"First we take in a matinee of 'Follies' and then... antiquing!"
Young Gerry Conway's bloated dialog and caption boxes are like some medieval torture device, slowly and methodically crushing the artwork into a splintered, bloody pile. (If you cut out all the repetitious phrases the book would be about eight pages shorter.) I expect towards the end of this story the panels will consist of a few tiny specks surrounded on all sides by melodramatic prose. And on the last page, the artwork is condensed into a black hole, destroying any unlucky soul mad enough to read this four-color turd all the way through.
10 comments:
There's so much overwrought dialogue, in fact, that it's covering up the obligatory "Vrrrm" sound effect for the groovy van. Shameful.
"...an armored Tony Stark"? Really? Since he collapsed, I really hope it's a page of people poking his collapsed form with a stick. Maybe that bamboo cane/toothpick from a few pages back!
Mmm. Vapid thought balloons roasted over an open fire.
Heh heh heh. The best will be when sets of repetitions start getting repeated.
And while I'm sure the art here is meant to convey the speed with which Mom is driving, I find that it works just as well as confirmation of my suspicion that it's a stretch-limo variant of a VW microbus. It helps explain the depth of some of the interiors, anyway...
At least something in the story has depth!
Anonymous: Heh! "Somebody, turn him over so he doesn't choke on his own vomit!"
Chawunky: Later, the stretch-VW was painted pink and used for "America's Next Top Model."
Anonymous: Zing!
As far as I can tell, they never published a letter column relevant to this issue, or at least, no letters mentioning this issue. I think it got conveniently "lost" while this book made the transition from regular-sized book @ 15 cents to double-sized @ 25 cents to regular sized @ 20 cents over the course of 3 months. Too bad, I would've loved to read contemporary readers responses.
"Yes...You shall indeed handle the colorful Iron Man."
Wow. I have no words. Just...wow.
Phillip: I'm with you. Did the average Iron Man reader of that time really dig this sub-sub-sub-James Bond nonsense or were they as outraged as the rest of us? Even a knock-off like "Danger! Death Ray" is solid, comprehensible entertainment compared to this mess.
Anonymous: It conjures up the image of anything but a super-hero comic, doesn't it? (Well, maybe a Chuck Austen super-hero comic...)
Pretty much any institutional kitchen has a "leftover night" where they re-heat and re-serve whatever stuff they have laying around from the past week.
This is leftover night at the Marvel Bullpen. I think this will become clearer as some of the more random story elements finally begin to show up -- stuff that was trendy at the time, left to sit under a heat lamp just a little too long...
All I have to say that I would really like to take Mr. Kline up on the offer of a matinée of 'Follies' and antiquing. This unfortunately says a lot more about me than it does the story.
Uh-oh, now I'm having visions of the cast of Iron Man 41 during the "Loveland" sequence...
Dave: Young Gerry Conway: the Furr's Cafeteria of comic book writers!
Bill S.: And Tony would start singing along to "Buddy's Blues."
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