Young Justice - Peter David, with art by Nauck and Stucker. Solid from beginning to end.
Agreed. However, it only lasted 31 issues, and sort of was a hybrid funny/serious book, which didn’t appeal to everyone.
Someone mentioned Groo! I love Groo, and own nearly every issue ever published. Even the latest stuff is good. Aragones is an incredibly talented illustrator - so dense and detailed, and still remarkably prolific.
“Samurai Destroyer” was meant to finish off the story of the cancelled Shogun Warriors. It’s okay in that context but I’m not sure why they bothered.
I enjoyed the Marvel series Excalibur.
I’m so out of the loop on comic books nowadays that I’m not sure if these count as “not mentioned much,” but I liked the old New Mutants (from the '80s and early '90s) and the *Longshot *miniseries (same period).
I have just started collecting old, early issues of All-Star Squadron, which I adored when I was a kid. Roy Thomas really nailed the 1940s dialogue and the massive cast was fun.
Hasbro (I think) own the rights to Rom. IDW Publishing are currently doing a comic book with Rom, Transformers, Action Man, MASK and GI Joe - http://www.worldcomicbookreview.com/index.php/2016/09/30/revolution-1-review/ When toys collide! Rom appears to kill a lot of Autobots masquerading as GI Joes.
Squadron Supreme, the original mini-series. You can find it repackaged as The Utopia Program now, when I first read it I was amazed. Imagine Marvel’s Civil War except actually good and well thought out.
Rogues Revenge Just about everything about Final Crisis sucked except Rogues Revenge. The bad guys are just more interesting when they have understandable motives AND they’re COMPETENT.
I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for “The Creeper”.
Creeper’s definitely among my few underappreciated DC favorites, along with Firestorm (the original Ronnie Raymond/Martin Stein version), The Question (including the original Charlton series), Captain Atom (the 80s DC revival version), and Hawkman and Hawkgirl/woman (both the Golden Age and Silver Age/later versions).
I’d also have Swamp Thing in that list, but I’m not sure he is all that underappreciated with the Alan Moore run, the BEST one bar none, on his comic being most deservedly lauded by critics and fans alike since the 80s.
In an interview in The Comics Journal, I think, Cary Bates, the writer of Captain Atom, said that he learned how to write comics from watching day time soap operas. As one storyline concludes, another is building up like a series of waves. This technique is well-established now (I am presently reading Rick Remender’s Deadly Class, the best comic book on the market IMHO, and it is nothing but high crested waves of drama and violence as far as the eye can see) but at the time it really made the title stand out.
Improv master Del Close also took part in the writing from what I recall, but I think his part was spitballing while Ostrander translated into comic book form. I still snicker about his “Coleslaw in my Underwear” story.
My choice for underappreciated Marvel comic is Get Kraven by Ron Zimmerman. Aloyisha Kraven is one of the original Kraven’s sons, and he decides to get into the movie business. He finds that Hollywood is more cutthroat than he realized. Apparently, the series didn’t take off, so they combined the last two issues into one. Too bad. I thought the series was hilarious.
The first issue had an aspiring screenwriter pitching his script to two gargantuan fat producer brothers who constantly ate, burped and farted during their conversation. The producers emblemized everything wrong with Hollywood. The screenwriter had written a movie about cancer, and they asked him how he’d like to work with Kevin Smith as director. The screenwriter was overjoyed until they informed him that Kevin was taking all the cancer stuff out. “The movie’s gonna be about jock itch.” The screenwriter then went ballistic and screamed “Tell that hack Kevin Smith to keep his filthy hands off my script!” Smith was writing Daredevil at the time, so maybe he had something to do with the series’ demise?
Ambush Bug