Outcasts - John Wagner. Alan Grant. Cam Kennedy. DC brings 2000AD storytelling to an obscure maxi series. My intro to Cam Kennedy's art which I don't think I read again until Star Wars Dark Empire from Dark Horse in the 90s. http://www.comicbookdb.com/title_covergallery.php?ID=5299
Silverblade - Cary Bates, Gene Colan, Klaus Janson, etc. A retiring actor who can transform into any of the roles he played over the decades. Again, not a stellar read, but fun for its time I suppose. http://www.comicbookdb.com/title_covergallery.php?ID=5507
At this point I'm just throwing stuff out. Haha. If it looks interesting you should be able to find them in backissues at cons or online fairly cheaply.
Also, there was a pretty excellent 12 issue Unknown Soldier series that came out around 1988 that was written by James Owsley.
Silverblade - Cary Bates, Gene Colan, Klaus Janson, etc. A retiring actor who can transform into any of the roles he played over the decades. Again, not a stellar read, but fun for its time I suppose.
This one popped up as something I remember seeing on the racks but never actually picked things up.
Great conversation. I don’t think I had realized how many of my old favorites were from this era, partly because, with things like The Question and Mike Grell on Green Arrow, I bought them piecemeal at the time and properly tracked them down in cheap bins and read them much later.
I'm going to pull off topic just a bit, more of a parallel alley than a derailment. Just to cost @mphil even more money. What are some of your favorite DC Prestige books regardless if they fall out of the 1980s time frame?
Longbow Hunters
Batman The Cult - I'm with @Matt on how much I like this story.
Blackhawk
OMAC - John Byrne does a wonderful job creating an interesting and really nice looking OMAC story.
And one of my guilty 90s pleasures. The Batman/Judge Dredd trilogy
I'm going to pull off topic just a bit, more of a parallel alley than a derailment. Just to cost @mphil even more money. What are some of your favorite DC Prestige books regardless if they fall out of the 1980s time frame?
Longbow Hunters
Batman The Cult - I'm with @Matt on how much I like this story.
Blackhawk
OMAC - John Byrne does a wonderful job creating an interesting and really nice looking OMAC story.
And one of my guilty 90s pleasures. The Batman/Judge Dredd trilogy
You hit a lot of winners right there. OMAC was pretty awesome.
As noted above, I'd add:
Psycho (see comments above)
World Without End (see comments above)
Twilight - cool use of the the DC space characters and terrific Jose Luis Garcia Lopez art.
The Golden Age - the Elseworlds that wasn't, until it was.
Batman: Holy Terror - really cool interpretation of the Flash's most important power.
Gotham by Gaslight - Mignola leaving his mark!
Speeding Bullets - What If Kal-El had landed near Gotham and been raised by the Waynes?
I loved the Prisoner prestige series they did in the 80s/90s. Such a fun take on everything I enjoyed about the series itself while attempting advancing the timeline a bit. I dig it out every now and then for a re-read.
The Cult was Jason Todd's finest hour.
Also enjoyed Superman: The Earth Stealers
And hey, if you want to re-capture that Prestige Format jones (pun intended) last year's Supergirl: Being Super by Joelle Jones was one of the better books I read...they even try and recapture the trade dress of DKR a bit.
Ooooo.... The Golden Age. I loved that one. I didn't have any experience with them, other than seeing them in Who's Who, and then seeing them in a sort of grounded, Astro City-esque (even though there wasn't an Astro City yet) story by Robinson, and that Paul Smith art? Fantastic. I didn't want it to end.
I think @Peter mentioned it upthread, but HAWKWORLD is my favorite prestige book, all-time. Something about the approach Truman took coupled with his art style just hits my sweetspot.
Ooooo.... The Golden Age. I loved that one. I didn't have any experience with them, other than seeing them in Who's Who, and then seeing them in a sort of grounded, Astro City-esque (even though there wasn't an Astro City yet) story by Robinson, and that Paul Smith art? Fantastic. I didn't want it to end.
Is The Golden Age post-Crisis? Or is it post-Armageddon 2001? ;)
Seriously, I was originally going to say The Golden Age is the cut-off for Post-Crisis as you had Zero Hour in 1994, but you already had had Death of Superman, Knightfall and Return of Barry Allen before that, and it feels weird calling those stories Post-Crisis Classics.
And unlike Legends, Millennium, Invasion and the Janus Directive, Armageddon 2001 feels like it was deliberately invoking Crisis with Monarch as it's Anti-Monitor figure and Waverider as its Harbinger.
And out of it you started to have all these series taking wrecking balls to major characters' lives. Which had they not changed Monarch's identity at the last minute would have started with Captain Atom in Armageddon 2001.
Ooooo.... The Golden Age. I loved that one. I didn't have any experience with them, other than seeing them in Who's Who, and then seeing them in a sort of grounded, Astro City-esque (even though there wasn't an Astro City yet) story by Robinson, and that Paul Smith art? Fantastic. I didn't want it to end.
Is The Golden Age post-Crisis? Or is it post-Armageddon 2001? ;)
Seriously, I was originally going to say The Golden Age is the cut-off for Post-Crisis as you had Zero Hour in 1994, but you already had had Death of Superman, Knightfall and Return of Barry Allen before that, and it feels weird calling those stories Post-Crisis Classics.
And unlike Legends, Millennium, Invasion and the Janus Directive, Armageddon 2001 feels like it was deliberately invoking Crisis with Monarch as it's Anti-Monitor figure and Waverider as its Harbinger.
And out of it you started to have all these series taking wrecking balls to major characters' lives. Which had they not changed Monarch's identity at the last minute would have started with Captain Atom in Armageddon 2001.
That’s a good point. I had forgotten how late Golden Age was, and that it was a diamond in the rough of the ‘90s, as Starman was about to be, rather than one of those late ‘80s classics.
I started college in '86... and didn't read many comics during the ensuing 5 years. My sweet spot for DC is the just-before to just-after Crisis... so the mid-80's...
I am amazed, looking back on it now, how diverse Giordano and Levitz' era was...
'Mazing Man Blue Devil Spanner's Galaxy Blue Beetle Booster Gold Blackhawk by Evanier and Spiegel All Star Squadron Captain Carrot Amethyst New Teen Titans War of the Gods Ambush Bug Omega Men Hex Green Lantern Corps Arak Son of Thunder Arion, Lord of Atlantis Atari Force Warlord Infinity Inc. Jonni Thunder Nathaniel Dusk Firestorm Blue Ribbon Digests Doom Patorl, Legion, Metal Men, Sugar and Spike, lots of good stuff) Thriller Vigilante Ronin Jemm Son of Saturn Night Force Elvira Funny Stuff Super Powers Masters of the Universe Power Lord Cinder and Ashe Twilight Batman and the Outsiders
Not to mention the stalwarts... Superman, Batman, etc... I'm not even bothering to mention Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen, and the other obvious ones. I also neglected to mention various limited series' featuring Legion, Batman, etc. and I'm sure I'm not remembering a ton of other limited series', etc.
@Tonebone, I don't know for certain but I've been reading The (DC) Comics Implosion and I am guessing that Jenette Kahn might have been a significant part of spurring on all that creativity. When she first arrived in 1976 she wanted DC to avoid relying on reprints believing that if creators were working on new material they were deeply invested in the output would be better. She encouraged creators to come up with their own material apparently offering some kind of "ownership" (my mistake: I did not mean ownership, but a piece of merchandising were the creation to ever reach that point) of new characters. Unfortunately the implosion came along, but after that -I'm guessing- she might have encouraged a similar creative agenda.
@Tonebone, I don't know for certain but I've been reading The (DC) Comics Implosion and I am guessing that Jenette Kahn might have been a significant part of spurring on all that creativity. When she first arrived in 1976 she wanted DC to avoid relying on reprints believing that if creators were working on new material they were deeply invested in the output would be better. She encouraged creators to come up with their own material apparently offering some kind of "ownership" (not sure if that actually worked out legally) of new characters. Unfortunately the implosion came along, but after that -I'm guessing- she might have encouraged a similar creative agenda.
Yes! Didn't mean to slight her... she's really a fascinating person... there's a great issue of Back Issue (I think) that does a lengthy interview with her. And I hear she's a really great person. I always think of Giordano and Levitz first and foremost, because they were really more of the "face" of DC for such a long time.
@Tonebone, you're right: Levitz and Giordano were key. I hadn't gotten to the last couple of pages of the Implosion book and on those pages they note how Giordano was brought in as an editor and Levitz acquired a bigger role at the start of the 80's.
Apologies to anyone who read my earlier post from August 26. I made a mistake I want to clarify. The creators were not given a form of "ownership" for creating new characters, but were told they would get a portion of the merchandising for any new characters they created (assuming it ever reached that point). The traditional work-for-hire was changed on some level although it seems some creators were still not getting what they were promised in the long run. At least Tony Isabella said he definitely got screwed over when they (not specifically DC, but the company making the Super Friends cartoon - maybe Warners) created a rip off of his Black Lightning character for Super Friends. Apparently DC could have still given him money for the use of the character but they put the extra cost off onto the company making the cartoon who refused to pay more to cover what Isabella was owed.
Paul was instrumental in getting creators more money for licensing. These days, George Pérez makes more money from DC licensing royalties than he does for making comics and commissions, and that's been the case for a few years now. He also found a way to get Kirby a royalty for his New Gods characters by having him do designs for the Super Powers toy line. The biggest single check Jack ever saw not involving a legal battle came out of that. There were some oversights and some workarounds that kept some guys from getting theirs, but not because of Paul.
That's wonderful. Paul Levitz sounds like a great guy. I think - correct me if I'm wrong - he also kept any more Watchmen stories from being told even though he obviously didn't have to. (Not that I'm against more Watchmen stories since I've really liked some of the ones we've had.)
So I've read my first thing from this thread, the Blackhawk miniseries by Howard Chaykin. Wow! I probably need to read it again because I think I missed a lot. I didn't like the garbled word balloons for the German characters, I found it to be difficult to read. But aside from that, this is some wonderful stuff. I love the art as well. I've bought some of the Action Comics that came after. I might wind up collecting this all into a bind.
Ooooo.... The Golden Age. I loved that one. I didn't have any experience with them, other than seeing them in Who's Who, and then seeing them in a sort of grounded, Astro City-esque (even though there wasn't an Astro City yet) story by Robinson, and that Paul Smith art? Fantastic. I didn't want it to end.
Is The Golden Age post-Crisis? Or is it post-Armageddon 2001? ;)
Seriously, I was originally going to say The Golden Age is the cut-off for Post-Crisis as you had Zero Hour in 1994, but you already had had Death of Superman, Knightfall and Return of Barry Allen before that, and it feels weird calling those stories Post-Crisis Classics.
And unlike Legends, Millennium, Invasion and the Janus Directive, Armageddon 2001 feels like it was deliberately invoking Crisis with Monarch as it's Anti-Monitor figure and Waverider as its Harbinger.
And out of it you started to have all these series taking wrecking balls to major characters' lives. Which had they not changed Monarch's identity at the last minute would have started with Captain Atom in Armageddon 2001.
That’s a good point. I had forgotten how late Golden Age was, and that it was a diamond in the rough of the ‘90s, as Starman was about to be, rather than one of those late ‘80s classics.
Thinking about it some more, I'd say the start of Death of Superman at the end of 1992 is the end of the Post-Crisis DC. You have Vertigo starting a month later, marking the roll back of mature content set in the DC Universe, and Dick Giordano leaving DC in 1993.
Carlin doesn't take the position of Executive Editor until 1996 - what was happening in-between? Was it just Levitz? Carlin seems to be editing a number of key books, but there's definitely some significant changes in his first year as exec editor (Morrison/Porter's JLA being the big one) suggesting he couldn't do them until he had that power.
Ooooo.... The Golden Age. I loved that one. I didn't have any experience with them, other than seeing them in Who's Who, and then seeing them in a sort of grounded, Astro City-esque (even though there wasn't an Astro City yet) story by Robinson, and that Paul Smith art? Fantastic. I didn't want it to end.
Is The Golden Age post-Crisis? Or is it post-Armageddon 2001? ;)
Seriously, I was originally going to say The Golden Age is the cut-off for Post-Crisis as you had Zero Hour in 1994, but you already had had Death of Superman, Knightfall and Return of Barry Allen before that, and it feels weird calling those stories Post-Crisis Classics.
And unlike Legends, Millennium, Invasion and the Janus Directive, Armageddon 2001 feels like it was deliberately invoking Crisis with Monarch as it's Anti-Monitor figure and Waverider as its Harbinger.
And out of it you started to have all these series taking wrecking balls to major characters' lives. Which had they not changed Monarch's identity at the last minute would have started with Captain Atom in Armageddon 2001.
That’s a good point. I had forgotten how late Golden Age was, and that it was a diamond in the rough of the ‘90s, as Starman was about to be, rather than one of those late ‘80s classics.
Thinking about it some more, I'd say the start of Death of Superman at the end of 1992 is the end of the Post-Crisis DC. You have Vertigo starting a month later, marking the roll back of mature content set in the DC Universe, and Dick Giordano leaving DC in 1993. .
Perfect. I've been trying to come up with an end to post Crisis DC. 1990 didn't seem right. I always put it around the start of the books that would become Vertigo, but Superman #75 is great ending point.
Comments
Here's a few more:
Shadow - Andy Helfer and Bill Sienkiewicz. Probably not the purest form of the character, but that artwork! And later issues by Kyle Baker.
http://www.comicbookdb.com/title_covergallery.php?ID=8390
Outcasts - John Wagner. Alan Grant. Cam Kennedy. DC brings 2000AD storytelling to an obscure maxi series. My intro to Cam Kennedy's art which I don't think I read again until Star Wars Dark Empire from Dark Horse in the 90s.
http://www.comicbookdb.com/title_covergallery.php?ID=5299
Silverblade - Cary Bates, Gene Colan, Klaus Janson, etc. A retiring actor who can transform into any of the roles he played over the decades. Again, not a stellar read, but fun for its time I suppose.
http://www.comicbookdb.com/title_covergallery.php?ID=5507
At this point I'm just throwing stuff out. Haha. If it looks interesting you should be able to find them in backissues at cons or online fairly cheaply.
What are some of your favorite DC Prestige books regardless if they fall out of the 1980s time frame?
Longbow Hunters
Batman The Cult - I'm with @Matt on how much I like this story.
Blackhawk
OMAC - John Byrne does a wonderful job creating an interesting and really nice looking OMAC story.
And one of my guilty 90s pleasures. The Batman/Judge Dredd trilogy
As noted above, I'd add:
Psycho (see comments above)
World Without End (see comments above)
Twilight - cool use of the the DC space characters and terrific Jose Luis Garcia Lopez art.
The Golden Age - the Elseworlds that wasn't, until it was.
Batman: Holy Terror - really cool interpretation of the Flash's most important power.
Gotham by Gaslight - Mignola leaving his mark!
Speeding Bullets - What If Kal-El had landed near Gotham and been raised by the Waynes?
I loved the Prisoner prestige series they did in the 80s/90s. Such a fun take on everything I enjoyed about the series itself while attempting advancing the timeline a bit. I dig it out every now and then for a re-read.
The Cult was Jason Todd's finest hour.
Also enjoyed Superman: The Earth Stealers
And hey, if you want to re-capture that Prestige Format jones (pun intended) last year's Supergirl: Being Super by Joelle Jones was one of the better books I read...they even try and recapture the trade dress of DKR a bit.
Seriously, I was originally going to say The Golden Age is the cut-off for Post-Crisis as you had Zero Hour in 1994, but you already had had Death of Superman, Knightfall and Return of Barry Allen before that, and it feels weird calling those stories Post-Crisis Classics.
And unlike Legends, Millennium, Invasion and the Janus Directive, Armageddon 2001 feels like it was deliberately invoking Crisis with Monarch as it's Anti-Monitor figure and Waverider as its Harbinger.
And out of it you started to have all these series taking wrecking balls to major characters' lives. Which had they not changed Monarch's identity at the last minute would have started with Captain Atom in Armageddon 2001.
I am amazed, looking back on it now, how diverse Giordano and Levitz' era was...
'Mazing Man
Blue Devil
Spanner's Galaxy
Blue Beetle
Booster Gold
Blackhawk by Evanier and Spiegel
All Star Squadron
Captain Carrot
Amethyst
New Teen Titans
War of the Gods
Ambush Bug
Omega Men
Hex
Green Lantern Corps
Arak Son of Thunder
Arion, Lord of Atlantis
Atari Force
Warlord
Infinity Inc.
Jonni Thunder
Nathaniel Dusk
Firestorm
Blue Ribbon Digests Doom Patorl, Legion, Metal Men, Sugar and Spike, lots of good stuff)
Thriller
Vigilante
Ronin
Jemm Son of Saturn
Night Force
Elvira
Funny Stuff
Super Powers
Masters of the Universe
Power Lord
Cinder and Ashe
Twilight
Batman and the Outsiders
Not to mention the stalwarts... Superman, Batman, etc... I'm not even bothering to mention Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen, and the other obvious ones. I also neglected to mention various limited series' featuring Legion, Batman, etc. and I'm sure I'm not remembering a ton of other limited series', etc.
That's a lot of out-of-the-box creativity.
So I've read my first thing from this thread, the Blackhawk miniseries by Howard Chaykin. Wow! I probably need to read it again because I think I missed a lot. I didn't like the garbled word balloons for the German characters, I found it to be difficult to read. But aside from that, this is some wonderful stuff. I love the art as well. I've bought some of the Action Comics that came after. I might wind up collecting this all into a bind.
Great first suggestion!
Carlin doesn't take the position of Executive Editor until 1996 - what was happening in-between? Was it just Levitz? Carlin seems to be editing a number of key books, but there's definitely some significant changes in his first year as exec editor (Morrison/Porter's JLA being the big one) suggesting he couldn't do them until he had that power.