Yes, more pins.
(See these previous four posts for even more buttons.)
Because of the glare (and the size of the image) you may not be able to make out that the pin in the upper-left corner is for the 20th anniversary of Kitchen Sink (1969-1989). The next button is for the 20th anniversary of Elfquest pin from…well, there’s no year on it, but I’m assuming it’s from 1998, since the first appearance of Elfquest was in ’78.
I’ve always really liked that Marvel 25th Anniversary pin…it’s just made of plastic, but the Spidey figure has a nice texture to it, and the whole piece is very eye-catching. DC’s 50th anniversary logo is equally eye-catching, I think, though I have vague memories of people not thinking much of it at the time. I liked it, anyway.
Those last pins are celebrating the 30th anniversaries of the Avengers and the X-Men, though trying to incorporate the title’s logos (or portions of them, anyway) into the number 30 weren’t entirely successful.
Ah, the parade of Jim Shooter comic book companies…Warriors of Plasm, from Defiant Comics, gave us the immortal phrase “gore for the org.” My only real memory of Broadway Comics was that the only ones that sold were the ones that features curvy dames on the covers. And I know that Shooter was long gone before Valiant Comics became Acclaim Comics, but where else was I going to put it? Also, it always seemed to me that there should be another half to that pin.
Ah, the Big Comic Book Market Boom of the late 1980s/early 1990s. That was the heyday of the All-Purpose Comics Price Guide Magazine (the only survivor of which was, of course, Wizard). Combo was, true to its name, a combination of comic book price guide, trading card price guide, action figure price guide, collectible card game price guide…and somewhere in there was the occasional stab at an article or two. Most issues were prebagged with a trading card or three…another symptom of this particular time in the marketplace.
The next pin is “Martin the Satantic Raccoon,” which was brought back for me from a San Diego Con a few years back. Here’s a website, which tries darn hard to not be safe for work.
Collected Editions brought up the badges given away during the DC Vs. Marvel mini-series, where fans could vote on the outcomes of key battles. I only have the “Vote DC” badge, it appears, because pffft, like I’d vote for Marvel.
Don’t bother going to the Mutantwatch.com address on that Senator Kelly button (from the first X-Men movie)…it just forwards to Fox Movies. That other pin is a promo for the first Tim Burton Batman movie from ’88. I always thought Billy Dee Williams (who played Dent in the first film) would have been a kick-ass Two-Face, but we ended up with Tommy Lee Jones as Dent in the third film. Not bad, I guess, but he’s no Billy Dee.
These are more of those metal badges with the bendy bits at the top, allowing you to hook ’em over the top of your pockets, or whatever. The first badge was to advertise your sense of loss and despair at the temporary lack of Superman in the Superman comics. The other badges plugged the other fill-in Supermen, each with their individual S-shields. The shield for “The Kid” (i.e. Superboy) was stitching around the edges, in case you can’t make it out.
The first two pins were released by First Comics in 1985, taking a minimalist approach by just showing the logos on a white background. The third pin plugged Groo’s 20th anniversary in 2002.
Here are some examples of “freebie” pins that Marvel and DC used to release to advertise new series…something I wish they’d still do, and not just so that I could collect them! (Here’s another example.) I couldn’t tell you a single thing about Spellbound. I know we got ’em in the store, but don’t know nuttin’ about the contents. I think I wore that “Doom Patrol” button to a Cure concert, once, just to be “funny.” Legion ’89 was actually an okay comic, for a while, and hey, that Green Lantern pin is good again, what with the new series and all. I also have a GL pin DC released to advertise the Kyle Rayner version of the character, but, well, you’ll just have to imagine it, because I forgot to scan it. Maybe next time!
A former employee of our shop gave me this button several years ago. I wonder what she was trying to tell me?
