• Those Church ‘n’ Birdie cats, they pulled a fast one…America’s most beloved comic strip about a comic shop, The Rack, has returned! The cast is reintroduced here, and behold, the first “new look” strip! Characters live, characters die, nothing will ever be the same again!
• And now, as part of an ongoing examination of the work of filmmaker Jim Wynorski, here’s an in-depth look at the cinematic classic The Return of Swamp Thing.

“Batman Wedding Garter Set Black Bat with Gift Box”

…now, when they come up with the Swamp Thing garter belt (vines) or Sluggo garter belt (shoelaces) then we’ll have something.

Roel was nice enough to pass along a copy to me, and I quite enjoyed it. I liked how the superheroics were pretty much just in the story for the purposes of how it affected the romance, and not the be-all, end-all of the story with a romantic subplot squeezed in. The dialogue is light and humorous when it needs to be, and services the romantic melodrama without being overly melodramatic and goofy.

Though it took me a page or three to get used to it, Arnold does a good job on the art, handling both the character interaction and the superheroics with his particularly stylized cartooning. All the characters are distinct and consistently portrayed and instantly recognizable, which is a plus considering the emphasis is on what happens to the leads when they’re NOT out in their superhero work uniforms.

The story itself is 50 pages long, but there’s a lot packed into it. There’s no wasted space on the pages, and no wasted time moving the plot along. No decompressed storytelling here. Yes, it’s a “boy meets girl, boy loses girl, does boy get girl back, I ain’t tellin’” plot, only with superheroes, and even with that twist, I’m sure we’re all familiar with the tropes of the genre. Even so, it still moves along at a quick and entertaining clip, and the basic story thread is given enough unique embellishment to go down easy.

If I were to bust the guys’ chops about a thing or two on the comic…having “The Beginning” at the end of the story? Oh, Roel ‘n’ Scott, say it ain’t so. You know the Mystery Science Theater 3000 guys would totally rake you over the coals for that. Also, the computer lettering used in the book was…well, not terrible, but just slightly distracting, but I got used to it. And there’s a panel or two in the comic where the characters felt like they weren’t really integrated into their backgrounds, such as when they’re standing on a rooftop but it looks more like they’re hovering over it or pasted into the panel. But that’s just getting nitpicky, and any rough edges the comic may have is the sort of thing experience takes care of. (Plus, I like comics with a rough edge or two…I’d rather read a comic produced by amateur creators just starting out in the field, like this one, than a fifteenth Avengers ongoing.)

But, overall, a good first effort, and I’d like to see more from these fellas. Maybe not more of this specific story, as, even though there’s a “#1″ on the cover (and, ahem, “The Beginning”), it feels like we reached a definitive ending with this story and it’d be a shame to undo that. It stands on its own as an enjoyable addition to the relatively-sparse “Superhero Romance” genre.

If you go to the official blog, you can read an extensive preview of the comic, and you can order your very own copy right here.

• I received my package of Neil the Horse comics yesterday, and they’re all in good shape, with only the first issue having a crease or two on the covers. Can’t really complain for a 99-cent bid, though I have to admit I’m not thrilled about paying a certain amount for shipping, and then seeing that the actual shipping cost was only about a third of that. But…full run of Neil the Horse, under nine bucks total, stop complaining, Mike.
• Hey, Superman: Secret Origin #6 is coming out today. Finally. Took ‘em so long, it’s almost time to revise Superman’s origin again.
• Bully, America’s Greatest Little Stuffed Bull, presents to you Archie Comics Versus Kids’ Fads. It’s a battle Archie only rarely won, if ever. (Ignore the first reader comment, where someone proclaims Archie late to the party for featuring a Wii-type game on a cover. Um, the Wii is still selling, last I heard. DO NOT TEMPT THE BULL’S WRATH, COMMENTER.)

That one I scanned above has received more reaction from our customers than any other card released so far. Okay, mostly it’s “they’re getting rid of a member of the Fantastic Four? Again?” but nearly everyone who’s seen the stack of these cards on the counter has commented on it. And really, this is about as perfectly pure and simple a targeted advertisement as I’ve ever seen. Okay, your average non-fan off the street may not get it, but every comic fan 1) recognizes this as the FF logo, and 2) knows that, hey, that should be a “4″ in there, not a “3,” therefore something’s happening to one of the characters. The information on the back of the card is almost redundant…everything you need to know is pretty much right there on the front. (But if you need to know…it’s a storyline starting in next month’s FF. And you should be reading FF right now anyway, because writer Jonathan Hickman has been doing a good job on it.)

Anyhoo, just wanted to give some appreciation to this promo item. Well done, Marvel’s marketing department…well done.

If one were to listen to the one year anniversary installment of War Rocket Ajax, featuring those Clown Princes of Podcasting Chris Sims and Eugene Ahn, you may hear them answering a Listener Question from a certain M. Sterling, at about the 1:27:30 mark.

EDIT 8-29-10: Had to shut off comments, as this particular post was attracting a lot of comment spam, for some reason.

Anyway, you don’t see anything in 3D, despite having to use 3D glasses for this particular gimmick. You do get to read a comic with one eye squeezed shut, and boy doesn’t that sound like fun.

An interesting thing on the cover:

On the other hand, comic book adaptations of movies are kind of a moot point when you can own the actual movie about four or five months after seeing it in theatres, like I’ve written about before.

So, The Flintstones Double Vision…bit of an oddity, and a latter day example of a comic book genre that’s very nearly gone* nowadays. Also, it doesn’t appear to be in the Overstreet Price Guide, so I’m totally pricing this at $3000, and none of you can stop me.

* Yes, I know there’s a currently running adaptation of the Star Trek movie. That’s why I said “nearly gone.”

Also, minor correction to my headline here…this is actually the space to the left of my normal parking space, and you can see part of my truck on the right hand side of the picture, there.

…Yes, this is really what I’m posting today. Sorry, been a bit occupied with some some other things I need to deal with. Normal service should resume tomorrow, with any luck.

True, the shipping cost is seven and a half bucks, apparently for parcel post, which is…well, I’ll let this old post of mine explain, but even so that’s still a full run of Neil the Horse for under ten bucks, and therefore I won’t gripe too much.

There are other indie series from the early-to-mid ’80s that I missed that the store doesn’t have and I’m seriously thinking about picking up for cheap via the eBay, because clearly I don’t have enough comics already. And I’m still looking for the elusive Yummy Fur #9, which (if I recall correctly) was one of the issues of the series not carried by Diamond, making it a bit of a rare item. Well, sure, I at least have the lead story reprinted in one of the Ed the Happy Clown trade paperbacks, but the knowledge that I have issues #1 through #8 and #10 through #32 weighs upon me in a way that only fellow obsessive-compulsive funnybook readers can understand.

And by the way, I didn’t say anything about it at the time…but as only vaguely implied in that how to ship comics post, I’d bought a run of Minx on eBay, which is an eight issue series, and the seller wanted to charge me twelve bucks to ship ‘em. Twelve. Dollars. That’s crazy talk, and I told him so. He eventually saw reason, but I guess that was my fault for not nailing down shipping ahead of my bidding.

But I did want to mention that one of things at our fair is a building filled with displayed collections. Disneyana, model railroad stuff, toy cars, even a Twilight display, and here’s half of the Doctor Who display: