blogging by Andrew Wickliffe and friends
Archie Goodwin
Blade Runner 2 (November 1982)
There are some real problems this issue–Goodwin’s got to adapt the stuff without Deckard (who in his adaptation isn’t just not a replicant, but is also a lot more the Deckard from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) and it’s just a mess. The way Goodwin structures it–the noir with Deckard and Rachel–it just doesn’t […]
MoreBlade Runner 1 (October 1982)
After the first few pages, I think I decided Blade Runner is best comic adaptation of a movie I’ve ever read. Goodwin has a fairly complex and lengthy story to adapt here (especially since the film is confusing, especially the version Goodwin would have been adapting) and he comes up with a genius way to […]
MoreBlazing Combat 4 (July 1966)
Goodwin and company recover for the fourth–and tragically final–issue of Blazing Combat. The issue opens with Goodwin returning to, if not controversial, then uncomfortable topics–he and Gene Colan (Colan’s art this issue is far better than his already good art in the previous one) have a depressingly real story about American racism. It might be […]
MoreBlazing Combat 3 (April 1966)
There’s a lot of great art this issue… but it seems like Goodwin was getting worn out. There really aren’t any stories with any bite–even the WWII one with the marine taking gold teeth from every corpse he finds. The opening story, credited to Joe Orlando but apparently pencilled by Jerry Grandenetti, is an indistinct […]
MoreBlazing Combat 2 (January 1966)
I can’t believe it, Goodwin tells a joke. In fact, he sets up his entire Revolutionary War story for a joke. I suppose the issue kind of needs it, since he opens with this famous Vietnam story, “Landscape,” the best illustrated of the three Joe Orlando stories this issue. “Landscape” is about a South Vietnamese […]
MoreBlazing Combat 1 (October 1965)
In seven stories–from the Revolutionary War to the burgeoning Vietnam conflict–there isn’t a single moment of humor. Goodwin doesn’t give the reader a single moment to forget he or she is reading a war comic. There’s so little humor, it’s got to be intentional. If Goodwin had just been writing loose, someone would make a […]
MoreDazzler 40 (November 1985)
I didn’t mention it in the previous Secret Wars II response, but is Dazzler always a loose woman or is she just being written as a loose woman for the Secret Wars II crossovers? Shooter handled it better, but here, Goodwin points it out and it just makes her look cheap. On to the art, […]
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