Your classic comic book story arc or series

Cafe Society
1

I saw Marvel’s Avengers last night and enjoyed it hugely. It got me thinking about back when I used to read comics regularly and the outstanding moments.

I thought about it some more today, and there’s been a few, and most of them from not back when. Maus, Watchmen and Gaiman’s version of Sandman are all collections I’ve re-read in the last few years. Of course, The Ultimates, Marvel’s reboot of the Avengers, came to mind, seeing how it served as a source for the movie, especially the look.

But the classic moment for me was from back when. It’s a 1980 story arc from The Xmen, called the Dark Phoenix Saga. I haven’t read it for years but read it repeatedly as a teen. Xmen was my favorite title at the time.

A lot of the impact [SPOILER ALERT, I guess, but I feel silly saying that about such an old story] came from the death of Jean Grey. Of course, since then she’s been resurrected in various media and incarnations. At the time I didn’t know about the comic book death trope.

There’s obviously heaps of comics fans here and I’d like to hear about their classic moments.

2

Daredevil - Born Again. What happens when a hero hits bottom? The treatment of Captain America in this is very good.

Cerebus - High Society. What happens when a barbarian, who happens to be an aardvark, stumbles into political power.

Love and Rockets - Human Diastrophism and The Death of Speedy. The first is a great arc about a small town being forced to meet the wider world. The second is a slow fall to death of a gang member who’s getting too old for it.

3

To mre, THE classic arc was the Galactus Trilogy in issues 48-50 of Fantastic Four. It’s one of the first multi-issue story arcs I can recall, and the first I can think of that really ran more than two issues.

Great stuff – Stan Lee and Jack Kirby at their most cosmic, with wonderfully weird characters (the Silver Surfer? A character totally out of left field), great throwaway bits (The Punisher, The Surfer learning (remembering, perhaps, but he had no backstory then) about Being Human from blind Alicia Masters), Big Themes, the Surfer’s rebellion, and huge whacko concepts like THe Ultimate Nullifier. This is the kind of thing that made the early run of FF (issues about #30 to #100) such incredible stuff.

4

When I was a kid, I read a bunch of Marvel comics my cousin had. There was a big crossover saga in which all the heroes had to fight some cosmic villain (I don’t remember which one) and had to leave Earth to do it. The thing that struck me was that the villain had a bunch of minions attacking various sites on Earth, and a bunch of supervillains (including Dr. Doom) agreed to protect the Earth from the minions and not take advantage of the situation. Eventually, the Scarlet Witch takes out the Big Bad.

Anyone else remember this?

5

I was a huge fan of Chris Claremont’s work on Xmen, and Peter David’s work on Hulk, but seeing as both of them stuck around for years, and had plenty of different plotlines running simultaneously, it would be hard to define them as ‘arcs’

6

I read a Superman series where Clark marries 3 times (each time he becomes a widower). The end has him wondering which wife - Lana, Lois, or the mermaid - he would have saved if he could have. That one stuck with me - probably for the romantic aspect.

7

Sounds like Secret Wars. That’s also the story where Spidey got his alien symbiont costume that later became (part of) Venom.

8

My sentimental favourite is Justice League of America #195-197.
(a) I love team-up comics.
(b) I like comics where the bad guys get to win (temporarily).
© George Perez is/was awesome.

[spoilers for 30 year old comics below]

The Earth-1 JLA are having their annual clambake with the Earth-2 JSA, when a bunch of Earth-1 and Earth-2 villains team up to “disturb the cosmic balance” by kidnapping a bunch of heroes from both worlds and imprisoning them in some kind of funky cosmic centrifuge. That banishes all of heroes from Earth-2 and the Earth-2 villains get to live it up like kings!

Of course, that causes some sour grapes from the Earth-1 villains and they bust the heroes out of the centrifuge-thing out of spite.

9

Followed your wiki link and from there to Comic Book Resources and saw some of the art, like the cover to “If This Be Doomsday”. Really cool.

10

Yeah, someone at DC had an “LL” fetish. Lois Lane, Lana Lang, Lori Lemaris (the mermaid)…not any sillier than any other aspect of Silver Age DC, but hey…

11

Seconding the Galactus trilogy in The Fantastic Four. I read it when originally published and that was a very exciting time for comic book fans.

12

I was going to say…Jean coming back from the dead is a convention, not a spoiler.

Dark Phoenix, of course. And Days of Future Past. But the one that stands out to me now is Joss Whedon and John Cassaday’s Astonishing X-Men saga. Joss got Wolverine just right. Then he went and killed Kitty Pryde , the bastard.

13

I haven’t read a comicbook since 1985. Funny thing is that many of the movies that have come out were based loosely on some of the story arcs from the 80s so I recognized what was going on. Dark Pheonix, The Electra Saga, The Hellfire Club. I guess the screenwriters are all about my age.

14

In the mid-70’s Manhunter (Paul Kirk) was revived as a back-up feature in Detective Comics. Paul Kirk was originally a fairly standard Golden Age masked adventurer. In the revival series, we learn that he had given up heroing after WWII and gone back to being a big game hunter in Africa where he was killed by an elephant IIRC. He was brought back to life and multiply cloned by a sinister organization known as The Council. Their goal was, of course, world domination and they planned on having the revived and enhanced Kirk lead an army of his clones in assassinations and terror ops.
Kirk really caught my attention. He was one of very few, maybe the only, DC hero of the time who carried and used guns, knives, and other real world weapons. He wasn’t afraid to use lethal force, either. He wore a costume that borrowed heavily from samurai clothing, which was kind of nifty, and there was a lot of martial arts violence to enjoy.
He battled The Council for a year or so as an 8 page back up feature and then the story climaxed with Kirk, Batman, and a martial arts teacher who had trained both of them taking on The Council in their lair. There was much carnage, though we never saw Batsy, himself, actually kill anybody. Kirk destroys The Council, the clone army, and himself by overloading a reactor or something at the end. He wanted to die and actually did, which was unusual for a DC character in that time.
I see the whole arc is available as a paperback on Amazon. I’ma hafta buy one.

15

There was also Thanos: The Infinity Gauntlet, another one that featured a ton of heroes-- plus villains like Dr Doom. Adam Warlock instead of Scarlet Witch, though.

16

Hmm.

I think I started at a bad time for comic book stories. Kinda. When I was really getting into them, around '83, they not only were making stories more “real” and I think that hurt them in the long run.

[SPOILER]So, the Iron Man where Tony Stark is a drunk and looking at himself in the mirror but not yet in a “what have I become” sort of way.

Storm losing her powers.

Robin (Jason Todd) dying, although that was late 80s.

Terra dying in Teen Titans. Maybe Jericho as well. Although, knowing about Slade did serve when I read the rebooted Teen Titans in trade compilation form starting about five years ago?

The big one for me, though, was Vigilante. He was a cross over from Teen Titans, which I also happened to be reading, and then got his own series. In it, he starts out as a judge going after those criminals that got off on technicalities. (Hardcastle and McCormack anyone?) Anyway, they set up that he isn’t a killer but will use lethal force if he needs to. They do show him avoid it when he can. Then, only ten issues into it, they kill off his sidekick/mechanic. After even though the series went on for another forty issues, it was not the same. The tone was different. The Vigilante dropped his other sidekick, went really violent and killed most, then turned into a drunk or addict. I think it ended with him killing himself. I think he’s the only one NOT to come back.[/SPOILER]

Except for Batman and Superman, who I read earlier, super heroes were turned into people for me and not heroes. Just people doing heroic things. The Spider Man story, which I also read at the time. A reluctant hero, at best. So, while I didn’t read it until decades later, Watchmen is more like what I read back then than any of the golden/silver age stuff.

I think that’s why I want deeper stories from my comics now. I don’t want a straight up hero and bad guy story but motivation on both sides.

As many have said, now it’s a trope but some of the ones I listed haven’t come back. I think. I don’t read many today as I did.

Having said that, I still enjoy comics! I picked up the new Shadow comic and really liked it! I hope it lasts! Same for Bionic Man/Woman.

vislor

17

I hope Marvel has a long term plan to buy back all their characters, and make this as a film in about 10 years,

I quite enjoyed the Infinity War and the Infinity Crusade too.

18

It was a long time ago, but I thought the Kree-Skrull War was pretty damned cool!

19

There were a couple other “LL” one shots, too. (Not to mention the Luthor slash that I’m sure exists).

20

Back in the Silver Age, they once had an entire (print) page devoted to listing all the “LLs”. There were a lot of them.