§ November 28th, 2004 § Filed under Uncategorized Comments Off on



This is one of the batch of retailer signs provided by Dark Horse, and featuring Paul Chadwick’s Concrete, released in 1996. Turned out I still had a couple in my box o’comic promos in the store’s back room. So, their appearance in American Splendor, in a scene that takes place in the early ’80s, is definitely an anachronism. See, I’m not crazy, I’m not!

The comments section of this morning’s post has turned up a couple other anachronistic comic appearances in films. I seem to remember some modern comics appearing in The Winds of War TV mini-series, with logos scribbled over in pen. And my memory of Drugstore Cowboy (which I haven’t seen since it was in theatres) was that several non-period comics were on a spinner rack in (where else) a drugstore. For some reason, Zell Sworddancer sticks in my mind as being one of the comics in question, though I might be confusing it with a Zell Sworddancer appearance in another film.

I’m sure you all find this supremely fascinating. Well, it’s not just me. My dad does this regarding guns in films: “they didn’t start manufacturing that model until two years later! Don’t the people who made this film know anything?” We all have our quirks.

On a related note, not long ago, someone directing a play set in the 1950s approached us for period comic books to use as stage dressing. We were happy to provide color photocopies of a dozen or so 1950s comic covers (as well as temporary use of one of our old wire comic book spinner racks) in exchange for a little free advertising in the program books. I thought it was nice that someone actually went through the trouble of at least attempting to keep everything more-or-less authentic.

In fact, those photocopies were returned to us after the play ended its run…and I still need to hang them up in our store for decoration. Someone remind me to do that next week….

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