Comics I Bought This Week: May 22, 2010

May22
on May 22, 2010 at 6:00 am
Posted In: Comics I Bought This Week

I’m back from the comic shop this week and I got three new comic plus a hard cover collection:

  • Supernatural: Beginning’s End – 5

  • Walking Dead – 72

  • Ex Machina – 49

  • “The Incredible Hercules – Assault On New Olympus”

    • And now for a review of something I’ve read recently.

  • “The Creeper” by Steve Ditko

    • This book collects the late 1960’s Ditko drawn issues of “The Creeper” and the late 1970’s Ditko drawn Creeper stories that ran in “World’s Finest Comics”. I had read a few of the issues of the 60’s comic but none of the stuff from the late 70’s before now. What a difference a decade makes.

    The Creeper comics from the 60’s were full length comics with basically one story running through the whole six issues. Sure each issue stood on it’s own but the tale that was told was of the Creeper versus a crime boss/super villain named Proteus.

    These issues were cutting edge for the 1960’s especially for DC comics. Ditko was going all out with his storytelling and doing some imaginative things with his layouts and drawing. These issues have some really good Ditko super hero action.

    The writing is also very good. Ditko is credited with plotting a bunch of the stories but there is always another writer credited with the script. Denny O’Neil foremost among them. The book wasn’t written for kids as a lot of 60’s DC comics were. The plot is complex and we are left guessing a lot. All the characters were new and since Proteus’ real face was not known he could have been any of them. The plot played with conventions and turned them around a bit. Overall I found myself enjoying the plot and script.

    It’s when I got to the 1970’s stories that things went wrong. They are only eight page backup stories and don’t have the flair of the earlier ones. Ditko mainly works in the nine or six panel grids for these layouts and they feel cramped as he tries to tell a lot of story in only eight pages. They needed more room.

    These short stories are not horrible or anything. They are just not as ambitious as the earlier stuff. They did get better as they went on. It looks like Ditko was getting used to the format but the plots weren’t nearly as good as the earlier comics. Still the 1960’s Creeper alone is worth the price of admission. Check those ones out.