Both the cover and the splash seem a little generic this time out.
Nice plug for SPECTRE writer Michael Fleischer's ENCYCLOPEDIA OF GREAT COMIC BOOK HEROES. Interesting, though, to note that DC still didn't know what was going to replace the 7 SOLDIERS serial that was soon ending.
The ad below probably did more in the long run to help sales of comics than anything we had seen in recent years. TBG helped organize and stabilize fandom and dealers in ways that had never been possible before and would eventually run 40 years, just finally ending--as CBG--this year, 2013.
Vigilante returns but it's the Earth 2 version here, not the grim, gritty Gray Morrow version we saw not all that many issues back. Again, a most appropriate art team with Jose Luis Garcia Lopez inked by Mike Royer (whom I would meet in 2012).
Below is the ad for the first ever collaboration between Marvel and DC...although it's actually just a Marvel product which, due to a rights dispute, had DC's logo added to it as well. Still, it opened the door that soon led to SUPERMAN VS SPIDER-MAN.
And then the Seven Soldiers guilt-tripped Willie into suicide. ...Uh.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure that cover sounded awesome in theory, but Aquaman's airborne shenanigans just couldn't hope to compare with the grandeur of his undersea "flying" (see previous issue's cover). Also, that missile is preposterously adept at making sharp turns.
All these covers suffered from banner-itis. For crying out loud, the book title and star are fed to us TWICE within the space of three inches (once tearing apart the Adventure Comics logo to accomodate Aquaman's). Between that and the obnoxious cover blurb and the huge DC logo I'm surprised anything else in the cover got through.
The splash is another story. I love Aparo's work fiercely, but this is just bad. It looks for all the world like Aquaman, sad that he just missed his Hawaiian cruise, is attempting to console himself with a stationary amusement park ride as he watches the ship sail away on a blustery day...not clinging desperately to a missile hurtling through the air at Mach 2 towards its helpless target.
While I was fine with Aquaman's adventures as written by Levitz (and especially with Aparo's art, which I much preferred to Grell's), I was beside myself with grief over the loss of The Spectre's gruesome adventures (especially as I missed the last two issues and never found out what happened for years to come).