The Hopefully Almost Daily Comic Book Coffee, Part Two

The challenge by Comic Book Historians group moderator Jim Thompson: Pick a subject and find a different artist every day for that subject until May 1st (if not longer).

I chose “coffee” for my subject.  From the work of how many different artists can I find examples of people drinking coffee?  I guess we will just have to see.  I posted these daily on Facebook, and I’m now collecting them together here on my blog.  Click here to read Part One.

6) Jaime Hernandez

Day Six’s superbly-illustrated page comes from Love and Rockets volume 2 #9 by Jaime Hernandez, published by Fantagraphics, cover-dated Fall 2003.

Brothers Jaime & Gilbert Hernandez have been writing & drawing their creator-owned series Love and Rockets since 1981, taking only a short break from 1996 to 2001.  Jaime and Gilbert both introduced interesting, well-developed, genuinely compelling casts of characters in their portions of the series.

One of Jaime Hernendez’s lead characters is Margarita Luisa “Maggie” Chascarrillo, a woman of Mexican American heritage who grew up in southern California.  Love and Rockets takes place in real time, and over the past four decades readers have seen Maggie progress from a teenager to adulthood to middle age.  “The Ghost of Hoppers” ran through the first 10 issues of volume two.  Maggie, at this point now in her late 30s, is an apartment manager in San Fernando.  A visit from her old friend Izzy is followed by Maggie experiencing strange, eerie visions.  In this chapter Maggie (who is nicknamed “Perla” by her relatives) pays a visit to the old neighborhood to see her sister Esther’s family.  Over after-dinner coffee Maggie hears the latest gossip about Izzy’s spooky old house, which naturally worries her, given recent occurrences.

Love and Rockets is a soap opera, but both Jaime and Gilbert have regularly ventured into magical realism with their stories.  The events in “The Ghost of Hoppers” are framed in such a manner that the reader can to decide if all of this weirdness is genuinely occurring, or if Maggie is merely imagining it all.

Whatever the case, “The Ghost of Hoppers” was another intriguing, moving installment in Jaime Hernandez’s long-running storyline.

7) Paul Pelletier & Romeo Tanghal

Green Lantern #66 by penciler Paul Pelletier & inker Romeo Tanghal, from DC Comics, cover-dated September 1995.

So, as someone who read these issues when they were coming out, I’ll put my cards on the table: No, I did NOT like that Hal Jordan went insane and destroyed the Green Lantern Corps, and no, I did NOT like that the new Green Lantern’s girlfriend Alex DeWitt was murdered and stuffed in a refrigerator.  Those two admittedly major things aside, I actually liked Kyle Rayner, and I felt that writer Ron Marz did a good job developing the character over several years.

After Alex’s death, Kyle moved from Los Angeles to New York City, renting an apartment in Greenwich Village, presumably pre-gentrification.  Kyle’s landlord Radu had a coffee shop on the ground floor, and Kyle was a frequent customer, since in addition to the super-hero thing he was a freelance artist, and between those two jobs he definitely needed his regular caffeine fix!

Kyle soon became involved with the former Wonder Girl herself, Donna Troy.  Nevertheless, being young and a bit immature, Kyle unfortunately still had a bit of a wandering eye, as we see here when he meets his neighbor, a model named Allison.

I’m not sure which one is stronger, Radu’s cappuccino or Allison’s approach to chatting up guys.  “You should invite me up sometime. Love to see what you do… you know, your etchings and things.”  Oh, man, that’s right up there with “It’s the plumber. I’ve come to clean your pipes.” 🤣

Pelletier is a good penciler.  I’ve always enjoyed his work, and thought he should be a bigger name in comic books.  As we see here, he certainly knows how to lay out a “talking heads” scene in an interesting manner.  Of course, it does help when one of your characters is a sexy gal.

8) Michael Lark

Gotham Central #6 by Michael Lark, from DC Comics, cover-dated June 2003.

Gotham Central, which was co-written by Ed Brubaker & Greg Rucka, successfully walked the line of being a serious police procedural in the vein of Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct novels and the TV series Homicide: Life on the Street while being set in a city where a vigilante who dresses as a bat regularly fights a rogues gallery of insane costumed criminals.  I admired Brubaker & Rucka for deftly straddling genres during Gotham Central’s 40 issue run as it chronicled the saga of the Major Crimes Unit’s detectives having to deal with Gotham City’s myriad super-villains, the police department’s own rampant corruption, and the interpersonal problems that resulted from having such a stressful, dangerous job.

Issue #6 is the first chapter of the five part “Half A Life” arc written by Rucka and drawn by Lark, which sees Detective Renee Montoya’s life severely upended by the duality-obsessed villain Two-Face.  On this page we see Montoya, as well as Captain Maggie Sawyer, Detective Crispus Allen and Detective Marcus Driver.  That’s Maggie Sawyer with the coffee pot in hand, with Driver also having a cup of java.  After all, if you’re putting your life on the line in a crime-infested hellhole like Gotham, of course you’re going to rely on caffeine to get you through the day.

This is a nice page by Lark, with solid storytelling & characterization. He did superb work on this series. The dialogue by Rucka is really sharp, as well.

I own the original artwork for this page, and it can be viewed on Comic Art Fans.

9) John Romita & Mike Esposito

Hey, hey, the gangs all here… here being Day Nine’s artwork by John Romita & Mike Esposito from Amazing Spider-Man #53, published by Marvel Comics, cover-dated October 1967.

After co-creator Steve Ditko’s departure from Amazing Spider-Man a year earlier, scripter & editor Stan Lee took the series even more in the direction of soap opera.  This was a good fit for the book’s new artist John Romita, who had recently come off of an eight year stint illustrating romance stories for DC Comics.  Lee & Romita revealed the previously-unseen Mary Jane Watson, and began setting up a love triangle between Mary Jane, Gwen Stacy and Peter Parker. In the 1960s there was undoubtedly many a teenage boy reading Amazing Spider-Man who fell head-over-heels in love with Romita’s gorgeous depictions of Gwen and Mary Jane.

Effectively inking Romita on this issue is Mike Esposito, using the pen name of “Mickey Demeo” as he was still working for DC at this time.  Lettering is courtesy of longtime Marvel staffer Artie Simek.

Following a battle with Doctor Octopus at the science exposition, Spider-Man changes back into his civvies and heads over to The Coffee Bean with Gwen for a cup of coffee.  Peter and Gwen arrive to find MJ, Flash Thompson, and Harry Osborn already present, with even Aunt May and Anna Watson popping by to say hello.

You just gotta love that sign with the skull & crossbones-ish beatnik coffee bean with beret, sunglasses & paintbrushes, accompanied by the warning “Abandon hope all ye who enter here.”  Sounds ominous… their espresso must be extra-strong.

10) Charles Nicholas & Vince Alascia

Break out your violins and hankies, because our next entry is from Just Married #113 from Charlton Comics, cover-dated October 1976.  “A Sacred Vow” is illustrated by “Nicholas Alascia,” the pen name for the long-time team of penciler Charles Nicholas and inker Vince Alascia, who drew numerous stories for Charlton.  Their style was well-suited to the romance genre, and they also worked on Charlton’s horror, war and Western titles.

Young, beautiful Anne is trying to make her marriage to Gordie Barton work, but doubts are beginning to creep in…

“When we were first married, Gordie planned to take night courses at community college. Why does Gordie have to be a bookkeeper? Kevin O’Shay, upstairs, is a commercial artist… he’s interesting.”

We can tell that Kevin is an “interesting artist” because he wears a foulard & black turtleneck, and has a mustache & long-ish hair.  Kevin must also be thinking about Ann, as one day when Gordie’s at work our resident artist is asking Anne if she’d like for him to pick her up something at the bakery, because there’s something he’d like to discuss with her.  Anne invites Kevin back to her apartment for coffee, where the artist, spotting her coffee pot, elatedly exclaims…

“Aahh… real coffee! I always use instant coffee and I hate the stuff.”

No, Anne, don’t do it!  Any man who’s too lazy to brew his own coffee is just not worth it!  Especially when he comes right out and admits instant coffee is awful!

Kevin asks Anne if she will model for him, offering to pay her $20 an hour.  Anne agrees, but keeps it a secret from Gordie, who she knows dislikes the artist because he feeds the stray cats outside.  A week later Anne models again for Kevin.  This time the artist begins putting the moves on her, declaring “You’re the most beautiful model I’ve ever had, Anne.”  And with that he grabs Ann in his arms and kisses her.  A shocked Ann pushes him away and flees.

Flash forward hours later and Gordie returns home to find Ann sobbing on the couch.  A distraught Ann confesses her activities, and Gordie admits “Oh? I knew you’d been in his apartment. I feel like sneezing… I am allergic to cats, remember?”  Anne realizes that, though she is attracted to Kevin, it is Gordie she wants to be with.  Realizing that she needs to voice her earlier doubts, she tells her husband “Darling, I’d like to go back to my old job… and then we’d both take courses at night.”  Gordie thinks this is a great idea.

As the story closes, Gordie casually mentions “If it’ll make any difference… I’ve seen O’Shay with at least three different girls this week! One woman will never be enough for him!”

So… Kevin O’Shay is a smooth-talking lothario who attempts to seduce married women and who is too lazy to make his own coffee.  On the other hand, he does feed the local stray cats.  Well, even Hitler loved animals, but we all know he was a huge @$$hole.

In all seriousness, it needs to be said that several decades ago romance comic books were a pretty big deal, and that a lot of young girls read them.  This is borne out by Just Married, which Charlton had been publishing since 1958.  However by 1976 the demographics of the readership had changed.  Super-heroes had come to dominate the medium, and the audience was now primarily boys in their early teens.  Just Married was a casualty of these changes, being cancelled just one issue after this one.

We can look back on these stories and mock them for their overwrought, melodramatic plots.  Nevertheless, at least back then there was an effort by publishers to appeal to more than just adolescent males.  Besides, if we’re going to be honest, if we look back on the superhero comics of our childhood years, we have to admit, a lot of those were overwrought and melodramatic, as well.

So the next time some idiot complains about female readers, just remember that for a long time girls and women did read comic books, and at long last they’ve returned to the medium.  That’s a positive, because we need a growing audience, especially with the comic book industry’s current financial crisis.

By the way, I bought Just Married #113 and a few other Charlton romance comics about a decade ago for my girlfriend Michele Witchipoo because she likes the artwork on those old books. She’s also a huge Love and Rockets fan, which resulted in my somewhat casual interest in Los Bros Hernandez turning into following the series regularly.

Look out! Here comes Spider-Gwen!

A few months ago Marvel Comics published the epic “Spider-Verse” crossover masterminded by writer Dan Slott, which featured appearances by pretty much every single alternate reality version of Spider-Man ever conceived, as well as introducing numerous new incarnations.  The breakout star of “Spider-Verse” was Gwen Stacy as a new Spider-Woman, who fans took to calling “Spider-Gwen.”

Making her debut in Edge of Spider-Verse #2, this parallel universe revision of Gwen Stacy / Spider-Woman was quickly given an ongoing title once “Spider-Verse” wrapped up.  Spider-Gwen #1 hit the shelves a mere five months after Edge of Spider-Verse #2, and so far is selling at a brisk pace.

I think there is a very basic reason why Spider-Gwen is such a success, and it ties in with the history of the original version of the character.  Gwen Stacy first appeared in 1965 in Amazing Spider-Man #31 by Steve Ditko & Stan Lee.  Gwen was originally something of a haughty ice queen.  After Ditko departed the series, Lee and new penciler John Romita gradually transformed Gwen into a warmer, caring figure.  She became involved in a long-term relationship with Peter Parker.  All these years later many long-time readers regard Gwen as Spider-Man’s first true love.

Fast forward to 1973 and the tragic events of Amazing Spider-Man #121.  In a story by Gerry Conway, Gil Kane & John Romita,  Gwen Stacy was brutally murdered by Spider-Man’s arch-enemy the Green Goblin, thrown from the top of the Brooklyn Bridge.  In hindsight, Gwen’s death is probably the first prominent example of what two decades later would be referred to by Gail Simone as “women in refrigerators” syndrome.

Ever since then the character of Gwen Stacy has been defined primarily by her death, by the fact that she was killed by Norman Osborn in order to make Spider-Man suffer.  A version of Gwen introduced in Ultimate Spider-Man was eventually murdered by Carnage.  Gwen appeared in the two recent Amazing Spider-Man movies, played by actress Emma Stone.  And, yep, at the end of the second one, she gets killed by the Green Goblin.  No matter what reality Gwen popped up in she seemed to have a target painted on her back, and fans were left holding their breaths waiting for someone to inevitably pull the trigger.

So by introducing an alternate reality version of Gwen Stacy who is Spider-Woman, this horrible trend is finally turned completely around.  Instead of being a victim, Gwen is now a hero.

Of course, it’s not just the concept but the execution.  As I understand it, Slott initially thought up the idea of giving a parallel universe version of Gwen the spider-powers.  The actual development of the character fell to writer Jason Latour and artist Robbi Rodriguez, the latter of whom designed Spider-Woman’s distinctive costume.

I have to admit, when I first read Spider-Gwen #1-4 I was a bit lost.  I felt like I had come in on the second act.  So I went and finally purchased Edge of Spider-Verse #2, now on its fifth printing (I told you the character was hot).  Reading that and then re-reading those issues of Spider-Gwen, things did make more sense.

Admittedly the story in Edge of Spider-Verse #2 drops the readers right into the middle of things.  I imagine that when Latour wrote it he didn’t have any idea that Spider-Woman would be an instant hit.  So he set out to give readers a crash course on Gwen’s origin via a quick two-page flashback before showing us what she was up to, and then ending the issue with a hook leading into the rest of the “Spider-Verse” crossover.

In the Spider-Gwen reality of Earth-65 it was Gwen Stacy and not Peter Parker who got bit by a radioactive spider and gained super-powers.  Much like Peter did waaaay back in Amazing Fantasy #15, Gwen adopted a costumed identity in order to seek fame & fortune.

Peter, who was as much of a socially awkward nerd in this reality as he was on “mainstream” Earth-616, became a huge fan of Spider-Woman.  Tired of being bullied by his high school classmates, Peter decided he also wanted to be famous.  He developed what appeared to be a serum similar to the one that turned Curt Connors into the Lizard.  Transforming into a monster, Peter fought Spider-Woman, and during the battle was fatally wounded.  The dying Peter told Spider-Woman “I just… just… wanted to be special… like you.”  This left Gwen completely devastated, as she and Peter had been close friends.

The J. Jonah Jameson of this world, who much like his 616 counterpart never met a spider-themed vigilante who he didn’t hate, immediately began blaming Spider-Woman for Peter’s death.  His editorials in The Daily Bugle convinced the general public and the NYPD that Spider-Woman is a criminal.

In a crowning piece of irony, Jameson is the one who declares “Spider-Woman and those like her must learn that with their great power comes an even greater responsibility!”  It is an admonishment that Gwen takes to heart.  She sets aside her frivolous goals and vows to use her powers to help others, even if most people believe her to be a murderer.

Gwen’s task is made all the more difficult by the fact that the police officer leading the manhunt for her is none other than her father, Captain George Stacy.  This ends up placing Stacy in the crosshairs of the Kingpin, who has his own plans for Spider-Woman.  An assassin is dispatched to murder the police captain.  Spider-Woman saves her father’s life, but Stacy immediately turns around and tries to arrest her.  This forces Gwen to unmask, much to her father’s shock.  She attempts to explain her actions to her father:

“You’re a good cop, Dad. You put on that badge and carry that gun because you know if you don’t, someone who shouldn’t will.

“When I put this mask on, I only did it because it freed me from responsibility. I thought I was special. And Peter Parker died because he tried to follow my example. I have to take responsibility for that. To make his death mean something.

“This mask is my badge now. If I don’t define what it means, monsters like this will. This is where I’m needed most.”

I’m glad that Latour got the reveal of Gwen’s identity to her father out of the way early on.  He avoided having the clichéd set-up of an authority figure on a misguided mission to hunt down a misunderstood vigilante, not knowing that their target is a loved one.  That type of thing has been played out too many times in the past.

The Spider-Gwen series is very much concerned with Gwen’s efforts to make things right.  Beneath the flippant attitude and corny quips of Spider-Woman, she is in turmoil, still haunted by feelings of guilt over Peter’s death.  Her relationship with her father is severely strained, as she has forced him to choose between his responsibilities as a parent and his duty as a police officer.  She is very much the novice crime-fighter, making a number of serious mistakes.  Gwen also struggles to balance her two identities, to find a way to be both an ordinary teen and a super-hero.  Her friendships with the members of the band the Mary Janes is on the skids since she keeps flaking out on them due to her activities as Spider-Woman.

It’s interesting how similar yet how different the Spider-Gwen universe is from the “regular” Marvel universe.  The Kingpin and the Vulture are much like their 616 selves.  Matt Murdock is not Daredevil but he is still blind and possesses heightened senses.  However in this reality he works as the Kingpin’s lawyer and is totally corrupt.  Frank Castle is also a regular fixture, not as the Punisher, but as a member of the NYPD, albeit one who is nearly as ruthless as his vigilante counterpart.  Castle’s idea of “interrogating” a suspect is to beat him within an inch of his life.

Despite the often somber tone, Latour features a lot of humor in his stories.  Spider-Woman draws the Vulture out of hiding by spray painting insulting graffiti all about the city such as “Your nest is a hot mess” and “Death from a butt.”  In the second issue, after sustaining a concussion during her battle with the Vulture, Gwen begins hallucinating that her one-time ally Spider-Ham is following her around making smartass comments.

I did feel that these issues went by a bit too quickly.  At $3.99 each, it would be nice if they were somewhat more substantial reads.  But that’s hardly a complaint that I would direct solely at Latour.  It seems endemic of a good portion of the comic book biz: the more expensive single issues become, the shorter the time it takes to read them, or so it seems.

The artwork by Rodriguez on Spider-Gwen is amazing.  He gives this series a unique look and atmosphere.  Rodriguez’s illustration of the action sequences is dynamic, with extremely effective layouts & storytelling.  Likewise, he does solid work with the quieter character moments, as in issue #4 when May Parker talks to Gwen about what happened to Peter, and about her feelings concerning Spider-Woman.

Rico Renzi’s coloring on these issues certainly stands out.  He utilizes unusual, distinctive hues to create a palpable sense of atmosphere.  Renzi’s coloring very much complements Rodriguez’s artwork.

The design sense that Rodriguez demonstrates on his covers for Spider-Gwen is striking.  He creates very eye-catching, abstract compositions on each of them.

As with so many other comic books nowadays, Spider-Gwen is being released with numerous variant covers by a number of different artists.  For issue #4 I decided to mix things up a bit and buy one of those, the regularly-priced variant by Mark Brooks.  His portrait of Spider-Woman hanging out on the side of the George Washington Bridge is done a much more photo-realistic style than Rodriguez’s work.  I’ve recently seen Brooks’ work on a number of covers for Marvel titles.  He’s done quality work on these.

While I was somewhat undecided after reading the first couple of issues of Spider-Gwen, the next two hooked my interest.  For the time being I think I’ll keep following this book and see where Latour & Rodriguez are going.

At the very least, with all the action taking place on “Earth-65” I hopefully won’t have to worry about Spider-Woman getting tied up in all the Secret Wars shenanigans currently occupying most of Marvel’s publishing line.  Ideally Gwen will be given the time to feature in several stories in her own reality, to stand on her own two feet, before once again crossing over into other realities.

Having said that, if and when Spider-Gwen does pay a visit to Earth-616, hopefully we will get to see her toss Norman Osborn off a bridge!

Happy birthday to John Romita

Here’s wishing a very happy 85th birthday to legendary comic book artist John Romita, who was born on January 24, 1930.  The prolific Romita has had a long association with Marvel Comics over the decades, at one time or another drawing many of the company’s major characters, as well as having a hand in designing a number of them.

Romita’s first regular assignment at Marvel was Daredevil.  He worked on issue #s 12-19 (cover dates Jan to Aug 1966).  It was while on Daredevil that Romita first drew the character of Spider-Man in a two-part guest appearance in #s 16-17.  This actually led to Romita becoming only the second artist to draw Amazing Spider-Man, after co-creator Steve Ditko departed from Marvel.  Romita’s first issue was #39 (Aug 1966), teamed up with writer & editor Stan Lee.

During his time working on Amazing Spider-Man Romita designed several new villains, most prominently the Rhino, the Shocker, and the Kingpin.  Romita also made his mark as an artist who was talented at rendering beautiful women.  He revealed what Mary Jane Watson actually looked like, and he gradually transformed Gwen Stacy from Ditko’s ice queen into more of a sweet girl-next-door type.  He also completely redesigned the look of the Black Widow, giving Natasha her now-iconic long red hair, leather jumpsuit and wrist-blasters in issue #86 (July 1970).

Before his time at Marvel, Romita had spent nearly a decade at DC Comics working on their romance titles.  This definitely made him very well-suited to working on Amazing Spider-Man.  During this time Stan Lee’s stories were as much soap opera as super-heroes.  Romita was the perfect artist to illustrate Peter Parker’s personal life and rocky romances with Mary Jane and Gwen.

Confession time: I am not an especially huge fan of Spider-Man, although there are certain runs and storylines featuring the web-slinger that I have enjoyed.  Consequently, I do not have all that many issues of his various comic titles and most of those that I do own are from the 1980s onward.  So sadly I don’t actually have many of the issues Romita worked on.  I really need to pick up some trade paperbacks!

One of the Spider-Man books by Romita that I do have, though, is from much later in his career.  Published in 1997, the Spider-Man/Kingpin: To the Death special was a reunion Romita in more than one way.  It was his first full-length Spider-Man story in a number of years.  It also saw him once again drawing the Kingpin and Daredevil.  The book also reunited him with Stan Lee, who scripted over a plot by another long-time Spider-Man writer, Tom DeFalco.  Romita’s pencils were effectively inked by Dan Green.  I thought it was a nice collaboration.  Green’s embellishment seemed to bring out the Milton Caniff influence in Romita’s style.

Although certainly not nearly as prominent as his association with Spider-Man, Romita also contributed a small but impressive body of work featuring another of Marvel’s iconic characters, Captain America.  Actually some of Romita’s earliest professional work was on the very short-lived revival of the Captain America title in 1954.

After Romita became firmly established at Marvel in the mid-1960s, he illustrated Captain America on a few occasions.  He drew the Cap stories in Tales of Suspense #76-77 (April-May 1966).  The second of those tales, on which Romita penciled over Jack Kirby’s layouts, introduced Cap’s wartime love interest & ally Peggy Carter, the older sister (later retconned into the aunt) of his current girlfriend, S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Sharon Carter.

Tales of Suspense was re-titled Captain America with issue #100.  Romita guest-penciled issue #114 (June 1969) and a couple of years later briefly became the book’s regular artist, working on #s 138-145 (June 1971 to Jan 1972).  Although the writing on some of these issues was a bit underwhelming, particularly the ones featuring the Grey Gargoyle, the art by Romita was nevertheless very good.

Towards the end of this brief run, under writer Gary Friedrich, the stories got a bit better.  Africa-American social activist Leila Taylor was introduced as a love interest for the Falcon who would frequently challenge his political views.  Cap’s arch-foe the racist Red Skull was unmasked as an agent provocateur who was attempting to discredit Leila’s militant civil rights group by inciting them to violence.  Romita’s final issue of Captain America was the first chapter of an exciting story arc that saw Cap, Sharon Carter and the forces of S.H.I.E.L.D. pitted against the hordes of Hydra.  His cover to #145 was incredibly striking, with a rage-filled Cap standing over the fallen Sharon, swearing vengeance against Hydra.  He worked on a number of additional covers for Captain America throughout the 1970s.

I mentioned before how adept John Romita is at drawing beautiful women.  This was very well encapsulated on the cover to Marvel Age #111.  Romita drew himself day-dreaming, surrounded by a bevy of the lovely ladies he had rendered over the decades, among them Gwen Stacy, Mary Jane Watson, and the Black Widow.  In a humorous, self-deprecating touch, in the upper right hand corner Romita draws his wife Virginia popping in to his studio to ask him if he’s finished drawing the cover yet!

Romita’s son John Romita Jr also went into the comic book biz, himself becoming an equally prolific artist who worked on numerous titles.  There are similarities between the styles of father and son, although I would describe John Jr’s work as more gritty.  The two have worked together on occasion, with Romita inking his son’s pencils.

I’ve been fortunate enough to meet Romita on a couple of times at comic book conventions, where I was able to get a few of the books he worked on autographed.  I didn’t have much of an opportunity to speak with him, but he seemed to be a polite, pleasant individual.

Although mostly retired nowadays, Romita does from time-to-time dip his toe back into the waters of the biz, drawing the occasional cover here and there.  It’s always nice to see new work from such a talented legend.