Essential Silver Surfer Vol.1 (three out of five stars)

ESSENTIAL SILVER SURFER VOL.1

I'm nearly finished reading Essential Silver Surfer Vol.1, and thus far its been a fun look at the Sentinel of the Spaceways earliest tales in the Marvel Universe. And I love Jack Kirby's artwork, as usual. But I do have a few gripes about the series.

My main complaint with the series is that virtually all of the Silver Surfer comics are the same. Far too much time is devoted to the Surfer's lamentations that he is imprisoned on Earth. The Surfer's constant whining about his exile, his insistent groaning about being apart from his beloved Shalla Bal, and the bi-polar attitude (one moment he pities warlike men, the next he hates them, only to pity them again, until their actions make him hate mankind again, and so on . . . . ) he exhibits throughout the series, coupled with Stan Lee's heavy handed, somewhat clumsy messianic allusions were probably a large reason the Surfer's original series was canceled short of it's 20th issue. I find that, despite my enjoyment of the character, even I am a little relieved that I'm almost finished with this particular chapter in the history of the 'Surfer.

That said, I am looking forward to Essential Silver Surfer Vol.2 (which I recently purchased), and the as yet unpublished Essential Silver Surfer volumes to come. I didn't read the 'Surfer's 80's series, and hopefully it will greatly expand on the character and flesh him out more. I understand that he is a tragic character. But I've had quite enough of the three-page long mournful soliloquy's . I want to see 'Surfer kicking some butt and taking names .

The Wildest Superhero of Them All

Remember the Human Fly? No? That's okay, I seemed to have missed him too back in the 70s. Recently, I found the entire series run of Marvel's "The Human Fly" in good condition at Wonderland Comics in Fresno and snapped up the collection for under thirty bucks.

All I can say is I loved it. It only took me one weekend to burn through the 19 issues, but it left me wishing there had been more to the series. Because the character was such a departure from the typical spandex-wearing hero set, I found him intriguing. Also, he was based on a real person, stuntman Rick Rojatt. How cool is that? (sorry for stealing your line, Rachel Ray).

If you can track down this comic in your neighborhood, or online and you enjoy 70s era Marvel, I highly recommend buying the Human Fly. See how a common man without extraordinary ability manages to make his way through the Marvel universe while contending with criminals and conmen, superheroes and villains, to become the wildest hero of them all.

Marvel Essentials Wish List

ROM: Space Knight

Another Classic from my childhood was Rom: Space Knight. I can still remember when Rom first came out, I sent my mother to the mall to grab me the action figure. Compared to todays toys, that old Rom wasn't much to brag about. But to me, at the time, he was awesome. My love of the toy, led me to collecting the comic. Rom is in my opinion, a vastly underrated title in Marvel history. I'm not saying it added as much to the Marvel Universe as Spidey or the X-Men, but a number of great characters were introduced in Rom, and the comic enjoyed more than a few well written storylines. Rom ran for 75 issues. That's enough material for a minimum of 2 volumes of Marvel Essentials if Mighty Marvel still holds the publication rights. If not, they need to buy them back and make this happen.

Devil Dinosaur

Marvel Comics only published 9 issues of Devil Dinosaur, but its one of the titles I remember best from my childhood. Along with Marvel's Godzilla comic, and the Shogun Warriors, Devil Dinosaur was one of my favorite books as a kid. Being that Marvel published a number of Devil Dinosaur one-shots, and guest appearances, there is enough material to justify an essential Devil Dinosaur.

Growing Up In The 70s

Growing up in the 70's I was fortunate enough to be a kid when Marvel Comics was undergoing an transitional phase from their traditional superhero oriented comics of the Silver Age, to more experimental themes. A lot of awesome characters and stories were born during the decade, including some legendary monster comics like Tomb of Dracula and Werewolf By Night, as well as comics like Howard The Duck, which defied easy categorization. It was a time before the market was flooded with X-books, and when you could still get a complete story in a single issue of a comic without worrying about massive, convoluted mega-crossover story arcs between a dozen different titles on a regular basis. Back then, Marvel was still the shining beacon on the hill for comic fans. Corporate greed and inept editors-in-chief (yes, you Joe Q) had yet to taint the hallowed halls of mighty Marveldom. I grew up a Spider-Man fan, largely through the Marvel Tales reprints of Peter Parker's earliest adventures as well as the Amazing Spider-Man comic itself. And, yes, I even read and enjoyed Spidey's Electric Company tie-in comic. Who didn't love the Electric Company as a kid back then? But Spider-Man was an exception. Typically, I was a bigger fan of the monster comics and stories featuring characters like Dr. Strange and the Silver Surfer, which dealt with more macabre and supernatural subject matter.

In the early 1990s I lost my passion for Marvel. The company had began to change from the company I had grown up with, to a corporation with one goal: make as much money as possible, at the expense of quality if need be. The gimmick foil wrap-around covers, the ever increasing cover prices and the increasingly common multi-title crossover story arcs were killing my enjoyment of reading Marvel comics. The storylines were just plain awful. All of the artwork began to look similar, with no one artist really distinguishing his or herself from any of the others. And the X-Men began to take up more and more room on the comic store shelves, meaning that other better titles like Alpha Flight were regularly canceled. I liked the X-Men as well as anyone. Hell, I'd been there from Giant sized X-Men #1 more or less. But too much of anything isn't good. So I did the unthinkable and dropped all of my Marvel comics, and went Indy.

I've never really returned to Marvel. I keep up with company news and eagerly await the day I read about Joe Quesada's departure as editor-in-chief. But I've not purchased any new Marvel Comics since the middle 90's or thereabouts. And I have no plans to do so. But I have grown fond of the great Marvel Essentials line of trade paperbacks. They're cheap, they're huge (most are well over 500-pages), and the black and white format doesn't bother me at all. I think it enhances the art to a certain degree. Thus far I have collected about fifteen volumes. And I've read most of them. This blog will be my review of those books, my thoughts on future books, and just random rambling on subjects myriad and diverse.