I actually had them fully wrote up for an MnM 3e game i'm planning on running involving Bishop's future timeline,so your welcome....
I also have almost all of Bishop's solo book series,so i had plenty of resources to double check.....
I actually had them fully wrote up for an MnM 3e game i'm planning on running involving Bishop's future timeline,so your welcome....
I just gave the issue a read, and it is very good, a reminder of what Claremont could do in his prime. Steve and Bernie are a cute couple, they feel like real people and it does a great job actually establishing and fleshing out the hero's supporting cast. Steve himself feels like a real person, and it's an interesting reminder of how Steve use to actually have a supporting cast, a secret identity, a job, he use to have a normal life that helped humanize him. There's a moment when the firefighter that lives in the building comes home, and Steve is part of a group of friends that are there to comfort him when one of his fellow firemen died. It feels real and natural, a nice kind of quiet that isn't talking heads. It actually makes me wonder what current comic Steve does when he isn't Capt. America, given he no longer has a secret identity, apparently doesn't have a job, nor "normal" friends, and oh right, he became the most hated man in the world because Nick Spencer wanted to show he could ruin the character worse than Bendis and Millar could.Jabroniville wrote: ↑Mon Feb 12, 2018 1:40 am
-Blockbuster appears in a pretty good issue of Captain America I picked up on a lark- it's a 1981 issue written by Chris Claremont & David Michelinie- I was actually stunned by how good the early part was compared to what I was expecting... and checked the bylines and discovered that of course it was CLAREMONT (working on a fill-in after Roger Stern & John Byrne had left the book) on the first half. It was during the "Bernie Rosenthal" era, when Steve was living in an old brownstone populated by an all-new supporting case of normal people, as Sharon Carter had just died (a fan even wrote in saying she never felt like "a real character", as opposed to Bernie).
-In the issue, the building across from Steve & Bernie is attacked by an arsonist, and Cap nearly dies trying to save people inside- a co-worker of his fellow tenant, a firefighter named Mike, dies saving Cap's life. It's a very grim, serious issue, dealing with the then-major crisis of landlords & big developers bribing arsonists to destroy buildings so that they can re-sell the land at higher value. This was a HUGE problem in New York at the time, in particular the Bronx ("The Bronx is burning" was a catchphrase of the times thanks to Howard Cosell's comments from a helicopter, and there were often a dozen arsons PER DAY in that borough!), and news about it led pretty much directly to this issue, a few years after the peak of the arsons. It's also a nice reminder of the neat thing about "human-level heroes"- even someone as super-powered as CAP is brought low by "common" threats like fire, smoke and ash. As an ordinary man with merely "peak human" physiology, any of that can and will kill him.
-And of course it has a "Comic Book" element, as the arsonist (who appears like a regular guy at first) puts on a massive Powersuit that turns him into a classic super-villain, and he nearly gets the drop on Cap. Cap leads him to a wharf, where a warehouse is torched, and Cap has to use careful tactics, guile and precision to defeat a guy who can set fires anywhere he pleases- he gets a sneak attack to knock Blockbuster into the burning warehouse, then lures him into grabbing Cap in a bearhug- this allows him to smash his suit's power with the Shield, and Blockbuster almost immediately passes out from the smoke and heat.
I just find it funny that a guy who is both a scientist AND a wizard is such a jobber. I think the only other guy with that concept in comics is friggin' DOCTOR DOOM.
I think that the big difference stem from the fact that during the '80s run of Cap several of these elements were added as a plus not as the central point of a character. Today, we (the readers) know way too much about the creative process behind each book and the general feeling is that every new character is meant to be a representation of something. Was it all that different back then?Ares wrote: ↑Mon Feb 12, 2018 4:23 am You know, I'm reading some of my old Captain America issues, and frankly, for all that the comic creators of the last 3 or 4 years like to pat themselves on the back for bringing diversity to comics, it's amazing how diverse a Captain America comic in 1982. Steve is dating a Jewish girl, he lives in a diverse boarding house, in several issues he'd hang out in Harlem, just chatting with normal people and helping them out, he had an old friend who was gay, his best friend Sam was black, etc.
Ares wrote: ↑Mon Feb 12, 2018 4:23 amIt's one thing that bugged me whenever people cry "racism" and "cultural appropriation" at Iron Fist. The guy was raised in an Asian city that he considers his home, he cherishes their philosophy, lifestyle and martial arts, his best friend and girlfriend are black, his other best friend is half-Japanese while his most respected rival is Chinese. Iron Fist is one of least racist characters in comics.