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Scott Adsit
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Joined: 11 January 2008
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Posted: 24 October 2019 at 5:04pm | IP Logged | 1 post reply
JB launched a very successful return to form for the FF in the 80's. The book returned to its tonal roots and gave us the pure versions of the characters that weren't anchored by the 70's shifts in style and tone it had accumulated.

I'm not a very deft comic historian. Have there been other comic book "back to basics" retro-vamps like that? Or attempts at it? One might say JB's very successful Superman, but that included a mix of inspirations and altered continuity for its vision. What about relighting the original fire in the original's style? What are some other good examples of that? Successful or otherwise.
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Eric Sofer
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Posted: 24 October 2019 at 5:38pm | IP Logged | 2 post reply
Steve Englehart took over writing Justice League of America for about a dozen issues, and he brought such story to it that it would easily qualify as back to basics. I think Gardner Fox would have approved.

Paul Levitz' second crack at the Legion of Super-Heroes read as it did at its best, if not a little better. Jim Shooter also did LSH and that was arguably his attempt at capturing the original style, but from a teenager's point of view.

Kurt Busiek's tenure on the Avengers hearkened back to the best of Roy Thomas' work on the book. He managed the same tone on Thunderbolts at the time - but of course, there was no earlier Thunderbolts to look back TO.
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Brian Hague
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Posted: 24 October 2019 at 5:48pm | IP Logged | 3 post reply
Ron Frenz altered his art style to bring a more Ditko-esque approach to his Spider-Man in the 80's and more Kirby to his Thor after that. It seemed a definite attempt to revisit the characters at an earlier, more inspired time in their histories.

It could be argued that Neal Adam's took Batman "back to the basics" with his insistence upon a more gothic visual style and shifting scenes written for daytime to night. He very consciously moved away from the more family-friendly Batman of the late Forties and Fifties and the camp of the Sixties to bring the character back to what he had once been.


Edited by Brian Hague on 24 October 2019 at 5:50pm
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Mike Norris
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Posted: 24 October 2019 at 5:55pm | IP Logged | 4 post reply
I thought Englehart  brought a very Marvel vibe to the JLA. Very different that more traditional approach the writers before him were doing. Who were quite often "Fox-lite".  His run on Batman in Detective felt more back to basics to me. 
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Vinny Valenti
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Posted: 24 October 2019 at 6:29pm | IP Logged | 5 post reply
Busiek/Perez on AVENGERS is a good example. It was the first time that the core team members were together as a team in at least 12 years.
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Rebecca Jansen
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Posted: 24 October 2019 at 7:25pm | IP Logged | 6 post reply
I like the art Perez and then Pollard did on the Fantastic Four before JB, but bloody 'ell, the stories are all over the map... Reed Richards losing his power, going mad, Ben Grimm human again but inside an exo-skeleton suit that looks and moves and is super like the Thing, all kinds of fill-in members like Thundra, Tigra, Impossible Man... different outfits (or the Torch went red at least) and then they break up for awhile and have individual adventures. It didn't really regain focus until a little before the big #200 and Marv Wolfman, the first run of JB art starting with #209 culminated in a great two part space-based story in #220 & 221 he wrote as well as pencilled that really felt 'classic' FF.

Walt Simonson taking over Thor with #337 (he had done a few issues earlier as penciller)  was another great return to 'classic' form, and excitement for each new issue. Steve Englehart and Marshall Rogers on Batman in Detective Comics (starting with #471) also, it even had a classic '40s style of lettering.
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Brian Miller
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Joined: 28 July 2004
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Posted: 24 October 2019 at 8:21pm | IP Logged | 7 post reply
Stern/Romita Jr on AMAZING SPIDER-MAN
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John Byrne

Grumpy Old Guy

Joined: 11 May 2005
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Posted: 25 October 2019 at 7:10am | IP Logged | 8 post reply
Dick Grayson was shipped off to college in an attempt to restore Batman to his "basics". The sand monster was a shot at turning back the clock on Superman.

Such restorations rarely had much chance of succeeding -- and less and less as the fans took over and the "archeologists" assumed more and more power.

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Eric Jansen
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Posted: 25 October 2019 at 7:31am | IP Logged | 9 post reply
Truthfully, only O'Neil and Adams on BATMAN and JB on FANTASTIC FOUR looked to be (and were described so by the creators) as "Back to the Basics" approaches, that I can think of.  Busiek and Perez on AVENGERS was more of a "Back to the Middle of Their History" approach (which might have been their best, so that was okay with me).

Some possibilities (and I don't think the creators were necessarily trying to get back to the basics, it just worked out that way)--

Frank Miller on DAREDEVIL evoked a lot of the mood and inventiveness of Wally Wood's short run.  Miller's run was such a fresh start, it might as well have been a new comic.  That's as "Back to the Basics" as one can get.

Jack Kirby returned to CAPTAIN AMERICA in the mid-70's and that surely evoked memories of his first run (with Stan) a decade earlier, but Kirby's solo stories had a weirdness and moodiness to them that was totally different than the action-filled, Stan-scripted earlier run.

I think there have been a number of attempts to get back to the basics with DOCTOR STRANGE, but nobody could really do it like Ditko.  (But, boy, if Jim Starlin had put in a two-year run--!)

THE HULK magazine literally tried to recapture the early days of the Hulk's original 6-issue run--but doing stories set in the same time period!  But I missed those and came on board later when the color magazine was a bit more like the TV show and had abandoned the retro approach.  I leave it to others to say whether the B&W issues succeeded in the attempt.

JB's various runs on SPIDER-MAN always reminded visually of Ditko, and storytelling of Stan.

Wally Wood drawing the Earth-2 SUPERMAN back in the 70's ALL-STAR COMICS revival was as close as you were ever going to get to the Joe Shuster version, but the stories were different.
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Michael Penn
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Posted: 25 October 2019 at 7:31am | IP Logged | 10 post reply

 QUOTE:
Neal Adam's took Batman "back to the basics"

Mr. Adams talked about this a few years ago.
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Rick Senger
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Posted: 25 October 2019 at 7:36am | IP Logged | 11 post reply
I like some Denny O'neil (particularly selected SF efforts) but that sand doppelganger was for me a disappointment... he was introduced with such mystery but the plotline (which took a bunch of issues to play out) just kind of petered out and O'neil was gone in about 10 issues.  I've always wondered if that attempt resulted in a dip in circulation so they decided to quickly reverse things.
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John Byrne

Grumpy Old Guy

Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132610
Posted: 25 October 2019 at 7:38am | IP Logged | 12 post reply
I missed those and came on board later when the color magazine was a bit more like the TV show and had abandoned the retro approach.

••

When Banner appeared in the first issue of SAVAGE SHE-HULK he was introduced with a caption that said something like "Call him David, Bruce or Bob...", and that was WAY too "meta" for me!

(It also suggested that Stan was probably not really the scripter.)

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