Lamenting the Lack of Landmark Looney

Man, I sure have been writing about Disney Ducks a lot in the last few years. Donald, Huey, Dewey, Louie, Uncle Scrooge... I seem to be able to talk about them a lot, especially if it's the works of Carl Barks or Don Rosa. In fact, this post about Della Duck from January of 2014 is one of the Cube columns that is constantly getting hits. Donald Duck is a great character. Scrooge McDuck is a great character.

Donald Duck and Scrooge McDuck are not my favorite funny animals. Not even close. That honor is reserved for one rabbit, and one rabbit only.

Yes, that rabbit.

Bugs Bunny cartoons were some of my favorite cartoons growing up and were some of the first voices I ever started trying to imitate. I watched a bunch of those cartoons a number of times, and to this day, I can still sing pretty much the entirety of "What's Opera, Doc?"

What's Opera Doc by MistyIsland1

I didn't mean to memorize that entire thing. I just watched it so much and it just imprinted itself in my brain. Beyond that, there's the Duck Season/Rabbit Season trilogy, the Rabbit of Seville, the ones with Marvin the Martian, and a whole host of others, and that's not even counting the ones that don't star Bugs (my favorite of which stars Michigan J. Frog).

Now Looney Tunes has had its share of comics over the last half-decade and more, and there are some websites that put up scans of them. They've been filled with fun moments, like this one:

And even some funny moments they didn't intend, like this one:

And there have been some really great talent that's worked on these comics. Hell, Dan Slott was one, and he's in the middle of writing what is probably my favorite Spider-Man run of all time. For one story in 1944, Porky Pig and Bugs Bunny got the king of funny animals working on them: Carl Barks.

Despite the sheer volume and talent though, I find it weird that Looney Tunes are rarely, if ever, talked about in the "greatest comics ever" conversations. There does seem to be a lack of landmark Looney Tunes comics, especially when you consider that the Disney Ducks are not only among the greatest comics of all time but also the biggest sellers in certain sections of the world, and I'm wondering really why that is. I've racked my brain for reasons, and I can only think of three.

Reason #1: Carl Barks and the Disney Ducks were a lightning strike

When Disney's comics people handed the pen and paper over to Barks, they gave him what was essentially free rein (or as such that passes for Disney) to do what he did. Barks, realizing that there was absolutely no way to replicate Donald's voice, also realized what a blank slate he was essentially working with. So he turned Donald into a regular working-class Joe (who happened to be an anthropomorphized duck) and had him take odd jobs that led him to adventures. And when Barks created Donald's Uncle Scrooge McDuck and cousin Gladstone Gander, the ball really started rolling. Those characters took on lives of their own, even if it did take a while for Barks to perfect them.

Dan Slott has said that when he was working on Looney Tunes, he actually got a lot of latitude, but it would take just the right eye to see how a character such as Bugs Bunny or even Daffy Duck could expand in the role given to them. Barks himself didn't figure it out in the one story he did, and really, as much as Barks' work on Barney Bear is pretty and entertaining, it's not as praised as the Duck books either.

Carl Barks and Donald Duck were a perfect match. Barks gave Donald Duck a life of his own, and so Donald Duck for the most part in the comics is a vastly different character from the cartoon Donald Duck. That was the right twist and it may not have worked with any other creator or with any other character. To hold the funny animal genre to that standard, which I am now doing because I am unreasonable, is to hope for a very specific lightning strike of creative freedom, the right creator, and the right character.

Reason #2: There is a distinct lack of promotion

Supposedly the Looney Tunes comics do well enough overseas, but there just seems to be a lack of knowledge of the existence of these comics. No trade paperbacks are in print, and hell, the DC series just came out with their 227th issue this month, and the general comics fan seems to be unaware or uncaring about the existence of the series. I'm not saying that the lack of landmark Looney Tunes comics is a direct consequence of the lack of promotion, but the lack of such recognition may also come with a lack of incentive to create beyond the box.

Reason #3: Mel Blanc is irreplicable and irreplaceable

Before I start this paragraph, can I just say how dumb it is that "irreplicable" isn't actually a word? That's really dumb.

Anyway, Mel Blanc, whom I believe is widely recognized even within the voice acting industry as the greatest voice actor of all time, gave a bunch of Looney Tunes characters, including Bugs and Daffy Duck, their voices. Their voices are a huge part of their personality, and they're not really easily rendered in written dialogue. Barks did away with the voice altogether, but aside from having a quick temper, Donald's generally a blank slate. With the Looney Tunes characters, their voices are their personality.

Could the right creator discard those voices altogether and come up with the right twists? Maybe. But I'm not holding my breath. The chances of someone really doing to Bugs Bunny and company what Barks did with Donald Duck are incredibly small, especially when you consider the fact that what Barks and Donald Duck was a match made in heaven to begin with.

But while not the same, the current Looney Tunes series is still entertaining. I was also a big fan of The Looney Tunes Show, as well. And it's nice to see things like DC doing a variant cover theme month integrating their characters with the Merrie Melodies characters. So I may as well close with this cover by Terry and Rachel Dodson, featuring Wonder Woman and Elmer Fudd.

"Oh Diana, yo' so wuvwy."
"Yes, I know it. I can't help it."

To Reprint or Not: Captain Marvel and the Monster Society of Evil

It's no secret that I'm a big fan of Captain Marvel, he who says "Shazam!", and a big part of it is conceptual. I love the Golden Age stories, those I've read anyway, written by Otto Binder, of Captain Marvel, and they're some of the best drawn and most creative stories, not just of the Golden Age, but in the history of comics in general. They're just brimming with the type of creativity that Silver Age stories would be lauded for, and the art by C.C. Beck is clean, crisp, and always a pleasure to look at. It also isn't a secret that I'm not a fan of most of DC Comics' attempts to breathe new life into Cap (there have been three exceptions), and I believe that DC should have more archival collections of Captain Marvel and the Marvel Family. The Shazam Archives, unfortunately, stop right before Otto Binder took over from Bill Parker, and thus right before the character really took off creatively.

One of the landmark stories in Captain Marvel history is called "The Monster Society of Evil," which ran in Captain Marvel Adventures #22-46, from March 1943 to May 1945. That makes it the longest-running serialized story in Golden Age Comics and thus a first of its kind for the superhero genre. This 25-part (!) story features Cap's search for Mister Mind, the leader of the eponymous Monster Society, and they even make Mister Mind's appearance a mystery for a few parts there, even having him make an appearance without actually being outed.

Mister Mind has henchmen all over the world and all over the universe, so Cap has to go travelling all known existence and averting crisis after crisis, like exploding volcanoes:

Or unthawed woolly mammoths:

Really, it's good fun. Unfortunately, Captain Marvel fighting people around the world in the middle of World War II means it's full of racial caricatures. It was the time for such, and it's common in Golden Age comics. The Japanese, especially, are demonized — a known strategy during wartime to heighten the importance of your side winning.

It's not just the villains either. Prominent in the early chapters is Steamboat, Billy's assistant, who is drawn in black minstrel fashion.

Again, this is common in Golden Age comics. The works of Will Eisner (particularly The Spirit) and even Carl Barks are full of such depictions. However, that doesn't make it any less unfortunate.

A few years ago, there was talk of reprinting The Monster Society of Evil, and the plug was pulled at the last minute. After having read this story in its entirety on Comicbookplus, I think it was a good call. It's a hard call though, because it's a historic piece of comic book history, and to not publish it due to racial caricatures reminds me of this introduction by Whoopi Goldberg for the Tom and Jerry collection:

"The Tom and Jerry episodes included in this collection and the outrageous brand of humor shown here comes to us from a time when racial and ethnic differences were caricatures in the name of entertainment. Now while humor may have been the intent of such caricatures, they also had the effect of revealing society's unfair and hurtful representations of people of color, women, and ethnic groups. Now some of the cartoons here reflect prejudices that were common in American society, especially when it came to racial and ethnic groups. These prejudices were wrong then, and they're certainly wrong today. With Puss Gets the Boot, we're introduced to one of those caricatures, Mammy Two-Shoes. Mammy Two-Shoes had a key reoccurring role in a number of Tom and Jerry shorts and was an important component that made the interplay in those cartoons work so well... The fact that she is so definite a character even though we really never see her face is due to the acting and posing that Joe Barbera excelled at, the skills of the animators, and the excellent voice talent of Lillian Randolph. Removing Mammy Two-Shoes from this collection would be the same as pretending that she never existed. The same is true for the other images and jokes that we wouldn't normally include in a mainstream cartoon today. So Ms. Two-Shoes along with other elements that reveal the other prejudices at the time are presented here to accurately reflect a part of our history that cannot and should not be ignored."

And I get that — Steamboat was a step in the portrayal of blacks in comics, just like the "evil Jap" was a step in the portrayal of Asians in comics. I've also been reading some Silver Age Marvel recently, and those are full of sexist dialogue, and obviously those are still being printed.

Still, I think it was the right call to not reprint The Monster Society of Evil, and a huge part of it is that Shazam is slated for release as a movie soon. Ideally, that would bring viewers, and by that I mean kids, into shops to look for Shazam-related stuff. As opposed to Will Eisner's Spirit (the target audience isn't kids), Carl Barks' Donald Duck (the Fantagraphics collections I doubt are for kids; they're more historic, and Fantagraphics releases one-off reprints for kids as well), and even Tom and Jerry (where you can stick an intro by Whoopi Goldberg in there, and was also an important step in the history of acting for minorities, since Lillian Randolph was black), there really isn't much Captain Marvel–related stuff out there, and it'd just be risky to put out there, at least this early on.

Additionally, like I said before, the Shazam Archives stop right before Otto Binder took over as writer, so there's a lot of actually really good Captain Marvel stuff that DC Comics could reprint and should reprint, most without the unfortunate addition of those racial stereotypes. I don't even think "Monster Society" is as good as some of the other Golden Age Captain Marvel stuff I've read from reprint-books-that-are-now-also-out-of-print. One of my favorites, "Captain Marvel Battles the Plot Against the Universe," is incredibly entertaining and to my knowledge has never been reprinted.

Luckily, I can read it all on Comicbookplus, which is another reason I think it's okay for DC not to publish "Monster Society." The Golden Age Captain Marvel comics are, as I understand it, in the public domain, and those curious enough to read it can do so if they're so inclined.

So should "Monster Society of Evil" be reprinted? I say no. There are other things they could reprint first, and maybe with a wide enough inventory, then they can think about it again. But it's a close call. What do you guys say?

Hey Marvel, Can We Get No One Dies in Hardcover?

So last week, I was talking about Spidey Sundays the 12-week strip Stan Lee and Marcos Martin did in 2010 that was incredibly silly and pretty, so much so that I want Marvel to rerelease it in hardcover format just because it would look really nice on my shelf.

So while I'm making requests, can I also get Amazing Spider-Man #655, "No One Dies" in hardcover?

"No One Dies" is a comic that exemplified why, until very recently, I was still buying single issues (certain constraints and Marvel's relaunches have made me switch to trade paperbacks). It truly is a work of art that stands on its own. The eighth issue of Dan Slott's "Big Time" era on Spider-Man, it was a marked departure from the tone Slott set for the preceding seven issues, which were more lighthearted. However, since this depicted the funeral of Marla Jameson, J.Jonah Jameson's wife, the mood was decidedly more somber.  The first half of the book is completely silent, which is a bold choice especially for a Marvel-style (plot first, dialogue when they get the art) writer like Slott, because it may not showcase his more tangible skills as a writer such as dialogue and narration, but it's also the correct choice because Martin's art just shows you everything you need to know.

Each scene bleeds right into each other, too. These two pages follow each other.

The second half of the issue is an elaborate dream sequence that requires you to turn the comic sideways at times, and is quite surreal, disturbing, and creepy.

And Escheresque! Did I mention Escheresque? So pretty. So beautiful.

In my mind, it's the best thing on a technical level, and perhaps even on an emotional level, that Dan Slott has ever written, and may be as close to perfect as any issue of Amazing Spider-Man ever got. The issue that follows is technically the continuation of the story, but really, this one issue stood on its own. It's the kind of comic that should be given to artists to inspire them and to get them to try new things. It's just beautiful.

So, hey, Marvel, can we get this to stand alone in hardcover? If IDW can do it for GI Joe's Silent Interlude, you can do it for this. Thanks!

 In the meantime, you can read the comic in this trade paperback, Matters of Life and Death.

Loki: Agent of Asgard is Marvel's Answer to Sandman You Didn't Know You Wanted

Neil Gaiman's Sandman is one of the evergreen stories in the history of comic books.Debuting in the late 80s and lasting 75 issues and over six years, Sandman featured the Lord of Dreams (or, really, the embodiment of Dream) as a brooding monarch who struggled with growth and change. Dream was tall and lanky and was also a shapeshifter, and he had the ability to peek into and control your innermost thoughts.

Two decades after Sandman ended, Al Ewing and Lee Garbett did Loki: Agent of Asgard, featuring the adventures of a reborn Loki who was trying to grow past the role of the god of lies.

Constantly faced with his past and his future (literally—his future self who goes back to being the god of evil is the main villain of the series), Loki is always trying to change. Capitalizing, I'm sure, on the popularity of Tom Hiddleston, god of Tumblr, Marvel had to find a way to turn Loki into a sustainable protagonist. That was already underway with the Kid Loki stuff, followed by a stint in Young Avengers (which is excellent), but in Agent of Asgard, Loki finalizes his change away from being the god of evil by accepting that he is the god of lies, and a lie is just a story told.

So by extension, this makes him the god of stories.

Loki makes a friend named Verity Willis, who can detect any lie. This means that she has a hard time with fictional stuff, because by definition, it's all a lie.

Side note: Verity is one of the best things about long-term continuity. She's related to a very minor character in Walt Simonson's legendary run on Thor. It's not important at all to the story, but it adds an extra layer of significance. And it's cool.

Eventually, after getting to know Loki, Verity manages to start reading fiction, knowing that while, yes, they are lies, they're also full of truth, which reflects a recurring theme in Sandman.

Loki even talks about how stories are cyclical, and how stories can come alive because people believe in them, or maybe just because they're that important.

Look, I'm not saying that Loki: Agent of Asgard is an extension of Sandman or anything, or even that they're similarly written. Sandman was clearly more serious, stood mostly on its own, referenced literature heavily, and was aimed at a specific crowd. Agent of Asgard has levity, tied into current events in the Marvel Universe pretty heavily (to its detriment, I think, unfortunately), referenced pop culture, and was aimed at a different crowd. But it dealt with similar themes — that of story and change — and had two characters that were both compelling and had similar capabilities, if completely different personalities. It's spiritually similar, and it makes Loki a more intriguing character, rife for more story and possibility.

Point is, not a lot of people read Loki: Agent of Asgard, I think, and it's a shame. It was well written, fun, and well drawn. It has a true element of mythology to it — fairy tale logic, mythical weapons that reveal truth, and whatnot — and it was really just quite charming. Fortunately, since this is the true Golden Age of comics, it's all available in three trade paperback collections, and if you're a fan of Loki, whether it's from Kid Loki or from Tom Hiddleston or whatever else, or, hell, if you were a Sandman fan, I really recommend it.

Or, if you didn't want to read all that, here's one of the first few pages of this series. Enjoy.

You can get Agent of Asgard on Amazon:

Crusher Hogan's "Last Shoot" and Why Spider-Man Ruined a Dude's Life

With the news of Ringside coming out from Image in a couple of months, I thought I'd look at another comic about professional wrestling. So here I am looking at my copy of Spider-Man's Tangled Web #14, by Brian Azzarello, Scott Levy, and Giuseppe Camuncoli, published in 2002, and wondering if readers who don't watch professional wrestling understand it.

"The Last Shoot" is the story of Crusher Hogan, who is the professional wrestler that Peter Parker fights in his first appearance in Amazing Fantasy #15, way way back in 1962, to test out his powers.

In the first Spider-Man movie, he was renamed Bonesaw McGraw and was played by Macho Man Randy Savage.

RIP Macho. You were awesome.

"The Last Shoot" tells the story of Crusher right before his meeting with Spider-Man and, consequently, shows how Spider-Man is responsible for ruining Crusher's life without even realizing it. Now I'm a pro wrestling fan, so I understood what was going on right away, as I am used to pro wrestling words such as "kayfabe," "angle," and "shoot," and I think this story is easily understandable by non-pro wrestling fans as well. But for those who don't get it, here I am to explain it to you.

(Please keep in mind that despite being a fan of professional wrestling and having read a bunch of wrestling biographies, I am not actually an authority on the subject.)

Okay, so "The Last Shoot" opens with Crusher Hogan in the ring, establishing that he's what's known as a shooter, someone who can hurt people for real. "Shoot" means they're doing it for real, as opposed to "work," which is when they're playing a character. You can do a "worked shoot," in which you're in character, but you're grounded in the reality of the situation.

In this case, we find out why Crusher's really rough on his colleague there. The guy wasn't selling (making it look like the moves hurt), so Crusher actually hurt him for real. Selling is an important part of any match, since it makes the opponent look strong. So Crusher has a warning for the kid for next time.

This isn't uncommon in pro wrestling. An incident in the mid-2000s in an untelevised house show
had a young up-and-comer named Chris Masters not selling well enough for the Undertaker.
After repeated warnings to sell better, the Undertaker broke his arm in the ring.

Unfortunately, the company Crusher works for, Championship, isn't doing well and even his boss Bobby thinks that jumping to the competitor, Global, is the best thing for his career.

Crusher has problems with this. It's partly due to loyalty, but it's also partly because "Global is about gimmicks," and he doesn't really have one. He's just a really good wrestler. It's similar to why the WWE is different from the smaller independent promotions — personality is very important. It's hard to argue otherwise for a global product, really, as watching pro wrestling just for the wrestling is pretty niche. (The technically proficient pro wrestlers are my favorite wrestlers, and even I wouldn't watch three hours of just them.)

Crusher's wife Marie says "They just want a piece of you," and it's in those words that Crusher finds his gimmick. The next show, he shoots... on the fans.

Worked shoots have such strong appeal in pro wrestling — CM Punk's whole career turned around once he delivered his famous "pipe bomb" promo, which people I know who know wrestling is scripted thought was real. It got them to pay attention after a long while and brought the WWE into a new era where they bring the characters into their social media accounts and blurred the lines between kayfabe (the world in which the characters live) and the real world.

Whatever Crusher said must have been really convincing, because it sells out the next show. The next thing we see is Crusher loaning money out from Hammerhead, who demands it back the day after the show, with interest.

This is the part that doesn't really fit. If Crusher was sure he wasn't going to use the money, why didn't he just pad a suitcase full of random paper and then a top layer of bills? Ah whatever, it adds to the tragedy.

The next scene features a sold out crowd and the same longhaired wrestler Crusher was working with at the beginning of the story thanking him for doing this for them. This is something that fascinates me about pro wrestling: the better the main eventer does, the better the entire promotion does, so it's really about filling the correct roles and knowing when to step aside and when to step up, because the more money for the promotion means more money for everyone.

It's here that Crusher reveals his plan: 10,000 dollars to anyone who can last three minutes in the ring with him.

It's an ingenious plan that hinges on Crusher's complete confidence in his ability to shootfight. The cash incentive would always ensure a sellout crowd, and those who don't give it a try will always tune in to see who beats Crusher, because that guy would become a hero. It's even an angle with an easy way out: when it's getting stale, they can just plant the next planned main eventer in the crowd and have him beat Crusher.

But it's an angle that needs time to gain traction. It has to have time to build up, and Crusher needs to get a bunch of wins in a bunch of nights to really make the fans hate him and for any payoff to mean anything. Unfortunately, for Crusher, that very same night, this happens.

Keep in mind that at no point in the story does it say this is happening in the past, so until Crusher reveals his gimmick, it could easily have been taking place in the present day. When Spider-Man makes his appearance, the impact is heightened. We know what happens next. Crusher's career is over, he owes 11,500 dollars to Hammerhead, and Peter Parker is completely unaware of it.

But Crusher's not resentful at all, no, because the next time Crusher is seen in continuity is in Amazing Spider-Man #271 (published in 1985), where Crusher is working as a janitor who tries telling people that he trained Spider-Man. He lives alone in a New York apartment that I doubt he could actually afford (just like in Friends), and is, apparently, actually a big fan of Spider-Man.

So you know, Spider-Man ruined the dude's job, marriage, and life, but it's nice to see Crusher didn't hold any grudges!

"The Last Shoot" delved pretty deeply into the wrestling world, and as a fan, I thought that was pretty cool. Another cool thing about it for me is that co-writer Scott Levy is better known as the professional wrestler, Raven, who has never made his being a fan of comics a secret.

Presto! The Joy of Bandette

"Do you think master thieves steal only paintings and jewels? This is not so.
For example, we steal hearts and smiles, to give to those in need."

Bandette, by Paul Tobin and Colleen Coover, is a delight. That is the simplest way I can describe it. Bandette is a delight. The eponymous heroine, a Robin Hood type with Camp sensibilities, fights crime and the forces of evil in a manner inspired by Tintin, with a speech pattern straight out of JM Barrie and Oscar Wilde books, and always, constantly, with a smile on her face.

Bandette is Camp, yes, and of the purest kind. While the common use of the word implies corniness, Camp really is just the emphasis of artifice and exaggeration, style over substance, to create something aesthetically pleasing. It's stylization played completely straight and with no hint of self-awareness. It's the beauty of masks, the joy of the show.

Bandette, always one step ahead of her enemies, at times feels like she never faces anything of consequence. But while that may be a criticism of more, shall we say, dramatic series, in a whimsical romp like this, knowing she's going to win is part of the fun. When she has to face bank robbers in a hostage situation, she does so by calmly pulling off a trick by letting them have all the money. When she runs into something unexpected to kick off her first collection of stories, Presto!, she quickly calls her team of assistants, affectionately called urchins, to execute a flawless plan. In fact, when Presto! ends, Bandette is in a contest with her rival, Monsieur, to see who the greatest thief in the world is. I'm 100% certain she's going to win that contest, and I can't wait to find out how in the next volume, Stealers Keepers. The fun is not in the worrying of how things will turn out in the end, but in how they will get there.

Coover's ink wash technique provides the perfect feel of whimsy and ephemeral quality to the book, and also imprints a very specific style on Bandette's already sizable and impressive cast of characters. As mentioned, there's her rival in thievery, Monsieur.

There's the Friends in Need Improvement Society (FINIS), and their leader, Absinthe.

There's the lovable old gruff cop who can never make an arrest without Bandette's help, Inspector BD Belgique, and his retinue. Belgique tries so hard, but he's just not good enough, and your heart breaks just a bit for him every time he has to call a wanted criminal to help him out.

There are Bandette's urchins, each with their own stories to tell, and each with their own personalities. Right now the most notable ones are the Three Ballerinas (bottom right), mainly because they're three ballerinas, and Daniel (the Thai delivery guy), because he definitely has a crush on Bandette, and she may or may not return those feelings. Daniel also has a prose story in Presto! that showcases Tobin's deftness with the written word and details how Daniel first met Bandette. It's quite charming.

But my favorite character in Bandette's world, maybe even more than Bandette herself, is Matadori, an assassin with a sense of honor, and who's even more Camp than Bandette. She actually narrates what she's doing as she's going along and even has her own entrance spiel!

I will emphasize that all these characters are introduced in the span of four issues. By the end of the fifth issue, and the end of the main arc of Presto, all the characters are on the stage and the momentum is in full swing. That's amazing! It's a full cast of characters, each imbued with their own unique aesthetic and personality introduced in such a short amount of time. That is a testament not only to Coover's design sense, but also her ability to infuse character and personality with facial expressions and body language.

Bandette: Presto! is a comic I picked up on a whim last week just as a treat to myself. I breezed through it and instantly started reading it to my niece. Bandette embodies freedom and the exhilaration of drama. She's a joy to read.

In addition to the main story, Bandette has "Urchin Stories," short strips drawn by different artists, focusing on her supporting cast. You can see them on Monkeybrain's website.

Guest Appearances and Semi-Plugs: The 80s Marvel Method of Dealing with Continuity

Back Issue Ben's been covering the severely underrated Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz Amazing Spider-Man run, which, while not critically acclaimed these days, left a lot of permanent marks on the history of your favorite wall-crawler not named Gwen Stacy. But one thing that struck me while putting his posts together is the way 80s comics used to acknowledge each other's continuity. Before the Big Event became a staple, the way a company would give an illusion of a larger universe is to have the characters drift in and out of each other's books, much like how in real life, you and your friends drift in an out of each other's stories.

Marvel was especially good at coordinating such incidences, partly because it was built into their DNA—Stan Lee and Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko had the Fantastic Four meeting the Hulk and guest-starring in Spider-Man, for instance, fairly casually, while DC books were looser, with the individual books going about their own business until it was time to bring the characters together in a team book like Justice League of America—and partly because Marvel's main characters were all pretty much in New York City.

Ben didn't really highlight the instances in his retrospectives so much, so I'll call 'em out here as highlights. In Amazing Spider-Man #277, in a narrative interlude to give Peter Parker a break from fighting the Hobgoblin, DeFalco and Frenz have Peter visiting a broken down Matt Murdock (that's Daredevil, for the five of you who didn't watch the excellent Netflix show), who's having his life torn apart by Wilson Fisk, the Kingpin of Crime.

Peter then visits the Kingpin afterwards to threaten him, not really getting anywhere.

This is all in reference to the now-legendary "Born Again" storyline in Daredevil, by Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli, one of the most well-regarded superhero stories of all time.

Spider-Man's interlude here, in his own title, serves several purposes. First, it shows that yes, these superheroes are in fact a part of a larger universe, and yes, logically speaking, a superhero can reach out to another in a time of need. Second, it does provide an automatic "out" (weak as it is, but that's just something you take with these shared universes) for Spider-Man to not get involved, thus leaving Daredevil's story independent and overall unaffected — "Born Again" is enriched by this interlude, as is the feeling of the Marvel Universe as a cohesive whole, but nothing is taken away if you don't know of this issue's existence. Third, it plants seeds for a possible plot down the line between Kingpin and Spider-Man. Fourth, it's a good plug for Daredevil's book!

Side note #1: the Kingpin moving from third-class Spider-Man mob boss villain to first-class Daredevil villain was a stroke of genius. What other "villain transplants" can you think of that were successful? Which ones didn't pan out so well? And which ones haven't happened yet, but you'd really like to see? I kinda wanna see Poison Ivy as a Wonder Woman villain.

Maintaining individual narrative integrity on each title while at the same time creating the feeling of a larger universe does, when viewed as a whole, make the foundations of the universe look spindly at times, such as when Spider-Man is fighting Firelord in Amazing Spider-Man #269-270, and Peter, hopelessly outmatched, tries to find the Fantastic Four, only to remember that they're off-world.

This wouldn't be so glaring (and in this case, they actually were off-world at the time in their own book) if the Fantastic Four didn't happen to be off-world just about every time he was outmatched and needed their help. Spider-Man's other "hopelessly outmatched" story, for example, where he fights the Juggernaut, has him trying to call the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, and the X-Men, none of whom are in New York City at the time. I don't know if they actually were or weren't in their own titles, but if they weren't, I'm going to chalk that up to editorial coordination and not just a stroke of blind luck.

But these are things you just have to accept if you're going to buy into this whole "shared universe" thing, much like, yeah, you just have to accept that Iron Man and Thor aren't showing up in Winter Soldier, because then it would take away from Captain America being the agent of resolution for the narrative. That's okay, and it does highlight the times when the other characters who need to be there actually do show up. At the end of the Firelord story, the Avengers show up to take Firelord away.

And in Avengers #258, which follows that issue of Amazing Spider-Man, we pick up right where we left off. Here's the cover.

And here's part of the scene that comes in the middle of the comic, when the Avengers get back to New York City.

The Black Knight is not easily accustomed to change.

Spider-Man's story, in the sense that he is the protagonist, as it regards Firelord, is over, and Firelord then becomes the Avengers' problem, while Spider-Man goes about his own life. In this Avengers storyline, early on in Roger Stern and John Buscema's legendary run on the title (not the part that would become legendary), Hercules sets Firelord straight and the flame-headed herald of Galactus joins Earth's Mightiest Heroes to fight against Nebula. That's it. Being beaten up by Spider-Man one week, fighting a space pirate with the Avengers the next.

Side note #2: Can you think of a better superhero comics/pro wrestling analogy than Firelord to Kane? Firelord is a former herald of Galactus, with similar power levels to the Silver Surfer, and made his debut fighting Thor, but, since then, he gets beaten up all the time. Kane made his debut fighting the Undertaker, is basically the Undertaker with fire, but also gets beaten up all the time. It's like whenever they show up, it's because the writers want to build up a new character by having them beat Surfer/Taker, but they know it'd be ridiculous, so they take the incredibly beatable substitute.

This sort of interlocking type of continuity was already in play since at least the 60s, but it was in the 80s when that interaction seemed to be at its most coordinated. For me to say I'm nostalgic for it would be a lie—my prime comic book collecting/reading time was in the mid-90s, when they were beginning to move away from this type of thing (hell, for a time in the mid-90s, Marvel pretended like they had five different universes, complete with five different editors for each line, including the Spider-line, the Avengers line, the X-Men line, the "magic" line, and the cosmic line). Comics like Spider-Verse replicate the feeling a tad, with each title showing a different hero fighting a different part of the big battle, all forming a bigger whole, but those are limited to events and expected interactions. It's not quite the same thing as Peter Parker just randomly visiting Matt Murdock in the Spider-Man title, to see what's going on in the Daredevil title. There do seem to be more guest appearances now, but they still seem independent — a Thor appearance in Captain America may have very little reference at all to what's going on in her title.

I like the 80s Marvel Method of random guest appearances and interactions, but I also acknowledge that it likely wouldn't work in today's market. Such a method derived so much utility from the interlocking schedules. Spider-Man visiting Daredevil to check out what was happening in "Born Again" doesn't really work if "Born Again" is over. In the 80s, you got your comics as they came out; missing them meant you might not be able to find a copy at all, so part of the fun was getting them on time. These days, with so many people waiting for collected editions, or with back issues so readily available either via comic shops or the oh-so-very-convenient digital methods, the comic book reading audience is not guaranteed to be reading on a weekly basis. Even event comics, when they interact with regular series, tend to derail the regular series unless you've been reading the event comic. Loki: Agent of Asgard is a great example of this — it started out strong and with a lot of momentum, but its continuous ties to Axis and Secret Wars have derailed the title, perhaps not for those who have been keeping up with the title (and with Axis and Secret Wars) as scheduled, but for those who have been buying the paperback collections. Because the collections don't come out in the same order as the single issues, the collections end up suffering because there is a feeling of not getting a full story, at times.  As such, the 80s Marvel Method isn't really viable.

But when I read an 80s comic and I see it interlocking with another 80s comic, I think it's fun. It bring back a sense of randomness and gives me a little mark-out moment. I don't think it's that big a deal, really, things not being done that way anymore, because I don't see how it works today, but it's a small thing that makes me smile. Maybe as a human being, I can see it as a reflection of how people interact and drift in and out of each other's stories. Maybe, just as a professional, I admire the coordination. Or maybe, just maybe, as a fan, I just think it's fun.