Monday, June 04, 2007

'Yes, I, the Silver Surfer, declare total war on all of humanity, from this moment forward, until...when I forget.'
In a less sensitive, artistic soul; this would've been fifteen minutes of 'PHFFFUUUUUaaaaahhhhCCKKKK!'
A big thanks to Fin Fang Doom and Jean-Claude Van Doom at Doomkopf.com, the Legion of Doom! Sorry Silver Surfer: Requiem wasn't your cup of tea, and to be honest? I confess I'm a little sad that I liked the book as much as I did, since I wanted a book to give the critical reaming to. Had the knives out and everything...

Still, as you can tell from the page above, I've been a Surfer fan for a long time. Not from the time of this original issue, though: it's from 1970's Silver Surfer #18, the last issue of his first series: "To Smash the Inhumans!" Written by Stan Lee, pencils by Jack Kirby, inks by Herb Trimpe. (Aside: I bought this in the mid-90's at the late, lamented Red Iguana Comics in Missoula, MT. The logo price tags still behind the backing board. Good little shop, and they got me on Preacher there.)

Even though he's super-pissed on this page, the Surfer's anger was gone by his next appearance, mostly due to an editorial oversight, I believe. He often seems cold and emotionless (and has had his emotions taken away more than once); or just mopey and sad. (I was looking for another panel, where the Surfer takes the proverbial gloves off, but didn't have time to dig for it now. It'll come back.) I think I slightly prefer the Englehart or Starlin style cosmic superheroics to the Stan Lee philosophizing, but I've grown to like that too.

Anyway. Still have to go through those quarter books: a couple might end up as full entries, and some we can just dog out right now: I got all of World War III and 52 #50 for $1.25, and it still wasn't great, for example. But, that'll have to keep 'til later, I'm afraid...

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