Mikester

How I was never quoted in any kind of advertising or on any print edition for All-Star Batman and Robin, I’ll never know.

filed under Categories dc comics, obituary 6 Comments

So the other day I sold a copy of the Superman: Krypton Returns trade paperback, and as I flipped it over to get the price, I noticed the following pullquote on the back cover:

“Superman is still super.”

And, well…yes, I know it’s a play on words meaning “Superman comics are great!” but it’s hard not to look at that and immediately parse it as “Superman still retains super abilities, hence the name ‘Superman.'” But that got me to thinking.

I’ve been quoted by publishers in the past, once or twice. I know I had a quote on the back of an AiT/Planet Lar trade, and I was quoted in this Previews ad for a Rick Veitch book. But boy, I think it’d be pretty neat to get quoted on the back of a DC graphic novel.

And thus…DC Comics or representatives thereof, if you’re reading this, hear me out. Now, you guys ‘n’ gals publish, what, four or five dozen Batman graphic novels and trade paperbacks a month? I might be rounding up a bit, but it’s a whole lot. You’ve got plenty of space to fill on the backs of all those books with pullquotes from, like, the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal or Modern Bride or whatever. Now, my little site here, Progressive Ruin Super Adventure Hour and Family Recipes dot com, may only have approximately three quarters of the prestige of any of those fine publications/organizations, but surely there’s room for just a few words from your pal Mike.

You can use this quote for any Batman book you’d like. I would be perfectly okay endorsing any Bat-title with the following words:

“Batman is still batty.”

                            –Mike Sterling, progressiveruin.com


Perfect for every Batman story, I’m sure you’d agree. If you want to save it for the eventual print collection of Dark Knight III, feel free. If you want to use it on every Bat-collection over the next year, well, who could blame you? Anyway, I look forward to your usage of this pullquote, DC Comics.

• • •

All seriousness aside: just as there is the Best Batman, there was also the Best Batgirl, Yvonne Craig, who sadly passed away this week. Mark Evanier has a pretty good story about her that you should read.

So long, Yvonne.

Does whatever an iron can.

filed under Categories retailing, self-promotion 7 Comments

So here’s something that happened a few times this past weekend that I’m surprised hasn’t popped up more often in recent months: customers looking for the latest Avengers or X-Men or whatever, and I have to tell them most of Marvel’s Big Name Series are currently on hiatus while the Secret Wars event is underway. I also let them know that new series for most of these titles are on their way, but, unfortunately, that doesn’t do any good right this very moment.

Reactions are mixed. Sometimes the customer will try out one of the Secret Wars tie-ins that’s related to the character/team requested, or s/he’ll buy some of that character’s back issues, or some non-Marvel book will be bought instead. (Or maybe the customer will try to opt for no purchase, but no one gets out of my store without buying somethin’, see.) As I said, this hasn’t been a big problem, but I had enough people bring it up in a short period of time for me to realize, oh, hey, yeah, having all the standards on hold while doing your big event could cause a minor issue.

Related: I was discussing with some fellow retailer pals this forthcoming Invincible Iron Man #1 that’s part of Marvel’s post-Secret Wars publishing initiative. Yeah, there’s a whole slew of new #1s headed our way…and to be fair, a lot of them look like they’ll be pretty good. That new Extraordinary X-Men by Jeff Lemire and Humberto Ramos, for example, seems like it’ll be fun, so long as they can hang onto that creative team. Anyway, I digress…our concern with a new Iron Man series is that Iron Man comics have, of late…underperformed, shall we say. And I would love, love, love a great selling Iron Man comic to burn up my racks, but conservatively-ordering this particular series seems like the smart move. I hope I’m wrong, and that everyone rediscovers their love of four-color Tony Stark, but recent sales history shows otherwise.

Now since I’ve had that discussion, the very high order numbers (relatively speaking) of that particular issue of Iron Man became a bit of a news item. That linked article mentions it would be the highest-selling issue of Iron Man in years, and, well, highest-selling to retailers, sure…whether those retailers can in turn sell those comics to customers is another story entirely. We’ll see soon enough. Like I said, I hope it sells great. There certainly won’t be any shortage of them.

I’ve been asked why I think Iron Man comics haven’t been selling as well as they could be, especially since they’re the basis of an extremely popular series of movies. That could be the problem: the movies deliver a more visceral thrill, present a more relatable cast of characters, than the comics can, and the comics suffer as a result. Oh, and also, most people who see Iron Man movies don’t read comics. And on top of that, Iron Man, in the comics world, is still kind of a…well, “second-stringer” seems a bit harsh. Maybe “one-and-a-half stringer” is closer to it, and the comics sales just reflect that status.

Or maybe people just didn’t like his comics. Hey, it happens. Maybe this new series will be the Iron Man comic everyone’s been waiting for.

• • •

This week’s Trouble with Comics roundtable question was “what makes a perfect comic shop?” and while the temptation to answer “having me running it!” was strong, I put a little more thought into it than that. You can read my responses, and those of my fellow Troublemakers, right here. Given as how I’ve devoted a lot of the past 11+ years of my site to this very question, not to mention this retailing column I wrote, you may find some of my answers familiar. But hey, I’m old now, I’m allowed to repeat the same ol’ stories over and over.

Back to Trouble with Comics: you can see what those folks have been getting up to over the past week in this summary post.

Sorry, pals…

filed under Categories low content mode 3 Comments

…I said yesterday there’d be more stuff today, and as it turns out, I don’t. I’m currently occupied with some other things and while I’d rather be having fun with comic book type stuff, unfortunately this other business has to come first.

Again, sorry, gang…I’ll hopefully be up to speed again this Monday. Thanks for reading.

I haven’t had the time to generate actual content…

filed under Categories low content mode, the eBay, zines 6 Comments

…so please accept this scan of a Linda Ronstadt book from 1978 in its stead:

lr
I currently have this up on the eBay, so I’m using this as an excuse to plug my eBay auctions, I guess.

Oh, this does remind me, I did recently list some other music-related magazines that may be of interest to funnybook fans, such as these issues of the music ‘zine Who Put the Bomp. Issue #7 from 1971 has a cover by underground comics artist George Hansen:

bomp71971

…while #9 from 1972 has a cover by another underground cartoonist, Jay Kinney:

bomp91972

Later the mag shortened its name to Bomp and went to slick color covers, such as this one for #18 from 1978 by William Stout:

bomp181978

Also, I’ll put up actual scans of those first two Bomps here when I get a chance…the digital photos didn’t work as well as I thought they would.

So there you go…I started off claiming there would be no content, and lo, there was content. Just how do I do it? I must be some kind of miracle worker.

More stuff tomorrow, pals.

So this is like the third post in a row about a movie I haven’t seen yet.

filed under Categories fantastic four, movie reviews, self-promotion 11 Comments

Yeah, I know I’m stretching this thing a bit, adding more fuel to the fire on something studios would rather just vanish into thin air. However, it occurred to me over the weekend that perhaps one should have some measure of pity for the poor guy(s) and/or gal(s) in charge of the official Fantastic Four movie Twitter account:

I’m sure they’re not locked away in a secret bunker somewhere, away from all media…they know the film is critically despised and tanking, but they’re still plugging away, hyping the film and trying to generate interest. And, of course, what else would they be doing? Presumably someone’s being paid to run that account…I mean, I’m guessing, I don’t suppose they’d throw some unpaid intern on there. And right now, that’s probably the last place they’d want an unpaid intern.

So, yeah, you’re not going to see “um…hey, everyone, sorry about the film” tweeted on there anytime soon, though that would be amazing. But if this account hasn’t yet, well…. But still, those folks running the Twitter account have a job to do, and they have to do it as best they’re able, because I’m sure the last thing they want is the studio deciding the reason the film flopped was because the Twitter campaign was insufficiently compelling and pointing their big ol’ stogie-wielding movie mogul fingers at them.

The other issue with running a Twitter account for a less-than-popular movie is that, well, on the Internet everyone gets their say. Sometimes it’s erudite and refined educated folks like all of you fine readers perusing my site, and sometimes it’s just straight-up dummies. I wondered aloud about the temptation of whoever’s in charge of the FF account to click the “Notifications” link and see how everyone’s responding to them. Because, boy howdy, are people responding to them, letting them have it with both barrels. You can pretty much just click on any post there and see the parade of haters venting their keyboard rage, for whatever good that’ll do. But I have to tell you, this particular exchange cracked me up:


So there are defenders for the film, too, presuming that they’re not all Fox employees.

There’s beginning to be some backlash to the backlash, suggesting that maybe we’ve gone from “well, that movie didn’t turn out as planned” to just dogpiling on the dopey film because it’s the fun thing to do. And, yeah, okay, it’s a little fun, and a small heaping of deserved scorn onto a studio once in a while helps remind them that maybe there’s some shit we won’t eat. But thanks to the Internet, any creative product with a social media presence gets hit with waves of anger over anything, sometimes deserved, usually not, and it all just blurs together into one bit ol’ mass of “why are we bothering reaching out to the fans again?” Who knows if the FF people are even paying attention to online reaction. I suspect the box office returns are keeping them occupied.

Anyway, that’s enough of that. I think I’ll hold off further comment ’til I actually see the darned thing, rented from Netflix in three or four months. Like I’ve been saying, the look of the film is very appealing, so I’d at least like to enjoy that aspect of it. And if it’s all that bad, I’ll just throw on my Blu-ray of Frank Miller’s The Spirit and wash that taste out.

• • •

As mentioned last week, I am now contributing to the Trouble with Comics group blog, mostly to the weekly roundtable question discussion thingie. This week’s question is regarding the future of the comic book periodical, and I pitch in with my usual overlong, rambling and nonsensical response.

Plus, here is an overview of what’s been going on over there, and boy, those folks have been busy as all get-out. And there’s plenty more to come!

A lot about the Fantastic Four, and a wee bit about Miracleman.

filed under Categories fantastic four, miraclemarvelman 5 Comments

In response to yesterday’s post, Earl asked:

“Out of curiosity, regarding Doom, do you have a favorite version of him from the various Marvel animated series?”

And to be honest…aside from my memories of watching a whole lot of the 1960s Spider-man cartoon, and some random installments of various series here and there over the decades, I really wasn’t much of a Marvel cartoon watcher. I have a vague memory of watching some animated version of Doom who spoke with a heavy accent, but I’m not sure what cartoon that may have been from, assuming I didn’t just cook that up myself in this aging brain of mine. The end result is that I don’t really recall enough about any of these cartoons to be able to pick out a fave Doom.

Earl suggested the Dr. Doom from the 1960s Fantastic Four cartoon [EDIT: um, Earl actually said the Doom from the 1970s FF cartoon – oops, my brain apparently needs new batteries], and having taken a brief look at a sample:


…why, he’s adorable! That’s some voice he’s got, so watch enough of the video I linked there to experience it yourself.

Other comments from yesterday: esteemed longtime reader G23 suggests that maybe they should just stop trying to do a live action FF altogether, and while I understand the frustration, I’d hate to not see one at all. Now, I realize a live action FF wouldn’t add anything to the comics, wouldn’t improve the overall state of culture, wouldn’t cure the common cold, etc. and so on, but boy I’d like to see one anyway, and I don’t think it’s so insurmountable a task that it can’t be done. I know it’s fanboyish wishful thinking, but it’s so fundamentally a part of the artform I’ve devoted most of my life to, I’d hate that the world at large wouldn’t get to experience at least some portion as to why we all like the FF so much. In fairness, though there was a lot they didn’t get right, at least those two previous Fantastic Four movies managed to do a good job with Aunt Petunia’s favorite nephew. The Thing, as I have noted before, is one of those creations that is so strong on its own that its basic essence can survive even the worst circumstances, though I understand the new film puts even that to the test.

Anyway, I think a good FF film isn’t impossible. It’ll probably just take a little more understanding about what made the original comics work, and a little less fixing it ’til it’s broken.

Another longtime commenter Jer notes that the problem with getting a Dr. Doom that’s like the Dr. Doom in the comics comes down to basic Hollywood blockbuster film-making. Everything’s gotta tie together, that gun in Act One better shoot something in Act Three, an’ all that. The trend — and Jer lists several examples — is that the villain is inextricably tied to the hero’s origin. And, in a way, the Doom of the comics is tied to the heroes…specifically, to his old college roommate Reed Richards, who tried to warn him about his experiments, and, well, you get the picture. But that’s probably not dynamic enough for a Big Moving Talkie, so we get the Doom who’s caught in the same accident as the rest of the FF and thus also gets superpowers.

Now arguably, one could say that there’s no such connection between the film versions of Superman and Lex Luthor, or between Nolan’s version of Batman and the Joker. But even without an origin/plot connection, there’s a thematic connection: brain versus brawn, order versus chaos. I suppose Reed Vs. Doom could be “science for good vs. science for evil,” but that’s not quite as basic a thematic struggle on which to hang your superhero movie, I guess.

At any rate, we’re probably some ways away from the next attempt at the World’s Greatest Comics Magazine That Hasn’t Quite Managed A Great Movie Yet, but I hear tell the final battle in the new film actually approaches the FF we know. Maybe, on the very slim chance the planned sequel actually happens, we can get past this rough set-up and get down to the business of punching Galactus and tangling with the Impossible Man, as God, and Stan and Jack, intended.

• • •

In other news, someone asked Neil Gaiman on the Twitterers how many new issues he and Mark Buckingham were going to produce to wrap up his Miracleman story, and the answer was “about nine.” The reprints for the previously-issued Gaiman and Buckingham comics are about to start up, so we’re that much closer to seeing some decades-old plot threads finally getting resolved. Barring any more production errors, of course.

This is not a review of the new Fantastic Four movie.

filed under Categories movie reviews 6 Comments

[…but the SPOILER ALERT is in place in case you want to know NOTHING about the new film]

So one of the questions I heard a lot over the course of my Wednesday was “did you see the Deadpool trailer, and as I type this I still haven’t see the main trailer, which is one of those naughty “red band” trailers that doesn’t censor things like “fuck” or “shit” or other words I would never, ever use on my site. However, I did see the trailer-for-the-trailer which is a thing we do now I guess, and I suppose it was amusing enough. However, I’m one of those funnybook-readin’ guys that never really got into Deadpool. I mean, I get the character’s appeal, I’m glad people are really into him, and I really, really hope Marvel doesn’t burn people out on him anytime soon, like the last time Deadpool was prominent in the marketplace. Or maybe I’m thinking of the Punisher. Or Wolverine. Or Ghost Rider. Anyway, you get my point.

Oh, okay, after the end of that paragraph and the beginning of this one I went ahead and watched the full trailer, since I was going to have to copy the URL for the link above anyway. It’s…well, it’s a lot bloodier than I was expecting, and the CGI Deadpool mask actually worked okay (putting half-lie to the whole “don’t make my costume green or animated” gag, referencing Ryan Reynolds’s’ previous superhero role). I can see parents taking their kids to see this new Marvel superhero movie, expecting more of the usual formula, and getting blindsided by the usual formula plus sex and George Carlin’s Seven Words, and never going to a Marvel movie ever again. Or maybe this is just what the superhero movie marketplace needed, and Deadpool will be the greatest cinematic achievement in film history, crashing economies as every available dollar, euro and Geoffrey Buck gets sucked into box offices around the world. Or maybe nobody will see it all. I’m definitely putting my dime on one of those options, or somewhere between. That’s right, that’s my position and I’m sticking to it, and I don’t care who’s offended.

Speaking of Marvel movies nobody’s seeing, the latest in what apparently will be a long line of Fantastic Four reboots, stretching (heh) out into infinity is opening this week. Or has opened. Or will opened. Regardless, word on the ol’ Internet superhighway is that…well, it ain’t good. Which is a shame, because I noted on this site a while back that the trailer made it look less like a superhero movie and more like a high-end science fiction film, and that seemed like a good way to go. And despite reaction, I still kind of want to see it, maybe via Netflix someday rather than enduring a theater visit, if only to enjoy the cinematography and effects and to see maybe if Mr. Fantastic’s stretchy powers actually work onscreen this time.

What bothers me most is that Doctor Doom once again is given superpowers from the accident that transforms everybody, like in the FF films from a decade ago. I mean, yeah, I can see the filmmakers wanting to make sure Doom seems like he can stand on his own against the Fantastic Four by ramping up his special abilities, because as we know there’s no way an audience is going to accept just a more-or-less normal guy in a metal suit in a superhero film. But as I said on Twitter just the other day:


…and granted, Doom did steal the Surfer’s powers in Rise of the Silver Surfer, so that movie at least had that. But as I lamented last year:


It’s like they’re afraid to let Stan and Jack’s creation be Stan and Jack’s creation. Yes, some compromises and changes need to be made…it’s not the early 1960s anymore, and film ain’t comics, but surely there must be a way to capture the essence of the original stories while making them appeal to modern movie audiences. Or maybe there isn’t. Maybe there’s just a magic there that can never translate. Almost wish Marvel’s film studio could get the rights back to the FF, because they’ve had a stronger history getting these characters onscreen and making them appealing.

Also I’m annoyed because I want them to do enough FF movies in a row without rebooting so that maybe we can get an actual, real, live-action Galactus onscreen (and not that stupid smoke cloud from the FF Silver Surfer film). Ooh, and the Watcher, too, so long as I’m dreaming, and if they don’t make him look like the Queen of Hearts from that Tim Burton Alice film, what with that big ol’ noggin of his.

Let me leave you with some words to think about, from Twitter pal Steven:

But will either of these projects tell us which first issues will be hot hot HOT?

filed under Categories pal plugging, self-promotion 5 Comments

So a long time ago, Alan David Doane asked me to contribute a regular column to his website Comic Book Galaxy. That monthly column, Behind the Counter, ran for a little over a year and a half, until CBG underwent…a retooling? A brief hiatus? I don’t recall now, but it was fun to do and I’m glad Alan gave me the opportunity to do it.

Alan continued blogging at Trouble with Comics, which he just recently relaunched with a whole new slate of contributors, including yours truly (and a few others who are participating but didn’t get their bios in on time, you guys ‘n’ gals).

Now, I warned Alan that between my own site and that store of mine, I’m probably not left with a lot of time or material to contribute there. However, one of the regular features is a roundup of responses to a weekly question, which sounded like fun to me, so that’s where you’ll likely see my input on that site. This week’s question is “Which single creator most influenced your perception of the artform?” and while I’m sure you all think I’m gonna answer “Ernie Bushmiller” or “Frank Miller” or “Alan Mooremiller” or “Charles Miller Schulz,” I think my response may surprise you.

• • •

Speaking of this sort of thing, Tom Spurgeon just released the first bit of business from his Comics Report project, the monthly comics magazine you can support right here for a practically-free two bucks a month. It’s an interview with cartoonist Keiler Roberts, and this preview gives us a sneak peek at the layout and design of the magazine, which is very nicely done. The aforementioned Alan (David Doane, not Mooremiller) has a review of that very thing on the also aforementioned Trouble with Comics site.

Now it used to be, back in the olden days when I had this now nigh-mythical thing called “free time,” I would regularly scour the new comics ‘zines as they came in. Amazing Heroes, Comics Interview, Comics Journal, and so on…I would absorb these cover to cover, even reading the articles and interviews I wasn’t especially interested in. As these faded away, only to be supplanted by Wizard and Hero and other magazines that…were less to my taste, shall we say, I sort of fell out of the ‘zine reading thing, though I’d still pick up the occasional decades-old Comics Reader I was missing from my run, and maybe, like, one of Roy Thomas’s Two-Morrows mags if something caught my eye. And of course there were comics news sites on this Internet thing, and comics blogs, but feh, who wants to read a comics blog?

It looks as if Spurgeon’s The Comics Report may be a return to the more in-depth comics mag of yesteryear while maintaining the ease of online convenience we’re all accustomed to now. I can’t wait to see the final product. It’s only two bucks a month, like I said. That’s only half the cost of Age of Ultron Versus Marvel Zombies, and I’m sure The Comics Report will be at least twice as good.

Are you an Ant-Man or a Can’t-Man?

filed under Categories movie reviews 2 Comments

Just got in from seeing Ant-Man…it’s nearing midnight as I write this, so I’ll keep it short. Or small. Like an ant. An ant man.

Hold on, let me try that again.

Just saw Ant-Man, and it was a vast improvement over the last Marvel film inflicted on us, Avengers: Age of Disjointed Nonsense. While I wasn’t terribly eager for yet another superhero origin story, this one was unique (I believe) in that it gave us our first legacy superhero, more or less, in which an older hero passes down his name and powers and so forth to another. It was also a story which worked at a much smaller (har har, yes, I know) scale than recent Marvel movies, less bogged down by the shared universe, or at least incorporating it in a more natural, less in-your-face fashion. Having only one superhero guest-star during the course of the main story was something of a relief, though from the looks of things we’re going to get the exact opposite of that in this forthcoming Civil War movie.

Anyway, it was exciting and interesting, and, something the Marvel movies have been particularly good at, funny without undermining the characters. If anything the humor helps along that suspension of disbelief required to buy into all this craziness. That’s the kind of deep insight that keeps you two or three dozen people coming back to Progressive Ruin Dot Com.

The film also had one of the greatest, most fitting cameos of all time. No, not Stan the Man (yes, he’s there)…I’m talking about this fella. And I gotta give them credit for actually working the phrase “tales to astonish” — the name of the comic Ant-Man first appeared in — into the dialogue.

So, Ant-Man: surprisingly good. I’d recommend you go see it, because I’m sure you totally haven’t by now.

That’s it, I’m off to bed. Pleas-ANT dreams!

(sigh)

Didn’t even care enough to capitalize the name.

filed under Categories publishing 5 Comments

So the other day I bought a handful of comics (from someone surprised I wanted these over the ubiquitous Web of Spider-Man issues also in his possession) that included these two mini-series: Disney’s Pocahontas:

…and Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame:


These two minis are reprints of the one-shot adaptations also released in the mid-1990s. The Overstreet guide lists the one-shots, but not these minis, as far as I can tell. I had actually started typing a long-ish paragraph speculating as to the origins of these minis, but the process of doing so awakened some ancient memories in this cobwebbed brain of mine. A little Googling confirmed those dusty recollections, that these two-issue minis were sold in two-packs in toy stores and such, as shown in this image “borrowed” from this eBay auction:


Why the one-shots were split into two comics for sale this way? I’m assuming so that the customer feels like s/he’s getting more bang for that two or two-and-a-half bucks, over paying the same amount for just one single comic that’s basically the same thing.

It does solve the mystery of why no cover prices are present, though the indicias in the comics do have suggested retail prices.

Mostly the reason I wanted to present these here are the Comics Code Authority stamps on the covers. Pocahontas has the traditional stamp we all know and love:

…but apparently when they were slapping together the Hunchback covers someone misplaced the photostats (or whatever) and someone was all like “c’mon, nobody cares, just type it in there” –


…and there you go. Not quite “Cosmic Code Authority” level, but an interesting variation on that familiar cover element nonetheless.