I mean, it sucks that Guggenheim is not getting work at all. But I’m not sure it’s that surprising - a lot of TV creators struggle getting another project off the ground after working on one for a decade. There always seem to be a kind of weird in-between period where no one knows what to do with you. Hopefully it’ll…

Sorry for the delay, I had a birthday so I got distracted for a bit there.

I think that as Marvel took off, Lee became less and less a writer or even a “plotter” of the stories and perhaps, as Wally Wood stated in his interview, would talk with artists about what they were doing but perhaps expect them to come up with the story they were about to do and he would maybe then offer story points…

Given how I’ve been wondering how good The Flash would be due to Miller acting so effing weird, I really had my doubts about the flick.

I’m going to quickly hide under my desk after typing this, but ... it doesn’t look horrible?

What I think happened was that once the Marvel line really did start to cook, perhaps circa 1963/4 on, Lee did less and less of the actual plotting of the books. This is what created the schism between Kirby and Ditko and Lee and would eventually lead them to leave. I believe at that point in time, and as the years…

So Kirby leaves DC roughly around 1960, lands at Marvel, has a staggering burst of creativity (while I am suspicious of just how much actual “creative” writing Stan Lee did, there is no denying he was a good editor, was good at dialogue, and most importantly was the charismatic head of the company and knew how to sell…

It’s also a matter of taste, I imagine. There was a time, for instance, when Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko’s art was considered top tier in the 1960's and during their magical run at the time. Only a short time later, and in the 1970's, audiences turned on them. The art was roughly the same but in the interum artists…

comics printed before 1980 are the ones that really need this sort of treatment, ie re-scanning the original art and doing a more thorough yet not “out there” recoloring

The Un-Men are flesh-colored in #10 (the plantation story), but multicolored in #2 (the introduction to Arcane). However, I seem to remember this being the case with the original colors in #2. (I don’t own a copy of that issue, but I do have the dollar comic reprint of #1-2 that was published around 1980 or so. Villarr…

Wow, so he technically didn’t just copy the artwork straight-up. He redrew it but with the same perspective and layout. I would say though, seeing them side by side, that there’s a real sense of motion and drama in Heath’s work that’s completely lacking in Lichenstein’s reinterpretation. 

Have you bought the Absolute edition? I was overjoyed to see they’d finally fixed the colors. Especially the one page sequence where the soldiers are guarding the alien and it gets gradually darker in each Cinemascope-sized panel. Something I remembered from reading the comics as a kid that every collection had…

Before his death in 2018, Russ Heath drew this response to Lichtenstein’s using one of his comic panels in his work. It gives a perspective which I think is pretty essential to any discussion of Lichtenstein’s work.

I’ve always liked the Moore stuff, but the Wein/Wrightson era is just an incredible run of comics. Wrightson wasn’t a traditional comics artist — he took a lot of his inspiration from 19th Century illustrators — and so the artwork has a weirdness, sadness, and gothic romanticism to it that you didn’t see in typical…

I’m currently watching Carpenter interview that’s part of the Shout TV “marathon.” He seems to have a positive opinion of The Fog remake.

I didn’t read it as snarky.  No worries.  Just joshing.

I know there are those who like the Precinct 13 remake and, like all things related to works of art, who am I to say anyone’s opinion is wrong!

As a huge fan of the original, I still really liked the Precinct 13 remake. If for no other reason, I felt like it really played with genre clichés. Off the top of my head, it sets up a love story and a cop with one day till retirement, and then gives both of those threads somewhat unexpected conclusions.

1998's Vampires with James Wood as a Vatican sanctioned vampire hunter was highly enjoyable.  I’ve never seen the sequels and I’m sure the quality dropped off, but the original was a lot of fun.  

I suspect, as you do, that they were hedging their bets. While we look back at something successful and think “of course it was going to work!” in the heat of the moment you simply don’t know. The Marvel universe of movies could easily have fallen apart in any of many of the films. And there were works that people…