Well, “sorta friendly” anyway.

§ November 30th, 2022 § Filed under retailing § 3 Comments


So this is what I’ve been busy with at the shop since Sunday…a sizable collection acquired from someone just trying to clear out space in the house. It was something inherited from a family member and that he didn’t really have any use for, thus it was to his local friendly neighborhood comic shop for unloading.

This ended up filling about four and a half long boxes, having been delivered to me in a variety of plastic storage bins that, I should remind you, are not the ideal place to keep comics. I could tell a lot of time was spent sorting, organizing, and cataloguing these comics, but alas not as much attention was spent to keeping them in nice condition. They’re…pretty rough, by and large. Intact and readable, but…well, I’ve already processed a big stack of these and the highest grade I’ve given to anything so far is a single VG+.

It’s mostly late ’70s/early ’80s, but it’s material I’ve been short on from that period. Lots of Spider-Man, Jonah Hex, Warlord, war comics, that sort of thing. While low grade, it’s all sellable goodies and even if they average out only a buck or two apiece, I should do pretty well on these. The trick is finding the time to get them all processed…I’ve been spending pretty much every spare moment I’ve had trying to work on these, but spare moments can be hard to come by, especially with holiday traffic.

But that’s a big part of why I like running a comic shop: getting to play with old comics! Even if they’re a little beat up, they’re still deserving of some love and a good home.

This isn’t really a variant covers post.

§ November 28th, 2022 § Filed under blogging about blogging is a sin, variant covers § 1 Comment

So I apologize…I’ve been getting home lately feeling under the weather and pretty worn out, so “typing out long-form commentaries at the computer deep into the night” hasn’t been a huge priority for me for the last few days. It’s just a bug I’m fighting (NOT COVID, I ASSURE YOU) and I should be back to whatever passes for normal within a couple of days.

In the meantime I’ve been lazily watching a lot of television, with a good dollop of YouTube mixed in. Now, I don’t usually watch comic book-related YouTubery, preferring instead to let the sound of this video drape over my wearied brow.

But I happened to find this one, discussing the history of variant covers:


Unlike my long-running and currently waiting-for-new-content series on this here site, where I jumped all over the place discussing this, that, and the other thing, this video gives more of a chronological context to what was going on.

What surprised me was that I was cited in the course of the video, when the Jab #3 from Adhesive Comics was featured. You know, the one the publisher straight up shot with a real bullet. Specifically, the usage of a panel scan from that post was noted in the video, and a link back to my website was provided in that video’s notes, which was nice. I do feel like that post provided a lot of the info used in that specific segment, beyond the one panel, but eh, Information Wants to Be Free an’ all that. Happy to be a research source.

I should also note not all those Spider-Man #1s were the same price, as the black bagged version was two bucks. Why was it two bucks and not $1.75 like the others? Because they could charge two bucks for it, that’s why. I wrote about this infamous first issue here.

Anyway, it’s a good video and you should watch it. Also, kudos to the fella for pulling a Silver Surfer #50 off his rack and revealing a U.S. 1 underneath.

• • •

A couple of brief responses to comments here:

Scipio asked

“Any idea why the Comic Treadmill old posts are inaccessible?

“All of H and Mag’s work.. .gone?”

I just took a look, and yeah, the last few posts are on the one page, but the post calendar is way out of date on the right there. I feel like that may be a page template error or something, like it hasn’t been updated for current browsers or something. I’ve been in contact with H recently, so I’ll send him another email and ask what’s up.

And then Gregory Burgas said on the topic of the comicsweblogosphere

“I think the ‘Golden Age’ was around 06-11/12 or so. Before that, it was a bit Wild West, but around 06, everything seemed to be humming, but around 11/12, people began to drop off. Of course, those years are fluid, but that seems about right. I’m glad you’re still cooking!”

I’m still standing, as it were. I don’t plan on going anywhere soon, I’ve still got posts about the Death of Superman and Frank Miller’s The Spirit to write.

But yes, the 2006-2012 timeframe sounds pretty close. I started this site in late 2003 (with BBS stuff and LiveJournal before that), and there were a few earlier than me (like the immortal Neilalien). The late, lamented Journalista daily linkblog by Dirk Deppey from the early 2000s on drove a lot of traffic to sites, including mine…and I’ve told Deppey plenty of times that a lot of what I’ve accomplished today, including opening my own shop, stems from him pointing out my dumb site in one of his updates. The exact quote:

“…Definitely one of the better new comics bloggers to emerge so far this year.”

…made me very happy, particularly coming from The Comics Journal, a magazine I’d long read and admired. Hopefully my long decline since hasn’t made him regret his statement.

But I can’t say when I first noticed the dropoff. I know a lot of my online pals with whom I most directly interacted started to cut the blogging habit as the years wore on, and boy, I sure heard “blogging is dead” a whole lot over the last few years. I know the big thing is video, or image-heavy stuff on Instagram and the like, and giant blocks of text like the one you’re currently enduring being somewhat on the outs. But folks are still out there writing and posting on their WordPress installs and their Blogger sites, so The Blog is still hanging in there.

I mean, for your sake, it better…you don’t want to have to look at my face on TikTok or whatever for your comics content.

Anyway, I said I wasn’t doing a long post since I’m feeling yucky, and here I am still trying. I do tend to be a creature of habit, which may be as much a reason as any for my continuing to write here, even when I should be in bed sleeping off my sickness. So, thanks for reading pals, and we’ll all meet back here again in a couple of days.

Remember, kids, smoking can give you super powers!

§ November 25th, 2022 § Filed under flash, golden age § 7 Comments

In which the Golden Age Flash, Jay Garrick, gets his super-speed abilities by not paying attention during his smoke break:


 
 

from Flash Comics #1 (January 1940) by Gardner Fox and Harry Lampert

A most sinful post.

§ November 23rd, 2022 § Filed under blogging about blogging is a sin § 5 Comments

Look, I know I still owe responses to some old comments, and that said responses will be a bit time-intensive for me to slap together so I’m doing lazy posts like today since I’m still a bit not-altogether-there and extended thought processes are falling into a jumble of nose fish bicycle, so please bear with me while I get my act together here.

Let me respond to a couple of comments re: blogging from the other day.

Walaka of Earth Two crosses the dimensional barrier to say

“…The comixweblogosphere was robust and diverse with snark over here and nostalgia over there and scholarship in the corner. And none of it was homogenized or monetized or corporate. That era was way too short.”

I think I’ve mentioned in the past that during Peak Comics Blogging, before I’d write my post for the day I’d zip through all the blogs in my sidebar and make sure I wasn’t duplicating anything my blogging brethren or sisteren had already covered. Of course that’s the behavior of a complete madman, particularly when I realized the value of “a personal blog” is one’s…well, personal insight and perspective. Sure, we were all talking about ALL-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder, but was anyone talking about it the exact same way I was talking about it? I think not.

I do miss the cross-pollination of blog posts and comment sections and all that jazz between the comic blogs at the time, and I look at (as Andrew points out) my almost entirely-rotted links page and lament the loss of many of those voices. Which is why I’m lamenting the possible loss of Twitter, as several of those folks turned up there so they’re not entirely gone.

Someone, and I’m sorry but I forget who, was going through all the old comic blogs, indicating which ones were still going, which were still up but clearly ended, which were gone entirely, what happened to the folks running them, etc. I thought that was a pretty interesting, if sometimes depressing, series…though that person ironically enough shut down his own site before getting to me and this ancient blog of mine. Dang it, the site name is on the tip of my tongue and I just can’t remember it. I even plugged it here once or thrice. Ah, well, I’ll think of it eventually.

But anyway, I’ll reiterate a pledge I made to y’all before, that I promise not to disappear on you with no warning. When I take my rare-ish break from the site and I say “I’ll be back soon,” that’s not the death-knell we’ve seen so many times on other blogs. I really will be back, honest! As long as I’m in this terrible industry, and still slinging comics, I’ll keep this site going. Or if for some reason all traditional blogging software goes kaput and I have to move to a new platform, I’ll let you know. I mean, I suppose if I am retired…you know, permanent-like, against my will, the site’s done, but I wouldn’t be able to help that. But if I can run this site from beyond the grave, I will.

I suppose being in comics retailing as long as I have is what’s kept this blog alive all these years (coming up on its 19th anniversary in just a couple of weeks!). I can’t imagine it surviving my departure from the business…for one thing, I suspect I’d not want to talk about comics after that. But, with any luck, that won’t be an issue. So long as, you know, people keep buying comics from me.

Okay, that’s enough of that. Not sure what I’ll be posting for Black Friday, as who’s gonna be reading blogs on Black Friday, but I’ll come up with something. Thanks for reading, pals, and I’ll talk again with you soon. Honest. No foolin’.

I could always go back to LiveJournal.

§ November 21st, 2022 § Filed under blogging about blogging is a sin, how the sausage is made, video § 7 Comments

Hi pals…I’m a little under the weather (not COVID, don’t worry) so I’m going to try to keep this reasonably short today.

Just to touch upon a topic I’ve noted before, the social media hoohar is still going on, as everyone is casting about trying to figure out what the new Twitter is going to be. Frankly, I think the new Twitter will be “the old Twitter, only worse” but in the meantime I’m trying out Mastodon, I’m there on Cohost, and I’m also on The Hive (user name: “mikester” natch), which is phone-app only but looks promising. I even revived my Tumblr, for Pete‘s sake.

I don’t know where we’re all going, but we’re certainly going somewhere. I do expect Twitter to survive, even despite current ownership, and as someone said they’re going to discover themselves engineering back to the solutions that already existed when their thoughtless whims all come crashing down. The trick is whether or not the advertisers and the power users will stick it out ’til everything settles down.

But whatever happens, you can always find me here, and you can see what else I’m up to (or had been up to) at mikesterling.com. And that reminds me…I’ve long lamented the fact that “mikester.com” was registered only a few short months before I thought about doing so, and after years of being what appeared to be a mostly-inert webpage it is now in the hands of some domain sales site at the low, low cost of nearly $4000. So, for about 4% of the price I registered “mikester.net” instead. It just forwards to mikesterling.com. Hey, that’s a whole four characters less! A real timesaver!

Okay, so this isn’t just me blabbing about social media and domain names, here’s some actual comic book content. It’s the Wizard-a-like Hero Illustrated‘s video magazine #2 from 1994! Warning: may be hard to take all 25 minutes in one sitting. Features a Rob Liefeld interview and commercials for a video game I don’t remember.

Maybe I was thinking about Twitter a little bit when I wrote that last line.

§ November 18th, 2022 § Filed under death of superman § 5 Comments

So let’s do a little more about the Death of Superman (which I write as I’m listening to the Longbox Heroes special Patreon-only Previews podcast as they cover the original solicitations for the event)….

Wayne wonders

“Question for everyone, young and old: was it ever, ever explained how it came to be that Doomsday was buried in a field in Ohio?”

Well, coming the older-end of the spectrum, I’ll take a shot at answering this the lazy way, i.e. Wikipedia-ing it and looking at digital comics on the DC Universe app. I have all the relevant Doomsday appearances, but it’s late and my back hurts and I don’t want to go digging through boxes, so Wiki ahoy and all that. And the answer there is after being finally defeated on some alien world, his “dead” body was shot into space where it eventually ended up on Earth. So, basically, it just happened to show up on the one world where a surviving Kryptonian would also live.

I don’t know if there was more to it than that ever revealed…like, maybe there was some ancient Kryptonian presence on Earth thousands of years ago, and even in his inert “death” state Doomsday sensed it and subtly guiding the capsule he’s in towards the planet. If someone out there remembers a specific explanation, please pipe up, but I don’t recall.

• • •

DK sez

“Those post Man-of-Steel Superman books really do hold up decades later, the 10 years after the Crisis was a DC Renaissance for sure.”

and on a related note, Nicholas sez

“30 years (ugh) later, I still really like the majority of Death/Funeral/Reign – re-reading it now, it’s such a bananas story, and I think it’s amazing how much they focused on Lois’/the Kent’s grief.”

I mentioned at the beginning of this post that I was listening to the Longbox Heroes boys talking about the push for the original Death of Whatshisname. In the course of their discussion they noted the interviews with the event’s creative teams where they pushed this as a “story,” not a collection of pin-ups or shallow guest-appearance machines, stuff like that. And that was certainly the case, that while the focus was on the action and making sure y’all knew how much of a threat Doomsday was, there was enormous focus on how other characters in the book reacted to the goings-on, which only ramped up as the story entered the “Funeral for a Friend” phase that followed.

It was a big ol’ stunt, sure, but it was a stunt flavored heavily with characterization and with inclusion of guest-stars that make sense (like, of course the Justice League would show up, this is a Justice League-type problem). Tack on the almost movie serial-esque feeling to the proceedings (which really drove the “Reign of the Supermen” part of the story later on) you had yourselves some good comic-bookin’, a creative peak in that period of Super-books that DC continued to try to replicate, not just in those titles but elsewhere across the line. I mean, “The Death of Clark Kent,” c’mon son.

• • •

JohnJ returns with

“Mike, someday would you write about how your store did with the ‘Marriage of Lois and Clark’ I really over-ordered on that, hoping for the same type of press coverage the ‘Death’ storyline got. It turned out to get next to none which I blame on the ‘Lois and Clark’ tv series having their wedding episode at the same time.”

Yeah, we overdid it just a little too, in that we still have plenty left over afterwards. But it still sold as a back issue, so our overstock did eventually dwindle. Not disappear entirely, mind you…when I left the old store there were still plenty in the backroom awaiting their day in the sun, but certainly fewer than what we started with. Even now, when I get copies of those in stock at my shop, they tend to sell fairly quickly (though “event” books with gimmick covers are an easier sell now than they were when shelves were just overwhelmed with them).

That was a real problem for a while, second-guessing yourself on orders and on whether or not this event would be the one to get real-world attention. It did feel like the Supes/Lois wedding would have been a big deal, but if there was media attention, it wasn’t a patch on the Death of Superman. That’s why I just order what I think I can sell, and don’t speculate on whether or not some late-night talk show is suddenly going to promote the book the day before release. Can’t predict it, can’t count on it.

“Also, how weird is it that Bendis’s big idea of revealing Superman and Clark Kent as the same guy really fizzled since he did next to nothing with the premise. It’s part of the reason why I finally stopped reading most Superman comics after having read them for several years.”

I said before it’s funny they went this route so soon after the New 52 Superman made the same reveal (after the long-time-coming Superman-telling-Jimmy-he’s-Clark story that I wish had been done with, like, the Real Superman Drawn by Curt Swan).

Also funny, I just took in a collection Thursday afternoon that had a lot of the Bendis Superman in it, and I got to thinking about how both the Byrne run and the Bendis run started with a six-part Man of Steel mini, followed by a short run on the books themselves before those Big Name Creators bounced. I thought it was funny that Bendis was all “okay, Superman reveals he’s Clark Kent, bye y’all” and stuck everyone else with that plot twist. Anyway, they’ve done a little here and there with the idea, though it’s weird seeing him in Clark Kent clothes…which to be fair, is weird to characters in the comic, too. Maybe now that the whole “Superman on Warworld for the Last, What, Eight Years” story is over, we can get more work done on the whole exposed dual identity thing, and what that fully means for everyone involved.

Eventually there’s going to be a story where the secret ID is made secret again, which I hope will be an in-story thing and not just another reboot/relaunch. Frankly, with both Superman and Batman having biological sons running around in the DC Universe, I still feel like it’s only a matter of time before everything gets rebooted back to the previous status quo anyway. I mean, it’s all working now, but all it takes is someone higher up the food chain at Warner Bros. taking a look at what DC’s doing and telling them to knock it off. I don’t htink it’s likely, as Jon and Damian have embedded themselves quite well into DC’s output, but you never know. Wouldn’t be the first time someone took something that was working and fixed it ’til it broke.

Come to think of it, that’s a pretty morbid cover on that trade.

§ November 16th, 2022 § Filed under death of superman § 7 Comments

JohnJ jams in

“Important thing about the 1992 Death of Superman story was its coverage on the Today Show and other news sources. There was a lot of interest by strangers but they were the kind of a-holes who thought that meant it was the very last copy of Superman ever to be published. I sold a hell of a lot more copies of the quickly collected $4.95 paperback than I did of Superman #75.”

I wish I kept note at the time, though I suppose the answers are somewhere in the piles of old invoices I inherited from the old store that I keep meaning to data-mine. But I *do* recall we ordered 10x the number we usually did on Superman, which was quite the risk given that Superman sales weren’t terribly strong for us at the time and if this stunt flopped, we’d be eating a lot of polybags and armbands.

SPOILER: 10x our regular numbers wasn’t nearly enough, and 100x would have been closer to what we could have used. Why I wish I had better recall of sales of the time was that I do not recall exactly how well that quick ‘n’ cheap Death of Superman trade sold. Yes, it sold very well, $4.95 being a shockingly low price point for such a high demand storyline, but did we sell more of it than we did of the actual issue #75 in which they dood the death? I’m thinking maybe we did, if not within the initial sales rush period of the storyline, but certainly as the years wore on and the book remained available.

I can’t remember if I noted this here or on Twitter or, God help us, on LiveJournal, but I realized at some point that while later reorders of the Death of Superman book were, like, 12th printing or whatever, the follow-up cheapie Funeral for a Friend trade had first printings coming in our reorders for years afterwards. There must have been a huge initial print run on that thing.

Now as JohnJ says, Real World Media pushed the general public into comic shops seeking that issue, though I perhaps had a more positive experience with some of these new customers than JohnJ seemed to. We had a ton of people come through the shop that day, with a giant line out of the door that, as I recall, former coworker Rob had to stand at to regulate customer entry. And yes, while we did have many pushy and annoying people come through (one particular person I still remember, and of course she was the one featured in the full-color photo of the local paper covering the event), most people were cool about the whole thing. I do remember a very nice elderly couple coming in for the Death of Superman storyline (not just #75, but they were in from the beginning of the storyline) and kept following the books for years. And we picked up several other regulars due to the event as well. I still get people telling me that it was the Death of Superman that got them into collecting.

The belief that this would be “the last ever Superman comic” was rather prevalent, despite our attempts to inform everyone otherwise. The day #75 came out, we smart-alecky employees made a window display of many previous Deaths of Superman to sort of drive home the point. And, as I’m sure many of you readers who’d been around a bit, I heard for a decade or more afterward surprise from folks not in the comics scene that Superman comics were still coming out. “I thought he died!” they’d exclaim, and I’m pretty sure they weren’t being facetious. I’d said that I thought it was an unusual promotional move to convince everyone one of your most famous characters was going away forever. To be fair, I haven’t had anyone mention that to me lately.

• • •

Ray Cornwall stalks in with

“Silly question- what if DC sold a new version of the bagged issue? Would that sell? Is there a market for such a gimmick?”

Given how the two comics they did release — the 30th anniversary special with new stories, and a reprint of the non-deluxe Superman #75 — a full-on reissue of the original bagged edition of #75 probably wouldn’t have been a huge deal. As I’ve said, these books are only selling fair-to-middling for me as is, and even the bagged version of the 30th anniversary special is hardly flying off the shelf (though it is selling better than I thought it would).

So while there is a market for gimmick covers still, I suspect the Superman thing being mostly callbacks to a 30-year-old story instead of a New Hot Thing dampened enthusiasm. “Yes, yes, we’ve seen all that…whattaya got that’s new?”

• • •

Okay, I’ll move on to the next batch of Death of Superman responses Friday. Thanks for reading, everyone, and as always for your great comments. They’re much appreciated.

I was in my early 20s when I sold the original…sigh.

§ November 14th, 2022 § Filed under death of superman, obituary § 12 Comments

So I briefly mentioned the release of the Death of Superman 30th anniversary comics last week, and wanted to dive into the topic just a tad bit more now that I’ve actually read the thing. “What, Mike talking about the Death of Superman? The devil you say!”

As I’d noted, I picked up the bagged version of the book, which featured this cover inside:


Boy, really pushing that “multiverse” thing. “Hey Marvel, we were here first!” Also, the back cover features the full image that’s on the foldout-cover variant of this comic. And yes, there is indeed a black armband inside, so you can…mourn the death of a fictional character who didn’t really die 30 years and had come back immediately anyway.

The lead story is by Dan Jurgens and Brett Breeding, and pretty much retells the events of the original story, mixed in with a l”current time” plot involving the return of Doomsday…or is it? It’s…fine, perfunctory and polished and giving you pretty much what you’d want from a “30th Anniversary of the Death of Superman” story.

A few things of note:

One, Superman’s cuffs, a design leftover from all the misguided fiddling with the man’s costume over the last decade, and left off more often than not in recent comics, are totally back with a vengeance:

Given we get an editorial note that the story takes place in “the not-too distant past” maybe this is just during a period before Supes dumped the cuffs (or at least stopped wearing them as often). In conclusion, they still look terrible. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

Two, it takes place before Jon Kent was aged into young adulthood, so a lot of this story is in the context of telling Young Jon all about this event in his parents’ lives that apparently he’d somehow never heard of ’til today. Which seems…unlikely. I mean, I get Supes and Lois not wanting to tell him about it ’til he was older, but, like, Superman is the most famous hero in the DCU, and Jon almost certainly looked up his dad on Lexipedia to see what it said about him. And you think Lexipedia isn’t going to have a long, lurid and loving description of Superman’s apparent death at the hands of Doomsday? C’mon, son.

Three, there sure is a lot of dialogue being shouted at Superman from the sidelines during his big battle. I mean, I guess that’s realistic an’ all, but all I could think of was “all these dummies are in huge danger.”

Four, speaking of the fight, like in the original ’90s comics, the number of panels per page during the fight decreases as it moves long, ending in a series of splash pages. Nice callback.

Five, it’s also an appreciated throwback to How Superman Comics Used to Be. I miss seeing these particular versions of the characters, with their specific personalities, and using supporting characters (like Terrible Turpin) that we hadn’t seen in a bit. Post-Crisis/Early ’90s Superman had a specific look to them, and it’s hard not to contrast them with the Superman books DC is currently producing.

And I’ll drop the numbered item conceit here and note that one of the things I’ve wondered about re: Superman continuity, given the reboots and revamps we’ve had over the last decade or so, was the canonicity of the Death of Superman. I mean, there were references here and there and then eventually a confirmation that it did happen, but never did find out the exact details. Like, was Australian Son of Luthor But Actually Luthor’s Brain in a Younger Body a thing that happened in the New 52 universe, y’know, like that.

Well, this special pretty much establishes that the Death of Superman happened more or less as seen in the comics from 30 years ago, in whatever passes for current DC continuity nowadays. There are other stories in this special that are set in the Superman milieu circa the early ’90s, like a Steel story by Louise Simonson and Jon Bogdanove. And we get some Ma and Pa Kent, though I think the “current” versions of them are portrayed a bit younger than the grandparent-ish types we got when Byrne rebooted everything. I don’t know, maybe something like what happened in this comic also happened to them. (Or maybe Dr. Manhattan did something when they came back in Doomsday Clock, but don’t get me started.)

I’m sure there’s more to say, but I’ll probably get to it when I address some of your comments from the last post (and probably this post) in my next entry. Oh, did I mention that the bagged version has a white backing board inserted inside that makes the package too big to fit on anything but the top shelf of my new comic racks? That’s annoying.

• • •

There are two voices for Batman that I hear in my head when reading the comics. There’s Adam West, who tends to pop into my head when I’m looking at some of the Silver Age stuff. And then there’s Kevin Conroy, the man who became the Batman to generations of fans. No offense to other great voice artists who’ve taken on the role, but whenever I’d watch one of those direct-to-DVD DC cartoons and it wasn’t Conroy in the Batman role, it just sounded…off to me. He embodied the character in a way so few others have.

We lost him too soon, dying recently at the age of 66. A tragic loss, and my condolences to his family, his friends, and his nearly-endless array of fans. So long, Kevin..

The Redeath of Superman.

§ November 11th, 2022 § Filed under death of superman § 8 Comments


“Death of Superman” nostalgia seems primarily focused around “I used to have one of those black-bagged comics, what’re they worth?” and not so much “I want to read more stories about the Death of Superman,” it seems. I’m selling…okay on this new 30th Anniversary DoS special, particularly, and surprisingly given the price point, on the bagged edition. But, even though I have no reason to think this, and I know it’s not something that was going to happen, I can’t help but compare to when I sold the original version and we had a line down the block of people waiting to get into the shop.

Anyway, haven’t had a chance to read it yet myself (and yes, I got the bagged one), but I’ll have a more extensive report on it shortly. At least I get to extend the life of this ol’ blog category a bit longer.

Kevin O’Neill (1953 – 2022).

§ November 9th, 2022 § Filed under obituary § 4 Comments


Legendary omics artist Kevin O’Neill has passed away, leaving behind beautiful work like Nemesis the Warlock, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Marshal Law, and much more. Of special note is, of course, the artwork he provided for The Sinister Ducks.

And as I love reminding folks, his artwork — not just what he drew, but his actual style — was rejected by the Comics Code Authority when they saw his contribution to Tales of the Green Lantern Corps Annual #2 (sample of which may be found above). DC published it away without the Code because screw the CCA, the art’s great.

So long, Kevin.

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