This Comic Is Bad - World's Finest #128
I know a pal who believes that we here at Comics Should Be Good look too fondly upon books from the past, and I think that is untrue.
The simple fact of the matter is that now, 40 or so years later, the books we remember from that time period are, generally speaking, the GOOD ones.
We tend to gloss over the multitudes of BAD books from the Golden and Silver Age.
Luckily, we here at Comics Should Be Good wish to give you a balanced look at comics, both the good and the bad.
So now, I present to you a Silver Age comic that I think would definitely qualify as a bad comic.
World's Finest #128
I do not use this term loosely (in fact, I cannot recall the last time I actually used it), but this issue pretty much defines the term "hackery" in my opinion.
Jim Mooney is a good artist.
Jerry Coleman is a good writer.
This issue is terrible, in both story and art.
Basically, it all boils down to one central concept - What if Batman was affected by Red Kryptonite like Superman?
The entire 17 page story is built around that conceit.
And while it is not a great story idea, it is at least SOMEthing, but the surrounding story is just awful.
For instance, three criminal masterminds (with backgrounds about as deep as 1990s Rob Liefeld villain teams) are taking advantage of Batman's problems to go on a crime spree.
Earlier in the issue, Robin did a workup on the three main villains. Basically, stuff like "this guy uses explosives."
Later, Batman remarks how he used his brilliant deductive mind. "I remembered that one of the bad guys uses explosives, and since explosives are used here, it must be him."
Seriously, was Coleman even TRYING there? I get that he is writing to a younger audience, but that's the kind of deductive reasoning that Encyclopedia Brown would mock endlessly.
Meanwhile, Mooney is totally phoning in the art. Just a terrible story.
The Aquaman back-up is not as bad, but it is no great shakes, either. The Ramona Fradon art is strong, but the Jack Miller story did not do much for me. Aquaman pretends to have gone crazy so he can trick some crooks into springing him, therefore capturing them and saving Aqualad (who the crooks had nabbed). Silly, silly story.
The Green Arrow back-up has nice Lee Elias art, but Dave Wood's story is quite flat. A nice idea (an ashamed policeman redeems himself by saving Green Arrow), but nothing really happens in the story. No real sense of danger.
At least the issue gave us Rules of Water Safety from Buzzy! Win Mortimer did a fine job on the one page story telling us that it is better to use a boat to save drowning people than swimming out to them.
Oh, and a long article (no pictures) about insect armor! Julius Schwartz DID like to keep us readers infromed!
So yeah, all in all, not a good comic.
The simple fact of the matter is that now, 40 or so years later, the books we remember from that time period are, generally speaking, the GOOD ones.
We tend to gloss over the multitudes of BAD books from the Golden and Silver Age.
Luckily, we here at Comics Should Be Good wish to give you a balanced look at comics, both the good and the bad.
So now, I present to you a Silver Age comic that I think would definitely qualify as a bad comic.
World's Finest #128
I do not use this term loosely (in fact, I cannot recall the last time I actually used it), but this issue pretty much defines the term "hackery" in my opinion.
Jim Mooney is a good artist.
Jerry Coleman is a good writer.
This issue is terrible, in both story and art.
Basically, it all boils down to one central concept - What if Batman was affected by Red Kryptonite like Superman?
The entire 17 page story is built around that conceit.
And while it is not a great story idea, it is at least SOMEthing, but the surrounding story is just awful.
For instance, three criminal masterminds (with backgrounds about as deep as 1990s Rob Liefeld villain teams) are taking advantage of Batman's problems to go on a crime spree.
Earlier in the issue, Robin did a workup on the three main villains. Basically, stuff like "this guy uses explosives."
Later, Batman remarks how he used his brilliant deductive mind. "I remembered that one of the bad guys uses explosives, and since explosives are used here, it must be him."
Seriously, was Coleman even TRYING there? I get that he is writing to a younger audience, but that's the kind of deductive reasoning that Encyclopedia Brown would mock endlessly.
Meanwhile, Mooney is totally phoning in the art. Just a terrible story.
The Aquaman back-up is not as bad, but it is no great shakes, either. The Ramona Fradon art is strong, but the Jack Miller story did not do much for me. Aquaman pretends to have gone crazy so he can trick some crooks into springing him, therefore capturing them and saving Aqualad (who the crooks had nabbed). Silly, silly story.
The Green Arrow back-up has nice Lee Elias art, but Dave Wood's story is quite flat. A nice idea (an ashamed policeman redeems himself by saving Green Arrow), but nothing really happens in the story. No real sense of danger.
At least the issue gave us Rules of Water Safety from Buzzy! Win Mortimer did a fine job on the one page story telling us that it is better to use a boat to save drowning people than swimming out to them.
Oh, and a long article (no pictures) about insect armor! Julius Schwartz DID like to keep us readers infromed!
So yeah, all in all, not a good comic.
posted by Brian Cronin at 5/31/2005 09:48:00 PM
4 Comments:
I love comics too!
Your "friend" is a fucking idiot!
Yeah, but that's a hell of a cover!
Heh. On the Millar Boards, Liefeld was asked a question about his "Govt. Dirty Work" team of the 90s, Bloodstrike.
His response:
"I honestly don't recall a single thing about the characters in Bloodstrike. I was doing too much cocaine and crystal meth during the mid 90s to remember many details about my books from that period."
I don't get the feeling he was kidding.
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