Friday, August 1, 2025

Marvel 80s Assemble

Here's my latest sketch card and as you may have guessed it's based on the events of issue 65 (1985).  But in terms of it's layout it's loosely based on based on the movie poster for Iron Man 3. No particular reason why I just always thought the movie poster was pretty cool even though the movie certainly was not the best of the three Iron Man films by a long shot. Speaking of art, the art in most of today's comics is really outstanding but I never the less feel very uninterested beyond their visual appeal. More style then substance as it were.

Continuing the theme from part of the last posting in terms of the half baked continuity of the original one and only ROM series. I'm back to talking about Avengers Academy after having ripped into Hickman's Imperial in the last posting. Avengers Academy from 2014 saw the return of Hybrid in a 3 issue story arc. Unfortunately, unlike the 1997 X-Man (Nate Grey) Hybrid return one shot story this one was not at all written well and ultimately ended up being a big disappointment. I've got several blog postings and a published letter to the editor from back then expressing my grievances. For the one or two of you over the course of the next decade who might actually be interested in seeing those they're just a key word search away but I'm not going to go into all that now I don't want this posting to be any more too long winded then it already is. But those Avengers Academy issues did have one little bright spot of genuine 80s nostalgia in the form a single panel featuring a flash back of ROM 65. It also acts like a preview of what that issue might have looked like with a different artist then Steve Ditko.
 
One of the other things I miss about the Marvel Comics of the 80s, the corner boxes on the front pages. Although like every one else at the time I liked them, while at the same time they were such a standard fixture on Marvel covers to the point where you almost stopped noticing them on a conscience level. But, like many other things in life you sometimes don't miss something or really begin to appreciate what you had until it's gone. This one here is what a version with Starshine might have looked like back in the day.