Comic Related - Life in Four Colors

LIFE IN FOUR COLORS #3
Crazy From The Heat

Well here we are, with a brand new Life In Four Colors column and believe it or not we’re headed straight into the smoldering hot, dog days of summer (not to be confused with the Hot Dog Days of Summer….which I’m sure is the name of a summer event at some baseball park somewhere in this great nation of ours.)

By the way America…Happy 232nd Birthday. That’s a lot of candles to blow out. (I was amazed at how many books I featured in this column that were actually published back in 1976, the Jimmy Carter era, and our country’s bicentennial. Nice.)

July 4th weekend….already. Where is this year going to? Seems like summer just got here and people are already making plans for the coming fall season. Life does seem to blur together around the edges more nowadays. One big event leading into another and so on. But it wasn’t always like that. Once upon a time summer used to seem to last forever….and a day. You can still recall those days long gone, right?

And as a comic collector summer meant it was time for Marvel and D.C. to release a whole cornucopia of double sized annuals. Back when the words King Size…meant pulling out all the stops and giving the fans a stand alone story full of wonder and excitement…that at the same time fit into the current events in the regular books.

Like the covers often times stated…Double-Size Dynamite!!! D.C annuals had a tendency to use the current creative team already working on the current monthly book in this case Gerry Conway and Rafael Kayaan from Firestorm, while Marvel seemed to make an effort to couple a powerful writer and artist not currently on the regular book on the Annual…in this case Len Wein and Gil Kane.

During the mid to late seventies and into the very early eighties Marvel would continue to crush these mega-sized hits out of the ball park in grand slam fashion, relying on major league writers and artists working together (sometimes for the very first time) to attract the fans to these summer time classics.

Marv Wolfman and P. Craig Russell on Doctor Strange annual #1, a masterpiece that still reads well to this day.

Jim Starlin on Marvel Two In One annual #2….the conclusion of the story started in Avengers annual #7 that same year. A rare (back in those days) comic event that bounced from one annual to another in an attempt to wrap up all the loose ends from the recently cancelled Warlock series. And who could ever forget the talent paired up for Avengers annual #10. Chris Claremont and Michael Golden in a story that featured the very first appearance of Rogue…

…..and Amazing Spider-Man annual #14 written by Denny O’Neil and illustrated by up and coming comic book Hall of Famer…..Frank Miller. An awe-inspiring story that guest starred Doctor Strange and pitted our heroes against a couple of Marvel’s greatest villains….Doctor Doom and the Dread Dorammu. With flawless inking work by pinch hitter Tom Palmer…..still magical after all these years.

Another successful technique used to win the fevered pitch masses over back in those days was the pairing up of some of Marvel’s greatest All-Star characters in books written by tried and true veterans of the game.

The Fantastic Four would join forces with Daredevil (actually Matt Murdock) in one of their best encounters with their very first nemesis, the Mole Man back in FF annual #13 by Bill Mantlo and Sal Buscema. Bill and Sal had already teamed up once before two years earlier for a double header and another home run with Marvel Team-Up annual #1 which featured the history making, very first meeting between ol’ Web-Head and the All New, All Different Uncanny X-Men.

The solid line up of Len Wein and the ever busy Sal Buscema would also join forces with the Mighty Thor with the original Guardians of the Galaxy in Thor Annual # 6, a story that would come back to haunt both the Guardians and Thor (along with all his Avenging team mates) a few years later.

As we marched to the tune of a different drummer and into the eighties guided by the ever watchful, almost parental hand of President Ronald Reagan….D.C was doing their very best to steal a little thunder away from the House of Ideas. The new ongoing series The New Teen Titans by Marv Wolfman, George Perez, and Romeo Tanghal was consistently selling just as well as …or some months even slightly better than Marvel’s powerhouse mutant squad, Uncanny X-Men.

D.C stuck with this group of heavy hitters and continued to work a plan where their summer time annuals would actually be brought by the books own regular creative teams and would actually tie up story ends from the previous 12 issues or so in one super-sized extravaganza.

The company would enjoy three very strong summers pitching an almost perfect no-hitter against their cross town rivals relying on the strength of the Titan books and the creators working on them.

They brought the heat with New Teen Titans annual #1 back in the summer of 1982 which featured the first show-down between Starfire and her evil sister Blackfire as well as the conclusion of a crossover type event that guest-starred the Omega Men and a story that had already bounced from Green Lantern and Action Comics earlier that same year.

The following year Wolfman and Perez would strike again as the back story that was building in recent issues of the Teen Titans concerning New York District Attorney Adrian Chase would come to an explosive conclusion in New Teen Titans Annual #2 and the debut of the first modern day D.C character to call himself the Vigilante.

George and Marv had one more fastball left to throw….next year with the conclusion of one of the most talked about stories in comic book history…part four of the jaw dropping Judas Contract.

The nineties saw the end of The Gipper’s double term in the Oval Office and eventually Mr. Clinton would get back to back terms of his own. Two guys buy the name of Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa would pursue an honest baseball record with steroids and corked bats and the comic industry would suffer its most detrimental period since the “Seduction of the Innocent” trials that led to the establishment of the Comic Code.

The glory days of the summer annual were coming to an end while the comic market was in that state of decline. D.C abandoned their extra-sized annuals altogether while Marvel tried their best to produce summer annuals still. As was most everything Comic Related in the nineties they tried to do so with gimmicks and less than perfect marketing strategies. They came to the conclusion that they would tie all the summer annuals together….forcing the few still loyal comic fans to buy every book produced during the summer affair…..the first of these cross the company annual events would be the “Evolutionary War” event…..followed by others such as “The Terminus Factor” and “Atlantis Attacks”.

After they realized that wasn’t working they tried to group books together….the X-Men books would have their own set of intertwining annuals as would the Spider-Man books, the Avenger titles and so on. This failed as well do mostly to the fact with the comic industry in such a state of decline they couldn’t attract the top notch talent they once did and slipping sales from double sized annuals caused the books to all but disappear around the turn of the century.

A few annuals did pop up over at Marvel around the years 2001-2003, but these limited few were numbered differently and as would be a summer event practice in the not so distant future were used to “clean house”….including confusing loose ends left over from the “Onslaught” fiasco a few years before which actually saw Marvel license out several of it’s properties including the Avengers, Fantastic Four, and Captain America to Rob Liefield of all people.

A couple more years would go by without any type of significant summer type event from either Marvel or D.C …..and then just a few years ago D.C decided to change that by starting a new summer trend.

They launched the first of many “Shock and Awe” big event summer mini-series with their “Identity Crisis” story arc. A story that was supposed to change the DCU forever, which it did. I just don’t know if it was the change that the company was looking for.

Almost immediately after the press broke the story of the book’s prepared launch, Marvel decided to leap onto the field with a very similar styled limited series entitled “Identity Disc”.

Several comic fans were disappointed in what was supposed to be major events in Identity Crisis turning out to be much less than what they expected….many fans actually believed rumors circulating around that time that D.C was going to kill off Lois Lane…..instead they killed off…..a few characters much less notable….but my beloved Ronnie Raymond incarnation of Firestorm did get axed in this story as well. And although there was some level of disappointment with the series…..Marvel’s Identity Disc series was all but ignored by fans and quickly found it’s over stocked quantities crammed in bargain book bins across the nation.

The full scale summer event would continue to escalate in the years that followed. Marvel’s “Civil War”…

…went run for run with D.C’s “Infinite Crisis”….

Marvel seemed to win out in this summer face off as Civil War was the much better received of the two series. Although many fans believed the conclusion of the story fell flat. D.C. on the other hand dropped the ball in a much more serious fashion. An entire section of one of the Infinite Crisis books never went to print and never saw the light of day until the collected Trade Paperback, which did not go over well with the fans. Many thought it was a marketing ploy designed to get more people to buy the Trade…and actually I wouldn’t doubt if it was. Bad editing within the book itself caused several points in the story to skip about erratically and the combination of the famous “Super-Punch”, the death of Superboy, the altering of both Impulse and the Flash was more than most could tolerate.

D.C also created another marketing ploy during this time to even increase the sales of the book… There would be multiple limited series, one-shots, and special editions leading up to the Crisis at hand….

….and several more to follow after the conclusion of the series including the first weekly series that would actually lead up to the next year’s big event…..

…..an editing nightmare that was met with mixed feelings and reviews.

Over at Marvel they managed to sneak in multiple Big Summer events, that didn’t really affect each other. Ensuring sales year round without the burden of a weekly book. While Civil War was running its course a war was being fought on the fringes of the universe in the first Annihilation series …..

…a multi-part cosmic skirmish that I thought overshadowed Civil War and was led up to by multiple limited series much like D.C’s own Infinite Crisis. Annihilation was very well received by fans and didn’t fall down as it crossed home plate. And as both Civil War and Annihilation came to a close the World War Hulk series was waiting in the wings to smash it’s way through the Marvel Universe…

….which it did …up to it’s final book and it too suffered in it’s conclusion much like Civil War before it.

That brings us to right here, right now. The Summer of 2008. D.C is up to it’s old tricks again with another weekly series, this time Countdown to Final Crisis and other limited series such as Death of the New Gods….that would ultimately lead up to …Final Crisis.

As Final Crisis plays itself out it will of course spin-off into several other limited series and one shots as well…just like Infinite Crisis before it. Final Crisis already seems to be struggling just two issues into the series as many fans don’t like what they’re getting for their money. I myself lost interest in the Countdown series that led up to it and stopped collecting it after the eighteenth installment….and I have also already stopped collecting Final Crisis after reading the second issue earlier this week.

Things on the Marvel front seem better with another group of limited series books that lead directly into a second Annihilation series. “Annihilation Conquest”…..

…a book that has been so well received it has already launched a new ongoing series…the new “Guardians of the Galaxy” title which is already off to what appears to be solid start.

At the same time….Marvel’s Secret Invasion….

..a series that I admit I was against since day one continues to pick up steam and surprise a lot of people, including me. This series and the tie in Avengers book as well as the Fantastic Four Secret Invasion and Runaways/Young Avengers Secret Invasion books have floored me with the tight story telling. Marvel appears to be on the verge of wiping the plate clean of several of the last few year’s accumulated bad ideas.

But even with what looks like to be a successful summer for Marvel and an uncertain one for D.C I fail to see where either company can go from here. Marvel claims (and I’m not sure I quite believe it) that this is where they have been heading for years…..so if this is the climax…what’s next?

And D.C ? Does Final really mean Final…? One could only hope. But if so….what do they do next year? Are both companies aware their fans are becoming a little tired of these extreme, multi-part summer crossover events.

Will the next step be the return of stand alone one shot annuals produced in the manner of days past? Both companies have filtered in a few annuals during the course of the last few years. A very nice Daredevil annual and Batman annual #25 come to mind…both done more or less by the current creative teams on the regular books at the time. Are more to follow?

I guess we will just have to wait it out and sees what the next inning brings.

Until then…see you in the funny papers!