From THE JACK KIRBY COMIC COLLECTOR # 29

Giffen is one of my favorites from the scattered work he did in the mid/late-1970's, on DEFENDERS 42-54, AMAZING ADVENTURES (Killraven) 35 and 38, CLAW 8-12, a few scattered issues of MARVEL PREMIERE, ALL-STAR COMICS, and so forth.

But he became one of my favorites with his work on LEGION OF SUPERHEROES 285-306 (a series of issues I just recently re-read for the Nth time), and for his "Doctor Fate" backups in FLASH 306-314 (reprinted nicely in IMMORTAL DOCTOR FATE 2 and 3 in 1984, Issue 1 being Simonson and Nasser stories), along with his Ambush Bug stories beginning with DC COMICS PRESENTS 52, and continuing in scattered issues of ACTION COMICS in 1983-1984, before spinning off into two AMBUSH BUG miniseries. Although truth told, I think the backups were better than the miniseries.
OMEGA MEN (Giffen did issues 1-5) was a prestigious series also for Giffen, one of DC's first deluxe-format Baxter series.
There was also a really funny LEGION OF SUBSTITUTE HEROES SPECIAL he did.


Giffen also collaborated with J.M.DeMatteis, Kevin Maguire, Adam Hughes and Bart Sears on JUSTICE LEAGUE and JUSTICE LEAGUE EUROPE (plus a number of JUSTICE LEAGUE ANNUAL, QUARTERLY and SPECIAL issues, and related miniseries) from 1987-1992, that I think tried to recapture the playfulness and humor that was largely gone from comics in those years, and arguably still is.

Plus its recent revivals as FORMERLY KNOWN AS THE JUSTICE LEAGUE, and JLA: CLASSIFIED.
This is also somewhat related to the Alan Grant interview I posted a few weeks ago, since they collaborated on the L.E.G.I.O.N. '89 and LOBO series.

The stuff Giffen rants in the interview, about the decline of the industry, really resonates for me. When he largely lost interest in creating and working for the major publishers, is pretty much when I largely stopped reading, about 1993-1994, for precisely the reasons he describes.

I also found it interesting how he basically pissed off pretty much everyone at DC in the late 70's, before he came back as a superstar penciller in 1982-1983. It's funny to picture a guy with that kind of stardom, being given work on probationary basis at DC, secretly being given a second chance.