Which, in your opinion Sup Forums, was Thomas' better "throwback" book? Invaders or All-Star Squadron?

Which, in your opinion Sup Forums, was Thomas' better "throwback" book? Invaders or All-Star Squadron?

I think maybe Invaders is better, because it's got a smaller cast to focus on. Thomas made a mistake in trying to incorporate all the Golden Age characters and then trying to send off the Quality Comics heroes to Earth-X. He should've just stuck to using Plastic Man, Blackhawk, and Phantom Lady on Earth-2 and then showed that they had counterparts on Earth-X instead.

The other advantage Invaders had was that it wasn't marred by COIE or an equivalent which derailed a lot of stuff.

Is Roy autistic ?

>I think maybe Invaders is better, because it's got a smaller cast to focus on
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Timely/Atlas didn't have a the same wellspring of golden age heroes to choose from, right?

That's right, they mainly had the big three (Cap, Namor, Torch) and their sidekicks, plus some other lesser known Golden Age heroes like Miss America, Whizzer, and some others.

As for DC remember that they were technically two joint companies--National and All-American--that eventually all got consolidated into one. So they had a lot of Golden Age heroes to start out with. Then they acquired Plastic Man and Blackhawk so by extension that would bring in the Quality Comics characters. So that got overstuffed fast.

I've read his avengers and want to read more stuff by him
Are both of these worth checking out? I've read most of johns JSA and liked it.

Nice company war, bro.

It's still worth looking at if you want to get some knowledge of the Golden Age characters they have.

I like All Star Squadron, but I think the spin off Infinity Inc is way better.

Also Roy Thomas wrote a ton of Conan the Barbarian comics that are mostly good, especially Savage Sword

Young All-Stars.

>company war poster accuses someone else of starting a company war

I legitimately believe he has Asperger's.

I think he uses it to his advantage.

Infinity Inc was a solid comic.

All Star was good but Ive only read it from randomly picking up various issues. So it might be a lot better if I read it in order

Tough question. I like Invaders because it has a core cast and they have a lot of time to focus on that cast, which in turn makes it feel more special when there's guest characters. All-Star Squadron has a certain iconic quality to it, though, and I think it's more polished in general.

Art-wise, ASS wins hands-down. It has really solid art all the way up until the final story arc (and then Young all-Stars gets bottom of the barrel trash artists). Frank Robbins who did most of Invaders v1 is a great artist, and one of the all-time American daily strip artists. But I just don't think he was born to draw superheroes. His more cartoony depiction of action scenes and anatomy somewhat jives with the general look and feel of Marvel sometimes.

Another interesting aspect is how they treat canon. Invaders follows Stan and Jack's lead and treats the actual golden age Marvel comics as more inspiration and legends than hard fact. Characters and stories are changed into a more "modern" perspective to suit a modern readership. With ASS Roy sticks very, VERY close to the original stories to the point of weaving entire arcs into single issues of golden age comics. I can't really say which one is the more enjoyable, but I personally feel that a slight amount of iconoclasm is better in the long run than being a canon purist.

I do like that ASS had more female heroes and a pretty nice, diverse cast going though. Firebrand, Hawkgirl and Liberty Belle are all awesome in it, and far outshine Spitfire.

I do want Thomas and Ordway to go back to All Star Squadron and continue the rest of the story as if the COIE never happened. We only got glimpses of it in Last Days of the Justice Society.

Thomas is working at PS Artbooks now. He's too busy.

Oh shit that's right, he's with the company that's doing all those hardcovers of PD comics.

Ordway was complaining a while back about ow he never gets any work because his style is seen as too old-fashioned. Damn shame...

Roy's like a million years old now, he's largely retired.

Yeah he's doing a lot of comics historian stuff these days, which is nice. The JSA compendiums are extremely exhaustive and have lots of research and information in them.

>Correct me if I'm wrong, but Timely/Atlas didn't have a the same wellspring of golden age heroes to choose from, right?

They did not. Try to remember that in terms of sales, Martin Goodman's Marvel was not one of the great publishing houses of their day. Many companies were well ahead of them, and DC/All-American was far, far ahead. As mentions, DC was essentially two separate companies collaborating, and they also offered much better contracts than many of their competitors.

Marvel's biggest seller was Cap, with the Torch and Namor as their two other big names. After that you get into obscurity first. The Destroyer was fairly popular, as was the Whizzer. All their costumed characters were outshone in sales by Patsy Walker and super Rabbit once they started getting into "funny" comics in the late 40s, and by that point they were already in the process of dismantling their superhero stuff.