Mikester

Hey, remember when I used to “watermark” pics on my site! That was a smart use of my time!

filed under Categories buttons 9 Comments

I’m not reading Infinity, but hell yes I’m down for some Infinity buttons:


Look for ’em at your shop today, but good luck finding that rare Black Bolt “chase” button.

Of course, none of these are a patch on my other Thanos button:


OH YEAH.

On a related note, I would totally read an ongoing Jim Starlin Presents comic where he just does whatever with any characters he can get his hands on. (We almost had that in his last ‘Breed series.) …Like, Dreadstar, Warlock, the Weird and Captain Marvel teaming up to fight the evil Mongul/Thanos/Lord High Papal triumvirate of terror. I would buy that comic like my life depended on it.

I’m trying not to be too angry about this.

filed under Categories dc comics, retailing 8 Comments

So due to DC’s recent announcement that they’re allocating the 3D Villains Month covers, my position on my orders for the books has gone from “I’ve ordered way too many, I’m probably going to take a bath on some of these” to “oh Lordy I’ve ordered not nearly enough.” As I write this (late Sunday evening) the page on the distributor website that will tell me the exact numbers I’m being allocated only results in an error page, so I have no idea how badly my orders are being curtailed. DC is offering 2D versions of the books to make up any shortfall, but the primary selling point on these were the 3D covers, so I suspect the 2D covers will be the disappointing consolation prize.

Since the allocation has been widely publicized, I may have to go the “one per customer” route on many of the books to avoid rampant hording and speculation from those folks who only show up at the store when the faint whiff of a buck to be made wafts gently through the breeze. We’ll see what happens, but let me tell you, it’s a lot of fun to agonize over orders, finally get some numbers down that you can live with, and then have to address the same problem all over again just a few weeks later. Ah, well…I figured there likely wouldn’t be any reorders to be had, but I had hoped at least our full initial orders would ship.

And in conclusion: I’d better get my 3D Swamp Thing covers.

…Anyway, I apologize for the shortness of this post. I try to have longer posts for Mondays, but I’m actually frustrated enough with this situation that I really don’t want to think about comics right now, beyond getting this hoohar straightened out about as much as I can manage. Not knowing how my orders are being cut is probably the worst part at the moment. I’ll let you know how things work out.

Frankly, this book has a lot of problems with hyphens.

filed under Categories advertising, hulk 9 Comments

So I purchased a comic collection Thursday afternoon, and among the assorted Iron Man issues and a reader copy of Sub-Mariner #1 (1968) and some British edition Freak Brothers comics and the one issue of Secret Defenders that still sells, I found a handful of copies of this:


…the 1983 Spider-Man Fire-Star and Iceman insert for the Dallas Times Herald newspaper, tying into the Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends animated series. Note that Firestar gets an extraneous hyphen, which also runs through the interior pages. I was kind of hoping we’d get “Ice-Man” inside the book, too, but no such luck.

Anyway, the story involves our heroes going to see The Nutcracker ballet, but not until after answering nature’s call:


…but ending up in a fight against the surely-must-have-turned-up-in-a-Bendis-issue-of-Avengers villain Daddy Longlegs:


…whose motivation is summed up thusly:


And frankly, that’s a motivation I can understand, more so than the usual reasons of “I want to blow up the Earth/take over the universe/get revenge on the Kryptonian for making me lose my hair.”

The latter portion of the comic involves our super-pals sitting in the audience and actually watching the performance of The Nutcracker, the story of which is retold in the comic. Please enjoy this horrifying version of the Rat King:


…who surely must also have made a cameo appearance in one of the Bendis Avengers comics.

Since this publication was one of interest to a particular locality, there are ads for area businesses throughout the book, generally featuring Marvel characters in varying levels of association. Apparently there’s something to do with “swinging” in this ad:


…which you’ll note neglects the necessary hyphen in Spider-Man.

This ad, placed on the page right next to the previous ad, remembers the space for the hyphen, but not the hyphen itself:


And here’s Spider-Man again, still missing that hyphen, this time shilling for fine RCA television products:


Surely the unnecessary hyphens in each occurrence of “Fire-Star” used up the hyphen quota for this comic, resulting in Spidey’s rampant hyphen shortages. Ah, if only the people placing these ads had access to the decades-later wisdom of Metrokitty.

Now, the Hulk isn’t in the story, though I would have paid one American dollar to have him dressed as one of the toy soldiers in the retelling of the ballet, but he does show up in a couple of ads. For example, this ad, where Hulk’s just kinda hanging out there around those boots for some reason:


Man, Hulk doesn’t even wear boots. What’s going on here.

And please enjoy the subtle menace of this image, attached to a restaurant ad ballyhooing Santa’s appearance there:


No, not Hulk-Santa, the attached ad just says “Santa Claus.” I wonder how many kids interpreted it to mean that Hulk would be there, dressed as Santa? “HULK NOT CARE IF YOU RICH OR POOR / HULK SMASH YOU JUST THE SAME”

…Christmas jokes in August. You’re welcome.

EDIT: For more information about Daddy Longlegs, I refer you to pal Andrew.
 
 

images from Spider-Man Fire-Star and Iceman (1983) by Jim Salicrup, Jim Mooney and John Tartaglione

Gone zooin’.

filed under Categories low content mode, superman 6 Comments


Hopefully I will be at the Los Angeles Zoo today, taking pictures of buff-cheeked gibbons and pointing imprudently at the mighty mandrill. In the meantime, all of you behave yourselves and also try not to think about why, why Superman would keep these innocent creatures in such inappropriately tiny cages.

UPDATE: Alas, the trip is postponed. The mandrills are safe…for now.

 
 

image from DC Special Series #26 (Summer 1981) by Roy Thomas, Ross Andru and Romeo Tanghal

“Aieee! My head!”

filed under Categories doog boog

So a while back I contributed to Steve Lafler’s Kickstarter for Doggie Style: The Complete Dog Boy, a collection of, as you might have already guessed, Lafler’s Dog Boy comics. The original Cathead Comics series, the Fantagraphics series, his first appearance in Guts #3, even the later appearances in Buzzard, the whole shebang. Now, I already have most of this stuff, aside from the Guts and that Fantagraphics #9, but I had a hard time resisting the temptation of having it all under one cover, with an original sketch inside to boot, as one of the Kickstarter incentives.

Anyway, just yesterday, my hardcover copy of Doggie Style arrived in the mail:


…and right on the first page, the very first thing I saw when I cracked open the cover, is this full-page original drawing of ol’ Doog Boog lookin’ right at me:


It’s a goodly-sized volume at over 11 inches tall and about an inch thick. Covers are reproduced (in black and white), and the actual reproduction of the artwork is nice and clean. And, of course, the comics themselves are hilarious, and I look forward to reading them yet again in this handsome tome.

As I understand it, this book will be eventually distributed through some of the normal funnybook channels, but I am very happy to have had the chance to put my mitts on this thing as soon as it was available.

Here is Mr. Lafler’s official site, and here is the site for co2 Comics, the publisher of the book (and you can also find free online Dog Boy comics there as well).

Actually this should be “Last Week’s Comics,” but I’m not making up a new site category for that.

filed under Categories this week's comics 3 Comments


So this is yet another one of those crossover event series where I’m only getting the chapters that happen to appear in comics I’m already reading (in this case, Justice League Dark) and missing the chapters that are in comics I don’t read (the other two Justice League series). I even took home part one, in Justice League #22, but still it sits there, unread. But I’ve been down this road before, and we’ve all read enough comics to put the pieces together, and I’m not going into this completely blind since I’ve read that Pandora #1 which leads into this whole hoohar. Excuse me, Trinity of Sin: Pandora, which is the official title, I guess, though I’m just racking it under Pandora on the shelf, though I suppose if I rack it along the title now suddenly known as Trinity of Sin: Phantom Stranger and put ’em both in the Ts, perhaps that’ll goose sales on the both of them, even though they’re selling just fine as is so who am I to upset this delicate funnybook balance and now to end this sentence before I use the word “though” again.

Anyway, I liked seeing the JL:D cast interact with the other, more traditional superheroes, which was fun, and there was a lot of shouting and running about regarding Superman being under the thrall of some bad guy or ‘nother and I’ll just assume everything’s going to work out in the end in one of those other Justice League titles I’m not reading. Also, as one might expect, JL:D sales, usually only about 1/2 to 1/3 of its JL brethren, sold just about equal numbers to his city cousins, so hey, sometimes crossovers work, gang. Not sure how long it’ll work in this case, but I’ll find out when I see my sales on a non-crossover issue of the series.


Speaking of crossovers, Constantine and Captain Shazam or whatever his name is now wander out of the pages of the previous comic and into issue #5 of John’s own series, and like I said on the Twitter last week:


This seems to have been the issue where folks still holding out hope this series would be more Hellblazer-ish than not have decided that it’s not what they wanted, given the couple of pull-list drops I’ve experienced. I thought the particular sequence in this issue I won’t spoil here was kind of amazingly crazy and enjoyed the heck out of it, though I suppose I can understand why someone might be put off a bit. Plus, it’s hard to read that sequence and not think of this, the link to which you probably shouldn’t even mouse over if you don’t want to be spoiled.

I do enjoy this direction, both in Constantine and in the new Swamp Thing series, in which they give weird and horrific interpretations of DC’s traditional characters. It’s a bit of nostalgia, I suppose, for the early days of seeing the Justice League in Saga of the Swamp Thing and thinking “whoa, what the heck” while immediately plowing through the pages. I may be all old and jaded and stuff now, but sometimes a little youthful exuberance slips through the cracks.


Another one of those cases where I know what numbers Rocketeer usually sells for us, what numbers The Spirit used to sell for us, and then getting sales on the crossover that exceed both numbers combined. Ah, well, What Can You Do? Reminds me of the story that the comic crossing over Cerebus with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles received orders well in excess of their usual monthly printruns combined. (Should also note the same thing happened to me on that Army of Darkness/Hack Slash crossover that also came out last Wednesday.) People (Or At Least Retailers Doing The Ordering) Like Their Unlikely Intercompany Crossovers, is the lesson learned here.

It helps that Rocketeer/Spirit: Pulp Friction is a good, fun comic. Alas, Paul Smith has left the book after drawing the first issue, but Loston Wallace takes over with #2, though his work looks like it’ll fit right in.


That this series reprinting the original 1940s/1950s Popeye comic books made it this far frankly surprises the heck out of me. (The companion series by Roger Langridge is apparently over and done with, which I didn’t realize…I just figured it was late or on a planned hiatus or what-have-you, but nope, it’s gone, which is a real shame.) I don’t know if Classic Popeye, featuring work by Popeye strip artist Bud Sagendorf, will be around to reprint all, what, 70, 80, whatever, of the original comics, but I certainly will appreciate whatever we can get. And, at the very least, I hope they get at least to 1962 so I can have a print copy of this cover.

Progressive Ruin presents…the End of Civilization.

filed under Categories End of Civilization 12 Comments

The big news from the San Diego Comic Con was, of course, that it looks like I’ll be doing these Ends of Civilization for quite a while yet, judging by some of the stuff that was announced, so you’re not rid of me anytime soon! But enough about the far future…let us wallow in products due out in the more immediate future, and you can follow along in your August 2013 edition of Diamond Previews, which you surely have at your side right at this very moment!

p. 87-9 – Justice League #24, Justice League of America #8, Justice League Dark #24:



The Justice Leagues fight the menace of television static! “Green Lantern! Quickly, move the antenna just a little to the left,” Batman commands!

p. 93 – Superman/Wonder Woman #1:

Batman/Superman

Superman/Wonder Woman

Batman/Wonder Woman

Superman/Batwing

Green Lantern/Wonder Woman

Green Lantern/Another Lantern, Maybe A Blue One, Sure, Why Not

Bruce and Clark and Diana and Lois

Superman/Other Hero To Be Announced, Basically Just DC Comics Presents, You Remember That Series, It Was Pretty Awesome

Wonder Woman/Wonder Girl/Wonder Tot

Batman Vs. Batman, starring Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep

Die Fledermaus/The Caped Wonder

Robot Superman/Alien Batman/Other Dimensional Wonder Woman/Plain Ol’ Aquaman

Catwoman/Jimmy Olsen

Itty/Ace the Bat-Hound

Batgirl/Nightwing/Would Probably Sell A Billion Copies

Superman, Just by Himself, Moping Around The Fortress of Solitude and Sighing

p. 115 – Green Lantern #24:


BEGINNING THIS ISSUE: the Green Lantern Corps versus classic punk band the Angry Samoans!

p. 142 – The Sandman: Overture #1:


I guess I’m okay with this New 52 Sandman series, but I think Sandman/Wonder Woman and Sandman Unchained and Sandman and the Outlaws and having him join Justice League Dark is really just pushing it.

p. 154 – Batman Black & White Earth 2 Batman Statue:


“And our drummer Batman exclusively uses only Waynetech Drums! Remember, Waynetech Drums, for the best in combining satisfying rock and roll sound with costumed vigilantism!”

p. 156 – DC Comics Super Heroes Batman Bust:


You’re going to do a Dancing Batman statue and it’s not the Batusi? C’mon, I thought y’all got those rights cleared up.

p. 245 – H.P. Mine Craft T-Shirt:


Quite frankly, the creatures in Minecraft are terrifying enough, they don’t need to be all Lovecrafted up. Though I won’t lie…I’d play a Lovecraft-themed Minecraft game. DAMMIT, MASHING-UP-OF-TWO-THINGS SHIRTS, YOU FINALLY GOT ME

p. 257 – Archie #649:


Ah, the Harry Potter parody issue! There’s the Archie I know, tackling the fads that everyone’s pretty much done with!

p. 258 – World of Archie Double Digest #33:


Now, this cover promises a story about Archie growing an amazing fro, so that better be what I see inside.

p. 315 – The Big Bang Theory “Bazinga!” Toaster:


So a show that made fun of Sheldon owning a Battlestar Galactica Cylon toaster has their own toaster that burns designs into bread. Where the equal time rule for novelty toasters? Where the screen time for the Watchmen Rorschach toaster? WHERE INDEED

p. 380 – Doctor Who The Vault – Treasures from the First 50 Years HC:


The companion volume to Complaints from the First 50 Years, compiling the best of fan mail from folks griping that they don’t like this new Patrick Troughton guy and the like. The last couple of chapters just tell you to go to Twitter and Tumblr.

p. 420 – Batman Major Cuff Knit Cap:


There are other caps like this on the page, like Punisher and Darth Vader, with a second pair of eyes on the cuff, which really begs the question why they didn’t do one of these for Bi-Beast.

p. 430 – Battlestar Galactica Retro Tin-Tote Figure Gift Set:


Kinda looks like Boxey hollowed out his robotic Daggit so he could wear the skin himself:


And it’s kind of hard to see the detail on this figure:


…so here’s a better look:

p. 440 – Dexter 3-3/4 Inch Action Figure with Tin Tote:


“Um, so, what are you doing there with your action figures, Little Billy?”

“Oh, Dexter finally caught up to Cobra Commander, and he’s going to finally pay for his crimes!”

“Okaaaay…say, could you maybe take it easy on using so much plastic wrap? That stuff isn’t free.”

“I’ll give it back as soon as I’m done with Punisher and Wolverine, Dad.”

p. 443 – Prometheus Series 3 Action Figure:

“Each figure stands over 8″ tall and features over 20 points of articulation and countless plot weaknesses and outright plot holes!”

…That quote may be slightly edited.

p. 491 – Superman with Cape Pilsner Glass:


“Man, there’s a tiny Superman sitting on the bar in front of me. Whoa.”

“Okay, I’m cutting you off…HOLY CRAP THERE IS A TINY SUPERMAN, EVERYONE GET OUT, RUN, RUN FOR YOUR LIVES”

Thank you for for enjoying my one-act play The Adventures of the Really Drunk Guy and the Easily-Panicked Bartender Who Has Relatively Poor Eyesight!

p. 496 – Kick Ass Coffee Mugs:


I first talked about these about three years ago, and solicitation specifically notes that it’s a resolicitation from 2010. Between that first listing and this one, we’ve lost a few mugs along the way (and gained a Hit-Girl, I think).

I have no joke here. It seems the mugs have come out, just from a quick Googling, just not through Diamond. Maybe we can look forward to a reresolicit around the time of Kick-Ass 3: The Movie.

p. 497 – Sons of Anarchy Men of Mayhem Can Cooler:


Please tell me there’s a scene in the show with one of those tough guys gingerly tucking their beer can into one of these foam covers. “WHAT?” the character shouts defensively at the others snickering at him. “IT KEEPS MY BEER COOL!”

p. 499 – The Walking Dead “If Daryl Dies We Riot” Bracelet:


I think what I like most about this bracelet is how it can apply to so many situations, both everyday and special events. “Do you take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife?” “If Daryl dies, we riot.” / “Mom, what’s for dinner?” “If Daryl dies, we riot.” / “Sapstein, do you have your budget report ready for us?” “If Daryl dies, we riot.”

p. 506 – The Hobbit An Unexpected Journey Yahtzee Collector’s Edition:


I was thinking “what’s less likely a Hobbit tie-in than Hobbit Yahtzee…oh, how ’bout Hobbit Backgammon, ha ha, there’s no way they can do do a Hobbit-themed backgammon game” and then I Googled and I guess I’m the asshole.

p. 514 – Mystery Science Theater 3000 The Movie:


I was hoping the Mystery Science Theater guys would get around to making fun of this Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie movie! This will be hilarious!

Marvel Previews p. 31 – Cataclysm #0.1:


I’m suddenly nostalgic for the good ol’ days of “television static” solicitation images.