I definitely should not start another post with so many unfinished posts on my To Do list - especially since I just started my latest post about Neil Gaiman´s SANDMAN last Sunday and I also haven´t finished that one - but I thought with all the recent deaths of comicbook legends it would be nice to celebrate one who is still living. And who better than Bob Layton who celebrates his 69th birthday Today. As faithful followers know my Bob Layton IRON MAN posts have become somewhat of an annual tradition.
Now in the title it says " Bob Layton´s IRON MAN "but that´s only because if I wrote " David Micheline´s, Bob Layton´s and John Romita Jr.´s IRON MAN "that would have been way too long. Anyway, this is the creative trio that re - ignited the title - which was already on the chopping block and slated for cancellation - and molded the character of Iron Man a.k.a. Tony Stark into the person most people now know from the big screen.
So while I focus a lot on Bob Layton that´s mostly because he has had really long stints on the book doing everything from penciling to inking, writing, anything besides stapling the damn thing. Which I can use to specify which issues I cover, as long as Bob Layton is on the creative team it´s all good. And it´s not like Bob´s other collaborator´s don´t have their own spotlight posts. Quite to the contrary. As longtime blog readers know John Romita Jr. is one of my favorite artists of all time and I have done numerous spotlight posts on him including posts on his runs on the Spider - Man books, THE UNCANNY X - MEN but especially his work on DAREDEVIL.
That´s my favorite work by him and as long as I have enough material for a halfway decent Ann Nocenti DAREDEVIL spotlight I will keep them coming.
As for David Micheline, I always felt he is underappreciated besides his contribution to Iron Man which is why I wrote a post for him in 2019 .
There are of course a plethora of other comicbooks David Micheline has written over the decades most notably the Aquaman run in Adventure Comics with art by Jim Aparo in which Black Manta killed off Aquaman´s infant son ( one of the watershed moments in comic history ), Avengers from 1978 to 1982 with George Perez and John Byrne and Amazing Spider - Man from 1987 to 1994 with Todd McFarlane, Erik Larsen and Mark Bagley.
Speaking about Todd McFarlane, those who read my two posts about Todd McFarlane´s runon The Incredible Hulk with Peter David might remember that I promised my next Todd McFarlane post will be about his rendition of the webslinger and it will probably be part of the David Micheline run.
I don´t have the time to list all of the series he worked on but he wrote some VALIANT books and Action Comics for 3 years so he will pop up in future posts about VALIANT and John Byrne´s SUPERMAN relaunch. David Micheline´s track record with characters is also very impressive as he co - created Claw the Unconquered, The Star Hunters, Venom ( another movie you can thank him for ), Carnage, Ant - Man Scott Lang ( ditto ), the Taskmaster, the Ghost ( ditto ), Bethany Cabe and Jim Rhodes ( ditto ).
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