Mike Sterling's Progressive Ruin
Under deconstruction since 1969
…Well, I was working on a new installment of the Final ’90s Countdown and I’m like a third of the way through the proposed entry and I just looked at the time. Eep!
So, I’ll finish it up Monday night and have it out for Tuesday. Sorry about that, pals. Apparently I had a surprising amount to say about this particular comic, and I didn’t want to rush through the entry just for the sake of getting it out “on time.”
Thanks for your patience, pals!
Aside from some time constraints and other topics popping up, I had this brief pause in this series of posts to give myself an opportunity to sort of consider what I’m doing here.
The reason I started writing these is because I recently read (or reread) a lot of the last 30 years’ worth of Fantastic Four, starting around the time Tom DeFalco and Paul Ryan were doing the book in the early ’90s. I didn’t read every issue…I skipped some of the runs I knew well (like the Walt Simonson issues and the Mark Waid/Mike Weiringo run), and read for the first time the aforementioned DeFalco/Ryan stories, and the suyrprisingly brief J. Michael Straczynski run, and the Dwayne McDuffie issues, and so on.
I also reread the issues I bought and read at the time, but hadn’t revisited in the years since, like the Jonathan Hickman/Matt Fraction consecutive runs of more recent years. It was nice to be reminded of those.
I’m also reading some of these storylines way out of order. I’m currently in the midst of the “John Harkness” issues of the late ’80s Fantastic Four, where series writer Steve Englehart worked under a pseudonym in protest nagainst the editorially-mandated direction of the book. But more on that when I get there.
Plus, I eventually want to reread the Dan Slott run that directly leads into the current Ryan North regime on the title. And I do want to go back and read Chris Claremont’s stretch of issues, despite being warned off of them. Hey, I knew the job was dangerous when I took it.
The intent of this series of posts is record my reactions to these individual runs, with commentary on the events within. It’s really supposed to be more “how do I feel about these books” than “let’s recap what happened,” and I felt like I was sliding more toward the latter than the former.
The “funny recap” (though I wasn’t necessarily trying to be overtly funny when talking about these FF books) was a staple of the Early Comicsweblogosphere, where we’d take some wacky comic of yesteryear and give it a good drubbing from our modern perspectives. I mean, I sure did it a lot, as did the consistently-funnier and better-written Dave’s Long Box and The ISB, to greater effect, but I had fun doing it all the same. But the one thing we all had in common was a deep knowledge of, and love for, the medium, lacking in certain other flash-in-the-pan sites who didn’t seem to know much of anything about comics other than “look at this dumb panel, isn’t it stupid.”
Of late I’ve preferred, when discussing comics like these, to try to go a little deeper than “this is weird.” For example, this post on the Mr. Grumpy comic. Or this oddball Wolfman Jack thing. More than just a recap, but an attempt at trying to dig up info about the item, putting it in context and giving an opinion other than “this is wild stuff.” (Though to be fair, some of that Wolfman Jack comic was real “just look at this” material.)
That’s what I’m attempting to do with these Fantastic Four posts. I’m trying to maintain that balance, but that Frankie Raye post, which started off okay, with my reactions to what was going on into the series, slid into “recap mode” for the rest of the post. Now, I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad post, but it was doing what I was trying not to do, and that’s just telling you with picked-out panels and some text, what was happening in these issue. Too heavy on the “here’s what happened,” light on the “and here’s how I feel about it.”
I suppose one could argue that the recap was necessary to give context to my reactions, but looking at that post it could have been a few panel scans and explanatory paragraphs shorter.
Anyway, that’s something I’ll be working on in future posts. The other thing I should mention: the John Byrne run of Fantastic Four was not included in my current rereadings of the series. And yet, I started off with that in my discussions.
As I’ve noted in this series of posts, the Byrne run starting with #232 is as clean as a break as can be managed in the continuity and storylines in the series. There are some callbacks and returning characters (such as Frankie and Terrax, as discussed in those previous posts), but the precedings are all given a “you don’t need to worry about anything before I took over the title” vibe by Byrne. In effect, Byrne initiates the Modern Era of the Fantastic Four, with an entirely separate look ‘n’ feel than the hundred-something issues prior and the 1970s of it all. This is despite Byrne deliberately evoking the 1960s era of the title by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.
The reason I didn’t reread these is that…I kinda don’t need to, other than doing a quick scanthrough of the issues i intend to discuss here. I’ve read them all at the time: as I bought them as back issues, I’d read ’em; as I bought them new on the shelf, I read ’em; as I pieced together the run, I read them again and again. Not committed to memory or anything (otherwise I would have mentioned this guy in that post about Byrne’s super-villains). They are, however, very familiar to me, which may be part of the reason why I’m so heavy on recap material versus personal reaction, as it’s so long since my first, earliest readings of the material. It’s hard to dredge up those emotions at this late date.
Now I could very well be obviously going on about nothing. You folks seem to be reacting well to these posts, so I’m perhaps overthinking a problem that only I see. At any rate, I wanted to give you a heads-up in case future posts in this series run a little differently than the earliest installments. I’m sort of just winging it a bit here, so I appreciate your patience as I knock “My Fantastic Four-ay” into some kind of shape.
I’ll be getting back into the comics with the next part of this series, as I may want to mention one or two more things about Byrne’s run before we hit that transitional period between the end of his tenure and the beginning of Steve Englehart’s.
But to give you a bit of a preview of what lies ahead in my series…boy, the Wizard shows up a lot. Like, almost as often as Doctor Doom.
But, oddly, not during Byrne’s issues.
I apologize for missing my usual Monday update, and even not managing to get one available a day late for Tuesday. Most of you know my primary blogging time is late at night, after the day’s duties are done, and before go into my beauty sleep that still isn’t working. Unfortunately, the last few days I’ve been just too tired to Generate The Content™ that you’ve come to depend on here, the Internet’s Only Comic Book Website.
So now that I’m back, first let me tell you that I’m sorry that I keep identifying the artist of this proposed original cover for Swamp Thing #88:
…as the late Michael Zulli, but it is in fact by Rick Veitch, which I promise I knew, once, but somehow Zulli’s name got into my head, and there you go. Thanks to BobH for giving me a virtual punch in the arm to straighten me out.
And more Swamp Thing news out of the New York Comic Con from last weekend…DC Comics is teaming up with Boom! Studios for a comic pairing up our favorite muck-encrusted mockery of a man with the still-ongoing suspense/horror series Something Is Killing the Children, in a comic that could only be titled
Well, sure, why not. Also, Something Is Killing the Children has been going on for, like, 50 issues now, shouldn’t they have figured out what that “something” is by now? Sorry, haven’t read the series, no idea what’s going on in there.
But sure, I’ll read this new series, due out next year sometime, and who knows, maybe I’ll find myself hooked on the original SIKTC story. Yes, that’s how it’s abbreviated, that’s not a misspelling of the sound effect you get when Wolverine pops his claws.
What the Swamp Thing Is Killing the Children title reminds me of is that “If you see Swamp Thing, say Swamp Thing” faux poster that seemed like it was all over the internet a couple or four years back, and now all I can find is this Pinterest link.
Oh, and there’s also this fun announcement video for the Swamp Thing Is Killing… comic that you can see on the Instagrams.
Anyway, a new episode of Previewing the Past just came out, but its behind the Patreon paywall…pay $5 a month and get it right away, or pay just $1 and get it two weeks later. They’ve got plenty of podcasts to listen to, some free, some Patreon only, all worth listening to. Let ’em know Mike sent you.
If you see a trolling, hate-filled reply in my comments, or even if it’s just garden-variety spam that somehow slipped through, don’t respond or interact with it, please. I’ll dispose of it accordingly as soon as I’m able. Thanks.
So I received a nice surprise in the mail on Tuesday…a postcard from Steve Lieber advertising the forthcoming hardcover collection of the Jimmy Olsen series he with with Matt Fraction:
If that cover seems familiar, here’s why.
On the back of the postcard is info about the book, plus a special handdrawn message from Mr. Lieber his own self:
A closer look:
Very nice. Made my day getting this card. And, if y’all haven’t read that Jimmy Olsen series yet, this is as good a way as any to check it out. It’s a great run, very funny and imaginative, and one of my favorites.
Anyway, inside was a note from Marvel saying they’re trying to get 6/16 to be “Marvel Day” or whatever, and they’re kicking it off with some new, branded variant covers for recent Marvels, like this one for X-Men #15:
So anyway, I put those out for sale on Monday, but not put out for sale was this item, a set of Fantastic Four pins:
Pretty cool, thinks me. And as someone who likes pins, I’m just gonna hang onto these, thank you very much.
I think future 616 Days may be better served by some kind of freebie comic instead of just “collectibles” to be marked up. (And if they’re going to ship pins like these with comics in the future, they might want to do a better job making sure the clasps on the back don’t get crushed into the covers of those special variants when the envelope containing everything is at the bottom of a box with piles of books on top of it.)
However, this have resulted in a lot of hair-splitting and questionable decision-making and whathaveyou and sometimes something slips through the cracks, like 1989’s The Mask.
So, there will be some sidebars to the Final ’90s Countdown with some “Honorary ’90s Comics” — titles like Eightball and From Hell, all technically beginning in the very late ’80s but are very associated with the ’90s. Look, I’m flying by the seat of my pants here, but these comics should be discussed, even if they were disqualified from the initial vote.
It’s a little bit of a mess, but at least we get to talk about a bunch of good comics!
Just a quick note to alleviate some confusion, since I’ve also been neglecting to mention it on a regular basis. The way I’m handling the Final ’90s Countdown, the same was I held the previous Final (’80s) Countdown, is by tallying the votes for all those nominated, and then discussing in alphabetical order all the single vote getters, then moving on to discuss all the two-vote getters, and so on ’til we read the #1 title.
As of right now, we are still in the middle of the many, many titles that have only received a single vote. So, if you voted for something and feel like it should have shown up already, well, maybe it got a second or third vote and will be in the next batch!
In the future I will try to emphasize the number of votes the title under discussion received, to help everyone keep track of where we are. And as I said when we started, ain’t no shame in a title just getting one or two votes. That just shows how much good stuff was out there for everyone to read!
Okay, thanks for reading, pals, and we’ll be back at it next week. (And hopefully I’ll switch the corner box and “…since 1969” tagline too.)
Thanks, gang, for the positive response to my 20th anniversary post, both here and elsewhere. And thanks to most of you for not making fun of my appearance in the Youtube video, Andrew. Ah, just kidding with ya, I knew my face was goofy when I took it.
But anyhoo, I was going to dive back into the 1990s comics thing, and I promise I’ll get back to the 1980s comics thing next week, but I thought I’d respond to a couple of recent comments before they’re lost to the mists of blogging time.
First, Donald G mentions
“May you be here for many more and not disappear like so many others.”
I’ve talked about this before, but it’s likely been, oh, a decade or more, so it probably won’t hurt to address it again. Barring accident or sudden health issues or something, like a big cartoony piano being hauled up the side of a building suddenly snaps its rope and it comes crashing down, accordionizing me beneath it, I promise if it comes time to shut off the lights here, I will let you know. I won’t leave y’all hanging.
I’ve seen a lot of blogs over the years where the last post reads something like “sorry, been busy, will post again soon!” and the entry is marked like five or six years before the current date. It was prevalent enough to where when I when post something like “sorry gang, no post today, will be back later” I’d add something like “no really, I’m coming back, I’m not like those other blogs.”
I used to post every day, because I read something once long ago that you should post every day to maintain your readership, get people used to the idea that Regular Content would appear on your site. Well, maybe doing that in the early years helped build an audience, but now I’m on a more…sporadic schedule (usually Mon-Wed-Fri, but not always) and that doesn’t seem to have hurt anything. I mean, someday the schedule may get even looser…once a week, three times a month, something like that, but don’t worry, I don’t plan to scale it back that far anytime soon.
BUT…scaling it back is likely inevitable. As long as I’m in the comics business, I plan on keeping this site going (so if you want this place to continue, the obvious solution is sending lots of money to my store). But it may be as free time decreases, or the simple desire to post as much wanes, new content here will diminish. I can’t see ever not wanting to talk about comics, so the site staying open so I can continue to pontificate at excruciating length at least once in a while.
Like I said, that’s a long, long way off before I do anything like that, at least three or four months, so don’t worry about it. One of the ultimate goals for this site is to create an index page, with links to specific posts or categories of posts, so that even when I decide to stop the blog or slow it to a crawl, it can remain a more easily-searchable resource. I used to have in the site’s sidebar links to posts of note…it would be sort of like that, only perhaps a little more comprehensive.
One thing I won’t being doing if/when I bring the site to an end is “Scorched Earth.” This was a post I thought about doing very early on, before I realized this site was going to become a lifelong task. It would be the final entry here, where I stopped being polite and started getting real, just laying into the people who annoyed me, crushing my enemies, speak truth to power, etc.
But if I’ve changed at all in the last couple of decades, it’s that I’ve mellowed out a bit. I don’t get quite as worked up over the whole “Someone Is Wrong on The Internet!” thing as I used to, mostly just shaking my head at the absurdity of it all. Besides, I’ve outlived most of my enemies, at least here on the Information Superhighway, so the burning need to do a Scorched Earth post has diminished over the years. …Wait, I just thought of that one guy. OOOOH I hate that guy. NEVER MIND, SCORCHED EARTH IS BACK ON.
The TOO LONG, DIDN’T READ version: I’ll tell you when I’m stopping the blog. Unless I’m hit by a train or something, in which case someone else can tell you.
So thanks to Roel for pointing out my “forward/foreward” typo, which was dumb of me specifically because 1) I had the book right in front of me and it’s spelled out there, and 2) I had to correct myself when I typed the same word in an email, so I do know how to spell it. Ah, well, it wouldn’t be Progressive Ruin without any typoos.
Anyway, I’ve been going through some old CD-Rs and DVD-Rs of old files, and finding some oddball stuff. Like, here, enjoy a full box of Spawn POGs (or SPOGs) that I had at some point for sale on the eBays:
And here’s this thing, a blank template I created from the first Eclipse issue of Miracleman:
…that I eventually used to make this post.
If you want a full-size version of this template for your artistic shenanigans, just drop me a line and I can email it to you. (Sorry, it’ll get hotlinked to death otherwise.)
Oh, and another thing…I’ve recently been reading Bill Mantlo and Sal Buscema’s “Intelligent Hulk” storyline from the early to mid-1980s, leading up to the Hulk’s banishment to the Crossorads in #300. I started reading Incredible Hulk with #293, which is pretty much right at the final act of this story which more or less began around #270.
For about 2 1/2 years the status quo of the Hulk had changed from what everyone basically “knew” (either from the comic itself or from the TV show), which seemed like it was taking at least a slight risk. Even at the end, changing the Hulk back into an even more brutal, even cruel, version of the character was a little startling. It definitely laid the groundwork for following writer Peter David’s ten years of various versions of the Hulk, and pretty much the Hulk ’til today. (Not to leave out interim creator Al Milgrom, who was the fella what actually brought back the Grey Hulk before David got his hands on him.)
But what I thought was interesting, after Mantlo demonstrating repeatedly over the course of the storyline, that even with Banner’s mind controlling the Hulk’s body, he could still fall into a Hulk-ish rage if he wasn’t careful. This groundwork for Banner eventually losing control was put down sporadically, but not, like, overwhelmingly, and the danger of the old savage Hulk returning seemed…at least preventable.
Then Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars came along, where a whole gaggle of Marvel’s heroes vanished at the end of one of their issues, returned at the beginning of their next issues, and we were all extolled to read the 12-issue Secret Wars series to find out what happened to them between those installments.
In Hulk’s case, he came back with a broken leg and a bad attitude, suddenly a lot more cranky and violent than he had been just a month ago. Obviously things went poorly for ol’ Jadejaws during his Secret Excursion, causing his further mental decline.
However, reading it now, as a whole, rather than just the final few issues as I had originally…the pacing is off. Having so much of the Hulk’s decline happen elsewhere felt like something of a cheat after following the story in his own book for so long. Yes, everyone reading Marvel was expected to read Secret Wars, but even if you were planning to, the nature of the series meant that by the time you got to Hulk’s problems there, the actual Incredible Hulk book would have moved on into its new direction. A part of the story’s development had been excised from the main book, put into another writer’s hands in another series, and then deal with those repercussions back in Hulk. Ah well, that’s the Marvel Universe for you.
To be fair, #300 was looming ahead, so a change to the status quo was going to come anyway. And realistically, how much more of “Banner is or is not losing control?” plot events did we need? It would have been nice if we’d got more of Mantlo’s Intelligent Hulk, but it’s enough that he basically changed what a Hulk story is for…well, all time.
So if you’re dumb like me and still on Twitter, you may have seen me complaining thusly:
What was this mystery scan? Well, it was from a story that ran in an issue of Action Comics Weekly, that brief period in the late 1980s when DC attempted the weekly comics thing. Overall I thought there was some good work in there, though as it wore on the contents became slightly less killer, more filler. Overall, though, it was a good run and I was kinda sorry to see it go.
Now, the scan in question that I’d thought I’d made was from one of the serialized stories in this run, in which my hometown of Oxnard, CA (“more than just a pretty name”) made a brief appearance. I couldn’t find it on this site here, and it may or may not have been posted by me during my LiveJournal days, but I didn’t see it there, either. I could have sworn I made and posted a sca of the darn thing, but evidence appears otherwise.
And as my tweet there said, I went back into the tattered remnants of the Vast Mikester Comics Archive to retrieve the issue and make a new (or first, anyway) scan of the panels.
Which brought me to my next problem. What issue was it in? I remembered it being from the Blackhawk story (as referenced in this post right here, in the post’s title even) and so my search began, poking through every issue with a Blackhawk story trying to find the darn thing.
I did seem to remember that this was the issue with the images I was looking for:
…but a check of the Blackhawk story there turned up nothing.
And thus I looked and looked and checked purt’near every Blackhawk story in this run and found nothing. But I kept looking at that particular issue of Action, as I was sure that was the issue.
I checked again, this time going through all the stories in #621, and found what I was looking for. In the Secret Six story.
Somehow I conflated the Blackhawk cover image with the pics from the Secret Six story and remembered it as “Oxnard was in the Blackhawk story.” (Or maybe I can claim it was some supernaturally-tinged Mandela Effect, get featured on some Bullshit or Not-type TV show or website and 3) Profit.)
Regardless, here’s the sequence in question, where the characters are passing through my city of residence:
Well, I mean, yes, there are oil drilling sites in the area, and while I don’t think there’s an exact location that street scene is based on, it wouldn’t be out of place:
I thought it looked a bit like part of Oxnard Boulevard, my girlfriend thought it looked like the Boulevard as well, or maybe part of Fifth Street or A Street or thereabouts. Point being, this could be in Oxnard somewhere even if it isn’t.
But it was a neat thing to see Oxnard referenced in a comic I was reading. I mean, yes, yes, there’s Love and Rockets, too, but that’s different, Love and Rockets is from Oxnard. It’s more weird to see a superhero comic, which usually base their stories in New York or Metropolis or other big real-or-imaginary cities, as opposed to cities like Oxnard usually used as punchlines by Johnny Carson (true) or ALF (also true) or referenced on Three’s Company (also also true). Not to mention an episode of Sam and Cat that takes place in town. Don’t ask how I know that.
Oh, and back to comics, I seem to remember an biographical strip by Eddie Campbell in which he makes a stopover by train in Oxnard. Kurt Busiek set one of his comics (Section Zero or Shockrockets, sorry, can’t remember, see this post’s title) in neighboring Port Hueneme, which is close but no cigar.
And that’s that…the saga of Mike’s Brain No Work and the quest to track down that scan from a story. Thanks for tolerating my self-indulgence here, and remember, Call Again and Drive Safely:
…a sign I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen around here.
Hi pals…I’m a little under the weather (not COVID, don’t worry) so I’m going to try to keep this reasonably short today.
Just to touch upon a topic I’ve noted before, the social media hoohar is still going on, as everyone is casting about trying to figure out what the new Twitter is going to be. Frankly, I think the new Twitter will be “the old Twitter, only worse” but in the meantime I’m trying out Mastodon, I’m there on Cohost, and I’m also on The Hive (user name: “mikester” natch), which is phone-app only but looks promising. I even revived my Tumblr, for Pete‘s sake.
I don’t know where we’re all going, but we’re certainly going somewhere. I do expect Twitter to survive, even despite current ownership, and as someone said they’re going to discover themselves engineering back to the solutions that already existed when their thoughtless whims all come crashing down. The trick is whether or not the advertisers and the power users will stick it out ’til everything settles down.
But whatever happens, you can always find me here, and you can see what else I’m up to (or had been up to) at mikesterling.com. And that reminds me…I’ve long lamented the fact that “mikester.com” was registered only a few short months before I thought about doing so, and after years of being what appeared to be a mostly-inert webpage it is now in the hands of some domain sales site at the low, low cost of nearly $4000. So, for about 4% of the price I registered “mikester.net” instead. It just forwards to mikesterling.com. Hey, that’s a whole four characters less! A real timesaver!
Okay, so this isn’t just me blabbing about social media and domain names, here’s some actual comic book content. It’s the Wizard-a-like Hero Illustrated‘s video magazine #2 from 1994! Warning: may be hard to take all 25 minutes in one sitting. Features a Rob Liefeld interview and commercials for a video game I don’t remember.