[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] David Hedgecock: Hey, everybody. Welcome back to The Corner Box. I'm one of your hosts, David Hedgecock, and with me, as always, is my good friend, John Barber, and special guest, Mason Rabinowitz. We're back for the second half of a 2-part discussion about our personal Top 5 All-Time Favorite Marvel Runs. So, we covered #5 and #4 last week, and now we're going to dive into our Top 3. Okay, here we go. There's some surprises that will shock and titillate you, my friends. Here we go.

John, I think Mason and I have already revealed our #3s. Mine was Walt Simonson's Thor, and Mason.

[02:19] Mason Rabinowitz: Peter David Hulk.

[02:21] David: You did the Peter David Hulk. So, you're up, John. #3.

[02:24] John Barber: I feel like, from here on out, it's super basic, but I don't know. Maybe nobody's going to pick the same ones. My #3, Claremont/Byrne X-Men. I read those things when I was a kid, when they were coming out in Classic X-Men. So, I have the nostalgia of it, from a kid. I know David's not a big X-Men guy. I actually don't know where Mason falls on this, but going back, and reading the guy who drew it before--the guy who created the new X-Men with Wein--Dave Cockrum, sorry.

[02:51] David: Oh, Dave Cockrum, yeah.

[02:53] John: Dave Cockrum is awesome. His characters have this really cool 70s feel of weird fetish gear costumes, and I don't know--It's cool stuff. I really like what he put in there. Rereading it more recently, I really came to love the Cockrum stuff, but I remember reading the stuff in black and white in Marvel's Essential Books, and there's 2 points in X-Men history. The other one is when Scott Williams starts inking Jim Lee, but the first one is when Terry Austin is inking John Byrne from their first issue on there, where all of a sudden, the comic looks like it's drawn 20 years after the previous issue. It's so sharp, so modern, so slick, and interesting, and new. Terry Austin inking it with a pen, instead of a brush, was the typical stuff, at that time, and Byrne just characters in a real--it wasn't a generic world they were in. They were in a real specific world, and Kitty Pride had real stuff up on her walls, and the other thing that was amazing about that run, for me, though, is every story doesn't just create a new X-Men story. It creates a new genre of X-Men story.

So, from then on, what you're doing is, there's the Shi'ar story. We can do an X-Men Shi'ar story. We can do a story where they change the past, and there's a dark future. We can do the Hellfire Club. There's the Dark Phoenix stuff. Wolverine's past coming back to catch up with him. All of those things are established in that run, except the Shi'ar. The Shi'ar was Cockrum. He was writing it like an 80s comic in the 70s, in the sense that the really good stuff that Marvel was putting out in the 70s tended to be overtly political, with Steve Gerber or Steve Inglehart, or something, and this wasn't. Despite everything that people put onto X-Men later, that starts coming in the Claremont run, but it's just this vague politics. Nixon doesn't shoot himself in the head in this comic. Not that I'm opposed to the politics part of it at all, and I don't mean to say there's none of that in there, but it's a slicker, more 80s style of things, and it seemed ahead of its time, and it still seems really well put together. There you go.

[05:02] David: It's a great run. I've only just read it for the first time, just recently. I'm still in the middle of it, actually. I'm somewhere in the late 30s/early 40s right now. I think I'm just about to wrap up the John Byrne run, and back to Cockrum, but it is a really good read, even today. I'm reading it for the first time in the last year and a half, two years. It still holds up. It's a good run. I really like it. It's not on my list, but I think it's more because I'm only now getting to it. So, the nostalgia for me is not really there. Also, for me, Dave Cockrum is way preferred over John Byrne, I've realized, in reading this run, because I think X-Men Issue #107 might be one of the best comic books ever drawn. David Cockrum’s first swan song on X-Men is incredible. Yeah, we've talked about it. It is an incredible work, and I don't know--I don't feel like John Byrne ever really got there with what he was doing. His work is wildly more commercial. I totally understand why people enjoy him, and enjoy his work, but for me, it's Cockrum all the way, but there's no denying that that run was Marvel for two decades.

[06:18] Mason: Yeah. That's the run that didn't make my list, that made me feel like my list was perhaps illegitimate for not making that list, because it's so definitively one of the greatest Marvel Comics runs of all time. I think the problem, for me, is that I came to it way too late. I was late to X-Men, as a reader, anyway. For some reason, we sequestered off the X-Men part of Marvel Comics for a long time, my brother and I, and my friends. We read everything but X-Men, and then got so into the Liefeld New Mutants/X-Factor stuff that I was so into, that by the time I went back, it was just the wrong period that it hit. I recognized that it set all those tones, but I've seen the new one now. I just couldn't, and that's mine. It's just that it never became my version of the X-Men, in a way that I loved, and could make it on this list, even though I think, clearly, it's an all-time great run. I don't know. We could talk about it endlessly. It's the template for every X-Men story they will ever tell.

[07:21] John: The one last thing I'll say, and I don't know--you might not agree with me just based on what you're saying about Cockrum, but one of the things I love about that run is, in my opinion, it keeps getting better until the end of Dark Phoenix. Every issue is better than the previous one, for a crazy run in there, and I used to joke, working in the X Office, that we were going to stop making X-Men as soon as we make an issue that isn't better than the previous one, but that was really going on then, I feel like. Each one of the stories just topped the previous, took it to a new place. More interesting character development, more cool stories. I don't know. Anyway.

[07:53] David: The other thing about that run is that I think Byrne, in particular--well, I know, Byrne, in particular--they elevated Wolverine as a character, in a way that had never been done before. They took a character that was just a one-off in an Incredible Hulk story, and turned him into the most important character in all of Marvel Comics, and they built him with mystery and gravitas, and heaping helpings of machoism, and man, early-mid-80s, that's what everybody was wanting, with Rocky and Rambo, and Schwarzenegger, and people were eating that stuff up, and there was no better, more clearly defined character, for that moment, than Wolverine, and they did it over that whole run. It wasn't just a “talked about him one time.” They kept developing him in this really cool, slow rollout of what this guy is, and who he's about, and then you see him evolving, as a character, in that book, in really meaningful, cool ways, and they're doing it as he's part of this huge ensemble cast on top of it.

So, man, that just by itself, just the way that Wolverine gets introduced and developed during that run, and he is the run. He is the main character. At a certain point, it's about him, even when it's not, but it's really just beautifully executed, all the way across the board. I really do love that, about that run.

[09:37] John: All right. Now, the Top 2. I bet we have some overlaps here.

[09:40] Mason: Who's up for #2? Is it me?

[09:41] John: Yeah.

[09:42] Mason: It's a title we've already discussed before. I've been thinking about Daredevil, because I was just reading Chris Ryall’s book on Born Again, which is really terrific, but Frank Miller's first run on Daredevil, I think, is just unmatched--not unmatched, because it's not my #1, but in terms of a writer/artist just delivering the coolest version of the coolest version of a thing, it’s that. No matter, I think if you read it now, it's just as thrilling. It's just as exciting. It looks so great. It's not Dark Knight, but it's a monthly periodic comic doing Daredevil stories that are just constantly exciting and thrilling, and beautiful.

[10:21] John: Yeah. No, there's something about it, too, like the Simonson one of, they were figuring out “what do you do with Daredevil this month?” and that's exciting, and there's big overarching stories, and stuff, in there.

[10:33] Mason: That version of the Kingpin and Elektra, and Bullseye, and again, the Daredevil is not a character I'm going to seek out on a regular monthly basis, as the thing I love, but that run, every time I ever look at it, every time I pick it up, it is beautiful.

[10:51] David: Here's how influential and important that run was, outside of the sales, and how it elevated Miller, but here's how important and influential that run was--I've never read that run. I've never read it, but as a kid, Bullseye was my favorite villain, because I knew that they had established him as such a badass in that run, that he was the best villain of any of them. So, not even having read it, I gravitated to Bullseye, as my favorite villain, not even having read that. That's how far-reaching the influence was, with that run.

[11:30] John: Daredevil's had a number of good runs, too. Daredevil's a pretty good comic. It's got the Frank Miller stuff. The Ann Nocenti/John Romita Jr run’s great.

[11:37] Mason: There's those characters that you're going to follow, no matter what they do, and then there's some where you’ve got to do it right, and I don't know, because without it, there'd be no Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which alone is enough to make it critically important.

[11:48] John: That's a great point. The Punisher that I liked would not exist without that one scene in his Daredevil. Those are weird issues, because they were drawn earlier, and they're not as good as the ones around it, but the scene leading up to it, where Punisher kills that kid, and then is like, “the enemy is killing children by sending them against me,” is brilliant, and defining of what Punisher is from then on.

[12:11] David: So, yeah, again, I know exactly what you're talking about, and I've never read that. I own near-mint signed copies of Frank Miller's Daredevil, multiple issues, and I still have not read it. That's why I blame the character, John. It's Daredevil.

[12:31] Mason: Now I know why you're not a fan of the character. I'm telling you, there were things in it, even the first time I read it--I didn't read it live, but there were things I knew happened in it, that I still felt shocked when it happened. I'd seen the panels before. I knew, and when it happens in the book, I was shocked. It viscerally hit.

[12:51] David: I 100% will read the Frank Miller. I'm not shying away from that one, but I just […] it was something else. Where's Frank Miller's New Warriors? That's what I want. I would have read the hell out of that.

[13:06] John: All right, well, what's your #2?

[13:08] David: My #2, I don't think you guys will have picked it. I feel like I'm going to surprise you. Another tie. […] I keep having to do these honorable mentions. Avengers: Kree/Skrull War from Avengers #89 through #97. Another just murder's row of talent, writing, and art on that, and that introduces a whole lot of stuff that we eventually see in movies, but my pick is not that. My pick is the Mark Waid and Mike Wieringo run on Fantastic Four, and the reason for that is, Mike Wieringo, I think, passed far too soon, and I think that Wieringo, in his time, was one of the most widely respected followed artists. He's a fantastic artist, and Waid, in that moment, was probably as hot as he's ever been. I remember the marketing for this, and they came out with this thing called Imaginauts. It's Fantastic Four, and the subtitle was Imaginauts, and that word just fired my brain. It just lit me up. I was like, “Imaginauts. What a great word,” and that set a perfect amount of hope in my heart that that's what we were going to get. These explorers of the unknown, back to the exploration and discovery, and sci-fi elements, and that's what we got with that run, and it was just a really fun, really great run.

Waid did some stuff with Doctor Doom in the second storyline with Unthinkable. That was crazy, and stuff that you'd never seen Doom doing before. Doom in the leather armor instead of the metal, that cover, just another career defining cover, all the way up to Johnny Storm becoming the Herald of Galactus. It was just a really fun run, and it was set off with this perfectly encapsulated concept, with just one word, “Imaginauts,” and I just loved that series, and I was not a big Fantastic Four guy. I think the last time I had read Fantastic Four, up to that moment, was probably the Walt Simonson run on Thor, which I adored. That's also a great run. Brought me back to Fantastic Four, in a way that--I didn't really have much interest in it. So, that's my #2.

[15:31] Mason: Interesting. I think it suffered, for me, from expectations, because Mark Waid's Flash was one of the most important superhero series, for me. So, my expectation, I got--big Mark Waid fan, loved Flash, loved all the science, and I am a big Fantastic Four fan, and I think my expectations were maybe outsized. It was really good, but I was really somehow just convinced this was the most perfect pairing ever, and it was good. It was so good, but I think I came to it a little like, “I thought this was going to be the definitive, greatest thing I've ever read,” and it was very good.

[16:07] John: I didn't read it till later. Terrible logo, that logo on that comic.

[16:10] David: Yeah.

[16:11] Mason: Yes.

[16:12] John: Wretched.

[16:13] David: Yeah.

[16:14] John: Wieringo was a weird pick. I always thought he was a weird pick for Fantastic Four. He's got this bounce to his style that I feel isn't what Fantastic Four is, but he nailed it. I mean, I don't know. I thought it was great. To me, it turned that around for me. He was so good. I love the bit in the second story, like you're saying with Doom, where Doom didn't look for his mom in hell first. That wasn't his first thought. That's brilliant.

[16:39] David: I love how you just described Wieringo's art. He's got a bounce to it. That's a perfect way to describe his work. I like that description. I don't know. For me, Wieringo defined the look of the Fantastic Four, for me, I think, in a lot of ways. I truly love that Simonson run on Fantastic Four, and of course, the Art Adams little story in there. I mean, that's some amazing work, artistically, but I don't know. Wieringo has always been my Fantastic Four, because of this run. So, what about you, John?

[17:12] John: So, I also picked a run of Fantastic Four. The one I picked was the Stan Lee/Jack Kirby run of Fantastic Four. Who? Google them, because if you look them up, if you remember the God character in the Mike Wieringo story, that guy actually used to draw the comic.

[17:30] David: What?

[17:31] John: And kind of wrote it. That's one where the early issues are okay, the later issues are not good, but it's really the last handful. The middle of that is just incredible, and it's nothing but grand slams, and it's nothing but great concepts. Galactus goes right into This Man, This Monster, and the next issue thing on that is “wait till you see this guy we whipped up next time--the Black Panther.” It's the only time the Inhumans have ever worked, in my opinion, and it works spectacularly well, because the whole point of them is that they're the in-laws of Johnny Storm’s girlfriend. You're like, “that's great. This endless creativity, these endless—"

[18:13] Mason: The Marvel Universe. It is--spoiler, that is my #1. That is my #1. Having the title, The World's Greatest Comic Magazine, is 100% accurate when those two guys are on that book. […] It is the Marvel Universe. That book is the Marvel Universe. I think you can pick up any issue, even the least of them are great, are worth looking at and great, and the art is amazing, and like you said, it's Galactus, it's the Black Panther, it's the Inhumans, it's Doctor Doom. It's crazy. This book was just building the Marvel Universe. If you had to take one comic run, and put it in the time capsule to save for all time, this is the Marvel Comics run you'd put in that shuttle in Secret Wars. This is the Marvel Universe right here. We don't need to get into a debate on who did what, but their time on that book is, to me, it is the Marvel Universe.

[19:06] John: Yeah, it's the fun of both of them, too. I mean, I love Jack Kirby comics when it's Jack Kirby solo, and he's just doing it. I could read them all day. I love his dialogue. I love his way of thinking about the stuff, but Stan Lee's dialogue is also magical. All the ideas that Kirby cooked up in there, all the stuff that he threw in there, who knows if Stan suggested any of it, but the way you read it invites you, in a way. It makes you a part of the story, in a way that, as much as I love Kirby’s stuff, it doesn't do that exactly. It's just a different thing. I wouldn't try to fight them out, about which one I like more. I really do like them both a lot, but Kirby starts doing wacko photo collages in the middle of this. The guy that draws stuff faster and better than anybody else figures out a way to slow himself down, by cutting pictures out of magazines, and putting them together, in a way that, obviously, you would never be allowed to do now. It's almost extraordinary, they reprint those stories just out of, somebody else took that photo. Anyway, but it's neat, and it's so goofy, but Kirby’s just pushing the stuff to the next limit. He keeps peaking, for decades after that. He's definitely on that track, by the time you get to the really good stuff in Fantastic Four. Did you ever read that one, David?

[20:24] David: It's a legitimate question. I'm not going to hate that. Yes, I have read the Fantastic Four run, and I couldn't agree more. An incredible run, and while I think there's no doubt in my mind that Kirby was driving that particular bus, it's not what it was without Stan Lee's scripting over those crazy plots that Kirby was throwing out there and creating. It was certainly the combination of--well, I would say that Kirby was probably 70/80% of what made all that tick, for me, at least. It had to have that other 20%. It's like the heat in the salsa. You’ve got to have that heat, or it's not salsa anymore. Love that run. Silver Surfer is probably my all-time favorite Marvel character. He's my #1, and Issue #48 through #50 of Fantastic Four is why Silver Surfer is my favorite character of all time. So, yeah, there's no doubt, there's no denying that. I think you're right, Mason. I think if you had to preserve one run for all time for future generations, it has to be this one. Without this, you lose so much of the Marvel Universe. So, yeah, couldn't agree more. It's a great one. Good pick. That's only your #2, John.

[21:42] Mason: I really feel like that's got to be the #1. When I was like, “there's a #1 free square,” I just feel that's the--

[21:48] John: I feel like there's two possibilities.

[21:50] Mason: That's fair. No, I think you're right. I think you're right, but I still disagree. You might be right, but you're wrong, because that's the greatest run. I'm going to stamp my flag. We could debate the other four forever. That is the greatest run in Marvel Comics history.

[22:07] David: So, Mason, that's your #1. So, John, let's start with you for the #1. We need to do a drum roll or something for John's #1 All-Time Greatest Marvel, in John's opinion.

[22:19] John: The Lee/Ditko Spider-Man.

[22:22] David: Oh, yeah.

[22:23] John: That's one that I feel hits it out of the gate. Amazing Fantasy #15 is a very good comic, in a way that Fantastic Four #1 isn't, I think. If Amazing Fantasy #15 had been the only one that came out, and you stumbled across that today, and you were reading it, you'd be like, “oh, man, this is a great character. I wish they would have done more with this.” Like you said, so much of it's there from the beginning, but to me, that has the other piece of the Marvel Universe, which is, this is an ordinary person going through real life, and it is done through the lens of a superhero costume, and larger than life villains coming at him.

To me, this is a thing--you look at “how did Buffy the Vampire Slayer work?” It was the same thing. It makes these experiences of high school, and stuff, universal, where in real life, you either live in a country where there is a high school, or you went to prom, or you didn't. You had a good time at prom, or whatever, but everybody knows what it's like when the love monster comes after you, and tries to kill you and your friends. That feeling of, you know what it's like to be trapped under that machinery, and you can't lift it up, but you have to find a way to do it, because somebody's depending on you, or something. Those are just these universal moments that the weird combination of Ditko and Lee managed to wrench out of the medium of comics. It's fascinating, to me, to see how that comes together. I feel like that's the one that, more than any other run, you could legitimately say “this is an important piece of American literature,” in a way that I think even--I don't know that I'd say that about Fantastic Four, as much as I love that.

There's something cosmic and big about that stuff, and it is real, and it does tie into real emotions and real feelings, but Ditko was all that, and Stan Lee was scared of him, and they did stuff in there that you just wouldn't have--I don't know--that nobody else would have pulled off, and I don't mean ultra-violence, or something like that, but I just mean the world of building a character around a teenager, and making that your flagship character, is weird and interesting, and very well executed. Ditko's art, beautiful. Master Planner trilogy is the highlight of it, when he lifts the machinery off, in such a way that he changes the physics of the comic, and reshapes the panels around him. It's always been an important one for me, and that was another one I was reading in the Marvel Tales stuff, when I was a kid. So, one of my first Spider-Man comics was the Molten Man issue, which isn't even a very good issue, but it was enough to be like, “this is really something.” That was around the time, there was DeFalco friends on the main book, and black costumes, and everything, and I was loving that, too. You guys ever read that one?

[25:09] Mason: Spider-Man? that's one that didn't make my list, even though I love it, because it feels like I want that to be the definitive Spider-Man, but because they moved on so fast from that not being the definitive Spider-Man, it got bumped, even though, I think, I agree with literally every word you said, and feel like I want to pull something else off this list, but when I think of Spider-Man, I love those, but it's not what Spider-Man was, and then was for--would be more interesting if it was, but wasn't outside of the core idea of the juxtaposed Fantastic Four, that it is that real human being dealing with real stuff. I think we've gone from so much, […] what made that so cool, what made it so weird, and strange, and exciting.

[25:58] John: Yeah, I think, to me, that's what--I don't know--cordons it off into its own little section of Lee/Ditko story. It doesn't end, but you're right. The version of Spider-Man that people keep doing is maybe the Lee/Romita stuff, but definitely the Gerry Conway stuff, and he's great. I think that's great. I don't know. There's something so authorial about the two of them on that run that, that even when you go back to high school, you have to do it in a totally different way, I think.

[26:27] David: Good point, Mason. I hadn't fully thought about that, but Conway is definitely the version that we've all landed on. It's not the Ditko version that is the one, but when I think about Spider-Man, the Ditko one's the one I want, but it's the Conway version that I'm given, which is fine. It's okay, for me, but that might be one of the reasons why I've never liked Spider-Man, as much as I think other people do. I like Spider-Man. I like Spider-Man stories. There's been plenty of--unlike, it's not a Daredevil thing for me. I fully enjoy lots of Spider-Man runs, and I like the character, but that Ditko version is the one that I think I'm most interested in, and I'm not served that one up anymore, and maybe that's why Miles Morales was such a cool character, to me, is because that was finally going all the way back to the Ditko version of things, where we got the teenager with the teenage problems, and going to high school again. At least, that's how I remember it.

[27:27] Mason: I didn't include Ultimate Spider-Man, even though I think that's a run that we should mention, in terms of all-time runs for Bendis and Bagley. That is an all-time.

[27:34] John: I forgot about Spider-Man: Chapter One. Throw out everything I said. My #1 is the Spider-Man: Chapter One.

[27:39] Mason: That's a run that should get mentioned here as an honorable mention, but in terms of going back to high school, and doing all that stuff, I seriously considered that one repeatedly, and bumped it for just that reason, even though I think you're right. It is an amazing reading experience.

[27:52] John: Even says it on that--Amazing.

[27:59] David: There's no surprise what my #1 is going to be. I think, John, I know you can call it without me even saying anything. Do you want to call my #1, or should I just say it?

[28:07] John: Is it X-Force?

[28:10] Mason: We were debating, can you count the New Mutants into X-Force as one run? Because I think you should.

[28:16] David: It's strictly New Mutants for me. New Mutants #87 through #100, because by the time you get to X-Force #1 through whatever, Liefeld's already off the book. He's already plotting and planning his launch of Image comic books and Youngblood, and all that stuff. So, I think maybe with Issue #1, he's fully engaged, but you can see, immediately after that, either he's taken himself off the book, or they're taking him off the book, because he's doing other things. I think it's that version, not the first. I think if he was given his choice, he would have stuck around on X-Force for a good long time. So, for me, it's New Mutants #87 through #100, and all joking aside, it is a pretty influential and important run. I think it's hard to disagree. 30 years earlier from New Mutants #87, there was a character introduced, named Spider-Man. 30 years later, we get introduced to Cable, and then a few short months later, we get introduced to Deadpool.

There's no argument that can be made that those two characters weren't wildly influential for Marvel Comics for--well, I mean, Deadpool, to this day--but Cable, for a rock-solid 10, maybe 15 years. Cable was probably one of, if not the most popular characters, in all the Marvel Universe, and I would submit that the reason why the bloom came off the rose of Cable is because they wildly went away from the core concepts of Cable, and turned him into some weird teenager with a giant spear. What the hell are you doing? In that Liefeld New Mutants run, you get Deadpool, you get Domino, you get Stryfe, you get the Mutant Liberation Front, you get Gideon, you get Shatterstar, you get Warpath, you get Cable. Just a plethora of new characters, many of which are still around to this day, in meaningful ways. You guys know who Domino is, when I say that name, and you can't say that of a lot of other characters that were created in 1991.

Deadpool is part of the best-selling crossover in all of comic books right now, Batman/Deadpool, and they chose Deadpool, because he's one of the most popular characters in all of Marvel Comic books. Multi-billion dollar movies were made about this character, and that storyline really did change how Marvel was doing comic books. New Mutants was not selling crap, and then by the time Liefeld finishes his run on New Mutants, it's one of, if not the best-selling comic book in all of comic books, and the only difference was that Liefeld got on that book, and started doing his run. So, it went from a book that nobody was paying attention to, to the best-selling book in all of comics, without the benefit of a new #1. Issue #100 sold hundreds of thousands of copies, and all it was, was infusion of some new characters, and infusion of some fun storylines, a really manic, crazy art style that people just really took to, and really appreciate, to the point that you see for the next several years, clone after clone of the Extreme Studios Rob Liefeld style across all of Marvel Comic books, not just in the X-Men offices, but across all of Marvel comics.

For me, wildly influential comic book run. As a kid who, at that time, it was comics or girls, and I was definitely looking at girls more than I was looking at comic books, and that New Mutants run roped me back in. The comics did not go all the way away, because of that run on New Mutants. So, for me, just my own personal, love that book so much that I would actually spend money on it, when I could have been spending money taking girls to movies.

[31:55] John: New Mutants: better than girls.

[31:58] David: Almost as good as.

[32:00] John: Joking aside, we were actually talking about it before you came on. My joke was, I didn't even say it for the #1 then, because it was clear what it was leading up to. Just to bring this up, as a matter of debate, I guess, I don't think it gets really good until #98. I feel like it's […] what Louise Simonson's doing, up to that point, and Liefeld's not as good, and his inking's not as good, the inking on him isn't as good, or like we were talking about McFarlane, the New Mutants issues of the X-Tinction Agenda are not very good. Then I thought #98, #99, #100, getting into the X-Force run of things with--I don't know--I would have actually shifted it to be more #98 through X-Force #14, or whatever, whenever he's totally gone from there.

[32:47] David: Totally gone. You're not wrong. I think, though, you’ve got to remember that #86 hit like a ton of bricks, man, and then #87 with that Cable cover, that changed the industry, dude. While I totally agree that the run was fairly uneven, it felt to me, just reading it, here was this new artist on the book who was trying to take it over, and he was getting pushback, basically. So, it feels a little uneven, until he's finally given the full reins. By the time you get to #98, he's fully in control of the whole thing. He's controlling the whole piece now, and that's when all the promise that you saw leading up to that, it's finally delivered, and it does deliver. It delivers in spades.

[33:33] Mason: And I think it's funny, something John and I were talking about before, about describing some Liefeld stuff as just the pure rollercoaster down, just the sheer excitement part, but I think there is something about those earlier issues, and I’m a huge fan. I love Liefeld’s stuff. I love New Mutants and X-Force. I think it deserves to be on this list, before he went through this Liefeld Renaissance. I would always argue with folks that no one had created new, meaningful characters in the Marvel Universe but him during this run. These were the characters. You could still feel that it was exciting, but it hadn't hit. It really felt like something that was about to explode, and it felt weird and dangerous, and strange, and it wasn't this New Mutants book that had been--I don't know--safe, and it really felt like something, that the container was too small for the thing, and it was going to explode, and you just had to find out, you had to keep reading to see what was going to happen, and then it does.

It lives up to that crazy, “oh, no, it can't really be this big and this nuts, and this different,” and then it just is, and then it doesn't go long enough, but then it just keeps going. Then it really is what felt like--my friends […] “this is what it must have felt like to read the Kirby comics back in the day,” where you're just getting new crazy stuff, and it's so exciting, and it's brand new, and it's not just the same characters that you know, fighting the same villains that you've seen before. This is new and exciting, and looks so different.

[35:02] David: And truly, look at his contemporaries, Lee and Larson, and McFarlane. There's no Marvel characters that any of those guys did, and they were the biggest names in the industry, at the time. Name one character that any of those guys created for Marvel from that time. Maverick? Bishop? Venom?

[35:23] Mason: Venom, I was going to say. Venom is a gambit without Jim Lee. I mean, I do think there are some legit--

[35:29] John: I wish I had a time machine, so I could go back, and instead of saying Venom, say Absolute Joker. I wish I could have said that. I wish I could have made that joke.

[35:37] David: Alright. Those were some great picks.

[35:40] John: That was wilder than I thought. There were a couple I thought everybody would have, and it was interesting, what overlapped, and what didn't. That was awesome. Thank you all for joining us on the Corner Box. Thanks for joining us, Mason.

[35:52] Mason: Thanks to everybody for listening, and check out the Behind the Panels of Marvel's Secret Wars, now on Kickstarter.

[35:58] John: Sold.

[35:59] Mason: David, I don't know if you've read the 2015 Marvel Secret Wars series, but whether you have or have not, you should also read this book to see how it got made.

[36:07] David: I have already pledged at a much higher tier than you would probably expect.

[36:12] Mason: Oh, well, thank you.

[36:13] David: I'm totally in for this one. That book sounds like a fantastic piece. I'm very excited for it--Behind-the-scenes stuff like that. The last year or two, I've really been getting more into that behind-the-scenes stuff, the history of creators and making comic books, and this seems like it's going to be exactly like that, in spades, and I love all the little extra add-ons you guys have, the little covers that are in the thick card stock, and the long box that you can put them in. I'm like, “okay, you’ve got my money, damn it.” You got me with the knick-knacky collect-y stuff, and then you've also got me, because I'm super into learning about the history of that story, in particular, because some fantastic creators on that book, as well. So, I'm in. Secret Wars. You just search Secret Wars Kickstarter, John? Is that what you're telling people to do?

[37:00] John: That should do it.

[37:01] Mason: Or you can just go to Kickstarter.com, get to the search window, just type Behind the Panel Secret Wars, or Secret Wars.

[37:07] John: All right. Check it out. Thank you for joining us. Bye.

[37:10] David: 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.