Saturday, April 05, 2008I'm only showing you one page, because showing you both pages would kill you.
I also cut out the name of the winner because, well, who knows how he'd feel about this now:
  from Shadowman #42 (Nov. 1995)The second page features the runner-up Shadowman rap, which begins thusly: "Comin' to ya live from the Big Easy Silly, sure, but I think I like these more than the poems from Sandman's letter pages. To repeat: SHADOWMAN RAP CONTEST. The world is large enough to contain even this. Friday, April 04, 2008[SPOILER] It was Rocket Red.
Since I may have confused one or two people yesterday, here's the source image for that post:
 That was DC's "characters that have been around for a while may actually be alien infiltrators" mini-series from a few years ago. I'd been meaning to do that mash-up ad for a while now, and I guess the day after the new "alien infiltration" series Secre Invasion came out was as good of a time as any. Secret Invasion seems to be selling well so far...not with the frenzy that Civil War did, but it's doing okay. As long as it avoids 1) scheduling issues that drag the whole main Marvel publishing line down with it, and 2) Clone Thor, it should go well. Not that those two points ultimately affected Civil War much at all, other than annoying retailers and fans (but not to the point where they stopped reading or cut orders). I'm also wondering how any real world coverage (if any) is going to work out...though I suspect Kevin is right on the mark. One side thing to the Secret Invasion is the "random" Skrull variants for various Marvel titles. This week Young X-Men and New Exiles had these variants, which were just the regular covers with one of the characters given a green face (and arm, in the case of the Exiles book). And next week Spider-Girl is supposed to have a Skrull variant as well. These variants are apparently inserted into the orders randomly, with no particular ratio of regular cover versus Skrull cover, and as variants go, they're...not really impressing the customers all that much. It's just a little green ink on an otherwise "normal" cover...everyone just thinks it's silly. (As opposed to the deadly-serious 1/500 glow in the dark sketch covers, but let's not get into that.) Anyway, didn't buy it. Bought this, though:  Many Happy Returns features a new Crossfire story by Mark Evanier and Dan Spiegle, new installments of Licensable Bear™, and, best of all, a new Journey short by William Messner-Loebs! There are a couple of other short strips rounding out the book that didn't do a whole lot for me, but your mileage may vary, as they say. But, really, Crossfire, Licensable Bear™ and new freakin' Journey should be enough to get you to part with your hard-earned coins. And in the interest of full disclosure...yes, I've known publisher Nat for some time, and like him quite a bit, so I may be biased, but c'mon. New Journey, man! And we can apparently look forward to collections of old Journey material from IDW in the near future. Can you tell I liked Journey? Boy, did I enjoy that series. Thursday, April 03, 2008I prefer to think of it as the "Event of the Millennium."
 Wednesday, April 02, 2008Found in the back room.
 This is an ersatz animation cel featuring Rob Liefeld's character of Chapel, dated 1997, that we received for, I don't know, ordering a certain number of comics (i.e. "any") published by Awesome, or something like that. It's just an image, with logos, printed directly on a clear plastic sheet. I don't think there ever was a Youngblood cartoon released...there's no IMDB entry, though there are several references to a Youngblood cartoon being planned, here and there on the 'net. This site has images of what look like actual production cels, not (apparently) mass-produced like our Chapel "cel." While I was looking around for more info, I came across the Wikipedia entry for the Youngblood comic book, which included this note at the top of the page:  Sometimes, the jokes just write themselves. Tuesday, April 01, 2008All Star Batman and Robin? "All Star Batman!"
 All Star Batman and Robin All Star Batman All Star Batman All Star Batman All Star Batman All Star Batman All Star Batman All Star Batman All Star Batman, All Star Batman and Robin All Star Batman All Star Batman All Star Batman All Star Batman All Star Batman All Star Batman All Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder. All Star Batman and Robin All Star Batman? All Star Batman All Star Batman All Star Batman...All Star Batman and Robin All Star Batman. All Star Batman All Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder All Star Batman All Star Batman All Star Batman All Star Batman, All Star Batman All Star Batman. All Star Batman All Star Batman and Robin All Star Batman. All Star Batman -- All Star Batman All Star Batman All Star Batman All Star Batman All Star Batman. All Star Batman and Robin All Star Batman. All Star Batman All Star Batman! All Star Batman All Star Batman All Star Batman and Robin, All Star Batman and Robin All Star Batman, All Star Batman. All Star Batman All Star Batman All Star Batman All Star Batman All Star Batman All Star Batman All Star Batman and Robin. All Star Batman All Star Batman All Star Batman All Star Batman and Robin All Star Batman and Robin, All Star Batman All Star Batman All Star Batman. All Star Batman All Star Batman All Star Batman All Star Batman All Star Batman. All Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder All Star Batman All Star Batman All Star Batman! All Star Batman and Robin All Star Batman All Star Batman (All Star Batman All Star Batman), All Star Batman All Star Batman and Robin, All Star Batman All Star Batman. All Star Batman All Star Batman and Robin All Star Batman All Star Batman:  All Star Batman All Star Batman and Robin and Robin All Star Batman All Star Batman All Star Batman and Robin. All Star Batman All Star Batman All Star Batman and Robin All Star Batman (All Star Batman and Robin) All Star Batman? All Star Batman and Robin All Star Batman All Star Batman All Star Batman and Robin All Star Batman?  All Star Batman and Robin: "All Star Batman and Robin All Star Batman All Star Batman All Star Batman All Star Batman [sic] All Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder. All Star Batman All Star Batman All Star Batman and Robin!" "All Star Batman and Robin." All Star Batman, All Star Batman, All Star Batman, All Star Batman...All Star Batman and Robin. All Star Batman and Robin "All Star Batman" All Star Batman All Star Batman All Star Batman and Robin, All Star Batman All Star Batman. All Star Batman All Star Batman All Star Batman All Star Batman All Star Batman and Robin, All Star Batman All Star Batman and Robin. All Star Batman and Robin All Star Batman. All Star Batman and Robin:
EDIT (4/2): Good God, did I really type all that? What was I thinking? Anyway, have some screenshots of the event: 1 2 3 4 Monday, March 31, 2008The loosest usage of the term "luckily" you'll ever read.
Still going through the Box of Misfit Variant Covers that I talked about last week, scanning 'n' prepping them for sale in the eBay store. And seeing these two comics in the box reminded me of how immensely popular these titles once were:
  Dark Minds and Warlands were strong, popular sellers, at least for a while, and it seemed like every time you turned around, there was some new tie-in/crossover/mini-series popping up related to one or the other. And there were about a million variant covers pumped out in association with these series as well. Okay, maybe I exaggerate slightly. Here's the Warlands "Dynamic Forces Exclusive Alternate Canadian Cover," only 2,500 printed:  Hope all you Canadians out there enjoyed that. Sorry for the crooked scan. This next variant is...well, it's appallingly ugly, frankly:  The appeal of a variant (aside from any alleged "scarcity") would be, I'm assuming, a compelling alternate cover image that far outshines the non-exclusive, non-variant cover that all the common folk would own. While the original covers for the above series are no great shakes, that variant is just plain yucky. And maybe that Dynamic Forces logo could have been a bit bigger. It had a print run of 2,000 copies. I wonder how many of them made it into customers' hands? This next variant isn't from the box of old variants, but is instead from last week's release of Army of Darkness/Xena #1:  Dynamite Entertainment sure likes its variants. Most of their comics have a set of multiple covers that comprise the regular print run...if there are two covers, the run is split 50/50, four covers 25/25/25/25, etc. So those variants are usually easy to find. In addition to that, there are the "virgin" variants (cover art sans any cover text or logos), and then there is the "negative" variant, with the colors inverted, as above. These are doled out based on orders, like 1 for every 25 or 50 or what have you. I understand the appeal of the virgin covers, but the negative covers? They don't do anything for me. Do people like how those look, or are they just being bought because "they might be worth money someday?" Who knows? But they do occasionally sell at the shop, and what doesn't move at the shop, I try to move in the eBay store, which is why AoD/Xena is going up with the Dynamic Forces stuff. Better to try to find a customer somewhere for it now, while interest is up, rather than waiting ten years and trying to find a home for, oh, say, Demonslayer. Speaking of which...that Nine Rings of the Wu-Tang comic I was listing last week? Sold it. Almost immediately. Luckily I have more copies of that very comic to relist. "Luckily." Sigh. In other news:
Sunday, March 30, 2008Yippee!
 Ernie Bushmiller sure was fond of using the "yippee" variant name for hippies. Actually, it does makes being a hippie sound like more fun. "Yippee! We're counterculture! Well, turn it up, man!" Er, anyway. I was just going to leave it at that and take the day off, but here's a couple of things to lay on you to close out my week:
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