Michael L. FleisherBesprekingen
Auteur van The Encyclopedia of Comic Book Heroes, Vol. 3: Superman
Besprekingen
Jonah Hex: Weird Western Tales #24 door Michael Fleisher
After Chris Claremont took over writing duties from Fleisher with issue 34, Jessica Drew and her friend Lindsay McCabe relocate to San Francisco, where Drew becomes a private investigator and continues to battle as Spider-Woman. With the exception of two alien stories, Claremont's stories have greater depth than the villain-of-the month formula that Fleisher used and feel like a return to Marv Wolfman's style. Given the opportunity to flesh out Claremont's stories, Steve Leialoha's art shines. Claremont builds a world involving a corrupt defense contractor and the Yakuza while bringing back the Arthurian elements of Wolfman's run, like Morgan LeFey. A multi-issue storyline involving the Viper is equally compelling. After wrapping up his main plots, Claremont's final two issues feel like afterthoughts, but do set the reader up for the disappointment of the final issues.
Ann Nocenti writes and Brian Postman illustrates issues 47-50. The first three are villain-of-the-month type stories while the final one attempts to tie them together and offer a conclusion for the series in a double-sized story. Nocenti's conclusion leaves a great deal wanting and feels like something of a betrayal after so many good stories. Postman's art is sufficient for the story, but lacks the zeal of Leialoha or Infantino. Worse, the ending wouldn't be fully resolved until Avengers nos. 240-241 and the events of New Avengers and Secret Invasion. The next stand-alone Spider-Woman series was a 4-issue mini about Julia Carpenter that Marvel published a decade after Spider-Woman no. 50. This was followed five years later by an 18-issue ongoing series starring Mattie Franklin in the title role. Jessica Drew wouldn't helm her own Spider-Woman series until the 7-issue Agent of S.W.O.R.D. motion comic in 2009-2010 and an on-going series beginning in 2015. All told, a disappointing ending.
This paperback volume reprints the stories in their original size with finished inks, but no color. The coloring in this era of comics took into account the cheap paper used and, without significant retouching, it would look garish. By omitting the colors and using cheaper paper, Marvel also made it possible to include more stories for a cheaper price, though the quality seems diminished from volume 1 and the black ink tends to leave smudges on the reader's fingers. If you want to read some of these in color without buying individual issues, nos. 37-38 appeared in Giant Size Spider-Woman and no. 45 was in an Impossible Man TPB.
Well worth reading just for the Gibbons/Simpson material.
Not a ton, as with issue #6, the series switches to the more traditional collections of stories, but in the interim there's some strangely enjoyable stuff; the full-length stories mean these stories have much more of an impact than some of their contemporaries. Particularly there's some lavish artwork from some of DC's best, like Alex Toth in "Bride of the Falcon" (a young woman in Venice), or Tony Dezuniga in "Kiss of the Serpent" (a young woman in India).
The later issues lose this gimmick, but it still seems more cohesive than in some series. I did enjoy the creativity of "The Hag's Curse" and "The Hamptons' Revenge" (written by Sheldon Mayer, art by Sam Glanzman), two stories of different time periods that literally run in parallel to each other-- take that indie comics innovators of the 2000s. We even get a story that seems rooted in DC's "Great Disaster," with "When Is Tomorrow Yesterday?" (written by Sheldon Mayer, art by Alfredo Alcala). The book does begin to get kinda dumb with its own theme by the end, though, such as issue #16, where each story is about a literal "sinister house"! Lame.
I picked this volume up because, as with its contemporaries, its host was reclaimed by Neil Gaiman as a resident of the Dreaming in The Sandman. But Eve is a virtual non-entity in these pages. The Secret House of Sinister Love actually begins as hosted by Cain, pulling out a file from the House of Mystery. Finally, with issue #6, Eve gets an amazing introduction, where Cain and Abel run away from the Sinister House because they don't want to be there when "that thousand-year-old female horror arrives!" (she's apparently been sleeping), but after that, she's just a recycled Alfredo Alcala headshot at the beginning of each story, with no personality. She does have a raven with her, though-- Matthew's predecessor? There's even an appearance in one story of three witches living in an apartment together-- Mildred, Mordred, and Cynthia of The Witching Hour! perhaps?
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Still, there's some decent material here, especially the completely creepy "Oh, Mom! Oh, Dad! You've Sent me Away To Summer Camp... and I'm So Sad!" (written by Michael Fleisher and Maxene Fabe, art by Alex N. Nino), about camp counselors and campers attempting to murder one another(!) and "The Night of the Teddy Bear!" (written by Michael Fleisher, art by Alfredo Alcala), about a creepy-faced serial killer and a weedy man. But unfortunately, this once-strong title could have done even better.
(Interestingly, a number of stories credit Russell Carley with "art continuity"; this Comic Book Urban Legends Revealed article explains what that means, but it baffles me that these credits are omitted from the book's table of contents, since Carley's role is far from incidental.)
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It is an impressive treasure trove of information about her Golden age adventures, and the entry on Wonder Woman herself is very good, even delving in to her psychology. But this doesn't make up for its instant datedness. A shame. With just a little more effort this could have been as interesting of a book as its predicessor.
The author has succeeded in making an encyclopedic work of all the Batman appearances up to the publishing date (barring his Justice League appearances). While I am sure he has missed some things, they are so minor that they are not noticeable. I am curious where he found copies of all of these comics to categorize like this, since this is before the trade paperbacks of collected issues.
The only reason that I give this 4 instead of 5 stars is two-fold. One, many of the entries do get a little repetitive. It is almost like he completely forgot what he said a paragraph or two before. Not too bad, but it does become annoying in some passages. And two, it is unfortunately dated. Not that the author had anything to do with this, but so much has happened to the character since this was written as to make this almost obsolete.
But it is still an incredibly impressive work.
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