I've been going through some of my old black-and-white comics and it occurred to me the three of them really did a good job of transitioning from one medium to another. Or two of them did I mentioned Conan here because he did sort of jump from color to black and white. His color comic was great but the black-and-white was larger and more impressive more dramatic. It's still hard for me to decide which I liked more.
It wasn't so much the nudity though that did have a lot to do with it when I was young. It was that these were comics, but they were bigger and somehow had more of an impact in black and white than they did in color.
Dracula for instance was freed from his old supporting cast and the writers delved into his past with a lot of one shots. They explored more of his evil side then I think could've been done in the color comic.
I also don't think they could've done Howard's return to duck world the same way in the color comic. I'm really sure that they couldn't have portrayed his relationship with Beverly the same way that they did in the color comic. But Howard's transition to the black-and-white was a bit different than Dracula's. Dracula was killed at the end of his first series run in color and they had to write a story to revive him. Howard and Bev pretty much picked up where they left off after the defeat of Dr. Bong.
All in all I miss those black-and-white stories. They were just so different at the time and I felt that they worked on a different set of rules. Plus as far as Howard and Dracula were concerned I believe the gene colon's art actually worked better without color.
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...Do you remember those Marvel B&W one-shots and mini-series of Marvel characters in B&W . published in the standard comic-book size , from a couple years back ??? Marvel also published a couple of magazine-sized one-shots of that material collecting stories of various characters , I presume all stuff that had also been printed in standard CB form but now in a magazine-sized anthology , which I suppose might've been a newsstand-market only repackaging/issue .
These B&W stories I'm referring to incuded this set in the 1970s story where Doctor Strange (Spoiler !) makes a deal with Mephisto to damn a not YET suitably guilty man to save innoecnts and an imaginary future Iron Man story where Pepper's descndant talks to a long-reclusive Howard Hughes-like Tony who has been hiding in his fortress while his inventions have semi-saved the world .
My introduction to the world of Marvel B&W magazines didn’t involve Marvel characters, but rather Planet of the Apes (first and foremost) and Doc Savage. Later I picked up the Rampaging Hulk magazine, which started in B&W before moving to color after the conclusion of the initial arc featuring Bereet and the Krylorian invasion of Earth. I look back fondly on that storyline and enjoy it more since it has been relegated to “fictional” status yet still remains a part of the Marvel Universe. HULK! (IMHO) got even better after dropping the “rampaging,” adding the exclamation point and moving to so-called “Marvel-Color.”
Some of Marvel’s 1970s-era B&W output has been released in “Essential” format, but I wish they’d release more. The art for those stories was intended to be seen in B&W, and the smaller format doesn’t necessarily hurt, “tightening it up” in many cases.
Yes, I remember those comic book-size B&W one-shots from a few years ago. There was Doctor Strange, Daredevil and Iron Man. (Maybe more, but those were the three I bought.) They made a good attempt to replicate the stories of the era. They didn’t succeed entirely (they did a better job on the covders than the content), but I did appreciate the effort. I wish there had been more of them.
One of my favorite features in Rampaging Hulk / Hulk! were the full page illustrations that appeared on the inside front cover and accompanying the contents page. There was a great one by Gene Colan of the Hulk busting through the roof of a cab with the driver looking on in shock. Banner must have felt the cab charge was too high.
I remember the rampaging Hulk and at the time it was explained in continuity that it was happening between one Hulk magazine and the other. It was only later that they change that so that it was all just an alien movie.
It's funny how I I first remember seeing them though. At the time my comic book store was a small convenience store next to the school. You walked in and the comics were right by the front door in a two column rack and beyond that was a eight-foot newsstand shelf that I usually avoided or ignored. It had magazines like Time and Newsweek ladies home Journal basically everything I wasn't interested in. But one day they cleared space on the bottom shelf, just in line with comics and started putting out the black and whites. Quite a revelation, because I hadn't imagined the comics could be in black and white outside of a newspaper.
The three comics I mentioned translated well into black and white, but I didn't think that stuff like the avengers or the fantastic four would. Then they came out with bizarre adventures featuring the daughters of the Dragon and there was a one-shot adventure with Jean grey.
They were really into experimentation and formats back then, I wonder if it's sort of like the digital stuff coming out today.
There was a conscious intention to make the content of the black-and-white comics different than the four-color version. They fell outside the Comics Code, so they could be somewhat more mature and deal with themes the color comics couldn't. I guess one could say they were Vertigo before Vertigo took hold.
I remember them well. I also got the black-and-white Tomb of Dracula and Howard the Duck, and several issues of Strange Tales, Conan the Barbarian, and I really liked Bizarre Adventures. I don't get this notion that anthologies don't sell; I'm very fond of them.
...On the other hand , Clark , i remember reading some vintage piece of comics reportage/news , sometime in the erly 80s , that , at that time ,Marvel - Jim Shooter , during his era - had announced that there would be no more nudity/" adult content " in the B&Ws - and , possibly , that Marvel was discontinuing/divesting itself of its last remaining " adult " magazines - Skin magazines , or perhaps last-generation " men's adventures-sweat " stuff like the Cadence company used to publish so many of under Might Marty .
I recall Shooter saying something like " We feel that , as a company publishing children's material , we shouldn't have anything inappropiate " , although this was probably before " inappropriate " was used so much as a word !!!!!!!!!
Yes , Marvel published some slightly more " mature " stuff still - Basically , this would've been about the " flashpoint " points of nudity , of course , good ol' American puritanism and perhaps a bit of early-Reagan era backlash against perceived libertinism/the seen excess of the Seventes/" Sixties " .
No more nudes/cursing/" edxtreme " gore , I suppose .
Doe anyone else remember this ?????????
So , I suppose that the nudes would have disappeared from SSoC about that time , say and Howard/Bev , if the title was still running , depicted in bed??
That B&W HOWARD is rather fannishly-dissed , I believe , as it was after Marvel had kicked Gerber out 100% , and it stated at one opint in its run that Howard was 100% Val Mayerik's creation .
ClarkKent_DC said:
I don't know if Regan was the cause or that era, around that time the convenience store that I had bought my comics in closed and by the time I found a new one comics were too expensive for me to keep up with.
They didn't exploit the nudity as much in HTD as they did in Dracula and Conan but I'm sort of surprised that Jim Shooter said that marvel stuff was still for kids. I thought Stan Lee had moved away from calling comics as just kids stuff.
"I recall Shooter saying something like " We feel that , as a company publishing children's material , we shouldn't have anything inappropiate ""
I imagine in the late 50's Martin Goodman probably said to himself, "I have all these "MEN'S" magazines, why the hell am I still publishing this CHILDREN'S crap?" :)
When I saw the title of this thread, it dawned on me that at least Dracula and large portions of Howard the Duck are drawn by Gene Colan. I've noticed that his work especially lends itself well to black and white. I bought the Howard the Duck Essential book and haven't regretted it in the least. I remember I read it while I was recouping from hernia surgery. Not a bad way to pass the time.
I was disappointed when they had Dracula show up in the Howard the Duck Black and White and Gene didn't draw it.