Bill Mantlo

Alpha Flight Vol. 2 AKA by Mantlo, Ross, & Lee – The #34 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus of 2017

May 30, 2017 by krisis

Alpha Flight is mostly known for its visually distinct team of founding members as written and drawn by creator John Byrne. With a Byrne Alpha Flight omnibus plucked straight from the 2016 survey results to be released earlier this year, is there any point in pushing for another collection of a less recognizable team?

In any other case, the answer might be no, but the next run of Alpha Flight has its own remarkable pedigree – it’s written by Bill Mantlo with Jim Lee first ever sequential art for Marvel!

Alpha Flight, Vol. 2 AKA by Mantlo, Ross, & Lee is the #32 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus of 2017 on Tigereyes’s Secret Ballot.

Visit the Marvel Masterworks Message Board to view the original posting of results by Tigereyes – plus, CK patrons have access to a super-detailed Alpha Flight reading and collecting guide that tracks not only every issue, but a complete reading order for each core team member’s every appearance.

Past Ranking: A 2017 debut!

Probable Contents: Alpha Flight by Bill Mantlo, Dave Ross, & Jim Lee would collect at least Alpha Flight (1983) #30-66, Annuals 1-2, and Avengers #272 – marking a clean break on Mantlo’s run of the title before James Hudnall takes over with the “Wrath of the Dreamqueen” arc on #67.

That said, it would make just as much sense for the omnibus to include Wrath of the Dreamqueen in #67-70, as it caps a few running plots. Then, it could push into Hudnall’s run as far as issue #78, which is another relatively clean break just prior to Acts of Vengeance. (Hudnall’s run continues through #86.) Then, one day Marvel could release a rather hefty final volume would cover #79-130, and maybe Northstar #1-4.

Since running out the latter years of this relatively obscure team likely isn’t a priority for Marvel (who, after all, haven’t even reprinted this series past a trio of Classic trades from the John Byrne era), it seems much more likely they’ll go with the slimmer Mantlo / Ross / Lee volume. I still say it should end on #70, despite that ending on a bit of a cliffhanger.

Creators: Written by Bill Mantlo through #66 and then by James Hudnall with pencils by Mike Mignola (#30-31 & 47), Jon Bogdanove (#32), Sal Buscema (#33-34), Dave Ross (#35-44), June Brigman (#45-46, 49-50, 52, & Annual 2), Jim Lee (#51, 53, 55-62, 64), Hugh Haynes (#54, 63, 65-67), and John Calimee (#68-76, 78 and beyond).

Can you read it right now? Only in floppies! Otherwise, issue #39 is the sole collected issue in this run thanks to its crossover with The Avengers. It’s the same on Marvel Unlimited.

The Details:

Alpha Flight, Vol. 1 was previously a mainstay in the Secret Ballot top 10, but lo and behold we saw it printed in January of this year as Alpha Flight by John Byrne.

Knowing the completionist urges of secret ballot voters, us wanting a volume two is fait accompli regardless of its quality – right?

Well, maybe. But, the Bill Mantlo run from #29-66 that follows John Byrne’s turn on Alpha Flight contains a number of interesting plots that make it worth reading as a companion to the first volume. Byrne created, assembled, and defined the mainstay characters of Alpha Flight, but he didn’t spend much of his run writing them as a complete team. Mantlo pens their most memorable and stable period, but also significantly transforms the members and deconstructs the team. [Read more…] about Alpha Flight Vol. 2 AKA by Mantlo, Ross, & Lee – The #34 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus of 2017

The Micronauts, Vol. 1 – The #35 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus of 2017

May 29, 2017 by krisis

When fans are rabid for an aged property it’s sometimes hard to decipher if they’re interested in quality or nostalgia. Have you gone back to watch many of your favorite cartoons from when you were a kid? At least half of them won’t hold up.

I think The Micronauts falls on the side of “quality,” and not just because of its Bill Mantlo pedigree. There’s hardly any residual fondness from sources other than the comic, since the toys were only a minor hit and there was not an ongoing cartoon or film for these characters.

I’m not saying it’s Watchmen, but as comics about toys go, people aren’t voting for Micronauts just for nostalgic purposes.

The Micronauts, Vol. 1 is the #35 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus of 2017 on Tigereyes’s Secret Ballot. Visit the Marvel Masterworks Message Board to view the original posting of results by Tigereyes.

Past Ranking:

Probable Contents: The Micronauts (1979) #1 to 30, 35, 37, 44, or 46 & Annuals 1-2, plus bonus materials from reprint series The Micronauts: Special Edition (1983) #1-5.

Then, a second volume would include the remainder of this series (through #59), The X-Men and The Micronauts (1984) #1-4 (after 57), and Micronauts: The New Voyages (1984) #1-20, written by Peter Gillis.

Creators: Bill Mantlo writes this entire run – and, in fact, this entire series, save for the final issue.

Issues #1-12 were drawn by Michael Golden with inkers Joe Rubinstein, Bob McLeod, & Al Milgrom, and colorists Carl Gafford, Doc Martin, & Roger Slifer.

Afterwards, it’s line art primarily by Howard Chaykin and then Pat Broderick, inks by Al Milgrom, Armando Gil, Danny Bulanadi, & Doc Martin, and colors by Bob Sharen, Roger Slifer, & Barry Grossan.

Can you read it right now? Sadly, you’ll need to hunt down some floppies to read this series.

The Details:

The Micronauts were one of many licensed properties that Marvel developed into ongoing comics in the 1970s. The comics were based on a line of Mego toys that were first released in 1976, which in turn were based on designs and concepts from Microman, a line of Japanese toys.

If you’re a child of the 80s like me, you’re used to most major toy lines coming with a Saturday morning cartoon that was a combined story bible and toy commercial. Micronauts didn’t have that built-in media tie-in – the comics were it! That meant that writer Bill Mantlo was creating the Micronaut’s world and story from whole cloth with each issue – unlike Star Wars or Conan, which adapted other existing and implied stories.

That makes Micronauts a lot like Master of Kung Fu and ROM in Marvel’s licensed character pantheon, in that many of the characters and concepts in the comic belong to Marvel rather than Mego. [Read more…] about The Micronauts, Vol. 1 – The #35 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus of 2017

New Collecting Guide: Marvel’s Cloak & Dagger (and an explanation of who they are)

July 18, 2016 by krisis

I’m happy to share The Definitive Cloak & Dagger Collecting Guide and Reading Order! It includes every Cloak & Dagger appearance ever published – both together and apart – with notes on trade-reading order and the importance of guest appearances.

I know what most of your reactions will be – “Who the hell are Cloak & Dagger?” They’re not exactly Marvel’s most-prominent characters and they haven’t had an ongoing series to call their own since the 1990s, but they happen to be Marvel’s most-recent property to garner an order for a television season – on ABC’s Freeform network.

Bright-eyed readers may have seen this guide already, but as of today the guide is officially out of its beta-release phase and ready to help you collect Marvel’s pair of would-be-mutants who recently garnered an order for a TV show!

This is one in a series of new and revised collection pages I’ll be highlighting; last week I covered Doctor Strange, and you can already see several of the others in action in Crushing Comics.

Who are Cloak & Dagger?

The short answer is that they were writer Bill Mantlo’s insertion into Spider-Man of a pair of teens whose lives were altered by the prevalence of street drugs in blighted, early-80s NYC. They adopted the powers of darkness and light and briefly took on a life of their own for the next decade.

Marvel was having a bit of a younger-character resurgence in the early 80s, with Chris Claremont spinning New Mutants off of X-Men and Louise Simonson launching Power Pack. Cloak & Dagger were conceived just prior to those two moves but offered a terrific contrast to them both. They were more rough-around the edges than either team, and lacking in the scholastic environment of Xavier’s school and the familial love of Power Pack. (They would make guest appearances in both series.)

Cloak & Dagger first spun off into a 1983 mini-series after their Spider-Man debut, and then into a 1985 ongoing title that was released bi-monthly. In 1987, they were relaunched into Strange Tales, Vol. 2, a monthly title they split with Doctor Strange.

Then there was the little matter of mutant hysteria. [Read more…] about New Collecting Guide: Marvel’s Cloak & Dagger (and an explanation of who they are)

Definitive Cloak & Dagger Collecting Guide and Reading Order

The definitive, chronological, and up-to-date guide and trade reading-order on collecting Cloak & Dagger comic books via omnibuses, hardcovers, and trade paperback graphic novels. A part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics. Last updated November 2017 with titles scheduled for release through July 2019.

Cloak and Dagger are a very 80s odd couple: a pair of teenage runaways from opposite sides of the tracks and get mixed up in drugs with a superhero twist.

As you’d expect for the, it’s blonde-haired, naive Tandy Bowen who comes from the moneyed upbringing and book-smart and street-smart Tyrone Johnson grew up poor. They bond while on the streets, but after being kidnapped and injected with synthetic heroine, they come away with newfound superpowers! Bowen gainst he power of psionic light, while Johnson gains access to the Darkforce Dimension

The pair were conceived and written by Bill Mantlo in the pages of Spectacular Spider-Man in 1983, and he wrote them almost exclusively for their first four years across three series. Mantlo kept their focus mostly on battling drug dealers and other reality-based street-level menaces, rather than super villains.

When Mantlo left them in 1987, their focus shifted – the book was even relaunched as “The Mutant Misadventures of” to try to tie the duo into the white-hot X-Men. It didn’t work, and in 1991 they were cancelled just as Claremont and Lee’s run on X-Men reached its peak of sales. Despite the fleeting “mutant” label, Cloak and Dagger were never a part of the X-books and would be later re-retconned as non-mutants.

Since 1991, Cloak and Dagger have been relegated to permanent guest-star status. Cloak tends to feature more-prominently, since he’s one of relatively few teleporters in Marvel’s arsenal and a suitably stoic foil to other lead characters, like Wolverine. The pair saw a brief revival as part of the Marvel Knights team in 200o, and later from 2009 to 2011 with participation in Dark Reign and Spider-Island stories. Afterwards, it was back to occasional guest star status – although that might not last for long, given they were greenlit for a television pilot in 2015.

Do you need a longer introduction? Head to my blog post announcing this guide. [Read more…] about Definitive Cloak & Dagger Collecting Guide and Reading Order

Marvel’s Most-Wanted Omnibuses of 2016 – 6 books that missed the cut

June 18, 2016 by krisis

Omnibus on Shelf We’re hurtling towards a conclusion of 2016’s Most-Wanted Omnibuses from TigerEyes’ secret ballot, but before I could even get the whole list out some of them have been announced for publication in 2017!

This isn’t all that unusual – they whole reason TigerEyes runs this survey in May and June of each year is to beat the solicitations for January of the following year. Anticipating we’d see a few of the most-wanted books picked off, he reveal a list of the next six books that just missed the cut.

These six books will all be big contenders next year (unless they’re printed before then). Let’s dive in… [Read more…] about Marvel’s Most-Wanted Omnibuses of 2016 – 6 books that missed the cut