The national nightmare of 1972 is over.
So in The Comic Reader #87 from 1972, it was announced that some mailed Bernie Wrightson pages from Swamp Thing #2 had gone missing, with FOUL PLAY suspected. But here the next month’s issue, #88, we find…
…that the true culprit was the U.S. Postal Service all along! DARN YOU AND YOUR PERFIDY, 15-YEAR-OLD LOUIS DEJOY!
Anyhoo, let’s go back to some of the open questions we had on Monday’s post about 1986 comics ordering, now that I’d had a chance to bend the ear of my former boss Ralph about just what going on back then in Ye Olden Pre-Mike Tymes.
First off, that issue of GrimJack, #26, that had the first color Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles story: yes, Ralph ordered high on this. And yes, as I said, there appeared to be plenty left over, and Ralph confirmed that it did not sell all that well off the new shelf upon release.
Here, let’s look at that cover:
The TMNT story is blurbed right there at the top, above the logo. The cover image itself is a little busy, and the blurb itself doesn’t stand out quite as sharply as it could. Plus, the font doesn’t grab the Turtles fan’s eye quite as much as an actual Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle logo would have done, I’d think. And maybe if the main cover image itself had featured the Turtles, or even an inset pic of them in one of the top corners, that might have attracted more attention.
But this is all 20-20 hindsight editing, and what’s done is done. As I said, it did move some copies out of the back issue bins in following years, but it was never a huge draw. But that’s just one store’s experience, maybe it moved tons of copies elsewhere. Every clientele is different.
Now, T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents…this wasn’t a question I’d posed in the previous post or anything, but I was just curious. How, I asked Ralph, did the Deluxe Comics edition of the comic whose name is a pain to type sell?
Ralph, himself a big fan of said property, noted that the initial issues of the Deluxe series (actually titled Wally Wood’s…) did quite well. And it’s no surprise, with some solid creators as George Pérez, Jerry Ordway, Keith Giffen, Steve Ditko, Dave Cockrum, and more on those early installments. But by the end of the run some of those folks had departed, and while the teams remaining on the book were perfectly fine, maybe the steam had run out a little. And the legal problems the book faced didn’t help, cutting it down after its fifth issue. Whatever the reason, interest in the series had waned by that point anyway.
And finally, that whole “Marvel’s New Universe” thing. That’s probably the subject of a whole post (or whole series of posts) just on its own, but I’ll try to keep it short and sweet here. My question to Ralph was “were people excited about the New Universe ahead of its release?” and his answer was “yes, very much so.” This was an exciting event in a time when Big Events weren’t an everyday thing in comics, and the last events that had happened, Crisis on Infinite Earths and Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars, hadn’t killed interest. As Ralph put it, the fans weren’t quite as jaded yet.
Did that extend to ancillary products like, say, comic news magazines with articles on the New Universe project? Sure, to the extent that there were fans who bought stuff like this. Obviously, not everyone who reads comics is interested in how the sausage is made, the comics themselves being enough, but the news/views mag sales did wax and wane with featured topics and New Universe was a point of interest. Here is Something Big that Marvel was about to launch, and interest is high.
And when it did launch, yes, it sold quite well. But for various reasons, the interest dropped off and the whole initiative crawled to a halt within about three or four years. Again, there’s a lot of ground to cover in regards to the Life and Death of the New Universe and I’m not doing that today. Suffice to say, it started big, then became less so, with the occasional bump upwards (like when John Byrne took over Star Brand). Eventually the New Universe (specifically the aforementioned Star Brand) became a plot point in Mark Gruenwald’s Quasar and the whole NU concept has popped up at Marvel in various forms ever since.
Okay, next week, I’ll try to be talk about topics from this decade. No guarantees, thoough!
I think we should take a moment to acknowledge that comic book publishers were apparently shipping oversized art pages via USPS on a routine basis and still hitting deadlines for dozens of titles a month. I’m not sure if the USPS is better or worse or what these days, but that’s impressive. I wonder if this Swamp Thing snafu changed their thinking about shipping methods at all.
Speaking of the New Universe, I hear from my friend that Strikeforce: Morituri still holds up. That seems like a title worth picking up on the cheap.
Strike force Morituri came out the same year but wasn’t under the New Universe banner, makes you wonder why not – same with Dakota North which would have fitted in more comfortably than in the 616 continuity. I remember being very excited about the launch of the New Universe – for awhile all we knew were the names of the titles which were all very evocative. All the titles turned out to be pretty disappointing and no one felt like they were bringing their A game. The only title I think I bought beyond the first issues was Peter David’s Merc which felt like at least it was trying something different and had some heart to it. It’s probably the title that’s gotten the least amount of love over the years out of the original NU releases.
I’m surprised your former boss takes your calls. Do you use a burner phone or something?
( j/k with the snarky comment. I’m grumpy you made me google “Louis DeJoy” )
Strikeforce: Morituri would have been a hard fit in the New Universe considering the premise. Shooter’s background for the NU was that it was our Earth prior to the White Event. There were no superheroes, supervillains, supertech, supernatural, or aliens known about on Earth prior to that moment. The White Event was the cause of superpowers for humanity. The plot of Strikeforce: Morituri was that aliens had invaded the Earth and the government started a program to give humans superpowers so that they could fight the aliens.
I liked DP7 a lot, and Psi-Force well enough. Star Brand got much better once Byrne showed up, but then of course he proceeded to wreck the shared setting.
I’m just realizing now that I thought Strikeforce: Morituri and D.P. 7 were the same thing for 40 years. Oops! Thanks for catching that. Maybe I’ll check them both out.
Also, it just occurred to me that Marvel has changed their anniversary date. The New Universe (and that cover border on the regular Marvel Universe titles) was created for Marvel’s 25th anniversary in 1986. And this year, we’re celebrating Marvel’s 85th anniversary. I knew something felt wrong about that, aside from the fact that I’m not *that* old. They’re counting backward to Marvel Comics #1 from Timely in 1939 now. I wonder when that changed.
Marvel celebrates both anniversaries; they celebrated the 70th and then a couple of years later the 50th.
Strikeforce: Morituri took place in the future so it could have been in the New Universe.
1961 Is the creation of the 616 Marvel Universe.
1939 Is the founding of Timely/Atlas/Marvel/etc.
Manvis Publishing was actually Martin Goodman’s company named which preceded Timely. Manvis Publishing released the pulp magazine Ka-Zar no. 1 in October 1936, so technically Ka-Zar is Marvel’s oldest character. And in Marvel Comics no. 1 from 1939 that pulp story from Ka-Zar no. 1 was adapted as a comics story.
One of the reasons that interest in the Wally Wood’s T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents comics published by Dave Singer’s Deluxe Comics imprint faded was that it was published erratically–sometimes six months or a year would pass by before the next issue hit the comics shops. I think that Carbonaro’s niece now owns the IP, but it would be cool if the estate of Wally Wood and/or David Spurlock could just buy the characters outright and produce a decent comic with them–even a limited series–that does justice to the characters, vetting a creative team of writers and artists who would continue in the spirit of the original series. There was also a rumor a few years back that Michael Uslan was trying to get a T-Agents film franchise off the ground with backing from a Chinese production company.
@Thom H. – I feel a little twinge of anxiety whenever I real old interviews or articles about artists shipping their pages in, esp. shipping through the U.S. postal service. Like you say, when you look at the sheer amount of pages being shipped it’s amazing it didn’t happen more often.
The New Universe was the second time comics broke my heart (Byrne leaving the FF was #1.)
I remember buying all of the titles and being disappointed by every single one. I THINK I bought the second issue of D.P.7, which seemed the most “Marvel” of the titles.
Looking back now, the title I probably liked the least, Kickers Inc. would be the one I would be interested in getting in the cheap bins. Ron Frenz in 1986 Marvel house style mode is pure comfort food!
Also: Looking it up now, I see that Kickers #9 had a Mignola/Simonson cover – dang
“The cover image itself is a little busy”.
It’s a bit of a mess! Everything going on, all crammed together.
” Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle logo… main cover image itself had featured the Turtles”.
Maybe all 4 Turtle Faces in the upper left corner, smiling at you, Marvel-style!
“As I said, it did move some copies out of the back issue bins in following years”
Seems like I’ve seen more of those than usual over the years, compared to any random Grimjack issue!
“Strike force Morituri came out the same year but wasn’t under the New Universe banner, makes you wonder why not”
The Strikeforce Morituri creators were going to take it elsewhere if Marvel didn’t publish it. It had no relation to the creation of the New Universe. Just coincidence in the timing.
DP7 is the best of the NU titles, I think! And in all fairness, even the worst title wasn’t as bad as NFL Superpro. THAT THING was CRAP.