Thanks to reader John for sending along another addition to my “homages to House of Secrets #92″ collection:
(Art by Don Cardenas and Steve Bryant.)
This comes this Kickstarter campaign, which makes me wish I had more money and more time to peruse Kickstarter for swell projects like this. I am unsure how to purchases copies of this outside of Kickstarter, so maybe keep an eye out for a campaign for issue #3? Or I’ll ask John and see if he can point me in the right direction.
Speaking of purchasing, John also sent me this 1977 Supersnipe comics ‘n’ art catalog:
Imagine getting an Amazing Spider-Man #1 (either version here) for this cheap:
I recently had both of these and they sold for a little bit more than these listed prices.
And check this out — three Peanuts originals for under $600 for the lot:
Yes, I know this is all in 1970s dollars, back when you could buy a car for a nickel and houses were basically free, but it’s still — amusing? Is “amusing” the right word here? How ’bout “depresing” — to see these dollar amounts attached to these items. And I just barely scratched the surface here…there are just pages and pages of price listings that I’m pretty sure will keep me shaking my head in mild disbelief for hours on end.
So pretty much in every media adaptation of Swamp Thing, be it cartoon or live action TV show or two fantastic movies or video game, hearing him refer to himself out loud as “Swamp Thing” always sounds just a little goofy. Some kind of weird combination of self-importance and “…seriously, that’s the name you’re going by?” And look, I’m saying this as the guy that, some of you may know, kinda likes this Swamp Thing character. But sometimes, something that reads okay on paper just doesn’t seem to translate to actual spoken out-loud dialogue, and, well, what can you do. And maybe they hit the “I AM THE PROTECTOR OF THE GREEN” thing a little too hard. Still, though, it was nice to see an animated Swamp Thing that had purpose beyond selling toys. Would love to see a standalone Swamp Thing animated movie at some point, but it would have to probably have to shoehorn Batman or Superman into it like they do with pretty much all the direct-to-home-video DC cartoons, like they did with this one, so I’m not holding my breath.
Oh, and by the way, “this one” is Justice League Dark, as some of you probably surmised, teaming up DC’s spooky characters, like Deadman, the Demon, Zatanna, and John Constantine, mispronouncing his name as they have in, I think, every TV and movie version of him:
…but What Can You Do? Despite that particular issue only I care about, I enjoyed the film well enough. It’s still weird seeing Constantine just straight-up casting magical spells like Dr. Fate in an overcoat, which is not something you saw him really do too much in the early comics but is perhaps a bit more frequent in modern funnybooks. But beyond that, it was a good showcase for all the characters, all of whom got something to do, with a variety of action sequences and creepy locations, but that one scene with the cast being chased by a hurricane with a face felt more like something out of Scooby-Doo There was just enough left unexplained in characters’ backgrounds to maybe urge the more inquisitive viewers to Read More About It. Hopefully in the comics, that is, and not just on Wikipedia.
As mentioned above, Batman does appear in the film to help sell it to people for whom the “Justice League” in the title isn’t enough to entice them, but other JLA members appear as well. Alas, though we’ve all moved on to the “Rebirth” era in the comics, the movies are still in their “New 52” phase, so that’s the Superman we get, whose New 52 costume is somehow even worse in animation than it is on the page. Fortunately he’s not in there that much, since that costume more than anything dates the film (to, like, the early ’90s, frankly). Wonder Woman’s New 52-era costume makes an appearance, too, though that’s slightly more tolerable.
I haven’t really gone through the extra features (available on the Blu-ray version) just yet, beyond the “Story of Swamp Thing” short, in which Len Wein and Kelley Jones discuss the character’s origins and history. There are other short pieces titled “Did You Know? CONSTANTINE ORIGIN” and “Casting Deadman” and the like, plus a preview of the New Teen Titans: The Judas Contract cartoon, originally announced years ago, which is finally coming out. (Not that it was made years ago and has been sitting on a shelf, but…well, you know what I mean.) There are also the usual “From the DC Vault” cartoons, this time a couple of episodes of The Brave and the Bold featuring the Demon.
…And speaking of Deadman, Nick Turturro does the perfect voice for him. I don’t know that I ever imagined what Deadman would sound like as I was reading the comics, but now this is the voice. So great.
Overall, an enjoyable film, I thought. Not really expecting a sequel, despite the fact it would be nice to see some…resolution to the seemingly final fates for some of the characters. But, despite what I said above about the possibility, I’m still holding on to that faint hope that maybe, just maybe, now that we’ve cracked the seal, we might see some kind of solo Swamp Thing animated effort. Well, even if it does have to guest-star Batman…whatever it takes, I guess.
§ August 14th, 2006§ Filed under swamp thingComments Off on House of Secrets #92.
House of Secrets #92 (June/July 1971) featured an eight-page story by Len Wein and Berni Wrightson titled “Swamp Thing,” about love, betrayal, revenge, and a swamp monster, taking place approximately in the early 1900s. Sales were brisk, and reader reaction was positive, so this one-shot Swamp Thing story was retooled into an ongoing adventure strip set in the present day (resulting in some highly regarded comics, some less-regarded feature films, a live action TV series and cartoon, an action figure line, and, yes, even chalk).
DC Special Blue Ribbon Digest #9 (May 1981) was the first time I was able to purchase the story from House of Secrets #92 for myself. This particular tale certainly stood out among the bright and cheery origin stories of the Atom and Krypto the Superdog. This is Copy #1 of this story in the Vast Mikester Archives.
Saga of the Swamp Thing #33 (February 1985) was a fill-in issue of sorts, which contained a reprint of the House of Secrets story, making this Copy #2 of this story in my collection. The new framing sequence for this story, which drew a connection between the original Swamp Thing and the newer Alec Holland version of the character, makes what could have been just a fill-in into one of the most important and influential comics of the series. Not only did it establish that the current Swamp Thing was the latest in a long chain of swamp creatures throughout Earth’s history (a plot thread that would play out through the rest of this series), but it also gave us the first “modern” usage of the old DC horror comic hosts Cain and Abel. Cain and Abel, formerly humorous wiseacres introducing short scary comic stories in their respective anthology titles, were now explicitly described as the Cain and Abel from Christian theology, Cain continuously murdering Abel in an eternal repeating cycle. This new (or old, I suppose) interpretation of these hosts was carried into Neil Gaiman’s Sandman and its spin-off, The Dreaming.
Roots of the Swamp Thing #5 (November 1986) was a deluxe format reprint series, representing the first ten issues of the original Swamp Thing series by Wein and Wrightson recolored and, for the first time, on nice, bright white paper. As a bonus feature, this last issue of this series included the original House of Secrets story, making this Copy #3 in my possession.
House of Secrets #92 (June/July 1971) – At some point in the late 1980s, I was able to purchase for myself an actual copy of the original House of Secrets appearance. The comic looked like it had been hit by a truck, and I think someone had used it to clean a shellac brush, but it was only a couple bucks and, by God, I finally had an original copy of the story (making it Copy #4 in the collection).
Swamp Thing: Dark Genesis trade paperback (first printing, 1991) – This trade collected the classic ten-issue run by Wein and Wrightson, and also contained the House of Secrets story. This is Copy #5 of the story in my possession.
House of Secrets #92 (June/July 1971) – At some point in the early 1990s, I was able to upgrade my first copy of House of Secrets #92, which a generous man with poor vision would have graded as “Poor to Fair,” to a copy in Very Fine. Set me back a cool $60, but given what it would cost now to buy it, I ain’t complaining. Let’s call this Copy #4a, which is also the copy I scanned for the image at the top of this post.
DC Silver Age Classics House of Secrets #92 (1992) – To commemorate the end of their printing comics at the World Color Press plant in Sparta, IL, DC released a series of classic comic reprints that were the last books off of those presses. Among the “Silver Age Classics” was House of Secrets #92, which kinda stretched the definition of “Silver Age” a little, but, since I apparently needed Copy #6 of the original Swamp Thing story, I was willing to overlook that little fact.
Essential Vertigo: Swamp Thing #14 (December 1997) – DC Comics began reprinting the Alan Moore issues of Swamp Thing in black and white in this series, partially to show off the fine linework in the art, but mostly because it would have cost too much to recolor everything for the new offset printing process. Anyway, this issue reprints Swamp Thing #33, mentioned above, making this a reprint of a fill-in with a reprint inside. I think this is the only U.S. printing of the original HoS story in black and white, but I know this is Copy #7 of the story that I’ve purchased.
Millennium Edition: House of Secrets #92 (May 2000) – To celebrate the turn of the millennium, DC Comics released reprints of notable comics throughout the year (complete with a cool gold foil “Millennium Edition” stamp on the cover that was designed by one of my long-time customers). And, yes, House of Secrets #92 made an appearance, and, yes, I made it Copy #8 of the story in my collection.
And I know there are more reprints of the story out there. One of the Swamp Thing trades reprinting the Alan Moore run contains issue #33, and I believe there were a series of black and white reprints in the U.K. that also contained that same issue.
But, for now, I think eight copies of the same story is plenty. I don’t want people to think I’m obsessed or anything.
Thanks to reader/mad genius Paul for sending this mock-up of what could’ve been for a Sterling Silver Comics retailer exclusive variant!
Following up on my discussion about that very topic from Monday, I’d actually pulled up an email I received from A Comics Publisher in response to an inquiry I’d made along these lines. Without going into a whole lot of specific detail, let’s just say my buy-in, just for the minimum copy purchase of the exclusive variant, would have been in excess of $10,000. That doesn’t count other minimum orders for the regular cover or other variants of your retailer variant, or for paying for the actual artwork by the artist.
Basically, it’s a lotta scratch…not undoable, entirely, but certainly an investment that would require some first class hustling to make that cash back. Which could be a problem in case you got a cover that didn’t grab the attention of the sort of folks who look for exclusive variants like this. But, to be honest, the way the marketplace is right now, seems like anything that has any form of scarcity is automatically in demand.
Anyhoo, something to think about the next time the opportunity arises.
But speaking of “scarcity,” apparently the latest issue of Usagi Yojimbo, #20, is “in demand” due to it being a first appearance of a character whose name I bet most of the people looking for it couldn’t even tell you. My distributor decided, alas, that this would be one of the comics they’d be shorting from my order last week (there’s usually a few every shipment). I figured that would be that, given it’s temporary hotness and all spare copies eaten up by reorders, I’d have to wait for the second printings to come along so I can get copies for customers who actually want to read it. Somehow, though, miracle of miracles, my replacements showed up! I mean, sure, half my Fireflys are missing and several of my Marvel Voices: Pride shorted or damaged, so it’s always something.
As to the Marvel Voices: Pride comic, it surprised me a bit by including select pages from Alpha Flight #106 (1992). In case you forgot, that’s the comic where Northstar finally just straight up said, after years of subtle-ish hints, “yeah, I’m gay.” Which was, granted, a pretty big deal, and demand for the issue warranted a second printing. But this was also at the height of the whole “gotta be EXTREEEME” art thing, and…yeah, it certainly looks a bit jarring side-by-side with more current art styles. Hey, gotta start somewhere! (Also, did they ever bring back Major Mapleleaf from that story?) (Yes, I know that was a nickname of Alpha Flight’s Guardian at one point.)
I should also note that my comments sections here on Rogressive Pruin occasionally take on a life of their own. So, if you ever wanted to delve deep into the origin of the word/sound/expression “vootie,” well, your day has come.
So some surprising comic news this week, with Oni Press announcing their revival of the EC Comics brand. By which I mean the brand that brought us Vault of Horror and Weird Science, and not, say, anything along the lines of Lucky Fights It Through.
This isn’t the first time that there’s been an attempt at bringing back EC Comics, specifically with new material and not just reprints of the originals. Usually it’s been a revival of the best-known of the ECs, Tales from the Crypt, which has been disinterred at least a couple of times in the last few years with new stories “in the EC tradition” under the familiar TFTC logo. For example, here’s issue #8 of the Papercutz-published version from 2008:
What’s interesting about Oni’s use of the EC brand is that it’s not starting off with yet another Tales from the Crypt series, or a revival of any of the other original titles. Instead, they’re doing brand new series, leaning on the EC brand itself to establish themselves, rather than depending on the name recognition of the title made part of pop culture for modern audiences primarily thanks to a TV show.
As such, they’ve tried to come up with new series names that evoke the EC experience…one working maybe a little better than the other. The first is the wonderfully-titled Cruel Universe:
…and the other is…well, Epitaphs from the Abyss:
…which gets points for trying, I suppose. It’s better than just swapping out synonyms for “tales” or “vault” or “horror” or “fear” I guess, but actually saying the name out loud (as I had occasion to do the other day) it doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue.
That said, the covers look swell, and I like the classic “SCIENCE” and “TERROR” banners in the corners. And they’ve got a pretty solid collection of creators to work on these books to start off, with folks like Jason Aaron, Cecil Castellucci, Peter Krause, Kano, Stephanie Phillips, Malachi Ward, Cullen Bunn, and Jay Stephens, among many others. One hopes that they retain use of the Leroy lettering of the originals, which is as much a part of the look ‘n’ feel of EC as any of its artists.
Another part of what made EC “EC” was its relatively small-ish and consistent roster of artists. Not saying these new ones won’t have great work in them, judging by the creatives announced, but part of the appeal of the originals was knowing you’d get new stories from the regulars. You crack open a Crypt, you expect a Jack Davis story and a Graham Ingels story, and so on. Sure, it wasn’t the same artists in every issue every time, but there was enough consistency that each title, or each genre of title, had its EC “house style,” that you knew what to expect. It’s too early to say what the Oni-era EC is going to do, but are we going to get, say, a Peter Krause story in every issue? Are the majority of the stories going to be written by Cullen Bunn and Jason Aaron in every release?
That’s not how modern anthology books work, and we’re likely to see a much wider range of stories and artwork from far more people than had worked on the originals. More dependence on freelancers than a bullpen (did EC have a literal bullpen?), which isn’t necessarily a comment on resultant quality. But it’ll certainly result in a different feel in the type of books these new releases will be. Beyond the fact that there’ll be about seven decades between the two versions of EC, of course. And there ain’t nuthin’ wrong with more points of view and life experiences informing the stories. (Cue the complaints of “wokeness” from the Usual Suspects, who obviously had never read an EC comic before.)
Trying to capture that EC style has been a continual windmill tilted at by the comic publishers over those decades. Outside of DC and Marvel’s Comics Code-approved “mystery” titles like House of Secrets, which followed in the short story anthology format (and featured plenty of good work of their own), one of the primary spiritual successors to EC is the output of Warren Publishing:
…especially with its own artistic excellence and its willingness to, shall we say, skirt the boundaries of taste in an occasionally tongue in cheek manner.
And one would be remiss to not mention the oeuvre of writer Bruce Jones, responsible for various 1980s EC-type indies like the following:
And even now, Image Comics is publishing Creepshow, a comic inspired by the Stephen King movie that was itself inspired by EC Comics:
This is hardly a comprehensive list, as the original ECs cast a long shadow and many, many publishers and creators have tried to follow in its footsteps. Given the creators involved, the publishing strategy taken with new and not revived titles, and the involvement of original publisher William M. Gaines’ daughter and grandson in this effort, I am at least cautiously optimistic. The immense regard in which EC Comics are held must surely be somewhat daunting to any new folks working on these books, but I am hoping what we get approaches the high precedent set by the originals.
Just don’t forget that Leroy lettering! I MEAN C’MON
So for approximately 36.3% percent of my life, I have been working on this website, since way back when I still had brown hair and properly-working eyes. And that also means of the 35 years I’ve been toiling in comics retail (and can currently be found at my own store), 57.14% of that time, more or less, has been spent relating the travails of the funnybook business.
Well, I’m still here. I’ve outlived many other comic shops, many other comics bloggers, mostly out of pure stubbornness, partially out of force of habit. But I’m hanging in there, even as the public’s desire and/or patience for both blogs and comic books wax and wane, and I appreciate you folks out there continuing to tolerate my presence.
As I like to remind folks, when I started this site, I didn’t even plan to bring up the fact I worked in a comic book store. Now it’s such an indelible part of this project of mine I can’t imagine doing without. I doubt I’d still be doing this blog if I weren’t so thoroughly mired in the comics industry.
Big thanks, of course, to my family and my girlfriend for putting up with this ridiculous hobby of mine for this long, to all my pals both online and (supposedly) real, the Longbox Heroes boys for plugging my site every episode, and of course to the Original Comics Blogger, Neilalien, for blazing this weird trail for the rest of us. And naturally to everyone out there still reading blogs and participating in my comments sections…you folks are a big reason why I’m still doing this. Thank you all.
Over the past year, I’ve been doing pretty well, actually. Despite a new but relatively minor issue cropping up, my eyeball problems have been on the mend, experiencing finally some real progress.
At the store, I’ve been having my best year of business yet, in no small part due to the acquisitions of some wild collections. Among those comics are many, many Silver Age Marvels, including a couple of very notable issues which you’ll see linked below.
Social media has been a real ride of late, necessitating the updating of my mikesterling.com page showing where you can find me (which probably could still use a little more updating, frankly). By the way, you can also get to that page via mikester.net, because I’m a raging egotist.
Twitter (or as I’ve been referring to it lately, Xwitter, per its new name nobody seriously uses, and that “X” looks like a collapsing “T”) is a platform I’ve been using far less lately. I’m still there, checking in and monitoring direct messages, but not participating nearly as much. Still, I have a few tweets to share from that platform, for perhaps the last time for one of these anniversary posts:
Marvel movies have taught kids at least one important thing:
Was finally able to form an opinion on The Flash movie based on an actual viewing:
And I can’t help but comment on other people being very wrong about superhero movies:
I address…assumptions made:
I experience the respect I deserve in my own store:
And maybe sometimes I get a little too much respect:
Finally, a fan-casting I can agree with:
And I at long last put my hard-earned English major to use by chiming with some literary criticism:
Now, if you want to find me on a Twitter-a-like social media platform, me ‘n’ many of my pals seem to have settled on Bluesky. Not open to non-members yet, but apparently there are plans to allow public access soon. You can find me here if you’d like (and my store here), where you can see bon mots such as these:
But overall, I understand my life and its position in the world:
Now to this site itself: for most of the year I’ve been discussing your picks for your favorite 1980s comics, and you can find all those posts under this category. I had hoped to be done with it all by the end of the year, but it’s not looking likely, especially since, surprise surprise, I tend to run off at the keyboard a bit so each entry is longer and more time-intensive than even I expected. But we’re almost done, with a couple of really good titles left to go. And you have yet to find out which 1980s title is my favorite!
But here, have some other highlights from throughout this past year:
DECEMBER 2022
I didn’t really need these Popeye action figures but honestly just look at them, more poop on Popeye, more than you ever wanted to know about Gold Key Champion.
JANUARY 2023
My Few Omnibuses with new addition The Thing, and yet morereprints of Swamp Thing for me, and now looking at your predictions for 2022 (123456), that Secret Six (not Blackhawk) story that takes place in my hometown of Oxnard, ass-free comics, arse-full comics and the first Code-approved use of “pissed off,” got pal Nat to sign an early comic of his for me.
FEBRUARY 2023
I still have little confidence that James Gunn DC movies etc. plan are going to go anywhere, maybe I’ve already discovered the Most 1990s comic, Popeye sailing the Spanish seas, it’s never too late for another Death of Superman post, Cerebus meets Popeye plus some street dates talk, a thing that’s bugged me for years about these two Marvel comics, Zot! Talk, parts One and Two.
MARCH 2023
So long to Dilbert, Howard Chaykin did more American Flagg! than I thought, for some reason it’s getting harder for me to do these birthday posts, so long Rachel, where’s my Eisner for the title I came up with this post about Mars, I think the store I talked about here is long gone, “Hey, I like PC comics” “of course you’d like ‘woke’ comic” “what,” I should get my Eisner taken away for the title to this post about Az, I chat about a handful of 1980s indie companies, Jupiter the comic that dares include me.
APRIL 2023
I think there will be an awful lot of posts there it’s just me talking about miscellaneous ’80s indie companies, so long Al, terrifying comic book ad puppets vs. reality.
MAY 2023
Before Free Comic Book Day with bonus Freak Brothers talk, after Free Comic Book Day, these great Golden Age horror action figures sold great, PLANET OF THE APES BUTTS, God is unhappy with one of these comics, honestly I admire DC’s restraint in not reprinting this Batman book, ROM and Micronauts together again.
I finally get some Guts, I tried to ask another question of the person who did this TikTok video but she mysteriously disappeared (or decided she’d heard enough from me), Hulk is honored, a couple of old images archived on old CD-ROMs, in which I bother Shannon Wheeler his own self about shooting Jab comics, by Jove it’s Jupiter, a small edit to Mad‘s Star Wars parody.
AUGUST 2023
I’m #1 with a Jab bullet, an early review of the first issue of Mage: The Hero Discovered, the wild reasons this issue of Amazing Heroes is expensive, Mike gets yet more fanzines he has no time to read, and here’s another fanzine oh by the way is anyone actually reading this part of the post – please let me know, and more ‘zines, these Flash comics were a real trial (and a follow-up).
SEPTEMBER 2023
Mostly just bragging that I had Amazing Fantasy #15 and Amazing Spider-Man #1, those dollar store Disney comics, another exclusive dollar store exclusive comic with video, I may have finally tracked down a childhood Star Wars magazine memory, my initial likely-inaccurate reaction to the whole Bill Willingham/Fables/DC hoohar, and now a picture of me with those Amazing Fantasy #15 and Amazing Spider-Man #1 comics, so long Joe, just pure nostalgia for my young comic-collecting days, still trying to figure out a price for this German DC Comic.
OCTOBER 2023
In short buy everything Bill Griffith ever does because it will always be good, NANCY TALK with a cameo appearance by long-last pal Andres in the comments, it’s just ducky and very recommended, some new-to-me Curt Swan art, so long Keith, and let’s not forget Video Jack, some of you got the reference in the title, some minor reminiscing about “the dangers of comics,” some info on Comico and its newsstand/money woes.
NOVEMBER 2023
“A bloo bloo this Flash Gordon strip is too vibrant and exciting and I don’t like it because it’s not old,” a sign of the end times, another ancient memory — this time involving Jon Sable — confirmed, another House of Secrets #92 homageand an old catalog, BROW THING OR NO BROW THING, but definitely NO TEETH THING with bonus movie ranting, what is the most 1990s comic, more old archived images this time from America Online, alternate timeline Howard the Duck movie, Wikipedia is wrong about Amazing Heroes, how many is too many Death’s Head II pins.
And I guess that is that…so endeth our 20th year, and on to year 21! Thanks to all of you for sticking around, and I’ll be back later in the week with even more comic talk. Even after two decades of doing this, I still have more to say, much to your delight and/or regret.
But for reading all that, please enjoy this brief video of some oddball’s weird face saying things at you:
Before I launch into this next batch of your 2022 comic industry predictions, I want to clarify my response to Chris V.’s submissions as I wasn’t clear. He’d said that Grant Morrison wasn’t going to do any new work for Marvel or DC last year, and my reply should have been “that’s correct, he didn’t…I thought for a moment that Superman and the Authority was this year, but it was the prelude to that long Warworld story and came out the year before.” I’d meant to emphasize that Superman and the Authority was not in 2022, I only thought it was, but in my usual muddled way I didn’t get that across. Sorry, Chris V., that was definitely a most palpable hit.
Okay, now to more of your predictions. You can find Parts One, Two and Three at those links right there, and there are still 11 1/2 months to go in 2023 to get in your predictions for the rest of this year here.
“1. Marvel’s going to decide the traditional 616-continuity needs to look way more like the MCU. It’ll probably be an event no one really enjoys, but kind of lumps it and moves on.”
I don’t think Marvel’s leaned any farther in this direction than they normally do, aside from publishing more comics featuring characters that are being pushed in the films. Like, sure has been a lot of Kang goin’ around in the ol’ Marvel funnybooks lately. And we’re getting a new Wasp series just in time for the next Ant-Man/Wasp movie to come out. So I think it’s Business As Usual in regards to this, but if anyone out there who reads more Marvel comics than I do thinks differently, please let me know.
“2. DC brings back HOUSE OF MYSTERY, or one of their other horror books. (It was that or war comics.)”
Titles like House of Mystery, House of Secrets, Doorway to Nightmare, the straight-to-the-point Ghosts — all great titles, still sadly underused. Though to be fair DC did drag out Ghosts a couple of times this past decade, one 100-pagers and one of those squarebound anthology comics.
Actually, we did get the return of a title that combines both DC’s classic horror and classic war books: that new Sgt. Rock comic written by Bruce Campbell! So, I don’t know, 1/2 point to you?
“3. I’d be surprised if no one else guesses this: Marvel and DC will finally reprint JLA/AVENGERS. And…that’s it. It won’t restart intercompany crossovers; there will be a sense they had to be shamed into it.”
As discussed in the very first installment of this prediction coverage, a new JLA/Avengers printing did indeed happen! And while I could cynically interpret the reason for doing so as guilt, I prefer to think they did it to acknowledge the legacy of George Pérez.
“I have never been right, in the slightest, maybe a decade running!”
I don’t know, you did pretty well this time! You stick it out long enough, you eventually succeed!
• • •
Existentialman makes me hit Google with
“1) Dark Horse Comics will announce the sale of its IP to a major streaming service, most likely Netflix.”
And here it is, “Netflix Lands First Look Deal with Dark Horse Entertainment.” Netflix, sadly, did pass on Grendel, which I would have liked to have seen, but maybe we can finally get that live-action Wacky Squirrel adaptation I’ve been wanting. (Yes, I said live-action. I want an actual person in squirrel make-up as the star. Someone get Adrien Brody on the phone.)
“2) Communication Workers of America will continue to support Comic Book Workers United in their effort to unionize at Image comics. Much will be reported but ultimately the effort will not succeed in 2022.”
Well, they announced in late 2021 that they formed a union at Image Comics, and this article from late in 2022 goes over where everything stands at the moment.
“3) Mike Sterling will continue to entertain us throughout 2022 and it will be fabulous!”
• • •
Rob S. sends along
“1) My traditional LSH prediction: An ongoing Legion series will be announced to follow JLA vs the Legion of Super-Heroes. It will maintain the Bendis/Sook continuity, but will have a new creative team.”
Not so far…it’s so strange that so much effort was made into getting the Legion back into comics (including bringing them back twice, in Doomsday Clock and in a Superman storyline) just to let them lay fallow again. I’m sure something’s coming along eventually…with a Legion animated movie imminent, and I think some other form of adaptation in the works, maybe, something’s gotta come out. DC’s the opposite of Marvel in some ways…if Legion were a Marvel property, we’d already have a mini-series and trade paperbacks of same for every Legion character out on the shelves right now based just on a hint of a possible movie or TV show.
“2) DC will publish a second ongoing anthology in the style of Batman: Urban Legend, this one centered on Metropolis.”
Not yet. I’d read it!
“3) A new crowdfunding platform will emerge, taking a lot of projects that otherwise would have been set up on Kickstarter, thanks to KS’s recent foray into cryptocurrency & NFTs.”
There seem to be quite a few out there…Zoop is one that I’ve seen a bit about. Kickstarter’s still hanging in there, though, even as crypto and NFTs collapse all around us.
• • •
LondonKdS kids me with
“1) Marvel launches a webtoon on Tapas based on various X-Men characters as wacky Gen Z college dormmates with superpowers.”
Man, I don’t even know what Tapas is. I’m barely figuring out TikTok. But I took a look and as far as I can tell, this hasn’t happened yet. Or it’s being hidden from me becaues I’m An Old.
“2) DC’s younger readers line does a crossover book bringing together some of the more divergent versions of DC characters from their earlier GNs (Kid Constantine, Breaking Glass Harley, Overdrive Batman etc.)”
I bet that would be neat. But I wonder if DC would rather just keep everything relatively standalone and not follow the pamphlet-style comics and all their continuity hoohars.
“3) Following Dan Slott’s Doctor Who miniseries, Titan announces a Sarah Jane Adventures comic series written by Ryan North.”
I didn’t remember the Slott Who happening, and sure enough all orders on the 2022 Special (the first of three annual specials) were cancelled at Diamond. Unless it was available elsewhere, I don’t think it came out.
That said, I’m all for a Sarah Jane comic. The world could use one.
“I predict I will sell thousands of copies of my comics. Fingers crossed! Here’s hoping!”
How very dare you, sir…trying to trick me into promoting your comics, like this issue of Frankenrocker from Bad Kids Press?
Never would I sink so low.
• • •
That’s enough for this time…as always, if you’ve got information I don’t regarding the above predictions, please feel free to lay it on me. Thanks, and I’ll see you Wednesday.
So the other oversized omnibus-type book I picked up this year is one containing stories that I already have in multiple formats, but had to have ’em in this one! It’s Absolute Swamp Thing, reprinting the first thirteen issues of the original 1970s series, which comprises all of cocreator Len Wein’s scripts. Other cocreator Bernie Wrightson draws the first ten, with Nestor Redondo on the other three.
I had a hard time finding good pics of what the actual item looks like from the distributor sites, so here I am with my nigh-expert photography skills.
The slipcase edition reuses the wraparound cover from the Roots of the Swamp Thing reprint mini-series:
Here’s the back, with a close-up of the hype sticker there:
The cover of the book itself is quite impressive…just look at this front cover:
And here’s the back, with a close-up:
The inner covers/endpapers are quite nice as well…here they are, with guest-appearances of my fingers:
And to the stories themselves, there was color restoration (by Jose Villabrubia), which I haven’t compared to the other reprints of this work yet, but boy it looks great:
I’ve said about similar reprints of older books that it always looks weird when comics I’ve seen for years on yellowing paper are reproduced on shiny white slick pages. But the colors are produced appropriately, not bright and garish. It still looks a little weird to my eyes, but it’s all still great.
I forgot to mention that the book does include the first Swamp Thing story from House of Secrets #92 is included, so this is, like, the 20th reprint of that story I have? Something like that.
There’s a lot more in this volume, like photos of Wein/Wrightson, their widows providing new introductions, lots of reproductions of original art, that sort of thing. Also featured is some original art from that aborted Wein/Wrightson Swamp Thing reunion comic.
Like I said, I have all these comics, in multiple formats, but it is nice to have it all in a larger format that’s easier on my ol’ eyes.
Twitter pal jd asks the following not-easy-to-answer question:
“…Why do some comic shops succeed and some fail? What are the major factors that go into longevity?”
Egads. Where do I start? Where do I end? Where do I go in-between?
The barest minimum answer I can give to “why some succeed and some fail” is “the businesses that make enough money to pay expenses and provide a living for the owner/employees succeed, and the ones that don’t fail” which, of course, applies to pretty much any retail business you can think of. But what is it specific to comics that feeds the rise and/or falls of those stores?
In slightly less general terms, I think a long-standing store should have
1. Knowledgeable, friendly employees
2. A wide and relatively deep range of stock
3. Some measure of cleanliness
…which again isn’t exactly comic-specific, but I think these are the positive qualities for a comic store to be around more than a year or two.
Those are just the things within the control of the store itself. That doesn’t take into account things like your potential customer base, the quality and proximity of competition, the overall health of the comics business, etc.
This is immensely simplified. Factors such as “expanding too much just as the market downturns” can take out a shop. “Being in a bad location,” or “being a good store but being outcompeted,” or “having the building you’re in get bought by a new owner who promptly prices you out by raising the rent too high,” “the partners who own the store got into a fistfight and now that store’s shut down,” “owner dropped dead” — could be anything, really.
I know during the ’90s boom a lot of shops opened up and I’m sure many of the proprietors smelled some easy funnybook money and dealt heavily in “hot” books. Once the fad died and the market crashed, all those “hot” comic customers dried up and without any longterm committed clientele, many of those shops vanished.
And this isn’t even touching really on distributors suddenly going under, taking retailer money and product with them, leaving stores in the lurch. Which is what has me wondering if we’ll see a return of that particular problem in this new no-longer-beholden-to-Diamond-Comics direct market world.
Ultimately, all I can do is control my store and do what I can to keep it vital. I’m not the biggest store around, or the fanciest, or the most monied, but it’s operating at a level I’m comfortable with, one that pays the bills and affords me a living and the occasional eye injection, and is (usually) stress-free, despite my distributors’ best efforts. But I try to be helpful and friendly, try to stock what I can (and am willing to reorder what I don’t have), and have fair pricing on my back issues.
Now if someone were to open a big ol’ comics emporium right across the street from me, I might take a hit, but I’d like to think I’d engendered enough loyalty to keep at least some of my customer base. I mean, I’ve been doing comics retail for three and a half decades now…it’s too late to go find a real job.
Oh oh oh, I forgot one…a store should have some kind of internet presence. Without going into too much detail, there was a shop I knew about that, when I went to look ’em up online, the only thing I found was a mention of their shop on someone else’s Instagram. Anyway, that shop wasn’t around too long.
• • •
As long as I’m taking Twitter queries, here’s one from a couple of weeks back from Joseph Z:
“What is the most reprinted comics story of all time? Story, not issue. My guess would be Spidey’s first appearance from [Amazing Fantasy] #15.”
That’s certainly a contender, and I’m presuming we’re not talking print runs but rather “most individual reprints of the same story in different comics or trade paperbacks.” I feel like the first Batman from Detective Comics #27 may be a small contender, though the look of the story hasn’t aged well and likely wouldn’t appeal to most modern audiences.
Now a while back I listed off the various House of Secrets #92s I had. I admittedly had too many and have more on the way. Thus, that was 8 reprints of the original Swamp Thing story…with more acquired since this, and more about to arrive. So…a dozen or so now, 15 maybe?
I’m hard pressed to think of an individual story that comes close (and also it’s super past my bedtime right now)..if you’ve got an idea, throw it into the comments and we can do a little digging. It’s probably going to end up being something at Disney or Dell, isn’t it.
So back in 2014, when I was still at the previous place of employment, our prep for what would turn out to be the final Free Comic Book Day I worked at that store, we took advantage of a special deal Valiant Comics offered. If we ordered a minimum of 500 copies of that year’s FCBD offering from the publisher, Armor Hunters Special #1, we would be able to receive custom-printed copies with our logo on the cover. Now 500 copies at a quarter a pop our cost, for a total of $125, was just a drop in the bucket in the overall expenditures for our Free Comic Book Day event, so we went for it, resulting in this:
One, they actually ran two logos, one for Seth’s store and one for Ralph’s, though I suppose the restriction wasn’t “number of store logos” but rather “what will fit in that space, and hopefully isn’t straight-up pornography.” Two, you can probably tell which logo was actually by A Real Artist and which was by The Overworked Comic Shop Manager Who Knew How to Color In Letters in an Art Program. As to that URL, pretty sure I told ’em “just put it in there somewhere” and somewhere is indeed where they put it.
Anyway, aesthetics aside, one of the unintended but probably-should-have-expected-because-comics consequences was phone calls from collectors trying to obtain copies of our customized version of this freebie. Lots of calls. Valiant press-released a list of stores what went for these branded Armor Hunters, which sent folks our way. (Honestly, I’m surprised so few stores took part in this.) And I believe we did mail out quite a few, but true to the spirit of FCBD we didn’t charge for them (just asked for shipping costs…and waited to send ’em out after the event).
That was the one time I did the whole retailer-variant thing, which I’d been thinking about over the last couple of days in relation to a collection of comics I just took in. Specifically, I acquired a bunch of Department of Truth variants, several for each issue released so far. There were a handful of the regular variants available through Diamond, but the vast majority of them were covers specifically produced for retailers, like this cover for #1 by Peach Momoko:
Now, to get that Valiant variant, it was relatively easy…just hit that minimum and provide the artwork. For these kinds of variants, featuring specific artwork by actual professional artists, it’s a whole different scale of business there. I don’t know the specifics of what had to be done with these Department of Truth variants, but I do know with other retailer variants I’ve looked into, it required ordering a certain minimum number of the regular covers, then committing to a certain amount of the retailer variant, sometimes at a higher-than-normal wholesale cost. Regardless of the details, it costs a lot and you end up with a boatload of comic books. Huge numbers of books, more than my current rinky-dink operation can deal with.
Every time I crunched the numbers on these, it always looked like the end result would be me having to dump all those extra copies of the regular cover (above what I’d normally sell) for pennies on the dollar, or just plain recycle them, and hope sales on the retailer-variant cover the cost. But the larger stores with the more efficient (i.e. more than one dude running the shop) mail-order department probably is in a lot better position dealing with these. And that must be the case given the number of retailer variants that exist for comics. I mean, Department of Truth alone…
Anyway, speaking of that comic, I already knew there were a number of variants for issue #1, but I just wasn’t aware how many. The main cover of the first issue looked like this:
…but interspersed with this cover during its initial distribution was this cover (about 1 in every, what, 6 copies?) replacing Kennedy’s image with Lee Harvey Oswald:
And of course there were the usual “ratio” variants, where you could get 1 copy for every X copies of the regular you were ordering. These existed at the 1-in-10 and 1-in-50 levels (which you can refer to on this page, as I won’t be putting every cover up here). There was also a 1-in-100 variant, which I am putting up here:
…due to its “homage” to the writer’s other weirdly popular comic Something Is Killing the Children. It is noted as “Cover F” on the back cover…a letter designation is assigned to most, but not all, of these Department of Truth variants. (If you’re also wondering if this particular variant has staples, you know where to look.)
This series turned out to be in very high demand, and after the quick sellout of the first issue, reprints were quickly produced. Five printings of #1 as of this posting, with the 2nd print pictured here:
These reprints, at least on the first issue, were simply coloring variations on the initial release. But also wildly in high demand, often from collectors and investors looking toward resale. Like many reprints, which are seen by some as “rare” collectibles, their relative scarcity in comparison to the comic it’s reprinting, drive their demand to occasionally outrageous levels.
But nearly all the rest of the #1s are retailer comics, which you could buy at conventions, or, more likely since there weren’t conventions for a while, obtained via mail order. Often they had small print runs (like about 500 or so) and a quick scan of several of these retailers’ storefronts show them long out of stock. However, this version of that first Momoko cover I posted, but sans logo:
…was used for a foil variant that apparently was sold directly by the writer himself, if I understand correctly? This only had a print run of 100 copies, so the premium prices on the secondary market for this edition can run quite dear. (And yes, before you ask, I had one of those in this collection…it was one of the first to sell!)
As you scan down that catalog of variants, you see the process not slowing down much. A lot of the “altered color” reprints, along with a bunch of retailer exclusives, are listed for every issue. Issue 9 isn’t listed there yet, but I can assure you the same goes for that one as well.
As I go through this collection of Department of Truth variants, it has me thinking again about looking into getting a retailer variant of my own. Given the response we had far and wide from folks trying to get that Armor Hunters variant, I imagine I could probably move enough copies of my own store-exclusive edition of…something. Just a matter of me deciding to put my dime (well, lots of dimes) down on something that I’d want representing my shop. I don’t know if I can top this Archie Vs. Predator exclusive, but I’d love to have a House of Secrets #92 homage on some comic for my store to sell. Too bad Herbie is off the stands…an HOS92-type cover with a lollipop sitting in the foreground with a shadowed Herbie lurking behind, with a giant “Sterling Silver Comics” logo adorning the image. It’s too beautiful to imagine.
Okay, I don’t know how educational all that was, and it was a little off-model from the rest of my variant cover-age posts. I know I said I’d do the Marvel 35-cent variants this time ’round, but that was turning into more of a thing than I was really up for at the moment. There’s a lot to unpack there, along with varying distributor marks, and the larger direct sales vs. newsstand editions secondary marketplace…I’ll get to it all eventually.
Saga of the Swamp Thing #33 (February 1985) was a fill-in issue of sorts, which contained a reprint of the House of Secrets story, making this Copy #2 of this story in my collection. The new framing sequence for this story, which drew a connection between the original Swamp Thing and the newer Alec Holland version of the character, makes what could have been just a fill-in into one of the most important and influential comics of the series. Not only did it establish that the current Swamp Thing was the latest in a long chain of swamp creatures throughout Earth’s history (a plot thread that would play out through the rest of this series), but it also gave us the first “modern” usage of the old DC horror comic hosts Cain and Abel. Cain and Abel, formerly humorous wiseacres introducing short scary comic stories in their respective anthology titles, were now explicitly described as the Cain and Abel from Christian theology, Cain continuously murdering Abel in an eternal repeating cycle. This new (or old, I suppose) interpretation of these hosts was carried into Neil Gaiman’s Sandman and its spin-off, The Dreaming.
DC Silver Age Classics House of Secrets #92 (1992) – To commemorate the end of their printing comics at the World Color Press plant in Sparta, IL, DC released a series of classic comic reprints that were the last books off of those presses. Among the “Silver Age Classics” was House of Secrets #92, which kinda stretched the definition of “Silver Age” a little, but, since I apparently needed Copy #6 of the original Swamp Thing story, I was willing to overlook that little fact. 
