Well to be fair,I enjoyed the Romita Jr./Bob Layton team on Iron Man and to me Romita Jr. is my definitive Daredevil artist.His run on Amazing Spider-Man with JMS was good and his run on Thor with Jurgens was awesome.However I have not enjoyed him on Avengers since it's relaunch.Win some/lose some I suppose.
Some New Universe stuff wasn't all that bad, but is so rooted in the 80's that it's like reading Secret Wars II over and over(see how I snuck in that Shooter reference?
)
Finally:
JOHN BYRNE!!!!
Thanks for the Shooter reference!
The Michelinie/Romita Jr./Layton run on IRON MAN (issues 115-156, with a few issues pencilled by Bingham in there) was my favorite run in the 1978-1982 period, even over the Claremont/Byrne/Austin X-MEN run.
In the early years I really liked Romita Jr's style a lot. His work was tighter and cleaner, and it continued that way when he worked on AMAZING SPIDERMAN from 1982-1984 (issues 224-250, with Roger Stern)
Why these books haven't been canonized in hardcovers yet is a mystery to me.
After that, Romita Jr's style began to mutate and get looser, when Romita Jr. began runs on X-MEN and DAREDEVIL. And I like that looser style by Romita Jr. too, arguably better in some ways. But the IRON MAN and AMAZING SPIDER-MAN runs are the Romita Jr issues I treasure.
Nocenti really proved herself as a writer on her issues with Romita Jr on DAREDEVIL. Particularly a 3-issue storyline where Daredevil, in a sureal dream-like story, went to a Hell frozen over (issues 290-292? Somewhere around there) where all his nightmares and childhood fears became monstrously real and attacked him.
Although I thought Al Williamson's inks were rather lackluster over Romita Jr's art. (Equally lackluster on SOLOMON KANE 3-6, and over Mignola on FAHFRED AND GREY MOUSER 1-3).
But Williamson when inking himself is one of the best in the business. See the FLASH GORDON movie adaptation (1980), the Star Wars (EMPIRE STRIKES BACK and JEDI) and BLADERUNNER movie adaptations in MARVEL SUPER SPECIAL (1980, 1982, 1983) and the collected Dark Horse trades of his STAR WARS comics and newspaper strips.
Of the New Universe stuff, I liked STARBRAND the best, written by Shooter, with art by Romita Jr. The character was possibly Shooter writing himself as a superhero. It was a guy who was unnaturally tall, (like Shooter) who was from Pittsburg (like Shooter). Not the best effort by either Shooter or Romita Jr., but still fun reading. And at the end of the run, John Byrne (just back from DC/Superman) took over the series and took the series in a different direction up till the series concluded. As I recall, it didn't come to a full conclusion, and appeared to be cancelled abruptly, unresolved.
The other New Universe stuff was a bit too trendy for me, a lot of bad attitude, big guns and mediocre art.
In that period, I was more into Marvel's Epic Comics line, books like MOONSHADOW (DeMatteis/Muth), BLACK DRAGON (Claremont/Bolton), DREADSTAR (by Starlin, at this point moved over to First Comics), SIX FROM SIRIUS, I and II (Moench/Gulacy) and GROO (Evanier/Aragones).
And the occasional Marvel Graphic Novel here and there.
After Shooter's departure, Peter David's INCREDIBLE HULK was the only monthly series I was still buying. And for a little while THOR, but I think Simonson's run ended shortly after Shooter left. And GROO from the Epic line, both of which (HULK and GROO) lasted till 1994 or so.
