[AD] This is John from the Corner Box. In my daytime hours, I work at a company called Pan Universal Galactic Worldwide, and we've teamed up with a place I used to work, Marvel Comics, to put together an exciting new book that we're launching on Kickstarter. It's called Behind the Panels of Marvel's Secret Wars, an in-depth look at the art and process of making Marvel's 2015 Secret Wars series--the one by Jonathan Hickman and Esad Ribic--the one that's inspiring the upcoming Avengers film.

This is the first in our Behind the Panel series, and fellow ex-Marvel editor, and all-around talented writer, Ellie Pyle, has talked to the minds who concocted that story, which is the big capstone to Hickman's Fantastic Four/Ultimate Universe/Avengers epic, the comic that ended the Ultimate Universe. It will take you from the Marvel summit planning sessions, through the spin-offs, and into the lasting legacy of the series.

Exclusive to this Kickstarter, we've got art prints, a red-blue 3D puzzle. The most exciting bonus--they're called bite-sized covers. These are miniature reproductions of the comic book covers. They're all the size of bridge cards, but super thick cardboard, and they come in a miniature short box with Secret Wars art. You can collect them, store them, or display them.

Check out Secret Wars Kickstarter, and it'll get you there in your web browser, and you can see what I mean.

Now, on to the show.

Welcome to The Corner Box with David Hedgecock and John Barber. With decades of experience in all aspects of comic book production, David, John, and their guests will give you an in-depth and insightful look at the past, present, and future of the most exciting medium on the planet—comics—and everything related to it.

[01:40] John Barber: Hello, and welcome back to The Corner Box. I'm one of your hosts, John Barber, and with me as always, my good friend--oh, my God. Where's David? We don't know. Hopefully, this is harmless and everything's okay. Where I suspect he is, is trying to read every single Marvel comic to accurately cover our topic this time, of the Top 5 Runs of Marvel Comics, and it wasn't just David and I that were going to be doing this. In fact, everybody else came here. Everybody else is Mason Rabinowitz. How are you, Mason?

[02:14] Mason Rabinowitz: I'm even better now that you've introduced me as everybody else. Also, I should be clear, I was only here to hear David's Top 5 comic book runs. So, now I also feel completely robbed. You and I talking comics is a thing I do for work. This is supposed to be a fun podcast. Also, I assume, like the rest of us, that David read all Marvel Comics when he was 12, and the real issue is that he just can't narrow down his list, and is still working on it. Doing your homework right before class starts, and you're just like, “I've narrowed it down to 6, but which one do I take off here?”

[02:46] John: Okay. So, it's #1, that series with Major X, or whatever his name was. #2, when Liefeld went back onto Wolverine. #3, when Liefeld came back, and did another X-Force series. #2, New Mutants with Liefeld. #1, Amazing Spider-Man. No, I don't know.

[03:06] Mason: I assume I can count that New Mutants and X-Force as one single run.

[03:10] John: Let's get into that. No, I don't know. Here's the thing. There aren't rules. We just made this up.

[03:14] Mason: The issue for me--and this is why I don't have a podcast--is that I would be ready to have an hour-long discussion with you guys about what would constitute a run, and “what are the criteria for picking?” and then run out of time, and we'd never actually get to the list itself, because there were a lot of questions that came up, in my mind, in terms of “what does it have to be? Does it have to be a single writer and a single artist? How long should it be? Do you get bonus points for being an incredibly insanely long run, even if maybe it's not the most consistent, or didn't end well?” These were all the questions that then tried to run by through some of these things, and then also, if it's important and meaningful, and it would be on all the lists, but it's not a thing you love, should you put it on this list? Also, are we just going to pick the same five books? Because if our #1 isn't the same, I don't know what to do. I have to assume that our #1 is the free square on the Greatest Marvel Comics Runs of All Time board.

[04:12] John: To be honest, I can see 2 contenders there, but I do think we'll both come up with those same 2 contenders. I definitely angled my picks more towards my favorites that I think are very good. There's no objective measurement of this, and anybody that pretends there is, there isn't. You can tell when something's well-crafted or poorly crafted, or something, but I don't know. There's no real criteria for any of that, and it does get into these weird things of “what do you count it as?” I could easily have encompassed one of my runs in a larger, more wide-ranging run of things, and I feel both would have been valid, but I'm going to pick my favorite. There's a couple here that are, “John's trying to be a little interesting, but not super interesting.”

[04:59] Mason: I was going to say, I feel like mine defaulted to one that is interesting. If I had to be like, “there's one I bet isn't on anyone's lists, and there's one that I doubt made it, but also wouldn't be surprised if it did.”

[05:12] John: Before we dive in, though, I do want to ask you one thing. What have you been working on lately? Ellie was on last week.

[05:18] Mason: Oh, yes, that was very exciting. Speaking of great runs, certainly, I think Jonathan Hickman's run on Fantastic Four is an honorable mention that did not make my list, but I do think he is one of those that should be an honorable mention for All-Time Great Runs. I am working with Ellie on the Marvel Comics Behind the Panels of Secret Wars, in which we dive deep into the secrets of making not just the Secret Wars series, but how the writers and artists, and editors, and people at Marvel go into creating a massive company-wide event, because I think that is both the actual makings of the book, and we've got amazing Esad art, and behind the scenes of making an actual physical comic, but also just all the fun, logistical craziness that goes into the summits, and killing the entire line. All of those things that are part of that Marvel bullpen that seems so exciting, but as fans, you don't really have access to what that's all like. So, we're putting that book together. It is currently on Kickstarter. Got some very cool rewards, bite-sized comics, mini comic boxes, a very cool sticker set. I can't believe they let me get Mr. Sinister with a martini glass, which is just my favorite thing I will have made in a long time. Currently, hard at work on that, Kickstarting it with still days to go. So, there's still a chance to jump in and get your book, and get behind the scenes with that Hickman guy. He plans things.

[06:39] John: Yes, I think you're on to something there. Speaking of plans, this plan couldn't have gone together better. I mean, two-thirds of us made it. So, we should--

[06:48] Mason: Two-thirds of us made it. So, I think we should also then probably just submit what Dave’s should be. We did. I think you’re right. You’ve got to get that New Mutants/X-Force Rob Liefeld run, which I will admit, there was a moment where I was just thinking, if you'd asked me at various points in my life, “what were the greatest comic book runs?” That was one, when I was experiencing it, that I thought was all-time great, and still before he had his Rob Liefeld cultural renaissance, wherein Deadpool is now one of the most famous figures of all time. I used to argue pretty hard that those were super underrated, and that no one had introduced more good stuff to the Marvel Universe than Rob. It was just Cable and Deadpool, and it felt like that period of Marvel where just new characters were showing up, and there was a house of ideas, and crazy stuff was happening. I was like “that's what it feels like. This is what it felt like.” So, it did not make my list, but I will say, that's one of those ones, if you'd asked me at the time, I would have been like, “this is an all-time great.”

[07:41] John: If we were to ever do this again, and do decade-by-decade, or something, I think I would definitely--spoiler alert--that would definitely make my list of the 90s ones, and yeah, for the reasons you're saying. It was also the book that got me back into reading X-Men. I hadn't been reading it, and that turned out to have an impact on my life, personally. So, it worked out. I read the new Youngblood that came out, and it's my favorite kind of Rob story, where a bunch of people start on a mission, they go and fight a bunch of stuff, and then something happens, and that sounds like a stupid breakdown, but that's like the Mignola issue of X-Force, Bloodstrike #1, those ones that are just a fun, straight ahead, not even a rollercoaster, just the straight downhill part of a rollercoaster, where you're just crashing forward at full speed.

[08:33] Mason: I think that sums it up. It's the rollercoaster, but just the sheer thrilling downhill fun, but maybe a loop thrown in, but that's it, and back down again.

[08:46] John: Anyway, though, you're the guest. Why don't you start?

[08:48] Mason: #5 is, I think, the more oddball choice.

[08:52] John: Okay.

[08:53] Mason: For #5, it's a writer only. It's a writer run.

[08:55] John: Okay.

[08:55] Mason: But I'm going with Larry Hama’s G.I. Joe.

[08:57] John: Wow. Okay.

[08:59] Mason: When I was thinking about what's important here, is it character and defining? I mean, clearly, it's character defining. It's long. It's a Marvel book. There's a ton of characters. There's a ton of good stuff. I've been working my way slowly through the omnibus, reading an issue at a time, and the way that book changes, from these really tight, self-contained single stories early on, into this big sprawling, crazy epic that'll also have a silent issue, that will do all of these things with all of these characters, I just feel like, when you think about a comics run, that is weirdly different than the rest of what Marvel has done, and I just can't imagine--none of that would exist without it. I really like Stephen Grant, as a writer. […] one, that was like, “that wasn't it. That was fine, but—”

[09:51] John: It doesn't feel like real G.I. Joe.

[09:53] Mason: It doesn't feel like real G.I. Joe, which is crazy for the most brand IP plastic toys thing. He infused it with all of the things that make it feel like a real-live world, with all the good stuff, and ninjas, and army vehicles. It made me feel like I knew what military ammo was.

[10:14] John: Yeah. I made a joke, I think to you earlier this week, about NATO uses 5.56 millimeter round, […] Warsaw pack.

[10:20] Mason: Yeah. So, I just feel like, if you want to follow one guy, one creator, on just a run that just runs, and then keeps on running, post-Marvel even. That Marvel run, that's my sneaky #5. I'm sliding that one in. That's the one I feel like is probably not going to make most other lists, but I think they're great books. I think they still hold up, and I think just as an individual creator's run, it checks so many boxes of defining the characters literally, going in an extended period of time, evolving, without losing the plot.

[10:51] John: Which is remarkable. This is a toy tie-in comic. So, that means that every year, there's a new wave of characters that they want to sell, not the previous ones, and you do run into that, where old characters are retiring, and then they come back, or whatever. A lot of that just works really organically with the story. He makes all that stuff work. He builds enough stuff into it. To me, the first 25 issues, or so, are super extraordinary. Actually, that's not even true. You are right. There's a hump in the beginning, and then once you get past that, all the stuff up to the attack on The Pit, that has C.B Cebulski, Editor-in-Chief of Marvel--his first appearance in a Marvel comic is in the letters column there, lettering G.I Joe #19. It was foundational for me. It was the first comic that I started reading, regularly. The silent issue was definitely the first time I had to engage with the form of comics.

[11:47] Mason: I was going to say, the two other things that I had--first of all, the fact that there were TV commercials for it is still mind-blowing. That was a comic everybody knew existed, and was cool enough to be advertised on TV, and then, yeah, the first time I ever thought about the way comics are put together and how they work, is that silent issue, where you're engaging with the actual structure of storytelling in a comic, besides just reading it, because it was very exciting, just reading it. I know that was definitely one of the first times I ever thought about the actual form of the book.

[12:20] John: Yeah. There's other little moments like that, too. There's one that I really remember, where the vamp was going down the elevator into The Pit, and Panel 1 shows the vamp up in the--I don't know—[…]. Panel 2, it's halfway down. Panel 2 is below it, and you see it going down into The Pit, and I remember being like, “what does that mean? Is the floor right there? How does that work?” Hama always pulling in a lot of Steranko storytelling tools into that. I mean, Silent Issue, especially. Do you know M.A.R.S. Patrol? Do you know that comic?

[12:53] Mason: No.

[12:54] John: It was a Wally Wood comic. Larry was Wally Wood's assistant. M.A.R.S. Patrol is basically G.I. Joe. It was an army team. M.A.R.S. was an acronym. They weren't on Mars, and that M.A.R.S. is also the corporation that Destro runs in G.I. Joe later on. He pitched it as a SHIELD series. He wanted to basically do SHIELD as M.A.R.S. Patrol. That didn't go through, but then the G.I. Joe license came in. So, he adapted the pitch to that. So, it's definitely got some roots. The Nick Fury part has its roots in the Marvel stuff, and then the other parts are deep roots into comics, and—not that Larry’s not an all-time great, but one of--

[13:39] Mason: Always fun to find a connection like that, and […] Wally Wood. If you told me Wally Wood had anything to do with the G.I. Joe comic, I would not have thought so. Did not have that on the list of things I would learn from John Barber. That's great.

[13:51] John: There you go.

[13:52] Mason: That's great. Well, #5 for me is Larry Hama's G.I. Joe run, and if you haven't read it, it's great, and those big giant soft omnibus things, whatever they called them, are a great way to read it. It feels like the old-timey newsprint. It's just great.

[14:08] John: Yeah. It's also, I think, probably the only run--certainly the only one I'm naming here--but the only run that I can think of that started in 1982 that you can still go out and pick up the current issue of, by the same writer.

[14:21] Mason: That's what I was going to say. I'll stand behind the Marvel run, but that it is still like, “no, that's G.I, Joe. That's the guy.”

[14:33] John: My #5 is also maybe one of the more outside ones, but it was the genesis of this. I remember a bunch of ex-Marvel or current Marvel editors talking a few years back about stuff that we think really stands the test of time. My pick is the Garth Ennis Punisher Max run. I really like that comic. I like Punisher a lot. There's something funny about Punisher, where every few years, it cycles through about how problematic the character is, and they go through and do something to change the character, and then it comes back, and it's just like, “well, let's just do good old problematic Punisher.” One of the things I think really was key to that run of Punisher, though, is that Punisher, for a long time in the Marvel Comics--I guess he isn't anymore--but for a long time, he was very much tied into Vietnam. This isn't my observation, but he was to Vietnam what Captain America was to World War II, where he comes out of it more of a tarnished hero. The darkness is very visible. Not that there wasn't that in World War II. There certainly was, but America's attitude toward it comes out of there, and Punisher Max is probably about the last time you could legitimately do that, and squint your eyes, and be like “yeah, he's in his 60s, but he works out,” or it fits into the way that he's written in there, where he's more of a force of nature than a character.

[15:56] Mason: Yeah, he's Batman-esque, in that he's not engaging in much hand-to-hand as much as he's just--I mean, he punches a polar bear.

[16:05] John: No, that's Welcome Back, Frank. That's one of the other things that's funny about it. Garth Ennis does not like superheroes. That's just a baseline thing. He comes in the Marvel Knights era to rebuild Punisher from one of the times they decided he was problematic, and turned him into an angel, Adams, or something, and Garth solves it by just, in one panel saying he told him to go to hell, and now he's just back. When he comes on and writes that, he writes it as a comedy. Steve Dillon drawing it, and it's the guys that did Preacher. It's a comedy, but it's also very dark. It's a very dark comedy, but it seemed like, “well, this is a great version of Garth Ennis writing Punisher.” This is the one you're going to get that's terrific. They made a terrible movie out of it. What better can you do?

So, then when Garth comes back and does the Punisher Max one, which is the adults-only very serious version of it, the thing that always struck me about it is that Garth's Irish. He lived a lot of his life in the suburbs of London--not suburban London, but not the high street, or something. He's lived in New York. I believe he's an American citizen, and this is a guy that has a not-blind-to-the-problems love of America, and Preacher was a young man writing about that, where he's out to find the answers from God, and get all this stuff, and Punisher Max was a mature adult dealing with America after Vietnam, and all of the problems, and all the darkness there, but also coming from a place of absolutely loving the place, and deciding to live there, and building his life in New York. So, I think there's something really personal to it, and something really meaningful about it.

Various artists, they're all very good. All done in this very cinematic style that the editor, Axel Alonso, I think, was instrumental in doing. This is also a piece of Axel's genius. When Axel really works on something, he's able to look at a creator and a concept, and see the alchemy of how it's going to fit together, even where the creator probably doesn't, and I can imagine him trying to talk Garth Ennis into being like, “well, what if you did Punisher, but didn't make fun of him? What if it wasn't funny?” And Garth obviously loves all the SAS guys, all the Special Forces guys. So, obviously, there's enough there for him to bite into, and Frank Castle--I don't know--I just think he did it with a really good run of comics.

[18:23] Mason: I’ve got to go dive back and check that out again. I know I've read it, but I think the big crazy moments from the other ones are what lodge in your head there. Although, the Russian, and all that stuff, such the--

[18:34] John: That's right. It's not humorless.

[18:41] Mason: We have a co-host.

[18:42] David Hedgecock: I didn't want to interrupt. You guys are doing just fine without me.

[18:45] John: Yay.

[18:46] Mason: We were debating whether you were still reading every Marvel comic, in order to get prepared for this, or if you just had 6 and you just needed to get down to 5.

[18:54] David: No. You know what happened? I was sitting at my desk, working, going, “man, this is lovely. I have so much time today to do things. Why do I have so much extra time to get to all these side projects that I need to get to?” And the answer is, I didn't actually have time. I was supposed to be on a podcast--my own damn podcast--and somehow, I forgot, John, that I was supposed to be on this with you. I'm so sorry.

[19:21] John: We did your runs. So, we're all good.

[19:24] Mason: When you want to find out what they are, you have to go back and listen to the episode.

[19:27] John: Welcome to the podcast, David, and we are actually just doing #5.

[19:30] David: Give me one more minute. Let me think about the last 30 years of comic book reading that I've done.

[19:35] John: While you're doing that, I'm going to throw out a positive thing that I've run into in comics. I really like the current Batman logo, the one on the Matt Fraction Batman comic. I don't really like the way it's used on the most recent cover, because it's backlit, and has a drop shadow falling on the light source. I don't like the drop shadow being added to it, but the actual logo--Batman's a funny one, because he's never had a real--Superman's got a Superman logo. You know what that looks like. You know the Fantastic Four logo. Spider-Man. Some characters have different logos. Things change. Whatever. X-Men. There's iconic logos. There just isn't one for Batman. So, they have to keep reinventing it, but I like the current one. It's really nice.

[20:12] Mason: Yeah, I would agree. I think it's nice. It's a fun Batman book, too.

[20:16] John: I agree. I like it a lot.

[20:18] Mason: John, do you have an honorable mention, something you wanted to put on the list, but just didn't make it? I wanted to include Grant Morrison's X-Men. Grant Morrison is my favorite comic book writer of all time. Many of his runs at the other companies are my favorite comics in all of existence. The run is really good, but I had to just say, I love it, but it did not make the list. Same was Remender's X-Force, which is the other sneaky one I kept trying to figure out if I could get in there. That's the one I would recommend. that people haven't read, the run that is probably the least read, but should be more read, but those were my two that don't make the list, but were honorable mentions.

[20:51] John: I mean, I'm a huge Morrison X-Men fan. I was reading that and Cerebus. Those were the only two monthly comics I was reading when that came out. I was in school, didn't have very much money, but I never skipped those. I think the highs of that are as good as anything else, but it's more uneven than any of the stuff that I picked here, in my opinion. Some of the art’s not as up to par as other stuff. The coloring is in that weird period where coloring hadn't gotten really good on Marvel stuff yet. I don't know. I have one, but it's a giveaway for one of my other ones, for why I picked this one.

[21:26] Mason: David, you got your #5?

[21:27] David: I've been carefully considering this for weeks and weeks now.

[21:30] John: We can tell.

[21:30] Mason: This is the eternal list for carving it in stone after the podcast.

[21:35] David: Man, there's so many to choose from, but the runs that stand out most definitively—so, we're starting with #5. It's a tie for me, for #5, and I'm just going to speak briefly to one of them, because we've actually talked about it ad nauseam, as far as our listeners are concerned. Speedball. Did you say Speedball? Did somebody else say Speedball?

[21:52] Mason: I wish we had, and I wanted to--Oh, my God. That's all right.

[21:57] David: The reaction on that was big. Speedball by Steve Ditko. So, here's what it was about that, I was at an age where there was a lot of books, at that time when Speedball launched. This is, I think, the mid to late 80s, when Speedball launched. Probably not getting my timeline exactly right. I probably should have done a little more research, but it was around that mid to late 80s period, and there was a lot of titles that were really long-running, at that point. Avengers and X-Men, and all the big books that everybody talked about were well into their 200s, at that point, and as a kid, I didn't have access to comic bookshops. They didn't exist, for me. The only thing I had access to was whatever showed up at 7-Eleven or the liquor store. So, I didn't have ownership of anything, because everything was so long-running. I'm reading it. Some of it, I was enjoying, but I felt like I was jumping into the middle of something.

So, when Speedball hit, it was a new #1, and it was like, “oh, wow. This is a totally new original character,” and I really loved the look of the character. The design was really amazing. Even to me, as a kid, I was like, “man, I just love the way it looks. He's a teenager. He's got all the problems that a teenager has.” So, I just really loved Speedball. I think it was about a 9-issue run. It just really captured my imagination, in a way that became precious to me, and I think a lot of it had to do the fact that I felt like I was finally getting in on the ground floor of something. I was the first to the table for once, when it came to Marvel comic books. So, that was one, and we've talked about that one a lot, and there's a lot of reasons why I think Speedball’s a really cool character, one of the primary ones being that Steve Ditko did create it. He's co-creator of Spider-Man. Dude's got some chops.

The other one that I would say is tied for #5, for me, would be G.I. Joe, but G.I. Joe starting with the silent issue, G.I. Joe Issue #21. The first issue that I ever bought of G.I. Joe was the silent issue. That was the first time I'd ever been exposed to G.I. Joe, and I was like, “what is this?” It blew me away. I didn't need dialogue to understand how cool that was, and I think I was probably already familiar with the cartoon, at that point, or maybe the toys. So, I had familiarity with G.I. Joe already, and I think I was already into G.I. Joe, but I didn't even know there was a comic book until there was.

So, my first exposure to G.I. Joe was Issue #21, and man, I was hooked. I was like, “this is my jam,” and I would say that G.I. Joe, for me at least, had an incredibly rock-solid run for a couple of years there. In fact, I think there was another silent issue, somewhere in the 80s. I want to say it was Issue #86, #83, somewhere in the 80s. I'm pretty sure there was a second silent issue that Larry Hama and company did, and that's about the end of it for me. That was about when it gave me a sense of closure, in a way, on G.I Joe, and G.I Joe, I think, was getting a little long in the tooth, for me at least, at that time, but that run, man, that was 5 years’ worth of material, and I was eating that stuff up every single month.

Now, keep in mind, I did not have access to comic bookshops. I had to go to the liquor store every week, and I'm fairly certain, I never missed an issue of that book for that whole 5-year run that I was buying it. There's some incredible artists on that book that, as a kid, I didn't know, but Michael Golden and Todd McFarlane were drawing those comic books, and Larry Hama is no joke. That guy was super legit, and at that time, really one of the top guys. He's done some amazing work over the course of his career, been responsible for a wide variety of incredibly high-selling comic books. So, that's my other one. I would say, those two are tied, in my mind, for my #5.

[25:49] Mason: I had a similar experience. I bought Amazing Spider-Man, at the time. So, to buy that annual, and then to be like, “who is this guy? Oh, wait, I can go and read his series,” and it picks up from here, and I had a subscription to it. If I was really into a series, we'd send in the little Marvel cards. My best friend and I would always try to find the ones that were the oldest ones we could possibly find with the cheapest price, and see if they would still redeem it, and they usually would. So, I was bummed when it got cancelled. I forgot what they replaced it with, but I'm a huge New Warriors guy. Also, because it felt, like what you were talking about, where “this is my book. These are characters who haven't existed for forever long, with stories that I never got to read. Here they are,” and I thought G.I. Joe wouldn't make the list, and it turned out, it made two lists.

[26:31] David: Somebody else picked G.I. Joe?

[26:33] Mason: Larry Hama’s G.I. Joe was my #5. That's the one I thought was a little off the table.

[26:40] David: You guys didn't even need me. I'm leaving.

[26:46] Mason: My #4, which is, I think, the one that is clearly a phenomenal run, indisputably. Also, I know every other one of these are characters I already loved, and adored. Walt Simonson’s Thor is a character I had not liked, at all. My brother is a huge Thor fan. The two things we would argue about. He liked Thor. I didn't. He liked Wonder Man. I didn't. I liked Quasar. He didn't. We would argue forever that the others were lame, but I never understood Thor, except for those, and in terms of a run for a writer/artist, those are the best. That run is just so good, so epic. So, everything you could possibly want Thor to be. When the movies do it, you're like, “yes, that's what it ought to be.” Seeing his art […] of illustrators, seeing those original pages only further reinforced to me that I don't care about Thor in any context outside of that Thor run, and it's so good, and epic moments, incredible art. I think the definitive version of that character.

[27:43] John: I mean, there's nobody better than Walter Simonson. I think there's nobody that was as good then, who was very good before then as well. Manhunter is one of my all-time favorite comics. That was an early one by him. His Alien adaptation is incredible.

[27:58] Mason: So good.

[27:59] John: He's as good now, and I don't think there's anybody else that you can say that about. I mean, unequivocally, in my opinion, his art now is better than it was then.

[28:07] Mason: Well, I think you and I have talked about the other Ragnarok book. That's exactly what you want from him here. In terms of a run, I just think, especially getting someone doing the whole package there, I think you can't beat that run.

[28:21] David: So, I'm just going to jump in, because the Simonson run is my #3. Couldn't agree more. That run was incredible, and that white cover with the hammer in the middle, and Thor and Beta Ray Bill facing off, that was burned into my mind the moment I saw it. I can still see it, clear as day, and what an amazing run. Just incredible art. Every page felt like its own epic tome. The way Walt was writing that book, and of course, the amazing art, I don't know that any singular creator has done it better than that. I think there are guys that have matched it, like Frank Miller on Dark Knight. No single creator has done better than that. There have maybe been teams that maybe have gone beyond, but nobody just sitting in his room by himself every day, for a real long time. The quality of that series, for an extended period of time, is just so incredibly high. Thor's ruined for everybody for the rest of the days, because you're never going to get that. I don't think anybody's even come close. I think the closest anybody's come is, was it Jurgens that did—

[29:35] John: Yeah, Jurgens did--

[29:36] Mason: Yeah, Jurgens.

[29:37] David: Did he do it with John Romita Jr.? Was there a Thor run with John Romita Jr. and I think Dan Jurgens? I remember having close to similar feelings with those guys on their run, but no one's even close, man. So, yeah, couldn't agree more on the Simonson. In fact, I pushed it up one notch higher than you did, Mason.

[29:54] Mason: It's only #4, just to torment my brother when he listens to this, just because I otherwise have no interest in Thor. Everything else on this list--I have no interest in Thor in any other context but that.

[30:06] John: And that's an interesting thing about it is, you can tell that this was--I don't know--it was a project he wanted to do, not just an assignment that he did a great job on, or something. The same way with Ed Brubaker bringing back Bucky. That was a thing he'd wanted to do since he was a kid. He executed it at a super high level. The idea that “what if Thor actually had something to do with the Norse mythology?” I mean, I think Kirby did a little bit of that, but Stan Lee didn't. I think that he was just a tough guy, or whatever. I don't know. That's not quite fair, but the way he incorporated all these pieces of outside mythology into it, made it part of Thor as a character in Marvel from then on. Good run. Great.

[30:46] David: How about you, John?

[30:47] John: My #4, the Brian Michael Bendis/Alex Maleev Daredevil run. Now, possibly, there's another run on Daredevil that people like. The thing that really put this over the top on there, those two were battling it out. Frank Miller's Daredevil, I love that run. I remember collecting that. I missed it when it came out. That was before my time of reading Daredevil, but collecting all the issues that I could, and the scattered paperbacks, and stuff that they had. I really love that run. I think there's great stuff in there, but I don't think it's the best thing Frank Miller ever did. Well, I think certainly this is the best Alex Maleev/Brian Michael Bendis collaboration, and they've done a bunch of them. It takes where Frank Miller started with some of the stuff, and pushes it way further into the pure crime comic territory. It has a lot of just, I thought, really great moments, and defining moments for that era of Marvel, where everything was working on full cylinders on this comic. It was the same storytelling stuff you would see in New Avengers, but I don't think it always hit the New Avengers the way it did here.

I think Bendis and Maleev work together exceptionally well, and they get what they're trying to do, and they finish each other's sentences, in a really strong way, in a way that I think Bendis doesn't with many other artists that he works with--Oeming, another one. So happy that there's new Powers comics, to be honest, but to me, that was the right mix of creators, timing, and a take on those comics. The Simonson on Thor gives you this version of the way comics were produced, at that point, just executed flawlessly, that he has not thought out what the next issue is going to be when he's finished the first issue, or not necessarily. So, you get into these, you have this epic story, where things are going on, and then Thor becomes a frog for two issues, and you'd never be able to do that in 2003, or whatever, 2023, 2003, whenever, any of those times. There's going to be an editor that's like, “well, no, we can't do the frog story in the middle of another story,” but it works really great on Simonson. This is the opposite version of that, where it's very planned out, at least as much as Bendis planned this stuff out. He knew where it was leading from the beginning, and it gets to this inevitable, semi-tragic conclusion that doesn't ruin the character, and just puts the character in a spot where he's at a zero-point that the next writer could come in and take over, but doesn't undo everything that he's done in the run.

I don't know. I really like that run. I love the intervention, where Peter Parker and Luke Cage get everybody together to talk to Matt, that he's going out of control, and they do it at Bryant Park, and I worked next to Bryant Park, and every time I went to Bryant Park, it was like, “oh, that's where they did the intervention. That's right there.” I loved it.

[33:25] Mason: Daredevil's stupid.

[33:26] Mason: It's possible the other Daredevil run made this list. I will say, I did struggle with not having anything by Bendis on my list. Ultimate Spider-Man was the one, I mean, in terms of just thinking about “what's an insane modern comics run that will never happen again, and was unbelievable?” but then it fell off the list, because I ultimately, at the end, felt like I really loved it when it was happening, but couldn't single out a bunch of great moments from it that I wanted to talk about on a podcast. So, I remember the Bendis Daredevil run. I felt like there was a lot of Bendis-ication of the Marvel Universe that worked better in some places than others. That dragged down my love of even probably the Daredevil one, which was really amazing.

[34:07] David: I feel like I've talked about this recently, but I don't know what it is about Daredevil, I cannot get into that character, at all. I'm joking when I say this, too, but I appreciate that there's been some fantastic runs on that book, but I've tried several times to get into it, and this is dumb, but the closest I've ever come into really getting into it was when D.G. Chichester and Scott McDaniel were doing the hated armor issues. Those were the only ones that I ever liked. I don't think I was built for Daredevil, but Bendis is, and this is horrible--I'm not a big Alex Maleev fan, either. His stuff leaves me very cold. Bendis, though, there's no doubt that that guy is great, but my favorite thing Bendis has ever done is not a Marvel book. It's Sam & Twitch. That book came out of nowhere, man. That book was so good, and that was the first time, for me, that I ever encountered that staccato style of dialogue that Bendis uses so well. He employs it just perfectly, and everybody else that's ever tried it, as far as I'm concerned, it's annoying, but he does it in a way that is absolutely not. It's absolutely entertaining, his brand of that. So, recognize the game, but just never been interested in watching it.

[35:26] John: David, your #4.

[35:27] David: Yeah. So, #4 for me is Peter David's Incredible Hulk run, starting with Todd McFarlane, and wrapping up with Gary Frank. Now, I will submit that there has never been a greater string of artists on a series, back-to-back, than Peter David's Hulk run, starting with McFarlane. It is a murderer's row of artistic talent on that book for a couple of years. You start with Todd McFarlane. Everybody knows who Todd McFarlane is. Right before he really blew up, he blew up on Incredible Hulk, and his Incredible Hulk stuff, especially once the inker started doing what McFarlane told him to do, his stuff started really becoming the McFarlane that we know and love, and fantastic work, and then we go to, in my opinion, one of the most underrated artists of all time, Jeff Purves.

Jeff Purves was no joke, man. That guy was fantastic. He was amazing, and I have recently learned that I am not the only Jeff Purves fan out there, because some of his Hulk stuff is showing up on Heritage Auction now, some of his original art, and it is going for thousands of dollars--way more than I thought it would. There's a real hunger for the Jeff Purves stuff, and he was only there for such a brief moment. I think he worked in animation. I'm not quite sure what Jeff Purves did before or after, but I think he went to animation. In any case, Jeff Purves was a guy who, I think, if he had stayed in comic books, we'd be talking about him, in a way that we talk about a lot of the top-tier guys from this period. So, then we go from Jeff Purves to Dale Keown. He's probably the best Incredible Hulk artist of all time.

[37:14] Mason: To show you how close we are, Peter David was my #3, and when I had to define it, I'm from McFarlane to Dale Keown. It's still great after, but you cannot beat that.

[37:26] David: No, that's funny. Yeah. So, Dale Keown, for me, he's the defining artist for Incredible Hulk. Nobody's ever done it better, as far as I'm concerned, and his stuff's incredible. It's amazing, and then we go from Dale Keown to Gary Frank. Gary freaking Frank. That guy's on people's Top 10 Hottest Artists of the Moment List, even today, and then let's not dismiss what's happening in this series. We get Grey Hulk, Joe Fixit. We're introduced to Mr. Fixit. I think this is the point where we really do dive into the idea of the split personalities of Banner's persona, and that there's multiple personalities, and the personalities are influencing the gamma radiation and how he's manifesting as Hulk. All this has happened. So, it's a really deep character evolution. Just amazing stories on top of just back-to-back to back-to-back incredible art. So, for the artist alone, it's my #4, but then you marry it with some of probably the most transformative and most meaningful Hulk evolution, as a character, than we've had before that, and probably since. So, I really love that run.

[38:42] Mason: It's the definitive versions of the character, in that he was perfectly willing to evolve it, yet all of them are the version. The art is stunning. The storytelling is so interesting and weird, and different. I just cannot love any part of it enough. I probably shouldn't have stopped at Gary Frank. The story stuff I loved best wrapped up in the Keown era, but I love that Gary Frank stuff. Once a while, it feels weird that […]. Peter David should still be writing Hulk, in some universe.

[39:12] John: Yeah, no, I love the run the whole way through. I'm so bad at that. There's so many times where there's something I love, and then I just fade away before the end, and for no reason, but I remember reading the last issue of the Peter David Hulk. It went through a couple of rough periods, even with some artists that I thought weren't good then that are spectacular now. Don Thompson used to talk about it in Comics Buyer's Guide, and it was one of those ones where I'm like, “man, I don't believe this. It's the Hulk. I'm cooler than that,” when I was 12, or whatever I was. The first one I read was the Countdown storyline, and by sheer chance, it was the first Dale Keown issue. He comes in on Issue #4 or #3 of Countdown. I forget what it was, but it was his first one, and then I remember going back, and buying the Purves back issues. McFarlane, those were already out of my price range, I think, at that point. So, I didn't read those till later. What a great run.

[40:04] David: Hey, everybody. That's all the time we have for this first half of our 5 Greatest Marvel Runs of All Time. Next week, we're going to finish it off with our Final Top 3, from John Barber, myself, and special guest, Mason Rabinowitz. Hope you guys had a good time. See you next Tuesday. Oh, like and subscribe. Bye.

This has been The Corner Box with David and John. Please take a moment and give us a five-star rating. It really helps. Join us again next week for another dive into the wonderful world of comics.