You are currently browsing the archives for February, 2006
§ February 20th, 2006 § Filed under Uncategorized Comments Off on Waiting for the repairman, or someone like him.
So, remember those repairmen that I was waiting for last Monday? Well, for one reason or another, they weren’t able to come by that day…so allegedly they will be arriving at some point today. Well, we’ll see…but in the meantime, here, have some stuff, links, random thoughts, follow-ups, you know….
Comic-booky stuff on the
You Tube:
Pete reads from the Malibu Comics Mortal Combat spin-off Goro Prince of Pain
JSA fan film trailer
The nigh-legendary Lobo Paramilitary Christmas Special
Kids, don’t try this at home: Superman action figure is set on fire. I enjoy the combination of the television in the background and the heavy breathing of the person doing the burning, for that extra-creepy flavor.
Batman, Robocop, a ninja(?), Jason from Friday the 13th, someone’s garage…excellence.
I just realized I alphabetized “Vaughn Bode” under “Vaughn” in my Valentine’s Day post. No, I’m not going to fix it. Let my error stand for future generations to mock.
So at the store, I’m nearing the end of what has felt like The Task That Would Not End…the gathering together of 100,000 comics for an impending bulk sale. That works out to about 285 long boxes, in case you’re wondering. Now, a lot of these are coming from the glory days of the late ’80s/early ’90s (which I’ve spoken about before here and here), when we are all ordering tons of comics, and selling tons of comics, and ordering more than what would sell on the rack since we were selling tons of back issues, too…then the market crashed, and that was that.
So goodbye Brigade, so long Second Life of Dr. Mirage, bon voyage Semper Fi, arrivederci Spider-Man Unlimited #1…you all had your day in the sun — well maybe not Semper Fi — but I’m glad to see the back end of y’all.
One series I’m slashing the backstock down to the bone on is Marvel Comics Presents, the biweekly anthology series. Now, sure, most of it wasn’t all that good, but it did have some high points. The Barry Windsor-Smith “Weapon X” series, a Wolverine story by Peter David and Sam Keith, Hercules by Bob Layton…there’s some wheat in the chaff there. Granted, it’ll take some searching to find it…can any of you folks remember any other good stories out of this series?
The Hulk boots ad and the Cyclops connect-the-dots puzzle I posted last week were from The Uncanny X-Men at the State Fair of Texas, a freebie comic distributed with copies of the Dallas Times Herald newspaper, almost certainly alarming and disturbing the citizenry. Pal JP had bought one of our copies a couple weeks back, and when next I saw him, he insisted I check it out for myself. I would have scanned more stuff out of it, like the several ads for, I don’t know, appliances and whatnot that just have Spider-Man pasted into the ad, but I sold our remaining copy over the weekend. I had to choose between entertaining you folks or collecting five bucks, and sorry man, but baby needs shoes.
BeaucoupKevin helped Cyclops, by the way.
§ February 19th, 2006 § Filed under Uncategorized Comments Off on "YAAAaaaAAAAggggGGGHHHhHHHHhhh!!!"
Franklin Harris is back, and he’s weblogging about the funnybooks. Go check him out, tell him Mikester sent you.
So the other day I received an invitation to an advance screening for the V for Vendetta film, which includes a question and answer session with folks involved with the film…in New York, the opposite side of the country from me, alas. Despite some of the misgivings I’ve had about the film, it’s a shame the screening is a tad bit out of my way…I’m always up for a free flick. And hey, that would have been a day’s content for this weblog, at the very least. Ah, well.
“X3 Wiil Be Last in X-Men Film Series”
In the “we meant to do that” department:
“‘Well, it seems to be the last of the series,'” says [director Brett] Ratner of the title for X3. “‘We wanted to make sure the audiences knew that this was a trilogy. Even though they weren’t made together like Lord of the Rings, this is really closure for the X-Men series…This is the last stand for sure.'”
“‘Sgt. Rock’ heads back to war zone”
A nice, positive “real world” review for Joe Kubert’s new Sgt. Rock: The Prophecy series, which includes this amusing comparison:
“Marvel’s competition for Rock was ‘Nick Fury and His Howling Commandos,’ who went everywhere in the European theater in WWII, blowing trumpets and yelping ‘YAAAaaaAAAAggggGGGHHHhHHHHhhh!!!’ Fury was formed by the wink-wink fatalism of the ’60s, when killing was done with style and attitude. Rock, on the other hand, would have ducked behind some rubble and waited for Fury to get his keester blown off.”
I still think that puppy’s going to meet some terrible fate.
§ February 18th, 2006 § Filed under Uncategorized Comments Off on
§ February 17th, 2006 § Filed under Uncategorized Comments Off on Clarification, accidental insults, and how not to cut your hair.
Just to clarify my discussion of Infinite Crisis and other house-cleaning company crossovers…I’m not stuck on the idea of company-wide continuity, and it doesn’t much bother me if, say, the revamp of Hedge-Trimming Man contradicts the back-story given to Punch Squad. I’m more bemused than anything else…I’m not going to write nasty letters to the publisher, or write fan-fiction “correcting” the mistake, or anything like that. I might comment on it here because, hey, this weblog doesn’t write itself, but it ain’t nothin’ I’m gonna get worked up over.
Unless it screws with Swamp Thing continuity. Then you’d better look out.
And I did like Hawkworld, since the subject came up. I particularly enjoyed the fun first annual, which was, I believe, the first of many efforts at explaining how this revamped Hawkman fit into the history of the DC Universe. And probably the initial moment when the folks at DC realized “Uh, oh…what’d we do?”
For further reading on internal consistency/revamps in myths and storytelling, may I recommend this discussion?
So former employee Kid Chris (here’s a photo for the ladies and so-inclined guys) related a tale to current employee Nathan, which he shared with me, which I’m now going to share with all of you (though names will be omitted to protect the embarrassed). KC was at a party recently, and the topic of his involvement in the funnybook retail world came up. Someone at the party informed Chris that his roommate was, in fact, a comic book writer…a writer of a particular indie title that had received a good amount of positive buzz. Tact-master Chris responded with “Wow, that comic flopped!” And, as it turned out, the person’s roommate, the writer in question, happened to be standing right there. He simply turned to Chris and said, sadly, “Yeah…I know.”
I’d been in a similar situation…many years ago, when I still went to the occasional comic convention, I was in the process of purchasing stock for the store when a fellow going through a comic box next to me decided to start up a conversation.
Fellow: “Hey, you guys sell [a particular now-defunct publisher] Comics?”
Me: “Yeah, they do okay, I suppose.”
Fellow: “So, what do you think of them?”
Okay, at this point I should have realized, “Hey, this guy may be involved with the company somehow.” However, I was but a young Mikester, my instincts not yet fully honed, so this was my response:
Me: “Well, they’re pretty amateurish…there are one or two okay artists, but otherwise, I don’t think they’re very good.”
Fellow: “Um…I draw for that company.”
And that’s how I felt like a real jerk for the rest of that day. Yeah, I know, he asked, but I still felt pretty bad.
Not as bad as that one time I completely and unintentionally mocked a customer from Ireland who was visiting our store, but that may be a story for later. (And it was unintentional, I swear!)
“Is it weird to get your hair cut like a super hero?”
“I just really liked the way Clark Kent’s hair looked in this issue of Birthright and got my hair cut person to do it like that for me. I know it’s just you basic part, but it just looked really cool. I didn’t begin to question whether or not this was kind of weird up until I was flipping through the latest Premier magazine with Brandon Routh on the cover and really liked his hair, too, then I got my hair cut person to cut my hair like that. Is that weird?”
“Yes, if it looks like Wolverine’s style…”
“Now if you were trying to get Guy Gardener’s Bowl cut, or try to have it on fire like Firestorm, then I’d be worried.”
“I ended up getting up a Guy Gardener cut once. I’ll never forget the expression on my face when I saw it in a mirror.”
“My hair is long.Brandon Lee from The Crow long.”
“Every summer, I get the Lex Luthor ‘do.”
“I got my haircut like super legend Guy Garner. Once a guy called me Moe so I kicked his behind.”
“Id love to have hair like Hal Jordan,He has a great head of hear.”
§ February 16th, 2006 § Filed under Uncategorized Comments Off on "Screw Bob Kane! Frank Miller created Batman!" – Pal Corey
That was pal Corey’s response to my telling him about Miller’s forever forthcoming Batman Versus al-Qaida. It may be no Daredevil Battles Hitler, but I’m sure it’ll be…well, I’m not sure what it’ll be, but I’m sure it’s going to get someone ticked off somewhere. (Oh, and Corey may not have used the word “screw.” I just didn’t want “f***” in the title.)
Anyway, another new comics day, another dollar:
Dear Diamond – please don’t let your employees use one of the books we ordered as a clipboard prior to sending it to us. The House of M book doesn’t look very appealing when we can plainly read the writing gouged into the cover by whoever was using the book to support the paper they were scribbling on.
Question of the day: “So, what’s Apocalypse Vs. Dracula about?” My response: “I don’t think I can explain any better than the title.”
The Rosen Graphic Mysteries: UFOs/Bigfoot/Loch Ness Monster/etc. – Well, at least the text pieces in the back make a token reference to the fact all this stuff is hogwash. Otherwise, so long as you take this material with a big ol’ grain of salt these books can be fun…a little crudely drawn, a bit garish, but still good old fashioned unacceptable entertainment, like comics should be. Kinda wish we didn’t get a dozen of ’em at once (including the related “Myths” line), however.
Planetary Brigade #1 – Boom! Studios‘s newest release is a spin-off of the very entertaining Hero Squared, focusing on the adventures of Captain Valor before he “teamed up” with a parallel-universe slacker version of himself. It’s superhero team hijinks a la the Keith Giffen/J.M. DeMatteis Justice League, which is only natural since these are the folks writing it. Amusing, entertaining, and imaginative…I think my favorite new character is the Mauve Visitor, the haughty and vain alien member of the Brigade, more concerned with his coat and drink than with the troubles at hand. He’s a “Prissuvian,” and that name probably tells you what you need to know about him. Very funny stuff. A variety of artists contribute to the book, including Hero Squared regular Joe Abraham, as well as Cynthia Martin, Eduardo Barretto, and Mark Badger, whose loose cartoony style is always welcome in my book. Anyway, check it out…previous knowledge of Hero Squared not necessary, though you should be reading that, too.
The Identity Crisis action figures have arrived, based on Michael Turner’s artwork, and…well, Deadshot and Zatanna come off okay. Green Arrow‘s head seems awfully out of proportion with the rest of his body, and Hawkman appears to be just a little too buff. And I had about a half-dozen incredibly inappropriate things to say about the Dr. Light figure, but I think I’d better just keep those to myself.
Speaking of inappropriate…Angry Youth Comics #10. That’s all I’m saying. Go look at it yourself, next time you’re in the store.
Sgt. Rock: The Prophecy #2 – That puppy’s going to come to no good end, isn’t it? (I’ve talked about the “avenging the dead puppy” DC war stories before…you know, hero befriends puppy, puppy dies horribly, hero uses anger over puppy’s death to give him the strength to kill the enemy…”this one’s for you, dead puppy!” This is going to be another one, I just know it.)
So were were talking about Infinite Crisis at the shop, and while we all agreed that, as far as crossovers go, this is probably one of the most exactingly planned crossover events in comic book history, with very little minor scheduling hitches (i.e. Supergirl) along the way, something was bound to be screwed up somewhere. Like, hugely screwed up, as in “we better do another crossover series to fix the mistakes caused by Infinite Crisis,” which of course would create more problems for yet more crossovers to fix, and so on. For example, what happened to Hawkman in all the revamping following Crisis on Infinite Earths, which they tried to fix during Zero Hour, which ended up getting sorta fixed in JSA by skipping over the revamped Hawkman entirely and going back to the Golden Age one.
It’s still too early to tell what’s likely to be the problem caused by IC…we’re still in the middle of the story, and they’re in the process of breaking things apart before putting them back together again…and it may not even be until a couple years after the fact before we get an inkling of any problems this series may cause. There was no clue in the original Crisis that Hawkman was going to get the short end of the stick, for example…that was more a symptom than a direct result of the series’ events.
But still, I wonder what “corrective measures” we have to look forward to after IC is over?
§ February 15th, 2006 § Filed under Uncategorized Comments Off on
§ February 15th, 2006 § Filed under Uncategorized Comments Off on "Tubby, no!"
reprinted in Little Lulu Vol. 8: Late for School – by John Stanley & Irving Tripp
I may never look at Tubby the same way ever again….
§ February 14th, 2006 § Filed under valentine Comments Off on 100 More Things I Love About Comics!
As you can see with Swamp Thing and Abby above, love is in the air today, and so following up on last year’s Valentine’s Day entry is, yes, another post with a hundred more things I love about comics. (Inspired, of course, by Fred Hembeck and Alan David Doane…see my original post for links to more lists from last year.)
1. Acme Novelty Library
2. Art Adams
3. All-Star Batman and Robin The Boy Wonder
4. All-Star Superman
5. America’s Best Comics
6. America Versus The Justice Society
7. Avengers #100 (particularly the first few pages pencilled and inked by Barry Windsor-Smith
8. Badger by Mike Baron and others (about the first 30 issues or so)
9. The 1960s Batman TV show
10. The Beyonder (i.e. Jim Shooter’s Mary Sue) — this character just kills me.
11. Blackhawks as superheroes (particularly “The Listener”)
12. Bloom County by Berke Breathed
13. Blue Devil
14. BOOM! Studios
15. Wayne Boring
16. Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson
17. Captain American and the Falcon, 70s-style
18. Captain Carrot And His Amazing Zoo Crew
19. Adventures of Captain Jack by Mike Kazaleh
20. Nick Cardy
21. Howard Chaykin
22. Cholly and Flytrap by Arthur Suydam
23. Comic book adaptations of movies that feature full scenes that were cut from the final released films (like the original Marvel Star Wars or Superman IV: The Quest for Peace)
24. Comic book covers that feature “big questions” or otherwise directly address the reader
25. Comic book covers where the disembodied floating heads of supporting characters/teammates look on in dismay and/or shock.
26. Comics Reporter
27. Cutey Bunny
28. Dan DeCarlo
29. DC Comics Presents #61 (Superman and Omac) by Len Wein and George Perez
30. DC’s old line of science fiction graphic novels
31. Deadman
32. Kim Deitch
33. Desolation Jones by Warren Ellis & J.H. Williams III
34. Dick Tracy by Chester Gould
35. Doctor Doom & Doctor Strange: Triumph and Torment graphic novel by Roger Stern & Mike Mignola (“Pain? Pain is like love, like compassion. It is a thing only for lesser men. What is pain to Doom?”)
36. Dog Boy by Steve Lafler
37. Dorothy of Oz
38. Dreadstar by Jim Starlin
39. E.C. Comics
40. Earth-2 and the rest of DC’s Multiverse
41. The Fantastic Four Roast by Fred Hembeck and a cast of thousands
42. Fatman, The Human Flying Saucer
43. Fell by Warren Ellis and Ben Templesmith
44. Flipping open an old comic and finding a letter from someone who later became a comics pro
45. Frank by Jim Woodring
46. Galactus
47. Gentleman Ghost
48. Gnatrat by Mark Martin
49. Gorilla Grodd (as promised)
50. Grand Comic Book Database
51. Hawkman drawn by Joe Kubert
52. Inducks.org
53. Journey by William Messner-Loebs
54. “The Kid Who Collects Spider-Man”
55. Land of Nod by Jay Stephens
56. Mage by Matt Wagner
57. Man-Thing by Steve Gerber and others (but especially Mike Ploog)
58. Mars by Mark Wheatley and Marc Hempel
59. Marvel’s many and varied fan clubs (F.O.O.M., M.M.M.S., and God help us, W.A.M.)
60. That 1980s Meat Loaf ad
61. Maxwell the Magic Cat
62. Mister O by Lewis Trondheim
63. Mr. Mxyzptlk
64. New Adventures of Abraham Lincoln by Scott McCloud (I liked it, Scott!)
65. normalman by Jim Valentino
66. Mike Parobeck
67. Per Degaton
68. The Phantom Stranger
69. Plop!
70. “Quiet, or Papa spank!”
71. Reid Fleming, World’s Toughest Milkman
72. Sam & Max Freelance Police
73. Seven Soldiers of Victory by Grant Morrison ‘n’ pals
74. Sgt. Fury
75. Sgt. Rock
76. Gail Simone
77. Snarf
78. The very fact that Marvel published a comic book titled The Son of Satan
79. Dick Sprang
80. The Showcase Presents reprint line
81. Squa Tront (scroll down a bit)
82. Squadron Supreme by Mark Gruenwald and Bob Hall
83. Steven by Doug Allen
84. The now-defunct Strand Newsstand, one of the places I used to buy comics in my pre-comic book store days…this was where I first saw indie comics (in the early days of Fantagraphics, Eclipse, PC, and Cerebus) as well as my first fanzines. Mr. Burns (no, not that one) and his wife, who used to run the store, would hold onto comics for me, without my even asking, in case they were in danger of selling out.
85. Superboy stories where he has his “first” meetings with other DC superheroes
86. Superman And His Fortress of Solitude treasury edition
87. Superman whenever he’s drawn as being really, really old, with a full flowing white beard, but still in his Superman costume
88. Curt Swan’s aliens (a couple samples)
89. Tales Designed to Thrizzle by Michael Kupperman
90. Ty Templeton
91. Thunderbolts by Kurt Busiek and Mark Bagley (primarily the first couple dozen issues)
92. The Tick by Ben Edlund
93. Time Bandits comic book adaptation by Steve Parkhouse, David Lloyd & John Stokes
94. The Trouble with Girls (discussed at end of article) by Will Jacobs, Gerard Jones & Tim Hamilton
95. Uncle Scrooge and Money
96. Valiant Comics (early on, before Jim Shooter left)
97. Vaughn Bode
98. “You Can’t Pin A Medal on A Gorilla!”
99. Zatanna
100. …And, of course, all of you, readers and/or fellow webloggers, who (hopefully) enjoy reading this site of mine. My sincere thanks.
…so here’s a discussion from the Greatest Internet Message Board Ever, Killer Movies:
“Could Batman Actually Happen??”
“Scenario: I’m a multi-millionaire who’s in decent shape and I’m bored. I decide to hire a bunch of personal martial arts trainers (the best money can buy) to train me rigorously for a year or so. […] Given the money and the will to do it, Batman as we saw him in the movie could actually exist.”
“Even if you did train yourself like him, you probably wouldn’t have the motivation to do it for so long and your psyche would probably not handle the continuous battle against the psychos on a regular basis.”
“you would break your ankle the first time you jumped off a roof”
“i dont think so yout hink theres a guy who owns a group of ninjas and a guy who always smiels and a guy who survived some cold liquid stuff i dont think so”
“There is a reason super heroes stay in the movie. Nobody gets as lucky as they do, or as close to death as many times as they do without dying.”
“fool, you can’t make a batman with gadgets and atheltic ability alone. tragedy is what made batman.”
“but if you did that, the cops would arrest you cuz your not a cop.”
“Likely? Not at all. Rich people are scum (seriously, what rich person ISN’T greedy?). As if any of them would be strong enough to be Batman. They’d do it for shits and giggles then give up after a week when they break a nail in a fist fight with a 13 year old car theif.”
“Couldnt have a Batmobile though, in a big city, you’d get stuck in traffic jams all the time.”
“Do you know how ****ing awesome it would be do see some man is a military TRULY realistic Batman costume stop some gangsta die pig die bling bling thug? ****ING AWESOMe. It’d be all over the news with security cameras and shit and be all over the internet.”
“Perhaps a group of Batmen, working like ninjas, would be possible for a short while.”
“I don’t think batman could hapopen. The three most likely superheroes would be Sandman (put people to sleep with sleeping gas that could happen batman should use that) Hourman (come takes a steroid to make himself strong it could happen) and Punisher just a crazy guy with guns.”
“I know what you mean about the character’s close up abilities to ours but never. You cannot imitate a comic book character. You can create your own symbol and become a new hero but not exposed. If you cannot keep a secret, forget it. These are my words.”
Well said.
§ February 13th, 2006 § Filed under Uncategorized Comments Off on More sales reports.
I enjoyed doing the sales report post from yesterday, and while I’m just sitting around and waiting for people to come over and do some repair to the house, I thought I’d do it again. Enjoy, won’t you?
Sgt. Rock: The Prophecy – Sold very well, though there was some initial resistance from the older Rock fans to the non-Joe Kubert alternate covers. However, I am now getting requests from those fans for the other covers.
Showcase Presents – Hard to judge what’s going to sell. The Metamorpho volume did very well, the Justice League volume just kinda sat there. Green Arrow didn’t move as expected, but we sold out of Jonah Hex and House of Mystery immediately. Maybe the oddball titles are more in demand…if that’s the case, I expect Haunted Tank to do tremendously well.
Fury: Peacemaker – The first issue hasn’t exactly taken off, perhaps because people who want to read Garth Ennis’ take on the character preferred the over-the-top, black humored MAX line version to the relatively played-straight version in this series. It’s a good read, and maybe first issue sales will pick up once we get two or three issues in.
Mickey Mouse and Friends – I wish I could make sense of this title. Of the Disney comics, the Mickey titles always pale in sales comparison to the Duck books. And some months, this current series just sits there on the rack and doesn’t move a single copy. Then, for a few issues in a row, it’ll sell through completely. Very frustrating come ordering time.
Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories and Uncle Scrooge – These high-end Disney titles ($6.95 the copy) sell okay in general, but they fly out the door in good numbers whenever there’s a new (or, at least, previously-unprinted in the U.S.) Don Rosa story inside.
Sable and Fortune – Combine a Spider-Man villain that isn’t nearly as interesting as Marvel seems to think she is, with a character that was pretty much only done right when his creator, Howard Chaykin, was working on him, and the end result? One D.O.A. mini-series. When it was time to call in order reductions on this title to our distributor, the customer rep didn’t seem terribly surprised.
Alias comics in general – Tenth Muse does okay, due to local artists working on the book. Other Alias titles…not so much.
Conan – Still selling well, with good back issue movement. Beginning to see an increase in interest in the original Marvel mags and comics again, too.
Schizo #4 – The long-awaited new release from Ivan Brunetti is selling okay for us, given the unusual size and price point…just had to put in my third reorder.
Maze Agency – First issue sold okay, second issue selling primarily to people who were fans of the previous Maze Agency series.
Freshmen – The “created by Seth Green” novelty has worn off. Sales way down.
Nodwick – Not a big seller, but with a vocal and loyal following.
Jonah Hex – Still maintaining its strong sales, with good back issue movement. I was lucky enough to get copies of #1 and #2 before DC ran out, so I’m able to feed demand for the time being.
Spider-Man titles – Sensational Spider-Man #23 seems to have confused a few folks…”What’s this? Where are the first 22 issues?” “It used to be the Marvel Knights Spider-Man title.” “What?” It’s selling okay, and that striking cover helps (hey, I happen to like Angel Medina’s work). The other Spider-titles are beginning to show more movement after an initial resistance to the 12-part “Other” storyline, with people catching up on the back issues they originally skipped. The variant/alternate covers for each “Other” chapter, while popular at first, no longer seem to be in demand. I think it was the “Peter Porker” cover that killed it.
Simpsons titles – Still strong movers, both as a new issue and as a back issue. Trade sales are good as well.
Speakeasy comics in general – Well, Beowulf does okay for us, anyway.
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »
