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I suppose I should probably get around to discussing your responses to my inquiry about how folks feel regarding DC’s New 52 initiative. …Especially since, thanks to Jim, we’re up to 52 comments! Coincidence? …Nah.
I’m probably going to go through over the next day or so and respond more thoroughly to specific comments, but the first thing that I noticed was that a few people are not entirely thrilled with Action Comics thus far, citing plot or art concerns. And, I can understand that….
A PROGRESSIVE RUIN ACTION ALERT! Okay, I just deleted several rambling paragraphs about changes to the Superman franchise and how this new status quo may be interfering with Morrison’s storytelling, or at least reader interaction with same, and blah blah blah you can read what I already wrote about some of my disconnect with this New 52 Superman here. In essence, I think Morrison may have been better served picking up from where the previous Superman creative teams left off, and just telling crazy new stories with the franchise’s toys (like he did with his New X-Men run) without having to deal with these editorially-mandated alterations. Of course, “Superman’s New Costumes!” gets more real world media attention than “Mad Scottish Writer Takes Over Superman, Vows Revenge” so that probably wasn’t going to happen.
Anyway, a lot of what I wrote felt awfully dismissive of people’s reactions to the actual plotting and pacing of the stories, which I totally wasn’t intending to do, so out all that went. I do think there’d be less of a disconnect if it were stories about the Superman we knew and not the post-Flashpoint version, but that wouldn’t necessarily address any storytelling concerns folks might have. I mean, I like Morrison’s Action quite a bit, and it’s selling very well for us, but I can see where people might not be so into it. “‘Your mileage may vary,’ he clichéd.”
I do admit that I’m not sure I like how Jimmy Olsen is being drawn in Action. I prefer the “Representational Archie Andrews” version of the character.
Urgh. My struggling over even that bit of incoherent weblogging took up all my ProgRuin time tonight, and then some, so I’ll get to your specific comments and such tomorrow. Especially those terrible, terrible things being said about Swamp Thing.
…Yes, today’s post was bit of a carwreck. Please enjoy its flaming glory, and I’ll see you tomorrow.
We’ve lost some fine comics folks recently…Batman artist (and man credited with creating the Joker) Jerry Robinson, Captain America cocreator Joe Simon, and fine comic book and comic strip artist Eduardo Barreto. There’s a lot more to those folks than my too-brief intros above, so I suggest reading the linked articles. Or Google around.
In particular, whenever I think of Barreto, I immediately associate him with two things. One, I remember him as the guy who took over from Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez on Atari Force (and did a swell job, by the way); and two, I remember him as the artist, both covers and interiors, for this two-part Kryptonite Man story:
To this day, that
Superman issue remains one of my favorite examples of a real attention-grabbing comic book cover.
So long, Jerry, Joe, and Ed…my condolences to their family, friends, and their fans.
• • •
In entirely unrelated news, I’ve been informed that there may again be a glitch in the RSS feed for this site, and new posts may not turn up as “new” in the feeds. If you’re not seeing new posts from me in your readers, unsubscribe then resubscribe and see if that fixes things. I’ll test things from my end over the next day or three and see what I can determine.
…If you’re not having problems getting new posts from my site in your feed, please disregard everything I just said. If you don’t read my site, you stink. So there.
Due to some health issues and other real-world concerns, I don’t have my monthly End of Civilization post ready for today. Sorry about that…it’ll be up tomorrow, with any luck.
Pal Dorian does have his Previews for Gays for last month’s Previews up, so please go enjoy that.
…I’ll see you folks tomorrow. Thanks for your patience.
The California tax law that caused Amazon to boot CA residents from their Associates program has been repealed, so my Amazon search box and links have returned to the sidebar. Just in case, you know, you happen to need to buy a $3000 camera and are stuck on where to go for one.
Also, click on the Bureau Chiefs link and pick up something from there while you’re at it. I get no direct commission from that, aside from a mild sense of bemusement that someone, somewhere, might be drinking coffee out of a mug with my “ATM Machine” gag on it.
So here’s what my original plan was:
After posting the final Sluggo Saturday and writing up my goodbyes, farewells, and amens, my initial intention was to do “Satan Saturdays.” However, I found I didn’t have immediate access to a sufficient number of devilish images to use for this project, so the plan changed slightly, to what you’ve been seeing me do over the last few months.
And…well, I wasn’t completely satisfied with the results. I mean, they were okay, I guess…I’m inordinately proud of myself for the Sea Devils Saturday entry, for example. But it felt a little forced to me, and turning these things up was more of a chore than a joy. And most importantly, they just weren’t tickling that same part of my brain that the Sluggo Saturdays were.
My goal was to do the “[character name beginning with the letter S] Saturday” thing for a year, and on the anniversary of that last Sluggo Saturday post, drop in a new Sluggo Saturday completely without notice. And then continue on with other characters, as before. Obviously, I didn’t make it that far.
So, um…apologies for making such a big deal out of my dropping the feature. I really intended to retire it, honest. But just when I thought I was out of Sluggo, Sluggo pulls me back in.
This doesn’t mean I plan on doing Sluggo Saturday every Saturday again, though…I’m going to try to keep it a little more sporadic than that, running when inspiration strikes. I’m also not continuing the other “S-Saturday” feature, unless, again, I come up with a good’un. Other than that, I have no idea what I’m going to be doing with my Saturday posts since I don’t have another regular feature planned. I suppose I could always go back to characters angrily pointing at this.
My blogging comrade Johanna mentioned to me that yesterday’s post didn’t pop up in her Google blog reader, and I’ve had one or two other people note similar issues. And, as I think about it, I think I noticed at least one post not making it through to my own feed reader.
Looking at my RSS feeds, this link (the one found via the “syndicate” button in the upper right hand corner of the site) gives me a feed where the posts are timed and dated with the actual times I’ve finalized them, while this link (which happens to be the feed I use in my own reader) gives me my posts with the times I put on them (usually 12:01 AM). Other than that, is there any real difference between the two RSS feeds I’m not aware of?
Anyway, I’m sure that’s all very interesting. Perhaps it’s just a glitch in the system, but if you don’t see a new post from me in the feed reader when you expect there to be one, just come straight here to progressiveruin.com. There’ll probably be something goin’ on.
Well, except today, since I got in late Thursday night, and I’m too tired to do anything but do some linky-linky:
- Pals Dorian and Ken present their monthly trailer reviews, which is always one of my favorite things to read on the internettings.
- Quite possibly the best thing to come out of this whole Fear Itself crossover nonsense.
- A little late linking to this, but pal Andrew presents a Nobody’s Favorite entry with a character I remember seeing on covers and such way back when, but I don’t think I ever read an actual comic involving her (aside from a brief appearance in 52, I guess). I honestly had no idea what her deal was all these years ’til reading Andrew’s post.
- And I hope Johanna got a laugh out of the title to today’s post!
As you may have noticed, I’ve been in bit of a Low Content Mode for the last few days. Sorry about that, but on the days I wasn’t feeling under the weather, I was otherwise occupied with Real Life stuff and haven’t had the time or energy to put together my typical way-overwritten commentary on things barely anyone cares about.
I’m not going anywhere, but I’m just going about it a bit more slowly at the moment. I’ll be back to normal operating standards, such as they are, soon.
In the meantime, here’s the variant cover by Ivan Reis for Brightest Day Aftermath: The Search for Swamp Thing #2, due out this week at your local funnybook store:
Yes, the Constantine/Superman interaction
is about as awkward as you’d think. More details
here at the DC Comics blog, where it was apparently posted a month ago and I somehow missed it. …It’s a hard thing, gettin’ older and slower.
So now that I finally started using my Tumblr site, I believe I finally found a purpose for it (aside from using it to comment on friends’ posts and reblogging awesome things, like this unused Superman versus Titano cover by Curt Swan). I think I may be using it as a “commentary track” or “greatest hits” supplement for this site, revisiting old posts and images and providing some additional info, background material, or just reminding folks of some of the older, sillier stuff. Okay, I did just repost that recent Klarion pic but c’mon, that pic is fantastic.
In other news…I’m sure most of you are aware by now of the Diamond street dates thing, in which retailers can get their comics on Tuesday in order to prep them for Wednesday sale, and woe betide you if you sell them early. I hear tell that Diamond has “secret shoppers” out there in the wild, enforcing the Wednesday street dates. Well, considering I yell even at Employee Aaron if he even looks at the books as I’m breaking down the order, I think I’m pretty safe there.
But anyway, this Tuesday, we had a large order of gaming product come in from Diamond, along with our usual comics order. I mean, a very large order. It was all prepaid for by a customer, so we had the coin of the realm on hand to take care of it, but still, it’s a bit imposing when you check the status of your UPS shipment and discover sixty boxes waiting for you. There’s always that fear that maybe your finger slipped while placing your orders three months ago and you accidentally ordered 15,000 copies of Green Hornet: Aftermath #4 and they all turned up today and OH GOD. But no, it was just the games stuff, and it was about fifty boxes all of approximately the same size and shape and while Aaron and I were tempted to build a fort with them, alas, we were too busy.
It was also a fairly sizable comics ship week as well, with a handful of notable items, like Superman #713, the next issue after the surprise Krypto fill-in for the scheduled Muslim superhero story. Some folks claimed the fill-in had something to do with the powers-that-be not liking the originally-planned story showing Superman rescuing a kitten, as it undermined the strength of the character or something. Well…guess what happens in this new issue? Go on, guess. Okay, it involves a roof, not a tree, but if anyone’s really going to split hairs over that, they are welcome to jump up my hinder.
Oh, and Superman #713 has this awesome Jeff Smith variant, and they should totally give Smith his own Superman series to do. (And speaking of Smith, the new issue of Rasl is out this week, too.)
The next issue of the Flashpoint: Frankenstein and the Creatures of the Unknown mini is also released this week, which turned out to be the only Flashpoint book I’m reading. I wasn’t going to be reading any of them, but those cats over at the War Rocket Ajax podcast convinced me to give it a try via their discussion of it on the show, and they were right: this is the stuff.
And this action figure is out this week. This is a gargantuan hunk of plastic. You could probably concuss a pony with this thing. I am praying this is how Tom Hardy looks in The Dark Knight Rises.
- Those of you who are on the Tumblr, and didn’t want to interact with me there because my regular Tumblr site Estate 4.1 depressed the hell out of you…well, I remembered that I had grabbed the “mikester” user name there a long time ago, but never did anything with that account, so Mike Sterlng’s Progressive Tumblr is now open for business. Mostly I’m just using it so I can comment on and occasionally reblog friends’ posts without breaking the Estate 4.1 “character.”
Estate 4.1 will still be continuing, so don’t you worry your pretty little heads over that.
- Bully, the Bull Who Is Stuffed and a Bull And Is Stuffed Also, sticks it to comic book stickers!
- This week’s Nobody’s Favorites is a character that…I actually sort of liked the idea of, just for how crazy it sounded.
- MAVERICK PUNCH!
- So the Dark Knight Rises teaser poster for the film is out. Kind of a neat design.
- H at the Comic Treadmill writes about currently taking a hiatus from comics and the previous times he’d done so.
…I was trying to think if I’d ever had a comics hiatus, and…well, not since I’ve started selling the things, obviously, but before that? I think once I started buying comics regularly, I never stopped. My purchasing dipped a bit at times, sure. And even now, the number of comics I actually pick up each week is pretty low. But I’ve never hit a point where I felt the need to give them up entirely. I suspect even at my lowest ebb I’d still be buying Swamp Thing. If there was one coming out, of course.
- And I wanted to post a special thanks to Matt and Lynnea, readers of the site who were nice enough to stop by the store, say “hi!” and see me in all my disheveled, unshaven and sweaty glory. Yes, they were just that lucky. Thanks again for visiting, guys!
So it was several years ago, back in the glittering Golden Age of the late ’80s/early ’90s, when pal Rob was perusing one of the then-new Kitchen Sink Press Ernie Bushmiller’s Nancy strip collections and he showed me a particular panel that tickled his funnybone:
And though I was not a
Nancy fan at the time, I shared in Rob’s amusement at that particular panel, one of a sequence of Sluggo blatantly goofing off at work while his boss glared at him. But that one panel, with him playing the harmonica, seemed especially transgressive and hilarious. The pure joy on Sluggo’s face was particularly endearing.
As I said, I wasn’t a Nancy fan. By that I don’t mean I hated the strip, or was actively opposed to it. I simply hadn’t been exposed to enough of it. I was aware of it, certainly, but mostly through second-hand sources, such as Bill Griffith’s occasional forays into Bushmillerian topics in his Zippy the Pinhead strips, or via the occasional parody (such as in Mad, or Mark Newgarden’s “Love’s Savage Fury” from Raw Magazine). And I’d read enough articles in comic ‘zines and historical overviews to know that Bushmiller’s Nancy strips were, to some extent, not held in the highest regard.
But given that my early exposures to the strip were via people and sources who enjoyed and outright celebrated (while acknowledging the peculiarity) of Bushmiller’s Nancy, that is probably what inclined me toward learning to appreciate it in all its oddball simplicity, with its surreal charm and its cornball gags. I acquired my own copies of the Kitchen Sink reprint volumes, and would pick up copies of the various Nancy comic books (containing both Bushmiller reprints and new stories by other creators) when the opportunity arose.
I’m not sure what really prompted me to start doing Sluggo Saturdays, other than 1) I tended to use Saturday as a “down” time on my site, simply posting an image or two, and 2) I’d been going to the Sluggo well an awful lot on my site at the time, and figured I could confine his appearances to just one specific day a week. And 3) this was a fantastic picture.
Also, I originally planned to only run with this feature for a year, but #52 ended up being on Free Comic Book Day, and that didn’t seem right to me. So I decided to shoot for 100, since you know how we comic book dudes like our round numbers, but realized that’d put me four short of a two year run. And we comic book dudes like our anniversaries, too, so the two-year run won out.
I was trying to pin down which Sluggo Saturday was my favorite, and it’s rough. There were a few missteps along the way, to be sure: I was never happy with the caption on this one (a bit too on the nose), this one doesn’t even really have a gag, sometimes I tried too hard, and…um, I meant well, honest. Plus, I notice that I hadn’t quite figured out what exactly my take was going to be on Sluggo Saturday by the second installment.
But the most popular Sluggo Saturday on the site, I think, and one of my own personal favorites, was this one, where it was hard to believe that that particular bit of dialogue actually appeared in a comic. Though I do like this one for being appalling, and this one for being a great example of how off-model the comic book versions of Nancy and Sluggo would occasionally be. And for this I can only apologize.
I always enjoyed when someone would be inspired by a Sluggo Saturday post to generate their own variations of the image, such as what Kevin did to this panel using my own face, and Nat and Bully both had some fun with the same pic.
And this pic has been the wallpaper on my cellphone almost since the day I first posted it on the site.
The other odd side effect from my parade of Sluggo appreciation comes from its pairing with my other funnybook obsession, Swamp Thing. Now, this image predates Sluggo Saturday, and I’d actually requested the pairing, but I feel I should re-present this Christmas gift hand-drawn by Employee Aaron:
However, a year or two later,
Awesome Hospital‘s
Matt Digges was good enough to gift me with this fantastic
House of Secrets #92 tribute featuring You-Know-Who:
And I am still regularly emailed, Twittered, and Facebooked with links and images regarding our favorite unkempt ruffian. In fact, just a couple of days ago, reader Dan sent along this Bill Sienkiewicz convention sketch obtained a while back by his friend Jaan. WARNING: cannot be unseen:
This is currently the wallpaper on the store computer. None who gaze upon it can look away.
Special thanks to readers Alan and Paul and to pal Nat for sending along material for use in this project of mine. And special thanks to pal Andres, who loaned me all kinds of great Nancy and Sluggo material that I used here, and was even good enough to gift me with my own copy of Brian Walker’s The Best of Ernie Bushmiller’s Nancy.
I suspect I’m not done with Nancy or Sluggo on this site. After all, we have the complete Nancy collections forthcoming from Fantagraphics to look forward to. I can’t wait to dig into those once they start coming out. And you never know when I may come across another great image I absolutely have to share. In the meantime, there’s this Tumblr site which is presenting Bushmiller panels, allowing us to contemplate the weird world in which Nancy and Sluggo live, without the burden of context or meaning. Strangely smoothing. There’s also this site offering up scans of vintage Nancy and Fritzi Ritz strips clipped from newspapers. Remember newspapers? And here’s this link post of mine from (Good Lord) about five years ago, which probably has suffered a bit of link-rot since then, but the YouTube video link, at least, is still good. Plus, I explain that one panel. You know which one.
Of course, the question still stands: why Sluggo? Why spend two years’ worth of Saturdays scanning assorted panels and attaching occasionally-amusing captions to them? What is it about Sluggo that is so compelling?
Because Sluggo is the kind of dude who’ll sit there at his work desk and happily play his harmonica while his boss watches, that’s why.
• • •
Like I said at the end of
the last Sluggo Saturday entry…thanks for reading and enjoying this little project of mine. I heard from more than a few of you telling me that you’ve gained a new appreciation for Nancy and Sluggo, and that makes me very happy.
Thanks again, and I’ll see you tomorrow.
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