Then again, depends on the comics.

§ June 13th, 2025 § Filed under video § 6 Comments

Hey pals, if you noticed an offensive comment on this site in the last day or so, I apologize. I didn’t get around to checking recent comments ’til late Thursday night and spotted it then. Deleted, and they can go be hateful somewhere else.

In more useful comments, Thom said in response to yesterday’s post and that news footage of a Dark Horse Comics office visit:

“The comedic tone irrationally bothers me, even though I realize it probably stems from some combination of a) copying the same tired formula for comic news pieces and b) getting to actually report on something fun for once.”

That’s a fair assessment, I think…surely during a story about comics is better than, say, a murder/suicide or a plane crash. Looking at it that way, I’m willing to give a pass even to the clichéd “bam/pow” sound effect graphics referencing a TV show from literally decades before. Though I have to admit the “CRASH” one they used for the computer was a good gag.

“Having said that, it’s cool that they showcased a variety of adult jobs at a comic book company. I bet some kids saw this (or similar) and became curious about how to break into comics.”

Yes, I was glad to see that, too. Given how short a segment it was, and how much time was given over to the reporter goofin’ around, you got brief snippets of People Working, presenting this as an actual business and not some kind of hedonistic beach party (though to be fair, I’m not sure what CrossGen’s office experience was like).

They certainly did a better job of getting that across than this early ’90s series of segments on MTV, where one of their onscreen personalities spent some time in the Marvel offices mostly introducing the next video. However, occasionally some minor production stuff gets presented, and there are short chats with Bob Harras and Mark Gruenwald:


Anyway, I’m always keeping my eye out for more period videos like these. These are a lot of fun, reminding me of a time early in my comics retailing life.

Found on the Dark (Horse) Web.

§ June 11th, 2025 § Filed under video § 2 Comments

Okay, I know I’ve been dipping into the “here’s another old comics video from YouTube” well a few times lately on the ol’ site here, and sorry about that. I’ll have Genuine Content™, again soon.

Part of it is that I’ve been spending a bunch of time searching through YouTube looking for period piece comic book videos, trying desperately to avoid newer uploads by the openly deranged — “WHY WOKENESS DESTROYED MY LITTLE PONY,” “A GIRL…DRAWING A SUPERGIRL COMIC, WTF!?!?!” — that sort of thing. But I’m enjoying these clips of old news reports, weird and flawed as they are, as somewhat condescending as they can be, still provide nice looks at the World of Comics That Had Once Been.

This particular example is a short look at Dark Horse Comics from the 1990s, where we get to see Ron Randall drawing some Predator pages, and the reporter trying to do “bits” and not really succeeding (but I’ll give him the “get thee to an anatomy class” line, which is pretty good).


At least this had a little closer look at the actual production of comics. Some shade thrown at Frank Miller’s all-black page from Sin City: “I can do that!” “Yeah, no you couldn’t.”

And the weird thing is that I can almost remember drawing this one.

§ June 9th, 2025 § Filed under wood eye § 5 Comments

Okay, more morning medical stuff this week, so I’ll keep this concise…or, at least, concise for me, Sir Types-A-Lot. But anyway, if you’ve been following along for a while, you know about my 1990s Brush with ‘Zines, where a bunch of pals and I were part of a “publishing” “group” named “Full Frontal Harvey” (called so, of course, after Harvey Keitel’s turn in Bad Lieutenant).

Among the many publications was one from which this website gets its name, Mike Sterling’s Progressive Ruin, written and drawn by yours truly, Michael Ricardo Anatoly Sterling. You can read about it in this post here, where you will notice one of the features of this publication was an original drawing by me of a monster on each and every back cover.

Foolishly I didn’t document the monsters at the time, but my friend William sent in a picture of his copy, which you can see in the above linked post. And pal Ben sent along a pic of his.

And then the other day my very longtime customer Corey came into the shop…I remember this fella from my previous place of employment, when he was just a little tiny kid, so of course now, decades later, he just towers over me. But he’s still a friendly guy and still loves comics and oh, he also had a collection of Full Frontal Harvey publications, including the one under discussion today. Corey was good enough to send along a photo of his, and here we go:


Now, the interesting thing about this one…all the monsters have names, but a few were named after specific people. In particular, they were named after the FFH regulars, like old friend Rob, or me, or Fred, or, like the example here, after pal Cully, whom you occasionally see in my comments sections.

So that’s one more Special Monster Friend down. I would at the very least like to find the one I named after myself. I’m sure it’s the handsomest monster around.

And by “Four Issue Mini-Series,” they meant “Three Issue.”

§ June 6th, 2025 § Filed under freak out § 22 Comments

SIX

 
 

FUZZY

 
 

METEORS

 
 

SIGHTED

 
 
 
 
 
 

Koosh Kins #1 (October 1991), art by Stan Goldberg and Henry Scarpelli

“Some people just don’t get dressed up because they don’t have to.”

§ June 4th, 2025 § Filed under video § 9 Comments


That pic above is a still from the video I’m featuring here, a brief TV news story about the 1974 San Diego Comic Con. The image represents the sort of thing I want to see more of: vintage videos of old comic racks and folks pulling comics out of back issue bins. Watch in horror as someone flips through a bunch of unbagged Marvel Tales! And I think that Silver Surfer #1 is unbagged, too! Alas, very little comic-flipping is present beyond what you see there.

At any rate, you can kinda see what this sort of thing looked like 50 years ago, and (cough) what some shops look like now. However, you have to peer past the story’s focus, which is on what everyone’s wearing. (WARNING: the quick-cutting between a photo of William Shatner as Kirk and a person dressed as Kirk may cause seizures.) It’s really sort of frustrating, as I want to see what’s one everyone’s tables, what comics are the “hot” ones, what merch (official and otherwise) is being offered.

There are other, better, videos, that show a little more of the comics themselves (often with a breathless “this was once 10 cents, now it can cost as much as FIFTY dollars!”). Many of those are like this, however, with less focus on the comics and more on the attendees, but not quite as unbalanced as this clip.

The Final ’90s Countdown: Part Nine.

§ June 2nd, 2025 § Filed under final '90s countdown § 6 Comments

The Final ’90s Countdown continues, as we are still working our way alphabetically through the single-vote receivers in our poll! Again, no shame in getting only a single vote…there was a lot of good stuff coming out in the ’90s!

Louis Riel (Drawn & Quarterly, 1999-2003)

This ten-issue series was the one of Chester Brown’s earliest post-Yummy Fur longform projects, preceded by aborted Underwater in the mid/late-ish 1990s. (Surprisingly, Underwater lasted 11 issues, but its central conceit of babies gradually learning to understand the language spoken around them, resulting in most of the text being gibberish, was I think more than the readership was willing to do along with.)

But Louis Riel is what we’re talking about here, Brown’s biographical examination of this figure from Canadian historty, and his conflicts with the Canadian government as well as his own apparently mental issues. It is meticulously and thoroughly researched, with each issue containing copious notes in the back pages, and the story itself is drawn out with Brown’s deceptively simple and almost plain style. It makes for compelling reading, even if you’re, like, an American who thought “ah, what does this bunch of Canadian shenanigans have to do with me?” You’ll find yourself bingeing this book in short order once you start.

As I said, this was originally a ten-issue series of comics, printed in a slightly-smaller, almost digest-sized format and released over a four-year period. Its ultimate form is the collected edition, natch, available in both trade paperback and hardcover forms. But I like my set of the digest-sized comics…I love small press mini-comics, and, well, given the sales on this as individual issues was supposed not all that great, I. guess this counts as “small press.” Regardless of how you read it, it’s highly recommended.

I didn’t mean “long tail” as a joke.

§ May 30th, 2025 § Filed under disney, star trek § 1 Comment

First, sorry I missed posting on Wednesday…some days I can fight the effects of this new medication, some days I can’t, and that was a “can’t” day. Even as I type this, today is a “well, maybe day” so we’ll see what happens.

Second, there were a couple of specific things I wanted to point out in an addendum to my Peter David post from Monday.

For example, I really should have noted his Disney work on 1992’s Little Mermaid:


…a character he loved so much that I believe it was the reason he named one of his daughters “Ariel.” This, and the spinoff Sebastian series he also wrote, remains popular back issue items for many years.


David also wrote a series of Star Trek novels called New Frontier, based around a crew assembled either from supporting characters from other Treks and original characters David pulled from the always-expanding Trek lore. Its mix of deep cut continuity, irreverence, and sci-fi adventure makes it kinda/sorta a proto-Lower Decks, if you sort of squint right.

Anyway, there were some comic book spinoffs from these novels, including the first one pictured above, a David-scripted one-shot released by DC imprint Wildstorm in 2000. A five-part mini-series came out from IDW in 2008, also written by David.

As far as sales go, these didn’t have quite the long tail that the Little Mermaid books did. However, the fans of the books who also read comics were very excited to have these. And I was too! New Frontier was an entertaining extension of the franchise that I hope isn’t forgotten.

Peter David (1956 – 2025).

§ May 26th, 2025 § Filed under obituary § 19 Comments

So I was already reading the Incredible Hulk by the time Peter David came on as the regular writer. Picking up threads established by previous creative teams — Bill Mantlo giving Bruce an abusive father and the preexisting elements of a multiple personality disorder, and Al Milgrom bringing back the grey-skinned version of the Hulk from the very first issue — David intertwined them into a long, engaging adventure over the next twelve years of his run. A complicated portrayal of the Hulk’s mental state was the central focus nearly the entire time, giving us wildly different interpretations of the character beyond the most famous “Hulk Smash!” version (one David famously had said he wasn’t interested in writing).

And what’s fascinating is that, ever since David’s run, the multiple-personality aspect has been, more often than not, a central tenet of the Hulk titles. I would say this makes David’s tenure on the book certainly the most influential. Even after John Byrne returned as scripter for the Hulk series in 1999, even that was a reaction against David’s influence, trying to twist the narrative back to the Hulk What Does All the Smashing business.

But Immortal Hulk, often held up as one of the greatest modern Hulk stories (with, um, a caveat), would not exist without David. The current horror-themed Phillip Kennedy Johnson and Nic Klein run on the character wouldn’t exist without David. Even that weird Donny Cates/Ryan Ottley Hulk-as-rocket-ship-piloted-by-Banner series wouldn’t exist with David. The ultimate version of the Hulk we see in the movies we would not have without David.

And it wasn’t just Hulk he wrote. Oh no. I can’t possibly list everything he’s worked on (EDIT: but customer Corey did!), but the great DC Comics kid team book Young Justice, the weirdest take on Supergirl, the strange mystery/horror/fantasy comic Fallen Angel, the X-Men spin-off team X-Factor, half of the DC Vs. Marvel mini (with Ron Marz — bit of a mess, but thanks to those two at least it was an entertaining mess), Captain Marvel, Sachs & Violens…

…and Star Trek.

Boy howdy did he write some Star Trek, and it remains some of the best Trek in comics to this day. Mostly wrote Classic Trek era, though he occasionally dipped into Next Generation, they were some of the most run TV-to-comics adaptations ever published. Some scenes and lines of dialogue from those still flash into my head to this day.

And Star Trek novels, he wrote too. Plenty of them, to much acclaim (and sales!). Of note is an odd little crossover between the classic Trek comics he wrote and the first Next Generation book he wrote, Strike Zone, where a minor character he was…encouraged to remove from the comic by the Trek Powers That Be, returned under a slightly different name in the novel to have his story wrapped up.

There were more novels than just that, such as movie novelizations (including the classic Return of Swamp Thing adaptation that manages to get Alan Moore in there as a character!), novels based on other franchises (such as Babylon 5) and his original novels (Knight Life – King Arthur returns and runs for New York Mayor, Sir Apropros of Nothing – lamed-legged thief makes his way through life with wit and not-always-good luck, Howling Mad – wolf bit by a werewolf changes into a man under the full moon).

Of course there is also his TV and movie work, writing for Space Cases and Babylon 5. Two of his movies were Oblivion and Oblivion II: Backlash, one of those borrowing the “not…SWEENEY!” joke from his Star Trek comics…I’m already going overlong on this, I’ll explain that gag later. Anyway, both those movies got the MST3K-style Rifftrax treatment and I always wondered how David felt about that. The movies were…what they were, you could definitely pick out David’s style in the script, but, well, it’s amusing enough to watch, and the actors looked like they were having fun.

This only really scratches the surface of everything he’s done. The man wrote a ton of comics and books, plenty of which are very entertaining. David can be a little too jokey at times — the man never met a pun he didn’t like — but the basics were solid and he knew how to tell a story and tell it well. And the man wasn’t perfect…he had a…very unfortunate blow-up at a convention that caused him to write this mea culpa.

As you probably know, David and his family had to repeatedly turn to crowdfunding to pay his medical debts, which is a damned shame. One would thing someone at Marvel or Disney or Sony could have ponied up 1% of whatever money they made off of Spider-Man 2099, a character David developed and has subsequently been used in movies and marketed in spin-off toys, and paid off literally all of his bills. Or that comic companies and their corporate owners could come up with some better way to treat their older and/or ailing creators after years of Generating Content that they then use to make piles of money in other deals.

Maybe this will be the final straw that finally gets these companies to do something about this.

But it probably won’t be.

Of course, if we had a proper healthcare system in this country none of this would be a problem in the first place. But ’til then…the GoFundMe is still open for Peter David’s medical bills, which his family still needs to pay. Please contribute if you can.

So long, Peter.

Also, this series is probably going to take the rest of the year to get through.

§ May 23rd, 2025 § Filed under final '90s countdown, how the sausage is made § 6 Comments

Just a quick note to alleviate some confusion, since I’ve also been neglecting to mention it on a regular basis. The way I’m handling the Final ’90s Countdown, the same was I held the previous Final (’80s) Countdown, is by tallying the votes for all those nominated, and then discussing in alphabetical order all the single vote getters, then moving on to discuss all the two-vote getters, and so on ’til we read the #1 title.

As of right now, we are still in the middle of the many, many titles that have only received a single vote. So, if you voted for something and feel like it should have shown up already, well, maybe it got a second or third vote and will be in the next batch!

In the future I will try to emphasize the number of votes the title under discussion received, to help everyone keep track of where we are. And as I said when we started, ain’t no shame in a title just getting one or two votes. That just shows how much good stuff was out there for everyone to read!

Okay, thanks for reading, pals, and we’ll be back at it next week. (And hopefully I’ll switch the corner box and “…since 1969” tagline too.)

The Final ’90s Countdown: Part Eight.

§ May 21st, 2025 § Filed under final '90s countdown § 11 Comments

Hi pals…the medical visits have slowed down briefly, but I still have that impending surgery which is happening sooner rather than later. Things may be sporadic still for a little while yet, but I’ll still bring that all important non-AI-generated Content™ when I can.

So let’s get back to our Final ’90s Countdown, where we look at the titles you voted as your favorites!

Hilly Rose (Astro Comics, 1995-7)

Here’s yet another comic from this period that’s on this ongoing list of books that I didn’t read, despite remembering its existence quite well. Hilly Rose by B.C. Boyer published a scant nine issues over a three year period, with a series of very nice sci-fi pulpy covers.

Aside from seeing the covers, I don’t know much about the actual contents, I’m afraid. The one trade paperback released for the series in 1996, reprinting the first five issues, is titled Hilly Rose Space Reporter so that should give you some idea. As a last resort I’ve dipped into my copy of The Slings and Arrows Comic Guide, Second Edition (2003) — last resort only because the print is far smaller than I’m comfortably able to read — for a bit more of a description:

“It’s science-fiction adventure with a strong humourous element used to undercut an otherwise hard-boiled tale.”

The description goes on to say that Hilly got her reporting job thanks to her influential father, but surprisingly gets offered an even more prestigious position, so there are mysteries and shenanigans involved, I’m sure.

I remember Boyer having done his Will Eisner’s The Spirit-esque The Masked Man in the earlier ’80s, to some critical acclaim. I don’t recall much critical response to Hilly Rose at the time (the Slings and Arrows book thought it was okay, if unfocused), but I know at least the cartooning is top notch. And hey, someone voted for it as their favorite ’90s series here, so I’m sure it’s a great series!

Okay, I couldn’t just leave it at that, so using the ‘zine search engine, and found this quote from Indy Magazine #14, describing the book as

“…a really fun science fiction comic with cute writing and beautiful art.”

And from Wizard #47:

“Throw together Terry and the Pirates and Bone, add a dash of drama and satire, and you’ll have something that comes pretty close to B.C. Boyer’s new self-published comic.”

So there you go. Seems like a fun comic worth seeking out to me!

An additional note: as I was searching up info on Hilly Rose, I found this Wikipedia entry on a radio talk show personality with the same name. I’m going to guess this person was not unknown to Boyer.

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