Marvel will just have to publish their own facsimile of Power Pachyderms.
Smichal smasks
“You get to curate a big chonky omnibus from the post-TMNT black-and-white indy boom. Roughly 1,000 pages. What’s going in it? (Choices do not have to be animal-related.)”
Oh Smichal, Smichal, Smichal…you say the choices don’t have to be animal-related, but friend, there’s only one choice for such an omnibus. And that choice is ALL THE TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES RIP-OFFS:
Most of these are pretty short runs, like the three issue run of the above. That would leave more room for the knock-offs that had slightly longer lifespans, like the Hamsters books:
I feel like some kind of more permanent record is needed to remember a lot of these books, especially since the Overstreet Price Guide has declined to list several series from the 1980s black and white boom.
Some decisions will have to be made regarding comics like Aristocratic Extraterrestrial Time-Traveling Thieves:
…which apes the title style but doesn’t quite feel like the a Turtles rip-off (and in fact changes its name to X-Thieves down the line).
Or does Miami Mice make the cut?
Or even the dreaded…
Some editorial decisions would have to be made, clearly. Anyway, you can see a selection of TMNT-inspired books here.
I feel like this would be a solid collection, particularly if it included supplemental text pieces providing some historical context and background information. We’re getting farther and farther away from this period of time and it shouldn’t just be up to blogs to remember the madness of the times.
So to sum up…either a big book of Turtles knock-offs, or a complete collection of every GRIPS title.
Maybe no-one will believe me, but those 3 Kangaroos issues are really entertaining. Lee Marrs brings enough of her underground sensibility to distinguish the comics from all the rest of the post-TMNT menagerie, plus she finds time to parody American Flagg! as well, not just the Turtles.
Fred and Bianca got their own compendium just recently. My copy is supposed to arrive this week. it was published by Mark Vogel, with an ISBN of 978-1963835366 – 340 pages, so it should be pretty complete.
Drew Ford, of Dover Books and then his own imprint It’s Alive Books, was doing a pretty good job of identifying ignored books from the B&W era and getting them collected. His unexpected death and financial situation at the time of death unfortunately left many of the projects unfinished.
But some he didn’t get to yet that I have dreams of seeing collected are Trollords, Twisted Tales of the Purple Snit, Empire Lanes, Those Annoying Post Brothers, Rhudiprrt, and others.
Definitely The Complete Bugtown by Matt Howarth. Presumably multiple volumes!
I’ve seen that groundhog cover a few times before, but don’t think I’ve ever noticed the $1.11 price before. I know I’ve seen at least one title with a price of $6.66 (the original printings of Jay Stephen’s Dwellings), but what’s your opinion on “non-standard” prices like this? Annoying or something else?
I think it would be cool to see the complete output of Pacific Comics reprinted in full color in one or two hardbound volumes…along with any unpublished covers or house ads. Maybe they could include the issues from the various titles that continued at Eclipse Comics as well.
Also, as Dave Stevens fan, I was pleasantly surprised to find his art in a house ad published in the July 1984 Heavy Metal magazine for screen printed shirts by Graphitti Designs featuring The Spirit, Groo, Moebius, and The Rocketeer. The ad features a Stevens drawing of nubile woman
holding a Rocketeer shirt in front of her and proclaiming: “The best buy this side of…ulp…Uranus!” while alien monsters peer at her.
“X-Thieves”
So it could be filed next to X-Men on the stands, presumably.
the first 8 issues and the one-shot that came before the series used the full title – by issue 9, they gave in to what everyone was calling it anyway and only put X-Thieves on the cover, but I believe the indicia always had the full name for continuity and copyright sake.
I had a few issues of Aristocratic Xtraterrestrial Time-Travelling Thieves back in the day, but I was a bigger fan of Vogel’s Southern Knights comic–especially the early issues which featured Butch Guice’s entry into comics.
Going back to the fanzine topic, I recently came across a Comics Journal no. 84, although unfortunately with a dinged up bottom corner. I bought it anyway when I flipped through it and found a spot illo of Batman by Todd McFarlane–it turns out that this is McFarlane’s first published work!