Stan Lee presents a glimpse into the future of the mighty Avengers...
"CAMPFIRE TALES"
Story: Bob Harras & Terry Kavanagh | Script: Bob Harras
Penciler: Mike Deodato | Inker: Tom Palmer
Colorist: Paul Becton | Letterer: Bill Oakley
Editor: Ralph Macchio | Editor-in-Chief: Mark Gruenwald
"CAMPFIRE TALES"
Story: Bob Harras & Terry Kavanagh | Script: Bob Harras
Penciler: Mike Deodato | Inker: Tom Palmer
Colorist: Paul Becton | Letterer: Bill Oakley
Editor: Ralph Macchio | Editor-in-Chief: Mark Gruenwald
Later that night, after everyone has fallen asleep, Tuc visits Luna in her room in the cabin and tells her that he has done all he can, then he departs.
Continuity Notes: In a sub-plot scene, Janet van Dyne and Hank Pym visit Jan's attorney, who informs her that all of her investments are tanking and she is soon to be broke. Jan takes this in surprising stride.
Deathcry says that she's spent the past few weeks (following from last issue) being interrogated by Henry Gyrich.
Magdalene observes that Hercules has changed his speech patterns since becoming mortal. He no longer uses "thees" and "thous," but he does still speak with somewhat archaic terms peppered into his language.
My Thoughts: Now we'll stop for real. Ending things on a "quiet issue" just before the crossover widely considered the nadir of nineties AVENGERS (if not the nadir of the entire franchise) feels like a fine idea. The issue itself isn't too much to be concerned with. It moves a few of the ongoing sub-plots along (and sets up at least one new one in the form of the Wasp's backruptcy), and it provides some foreshadowing for "The Crossing", which had technically already started at this point via a self-titled one-shot. It's a fine issue as these things go, and it has the benefit of being done by the full usual creative team (I feel like most of Harras's prior "between event" stories were drawn by guest artists). Tom Palmer somehow continues to make Mike Deodato, at the height of his nineties excess, feel consistent with the likes of Steve Epting and John Buscema. (Note I said "consistent with," not "as good as!")
So let's discuss the overall run in general. I've heard for years that Bob Harras/Steve Epting was one of those comic book runs you either really like or really hate. Not necessarily because of either creator's talent -- I'd say they're both quite good; Epting is an excellent penciler and Harras surprised me with his skill as a wordsmith -- but more because of the sheer "ninetiess-ness" of the entire affair. Bomber jackets and pouches, enigmatic mystery villains wearing incomprehensible armor, clones from alternate realities, and so forth.
Now personally, having come of age during that era, this is the sort of comic book material I eat up. I love the Silver Age and the Bronze Age, but I find the over-the-top insanity of the nineties just as fun, in its own way. Providing it's well done, that is -- and this run certainly is. Harras has a vision, a long-term storyline for Proctor and the Gatherers, and he sees it all the way through, with Epting's artwork providing a sort of dark gravitas fitting that vision. That said, there are certainly hiccups during the run. There are places where I feel Harras glosses over certain bits and pieces, or leaves too much to the reader to parse out. He's great at the character beats and the long-term plotting, and while he resolves his storylines satisfactorily enough, there often seems to be something missing from the big finales. All of the four anniversary issues from 1993 feel a bit off in that way; as if Harras didn't have enough pages to finish things properly. They're fine, but they usually feel like they could be better.
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| Directly at the intersection of Nineties Comics Blvd. and Mike Deodato Jr. Street, you'll find Crystal's "swimsuit" from this issue. Not that I'm complaining... just making an observation. |
But at the same time, it's clear Harras still has stories he wants to tell after #375. The reconciliation of Crystal and Quicksilver, the Hercules/Taylor Madison story, Vision's arc, and the development of Deathcry, all burning in the background during the preceding issues, are resolved and/or expanded upon after the Gatherers storyline ends. I think Harras was trying to find his feet without his long-term collaborator, Epting, but he clearly still had interest in the series at this point. Fate just went in a different direction, as "The Crossing" likely derailed some of his plans, and he soon abandoned the title when he was promoted to Marvel's editor-in-chief (and, as I recall, after assuming that position, he actually implemented a rule where editors could no longer also moonlight as freelance writers, albeit with occasional exceptions).
Which brings us to my final thought: Harras's career took him down the path of an editor, but he's a really good writer, too. Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised by that; an editor needs to have a grasp of how to pace and write a story, and I know Harras was heavily involved in plotting the X-events of the nineties. But I was still a little shocked at just good a plotter and scripter he turned out to be. Anyway -- I don't know how he feels about Marvel nowadays, but given he left his editorial position at DC a few years ago* and the guy who usurped him at Marvel left that company last year, would Harras ever be willing to revisit the Avengers in some format? Or the Black Knight? Steve Epting's still around too, so if Marvel were ever to reunite the pair on a Black Knight mini-series or something, you could count me in as a reader, sight unseen!
* I wrote the above before the announcement earlier this year that Harras was hired on as editor-in-chief of Immortal Studios, but my hypothetical suggestion still stands!
Ah the calm before the storm. I hadn't spotted the coincidence until now but my main memories of reading this come from my own holiday in the country up north west from the main city, enjoying it and several early issues of The Crossing one warm summer's day whilst housesitting at my grandparents' home in a small village in Cumbria, the most north westerly county in England. Reading those issues it seemed as though a glorious era for the Avengers was about to start. How little we knew...
ReplyDeleteSince Tuc appears here complete with an apparent mystery, it should be okay to note that he's a good example of one of the biggest problems in The Crossing, namely that it wasn't always clear if something was meant to be a mystery or not! So there are hints that Tuc is Luna's brother from the future but (IIRC) it's not actually stated in the story itself and in the final part when Crystal asks "But who are you really? Why do you care?" he just replies "I think you already know, dear Crystal. Just as Marilla knew, just as Luna knows." However a two page spread in Avengers Unplugged #2 served as a guide to the key characters in the early part of the story and explicitly states Tuc is "The not-yet-born son of Crystal and younger brother of Luna", but "the identity of his father" "remains a secret". It would be very odd to just reveal a mystery in a feature at the back of a title explicitly standing aside from the crossover to instead try to attract new readers to comics, so this instead points to the general disconnect amongst the writers and editors that added to the confusion. (Kurt Busiek has since stated that when he came to the Avengers a few years later nobody seemed to know where The Crossing was all meant to go, presumably not even the surviving writers & editors, and nobody ever found Mark Gruenwald's notes. Hence why he took the approach of retconning it all out rather than trying to second guess the situation.)
It was also a chaotic time for comic distribution, to put it mildly. This was the month when Marvel shifted to self-distribution through their acquisition of Heroes World, resulting in general chaos as their own shipping became heavily error prone whilst comic shops struggled with the triple whammy of having to deal with two separate distributors, the shrinking of discounts and the mess of Marvel shipments not arriving on time with the phoneline not working. The other distributors and comics companies started looking at exclusive arrangements that eventually led to Diamond having a monopoly. To this day I'm not certain if Marvel/Heroes World also self-distributed internationally but do recall some problems with getting comics on time, including some of The Crossing chapters that do have a clear order (e.g. Iron Man #323 definitely precedes Avengers #393) showing up the wrong way round (admittedly this has been a common problem with multiple Avengers based crossovers). And to add to it all, July & August were now the school summer holidays when it became harder for me to get to comic shops. (I lived in a small town in the commuter belt outside London and had no immediately local comics shop. During term time at a central London school I would make use of my season ticket Travelcard to get to multiple shops across London but in the holidays opportunities to get into the capital were less frequent.)
Thanks for that, Tim -- both the personal recollection, which I always love hearing from people, as well as the info about "The Crossing".
DeleteThe 90s were a wild time for the comic industry. I was a teenager and had no idea what was going on behind the scenes. I didn't follow the fan press (at least not until a friend of mine started reading WIZARD later in the decade, but by that point the magazine had become more of a hype machine than anything else), so all I had to go on were the comics themselves, and as insane as the stories were, I loved what I was reading.
Yet I still can't bring myself now, as an adult, to touch "The Crossing". I probably would've devoured it when I was 15 or so, as I did with Spider-Man's Clone Saga, but nowadays I have a feeling I'd really dislike it.
I think Editor Ralph Macchio had more to do with the Crossing than Gruenwald did.
ReplyDeleteI’m taking all this from Marvel Comics: the Untold Story by Sean Howe and Rob Liefeld’s podcast Robservations (specifically the episodes “Heroes Reborn!” Part 1,2, 3 & 4)
People tend to think Bob Harras was behind Heroes Reborn. Largely because he worked with Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld in the X-Office. But he wasn’t. Heroes Reborn was the brainchild of new Marvel President Jerry Calabrese and was in the works before the decision to promote Harras had even been made.
Calabrese’s math was simple. Marvel was doing great when the Image guys were at Marvel. Now Marvel was doing bad and Image was also doing bad. So combine them again and rake in the money.
Hence Heroes Reborn.
In the first 20 minutes of “Robservations: Heroes Reborn! Part 2” Liefeld tells the story of how Macchio took it on himself to prevent Heroes Reborn from happening. His idea was to prove the internal Marvel team could save these books without Lee and Liefeld.
That’s why you got “The Crossing.” And why the Waid/Garney run on Cap starts the same month as “The Crossing.” It was Macchio’s attempt to raise sales quickly.
Important context is that Marvel editors were afraid everything would eventually be outsourced to Image. Which was the plan if Heroes Reborn worked. If you Google “Dan Fraga Daredevil” there’s a cool image from the pitch for Heroes Reborn Phase 2. Which would have given Lee and Liefeld four more books, one of which would be Daredevil.
Bringing it back around, I suspect that was why people lost track of where “The Crossing” was going. It was a desperation play that ultimately failed. A year later Heroes Reborn would fail as well, throwing those characters back to Marvel with virtual clean slates. Which made anything happening before that not worth even remembering apparently.
One problem with Macchio driving The Crossing is that of all the books involved he was only editing The Avengers plus the two one-shots. Iron Man, War Machine and Force Works were all edited by Nel Yomtov. The editorial divide between the Avengers and Force Works titles clearly lasted a while beyond the characters finally being brought together and this may have contributed to the mess.
Delete(There had been a bit of chopping and changing Marvel editors around the time the line was broken up into the five separate Editors-in-Chief but when the dust settled Yomtov's other titles were the Fantastic Four books instead of Avengers.)
It was only after the restoration of a single EiC and another round of lay-offs that saw Avengers and Iron Man get the same editor (Gruenwald himself), but even then Captain America stayed with Macchio for the last few pre Liefeld issues and Thor went to Bobbie Chase. (Force Works and War Machine were cancelled, Yomtov left Marvel and Macchio moved over to the Spider-Man books.)
ReplyDeleteAs I’ve noted here before, I was both writing about comics for trade mags and working at a comics shop — on the sales floor as well as in the office — during the “may you live in interesting times” insanity of Marvelution et al. There were so many shoes dropping you’d have thought the company tried to buy Foot Locker along with Heroes World, Panini, Toy Biz, Fleer, and Malibu.
Crystal’s bathing suit is astoundingly ’90s but I give it points for, intentionally or not, kind-of resembling that weird hair band of hers.