“I remember that hilarious mini-comic you wrote called, ‘Things NOT to say to a comic book shop employee’. Anything new to add to that list with time and now being an owner of a fab shop?”
Keeping in mind I actually like the show.
Mikester
No Go Pogo.
Let’s tackle the ol’ virtual mail pile and get to more of your questions, shall we?
GiantsinThoseDays looks back with
“Doomsday Clock posits the DC metaverae responds to changes in the Superman story (and I think Milk Wars said something similiat, which is why Superman couldn’t be subject to the retcon). What’s your most controversial opinion about Superman?”
Huh. I’ve read Superman comics for a very long time…started in the late ’70s sometime, reading them off the stands off and on, then buying every issue of Superman and Action (and related titles like Man of Tomorrow and other series that work into the ongoing continuity) after the mid-1980s relaunch.
In all that time, I don’t know that I’ve had anything that’s a really controversial take on the character. My feelings on Superman tend to conform to what I believe is the general conception of Superman. Like, “Superman is the moral center of the DC Universe,” or “Superman should always win,” and “Clark Kent is secretly Superman, shhhh, don’t tell anyone.”
As I recall there was some pushback from fans during the ’80s reboot regarding some of the changes to the franchise…not everyone, obviously, but a non-zero number, so I suppose saying “I’m okay with New Luthor, and with the Kents still being alive, etc.” would put me in the “controversial opinion” side of things with them.
Maybe the one event from that period that got up the most people’s noses is Superman executing the Phantom Zone villains from that alternate universe (long story, go read the back issues, they’re cheap)…and I was okay with that, actually, which probably puts me on the other side of the fence from most fans who read this story. The “Superman Doesn’t Kill” aspect of the character was…well, still is…pretty important, and having this occur came as quite the shock at the time. I think what saves it is that it was not without consequences, with repercussions running through the Superman comics for months afterwards, culminating in Superman’s vow to never again take a life, at least until he seemingly kills Doomsday in Superman #75. Anyway, it worked for me, but I can understand if some folks felt that was an unnecessary tainting of the character.
Aside from that, I don’t really have any “hot takes” on Superman. I always liked pal Dorian‘s idea that Superman should have always been a period piece, that his stories should always take place in the 1930s. In place of my own controversial opinion, I’m going to steal his.
Thelonious_Nick underscores his question with
“You’ve mentioned Pogo before, and as a lover of old comic strips (Popeye, Prince Valiant, Peanuts, Annie, even, God help me, the reprint editions of the early Blondie & Dagwoods) I’ve long thought about trying Pogo out.
“But it’s a bit more intimidating than some of those others maybe, since I think there was some level of continuity and I believe also Pogo doubled as a commentary on the politics of the time.
“Is there a place you recommend somebody unfamiliar with the strip start? Is Vol. 1 of the Fantagraphics reprints a good place, or are the early strips only for completists? Is there a good cheaper collection if I’m not sure I’ll like the strip?”
Um…hate to tell you this, but while I have mentioned Walt Kelly’s Pogo one or twice on the site, I’ve never actually read much, if any at all. My primary exposure to Pogo is this issue of Swamp Thing, a weird tribute to the strip. Oh, and also I watched a VHS copy of this stop-motion animated movie that the aforementioned pal Dorian let me borrow several years ago. He’s more of an aficionado of the strip.
For some reason, as I was exposed to several different comic strips via paperback collections as a kid, Pogo never made into my hands. Doonesbury did, somehow, but Pogo never made it into my grubby little hands.
Now keep in mind this is nothing against Pogo, or some kind of unwillingness on my part to give it a shot…just circumstances and time have never really quite allowed me sufficient exposure to the strip. I’m aware of the characters and general premise, but as to any actual specific knowledge of the strip, sufficient to send you in the proper direction.
Mark Evanier, who’s involved with the new Fantagraphics reprint volumes, has had plenty to say on his site about Pogo and you can probably learn a lot more from him. He does say that the most recent volume, the fifth one, “contains two prime years of what I think is the best newspaper strip ever” and that sounds like a fairly solid recommendation to me.
Gareth Wilson volleys the following to me
“Robin Hood and King Arthur have been handled badly in recent movies, and some people have suggested that modern movie-makers have problems handling old public domain characters. Have comics done any better with these two characters? What about similar characters like Sherlock Holmes?”
Well, there have certainly been a lot of comics featuring all three of these guys, as I’m sure you know. I think comics might have a better chance at doing interesting and possibly even good things with them, as comics are perhaps a bit less beholden to studio interference, test marketing, and so on. Of the three, Sherlock Holmes has had a lot of play in the funnybook realm, probably because the general success of TV and movie adaptations spurred on comic publishers riding that zeitgeist. Dynamite has published several series that weren’t bad, I think.
The King Arthur legend has seen several weird permutations in comics, either changing the setting or flipping genders or what have you, whereas the film/TV adaptations tend to hew a little closer to the source material. Right now there’s the popular comic Once & Future from Boom Studios, there was Once and Future Queen from Dark Horse a year or two back, and Matt Wagner’s Mage is a take on Arthurian legend. Gotta say, though, Camelot 3000 is still a favorite of mine.
Robin Hood is a little harder to nail down…there have been plenty of Robin Hood comics, both adaptations of the original legend and transformative reworkings, such as Zenescope’s multiple Robyn Hood series. To be honest, I haven’t really been exposed to enough of these to have an opinion as to their quality, but this one was drawn by Tim Truman, so how bad can it be. Though I guess basically any superhero with a bow and arrow is inspired by Robin Hood (Green Arrow being the more obvious of them).
My general sense is that comics may have better luck dealing with these public domain properties, just through sheer numbers and more willingness to experiment with them. One of the fascinating aspects of these characters is how they’re adapted and changed to relate to new audiences, to reflect new circumstances. Not always successfully, but rarely without value, either. And when this happens, sometimes we get Tomb of Dracula, and sometimes we get
In which I shamelessly bend the rules.
So remember that time I asked you all for questions and you gave me a bunch of questions and I started to answer your questions until I got distracted by other questions which raised more questions? Anyway, I’m back to your questions:
DolphusRaymond dives in with
“Between Doomsday Clock’s [JSA]/LSH simmer, the return of Wally West (and consequent ‘no twins’ meltdowns), and the Zatanna “OMG Young Justice really existed what does it mean?!?” in the new Young Justice, do you see post-Crisis pre-New52 continuity making a comeback?
Is this my generation’s ‘I miss Barry and Hal bring them back?’
Will the comics world ever see more than 3 of the 52 multiverses published at the same time? (I count Main Continuity, Freedom Fighters Earth-X, and Shazam! …I don’t know if Bendis creates a pocket universe around his writing or not.)”
Ever since Crisis on Infinite Earths it seems like creators at DC kept looking for ways to bring back the stuff they liked from the pre-Crisis continuity. And of course later reality-changing events like Zero Hour and The Kingdom were intended to bend our new DC Universe back into a shape somewhat resembling the Old DC Universe, and all these reboots and retcons and so on is what brought us to the point of having a story where all the continuity problems were pinned on Dr. Manhattan, which is probably not a thing anyone saw coming a few years back.
Anyway, I don’t really see DC just straight up going back to the way things were post-Crisis/pre-New 52. Like, just ignoring everything that’s happened since and starting right up again from just before all these reboots/relaunches happened, like restoring from a back-up. But I imagine DC will continue its habit of picking and choosing the pieces from the past that it likes and reworking them into the comics of the present. We essentially have the post-Crisis Superman in our current DCs and that seems to be going okay so far.
As far as the “number of different universes in play at any given time at DC…I don’t know. Do the Sandman books count as a parallel universe? Scooby Team-up?
But everyone, hold everything: things are about to get more complicated (and more headachey for your retailer pal Mike) if this business about DC’s “5G” plan is true. So, basically, ignore everything I wrote prior to this paragraph because I’m honestly just hearing about this supposed coming hoohar from DC right now. So now I suppose the ultimate answer to your question, DolphusRaymond, is “who the hell knows?”
Synonymous means only one thing when asking
“So why _was_ the ‘Mike’s Magical Comics Fort’ name rejected?”
Mr. S is referring to this lightly prophetic post of mine (posted only a few months prior to, well, my actually opening a shop), in which I suggest that as a possible name for my no-longer-so-theoretical store. (Though I’m kind of partial to the store name “Ventura Fun Time Comic Book/Magic Card Store and Video Deli,” originally posted here…though I’d probably have to change “Ventura” to “Camarillo.”)
Anyway, I didn’t use the “Magical Comics Fort” name because people would continally come in thinking I had Harry Potter comics and I didn’t want to disappoint them. Unless they accepted Books of Magic comics as a sufficient replacement, of course.
RELATED: Brian followed up the previous question with
“Is it true that Mike’s Magical Comics Fort actually does exist, except that it’s your secret fortress of solitude, with statues of Swamp Thing and Sluggo holding up a giant long box in the central hall?”
And it’s constructed entirely from pogs.
De demands da dope:
“After crossover minis with Star Trek and Green Lantern, what’s the next natural mash-up with Planet of the Apes?”
Ooh, I immediately want to say Twilight Zone, given Rod Serling’s connection to both, but maybe that’s a little too wide-ranging an idea. Um…Kamandi seems like the natural one, given POTA was the inspiration for the Last Boy on Earth in the first place. Or…I mean, you can always throw Superman or Batman into any crossover thingie like this and probably come up with something workable.
Oh, wait, I’ve got it…Swamp Thing! Yeah, I know, gee, who saw that coming, but hear me out: “PLANT ELEMENTAL OF THE APES.” Don’t tell me you don’t want to see that.
ExistentialMan makes me ponder my existence with
“What do you consider the single best year of comics publication in your lifetime?”
Holy shit. I mean, pardon my use of the word “holy,” but man, that’s a good question. I’m going to say 1986. You had Watchmen, Dark Knight Returns, the relaunch/reboot of the Superman books by John Byrne (hey, I think they still hold up, mostly), you had Dan Clowes show up with Lloyd Llewellyn which I bought off the stands because it looked so amazing, the first Mage series by Matt Wagner was still going, there was the two part “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow” by Alan Moore, Curt Swan and pals, Englehart and Staton’s Green Lantern turned into Green Lantern Corps and started to get weird (and also introduced Kilowog!), Dark Horse Comics and Slave Labor Graphics started up, we had ‘Mazing Man, Flaming Carrot was still going, Cerebus was still good, Love and Rockets was around (as it still is!), Swamp Thing hit issue #50, we had regular Groo the Wanderers…man, there are lots of things to love about 1986. I’m sure I could pick out any other year and find things to love about it, but 1986 was the first one to come to mind.
Oh, and the New Universe started in 1986, too. Don’t forget that!
Jason Sandberg contributes TOO MANY QUESTIONS but he advertises on my site so I will let his filthy lucre sway me into breaking the “one question per customer” rule:
“What holds the Winter Soldier’s mask on his face?”
Our hopes and dreams.
“Am I correct that ‘Captain America and the Mighty Avengers’ issue 9 was better than the entirety of ‘Avengers: Time Runs Out?'”
Since you advertise on my site, I’m going to say “yes, you are correct, sir.” I mean, mostly because I’ve read neither and have no basis for judgement.
“What dark and sinister medial moguls are thwarting the progress of the DREADSTAR film/TV franchise?”
Alas, it appears the frailty of human flesh may be the cause, as according to this interview with Jim Starlin, the producer died and that kinda scuttled their plans. He’s still hopeful to get it on TV, but, well, you know how it is.
“Robbie Reyes ‘ghost rided’ a dead Celestial. Could he ‘ghost rider’ Galactus’s Taa II? Where would he go, what would he do?”
“Rided?” Anyway, I suppose Mr. Reyes could pull that off. As to the question “Where does a Ghost Rider ‘ghost-riding’ Galactus’ home base/spaceship go?” and answer is of course “anywhere he wants to.”
“If I ever make it out to the West Coast, where would we go for lunch, dude?”
Anywhere that takes your credit card, my friend, because I’m not going to restaurants too often on a comic shop owner’s salary.
And with that bout of sheer favoritism, I think that’s enough Question Time for today. I’ll try to get to the remaining questions in short order instead of making you all wait so long again. Thanks for reading, pals, and I’ll see you Monday.
March 1981 was apparently a good month for comics I didn’t buy.
I’m sure those of us who collect comic books have specific memories tied to particular issues in their collections. Like Uncle Scrooge and every piece of currency in his money bin, where each item interred there is not kept (mostly) out of sheer avarice, but because of the events or emotions that they can evoke.
I’m probably overselling the premise of the post a bit here, as mostly I’m just talking about recalling the exact circumstances surrounding the acquisition of, or encounters with, certain comics. I don’t mean, like, the Big Ones…I’m sure you’re gonna remember doling out the kid’s college fund to snag that copy of Amazing Fantasy #15 or whatever. Rather, I’m talking about memories tied to, you know, just random issues…nothing remarkable or hugely sought after, but just your typical comic purchase made as part of your day-to-day or week-to-week regular comic purchases.
For example, I remember riding my bike over to the Circle K near the Seebee base in Port Hueneme and buying my copy of Saga of the Swamp Thing #4. Or driving up to the comic shop, picking up the newest issue of Watchmen (#11), reading it, then driving back to Oxnard for my high school graduation. That’s the sort of thing I mean.
I was reminding of this particuilar phenomenon when the following two comics popped up in collections I was processing at the store (which is, of course, Sterling Silver Comics, located in beautiful Camarillo, CA, where I also provide mail order service to locales near and far). Now, in these cases, these weren’t comics I’d purchased at the time (coincidentally, both cover dated March 1981, so likely were released close to the new year), but instead other people’s comics that I’d read. That makes it even slightly more unusual that I’d remember the circumstances of my encounters with these books without having them in my possession as constant reminders.
First was Flash #295:
I don’t remember whose comic this was, but I do remember where I first saw it…in my 6th grade class. Don’t worry, I wasn’t, like, sneaking it in my textbook when I was supposed to be studying, like I’ve seen in that old Daisy BB gun ad or in movies/TV shows but never in real life. It was during some free time, perhaps during an indoors recess period during inclement weather outside, but it was handed to me, and by gosh that’s how I read about Gorilla Grodd fighting the Scarlet Speedster, a story best absorbed in an educational setting.
I’ve never owned the comic, never felt the urge to go back and fill in my collection with a back issue purchase of it. But every time I saw it after that, I would think back to my 6th grade classroom (even down to where I was sitting in that room at the time) and how I first saw that comic there. Eventually, I would start buying The Flash on ‘n’ off with issue #300, which would be a good one to start with. And I’d keep reading, all the way through the whole “Trial of the Flash” storyline which 0killed wrapped up the series. …Hey, I liked it.
The other comic was Action Comics #517:
…which was an issue of the series I had missed, somehow, despite buying the Superman books fairly regularly around this time. Hey, when you’re in sixth grade, even doing the rounds of all the local convenience stores and supermarkets and even making regular trips to the well-stocked newsstand we had in town, stuff sometimes slipped past you.
But this issue didn’t slip past my friend David, and I still remember sitting in a room in his house and reading this issue cover to cover. And again, like that Flash above, every time I saw this a copy of this comic after that, I’d think of David and that day I was at his house, reading his comic book instead of, like, being sociable.
Now the thing about this comic…years later, when I was still working at my previous place of employment, David actually stopped by with a stack of comics to sell. And yes, one of the comics he was selling was that very copy of Action Comics #517 I’d read so many years ago. As it turned out, the boss didn’t buy much (if any) of his stuff, since it wasn’t really in resellable condition (probably not my fault, I’m sure even as a child I handled his comics with the gentle touch of the comics retail professional I would someday become), and I wish the story ended with “so I asked David if I could keep that copy of Action so that someday I could blog about having it in my possession, once blogs are invented” but alas, he took them away to some unknown fate. Probably living happy and free on a farm upstate, and not thrown away or burned in a fireplace.
I suppose technically I own copies of these two comic books now, since they’re in my store with my price tags on them. But it’s weird how two comics I otherwise have never owned have loomed so large in my comic book memories after all this time.
Whatever else you might think about these comics, Spitfire and the Troubleshooters was actually a pretty good name.
Just a quick follow-up to the recent New Universe post…I did indeed talk to my old boss Ralph about how things transpired regarding the sales of Marvel’s 1986 publishing initiative. I told him I had to ask him about it since I hadn’t yet entered the world of comics retail at that point. “You weren’t around for that?” he asked, and I replied “no, but I was around for its ending…I’m sure there’s a connection.”
Anyway, yes, when the New Universe started it sold great…but tapered off fairly quickly at the shop. Some titles maintained reasonable sales…Star Brand probably being the strongest, with Justice and D.P. 7 following, which likely probably doesn’t surprise too many of you, since those seemed to be the most traditional, or traditional-seeming, of the bunch. The others settled at sales levels that were…not so great. They had their fans, but it was pretty clear, at least at this one retail outlet, the New Universe wasn’t the overwhelming success Marvel was hoping for. Oh, and apparently of the bunch Kickers Inc. was a non-starter…maybe the first issue sold, but folks decided right away that’s not the comic they wanted. Again, probably not a surprise to most of you.
As the initiative dragged along to its eventual demise in 1989, there were a couple of upward bumps in sales. As expected, John Byrne taking over Star Brand did increase sales on the title at the shop…not a lot, but, you know, not nothing. And then when the retooling of the New Universe began with everyone’s destruction-of-Pittsburgh comic The Pitt, sales were pretty good on that one-shot special as well, spurred on by curiosity about what exactly they were going to do to the New Universe, as well as, Ralph recalls, actual media coverage because they were, you know, blowing up Pittsburgh.
The Pitt‘s sales, unfortunately, didn’t transfer over into the follow-ups The Draft™ and The War™, which didn’t sell very well at all.
And shortly after that, the New Universe died, never to be seen again except for several more times in various comics over the next couple of decades.
So there you go, straight from Ralph’s beard and onto my webpage. Try as I might, I can’t really remember any specific memories about the New Universe from that period, where my first couple of years behind the counter overlapped with the last couple of years of that imprint’s lifespan. Probably too busy fielding endless phone calls about Batman stuff to pay attention to much else. Ah well.
Still waiting for my Nancy and Sluggo Funko Pops.
Your reminder that, while you’re out buying the new Nancy strip collection by Olivia Jaimes, out this week at better comic shops, and even mine:
…you should also be on the lookout for this other Nancy item by Jaimes, released to ye olde funnybooke stores this week as well:
Nancy’s Genius Plan is a children’s “board” book, with thick pages designed to take extra rough handling by young kids or, say, by whoever it was that went through my back issue bins a couple of days ago.
Anyway, it’s a short one, as you might imagine, but features several great full color illos by Jaimes. Also, the book is “interactive,” in that the reader is encouraged to physically interact with the book, like knocking on a window in one page to distract a character in-story, or turning the book upside-down to help Nancy get by an obstacle. Not a lot of Sluggo involvement…mostly he’s just one of the supporting cast in this particuliar adventure.
One thing I’d like to note is how, at first glance, the portraits of Nancy on both covers look identical. It’s basically the same features present on both faces, but with just the slightest adjustments, the open, genial face of Nancy on the strip collection:
…becomes that conniving Nancy on Genius Plan.
So it’s a good week to be a Nancy fan, like I know I am. Maybe I can finally make an effort to read some comics this week so that Doomsday Clock isn’t the only thing on which I’m caught up. Okay, granted, I did read Genius Plan already. Pretty much can read the book just by barely glancing at it, but then I suspect I’m slightly older than its target audience.
Still turned the book upside-down to help Nancy, though.
Yes, I know Shatterstar was in the movie too.
So I got a set of these in a collection the other day:
…and by “set,” for those of you who weren’t around in the early 1990s to experience this particuliar phenomenon, I mean “all five initially released versions of X-Force #1, each prepacked with one of five different trading cards sealed within the polybag.”
Now your pal Old Man Mike was there manning the comic shop front lines when this comic was unleashed. We had tons of them, and as I recall we set up a table near the front of the store to put them all out for easy access, divided up by inserted card. Which means, yes, we had to go through the cases and divvy ’em up.
The point is, we ordered a lot, and we sold a lot. And yes, I know you bought them. Yes, you, right there, reading this blog post right now. I saw you do it. We caught it on camera. WE HAVE EVIDENCE. Anyway, plenty of copies got circulated out there, and we had a reasonable, and surprisingly not overwhelming, stock of copies of that first issue stashed away for future back issue sales.
Well, things go as they go, and what was eventually became not, and X-Force and its ilk fell out of favor…as, well, did most comics as the ’90s wore on, in favor of pogs and Magic: The Gathering. And back issue demand for that particuliar first issue of X-Force did trail off, even as the series kept on keeping on.
It never fell entirely out of awareness, of course…X-Force #1 remained a notable artifact of the excesses of comic collecting in the 1990s, a cautionary tale along with the 5 covers for X-Men #1 and the “bagged” editions of Spider-Man #1 and thankfully the industry has learned its lesson and no longer depends on multiple variant editions of its publications to shore up sales.
The end result was that, for many years, X-Force #1 was not generally traded in the aftermarket for premium prices. If anything, it was slash-priced, marked down to move, for the love of God please take these off our hands…dollar boxes aplenty were fed by copies of this book across this great nation of ours, and that’s just how things were. Not to say that some venues didn’t keep copies in the bins marked at ye olde Overstreet prices, and they did sell occasionally, but its star had long since faded.
CUT TO: your pal Mike, getting a collection of comics over the weekend…some good stuff, some stuff basically dumped on me, but most of it still usable. Within was that set of X-Force #1s that I mentioned about 4 or 5 thousand words ago. I’d been literally turning these down as they showed up in the hands of hopeful sellers coming through my door, but, eh, here they in this box of stuff I got, might as well price ’em up and put them out.
And evidently it’s been a while since I’ve had the opportunity of price this issue, because imagine my surprise to find out the guide has the version with the Deadpool card priced at $18. The one with the Cable card is priced the same. The other three card variations are a somewhat more reasonable, but still seemingly optimistic $6.
I feel like, at some point during one of the three or four previous times that Deadpool’s popularity peaked, that I did check our price guide and/or online sales to see if there was any increased demand for the Deadpool-card version of X-Force #1, and at that point it was big ol’ “nobody cares.”
But, obviously, things have changed. My initial thought was my pet theory about things that used to be common and in deep stock at stores through the ’90s boom period have suddenly become harder to come by, as shops from that era die out and, sometimes, take their stock with them. Or that copies that did make it into the hands of collectors were either damaged due to poor storage (a not-infrequent problem, even with the hardcore collectors at the time) or just discarded outright (after losing interest and/or failed attempts at recouping their money via resale back to shops that either didn’t want them, or offered only a pittance).
Mentioning this on Twitter, I received this response from Tony:
“They are everywhere and people will drop $5-10 easy on them. Its shocking. It’s a mix of the age of the book, new fandom from the popularization of Marvel movies, and those early 90s fans that are now wanting to rebuild their collection.”
And yes, those are factors as well. I know “age” doesn’t always equate with “price,” but I’ve seen demand for the novelty publications (bagged, like this X-Force, or foil/chrome/die-cut covers) from customers who hadn’t even been born yet when these items were in their heyday. And, like Tony mentioned, I’ve had customers who did collect these as they were new, who had since lost or discarded their collections and now want to reconstruct them. Never underestimate the power of nostalgia, friends.
The actual pricing seems pretty…extreme, and my response to Tony that it might be a case of “hot because it’s hot.” Not priced according to any supply/demand thing, but because “Deadpool is in a movie and these should be hot now.” The X-Force #1 with the Deadpool card is priced a little higher than normal, people notice, start picking them up, which encourages more up-pricing, a self-fulfilling prophecy that cycles on and on.
This is not to ignore that variation with the Cable card, also priced at $18 in the guide, which surely must solely be the fault of the character’s appearance in the Deadpool movie. That they’re both $18 makes me think it was specifically the movie causing the price bump, since in comics alone Cable isn’t nearly as popular as Deadpool, unless I’m about to hear from the International Cable Fan Club in my comments here.
So anyway, that was quite the shock, mostly because I’d expected this to happen a while back, it didn’t, I figured that was that, then suddenly IT HAPPENED. Don’t know how many people are actually successfully selling these for nearly $20 a pop. A quick look at the eBay shows it trading for far less than that…there seems to be more interest in issue #11 of the series (the “first appearance” of the real Domino, as it had been an imposter Domino in the comics prior to that…um, SPOILER, I guess).
Still not sure what I’m going to price my copy at. Maybe $100, really screw the curve there. But while I think about that, here’s a picture of me holding that bountiful treasure of X-Force #1s, as taken by the Mighty Matt Digges:
Hey, if you buy all these from me, maybe I can afford a razor to shave my face!
(PREVIOUSLY ON PROGRESSIVE RUIN: would you believe I’ve written about X-Force and the Deadpool card before? Here and here? I can’t believe it either. Look for my next post about this in 2022!)
Well, this went off on a tangent.
Robcat17 says
“And as much as I may question your Swamp Thing collection, I will buy Legion of Superhero books… every reboot, every time Giffen kills Karate Kid, I’m there. Which makes me ask other collectors ‘What’s your “sucker” book?’ You know the one. It may be bad, but you buy it anyway because you’re hopeful, or loyal, or whatever… but you really just love the character…”
You are indeed wise to question my Swamp Thing collection. No reasonable human should own a pair of these.
But yeah, “sucker books,” I get that. I’ve followed many a character through, shall we say, rough times, simply because that character was a particular favorite of mine. It goes without saying that Swamp Thing is one of those characters for me, though fortunately there have been very few Swamp Thing comics over the years from which I haven’t derived any entertainment value. Yes, there have been some stinkers here and there that I feel no need to revisit, but, eh, no biggie.
An example of a book that I kinda stuck through for the entire run despite things going, well, I won’t say “bad” but “not entirely to my liking” is the second Firestorm series, the one that run 100 issues. I used to say “the first 20 were good, the last 20 were good, the middle 60…um, maybe not so much.” But did I continue buying through that 60-issue slump? Oh yes I did, because I sure liked Firestorm, and though I didn’t much care for the stories they were in, I was still interested in what was going on with Ronnie and Martin (and Cliff).
To be fair, I’ve softened a bit on my opinion on those middle issues. I still bought them, I still enjoyed them, even if I thought they weren’t quite up to the standards of the entries at either end of the series. And I still have them…when the time came to populate the back issue bins in my store with material from my own collection, the Firestorms I kept. Maybe a big chunk of them were dopey comics, but they were my dopey comics and part of my life, a monthly ritual I followed from that first issue in my grade school days until that final issue came out when I was in college.
And I’ll still buy Firestorm whenever he (or they?) turns (or turn) up. But the main impulse, to follow a character, is somewhat undermined by the various reboots/relaunches that have happened. I followed the ongoing subplots and development of Ronnie and Martin in Firestorm, even through the lean years, because I liked those characters and wanted to know what happened to them, how each incident in their lives built on each other and moved forward. The reboots etc. break that chain…suddenly a character can be back at square one, all previous development removed from the story, and my need to see where things go is lost.
Now, it can be done and still maintain reader involvement. The mid-80s reboot of Superman kept my interest, and even as creative teams changed and fictional universes got fiddled with, it still felt like I was following the same character that got re-introduced in Man of Steel #1. The New 52 initiative kinda broke that line for a while, but it’s kinda come around again with, well, more universal retooling shenanigans, and while not quite back to where we were with Supes, it at least is within spitting distance.
One place where it didn’t work with me was the Legion of Super-Heroes, which I read for years and years and years and through a couple of reboots (both soft: the Five Years Later thing – and hard: Zero Hour)…and then finally the New 52 relaunch was just one new beginning too many. I’m willing to give the new Legion of Super-Heroes title a try, but….
…Well, sometimes I’m at war with my own nostalgia and that can get in the way of reading a new take on a character (or team of characters) that I like. Yes, I would like some consistency to the characters that I follow. But no, I can’t honestly expect everything to be of a piece with a comic I read 20, 30, 40 years ago. Things change with the times, and concepts have to be retooled to be appeal to current audiences, even if that retooling means casting away the old to make way for the new.
The way the Superman comics were done, I still feel like I’m reading the same guy (with a couple of exceptions) that’s been around since the 1980s. Legion of Super-Heroes, I feel like maybe they bent it ’til they broke it, and they lost me. Maybe they’ll grab me again with this new run, I don’t know.
Anyway, that got a bit away from Robcat17’s question, maybe. I think what I was trying to say is that a seeming consistency (if not necessarily explicit continuity) of the characters can be enough to carry you through any quote-unquote “bad” comics they may appear in. When that consistency is disrupted, suddenly it’s harder to tolerate even what was once a favorite character in a comic you don’t care for.
I’m probably way overthinking this. And I’m aware of the irony of ballyhooing the seeming consistency of the Superman character starting in ’86, given that one of thee main complaints about the Superman relaunch then was that this new iteration didn’t feel like Superman. For some people, that Byrne reboot was the disruption in the line…”this isn’t the same character I irst started reading in 1938!” …Hey, you don’t know, it could have happened.
Thanks for reading…whatever that was. I’ll get back to more of your comments and questions soon.
So if this year is Marvel’s 80th anniversary, that means their 25th anniversary in 1986 was 55 years ago.
Not to get all Inception on you, but I’m going to address some comments made to a post where I was addressing your comments from a previous post, before returning to responding to more comments from the initial post. Got it? Good.
Anyway, I wanted to say just a few words about Marvel’s (or editor-in-chief Jim Shooter’s) “New Universe” publishing initiative, in which on the event of Marvel’s 25th anniversary (counting from the publication of Fantastic Four #1) they were going to introduce a whole “new universe” (hence the name) of superheroes completely unrelated to the shared world with Spider-Man, the Hulk, etc. The tagline was that this would be “the world outside your window,” with a somewhat more realistic take on what supeheroes would be like and what impact they would have on the society and people around them. Even the time scale in which the comics operated was “real time,” with a month passing in story time between each monthly issue. (Not sure how long that was kept up, to be honest.)
This dovetails nicely with a post I made recently about “realism in superhero comics, and I’m sure much of New Universe’s inspiration was informed by the success of Watchmen and Squadron Supreme. Star Brand, the one NU title I followed all the way through, had several examples of this sort of thing, such as pointing out a superhero costume wouldn’t really hide one’s identity very well, or the main character getting lost while flying around…little things, but details that commented on that nature of the genre.
Like I said, Star Brand was the one I kept on with, though I liked early issues of D.P. 7 (a superhero team) and tried out an issue of Merc or two. Star Brand, being the work of the NU creator Jim Shooter, would probably be the title that most exemplified what the whole imprint was about…at least in my opinionl, since as noted I didn’t really read too many of these titles. But it did try to tell a superhero story in a different and unconventional way. The hero’s “costume,” as such, was kinda drab, the hero himself wasn’t exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer, as I recall…at the very least, he was a flawed human and no paragon of perfection. He even flew funny, in an upright, “standing” position instead of the usual “one fist forward” Superman pose. Even when John Byrne took over the book for the final few issues, and it began to look like a somewhat more conventional superhero comic, it still underminded the genre here and there, even if seemingly biting a particular plot point from Miracleman.
Even the trade dress of the comics was unusual, at least for the initial couple of years, with each cover framed in a black border, like they were in mourning for something. It gave everything a sheen of solemnity, that this wasn’t some flashy comic with dudes punching each other. It was something different, something somber, with dudes punching each other realistically. Or perhaps the more obvious interpretation was that black frame was a window frame, tying back into the “world outside your window” concept…you’re lookiing through your “window” at the New Universe that’s outside it.
The imprint was shaken up a bit with The Pitt (not to be confused with, well, you know) in which “the world outside your window” was distanced from the New Universe with the destruction of Pittsburgh. And then that was follwed by The Draft™ and then The War™ and my sense was that emphasis was less on keeping the New Universe “realistic” and more “something customers might keep buying.”
Anyway, the imprint eventually came to an end, with the last issues of the series reading “# [x} of a [x]-Part Limited Series,” which was sort of clever. And that was that, ’til elements of the New Universe started to creep into the regular Marvel Universe (a crossover that was once verboten). It started with some stuff in Spider-Man 2099 and in Quasar early on, and continues even today, with reboot series and character appearances and such.
I don’t think the original New Universe was a bad idea…kinda beat the big rush to everyone starting up their own “new universes” a few years later during the Big Comics Boom/Crash. And I think, in a way, the “Ultimate Universe” was a continuatino of the idea with marginally more realistic/deconstructive takes on the standard Marvel heroes. Of course, it ended the same way, eventually petering out with shake-ups to the premise and then getting folded into regular Marvel Universe continuity. But what probably did the New Universe in wasn’t necessarily the execution, but the rejection of Marvel fans to buying new Marvel comics that weren’t part of the regular Marvel universe they’d been following. I mean, sure, the Ultimate Universe books did fine at first, but those featured the familiar characters…this was a whole new batch of weirdos and unless they were going to fight Wolverine at some point, why bother reading them?
Or maybe it was the execution. A couple of them were pretty bad.
Now this all started prior to my entering the world of comics retail in 1988, so I don’t know what initial sales/customer reaction was like at the shop. I’ll have to ask former boss Ralph when next I see hiim…or maybe I can finally start going through these stacks of ancient invoices he passed along to me for research purposes, now that my eyes are a little more up to the task.
In the meantime, you should at least read John’s comment explaining his Spitfire #1 collection.
Maybe I’d collect every copy of All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder. You know which one.
So y’all left a lot of good comments on last week’s post about being a comic book completist (and I continued on a bit in a second post). Thank you for participating…sometimes I feel like we’re kind of past the heyday of people wanting to leave comments on small hobby blogs like this one, but every once in a while you folks come through and remind me “hey, sometimes people actually read my site!” So, thanks pals.
Anyway, let’s dig into some of those comments from that initial post and see how much typing I can do around them:
Thom, the fella what started all this in the first place, had this to say:
“For the record, I knew that completism was a thing, but I had no idea Swamp-Thing completism was being practiced by more than one person.”
Oh, sure, sorry about implying otherwise. But yeah, I’m not the only Swamp Thing completist out there. I’ve encounted a few through the years, online and in the respective shops I’ve worked at. Granted, not many completists have gone so far as to get Swamp Thing Chalk, but more have than you might think! But I gotta be one of the very few to have this.
Brad Walker strolls in with
“So have you ever talked about Richie Rich and Casper #1?”
Ah, you mean how Casper is clearly the departed spirit of Richie Rich, condemned to roam the mortal world until he has sufficiently counterbalanced his excessive avarice in life, therefor the two of them appearing together in one adventure is a blunt expression of Harvey Comics’ belief in the dualism of mind and body?
Or is it the “swamp creatures” thing in that first issue you linked? Yeah, on second thought, it’s probably that. Well, to be honest, while those monsters are clearly planning to eat Richie Rich and thus certainly have my sympathies, but that doesn’t really trigger the “swamp monster collector” instinct in me. I suppose I want something a little more…Swamp Thing-ish, I suppose, more green and humanoid and/or transoformed by science goine awry, as opposed to a couple of critters that just happen to live in a swamp. A fine line to draw, I understand, and probably exposes something disturbing about me psychologically,, but this issue just doesn’t float my airboat.
The infamous John Lancaster had more to say, but I wanted to focus on this bit:
“One that I may have mentioned here before; collecting every #1 issue of Spitfire and the Troubleshooters. As of my last count and based on publishing records, I own approximately 4% of the print run on this one. It’s not because I love that character or anything, I just want to wipe their existence off the earth. It’s basically a Scrooge McDuck gambit.”
Whoa nelly. Imagine finally getting all extant issues of this in one place. Just mountains of Spitfire, taking up every room in the house, filling the bathtub, falling out of the attic, stacked around the Ford Festiva in the garage, etc.
But even that’s an aspect of collecting I’ve come across once or thrice over the years, with folks trying to buy multiple copies of the same issue. I mean, aside from the investment side of things, I saw that a lot during the ’90s boom. Or, you know, whatever the hell was going on here. I mean, just got a wild hair to get, say, every copy of the “Spore” issue of Iron Man, as Mag ‘n’ H were trying to do at one point over at the Comic Treadmill. Or the customer I have now who’s way into Green Lantern, and wants as many copies as he can get of the 3-issue “Emerald Twilight” series.
I can’t say I’ve ever wanted to do that, myself. I mean, sure, I guess it would be a little funny if I bought every copy of Swamp Thing #24 I could find…just, like, corner the market on them, be the world’s ultimate collector of Thrudvang, but…yeah, nothing’s ever tickled my fancy that way. …I seem to remember former employee and old pal Rob decided he was going to get every copy of the Art Adams “Fin Fang Foom” trading card from the ’91 Marvel set. I helped him with that a bit, that’s probably as close as I’ve come.
Andrew Davison schools us on
“In the past I’ve used GCD to search for a character’s appearances.
“Any top tips for finding comics on a theme?”
That is admittedly a bit harder. Other than looking at hundreds of comic book covers nearly every day, like I do, perhaps you can plug in various keywords into the Grand Comics Database’s story title search function. Or if you’ve got time to kill (and who doesn’t, we’re all swimming in free time) you can just poke through the various cover galleries of likely titles there. Yeah, that’s kind of a crapshoot, but you never know.
Also, there are plenty of blogs and Tumblrs and, um, Myspaces, I guess, out there where folks have already done the work and pieced together their own lists of comics that cover their specific interests. That’s my guess, anyway…I don’t really know, I don’t go on the internet.
Paul Di Filippo (a fella who himself isn’t unfamiliar with swamp critters) wades in with
“What?!? No love for swamp monster Solomon Grundy?!?”
I ain’t got no beef with Mr. Grundy, no sir. It’s easy to forget that he fits right into the genre of “man transformed by science and/or magic into swamp beast” since he isn’t, y’know, green. OKay, he was getting a bit green in that one Swamp Thing story, but that was pretty much it. I talked about his first meeting with Swamp Thing not too long ago, and I’ve mentioned a couple of times how DC wanted Grundy to fill Swamp Thing’s niche in the DC Universe (as Swampy was tied up over at Vertigo) and put out a series to do just that.
But despite the connection to Swamp Thing, I never felt obligated to add “all appearances of Solomon Grundy” to the collection. That would being getting some pretty pricey early comics there. And I think I’ve bought ‘n’ read a sufficient numbers of more recent appearances so…I’m probably good on the guy for now. I won’t say no to future comics, but I’m probably not going to be dipping into back issues to fill holes in that particualar accumulation. Sorry Paul!
Eep, that’s a lot of typing. Okay, back soon with more. Leave more comments on that first post if you’d like, and of course read everything everyone has to say there. Lots of good comments…remember when comments were good? Now you can relive those halcyon days right here on Progressive Ruin Dot Com.