Mike Sterling's Progressive RuinAlone, unmourned, and unloved since 1969

“Squid Games” is my favorite Ceforeignalopod album.

§ December 17th, 2021 § Filed under question time § 4 Comments

Back to the ol’ question mine for today’s post! But don’t forget to give me your predictions for 2022’s comic industry!

Dave Carter is an unstoppable question machine with

“Who is your favorite Legionnaire? (i.e. member of the Legion of Super-Heroes; not e.g. your favorite enlistee in the French Foreign Legion…) Explain your answer.”

Dangit Dave, I had Jean Genet all ready to go before you threw your little caveat in there. FINE.

Anyway, it’s a question that’s come up once or twice here on Pugressive Rune, and this post from, egads, four and a half years ago, answers and explains:

“I’d like to see a Brainiac 5-centered Legion relaunch. Brainy as the cool, rational, scientific center surrounded by the utter madness of ‘Bouncing Boy’ and ‘Matter-Eater Lad’ and so forth, just trying to do his job despite all the crazy nonsense in which he finds himself mired.”

Um, not quoted is my writer suggestion, which, shall we say, hasn’t aged well. But I think Brainiac 5 is just the right mix of seemingly normal but weird enough to be interesting. He has a long history behind the character tied to Superman and L.E.G.I.O.N., even given the various continuity shenanigans. His scientifically advanced inventions (and lest we forget, time travel) have a lot of story potential. I’ve just always liked him, what can I say. And I think one of the times I brought up that he’s my favorite Legionaire, I was hit with the response “he’s everyone‘s favorite Legionnaire!” So let’s get that Brainiac 5 solo series out, already.

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ExistentialMan exists only to ask this question

“Here’s a quick, classic one: Flight or Invisibility?”

Flight, natch. Invisibility feels like would wear out its novelty after a while. Unless of course you use it for nefarious means, like, for example, sneaking into movie showings for free AND NO OTHER REASON, and who needs the temptation?

I mean, flight would be awesome. No more traffic jams! (Just fines for violating aviation rules!)

• • •
William Burns fires up the ol’ keyboard to ask

“Do you think Marvel will ever bring back those True Believers $1 reprints (or a similar cheap reprint format)? Those were fun.”

It’s be nice, but I don’t see ’em in any forthcoming orders. It could be that paper shortages/increased costs have made them not financially viable for the moment…I mean, less so than they already were. They were certainly popular with my customers, so hopefully they’ll return. I know there’s still the occasionally “facsimile” edition (like this week’s Conan the Barbarian #1) issued at full current cover pricing, but even those seem less frequent.

• • •
Chris Gumprich has Martin Landau ghost the following question for him

“I’m not up on the current comic zeitgeist anymore so this might seem a ‘duh’ question. In your experience, do buyers still follow characters above all or has the momentum shifted to creators? Is it more ‘I will buy everything Ed Brubaker writes’ or ‘I’m going to keep buying SWAMP THING even though I haven’t liked it in years?'”

To the best of my observation, it’s mostly readers following characters. Though, sometimes when there’s a creative team change with an accompanying premise change for a character, like with the recent transition from Immortal Hulk to the new Hulk series, some folks dropped off. Though that may be more about people jumping on to the highly regarded Immortal Hulk series, and leaving once that story was over.

But by and large, I haven’t had many customers zeroing in specifically on creative teams over the actual character(s). There are still a few, of course, looking for “all Ed brubaker” (to use your apt example). They’re far outnumbered from the people who want, like, all Green Lantern appearances. Or even weirdos who want all Swamp Thing appearances, what’s up with those crackpots.

• • •
Bob Stec goes this way with

“Are you watching Squid Game on Netflix?”

I’ve heard of it, of course, but I don’t think I’ve seen a single frame from it (unless I saw one on, say, Twitter, and didn’t realize what I was looking at). As far as I know, it’s about squid playing football. I’d totally watch that.