Citation no longer needed.
And now, for no good reason, Iron Man versus Man-Thing:
from Iron Man Annual #3 (1976) by Steve Gerber, Sal Buscema & Jack Abel
Following up on yesterday’s post:
- There was some discussion in the comments as to why Iron Man hasn’t had the sales bump comic books usually get prior to the release of films based on them. Generally responses have ranged between “Iron Man hasn’t been a very likable character lately” and “Iron Man comics, by and large, aren’t very good.” And either theory has its merit, though a comic not being good is rarely a detriment to sales, as proven by [insert title of comic you don’t like that sells well here]. But those are as good reasons as any for a lack of interest in Iron Man comics…though if the movie is as good as I’ve been hearing from reliable sources (as opposed to, say, Ain’t It Cool News), maybe we’ll actually see a reversal of the usual trend. Maybe a comic book movie will finally inspire sales after the movie’s release. Not holding my breath, but we’ll see.
It’s the total lack of even the investor-types that has me puzzled. There’s always at least two or three people who come sniffing around for key issues and first issues and “excellent to mint” (gah) copies for resale, even for the movie series that have been around for a while and the sales bumps are no longer as significant as they were for the earlier films. Like the example I used yesterday…Spider-Man 3 didn’t generate a whole lot of funnybook activity, but I still had that guy buying all of the issues with the debut of the black costume. I would have figured I’d have more people looking for Iron Man #1, or that issue with the debut of Thanos, or the greatest issue ever, or whatever.
If anything, our Iron Man sales are down. Even the brief flurry of customers I had looking for those Warren Ellis issues a few months back have dried up.
Curious to see what happens after the film’s release.
- Phil notes that Swamp Thing had a brief, brief cameo in the House of Mystery preview in the latest issue of Fables. Phil’s belief is correct: that isn’t a new drawing of Swampy…in fact, it’s from page fifteen of the first issue from 1972, drawn by Bernie Wrightson.
Well, “cameo” is overstating it, since the cameos of the various Vertigo stars amounted to inset bubbles with old art and new dialogue espousing the virtues of this new House of Mystery series (or whatever they were doing — I don’t feel like double-checking). This series does look interesting, though, from what little I’ve seen. Hopefully it’ll feature more Cain and Abel than what’s just in the preview…haven’t had enough of them since The Dreaming was cancelled.
Here’s DC’s page for the series, including a PDF file of the preview.
- I can’t believe I’m now the citation for Woozy Winks’ doofus-ness in the Plastic Man Wikipedia article. Well, at least until it gets revised away by someone with no sense of humor. EDIT: Citation since revised away by someone with no sense of humor.
