| MILLER
The eighties event was the take on Daredevil by Frank Miller. There is Before Miller and After Miller, not only for Daredevil but for comics generally. If Miller innovated in art, particulary in page organization, it's above all his scripts wich revolutioned comics. For the first time, characters got a genuine psychologic deepness uncomparable with the timid "humanization" introduced by Stan Lee in the sixties. With Stan Lee, we found out that super heroes should eat, cure their cold and pay their rent, like anybody. With Miller, we knew as much about their impulses and their motives as if we have been their psychoanalyst for twenty years.Daredevil was divided between his Justice ideal and his love for the criminal Elektra. Never seen before! Bull's Eye wanted to kill Daredevil because this one had saved his life, that he considered a humiliation. That took us far enough from the mad scientist who wants to become master of the world because mad scientists want to become master of the world. Miller's masterpiece was the Kingpin. This minor character created by Lee and Romita in an old Spider-Man, the millionth Spider-Man foe intending to become master of the underworld, uterly forgoten, would be put by Miller in the first rank of Marvel bad ones. Machiavelic manipulator, managing everything without participate in anything, seting his foes against each other, he was in the same time a suffering man brought back to crime by a familial tragedy. He would become not only Daredevil's arch foe but Spider-Man's one. I don't see another two heroes' arch foe. Do you?  | The series masterpiece was the issue with the murder of Elektra by Bull's Eye. The most of daring was next issue where Daredevil lost his marbles. Refusing to believe in Elektra's death, he made up a rocambolesc story of substitution and of machination.Just the kind of story, o irony, you can find anywhere in comics, when it needs to resucitate some dead hero. But this one shown the hero's flirt with insanity. It was not anymore Adam Warlock, half human creature, hero of a minor series, with whom they could have let Starlin toy. This time that was Daredevil, one of the Marvel temple pillars, a star for twenty years and above all the moral exemple par excellence, the Marvel's standard bearer of ethic and justice... who came to clobber puny ofenders to make them confirm a meaningless fantasy. No need to say that they gave meaning to this fantasy, resucitating Elektra (with Miller himself's complicity indeed). After the thousand and one returns of Galactus and the resurrection of Phenix, one little bit more or one little bit less... However, comics strips, even the most hopeless ones, would never be the same, since Miller opened the door. |
|
|
| The after Miller days best writer Ann Nocenti teamed up in 1986 with the today best artist John Romita Junior to give Daredevil back the greatness he received from Miller. And they succeeded one with typewriter, the other with pencill, the challenge to match the work of the master. Junior, son of this John Romita who drawn Captain America in 54 and above all Spider-Man in the sixties, had already drawn Spider-Man, Iron Man and the X-Men. And progressively, imperceptibly his style had emerged from triteness and banality to unveil itself a little bit more at every new series he took up. With Daredevil, he reached his top. Then he took up the X-Men, Thor and above all Spider-Man. |
|
If we should remember something else from this time, after the Miller thunderbolt, it is the
SECRET WARS. This story wich put together all the Marvel super heroes would inaugurate the cross over era. The first meeting of two heroes brings us back to 1939 when Submariner met Human Torch, but this was not a cross over. A cross over is a story wich begins in one magazine and continues into another. The first cross over was in 1966: a battle betwen Submariner and Iron Man started in Tales of Suspens 79, 80 to end in Tales to Astonish 82. (Indeed DC was before, with the splendid team up Challengers - Doom Patrol two months before this.) But untill 1983 the use of cross over had been rare and they were moderate: they involved only two titles and did not laste over one month. Secret Wars was the event: all super heroes were concerned and, specialy with Secret Wars II, the story lasted a long time. Marvel heroes were confronted with the creator of the universe. No. Don't say G... It would be blasphemous. Say the Beyounder. Take notice that Secret Wars preceded the famous Crisis on Infinite Earths of DC. What was, on the moment, an excellent idea would become a plague. For Marvel never could use anything without abusing of it. From the nineties, at every instant, there is a cross over, when not two. Every time thirty six series are involved. That obliges readers to buy them all, without consideration neither for the bounds of their buying power nor for the huge diference of style and generaly of quality between the tangled series arts. To improve it again, cross over sprawl across months and months and, when at last you see the end of one, it's just in time to learn that another one starts next month. The phenomenon seems to rarefy, by now. Could Marvel grow wiser? Time will tell. (P.S. Time has spoken. Marvel recently promised to avoid cross over and resurections.) |
|
| Unlike those of DC, all Marvel heroes are grown up. An atempt to enlarge the characters gamut was launched in 1984 with Power Pack, that everybody has forgoten long ago. On the contrary of all their famous prédécessors, Superboy, Robin, Mary Marvel, Bucky and so, the Power bros and sis had a psychology conformed to their age. The fact that this series, very well made, couln't find an audience demonstrates that readers, even youngest ones, are reluctant to identify with children. Responsible teen agers like DC's New Teen Titans, of course, but children! Us? Did you realy look at us? |
|
| January 80 | | First appearance of Kitty Pride in X-Men 129 | | February 80 | | First appearance of Dazzler in X-Men 130| February 80 | | Creation of She Hulk| July 80 | | First appearance of Mocking Bird in Marvel Team Up 95| November 80 | | Beginig of the series Moon Knight| November 80 | | introduction in super heroes' world of the western hero of the sixties | | Ghost Rider (renamed Night Rider) in Ghost Rider 50 | December 80 | | Creation of (comic adaptaion) Doctor Who (Marvel Premiere 57)| January 81 | | First appearance of Elektra in Daredevil 168 | | March 81 | | Beginig of the series Dazzler| March 81 | | First appearance of Cloak and Dagger Spectacular Spider-Man 64| August 81 | | First appearance of Rogue in Avengers 210| April 82 | | First appearance of the Team America in Captain America 269| June 82 | | First appearance of Rachel (future new Phenix) in X-Men 158| July 82 | | First appearance of Magik in X-Men 159| December 82 | | First appearance of the newCaptain Marvel in Spider-Man Annual 16| March 83 | | Creation of the New Mutants| May 83 | | First appearance of the Morlocks in X-Men 169| June 83 | | First appearance of Nomad in Captain America 294| July 83 | | Rogue change her side, joins the X-Men| August 83 | | Beginig of the series Alpha Flight| October 83 | | Beginig of the series Cloak and Dagger| January 84 | | First appearance of Magma in New Mutants 11| Janvier84 | | Beginig of the series Jack of Heart| February 84 | | Mini series Elektra Assassin| April 84 | | First appearance of the second Spiderwoman during Secret Wars| August 84 | | First appearance of Warlock (No relation with Adam Warlock ex Him) | | and of Cypher in New Mutants 18| August 84 | | Creation of Power Pack| Septembr 84 | | Creation of the West Coast Avengers| September 84 | | Creation of the Transformers| November 84 | | First appearance of Jeffries Madison in Alpha Flight 16| September 85 | | Beginig of the series Squadron Supreme| September 85 | | Creation of Longshot| January 86 | | Creation of X Factor| January 86 | | Beginig of the series Punisher| May 86 | | First appearance of the second Ms Marvel in Thing 35| October 86 | | First appearance of Meggan in New Mutants 44 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
|
Did you notice the sudden rain of heroins? |
|
