Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION Dr. Gym'll's Cultural Rarities Magnus Robot-Fighter

hey has anyone gotten the archive volumes of the 60's Russ Manning Magnus series? i've been thinking of getting them after finding an old copy of the comic in a forgotten box of stuff. i loved the art. the whole vision of the future, Leeja's miniskirt, the variety of robots...it's classic. a few reviews on amazon.com mention how poor the qualiity of the reproduction is. any know first hand? is it worth getting?

I don't have an answer for you but you did remind me that Louise "Weezie" Simonson wrote a new story with Magnus recently.

Anyone get that? I became a fan via Valiant.

Yeah, I'm only familiar with Magnus from the Valiant series. Still have 1-25 and Magnus Vs. Predator packed away somewhere...

If anyone has an answer for you, I'd love to hear it as well. I'd like to check out the original Manning stuff.

No answer here either GN, but I also want to throw in that I'm a Magnus fan. I have access to the Silver Age stories but have only ever read the Valiant series. It's such a cool sci-fi concept from the late 50's...

I picked them both up. I didn't notice that the quality was particularly low; I'm very happy with them and would definitely recommend them to any Magnus/Manning fan.

Now if I could just get a "Mighty Samson" archive...

Ah, Magnus, I remember him all too well. One of my fave moments came when he knocked a robot off the top of a building.
Robot: "The man has forced this unit off the building. Instructions?"
HQ: "Smash into the ground QUIETLY."
Okay, this wasn't quite what happened. Still...

Mighty Samson, Space Family Robinson and Doctor Specktor were my favorite Gold Key books, love to see reprints of them all.

As to the Magnus stuff, I can't really speak to it, but I imagine its done similar to the Doctor Solar stuff (I want to get both, eventually, but right now only have Solar).

In Doctor Solar they're shooting straight from comic pages for their image - flaws and all. So in that sense, they're not really like, say, the DC Archives which scans and tries to restore the artwork as best possible. It is cleaned up some (the collection of STAR TREK Gold Key comics from Checkerboard wasn't cleaned up, if you want to see the difference) but you can tell you're still working with old newprint comics.

Forgot all about Doctor Spektor. I'll take an order of that too.

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In Doctor Solar they're shooting straight from comic pages for their image - flaws and all. So in that sense, they're not really like, say, the DC Archives which scans and tries to restore the artwork as best possible.

I skipped the Solar books, but I'm sure it's the same process. Different look than the DC Archives, but still a high quality reproduction that I'm very happy with.

"In Doctor Solar they're shooting straight from comic pages for their image - flaws and all. So in that sense, they're not really like, say, the DC Archives which scans and tries to restore the artwork as best possible. It is cleaned up some (the collection of STAR TREK Gold Key comics from Checkerboard wasn't cleaned up, if you want to see the difference) but you can tell you're still working with old newprint comics."


You know, I've seen a couple of instances where publishers have done this. Marvel with THE HUMAN TORCH #5B reprint, and an anthology book called THE SMITHSONIAN BOOK OF COMIC-BOOK COMICS. In both cases, I was able to look past yellowed paper and see the LINEWORK was being reproduced MUCH better than in MOST Golden Age Archives or Masterworks books I've seen-- plus, you were seeing the actual coloring, not flashy, glaring, distracting modern computer color.

One story that stood out for me was the very 1st Batman story from DETECTIVE #27. I have about 4 different reprints of that story-- and the one in the SMITHSONIAN book, shot from a printed comic, is the BEST-LOOKING of the different reprints! the quality of the linework reproduction is SO MUCH BETTER, it makes me wish they'd do this kind of thing more often with really old material, when there simply are NO stats or negatives of any kind available.


Also, between Marvel & DC, I understand Marvel tends to do more "restoration", while DC-- at least from the 1960's-up-- tended to keep the original NEGATIVES. This explains why in books like their JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA and LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES Archives, the art looks brand-new-- as if it had been drawn yesterday!

I've always wanted to do a parody, called Magnum Robot Fighter, with Jonathan Hillerman as 1A.

I can see both points really, and I don't really mind the shooting old comics method. In fact I'd rather they do that than continue to give us the excuse that we don't see much Lou Fine stuff reprinted from the Golden Age because the technology isn't up to preserving his thin, complex line work AND restoring the color.

hey amentep, after reading your mention of Lou Fine i googled him.
i love his stuff! and don't really know it. i was impressed by one website that has quotes from kirby and kane, etc. saying how much they loved his work and were influenced by him.
someone really needs to put out a book. i suppose Warner Brothers/DC own all the old art for Doll Man, The Ray, Uncle Sam, etc.

Well DC owns the characters...some of the comics themselves have fallen into the public domain That's why AC Comics (publishers of a lot of GA reprints and the FemForce comic) has been able to reprint some of these stories in B&W.

The original art, for the most part, is non-existant.

I used to be real active on DC's Archive forum when the archive editors used to post there and asking for reprints of old Quality work was pretty common, but the inability to recolor Fine without loosing linework was always cited as a reason they couldn't do it "yet". Same was said for Mac Raboy although they did reprint at least one story by him in a SHAZAM ARCHIVE.

Its kind of frustrating to have a lot of series - not just The Ray and Black Condor but things like Kid Eternity - held up because DC claims it wants to wait for technology to get "better". In that sense I think the method used for MAGNUS and DOCTOR SOLAR makes sense to me.

Of course DC seems to have announced plans for Raboy's CAPTAIN MARVEL JR., so maybe we're finally closer to Lou Fine reprints...?

I liked Dan Spiegel's work on both MAGNUS and SPACE FAMILY ROBINSON - what's he up to these days? Is he still in the comic art biz?

From what I've been able to gather, Spiegel's most recent work was on two Indiana Jones mini-series from the mid-90s -- Indiana Jones: Thunder in the Orient, and Indiana Jones and the Spear of Destiny.

The comic that got me interested in Spiegel was the wonderful 80s comic Crossfire, published by Eclipse. Crossfire writer Mark Evanier talks about it on his site (and there's some of Spiegel's Crossfire covers on this page, too):

http://www.povonline.com/Crossfire.htm

Evanier and Spiegel are friends, and have collaborated on many other comics, all of them mentioned at Evanier's site.