MSPR Presents – A Big Freakin’ Post.

§ January 24th, 2005 § Filed under Uncategorized Comments Off on MSPR Presents – A Big Freakin’ Post.

From Amazing Heroes #25 (June 1983), an excerpt from a Geppi’s Subscription Service advertisement:



Those were the days, eh? (And yes, that’s “Geppi” as in Diamond Comics poobah Steve Geppi.)


From another issue of Amazing Heroes, #22 (April 1983), comes this tidbit from Jim Korkis’ “Potpourri” column:

“In February of 1969, the University of Wisconsin was offering a course entitled, ‘Uncle Scrooge: The Duck and the Legend’ taught by Terry Zwigoff on Thursday evenings. […] The class only met five times. It was cancelled because of low attendance.”

Unless there were two Terry Zwigoffs* who attended the University of Wisconsin, this would be the same fellow who would go on to direct Ghost World and Crumb.

Man, to have gone to a class about Scrooge McDuck taught by Terry Zwigoff…if only I hadn’t been -1 months old at the time….


Swamp Thing in foreign lands: French artist Bruno Gore‘s portfolio image of Swampy, and a history of Swamp Thing in Italian.


Okay, so we’re in the process of buying a big ol’ collection of comics from a fellow, and among the many and varied books is a small incomplete run of Chester Brown’s Yummy Fur. Now, I already knew that the yearly Overstreet price guide hadn’t listed Yummy Fur in the past, but I cracked the book open anyway just to see if Overstreet‘s editors had relented.

Nope. Not yet. However, all three issues of Young Zen Intergalactic Ninja from 1993 were listed.

A comic that no one has ever asked for ever** is listed in Overstreet, while a comic by an acclaimed, award-winning cartoonist is not. A comic that, by the way, was not carried by Diamond Comics for a time, and thus had some spotty distribution…a comic that really could use some kind of semi-reliable pricing information.

During the black-and-white publishing explosion in the ’80s, people were cranking out books by the truckload in order to piggyback on the success of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Overstreet decided, for space reasons, not to list the majority of them, as they were just pumped out to make a quick buck on speculators. But, one would think that after all this time, at the very least Yummy Fur would be included. Perhaps Overstreet isn’t getting any sales reports on it…but I find it hard to believe that Young Zen Intergalactic Ninja is.

Okay, okay, I’m not completely unreasonable. I know Overstreet has to make decisions as to what to include and what to exclude, as they only have limited space. But what they do include and exclude baffles me, sometimes. I mean, Palookaville isn’t listed either…and that one’s still coming out!

Of course, we can solve this problem by doing away with price guides altogether, and just charge, say, $1 for all back issues regardless of age or demand.

Yeah, right. You first!


Spotted at pal Andy‘s site – a sketch-weblog by Ivan Brunetti! “Doodle-A-Day” – cool!


So pal Dorian tells me yesterday that he’s been hearing reports from some of our customers about some kid telling people that our store is going out of business (not true, by the way!). Clearly we must have offended this kid somehow (probably by telling him to stop doing stupid things in our shop, like running, or throwing things, or picking his nose then reading the comics*** or whatever) and this is his way of getting revenge. Of course, we’re getting these stories second-hand, so who knows what’s really going on, but I’m always really thrilled to hear stuff like this. (I would think that the caveat of “consider the source” would be enough explanation.)

A few years back, someone who owned a card shop in a neighboring town was apparently claiming that we were all arrested for “charging prices that were too high.” Um…what? Again, it’s hearsay, so who knows what, if anything, was actually said. Plus, that shop in question is long gone, so it’s a bit late to find out for sure.


I’m a bad person for giggling at the phrase “major Moorcock input.”


In the “You Don’t Say” department, here’s this caption from The Transformers #1 (September 1984):

“Whereas life elsewhere in the cosmos usually evolved through carbon-bonding, here it was the interaction of naturally occurring gears, levers and pulleys that miraculously brought forth sentient beings.”


Some of your favorite comic and cartoon characters in balloon form.




Goodbye, Johnny.

(Inspired by Will Pfeifer, who posted the companion piece to the above book.)

* It’s not like he has a common name, like, oh, say, Mike Sterling. (Yes, I know some of the links there don’t work at the moment.)

** Oh, relax, I’m exaggerating to make a point. I really don’t want to hear any griping from the Zen fans. Either of you.

*** We’ve had to tell someone this. Our customers prefer their comics booger-free, thank you.

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