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Post by Adminenkainen on Nov 30, 2017 20:07:46 GMT
My favorites so far have been Amazing Man and Fantom of the Fair. Amazing Man is another one of Bill Everett's anti-heroes, with a dark side that he has to keep in check at all times or he turns evil. Fantom of the Fair has a terrific backstory and is weakened chiefly by being tied to a specific place and an event.
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Post by Adminenkainen on Dec 12, 2018 5:59:27 GMT
Centaur Anthologies
For the earliest good characters, I would tuck them all in Comics Magazine, as follows:
Comics Magazine
Dr. Mystic, Occult Detective (5 p.) Allow Joe Shuster to come back and continue an alternate version of Dr. Occult.
Skipper Ham Shanks (5 p.) John Patterson's underappreciated Popeye pastiche.
Bart Regan, Federal Agent (5 p.) Surely Shuster, even with his bad vision at this point, could handle 10 pages a month...?
Dickie Duck (3 p.) Centaur's lone anthropomorphic "cartoon" character.
Clock (7 p.) The classic mysteryman (but with a different artist).
Scott Ware, U.S. Customs Inspector (5 p.) A Captain Easy clone.
Red Dolan, G-Man (5 p.) Gotta have a G-Man in there somewhere.
Brothers 3 (7 p.) Because Eisner did it.
Rocky Baird (10 p.) Like if Captain Easy was an aviator.
Dan Hastings (5 p.) Fred Guardineer's sci fi hero.
Jack Strand (6 p.) Bland, generic, yet imaginative all at the same time!
My second anthology feature would be more tightly focused on adventure stories:
Funny Pages
Abdallah (6 p.) Inventive medieval Arabian fantasy.
Round Table Adventures (7 p.) Shares with Abdallah the idea of dinosaurs existing in near-modern times. This story was actually just a one-shot at the time, but it's too good to let go to waste. Abdallah and the Round Table Knights could even have crossover adventures!
Skyrocket Steele (6 p.) Bill Everett's Buck Rogers clone.
Speed Rush, Ace of the Private Sleuths (7 p.) Another one-shot that deserved another chance.
Arrow (6 p.) The first archer superhero (with powers!).
Dirk the Demon (4 p.) Boys adventure with a twist - the boys are in the 24th century, exploring ruins from the 20th century.
The Ermine (5 p.) A frontiersman-mysteryman.
Dean Denton, Scientific Adventurer (10 p.) Harry Francis Campbell's first science hero (though also, curiously, a ventriloquist).
Ben "Little Dynamite" Trumpson (8 p.) Jack Cole's beat cop hero.
Corporal Merrill of the Northwest Mounted (5 p.) Mountie mystery.
I would take Star Comics, a humor anthology, and make that the high adventure anthology book:
Star Comics
Air-Sub DX (8 p.) - Carl Burgos' futuristic sci-fi story.
Captain Ransom (5 p.) - a fun little aviator one-shot that deserved another chance.
Fantom of the Fair (9 p.) - Gustavson's Superman clone, with all the mystery and backstory of the early stories before it was all retconned out.
The Last Pirate (5 p.) - Canceled just as it was kicking into higher gear, we should have seen the quest for the lost islands.
Amazing Man (13 p.) - Bill Everett's second masterpiece, after Sub-Mariner.
Iron Skull (9 p.) Burgos' futuristic 1950s cyborg hero.
Shark (6 p.) Sub-Mariner rip-off, but not bad.
Russell Granville (6 p.) A smart detective feature.
The Eye Sees (4 p.) Almost forgot about him! We'll squeeze him in a few pages for a short morality play to wrap each issue.
Notice how I don't think most of these characters could carry a full-length feature, except for Amazing Man. Amazing Man would not get his own comic, but he would definitely be the main cover feature on Star Comics. And that would be it; Centaur didn't have enough good characters to fill four titles with only good stuff.
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Post by archersix on Dec 13, 2018 4:18:46 GMT
Some of these sound really good. I have some reading to do.
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