Yes, I know about the Swordquest retailer incentive comics, too.

§ July 17th, 2017 § Filed under this week's comics § 3 Comments

Minor SPOILERS ahead:

So usually when I pick up an issue of DC’s recent “Rebirth” titles, since everything has two covers (at least) now, I’ll pick the cover with the image I like the most. I mean, duh, right? With Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps, that decision is made easy by the fact that every biweekly issue has, as an option, a cover by Kevin Nowlan. I likes me the the Kevin Nowlan.

The comic itself I’ve been enjoying…well, quite a bit, actually. The focus right now is on the integration of former adversaries the Yellow Lantern Corps with the Green Lantern Corps into one big happy space cop family, and the subsequent bumps in the road, plus some subplotty stuff with GL Kyle Rayner hitting a rough patch with his paramour, the Yellow Lantern leader Sora. It’s actually all quite entertaining and very soap-opera-y in the best sense of the term, even if this book (like its companion title Green Lanterns more often than not seems to be about dealing with internal issues relating to the various Corps and their histories and not, say, punching Goldface. I mean, that’s fine, we had decades of punching Goldface, I’m not complaining. There’s just that Mike of Decades Ago who remembers reading Green Lantern before it got all complicated an’ stuff, and kind of missing those days once in a while, but understanding that’s just how it goes, sometimes.

Also, we as a people aren’t talking enough about Space Ape.
 
 

One of the very first things I bought on eBay (aside from the Swamp Thing Pencil Sharpener) was a still-sealed-in-the-box copy of Galaxian for the Atari 2600. No, not for the video game itself (though that did sort of kick off a brief nostalgia-fueled wave of Atari cartridge collecting, but that’s another story), but for the pack-in Atari Force comic book. You see, during the original wave of Atarimania, I acquired three of the games that had the AF comics, but never did get the other two. But then, along comes the eBay, and suddenly I can complete that set (along with finally getting a copy of Berzerk, a game I never got way back when as a friend had it and I could play it at his house).

I often thought about getting the other comics Atari had packed into their games. I mean, there aren’t that many of them, but I had my chance at getting Swordquest #2 and #3 without buying the cartridges, as the previous place of employment had ’em available singly at one point. And, basically, I just never got around to it.

But here’s Dynamite Comics, putting out a bunch of Atari-related comics, and as a retailer incentive they offered reproductions of the original pack-in comic from Centipede. Yeah, it’s a silly thing to want to have, but I’m glad I have it. It’s got nice art by Howard Post of Harvey and Star Comics fame, and, um, I may have liked it a little more than the new Centipede comic that it was the incentive for. I think I was expecting more High Fantasy (or at least Semi-High) like the old mini-comic, than the apocalyptic sci-fi war comic that we got. I mean, it’s not bad, and I’ll come back for issue #2, but I’m not quite sure I’m getting the setting…? It’s not Earth, but an alien world that’s just like a slightly more futuristic Earth, but they’ve heard of Earth and observed its broadcasts? Yeah, I know, that’s the thing that’s tripping me up about a dude standing along against the invasion of a space centipede. Hey, what can I tell you, I hit a bump, then I hit a bump.
 
 

Yes, I’m one of those people who bought the original Mage more-or-less as it was coming out in the ’80s (I think I started about halfway through and picked up the rest as back issues), then read Hero Defined in the late ’90s, and have been waiting for this ever since. I think that puts me squarely in the Mage “30+ Year” Club, patiently anticipating the arrival of the concluding mini. It’s very much the “old warhorse not impressed by these cocky new kids” story, but it’s Matt Wagner and it’s Mage and it’s great and it was sadly missed. And I was only half-joking about wanted “The Hero Disco-Dances” as the follow-up.
 
 

Okay, technically this isn’t from “this week’s comics” as per the tag on this post (but then again, the previous comics aren’t from this week, either), but I didn’t get around to reading it ’til last night and there you have it. Mostly, I just wanted to note the plot point (that Shadow has met Batman before, but “clouded his mind” to make him forget) makes all the previous Shadow/Batman crossovers canon. Well, “canon,” you know how DC is. And there’s a sequence showing other DC heroes being killed off, so that’s hard to reconcile. But, you know, close enough!

• • •

So long to Martin Landau of Space: 1999 and Ed Wood fame (yes, I know he did more, but I loved those the most)…Mark Evanier re-presents an interview he did with Landau about his cartooning career. So long also to George Romero…in whatever afterlife that may exist, let us hope that he and Bernie Wrightson are collaborating on one heck of a zombie movie.

3 Responses to “Yes, I know about the Swordquest retailer incentive comics, too.”

  • Jim Kosmicki says:

    FYI- your images have not been showing up in my RSS feed for a few weeks now. I know that Photobucket changed some of its terms, but I don’t know if that’s where you host your images or not. It’s no big deal- if I need the images, I can go to the blog page itself, but I’d want to know if this was happening to my posts.

  • Turan, Emissary of the Fly World says:

    Mentioning Howard Post reminds me of his newspaper comic strip “The Dropouts”…which reminds me that I know it only for being adapted in the Saturday morning TV series ARCHIE’S TV FUNNIES, as I never, ever saw it in an actual newspaper…which further reminds me that I also never saw two of the other strips on that show, “Smokey Stover” and “Emmy Lou,” in newspapers, but at least I once came upon a paperback collection of “Emmy Lou,” and comic strip histories would mention “Smokey Stover”…and this does not really have a point, so I shall stop now.

  • Brad says:

    If it matters, The Dropouts ran in my local paper, so it was an actual newspaper strip. I hope that sets your mind at ease.