Yes, I can't believe it myself but the day I thought would never come has finally arrived. Because Today of all things we are going to talk about the man, the myth, the legend, none other than Rob Liefeld and his arrival on NEW MUTANTS - with the 86th issue - that should not only change the direction of the book but also Marvel Comics itself and with his fellow iMAGE co - founders even the course of the entire comicbook industry.
Keeping in mind that in Germany Today marks the start of the Fasching season ( Germany's version of Halloween only less spooky and with more beer and women dancing in short skirts ) which is every year at the 11th day of the 11th month at the 11th minute of the 11th hour my faithful followers in Germany might think this is a joke. But no, I'm serious here.
Like I said, I never expected to write this post but then again I also never expected to write a spotlight on Gambit - or Gambito like they call him in Spain and how I prefer to call him - and I have already written two .
So what is the genesis of this post ? It goes back to a post I DEFINITELY planned to do : my spotlight on Psylocke which hopefully will get at least one more entry. Since my latest posts have been a bit problematic with blogger putting age restrictions on them left and right and even setting my post on CHAOS ! COMICS Purgatori back to the draft version ( so I hope my regular visitors read it while it was still up ) and I have been going over all of my Halloween posts that I started last year I thought that it would be about time that I finished my oldest unfinished posts.
As it happens to be that was my Psylocke spotlight post and I have not only replaced a lot of videos that have been deleted by YouTube but also added quite a few new ones. And what do I get for all of my troubles ?
Another age restriction of which I am not quite sure how I deserved this because there is nothing in that post that has not appeared in any other posts. In any case, while continuing the Psylocke post I had to look for a few new pictures - as you so often have to do - and while doing just that I came across a few original art pieces by Rob Liefeld for NEW MUTANTS.
Now as usual I put these in the Rob Liefeld folder but I was surprised how much material had accumulated. So I thought this would be something none of my readers would expect so after spending another day looking for enough original Rob Liefeld art to make a proper post here we are.
And while I never expected to make a post about Rob Liefeld all of my longtime followers know that I am always prepared to talk about NEW MUTANTS which in my opinion is THE best team book Marvel Comics has ever published, past, present or future. Because I have written a few posts on that subject but let's get back to the beginning of my journey.
I first encountered THE NEW MUTANTS - like so many american comics - first in the spanish editions since the german publications were always decades behind what the rest of Europe published. Bob McLeod, who co - created the New Mutants with Chris Claremont was the regular artist and I have already written two birthday posts on him, one in 2016 and one in 2019 where I also touched on some of the other artists who have worked on the title like Rick Leonardi ( who also got his spotlight post) or Bill Sienkiewicz ( who not only got his own spotlight post for his work on NEW MUTANTS but also two for his stint on MOON KNIGHT ). And then there is the second part of my Arthur Adams entry for X - MEN MONTH .
So we have already covered a lot of artists and periods from the book.
Continuing my personal journey with THE NEW MUTANTS Bob McLeod has always been one of my favourite artists and his style was just perfect for the book. The first issues I got were not single issues however but those spanish trades they published back then which was five regular issues glued together with a cardboard wraparound cover. Pretty cheap but it got the job done. I got as many of those as I could get during my summer vacations in Spain and back in Germany I had to wait quite a few years until the Condor Verlag published the - infamous - DIE GRUPPE X pocket books which were glued very badly and fell apart after a few readings.
THE NEW MUTANTS were also some of the few titles I could get from the international newsstand at the railway station in Stuttgart although they were much farther ahead in the timeline with Butch Guice ( who sadly passed away this year ) as the regular artist and later on Bret Blevins during such big X - Men crossovers like THE FALL OF THE MUTANTS and also on INFERNO which is one of my favourite crossovers of all times.
So you can imagine that I had a few gaps in my comicbook collection and THE NEW MUTANTS was always one of the titles that I was searching for whenever I visited a comicbook convention ( back when I still could go to comicbook conventions ) and they featured quite heavily on my search list ( which back in the day every comicbook collector worth his salt was always carrying because you never knew where you would encounter a chance to fill your gaps ) until Marvel Comics finally decided to reprint the entire series. Man, the comicbook fans of Today don't know how good they have it where they can choose between getting the original back issues, an Epic Collection or even an omnibus of their favourite material.
I feel robbed
No comments:
Post a Comment