I don’t know if that’s a frown or a robot moustache.
“Hey, Enndo, can you go wiggle the handle so the toilet will stop running?”
“Hey, Enndo, can you obey NoMan?”
“…Yeah, that’s what I thought.”
You are currently browsing the archives for March, 2012
images from Superheroes #1 (January 1967);
Progressive Ruin presents…the End of Civilization.
Usually I have a few words of introduction to my End of Civilization posts, but after looking at this cover for the April 2012 edition of Diamond Previews:
…all I have to say is this:
And now, we rejoin the End of Civilization, already in progress:
p. 66 – Marvel Classic Character Series 2 #1:
I don’t really have any specific to say about the statue itself…
…though admittedly “petulant little boy pout” is a brave choice of expression for a statue. However, I find myself curious about this:
“Hmmm…I was waiting for a good jumping-on point to start buying these statues! A new number one? I’M IN.”
p. 74 – Before Watchmen: Minutemen #1:
Look for the follow-up mini-series fIREHOSE in 2013!
p. 76 – Before Watchmen: Comedian #1:
I swear, the more I see this cover, the funnier it gets. Appropriate given that it’s the Comedian, but I’m not sure that was the intention. But man, just look at that, and imagine it staring back at you from the comic rack. …And into your unquiet dreams.
p. 132 – Superman Family Adventures #2:
If even the Tiny Titans guys have trouble making that Superman costume look appealing…well, I don’t know what to tell you.
p. 150 – Mars Attacks #1:
55 different covers? You’d probably have to go to 50 different stores to find them all!
Ah, but I kid. But I can imagine what the price guide listings for this are going to look like: “‘Destroying A Dog’ cover – $45.00. All other covers – cover price.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, the other fifty-five covers weren’t enough? You gotta ask about another one?”
p. 151 – Mars Attacks #1 Complete Comic Book Box Set:
And then there’s this…a complete set of all 55 covers, plus a bonus 56th cover only available in this set, for only $199.95. …I absolutely admire this in all its evil glory.
p. 166 – Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Vol. 1 – Change Is Constant Deluxe Edition:
Like that one time a big-time movie director decided to change the Ninja Turtles into aliens? That was pretty deluxe right there.
p. 236 – Richie Rich Gems: Treasures TP:
You know, up to a certain age, you kinda want to be Richie Rich and have access to all that cash and neat stuff, and past a certain age, you hope that the proletariat, as represented by Freckles and Pee Wee, rises up and drag Richie through the streets.
p. 256 – Soldier of Fortune Magazine Presents #1: Stealth:
1. No, it’s not about the not-evil-but-misunderstood robot plane.
2. Didn’t Soldier of Fortune magazine have, in the 1980s, a comic in the back pages with some scantily-clad gal explaining different types of military equipment and tactics? Where’s our collection of those strips?
2a. Don’t ask how I know about that.
3. Nothing to do with these comics, but I remember a classified ad in the back of an issue of SOF offering the services of “Jon Sable, Freelance.” …In-joke from the editors, or innovative marketing from First Comics? I’ll never know.
3a. Don’t ask why I was looking at the classified ads in Soldier of Fortune.
p. 279 – Dark Shadows #9:
“Another hilarious issue of Dark Shadows, a perfect jumping on point for fans of this year’s hit comedy sensation!”
p. 318 – Alien The Illustrated Story:
A reprint of the Heavy Metal adaptation of the film by Archie Goodwin and Walt Simonson…hopefully lacking the original’s “special feature” of the binding falling apart if you looked at it sideways.
p. 345 – The Amazing Spider-Man Kit:
Hmmm…having this tiny Spider-Man gives me an idea for my next short film:
“OW! A–a Spider-Man! It bit me! But why is it burning so? Why is it glowing that way?”
LOOK OUT, HERE COMES…THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN-MAN!
…I need a vacation.
p. 354 – Porn King The Autobiography of John C. Holmes SC:
…Which kind of begs the question about this shipping to comic book shops in the first place.
p. 371 – V for Vendetta “Accountable” Black T-shirt:
Fight back against The Man with this fully-licensed Warner Brothers product!
p. 383 – Universal Monsters Select Metaluna Mutant:
SON OF A…you mean, if I’d just waited, what, a decade and a half or so and not bought the Interocitor-less Metaluna Mutant action figure that was offered way back when, I could have had the Interocitor-laden Metaluna Mutant now being offered instead? Oh, the tragedy!
p. 384 – Walking Dead Mini-Mates Series 1:
Don’t have any joke or sarcastic comment here…just wanted to point out the mini-fig with its intestines hanging out. That’s…certainly something.
p. 391 – Mr. Potato Head The Wizard of Oz Collector’s Set:
Man, what the hell did the Cowardly Potato fall into? Was he following the Brown Brick Road? Were there no “Curb Your Little Dog Toto, Too?” signs? …Ew.
p. 391 – Battlestar Galactica Lt. Starbuck / Android Sister Action Figures:
No…it’s too terrible, too awful! Not an action figure of…that!
No, no, not of Dirk Benedict. I mean of this:
p. 406 – Star Trek Captain Kirk 1/4 Scale Statue:
Here’s a little something special for my pals Lene and Jungle Kitty over that the Shatner-centric Look at His Butt podcast:
There you go, ladies. Enjoy.
p. 407 – Star Wars Logray Mini-bust:
Wow, they’re sure starting early on the Johnny Depp merchandise for that new Lone Ranger movie.
p. 431 – The Avengers Movie Life-Size Stand-Ups:
Just as fully-dimensional as the characters in the film!
p. 435 – Star Trek The Next Generation Facepalm Magnet Set:
I bet the guy who first started this particular Internet image “meme” is really, really irritated right now. Perhaps even facepalming himself. …IRONY!
p. 442 – Monopoly The Godfather Collector’s Edition:
“Just when I thought I passed GO…they pull me back to JAIL.”
p. 442 – Phineas & Ferb Collector’s Edition:
Do not pass GO, do not…um, make some kind of reference to a TV show you’ve never seen. …Sorry, gang, I can’t watch everything.
p. 442 – Street Fighter Collector’s Edition:
Do not pass GO…in fact, just beat the holy living crap out of GO.
Marvel Previews p. 67 – Marvel Silver Surfer Sculpted Bottle Opener:
You know Galactus totally used the Silver Surfer for just this very task between eating planets:
“TO ME, MY HERALD…GALACTUS MUST POP OPEN THIS BOTTLE OF COSMIC BREWSKI.”
“But, my master, I must surf the spaceways! I must fly amongst the stars, I must…oh, okay, fine.”
POP…fssssh. “AH, THAT HITS THE SPOT OF GALACTUS.”
“…This is so degrading.”
So you may have noticed…
…that I’ve been in bit of a Low Content Mode this week. Sorry about that, but there’s been a confluence of events and moods and time constraints that’s been in the way of producing daily content here. Which also means that I’ve not yet finished the new End of Civilization post, which usually would be up the Thursday after the release of Diamond Previews. There will be an EoC post, but it’ll have to wait ’til tomorrow.
Again, I’m not goin’ anywhere, but your pal Mike needed just a slight break from the site for a while. I still love you! Well, like you. …”Like” you, at least. I mean, I’m not totally disgusted by you, by any means. Mostly.
Just so there’s something about comics in this post, I did read this week’s new issue of Superman, with the debut of the new creative team. Other than editorial notes pointing out tie-ins to stories in other current DC titles I’ll never get around to reading, I thought this issue was…a little better than the previous storyline. At the very least, I felt like the character of Clark/Superman was a little more relatable than in the earlier issues. Probably didn’t hurt that the new creative team isn’t trying to squeeze 40 pages of story into a 20-page package, which sounds like “hey, getting my money’s worth!” but in practice results more in “infodump” than “story.”
That new costume, though…bleah, I say again.
Yes, it’s another time-savin’ post. Sorry about that.
- That one National Lampoon cover must surely be one of the most mimicked in publishing history…and our little stuffed pal Bully gathers together several examples from the funnybook world.
- Discussing this particular Nobody’s Favorite Alpha Flight character started a brief discussion among a few pals of mine about the early issues of that series and its focus on “body horror”-type stories. Probably an essay in there somewhere, should I ever find the time.
- Dr. Polite Scott takes a look at one of the few Curt Swan-drawn PSAs from Silver Age DC Comics…the article includes links to the other two Swan PSAs.
- So they announced the soundtrack listing for the Avengers movie, and lo, there was a wailing despair heard across the land. I don’t know, the soundtrack doesn’t look that bad.
In which I totally pull the lazy-post and just put up a video.
And now, a speed-accelerated video of the creation of a CGI Swamp Thing:
Swamp Thing from Bryan Wynia on Vimeo.
Neat!
Someday I will have to answer for the things I have inspired.
It came to him in unquiet dreams borne of reading both the recent Nancy Is Happy collection and this site, said reader John L., and thus did he create this most terrifying image. What is seen cannot be unseen:
SLUGGIUS
It says “pucker.”
1. “Anything in your online Britanica [sic],” they mean.
2. Man, what did Heidi ever do to them? “Hey, yeah, take that, the Swiss!” (Well, okay, maybe this.)
3. Remember when bippies roamed the earth, and the betting thereof was repeatedly encouraged? Thankfully, a bippy-based economy never took hold.
4. All in all, I’m frankly not sold on this unholy amalgamation of “nutty stickers” and “daisies.” SEE WHAT YOU’VE DONE, MODERN TECHNOLOGY?
back cover ad from Teen-In #3 (Summer 1969)
And now, three books I’ve barely had a chance to look at.
- So perhaps you gathered that I was a tad excited about Nancy Is Happy, Fantagraphics’ collection of Ernie Bushmiller Nancy dailies from 1943-5. I’m only a couple of dozen pages in so far, which may surprise you, but Nancy is a pleasure to be appreciated at a leisurely pace, and not gulped down like a cheap soda.
Having read and reread and rereread the previous Nancy strip collections and nearly committing all their contents to memory, having some new (relatively speaking) material to enjoy really is a treat. Plus, getting to see some of the more explicitly propagandistic wartime material (Sluggo throwing a firecracker at a globe, which blows off the country of Japan, for example), as well as some of the more politically-incorrect gags (a couple of punchlines which play off the stereotypically-slanted eyes of Nancy’s Chinese friend), is certainly interesting from a historical perspective.
I also like the red lettering for the years and page numbers on each page…really gives the book a unique look. And there’s plenty of Sluggo in this volume. Mike, like Nancy, Is Happy.
- The Complete Peanuts 1983-1984 – holy cow, we’re purt’near the home stretch on the Peanuts reprint books…we’re what, eight, nine books away from the end? It hardly seems possible.
The appeal of the series is of course the “complete” aspect, where we get to see strips that eluded the previous paperback reprintings and are finally seeing the light of day for the first time since originally popping up in the funny pages. I’ve noted before that my prime Peanuts reading was when I was but a young Mikester in the late ’70s/early ’80s, where I read just about every Peanuts book I could get my hands on, thus making the reprint-debut of strips in the Complete Peanuts volumes presenting years prior to about that time of particular interest to me. I missed most of the ’80s Peanuts strips, except possibly for having read them once in the newspaper way back when, which makes these more recent Complete volumes almost all new to me.
A number of years ago, just prior to Peanuts ending, I got back into collecting the paperback reprints of the later strips, which, at that point, seemed to be collecting full dailies for each year, or at least close to it. Thus, once we move into the ’90s volumes for the Complete Peanuts, I’ll likely have read most of those strips…but I’ll keep getting these new collections anyway, because I’m a sad old fanboy who has to have the full set, that’s why.
- Unlike the two books above, which I’ve at least started reading, I haven’t had a chance yet to crack open the latest Smurf book from Papercutz, The Smurf Olympics. At the very least, however, I wanted to mention that I’m glad this particular reprint effort survived the movie promotional push that presumably helped bring it about, even if the “Soon to be a movie / See the movie in theaters now!” blurbs on the front have now morphed into “See the DVD!” A small price to pay to finally get these volumes of classic cartooning back on the shelves.
