mentioned here.

Brack

nweathington said:

Peter said:

They also showed up to rework the origins of Hawk & Dove but I'm not sure I would call that mini/ongoing series a must read. :)

Maybe not a must read, but I actually liked that series better than some of the stuff mentioned here.

Same.

A lot of these I read in the late 90s borrowing them off a friend in exchange for me lending him current DC, manga and VHS fansubs.

And as much I enjoyed Suicide Squad and L.E.G.I.O.N., the Kesels trying to reign in a rambunctious Rob Liefeld is also pretty fun.

On the other hand none of the DeMatteis stuff worked for me, even the much ballyhooed Justice League run. And the actual Legion of Superheroes stuff was impenetrable. I feel like certain elements of DC comics have always been a hard sell for people my age from the UK.

Our way in was Karen Berger's talent raid in the late 1980s but even something like Suicide Squad is an easy sell to people raised on fatalistic strips in Battle and 2000AD.

hauberk

I didn't get back into comics until around '88.

At that point, I fell back in hard:

Invasion! Right up there with Crisis for my favorite line-wide crossover. Also, the classifieds in the Daily Planet special that was released during the story are spectacular... especially the post Death In the Family reference.

Spectre - both the '80's series and the darker '90's series.

Suicide Squad I didn't catch on to this soon enough and am still hunting down issues, but oh. so good!

LEGION - straight out of Invasion! Wonderful precursor the the Legion of Superheroes.

Checkmate - pretty sure that my first exposure was because of Invasion! Really liked the design for the Knights. Made me go back and hunt down the Vigilante series.

Captain Atom - another one that I was late to the party on. I recall really digging Pat Broderick's work on the book.

Long Bow Hunters and the following long run of Grell on Green Arrow was incredibly solid and probably something I need to go back and reread, I'm sure that I wasn't really experienced enough to appreciate the entire story. First of the Mature Readers titles that I jumped on.

The Question - I think that I found this one as a result of the Cowan art after seeing him on the Shadowline books over at Epic. Like Green Arrow, it probably deserves a more nuanced re-read.

@Peter you referenced prestige books. I'd have to agree with all you listed, but also add:

Psycho which was not my first exposure to Dan Brereton, but definitely the one that got me excited for Nocturnals.

The Griffin - spectacular science fiction series by Dan Vado - I think it was ultimately collected by Slave Labor.

World Without End - darkly beautiful book by Jamie Delano and John Higgins.

mphil

This thread makes me so happy.

mphil

So far I've bought Blackhawk #1-3 from this thread. I think I'll be spending quite a bit!

nweathington

hauberk said:

The Griffin - spectacular science fiction series by Dan Vado - I think it was ultimately collected by Slave Labor.

The funny thing about The Griffin was that it actually started at Slave Labor. It went three issues there in the late ’80s before Vado sold it to DC in the early ’90s and finished it there. Then he got the rights back and collected it back at Slave Labor. It was a very good series, though I remember the last couple of issues being a little bit of a letdown. I think Vado tried to do a follow-up at some point, but it never happened.

mwhitt80

So I was listening to a podcast from someone with generally good tastes in comics talking about how good the actual Blackhawk series DC did in the 80s.
I've read a few issues (own the whole thing); I didn't really care for it. Should I give it a second chance? That was literally the first time I had ever heard anyone mention it in the thousands of hours of comic podcasts I've listened to.

nweathington

mwhitt80 said:

So I was listening to a podcast from someone with generally good tastes in comics talking about how good the actual Blackhawk series DC did in the 80s.
I've read a few issues (own the whole thing); I didn't really care for it. Should I give it a second chance? That was literally the first time I had ever heard anyone mention it in the thousands of hours of comic podcasts I've listened to.

The regular series continued straight out of the Action Comics Weekly feature, which I liked quite a bit. I think it worked much better in the 7-page installments of Action than in the full 24-page stories of the ongoing—the tighter pacing and more frequent cliffhangers gave it a movie serial feeling that really fit the tone of the stories. I don't really remember much about the regular series. I don't even own them now. I still have the Action Comics Weekly run though.

hauberk

nweathington said:

hauberk said:

The Griffin - spectacular science fiction series by Dan Vado - I think it was ultimately collected by Slave Labor.

The funny thing about The Griffin was that it actually started at Slave Labor. It went three issues there in the late ’80s before Vado sold it to DC in the early ’90s and finished it there. Then he got the rights back and collected it back at Slave Labor. It was a very good series, though I remember the last couple of issues being a little bit of a letdown. I think Vado tried to do a follow-up at some point, but it never happened.

I think I do remember something about that. At least about the attempted sequel.

hauberk

Momentarily forgot about Del Close's Wasteland! Close was cool for so many reasons, but Wasteland as a new weird anthology book was up there with the posthumous attempt to secure the role as Yorick at the Goodman Theater in Chicago.

https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/as-del-lay-dying/Content?oid=1109931

Also, I was always intrigued by Haywire, but only recently finished tracking down issues. Looking forward to giving it a read.

Peter

hauberk said:

@Peter you referenced prestige books. I'd have to agree with all you listed, but also add:

The Griffin - spectacular science fiction series by Dan Vado - I think it was ultimately collected by Slave Labor.

The Griffin!! I would've brought that up - it definitely is obscure - but the original post stuck to mid-late 80s. If we start into 90s DC I'll never sleep. :)

Random thought - I think if people like Invincible, they might enjoy Griffin.
http://www.comicbookdb.com/title_covergallery.php?ID=4812

hauberk

Peter said:

hauberk said:

@Peter you referenced prestige books. I'd have to agree with all you listed, but also add:

The Griffin - spectacular science fiction series by Dan Vado - I think it was ultimately collected by Slave Labor.

The Griffin!! I would've brought that up - it definitely is obscure - but the original post stuck to mid-late 80s. If we start into 90s DC I'll never sleep. :)

Random thought - I think if people like Invincible, they might enjoy Griffin.
http://www.comicbookdb.com/title_covergallery.php?ID=4812

I cheated. For some reason, I thought that Hawkworld landed in the '90s. World Without End and Psycho are similarly disqualified.

hauberk

Digging around a bit, I'd also forgotten about the Piranha Press Beautiful Stories for Ugly Children. The story Happy Birthday to Hell, was particularly excellent.

I also remember enjoying Justice Inc.

Also, there was a pretty excellent 12 issue Unknown Soldier series that came out around 1988 that was written by James Owsley.

Vertighost

Let me also throw my hat in for O'Neil and Cowan's The Question as well. I wasn't even aware of it during its initial run but finally read it about 5 years ago (after reading Ditko's version which is utterly unique)- and thought it was great. Unfortunately, I just checked and volume one is going for over a hundred books on Amazon.

mwhitt80

Get the Question in floppies. They shouldn't be expensive