I’m just curious how long we can make pal Dorian‘s list.
And if you’re getting tired of seeing these…well, please feel free to return the unused portion of this weblog to the webmaster for a full refund of your admission price.
Hey, I’m usually all about the content, baby…let me “meme” out for a while.
DARRYL & OMAR: “SWAMP THING!“
SWAMP THING: “You kids know that plastic lasts hundreds of years when thrown into the environment?”
OMAR: “That stuff lasts that long?”
SWAMP THING: “Sure does, Omar. We all have to protect the Green, recycle our litter.”
DARRYL: “You need us to help protect the land and water?”
SWAMP THING: “Sure do!”
OMAR: “You really that busy?”*
SWAMP THING: “As a matter of fact, kids…I’m swamped!”
ALL: (laughter)
(As featured on the Return of Swamp Thing DVD…highly recommended!)
The debate rages on: “Would you rather be the Man of Steel or a Jedi?”
“i would go for jedi…… superman is bullshit”
“…The Jedi could get [Superman] to a place without a yellow sun and kick his ass.”
“Superman is okay, but he would lose. Lightsabers can cut through anything.”
“The Christopher Reeve version could beat Luke Skywalker with both hands tied behind his back. The Hulk is debateable considering his brute strength.”
“yoda could prolly make supermans blood boil from the inside making him explode from the inside out. One of the strongest powers exist is within the mind for the mind can make anyone strong physically, in this case the jedi’s mind is the most powerful, as much as i love superman i know a jedi will bring him down.”
“nothing a jedi could do, including a lightsaber, could hurt or even phase superman. nothing short of a full fledged nuclear strike would even harm supes. (discluding kryptonite).”
“I’m Superman, slicing in half though the light of multiple lightsabers and the Jedi’s holding them, with my heat-vision then freeze breath all torsos in the air. Now shatter Jedi, along with your cut in half frozen saber light.. Superman Forever..”
“Now just imagine Superman training with a lightsaber under The Emperor……….learning the dark side of the force. HOLY SHIT! Now that would be doom for the entire universe……..lol”
“imagine using kryptonite as the crystal in the lightsabre then supes wouldnt stand a chance”
Kryptonite lightsabres. I love you, Internet.
…some other coverage of the whole DC Universe: Stories of Alan Moore screw-up that we discussed here nearly two weeks ago. Also discussed in Rich’s column are the other omissions from this book, and the first Moore Swamp Thing trade, that were brought up in the comments section for that post of mine.
(I hadn’t heard about the copyright problems Rich mentions, though…that was news to me.)
Hopefully this will bring DC one step closer to doing something about correcting the problems in this book…at least returning the text intro to the Superman story. I mean, c’mon.
So over the weekend, I had an old customer of mine bring in a box of magazines to sell…mostly it was Savage Sword of Conans that had seen better days, and combining their conditions with the fact that we’ve recently bought several Conan collections, and were thus stocked to the gills with barbarian funnies, I unfortunately had to tell this gentleman that we couldn’t use them. However, there were a couple non-Conan mags in the box that I decided I couldn’t live without:
“If you know about this science (not astrology) you know it measures the three basic rhythms of one’s life from birth to any day of life.
“Beginning with Shatner’s day of birth (Sunday March 22, 1931) we can discover through biorhythmic calculations that Shatner was at his intellectual peak, but at his lowest physical and emotional cycle on the day Star Trek rehersals originally began (April 7, 1965).”
The article ends with this caveat:
“It is difficult to figure in the biorhythms of the other Star Trek actors since exact birthdates are not always known. Some of the stars will tell their ‘sign,’ but not the year of their birth.”
What can I tell you. It was the ’70s.
Other features include a photo tour of the Smithsonian, with a special focus on its display of an 11-foot U.S.S. Enterprise model from the show, a couple poems written by Nichelle “Uhura” Nichols (with fan illustrations), a gallery of fan art of Vulcan wildlife, and a long list of Star Trek facts, a few of which follow:
“7 – Itaka is Sulu’s first name.”
“84 – The funniest episode was ‘The Trouble with Tribbles.'”
“87 – There are such things as Spock ears that can be purchased.”
“131 – The phaser beams shot on the show are done by animation.”
“134 – Romulans look like Vulcans.”
It’s not all Star Trek, however…one amusing article presents excerpts from reviews of 2001: A Space Odyssey (“Such movies as 2001 may be no more than trash in the latest, up-to-the-minute guises, using ‘artistic techniques’ to give trash the look of art” – Pauline Kael).
The thing I like most about fanzines, both the comic book fanzines I normally collect as well as these Star Trek ‘zines I bought on a whim, is the snapshots they provide of fandom’s concerns and obsessions from a particular time. And that’s the advantage the print medium has over something like internet message boards or weblogs…unless I print out and widely distribute hard copies of my website, some kid interested in comics thirty years down the line isn’t likely to come across a copy of “Progressive Ruin” in a dusty box of beat-up magazines. I know there are still plenty of print ‘zines out there, but I can’t shake the feeling that Wizard is going to end up representing the current state of comic fandom to future generations.
Okay, I didn’t mean to depress myself, there…cheer me up, Casual Spock:
Don’t worry, that’s the last one from me. Please click this link or on the sidebar banner to keep up with newer additions.
This is all pal Dorian’s fault, you know.
Thank you for many varied and well-chosen suggestions for good X-Men comics for new readers, particularly given my initial request was a tad more negative than I intended. Let me add a couple thoughts to some of your suggestions:
“So, what’s the price on a comic like that?” (indicating the God Loves, Man Kills graphic novel)
“It’s $5.95.”
“Wow, they’re expensive…I remember when they were a dime!”
So that issue of Punchy And The Black Crow where I got that ad I posted yesterday has an interesting mix of other advertisements contained within. You’ve got your standard comic book ads, like “Grit” and “Gain Weight Now,” but then you also have things like “Beautiful Bust for You,” “Cover Up Those Varicose Veins,” and that happy fellow to the left, there, in the slimmin’ suit. 
Of special note is a full-page ad for Fantagraphics publications, which was (at least in my copy of this comic) printed horribly off-register. There’s a portion of said ad to the right. It seems like an odd mix, but there is a minor connection between this comic and Fantagraphics, as Milton Knight, creator of Hugo (another title featured in the ad) is plugged as a future cover artist for Punchy on Charlton’s hype page.
It’s been said that a good way to tell what a publication’s perceived audience is by looking at its advertising, so I guess this comic’s readers were veiny, skinny (but still in need of a slimmer look), Grit-selling mystical chanters who read Love & Rockets. That’s prime demographic, baby!
Around the store:
A fellow on a UFO message board laments the preponderance of conspiracy-minded and just plain loopy folks in the flying saucer biz, and in a less than serious response, another poster leaves his parody of a typical paranoiac rant:
“Do you remember Green Lantern, Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, AquaMan, Hawkman, the Atom, Martian Manhunter, The Flash, The Green Arrow, Snapper Carr, the original Justice League? If you remember they used to fly in outerspace in their undergarments in the 60’s with no visible means of support. Suddenly one day they came back with breasts and sex organs and there uniforms got all bulgy and supergirl suddenly became a babe although lately they have her looking anorexic with her belly button showing. They have taken away her muscles and made her look a lot like a waif model.But even Super Girl has breasts now although she has moved to the Amazon island to be with Wonder Woman and get away from men. You see just about that same time they came back from space and got bulges some superheroes suddenly became black or Asian. There’s a black Green Lantern now.”
You can see the second half of the “rant” at the above link.
Hey, pal Dorian has started a “meme.” By accident. Honest.
Speaking of pal Dorian…at the shop Thursday night, we were discussing this message board exchange where the person’s request for a non-superhero comic recommendation was met with the immediate suggestion of X-Men. In Dorian’s words:
“The answer to any comics recommendation request is never X-Men.”
And yeah, that’s usually true enough. With very, very rare exceptions, the X-books are not the best example of the comics medium as an artistic means of expression, particularly for someone new to the comics world. It’s comics specifically for comics fans, insular and self-referential. If someone new does come in expressing a specific interest in X-Men books, I explain that they’re essentially soap operas, with very few clean starting points…just jump in and hang on, and hopefully anything you don’t get will get covered eventually.
But that got me to thinking…is there a single issue (or short-run storyline) from the X-books that shows these comics in their best light? Something that you could show a new comics reader and have them not throw the book down in disgust…a single X-book that might make them think, if only briefly, “say, these colorful pamphlets of mutant adventures may actually be not half bad!” Yes, I know everyone wants to say the stuff from 94 to 144 (or whatever those issues of Uncanny were)…what would you say aside from that particular run?
With apologies to pal Dorian:
So it seems our customers, having been trained by the recent Diamond Comics shipping delays caused by Christmas and New Year’s Day, assumed Martin Luther King Day would do the same and either 1) didn’t drop by on New Comics Day or 2) placed many, many calls asking if the week’s shipment had come in yet.
Just can’t win, sometimes.
Speaking of Diamond, our shipment was shorted about a bazillion random things, including a replacement for an item that we had been shorted on the previous week. Oy.
By the way, I haven’t been on the internet much lately, so I haven’t noticed…has there been any other coverage of the missing material from the new DC Universe: The Stories of Alan Moore trade paperback?
Customer: “Hey, did you hear that Strangers in Paradise is going to be ending soon?”
Me: “Finally!“
Customer: (laughs)
The things I do at this job.
And yes, I shut myself up in the bathroom with a Red Sonja comic. Quiet, you.
On a related note, a couple weeks ago at the shop I was discussing the fact that, when the Earth Prime Superboy was introduced during the original Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover shenanigans, the only purpose he really served was 1) to represent the concept of Earth Prime (i.e. “our” Earth), and 2) to act as a symbolic “goodbye” to the Superboy concept* at the end of the series. He didn’t really serve any plot purpose that I can recall (beyond being involved in a minor continuity glitch in the series). Now that he has a slightly larger role in Infinite Crisis, I realized that it took 20 years to find something to do with the character!
For reading this far…I give you Celebrities with Phones!
