Boxes, late shipping, "Chick," and footnotes.

§ November 14th, 2005 § Filed under Uncategorized Comments Off on Boxes, late shipping, "Chick," and footnotes.

Now this is an old fandom observation, that if you were to take a copy of the old magazine-sized Elfquest #16 and put in the front of a standard cardboard magazine box:


…you’d have a weepy-eyed elf peerin’ right back at you through the handhold opening.

I was reminded of this the other day because, as I was walking through our backroom storage area, Angel from the cover of Uncanny X-Men #399 was staring at me from one of the boxes:


Of course, Chaos Comics and the like can offer up a surprise or two, such as the cover from Lady Death: The Crucible #2:


At our store, we’ve been in the habit of taping white cardboard backings into the inside-fronts of our boxes, mostly to protect the comics inside from accidentally catching on the lip of one of the inner pieces of the box, but partially to hide the images that may be seen through the box holes. It may not seem like a big deal, but considering the sort of things that may poke through that little cardboard window in our boxes of adult back issues, it’s probably best to take a little precaution.

Any other comics you can think of that can function along these lines?


This week Green Lantern #5 and Supergirl #2 are due to be released from DC Comics. Now, it seemed like it’s been quite a while since we’ve seen issues of either of these, so I whipped out the cycle sheets to see when they were last on the shelves.

According to the records, GL #4 came in on August 31st, which means that #5 probably should have been in around the end of September. So, this issue is about 1 1/2 months late.

The previous issue of Supergirl, #2, was in on September 22nd, so #3 probably should have been out the third week of October. Instead, it’s coming out three weeks later.

I know stuff happens, production delays and what have you, but these are two particularly high profile relaunches for both these characters…it would seem that these kind of delays would hurt the momentum a little. Plus, if these titles are tying in closely to events in DC’s Infinite Crisis crossover event (I know Supergirl is, don’t remember about GL), they may have to rush production to make sure the right issues are out at the right time.

On a related note, I have a mail order comics subscriber who gets his stuff mailed to him about every two to three months. He primarily gets Marvel books, and I was sorting his stuff out to make sure that, by some incredibly extreme and rare chance*, I didn’t miss anything from his pull list, when I noticed something. In a 2 1/2 month period, some titles had released three or four issues, while Fantastic Four released only one. It may not be the flagship title it once was, but it’s still the first of Marvel’s modern superhero era. You’d think they’d want this to come out on a timely** basis. I don’t know why it’s running so behind (if it’s at the creative level, perhaps no one at Marvel wants to tell their big-name writer to get the lead out…see also Kevin Smith)…but thankfully*** there’s something like two dozen other FF titles to take up the slack.

And then there are those titles that no one expects to come out on time. Superman/Batman, anyone?


So, when Archie Andrews first appeared in comics, under the “Archie” logo, the very first caption to describe our favorite red-headed teenager tells us to call him “Chick:”


That’s a bit of characterization that couldn’t be dropped fast enough. It’s my guess that it didn’t last past that first story…I didn’t spot any other examples in my quick scans of Archie in The Forties and Archie His First 50 Years, though those are hardly complete. I like finding things like this in early comics…those bits that the creators had second thoughts about and discarded, or just plain forgot about. (Remember when Superman was able to mold his facial features to disguise himself? That’s something he hasn’t done lately.)

And isn’t saying that if we shouldn’t call him Archie if we “value life and limb” overstating it a bit? C’mon, Dilton could probably take Archie in a fight****.

* That “ahem”-ing you hear in the background is pal Dorian clearing his throat, for some reason.

** It’s funny, because Timely was the company that would (more or less) become Marvel. See, it’s like a play on words…oh, never mind.

*** That would be sarcasm.

**** Sorry, nothing here. I had a leftover footnote and had to put it somewhere.

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