Please for the love of God do not show up in my comments to explain the different spellings.
So a new post in the ongoing multiverse talk series just wasn’t coming together, and as such today I’ll instead post this Popeye comic I just acquired for the personal funnybook collection:
This is issue #166 from 1982, pretty late in its run (which would end in 1984). And since I’ve already been asked, no, it has nothing to do with the 1936 cartoon Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor, in that the the Sindbad in the animated feature is spelled with two Ds.
My eventual goal is to get my ungainly mitts on every issue of this publisher-spanning Popeye run, though I think I’ll be satisfied with having all the early Dell numbers in their IDW reprints.
Also of note is that there is no #93, lost in the transition between Gold Key/Whitman/Western/whatever and Charlton in the late 1960s. Plus, ssues #160 and #161 were not published during the later Western run at the title. And just to make things difficult, two issues (158 and 159) were only sold in those 3-packs, so I’m probably looking at paying more of a premium for those (but not as much as what I’d be paying for the similarly-distributed Uncle $crooge #179 — sheesh).
You see what I’m up against. Ah well, I hope at least I can find that #158…I need to learn more about THE MOODUC:
Mooduc and Granny McGurk should team up.
Also, how do you just not publish two issues of a title and then pick up two numbers later? It doesn’t seem that difficult to switch the numbers around in real time. But what do I know?
I hope you realize that MOODUC is an acronym: Miscegenous Obstreperous Organism Designed Unusually Crappily.
At first glance I thought, and then hoped, this would be about some crisis of infinite arf-arf-arfs.
You want that sweet Sinbad vs. Sindbad spelling content reserved for your twitter feed?
Got it!
— MrJM
Mike:
Regarding your tweet from a few days ago about the Mark Evanier/Dan Spiegle early 1980s run on Blackhawk (no.251-273), I think those issues are a great read and are underrated –or under the radar. Aside from the outmoded depiction of “Chop-Chop” (Wu Cheng) on the cover to no. 251, the series has many great covers drawn by Dave Cockrum, Howard Chaykin, and Gil Kane. Also, as the series progresses, Wu Cheng is richly explored as a character and full-fledged pilot/team member. Evanier and Spiegle also created a compelling villainess/love interest for Blackhawk, named Domino, somewhat in the vein of Airboy’s Valkyrie or Catwoman or Iron Maiden.
And there are cool back-up “Detached Service Diary” short stories with solo exploits of various team members, drawn by Cockrum, Chaykin, Alex Toth, Pat Boyette, John Severin, Will Meugniot, Joe Staton, Don Newton, etc. Highly recommended reading!
Now if only Steven Spielberg will get that long rumored Blackhawk movie produced…
Thom – I’m not the publisher, but if I had to guess that particular sequence of POPEYEs may have had their contents and distribution already locked down. 160 and 161 may have been intended for the threepacks, which for whatever reason didn’t happen. But by that time a POPEYE 162 may have been expected by the distributor, so that’s what had to be delivered.
According to the comics.org database, contents for one of those skipped issues ended up getting placed in a later issue, so the publisher apparently just had to wait for an opening in their schedule, for a POPEYE issue whose contents weren’t already locked down, to use that material.
Again, this is all just guessing on my part.
Sean Mageean: “Mark Evanier/Dan Spiegle early 1980s run on Blackhawk ”
Ohhhhh those are SO good!
Snark Shark:
“Hawk-a-a-a!”
I dug the Howard Chaykin Blackhawk 3 issue limited series from ’88 as well…it should be collected into a single volume.
Re: WIZARD magazine
“For a while there at the old shop, we had WIZARDs #1-3 which I kept trying to unload on eBay for lower and lower prices and nobody was buying. Apparently *now* there’s a sellers market for the damned things.”
Part of the increased demand for old WIZARD magazines might be at least partially due to Ed Piskor and Jim Rugg’s Cartoonist Kayfabe YouTube channel. In addition to old comics,they scrutinize old WIZARD issues quite a bit, and they talk about “the Kayfabe Effect” where there’s an uptick in subscribers to their channel seeking out old back issues of whatever comic or magazine they’ve just discussed on any given day,thus driving up demand.
Mike — That makes total sense. I was thinking of the book in terms of a single distribution stream, which of course wasn’t the case at the time for Popeye. Thanks for the (speculative) explanation!