Tuesday, August 21, 2018

Decent Comics: "The People of the Maelstrom" by Michelinie and Chan

Hey, hey, hey, Groove-ophiles! Here's another Claw the Unconquered classic, "The People of the Maelstrom!" In this one, from ish #7 (February 1976), creators David Michelinie and Ernie Chan (then using his "Chua" alias) get even more cosmic and still manage to toss even more cool things like, a swamp monster, a dude that looks like an aged Prince Valiant, and a city in a whirlpool (amazingly rendered by Chan) populated by godlike beings. Plenty of action and an unexpected twist or two make for a fun comic. Enjoy!



















5 comments:

  1. I wonder if Claw could ever be revived? Of course, since Mr Chan is no longer with us it wouldn't be quite the same.

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  2. I like Mr. Chan's artwork on this a lot better than I liked his mid 70's covers for DC. I don't understand why he was a cover artist, or why his covers were worse than his interior work.

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    Replies
    1. I believe he was working over Infantino layouts like most DC cover artists did. But he seemed stretched thin and uninspired. Actually, to me, each cover artist was a step down from the one before. DC went from Neal Adams to Nick Cardy to Ernie Chan.

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    2. My favourite DC covers were by Neal Adams, Berni Wrightson, Jeff Jones (all 3 of them), & Joe Kubert. Alex Toth was rarely given covers in the Bronze Age, but some of his '80s covers for other companies are sensational. Nestor Redondo did some great covers on his Swamp Thing run, as shown in this blog.

      I like Nick Cardy, but thought he always drew his characters looking slightly overweight(!). Kaluta had some good cover moments, but the drawing was more consistent by the late '70s/early '80s.

      Regards,
      Chris A.

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  3. I believe that during one of DC's Post-Crisis reboots, some or all of the 70's fantasy characters were brought back in one storyline - maybe sometime in the 90's? But they were all "updated" or retconned in some way.

    So I guess it's true that we can't ever "go home", and sometimes trying to is worse than just leaving our memories alone.

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Special thanks to Mike's Amazing World of Comics and Grand Comics Database for being such fantastic resources for covers, dates, creator info, etc. Thou art treasures true!


Note to "The Man": All images are presumed copyright by the respective copyright holders and are presented here as fair use under applicable laws, man! If you hold the copyright to a work I've posted and would like me to remove it, just drop me an e-mail and it's gone, baby, gone.


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