“So what’s the good news?” “The good news is that Miracleman is coming back!”

§ October 18th, 2013 § Filed under miraclemarvelman § 18 Comments

And lo, there were solicits for the Miracleman revival:

MIRACLEMAN #1 & 2
THE ORIGINAL WRITER & MICK ANGLO (W)
GARRY LEACH, ALAN DAVIS, PAUL NEARY, STEVE DILLON & MICK ANGLO (A)
ISSUE #1 – COVER BY JOE QUESADA
Variant COVER BY JOHN CASSADAY
Variant COVER BY MARK BUCKINGHAM
Variant COVER BY JEROME OPENA
Variant COVER BY LEINIL FRANCIS YU
Sketch VARIANT BY JOE QUESADA
YOUNG VARIANT BY SKOTTIE YOUNG
CLASSIC VARIANT BY GARRY LEACH

ISSUE #2 – COVER BY ALAN DAVIS
Variant COVER BY ARTHUR ADAMS
Variant COVER BY MIKE PERKINS
Variant COVER BY MIKE MCKONE
Sketch VARIANT BY ALAN DAVIS

• KIMOTA! With one magic word, a long-forgotten legend lives again!
• Freelance reporter Michael Moran always knew he was meant for something more — now, a strange series of events leads him to reclaim his destiny!
• Relive the ground-breaking eighties adventures that captured lightning in a bottle — or experience them for the first time — in these digitally restored, fully relettered editions!
• Issue 1 includes material originally presented in WARRIOR #1 and MIRACLEMAN #1, plus the MARVELMAN PRIMER. Issue #2 includes material originally presented in WARRIOR #1-5, plus bonus material.
ISSUE #1 – 64 PGS./Parental Advisory…$5.99
ISSUE #2 – 48 PGS./Parental Advisory…$4.99

First off…holy crow, that’s a lotta variants.

Second, since Steve Dillon is mentioned as one of the included contributors, I think that means we are getting that previously-unreprinted story from Warrior #4.

Third, “The Original Writer” is what they’ll be calling Alan Moore on this, since Marvel is following Moore’s wishes not to associate his name with the work, I guess. There goes a major selling point to the uninitiated (though I imagine any comic fans with interest in this material pretty much already know).

Fourth…well, it looks like Marvel is depending on the reputation of the material to sell the books, what with a $5.99 debut issue that, if I’m interpreting things correctly, includes the redialogued classic Marvelman story that began the Eclipse Comics MM #1, the initial 8-page installment of Moore and Leach’s revival from Warrior, and your second chance to not read all that stuff from the Miracleman Primer you didn’t read in the first place. So, like, 18 pages of comics, and 46 pages of other stuff if, again, I’m understanding correctly. And I’m guessing the “material from Warrior #1” business in issue #2 is a typo, since there ain’t that much MM stuff in Warrior #1 to begin with, unless they’re splitting an 8-page story across two issues of reprints.

At a $5.99 price point, that’s basically telling the reader who may have a casual interest to not bother. Modern comic fans aren’t necessarily going to dive into this long-unavailable comic simply because the names Moore and Gaiman are attached. (Well, not attached, in Moore’s case, but no media coverage of this comic is not going to mention him.) No matter how special and in how high of regard old fanboys like me who originally bought these comics way back when hold them, it’s still reprints of decades-old comics starring a superhero nobody’s heard of and featuring storytelling tropes that everyone’s seen by now and really why should I, a young, hip comic book reader who follows all two dozen Avengers titles done in the cool modern styles of today, bother to read this old thing just because Grandpa read it and liked it?

I exaggerate, but only a bit. I’ve already seen people expressing disinterest, folks who once enjoyed Moore’s and Gaiman’s work, now no longer so enthused about their output for whatever reasons. And I’ve seen people who might have tried out the comic decide to pass at the proffered price points, particularly since it seems these will be coming out at a more-than-monthly pace given the dual solicitation in a single month’s catalog. I would have loved to see an introductory issue at the promotional $1.00 price point — just comics, with maybe a minimal historical text piece, all killer, no filler — that could have grabbed a much larger base readership. A base that, having been exposed to the material, may be far more willing to follow along with the series at $3.99 per subsequent installment.

But instead we have $5.99 on #1, effectively capping the potential audience. There are the completists who’ll buy it regardless. There are the people who have genuine desire to finally own this material after hearing about it all these years. And there may even be some people who, despite Marvel’s best efforts to dissuade them, will pick up the first issue anyway out of curiosity. And those initial sales numbers will dwindle as the series progresses, until finally bumping up again as the new material finally appears in the series and all the original old Miracleman fans return to the book after previously having given up on rebuying comics they already owned.

I hope I’m wrong. I hope they do sell well. I love the old Eclipse Miracleman comics. I reread them every once in a while and they’re still as entertaining and fascinating to me now as they were when I first experienced them. And I’m really, genuinely happy that Miracleman will soon be available again for everyone to read. I’m simply hoping the strength and beauty, the joy and wonder, of the material can overcome the initial hobbling of its presentation.

Anyway, I’m sure these will eventually make a nice series of hardcovers. Assuming they don’t blow this “relettering” they keep ballyhooing.

They could always try “Magnificentman.”

§ October 16th, 2013 § Filed under miraclemarvelman § 12 Comments


As I briefly mentioned the other day, and I’m sure you’ve already had your fill of news about, Miracleman is finally returning to print next year, eventually culminating in unpublished and new work by Neil Gaiman and Mark Buckingham, who are going to continue from where they left off. The initial reports were a bit vague on what exactly was going to be reprinted, resulting in some necessary clarification: they are going to start the reprints with Alan Moore and Garry Leach’s initial revival of the character from the early issues of Warrior, as reprinted by Eclipse in the 1980s.

That of course means those of us who’ve been waiting…hold on, let me look it up…oh Good Lord, since mid-1993 for a follow-up to that bit of a cliffhanger Neil ‘n’ Mark left us on in #24 are going to have to wait a little while longer to see how that all plays out.

Despite my wishful thinking on the Twitterers:


…it looks like we’re getting these Miracleman comics doled out to us on a periodical basis, each issue containing some kind of new content so sad old MM completists like me will probably buy them all despite already having the originals because we’re suckers. And hopefully it’ll sell well enough from the get-go to eventually make it to the promised new material, as I suspect there may be some cases of newcomers to the work going “pfffft THIS is what all the excitement’s about?” because they’ve been reading ripoffs and retreads of these stories for the last twenty years and now it’s all old hat to them.

On the other hand, maybe it won’t take that long to get through all the old stuff to reach the new stuff since, as I noted at the end of this post, Marvel ain’t shy about turning the faucets open all the way and flooding the shelves as quickly as they’re able with successive issues of any given series. So, 24 reprint issues before getting new Miracleman? Eh, ten, eleven months, tops.

Okay, technically 23 issues, since Eclipse’s #8 was a reprint issue, though with some new pin-ups and a brief framing sequence drawn by Chuck Austen (AKA Chuck Beckum). But then again, they could speed up the process by printing more stories per issue…the first seven issues of the Miracleman series featured stories told in 6 to 8 page chapters, mostly reprinted from the UK magazine Warrior (though some of the later chapters were drawn new from scripts that never made it into that magazine). And some of the follow-up “full-length” installments were only 16 pages long. I don’t know how economically feasible it is to put out a regular series of 48-pagers in order to squeeze in more material, nor do I think readers are going to want to pay the inevitable $4.99 to $6.99 per issue in order to subsidize the printing costs simply because I, your pal Mike, wants to get his filthy, filthy mitts on new Miracleman comics right this very second. I’ve seen it mentioned that the first issue includes material from Alan Davis, who didn’t start on the feature ’til its sixth chapter (which was reprinted in Eclipse MM #2) so maybe we are getting more miraclebang per buck in each issue. We’ll see.

Most likely Marvel will stretch things out best as they’re able, and there are a handful of shorter Miracleman-related stories to round out any 32-page format comics containing just one 16-page main story. Maybe we’ll even get that bit of business from Warrior #4 that never made it to the States. And of course there’s that “new material” and interviews and such that Marvel noted in their press releases that will probably fill up any shortfall in any given issue. They also mention “the stories are being completely relettered to meet today’s standards,” which gives me the twitchy eyeball, as I recall certain other publishers relettering some high-profile reprint projects and introducing a whole new world of lovely typos and spelling errors into some classic material. Here’s hoping there’s no editing-by-spellcheck goin’ on this time.

I do like the idea that they’re keeping the “Miracleman” name for this particular story started by Moore and (presumably) to be ended by Gaiman. I had assumed that the name change (originally necessitated by a U.S. publisher that wasn’t Marvel Comics reprinting the material) would be reversed now that Marvel does have the work under its banner, but it looks like they’re keeping the Miracleman name for this project, and “Marvelman” for when he’s in the actual Marvel Universe and joins the Thunderbolts or whatever. And I think that’s fine. It was pretty well known at the time that Eclipse had to change the character’s name to keep Marvel happy, but I came to know the feature as Miracleman, and it would feel strange to pick up the story again with his name changed back. Just one of those funny fanboy quirks, I know. Hey, I’m allowed one or two of those.

Of course, the Miracleman name could be a problem, too, if the publisher of this comic ever turns up with some ceasing-and-desisting.
 
 

image from Warrior #9 (January 1983) by Alan Moore and Alan Davis

Yet another comic I’d completely forgotten about.

§ October 14th, 2013 § Filed under publishing § 10 Comments

So relatively recently, apparently, we’ve been selling back issues of the Morbius series from the early 1990s. Now I knew we’d at least sold the issues crossing over with the Siege of Darkness storyline, since we’d had folks specifically seeking those issues out. However, when I finally stuck my nose into the box to see what issues I had to pull out of the backroom to restock, lo and behold, the section was nearly empty.

Basically what I’m telling you is that it’s been a while since I’ve done the full restock on the Morbius books. I’ve dipped into the backstock boxes to pull out more copies of the Siege of Darkness issues, and the first issue Rise of the Midnight Sons crossover tie-in, but that’s about it. I haven’t really given that old, cobwebbed Morbius box — underlit, mysterious shades roaming about it in the darkness, the quiet sound of a slow drip of water into a shallow pool — in the backroom a good going-through. And what I found whilst digging through said box was a small stack of these:


…the shocking second printing of 1971’s Amazing Spider-Man #101, republished in September 1992, the same month as the debut of the Morbius series, and featuring…well, I’ll let the corner cover blurb tell you:


This comic also has that metallic-ish silver ink on the cover, which may not come through very well in the scan. But you know the kind of thing I mean, especially if you collected comics in the ’90s, the gimmick cover’s prime time.

Anyway, I’d completely forgotten that this particular reprint even existed. I knew Marvel did stuff like this, like reprinting the first Silver Sable appearance when she received her own series. But nope, this thing totally slipped my mind, as did the Morbius Revisted reprint series that briefly ran concurrently with the main series, during that crazy time in this industry when the market could support two series starring the Living Vampire. (As, you know, opposed to now, where it can’t even support one.)

Of course, the annoying thing about a reprint like this is the fact that the story totally ends on a cliffhanger, with Morbius teaming up with the Lizard to take on ol’ Webhead, leaving it up to you to find the then 20-year-old #102 to wrap up the story. (Or, um, Marvel Tales #253 from 1991, reprinting #102.)

Just thought this was an interesting artifact of its time, created to support the launch of a series starring one of Marvel’s third-stringers, now primarily only of import because it’s a reprint of a pricy Amazing Spider-Man back issue. Plus, it’s, like, the middle chapter of the Amazing Spider-Man’s Six Arms Saga, and where’s our trade paperback and / or live action film adaptation of that?

• • •

In other news: Miracleman is coming back. How ’bout that.

Just moments before that guy slammed his foot on the accelerator.

§ October 12th, 2013 § Filed under richie rich § 8 Comments


 

Richie Rich Diamonds #30 (May 1977)

“My tubes are flashing wildly…!”

§ October 11th, 2013 § Filed under golden age, grendel, pal plugging § 5 Comments

So it turns out I was wrong, so very wrong, when I suggested that the story on the cover of Amazing Adventures #4 (the Ziff-Davis one from 1951, not one of the three that Marvel Comics did) could no way be matched by whatever story was within:


No, the story is just as crazypants as the cover promises:


Two aliens decide to use love robots to conquer the Earth, but their plans go awry when…well, you can probably guess. You can read it for yourself here, starting on page 3. Special thanks to reader Paul, who has kindly declined my offer of quatloos (as my mouth was writing space-checks that my United Federation of Planets Bank couldn’t cash), but I will happily direct you to his website, to the Inferior 4 Livejournal where he regularly contributes items of interest, or to Amazonwhere you can track down many of his fine works, in print or digital formats.

In other news…man, after that story, do you really want other news? How ’bout this, since Employee Timmy sent this link to me via the Twitter: Dynamite and Dark Horse teaming up for a three-part crossover between Grendel and the Shadow, written and drawn by Matt Wagner. Holy crow. I find this…acceptable. Very acceptable indeed.

It was hard to find panels from this Archie comic that Chris Sims didn’t already post…I think.

§ October 9th, 2013 § Filed under archie, chris sims, golden age § 7 Comments

So anyway, I read Afterlife with Archie #1, in which the zombie menace invades Riverdale, and now I think I’ve gone mad:


Also, the comic is fantastic. Beautifully illustrated by Francesco Francavilla, and written by Roberto Aquirre-Sacasa in such a way that the Riverdale zombie apocalypse actually makes sense within the Archie universe. Well, “makes sense” in that the entire comic is completely bonkers, but it’s a good kind of bonkers and I totally recommend it. Now, I have (as I write this) about ten hours to decide if I’m going to rack with the rest of the Archie comics on the “Fun for All Ages” shelves because I’m an awful person, or keep it separate from them because this really is a dark and gruesome (and yet fascinating) book. Well…we’ll see.

In other news…in case you were wondering where my current sidebar pic came from, here you go, straight from the Grand Comics Database:


I will bet 20 quatloos that the story is nowhere as amazing as that cover. (Another 10 quatloos that the story in no way even resembles that cover.)

In which I say I’m not going to respond to the comments, but I do so anyway. (Also, I usually compose these titles after I write my posts, in case you were wondering.)

§ October 7th, 2013 § Filed under dc comics, does mike ever shut up, retailing § 10 Comments

The temptation to follow up to the comments on my Robot 6 interview is strong, but I think I’ll try to resist…mostly. A few folks there noted an actual, physical aversion to the very texture of DC’s 3D covers, which is a reaction I hadn’t heard at the shop. I did have a few people reject the 3D covers because they didn’t care for them visually, and others who expressed an aversion at paying $3.99 a pop, but people just plain not liking how they feel is a phenomenon I didn’t expect. Personally, I liked rubbing them together and listening to the zzzzzzip zzzzzzip sound, but perhaps I’ve said too much.

Interesting also is the gap between one commenter’s statement that “the idea any of these titles are going to be worth money in the future is laughable” and another’s statement that “these are going to be worth money.” The truth is somewhere between, as it often is, unless the eventual answer turns out to be “these will be worth exactly one visit to the King of the Moon!” which is waaaay outside the range established by the initial responses, admittedly. Right now, yeah, some of them are commanding Big EBay Bucks, but they’ll settle down to Slightly More Reasonable EBay Bucks in a few months, and I suspect future price guides, assuming a future industry to support publication of future price guides, will reflect slightly higher prices for these 3D issues over the issues that surround them. If the vast majority of them are going for any more than about $5 to $10 a year from now, I will be shocked, and thankfully the comments on this post will be closed by then in case I’m wrong. Anyway, in a year someone remind me to go look at the aftermarket pricing on these books and maybe I’ll write up a follow-up post, unless by then I’ve ejector-seated myself out of this crazy business and finally started doing something sensible, like deep-sea fishing.

The negative response to the comics themselves, not just in those comments but elsewhere on the Internet, are a bit of a surprise, too. Well, not much of a surprise since it’s currently DC’s turn to get kicked around by the online comic-gnoscenti, but in general my customers seemed to enjoy reading the comics, when they weren’t being frustrated by availability issues. Most of the ones I read I enjoyed, but, as I noted in an earlier post, I was generally just picking up the Villains Month issues for comics I was already reading (or featuring concepts I enjoyed, but shoved under the Justice League banner for the month), so I was predisposed to like the Villains Months issues I was buying. I liked most of the one-shots that tied into the main Batman book, for instance, but I passed on the Bane one-shot because, well, aside from the animated versions, and the amazing live-action version from the third Nolan Bat-film, I don’t much care for the character. I enjoyed the Doomsday issue of Superman/Batman, with its crazy-pants Krypton story and implications for how the Death of Superman now fits into New 52 continuity. We also got a new Mongul story in one of those Green Lantern one-shots, written by Mongul’s creator, Jim Starlin! That was pretty fantastic. And I enjoyed Swamp Thing‘s Arcane one-shot, as I’d discussed previously, and my issues with that particular comic were more related to the general Swampy-reboot as a whole than any specific Villains Month hoohar, but then, I’m Swamp Thing-obsessed so that should be expected. …And I’m sure some of you folks out there liked reading some of these villains comics as well.

In a more general sense (and I’ll stop using the word “general,” I promise) I don’t object to the idea of DC doing a big special event like this. If it gets people in stores and looking for comics, well, beggars can’t really be choosers, especially as the marketplace continues its ever-ongoing and seemingly-eternal upward scrabble out of the pit of the ’90s crash. I wish the event had been handled differently — let me insert right here the “NO DUH” you’re thinking right now. I wish it didn’t effectively make a bunch of titles weekly books for the month…I mean, if you were already getting all the Green Lantern books, you were basically buying a weekly GL comic anyway, but if you were only getting the main Green Lantern title, you may have felt compelled to get all four Villains Month issues, quadrupling your GL input, and that hardly seems fair. (Much in the same way Superior Spider-Man fans got about twenty issues of their title in nine months, Lucy-and-Ethyl-working-the-chocolate-conveyor-belt style). At the same time, just doing a Villains Month special for each of their regular titles would not have generated the same sales levels, probably; an All-Star Western 3D Villains Month special issue wouldn’t have generated the numbers of a fourth Superman special, hence that marketing decision.

In conclusion, I wish things were different and better and that everyone would be happy, and also I want more Swamp Thing titles, so long as I’m wishing for stuff. I also hope the next Big Event is not quite as headache-inducing, as long as I’m really wishing. And hopefully, that’s enough discussion of 3D covers on this site (until the aforementioned year-later post I may or may not do).

Next up: DIE-CUT COVERS – why these are a huge pain in the ass.

Starmasters Saturday #1.

§ October 5th, 2013 § Filed under saturday § 4 Comments

A MISSED OPPORTUNITY

FOR THE SCI-FIVE

from Starmasters #2 (January 1996) by Mark Gruenwald, Scot Eaton and Bob Almond

You’d think that of all the phrases, they’d have left “SHEER NIGHTGOWNS” on the VHS cover.

§ October 4th, 2013 § Filed under self-promotion, swamp thing § 3 Comments

 

  • So just in case you wanted to read more of me picking at the scab of DC’s Villains Month — and geez, why wouldn’t you — here’s a long-ish interview I did over at Comic Book Resources on that very topic.

  • BEHOLD: Swamp Thing art! The Louis CK/Swamp Thing mash-up you requested, Cute Poison Ivy versus Cute Swamp Thing, and (people have been sending me this one a lot, and thanks to everyone…it was my work computer’s wallpaper for a while!) “If you see Swamp Thing, say Swamp Thing.” And then there’s my old pal Batfatty, much missed around these parts, who sent me a link to the Japanese VHS cover for Return of the Swamp Thing (based on the beautiful U.S. one-sheet, which I do have!).

  • A couple of weeks back I posted a link to a YouTube video of Video Comics, an early Nickelodeon program that would present print comics onscreen panel-by-panel, with voice actors and sound effects. The Swamp Thing episode didn’t feature the kids-on-bikes “Ride of the Valkyries” opening that many entries in the series had, but reader tvguy1979 sent along a link to a short promotional video which contains most of that missing intro.

“I’m anti-dragon!!”

§ October 2nd, 2013 § Filed under jack kirby, swamp thing § 7 Comments

1. Yes, it says “ret” in the first panel. Was that typo fixed in the recent Demon hardcover?

2. This little monkey-fella makes a reappearance in Saga of the Swamp Thing #25, #26 and #27 (1984):

I remember finding out at the time that Kamara (that monkey creature) had appeared in The Demon a decade before, and thinking “boy, there’s no way it can be as creepy as it was in Swamp Thing,” but I was wrong. So very wrong.

GAH.

 
 

images from The Demon #4 (December 1972) by Jack Kirby and Mike Royer; Saga of the Swamp Thing #25 (June 1984) by Alan Moore, Steve Bissette and John Totleben

 
 
(updated 8/2017)

« Older Entries Newer Entries »