Marvel Comics of the 1980s: 2017

Wednesday, December 13, 2017

Shut 'er down, Clancy, she's pumping mud!

It's been a good long ride. 10 years. Over 3,500 posts. Over 5,000 comments.

But all good things have to come to an end. It's time to shut down my blog. A sincere thank you to all for your support. I couldn't have done it without you!

However, I do have a fun tumblr page focused on the Marvel 1980s. See you over there! http://marvel1980s.tumblr.com/

Tuesday, October 31, 2017

1986 - Mutant Massacre Map

From Walt Simonson's Facebook page:

"Actually, the logo on the poster said 'Marvel Mutant Massacre Map'. Somebody at Marvel felt that 'Merry Marvel Mutant Massacre Map' was in poor taste. So it was changed. But that was the original title. ;-)

"The poster outlined the reading order for what I think of as the first true crossover in the modern sense in mainstream comics. There had been occasional character crossovers before this (Iron Man and Sub-mariner come to mind for those of us who go back far enough) and there was an Olympic-themed comic with a lot of Marvel characters in it around 1980. And Thor featured a winter invitational during the Casket of Ancient Winters storyline that a few other titles participated in. So the general idea was floating around in the ether. But AFAIK, this was the first time a series of books at either Marvel or DC were linked in quite this way.

"The collaboration really grew organically out Chris Claremont and Weezie. The story of how that happened, while not THAT long, is longer than I want to post here. But they began collaborating on what became this crossover based on a story idea of Chris’s for X-Men. I got into the act because of Weezie and before we knew it, there were five different titles involved in an overarching crossover. And it really happened because the three of us were involved in these five titles. We did try to write the individual titles in a way that gave readers who were following individual titles a coherent story in each title while at the same time creating a larger story arc throughout all the books.

"At some point, it was decided that a chart showing the various threads and their relationships was needed. Well, both needed and promotional, I think. :) So I drew it up and added a row of figures across the bottom with a separate drawing. I don’t remember now if I did the actual paste-ups of the logos. At the very least, I would have indicated where every title went in which box.

"The entire assemblage was released to comic shops as a two-color poster.

"We all had a lot of fun, and the crossover was successful enough commercially that we found ourselves facing an editorially-mandated crossover the following year. And in general in comics, pretty much every year since.

"Nothing succeeds like success."

Monday, October 30, 2017

Why didn't John Byrne draw X-Men and Alpha Flight?

http://www.byrnerobotics.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=35290&PN=0&TPN=27

"Chris [Claremont] had so mishandled scripting Kitty -- who was, after all, my character -- that by the time I left X-MEN I wanted nothing further to do with her.* I'd settled down a bit by the time I drew this group shot, but there is really no significance at all to Kitty looking at the viewer -- except to be "cute".

"Some of you may recall that I was originally asked to work on the X-MEN/ALPHA FLIGHT book, and I said I would on two conditions: neither Chris nor I would have anything to do with the plotting, and Kitty would not be in the book. Both were agreed to by [Jim] Shooter.

"When I received the plot, it was OBVIOUSLY written by Claremont, and Kitty was all over it. When I complained, I was told I was being "unprofessional" and the editor actually HUNG UP ON ME!!"