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My warranty must have expired, because I took yet
another Saturday off work due to illness, and as such don’t have much more for you today than a brief appreciation of the back cover art from the DC Comics digest
Adventure Comics #498 (April 1983) by Howard Bender and Frank Giacoia. I mean, look, the Spectre is totally fighting a dinosaur.
There were some nice little character pieces drawn on the back covers of a lot of these DC digests, and I think I’ll write a little more on them when I’m a bit more recovered. But in the meantime, seriously — Spectre Vs. Dinosaur:
Think about it, won’t you?
SLUGGO IS WAY PAST
THE PASSION STAGE
from The Best of Ernie Bushmiller’s Nancy (1988) – thanks to pal Andres
Though admittedy,
Archie’s Love Scene is pretty close.
Anyway, the other day we had a large collection of 1980s Archie comics dumped on us, including a whole lot of black and white Archie reprint magazines and digests produced for the Australian market. Sorting through the piles, at first it looked like the publisher just made up a new title for each individual reprint book they published, simply because there were so many different titles, but further investigation revealed that that at there were multiple issues released under at least a few of these banners. But, man, there are just so many. I don’t even think Richie Rich had this many different series in the U.S. over so relatively short a period.
Anyway, here are a few samples of some of the Archie digests (which, unlike the squarebound American Archie digests, are staplebound).
This title feels almost like a Peanuts paperback title: Let’s Hear It for You, Charlie Brown.
Okay, whoever was making up titles for Archie’s Australian editions was apparently at the end of his work day when this one came up.
“Once upon a time there were two beautiful girls who attended Riverdale High School, and they were each assigned very difficult schoolwork. But I took them away from all that and now they pine for me. My name is Archie.”
“Enjoy Archie!” “Well, you know, I kinda like Archie, but don’t really enj….” “ENJOY ARCHIE, or ELSE.” “Geez, okay, fine, here…I’m enjoying Archie, okay? Wheeee.”
Okay, that’s not really making up a new title so much as just adding a different modifier to it. Nighttime Fun with Archie. Driving Fun with Archie. Fantastical Fun with Archie. Ooh, hey, Australian Fun with Archie! Seems like a natural.
I suspect some metacommentary with this particular title. “Geez, just how many comics does this kid have? This goes on and on.” “Hey, there’s our new title!” “Oh, man.”
Here are a few more Australian titles:
Madcap Archie (mad? Why, he’s downright wacky!)
Incredible Archie and Spectacular Archie (sadly no Uncanny Archie or Invincible Archie)
Archie Amusement (“bring me the one called Archie…he amuses me”)
Always Archie (it certainly seems like it)
A Date with Archie (this sounds like it should be a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book, for some reason…”Archie pulls up in his jalopy. If you decide to bail out now, turn to page 23″)
Archie’s Charm (I suspect this title is being ironic)
Archie Action (not as dirty as it sounds)
It’s Archie! (aaah! Look out!)
Archie Again (you can almost feel the lack of caring in this title)
Go Archie (g’wan, get out of here)
All Out with Archie (I like this title a lot)
Forever Archie (it certainly seems like…oh, wait, I said that earlier)
Archie’s Pin-Up Parade (NOTE: contains no pin-ups)
Archie’s Antics (Archie gives tips on using your Atari 800. …Okay, some jokes are just for me, I’m sorry)
Archie’s Triumphs (the thinnest Archie comic ever)
So pal Dana dropped by the shop on Wednesday to bring us some homemade cupcakes in honor of my birthday this past weekend, because she is awesome. Even more awesome was the birthday card she drew for me with the wraparound cover:
Yes, that’s Sluggo and Swamp Thing giving each other the high five. And they’re both wearing sombreros. Note that Sluggo is wearing a sombrero on top of the hat he normally wears. This is the greatest thing ever. (
Here’s a little context for the whole sombreros thing, in case you’d forgotten.)
• • •
In other news:
- The spam catchin’ plug-in on my site seems to be catching genuine comments, and there’s no easily-implementable white list function to correct this issue. Until I can find a little time to tinker with this, if you post a comment and it doesn’t show right away, don’t worry…I go through the spam folder every day and I’ll find and approve your comment eventually. I apologize for the inconvenience.
- Sad to report that my non-readership streak of Antarctic’s books remain unbroken, as, despite my initial hopes for the title, a glance through Time Lincoln didn’t do anything for me. Sorry! No hard feelings, I hope…it’s not you, baby, it’s me.
And, as pointed out in the comments…the Time Lincoln logo is very reminiscent of the Time Warp logo. Probably should have realized that myself…I keep coming across copies of Time Warp at the shop, after all.
- I may have seen this image a couple of weeks ago, and have been dying to link to it once it was posted. And at last, here it is: Chris Sims and Rusty Shackles bring you an installment of Great Comics That Never Happened that has to be seen to be believed. I would buy the hell out of this comic. (SPECIAL NOTE TO MY DAD, WHO READS MY SITE EVERY DAY: Click on “Great Comics” link, Dad.)
- American Vampire #1 – New comic that Stephen King’s involved with somehow. Didn’t order large numbers, since King’s comic marketplace pull reached diminishing returns in very short order. (Though I do like them myself, but I’m an easy mark for King-related work. Who saw Maximum Overdrive, Cat’s Eye and Creepshow 2 in the theatre? This guy.)
- Brave and the Bold #32 – Team-up between Aquaman and the Demon. …Okay, you have me, let’s see what you got, comic. I know it’s going to be heavyhanded and kind of dopey, but so far B&B has been keeping me entertained. Probably for all the wrong reasons, but entertained none the less.
- Green Arrow #31 – Pondered a bit over order numbers on this, since this is the “new direction” for GA. Sales on this series had been pretty abysmal, but the price is dropping to $2.99 and it’s picking up plotlines from Cry for Justice — a comic that, despite internet outrage, sold pretty well for us. Ended up ordering about double what we usually get, and we’ll put in an immediate reorder if it looks like it’s flying off the shelves.
- Green Hornet: Year One #1 – Speaking of things that aren’t selling as expected…well, the first issue of the regular series didn’t exactly fly off the stands when it first came out. But, as time has gone on, and word has apparently gotten out, we’ve had a few more bites. A handful of people each needing to buy one apiece of all the variant covers helps, but it looks like future issues will probably drop down to single digit sales for us, like the rest of Dynamite’s licensed books. Maybe as the movie approaches release we’ll see an upswing in interest.
- Green Lantern Corps #46 – This “Blackest Night” crossover is still like printing money. I figured fatigue would have set in among our customers by now, but sales haven’t flagged in the slightest. I suspect that’ll hit a few weeks into the biweekly Brightest Day series.
- Hit-Monkey#1 2nd printing – The first print of this comic was kind of a surprise seller for us. A rare instance of a 2nd printing from Marvel that’ll actually come in handy.
- Hulk #21/Incredible Hulk #608 – Both in the same week, huh? Couldn’t space ’em out a bit? I’m going to buy ’em both, since Hulk is one of (well, okay, two of) those series I always buy. But still.
- Jughead #200 – Oh, good gravy, it’s up to issue #200 already? It seems like just yesterday they were starting the series over. Oh, Juggie, you misogynistic binge-eater!
- Muppet King Arthur #3 and Muppet Show #3 – Like the Hulk books, I wish these were spaced out a bit, but these are still great comics, regardless of release schedule.
- Siege #3 – Marvel’s latest crossover event started up with a big fizzle for us, but picked up steam in the last month or so. Lots of requests for issues #1 and #2 in anticipation of #3.
- Star Trek Movie Adaptation #2 – Still kind of amazed they’re doing this now. The purpose of comic book movie adaptations is pretty much lost nowadays, given that you can get the actual movie for the price (or less) of the adaptation, usually within a few months of the film leaving the theatres. This ain’t the ’50s anymore.
- Superman Eighty-Page Giant #1 – Okay, maybe I can give you a pass on the previous Superman 80-pagers from the ’60s. But there were three issues of a previous Superman 80-page series only about 10 years ago. Why isn’t this #4? (And don’t get me started on the Uncanny X-Men Annual situation.)
- Time Lincoln – Only took Antarctic Press 26 years, but they finally published something I might want to read:
That’s a fine cover. Yessirree. (And I don’t mean to be harsh on Antarctic…I mean, bless ’em for sticking it out for so long. Just I’ve never seen anything from them that’s ever grabbed my attention. Sorry, can’t be interested in everything!) (I’m not even sure about Time Lincoln yet, since all I’ve seen is the cover.) (And if you’ll forgive another parenthetical aside, that cover has a bit of a Rick Veitch-y feel to it, don’t you think? The Maximortal-ish logo certainly helps. Probably why it appeals so much to me.)
- Uncle Scrooge #389 – An actual conversation I had with a customer about the current Uncle Scrooge series:
Customer: “I don’t like this new Uncle Scrooge. It’s too much of a kiddie comic.”
Me: “Errr….”
- X-Factor Forever #1 – In the tradition of X-Men Forever #1, X-Factor Forever picks up from where the X-Factor continuity left off a decade or so ago, and continues from there outside of the regular Marvel Comics universe.
…
Uh huh. When I can get Man-Thing Forever, where Michael Fleisher picks up from his storylines in Man-Thing volume 2, before Chris Claremont took over, let me know.
Well, post #3000 kind of sneaked up on me, there…I’d been tied up with work stuff and writing projects and tweaking the new version of the site and so on, and didn’t notice it was so close. Even though I had plans for #3000, by the time I was ready to finally start putting them into action, well, there it was. And since comics like to commemorate big “anniversary” type events with issue numbers that end in zeroes, I wanted to do something at least a little special today.
It sort of weirds me out a bit that I’ve been at this as long as I have. I know
other people have done it for longer, and there are plenty of folks out there who have been more prolific in their posting. But for me, personally, it surprises me a bit that I’ve stuck to it for 6 1/4 years, for 3000 posts.
But I’m glad I have. Despite the occasional low moments, the occasional frustrations with the industry and its level of discourse, the occasional feeling of redundancy given the large number of comic blogs out there and what makes me think
I’m so special…
…the fact that
you folks are out there, reading my site, and hopefully enjoying my particular perspective on comics is something that I find quite heartening. I originally started this site just to amuse myself,
pal Dorian, and a few other friends, of both the online and in-real-life sort. And as I’ve mentioned several times before, that I managed to garner an audience beyond that small group of people that have already learned to somewhat tolerate me is a constant surprise.
So I wanted to use today’s post to thank all of you for reading my site. For continually coming back, whether it’s every day or once a week or once a month, whether you just glance at my site once in a while through your feed reader, or whether you just Google image-search my site for pics to hotlink for your Myspace pages. Well, okay, maybe I don’t want to thank those last people, but the rest of you…thank you for reading, and for your comments, emails, and other forms of encouragement for my behavior. And, especially, thank you for putting up with the hopefully-infrequent site glitches, my struggles with commenting systems and WordPress hoohar, and the periodic rants and losses of temper. I always want to provide smooth sailing, but thanks for not abandoning ship when I hit rough waters. (NOTE: I have never actually been on a boat.)
Thanks for sticking around, and I’ll see you all tomorrow.
most images from the Grand Comics Database, a fine resource for your comic-booking needs
…and griping about their employees:
…Superman was juggling African tribal peoples to demonstrate his superpowers, while Spidey looks on:
“Boy, our employees are flaky and unreliable, but at least they don’t run around in long underwear and do weird things with the native folks in other countries!”
“I’ll drink to that, J. Jonah!”
from Superman Vs. The Amazing Spider-Man (1976) by Gerry Conway, Ross Andru & Dick Giordano
…and I’ve had a long Saturday, and I’ve got nothing to post about for Sunday, and it’s still my Birthday Weekend, and so I’m taking today off. However, it is my sister Jeanne’s birthday today, so please wish her a happy one.
And happy birthday yesterday to internet pal and fellow Fake AP Stylebook contributor Andrew Weiss!
Thanks, gang, and I’ll see you tomorrow.
WELL, ACTUALLY
IT’S TODAY
from The Best of Ernie Bushmiller’s Nancy (1988) – thanks to pal Andres
Maybe some of you folks out there with the lifetime subscription to Progressive Ruin remember when I put up this post, where I presented an ad for something called the “Evil-Eye Evader.” For a mere $6.66, you could own a lucky charm capable of protecting you from…well, the Evil-Eye, actually. If some jerk you knew was giving you the mystic whammy with his Evil Eye, this charm apparently allowed you to give that sorry son of a bitch what-for.
Anyway, after putting that post up, reader Reggie appeared in comments (near the bottom) explaining that he in fact had ordered the Evil-Eye Evader (and how it took him quite a while to finally get it from the guy who produced it). He popped up again later to let me know that he actually managed to retrieve the Evader from a friend he’d given it to, and that he was going to send me pictures. A comment was left there at the end of ’08 that he’d sent me the images, but apparently there was a small problem with the e-mail and the attached pictures did not appear. Clearly malevolent magical forces were preventing me from finding the truth.
Well, today is the day Reggie and I have overcome those powers that opposed us, my internet pals. Behold…the EVIL-EYE EVADER:
I like the spookiness of the next image. WOOOOO LOOK OUT EVIL-EYE USERS:
So much mystic might, packed into something barely larger than a quarter. Such is the power of science!
Anyway, by posting these Evil-Eye Evader images on my site, hopefully I’ve warded off any of you folks trying to put your Evil Eyes on me. Take that, you!
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