Marvel's most successful pure anthology run (at least here in the U.S., maybe not overseas), running for 175 issues from the late-80s to the mid-90s. A real staple for the "5 comics in a bag" things at the grocery stores of my youth. Four stories in each issue, different creative teams. Usually a mixture of done-in-ones and multi-chapter stories, spread across several issues. So the image above is from chapter 2 of an 8-part Wolverine and Typhoid Mary story, but that issue also had a one-off story about Nightcrawler encountering a Jack the Ripper-style killer in the streets of London.
Confession time: I own about 30 issues, but they've all been dismantled. I pulled the staples, gathered the page of the specific stories I wanted (like the one above), and then clumsily reassembled them, thereby removing all the chaff. Mostly stories about Venom, War Machine, or Vengeance. Those three really dominate the back half of the run.
As expected, it's a real mix. You get stuff like Sam Keith-illustrated Venom vs. Wolverine stories, or early Pat Lee on a Beast one-shot. Alan Davis dusting off his ClanDestine characters again. Gerry Conway and early Scott Kolins on a 9(!)-part Young Gods story. Nocenti wrote a pair of multi-chapter arcs about Typhoid Mary crossing paths with first Wolverine, then Ghost Rider, culminating in the entire 150th issue being devoted to a story with Wolverine, Daredevil, Vengeance and some vaguely-Silver Sable looking lady all gunning for Mary for various reasons. All of those drawn by Lightle.
There's also a lot of random stuff by writers or artists I've never heard of, lots of very '90s art with absurd physical proportions and a severe lack of visual clarity. That's the risk with anthologies titles. You pay for stuff you don't want along with the stuff you do. I don't think that's why Marvel and DC can't sustain books like that any longer; more likely fans are conditioned to dismiss anthologies as "unimportant" titles. Either that or the majority of writers and artists can't do compelling, or even entertaining, stories in 8 pages.
2 comments:
It's very strange that the US market never really took to anthologies, as it's a common, if not dominant, format in other regions. Maybe it's that "unimportant" perception you mention.
As I type this, I can see the big chunky Jack Staff collection that Image put out a few years ago, and I'm reminded of the way Grist presents that comic as a faux-anthology. I wonder what US audiences made of that?
The closest thing to long-running anthologies I remember where things like the big "Superman Family" 100-page comics DC would put out in the '60s and '70s, or maybe those "House of Mystery" style books that were usually two or three shorter stories. That stuff seemed to fade over the course of the '70s, but I'm not sure why.
I know it took me a while to recognize Jack Staff wasn't always Jack Staff's book, and who was the lead changed constantly. I don't have the impression the book ever sold gangbusters over here, but I guess it did alright since I think it stopped more due to Grist moving to other projects/losing interest than poor sales.
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