My current reading is the old Indiana Jones comics. Pretty good stuff, more than one of those original stories would have made a good movie if Ford, Spielberg and Lucas hadn't stopped at Last Crusade.
Have you read Doc Savage?
For light comic-book reading an hour before bed, or after waking up I figured I'd start the Gwenpool omnibus. It sure is chaotic enough, and the art isn't putting me off for now. Not sure I'll stick with it for the full 1000 pages, but who knows. Browsing through some recent iterations of certain comic book series such as Batgirl, I am left to wonder what the hell is going on with the art. It looks so ... stylized and "clean", for lack of a better word. The covers for some of the trade paperbacks are just god-awful. I hope this is only a phase but it'll probably evolve into something worse.
Gwenpool by Hastings and Gurihiru was actually good despite being a vanity project by Heather Antos.
All the Legion talk got me to go dig through some of the old stuff.
End of an Era
Mark Waid is more or less the central thread of the End of an Era LOSH run. He was put on Valor, a book spinning off of Robert Loren Flemmings Eclipso crossover, in 1993.
#9 features a wonderful cover by Adam Hughes and is a very fun almost retro comic book considering it's place in the middle of the grim and gritty 90s. Waid's rendition of Valor works in part because this version is more of an immature hothead, perhaps Waid connected on that level?
#10 and 11 finish up plots and set up the books final arc as the lead serum fails Valor. This all winds up to the DOA arc.
#12-17. I really forgot how much I liked this. It's messy and sloppy, but Lar really goes through a heroes journey over these issues. His development as well as the bait and switch with Glorith was well executed. You get the idea that he's tempted by Glorith and that Glorith genuinely cares about this version of Lar. The artwork switches to Coleen Doran half way through and I have to say she sales the ghastly final days of Lar as he refuses to stop being a hero even if it means dying.
#18-21 Aftermath. This is were the confusing time stuff happens. By killing Lar's past self, Waid contorts himself to right things; introducing another Lar more in line with his original incarnation and helped by the LOSH. Busiek takes over scripting after one issue and Doran provides continuity. The story ends solidly with the heart rending isolation of Lar for the time until he is removed by the LOSH in the future.
While this happened, the Bierbums had ended/been replaced on LOSH by Tom McCraw, a long time colorist for the series. He wrote the main book until Waid joined him on LOSH #59 and Legionnaires #16, resolving numerous convoluted story lines in a continuity with not one but two teams of identical members with decades of stories; some retconned, some erased, and some left unchanged.
Obviously the next six issues, two of Valor, LOSH, and Legionnaires are dense, confusing, and a little emotional. After this, nothing would be the same. DC comics has never found its way back to this point. Not when bringing old creators back. Not when trying to hand wave things. My favorite moments are probably Lar, at the end of his tether and about to disappear urging them forward and swearing he'll find Shadow Lass and the last moments of the big 3.
