Mikester

Yes, I know zombies in The Walking Dead don’t actually say “braaaaiinnns.”

filed under Categories blogging about blogging is a sin, pal plugging, publishing, swamp thing 1 Comment


So customer Ryan came by the store on Thursday with the above gift for me…a full page pencil drawing of Swamp Thing that he drew. He said “I began to realize that you kind of like Swamp Thing, so I thought I’d do this for you!” That was very nice of him. I actually have a bunch of art in frames ready to hang up, I just haven’t found time to do so yet…I do have this piece by pal Matt on display, but I’ve got several others that need to go up. Someone remind me to do so.

Also, I may need to redact part of my post from Wednesday, in which it turns out the extra story pages only present in the variant’s variant (sigh…) are in fact preview pages from the next issue, so readers won’t miss out on any material. It was just a little something extra to give me a headache for the lucky fan who was able to get their mitts on it. Anyway, glad I moved my copies already. I’m not sure how I’m going to edit that post, but I’ll put an explanation at the top so they’ll know to take my rantings with a grain of braaaaiinnns. Thankfully nobody reads blogs anymore, so I didn’t get many complaints.

In Patreon news…I will have a new installment in the Swamp Thing-a-Thon up soon. I’m just retooling the format a bit, oh, and also trying to find time to write it, which hasn’t been easy of late. I didn’t give up, I’m just a wee bit behind. I’m attempting to make the process a little less time-consuming, so that a biweekly schedule won’t become an enormous burden. I’ll let you know when the new one is up.

And in news that’s not all me me me me me me, Bully, the Little Funnybook-Pricing Bull, and his pal John are selling comics to support good causes! Plenty of photo evidence at the link! If you’re in the area, why not drop by and pick up some great comics at low, low, low prices…and that’s no Bull(y)!

Which isn’t to say I didn’t put ’em on eBay…look, I’ve got bills to pay.

filed under Categories publishing, retailing 1 Comment

(EDIT: I spend a lot of time in this post complaining about something that isn’t a thing…turns out the extra pages are from the following issue due in a month’s time, so wherever I complain about that here, just ignore it. Thought about just deleting the whole post, but let it stand as a warning against other publishers thinking about making new story material difficult to find for the fans, and as a warning against jumping the gun on writing complain-y blogs.)

So a few months back I placed my orders for the current issue of The Walking Dead, due out in your local funnybook venue this week. And then, a few weeks back, said issue of The Walking Dead turned up on the Final Order Cutoffs, where retailers get a last chance to fiddle with their order numbers before print runs are committed. At that time, as happens on occasion, additional items not offered in the original catalog are put up for order…in this case, a variant cover by Lorenzo de Felici was added that was “free to order” (as in “I can order as much as I’d like,” as opposed to “order 10 of the regular cover, get 1 variant!”). I placed my numbers and that was that. (As an aside, I got so used to ordering two covers for each Walking Dead a while back that just ordering one cover throws me off!)

Tuesday, I received my weekly Diamond shipment which included these two Walking Dead variants, broke everything down, sorted ’em, counted ’em, pulled them for comic savers, etc. At that point, I get a call from another comic shop owner, someone I’ve known for decades, who wanted to give me a heads up that there’s a rare variant of this new issue of Walking Dead. At first I thought he meant the de Felici variant just on its own…I’m sure some retailers may have missed ordering it when it came up on the Final Order Cutoffs (or wherever else it may have appeared…there’s more than one place for these things to be added after the fact), but I didn’t think that was enough to make it rare.

My friend explained further, that the variant itself had a variant, that a minor visual cue on the variant’s cover indicated interior variations…specifically, the letters pages and other editorial content were replaced by an additional seven pages of story not in the other versions of this comic, either the regular cover or, um, the regular variant cover, shall we say.

I know this is being compared to comics like that Team Titans #1, which had multiple variations of its contents, each featuring a different short story in addition to the main feature which was the same in all versions. But that had sufficient warning…people knew DC was going to pull that stunt ahead of time, so it wasn’t a surprise to find different/additional content in each issue, and if you wanted all versions, they weren’t hard to get. Or even Thump’n Guts by Kevin Eastman and Simon Bisley was mentioned to me, which had multiple variations on content, but even that was marketed as a part of the gimmick for the book.

But doing this to Walking Dead feels like it’s a little more frustrating. Yes, I’m sure the pages will turn up in the trade paperbacks, but the folks reading the monthlies don’t necessarily get the trades as well. Making part of the story an exclusive “chase” variant is different from just doing rare covers…basically it’s telling fans who have been following that particular franchise “hey, we’re hiding some of the story from you!” …Maybe it’s not as bad as all that, and I’m sure there are…illicit methods of finding those pages, but I’d rather not encourage that behavior.

My hope is that those extra pages turn up in a later issue, so people who don’t want to buy the trades ,and don’t want to go on a scavenger hunt to piece together the entire story, can read ’em. I know I’d be put out a bit if a comic I really liked suddenly decided to sneak extra pages past me so that only a lucky few got to see them. …Are they in the digital version? Maybe someone can let me know.

Anyway, here’s hoping they don’t do that again. I know they probably meant well and wanted to do something different and have fun and make people excited, etc. etc. But this can easily turn into an aggravation, and nobody wants that.

Progressive Ruin presents…the End of Civilization.

filed under Categories End of Civilization 10 Comments

From out of my brain, through my fingers, into my keyboard, and out on your screen…it’s the latest installment of the End of Civilization, where I plow though the monthly Diamond Previews catalog and point out items of particular note. If you have your own copy of said Previews (the September 2017 edition, to be precise), you can follow along with me, as I present at least one joke directly stolen from Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie:

p. 74-7 – Doomsday Clock #1:


Look, I already made my big joke about this series a few days ago. So…um, what if the series is about Doctor Manhattan and Superman teaming up to stop a giant clock from destroying the Earth? Yeah, that’s funny, right…? …No, huh. Look, I also gave you the “Manhattan has stolen Superman’s shorts” gag, what more do you want.
 
 
p. 88 – Batwoman #9:

Ah, Kathy’s Freddy Krueger cosplay:


 
 
p. 136 – Shazam The New Beginning 30th Anniversary HC:


Put a lenticular cover on this of C.C. Beck just shaking his head.
 
 
p. 147 – Batman Black & White Spy Vs. Spy as Batman by Peter Kuper Statue:


If the Internet suddenly becomes self-aware and threatens to destroy humanity, just have Captain Kirk show it this statue and hopefully that’ll cause it to break down out of confusion.
 
 
p. 191 – Coyotes #1:

Finally, a super-team of all my favorite coyotes:


 
 
…wait, how’s that again? …Oh. Well, uh, I’m sure this comic will be great, anyway.
 
 
p. 275 – How The Trump Stole Christmas:


I’m beginning to sense a slightly different tone in the Trump-exploitation comics vs. all those Obama comics.
 
 
p. 294 – Kong on the Planet of the Apes #1:


ATTENTION GUYS ‘n’ GALS AT BOOM! STUDIOS: I will totally write the Every Which Way But Loose/Planet of the Apes crossover. C’mon…”Right turn, Clyde!” [Clyde smacks General Ursus right in the face.] …You know how to reach me.
 
 
p. 295 – Big Trouble in Little China The Game:


Do not pass GO, do not collect Jack’s tru–oh, this isn’t Monopoly? Look, that’s my one format for End of Civilization board game jokes. You get what you get.
 
 
p. 328 – Elvira Mistress of the Dark Spectral Switchboard:


“See…it’s going…right…for her…boobs….”

“No…it’s moving…to her legs….”

“DANG IT CHAD, QUIT HOGGING THE PLANCHETTE”
 
 
p. 362 – Trump’s Titans Vs. Fidget Spinner Force #1:


“Gran’pa? What was the year 2017 like?”

[Old Man Mike pulls a dusty copy of Trump’s Titans Vs. Fidget Spinner Force #1 out of his worn and battered trunk. He shows it to the gathered children.]

“It…it was just like this. Read it…if you dare learn…the truth.”

(Oh, by the way, the preceding dialogue all takes place in 2019.)
 
 
p. 364 – Gumby Volume 1 GN:


 
 


 
 
p. 398 – Chasing Hitler #1:


The sequel to Chasing Amy you never expected.
 
 
p. 469 – Oh My God, They Printed That?!:


In case you’re wondering what goes through my mind as I actually sit down to do the monthly comics order, versus doing a pass through for End of Civilization jokes.
 
 
p. 473 – Star Trek The Book of Lists HC:


“Ten Reasons Why You’re Supposed to Buy Kirk and Spock as Best Friends in the New Trek Movies Even Though There’s Not Really Anything in Those Films That Supports It”

“…Mike.”

“LOOK, THAT BUGS ME”
 
 
p. 473 – The Physics of Star Wars SC:


“So how was Hosnian Prime’s destruction in The Force Awakens visible to an entirely different solar system?”

“That…that’s not really what the book’s about. It’s about real world physics being applied to Star Wars concepts and how they could and could not w….”

“So you don’t know.”

“Okay, look, Wookiepedia says that happened because of…phantom energy? …Really?”

“Well, I guess you got something for your next book, then.”
 
 
p. 501 – Marvel Select Black Panther Movie Action Figure:


Black Panther is totally teaming up with a Horta in his movie! This is going to be awesome!
 
 
p. 511 – DC Teekeez Stackable Vinyl Tiki Figures:


“LEONA HELMSLEY?”


“WALTON GOGGINS?”
 
 
p. 520 – Edward Scissorhands – Scissorhands 1/1-Scale Replia:


1/1-Scale Impaled Vincent Price not included.
 
 
p. 525 – Star Wars Kenner-Inspired Early Bird Jumbo Action Figure 4-Piece Set:


I’m tempted by this, but I’d probably be shorted Artoo again.
 
 
p. 532 – Pop! Mystery Science Theater 3000 Vinyl Figures:


No Gypsy? No Cambot? No Gerry and Sylvia? No Mr. B. Natural? No Torgo? No TV’s Frank? No Timmy? No Hamdingers? No Jack Perkins? No Gamera? No Joe Don Baker? No Demon Dogs? No Nuveena? Well well well, Mr. Funko Pop! Smith, Esq., I think you have your work cut out for you. I expect all these on my desk by Friday.
 
 
p. 586 – Deadpool Plate Set:


“Eat all your food, Little Billy, and you’ll see Deadpool staring back at you!”

[Little Billy never eats again.]
 
 
p. 586 – Deadpool Teapot:


“I’m a little Deadpool

Short and stout

Here is my handle

Here is yet another spinoff series starring me as various kitchenwares”
 
 
p. 588 – Breaking Bad RV Incense Burner:


The saddest fate for Barbie’s Dream Motorhome.
 
 
p. 589- A Christmas Story The Party Game:


So the object of the game is to not shoot your eye out while sticking your tongue to a pole, dressed in a bunny suit and also fighting over a leg lamp. Well, that’s the tradition in my household.

I just kinda gave up putting “cite” tags around “Watchmen” halfway through, I was typing it so much.

filed under Categories watchmen 3 Comments

I know we’re all supposed to be outraged at DC continuing to repurpose Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s Watchmen, but man, I just laugh and laugh and laugh at this:


…partially for the chutzpah…well, okay, mostly for the chutzpah of DC to even do this, and partially out of my own curiosity over how it’s even going to work, and partially out of my own misguided love for weird permutations of the original story, like, say, this toaster.

And seeing this cover finally got me to put together a gag involving that title “Doomsday Clock” and its superficial similarity to a particular piece of dialogue from a page in Preacher:


Ever since Doomsday Clock was announced, I had this stupid idea in my head. And now here it is, in all of yours.

Anyway, I have no idea how I’m going to order this. Well, that’s not entirely true, I do know how I’m going to order this, I’m just not sure how it’s going to sell. With that Batman/Flash crossover “The Button” associating DC’s use of lenticular covers with “special Watchmen tie-in events,” using lenticular covers for the Mr. Oz storyline coming up in Action Comics, where the Watchmen tie-in may not be as strong as had been presumed*, may lessen the sales boost said covers may give to Doomsday Clock.

Or I’m just overthinking it. While that Mr. Oz storyline may or may not have solid ties to the overarching Watchmen thing, Doomsday Clock is totally being pushed as “SUPERMAN VERSUS DOCTOR MANHATTAN” which should drive sales to even those folks who feel like they weren’t getting enough Watchmen content in that Action story. Boy, I’m sure assuming a lot about that Action comic I haven’t read yet.

At any rate, I’m reasonably certain sales will start out strong, but 12 issues over presumably a year (or a year-and-a-half, if not more) is a long stretch to keep interest up, even in something as wildly out there as a Watchmen/DCU crossover. There’s gonna be some attrition unless there’s a big sales-driving surprise partway through, and even then, who knows. There’s the kind of comics marketplace insight that keeps my two or three readers coming back.

I was looking back at some of my old Watchmen posts on this site, and from this entry in 2010 I quoted an excerpt from a DC press release:

“However, DC comics co-publishers Dan DiDio and Jim Lee said, ‘Watchmen is the most celebrated graphic novel of all time. Rest assured, DC Comics would only revisit these iconic characters if the creative vision of any proposed new stories matched the quality set by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons nearly 25 years ago, and our first discussion on any of this would naturally be with the creators themselves.’”

I don’t know what conversation DC had with Gibbons about this, but I’m sure any conversation with Moore probably ended with him slamming down his rotary phone after shouting “don’t call me again!”

I am curious as to what’s going to happen once DC no longer has this Watchmen subplot running through their series and special events. Will we finally get that epic multi-part storyline teaming up current Batman with Dark Knight Returns Batman? Then again, DC just wrapped Dark Knight III, and I think they’ve threatened a IV, so that franchise is still going on. Maybe…Rōnin joins the Titans? Angie Thriller becomes a…I don’t know, Indigo Lantern? Daniel from Sandman teams up with the Justice L…oh, wait.**
 
 

* I won’t “spoil” what Mr. Oz’s reveal might be, but you can Google around and see what people are assuming. Or look here on the Tweeters where I just straight up say it, back when it was still a crazy idea and not the likely correct one.

** Yes, I know they asked Neil Gaiman. Yes, I know Sandman is technically in the DC Universe. Let me have my little joke.

A little more Kirby-type stuff.

filed under Categories jack kirby 2 Comments

The New York Times has a list of charitable organizations that can use your donations, if you are able, for victims of the Harvey storm. Best wishes to everyone affected, and here’s hoping they get the help they need.

• • •

Get more of your Kirby on:

You can download a nice Jack Kirby booklet in PDF format here.

Pal Andrew reminded us of this old post of his where he dives deep into the misty origins of one of Kirby’s more inexplicable characters: Flippa Dippa.

Bully, the King of Bulls, hasn’t put up a Kirby tribute post specifically for the Big Guy’s birthday, but what else is Bully’s “365 Days of Ben Grimm” but a tribute to the character that, as far as I’m concerned, is Jack’s greatest creation. (And speaking of the Thing, just look at this Mike Deodato drawing. JUST LOOK AT IT.)

And here’s Tom Spurgeon’s Kirby tribute…God help you if you’re still on dial-up!

It’s Jack Kirby’s 100th birthday.

filed under Categories jack kirby 1 Comment


 
 
PREVIOUSLY, ON PROGRESSIVE RUIN:

I note Jack Kirby’s 88th birthday by mentioning my brief meeting with him at an early 1990s comics convention.

A jam drawing by Jack Kirby and a couple of other cartoonists of note.

Kirby’s immortality would have been assured even if he’d only invented this.

Black Racer – still awesome.

The fighting philosophy of the Black Panther (parts one and two).

KUNG-FU KIRBY.

I mark Kirby’s 92nd birthday with this cover to The Comic Reader #100.

The office adventures of Darkseid.

A hard to find display piece for one of Kirby’s projects.

Klarion the Witch Boy and his gender-switching cat.

Never, ever fails to make me laugh.

My pal Cully meets Jack and gets a Captain America sketch.

There were a handful of Swamp Thing/Jack Kirby tie-ins, of course, but this is my favorite one, and the creepiest!

Another Kirby birthday post, featuring Destroyer Duck!

Probably my favorite Jack Kirby creation that I’ve only heard about and never have actually seen.

…And, the pièce de résistance…every appearance of the sound effect “POW!” in Kirby’s New Gods.
 
 

image from 2001: A Space Odyssey #6 (May 1977) by Jack Kirby and Mike Royer

And I mean, like, the Wonder Woman #1 from 1942, not the Pérez one, you wiseacres.

filed under Categories legion of super-heroes, retailing, the eBay 4 Comments


So kind of the last thing I expected on the most recent New Comics Day was for someone to walk in with a shoebox containing about a dozen and a half comics, with that comic pictured above right on top of the stack. For the two people reading this site who don’t recognize the significance of that particular issue, that is Adventure Comics #247 from 1958, containing the first appearance of the long-running DC Comics team the Legion of Super-Heroes. And yes, that is a scan of the actual copy that I received in that collection.

I was particularly surprised because, at my previous place of employment, my old boss Ralph would often note that this comic is one that he never had show up in any collections. People would bring in runs of Adventure, but #247 was always skipped. Third or fourth appearances of the Legion, sure, but never this first one. In the time I worked for Ralph I’d seen multiple Amazing Fantasy #15s, and Amazing Spider-Man #1s, X-Men #1s, a Wonder Woman #1 here, a World’s Finest #2 there, but nope, never that elusive Adventure comic.

But there it is, at long last. In my hot little hands. Sure, it wasn’t in the best condition, but all the pages were there, and it was completely readable. The cover had seen better days, and the spine was about half-split, and the centerfold was loose. What I presume were the owner’s initials are right there on the front cover, as they were on some of the other comics in this collection…well, either initials or some elaborate hand-written arrival date scribbled on there by some newsstand operator. Not a great copy, but better than no copy.

Anyway, I put it on the eBays…I was planning to put it up for one price, thought “well, let me try for a slightly higher price,” and I guess I should have put it up for a much higher price because it was listed literally for about two minutes before someone bought it.

And that’s the tale of how I owned Adventure Comics #247 for all of about half an hour, forty-five minutes tops. Where was this comic a month ago, when I was talking about that exact story of the Legion’s first appearance? Ah, well…I probably would have been too afraid to scan that panel out of this comic anyway.

Here’s hoping whoever bought it doesn’t try to send it back…I’ve already spent that money on hooch, dice, and other sinful pleasures. Besides, I took a whole lot of pictures of the book’s problems to accompany the listing…I probably spent more time taking those pictures than the comic actually spent on eBay. There shouldn’t be any surprises.

Now I need to actually process the rest of the books in the collection: some late ’50s/early ’60s Detectives, a couple Brave and the Bold issues with Cave Carson, a beat-up Action #300, an even more beat-up Atom #4, a couple of other things. But this is one of the real perks of the job…getting to enjoy lots of old comics. Even if certain comics only stick around for about half an hour.

Since I don’t say it anywhere in the post itself…Ducktales was pretty good.

filed under Categories from the vast Mikester comic archives 3 Comments


So I was poking through my enormous number of Gladstone/Gemstone/Whateverstone softcover albums of Carl Barks duck comics…you know, the ones that came shrinkwrapped with the trading cards, plus the handful that didn’t…the ones that came out one or two volumes a month for well over a decade…the ones where I occasionally add up how much those all cost me over the years and even with the employee discount I come up with a number that’s way higher than I care to think about…you know, those ones. Anyway, I was revisiting a volume or two after having watched the the premiere of the new Ducktales cartoon, which had put me in the mood for duck adventures of either a Barkians or Rosa-esque nature. And in there, tucked amongst the too-many slim albums, was the above Dynabrite comic.

Now, I’ve talked about Dynabrite comics on the website before, but for the 5% of my readers out there who don’t have my every utterance committed to memory, let me ‘splain again. This was a Whitman imprint from the late 1970s that reprinted comics from the Gold Key library on nice, bright paper with good coloring, no ads, and under thicker covers. The books were a little larger than the standard comic book size, and staplebound. They cost a little more than their regular newsstand cousins, but were very nice packages of comics.

This particular example, Gyro Gearloose and the Disney Ducks, is from 1979 and reprints several Gyro stories by Barks published in Dell’s Four Color series from the late ’50s/early ’60s. I don’t remember when exactly I bought this, but it must have been sometime between my reentry into reading Duck comics in 1987 (when I followed Don Rosa to his first Scrooge story) and before the entire Barks run of Gyro stories were reprinted in album form starting in 1993. I don’t imagine I would have bought this after getting the same stories reprinted in upscale form in those albums, but then again, I’ve been known to double-dip occasionally on some comics because I happen to like the cover or because I’m crazy.

Even as I look at this now, and I think “this is redundant, and I have a store, so I have someplace I can sell this,” I find myself not really wanting to. I mean, I could think about this in a weird collector sort of way, like “I should have at least one example of this particular publishing imprint in my collection,” though 1) I know full well what a Dynabrite comic is like, I don’t need reminding, and 2) who am i trying to impress, really? Well, sure, I’m trying to impress all of you, but now that I’ve blogged about this particular item, it’s served out that purpose.

I suppose the real reason is mostly sentimental, I guess. Some of my very earliest comic book memories, from when I was maybe five or even younger, come from Disney comics. Specifically, I remember being fascinated by Gyro’s little robotic friend Helper, and the background shenanigans he’d get up to:


Even though my ownership of this item doesn’t date from my childhood, the characters are still a definite memory from that time. So really, for no good reason beyond that, I’ll be hanging onto this for a while longer.

I honestly have nothing against the Syphons comic book.

filed under Categories retailing, self-promotion 8 Comments

So the other day on Twitter I was reminiscing about the influx of comic book price guide periodicals that flooded…well, wait, hold on, let me back up.

A few days ago a customer told me in passing that he’d heard Wizard was coming back. For those of you who don’t recall, Wizard was a monthly comic news/interview magazine that featured a price guide in the back, with occasional investment recommendations, lists of new first issues, and that sort of thing. It ceased publication a number of years ago, but the Wizard brand still appears on conventions, and I regularly get folks in the shop asking me if the latest issue of Wizard is out. (Technically, the answer to this is “yes,” I suppose.)

A little bit of Googling later, I found this article saying that Wizard is being relaunched as a digital “service,” with a quarterly magazine and a daily video thingamajigger. No word here on whether a price guide is part of the quarterly release, which, judging by my retail experience selling the magazine for its entire existence, was the magazine’s primary attraction. Okay, I exaggerate, but really, not by much. I’ve heard more than once “Wizard‘s gone!? Then how do you price your comics?” But the magazine’s appearance and content skewed young-ish, appealing to the teen crowd of comic readers that were then heavily populating the marketplace during the industry’s boom years. Features on “hot” comics and creators, pack-in freebies like trading cards (also “hot” for a time), offers for special “limited edition” comics…there was a lot of material to attract fans of a certain type, and there was nothing else quite like it on the market…at least until Hero Illustrated showed up.

Anyway, to get back where I started, this got me to thinking about the many other price guides that suddenly turned up during the last time lots of people remembered that comic books existed as items they could purchase. I’ve already mentioned Hero Illustrated, which was basically the same thing as Wizard, with articles that perhaps aimed at a very slightly older reader, but still had that big ol’ price guide section in the back. As I recall, the major difference from Wizard was that Hero sometimes offered “ashcan editions” (i.e. digest sized previews of comics) as pack-ins, along with the usual trading cards, etc.

Going a slightly different route was the magazine pictured above, Comics Values Monthly, the title of which you can almost read, there. I actually have two issues of this magazine in the Semi-Vast Comic Archives…that one there, which I bought for perhaps obvious reasons (“Wha–!? A Syphons preview!?”), and the other one being a special issue about the Death of Superman, of course. This was a less fancy publication than Wizard and Hero: black and white interiors, few articles, focus is on the “price” part of the mag. There’s the occasional goodie (this issue had a folded bound-in poster of its cover), oh, and just flipping through it, there’s an interview with Garth Ennis, which wasn’t as important to cover-blurb as Syphons, I guess. This mag also had an annual price guide softcover.

There were other monthly (or semi-monthly) price guide magazines. Overstreet had their own Wizard-esque price-guide-with-some-articles slick covered mag Overstreet Fan. (Amusingly enough, Wizard started their own annual price guide book, competing with Oversteet’s annual guide. That only lasted a couple of years, as I recall.) I don’t really remember a lot about the quality of the articles, but I do know they sent us a pretty cool clock (with the “Fan” logo across its face) that, as far as I know, is still working and displayed on the wall at my previous place of employment.

The long-running Comic Buyers’ Guide had a regular (quarterly?) price guide sometimes sealed in a polybag along with their tabloid editions. When it shifted from a weekly to a monthly, it had a price guide in the back of every issue, I believe.

And there were others, probably many short-lived mags. I seem to remember one or two that tried to be all-purpose price guides (like the appropriately-named Combo magazine) with prices for comics, toys, cards, Fabergé eggs, collectable shoes, what have you. I’m trying to remember if Beckett, the primary publisher of sports card price guides, ever did a comics price guide during this magical period of the 1990s. If not, they missed a bet, because man oh man did I ever have lots of people asking for our “comic book Becketts” at the time. (That’s how I knew a bunch of people bailed out of the card market to seek their fortune in funnybooks.)

In practical use, we tended to stick with the Overstreet annual guide for general pricing, with reference to Wizard for any month-to-month trends that an annual guide might miss. Once other price guides proliferated, we’d occasionally use those for reference as well, but not nearly as frequently as the Overstreet annual/Wizard monthly power pair.

Nowadays, it’s mostly Overstreet I use, plus just general awareness of local market conditions. I’ll pop in on the eBay to see if anything unusual happens to stand out, though given how things are organized there, it’s easier to just look up specific issues rather than just browse and hope you see relevant data. And I know there are online price guides services…I haven’t signed up for any of those, but one I looked at had a page of “CURRENT HOT ISSUES!” that didn’t hold any surprises for me this time, but might be a handy reference for knowing which titles people are going to wanting multiple copies of.

Don’t know that I really have a point to this beyond “hey, remember when there were too many price guides?” There was another thing on Twitter that I brought up, regarding the discrepancies in prices we’d often find between price guides, which was surely just a matter of differences in surveyed retailers and their own pricing trends. However, I remember my comic shop cohorts and I speculating that perhaps some guides pushed certain prices a little higher than they should have been, in order to attract more buyers. “Hey, Comics Cash Weekly lists the comics I own at higher prices than The Old Price Guide Grandpas Use…Comics Cash Weekly, you’ve got my money!” …However, clearly this would require a level of sleaziness that could never occur in the comics industry. But I do wonder if anyone actually did decide on which guide to buy based on that criteria? I mean, people have done weirder things for less reason.

As for Wizard‘s new venture…all I know about it is what I read in that article, but I honestly don’t know if “quarterly” is often enough when most big comics news/entertainment sites are updated multiple times daily. Yeah, I know they have the daily video thing, and we keep getting told video is the way everything is going, but…maybe I’m just an olds, but I’d prefer to read information online at my own pace rather than have someone talk at me. I mean, you read all this, right? …Hello?

• • •

Speaking of too much to read, installment #7 of the Swamp Thing-a-Thon is up at my Patreon page, covering Swamp Thing #6 from 1973. Only one dollar a month gets you into my exclusive club, where we’re all talking about you, right now…if only you were there to defend yourself!

I looked through my Amazing Heroes Preview Specials for way too long trying to find that book’s original title.

filed under Categories pal plugging, publishing, self-promotion 1 Comment

A couple of reactions to Wednesday’s post:

Eric L asks

“OK, but was Radioactive Adolescent Black Belt Hamsters any good? The title sounds like a blatant rip off, but it seems to have lasted a while so maybe it had something going for it?”

The fact that the title “Adolescent Radioactive Black-Belt Hamsters” was so on the nose was pretty much part of the joke, and folks kept putting out books with more tortured variations of that title format. Even Marvel was going to get in on the act, with a one-shot titled Grown-up [or Adult] Thermonuclear Samurai Elephants, but it took so long to come out that the fad had passed, and it was renamed Power Pachyderms prior to its eventual unleashing.

But Hamsters was the first out of the gate in the “‘borrowing the Turtles’ sauce” race, and…well, as these things go, it wasn’t bad. I only had one copy of the comic in the store for me to flip through and remind myself of the actual contents:

…and of course it was the 3D special, which was a small bit of a challenge to my aging eyes. But, you know, it was amusing enough, and professionally done…it did its job as a funnybook. Also as I recall, other issues featured work by Ty Templeton and Sam Keith, so there were some interesting art jobs on the series that you probably wouldn’t have expected. Yes, it will always be remembered as “The First Knock-off of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” and it deserves some credit (or, more likely, blame) for leading the way for the [blank] [blank] [blank] [animal, maybe] titles that would follow, but as black and white boom comics go, it’s certainly nowhere near the bottom.

Dave Carter says

“The comic I remember most from the B&W boom was Mark Martin’s Gnatrat. I recall quite enjoying it at the time (though may tastes may have been less discerning in those days…)”

Trust your memories at least on Gnatrat and related titles, Dave…as I mentioned in this post about The Boom, Mark Martin’s comics were Quality Products by a talented cartoonist, definitely top echelon of the period. They are Batman/Daredevil/Frank Miller parodies, but they hold up. There was a complete Gnatrat trade paperback a few years back…out of print, but used copies are cheap on Amazon at that link.

• • •

In other news:

  • The next installment in the Swamp Thing-a-Thon at my Patreon should be up over the weekend, or Monday at the latest. Only one dollar gets you a extra giant wall of text from me twice a month!

  • Alan David Doane notes a recent David Letterman interview where the talk show host reflects on frequent guest (and comics legend) Harvey Pekar. I remember watching all of these as they aired all those years ago…usually funny but so uncomfortable. I think it was in that final appearance that Dave got pissed at Harvey and referred to American Splendor as “this Mickey Mouse thing.” I suppose I could go look this up on YouTube, but that’ll probably just make me agitated.

  • Bully, the Little Bull Stuffed with SPF 300,000 sunscreen, looks directly at the Sun-Eater…without protective lenses! Bully, NO! Always be safe when observing solar events!