BREAKING SWAMP THING NEWS!!!
…From Et Cetera & The Comics Reader #87 (1972):
I’m not sure I’d heard about this, or if I had I’ve forgotten in my dotage. I presume the art was found, since there are photos of some of those pages in the IDW Bernie Wrightson Artist Edition.
I’m still looking at the Comic Readers I acquired recently, so I’ll keep an eye out if there’s a follow-up blurb in a future issue.
Speaking of ‘zines, I’ve been perusing yet another one, Inside Comics #2 from Summer 1974. There’s a few pages of classified ads, mostly want lists and selling offers, but there’s a big ol’ section just for announcements like THESE:
Well, I don’t know how you did it, Bruce, but it’s fifty years later and comics are still here! Well done!
I wonder if he got one. I mean, $20 for this dumb comic printed on the worst paper and the Hulk isn’t even colored correctly? Take that guy’s money and run.
I…um, look, this is depressing, look away, look away.
This is clearly a transcription of some of what was said in those erased bits from Nixon’s White House tapes. Very timely on this person’s part.
MAAAAAAN, deep burn on Rascally Roy here. Someone wasn’t happy with the state of Marvel, with a bonus reference to the apparent paper shortages of the time.
Well, that’s one way to advertise your shop, I suppose. You can’t make it up!
I wonder if the burn on Roy Thomas was from a disgruntled Marvel fan who was cheesed off about the missed deadlines that started leading to reprinted stories with way too much frequency? I think 1974 was about the time that started happening, with Doctor Strange definitely being one of the missed deadline books,early in the Englehart/Brunner run, where a Lee/Ditko early Doctor Strange story was subbed in. Or maybe the fan didn’t like all the Marvel reprint titles: Marvel Triple Action, Marvel Tales, the various Marvel anthology horror comics reprinting Atlas Comics horror stories from the ’50s, etc. ?
That little blurb about kicking the habit makes me think of Richard Lupoff’s detective novel”The Comic Book Killer.” Although published in the ’80s, it is set in the Bay area and references various comics shops of that era in SF, Berkeley San Jose, and beyond.
It would be interesting if it was Bill Mantlo who was seeking a NM Hulk no. 1 for $20–as he would go on to be Hulk scribe a few years down the road …
I wonder if Bruce stayed the course with comics a few more years and got into Adam Warlock, the new X-Men, Howard the Duck, Pacific Comics, First Comics, Eclipse Comics, Love & Rockets and so much more? Hopefully so! It would be funny if it was Bruce Jones just looking to see what fans wanted and the fans said: “We want Alien Worlds and Twisted Tales, Bruce!”
I have a feeling that “The Lone Ranger” continued to be lonely …but maybe consoled himself by grooving along to Jim Croce’s music: “…You don’t tug on Superman’s cape/You don’t spit into the wind/You don’t pull the mask off the old Line Ranger/And you don’t mess around with Slim…”
I think D. Lewis was either an acid casualty or was sending coded messages to Soviet sleepers…
Didn’t some Rick Veitch Swampy art get stolen at some point as well?
The bulk of Rite of Spring got stolen at one point I believe, don’t know if it was ever recovered.
All of those Marvel reprint comics of the 70s made it so easy to read all the earlier comics from before I became a Marvel fan. The only 60s super-heroes Marvel didn’t reprint was Giant-Man but I finally got a chance to read that when they did an Essentials volume with all of it.
I know it’s hard for the modern fan to contemplate this but it was a bummer for us old guys in 1969 when comics jumped from 12 cents all the way up to 15 cents and only 7 years after they had still been a dime each.
IYKYK – Len would have had some experience in the subject of missing original art.
@ JohnJ
Yes, I agree that the Marvel reprints from the ’70s are great –I still tend to pick them up when I can find them in Fine condition or higher in order to read classic ’60s Marvel stories at a fraction of the cost it would be to try to buy the original runs. Also, some of those Marvel ’70s reprints had new covers drawn by Gil Kane, Rich Buckler, Jim Starlin, and other great artists.
I think Marvel should pump out more of those, or more facsimile editions, preferably printed on pulp paper like in the good old days.
The first comics I bought off the spinner rack as a very young kid cost 20 cents. I remember buying the JLA issue which was the second part of the JLA/JSA/Freedom Fighters “Crisis on Earth X” story, the Secret Origins issue which reprinted the origins of Wonder Woman and Wildcat, and the last issue of the Teen Titans’ first run before it got cancelled–all of these comics had great Nick Cardy cover art!
My dad tells a story about how he could buy a comic a week because his allowance was 10 cents at the time. Raising the price to 12 cents per issue really messed up his buying habits.
“The bulk of Rite of Spring got stolen”.
That’s it! It made the front pages of CBG.