This week on Coffee & Comic Books, Rick and I do a deep dive on Walt Simonson's 25 issue classic, Orion! Running from 2000 to 2002, the series is both an incredible tribute to Jack Kirby's classic Fourth World comics of the 1970s, and an incredible action-adventure-sci-fi-fantasy journey in its own right. We've spent a lot of time in previous episodes talking about how much we love Simonson's comics, and so it was immensely gratifying to spend two and a half hours talking about all the things that make this series so special. You can listen to our episode for free on the Export Audio patreon or by going to exportaud.io/comicbooks. And hit the read more to see the other comics we bring up in the course of this episode (I won't promise that I get everything in the show notes this week because it's a long episode and there's probably a tangent or two I didn't take note of haha.)
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The Losers by Jack Kirby. A mid-70s series of high-octane WW2 comics that kick ass, and is also unfortunately very racist. Rick also briefly mentions another story drawn by Alex Toth that ran in Our Fighting Forces before Jack Kirby took over, and I thought I'd include the title page from that here because it's SICK.
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Redwall by Brian Jacques. Not a comic, I just read some Redwall, it's fun lol.
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New Gods by Jack Kirby. This is the series that Orion most directly follows up, being Kirby's series that centers primarily on Orion but also introduces all sorts of elements from throughout the Fourth World.
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Thor by Walt Simonson. From 1983 to 1987, Walt Simonson wrote and drew the definitive run of Thor comics and perhaps the definitive Marvel comic of the 1980s. Claremont's X-Men is the only Marvel comic that rivals it for impact and influence. It is nearly 50 issues of excellence, I cannot hype it up enough. Simonson is a creator who can do a lot of different genres and tones, but his Thor is the obvious touchstone that runs all through Orion. If you want to read it, I must stress that you should seek out the single issues from the 80s, not the trade paperbacks that Marvel publishes now. They recolored the series for those tpbs and it doesn't look half as good. I'm not sure the series as it was originally presented is still for sale, but those issues can be found online if you know where to look.
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Space Academy 123 by Mickey Zacchilli, a comic we briefly considered doing for our next episode. We decided against it because it isn't available digitally, but you can order a physical copy and you should because it looks very good. I'm excited to check it out when my copy comes in.
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Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files 05, aka the book for our next episode! Available in both black and white and color and I can say for once that I think both look great. I'll be reading it in black and white due to my own preference, but the color does look great.
