Mikester

Sez you.

filed under Categories letters of comment, swamp thing 7 Comments

From the letters column in Challengers of the Unknown #86 (April-May 1978):


The editorial reply:


Well, I don’t know about you, but I’d totally be in favor of an “Adventures of Alec Holland” series. In fact, in a way it looks like we might be getting a little bit of that in next week’s final issue of that one series I don’t want to spoil by mentioning that Swamp Thing may or may not have made an appearance in the previous issue.

We’ve had the occasional Alec Holland adventure in the various Swamp Thing titles, usually when he reverts (or imagines he reverts) to human form, like in the last issue of his original series and the couple of Challengers of the Unknown issues which followed up on those plot threads.

And then there was this, Alec Holland’s one and (I think) only appearance in the DC Animated Universe comics, from Batman Adventures Vol. 2 #16 by Ty Templeton, Rick Burchett and Terry Beatty:


Alas, at no time was there an animated universe Swamp Thing to go with our animated universe Alec Holland, aside from some sneaky cameos in the Justice League cartoons.

As an aside…there sure were a lot of typos in that Challengers letters column. In the scans you can see “there” used in place of “their,” and “permanently” spelled “perminately.” Not shown: “November” spelled “Nobember.” By the way, I was going back through some of my older posts as I was writing this and quickly spotted several typos of my own, so I’m not taking the high road, here.

And if I may quibble a bit with the original letter writer’s point…Holland didn’t spend “his whole life looking like that.” Even in real world time, as opposed to however much time allegedly passed in the comics, Holland had only been Swamp Thing for about six years at that point. So let’s not exaggerate, Guy Who Wrote in to Challengers of the Unknown 30-Plus Years Ago!

The Joker was so excited, he slipped while putting on his lipstick.

filed under Categories swamp thing 10 Comments

DC Comics Presents #50 (October 1982) had a two-page pin-up by Alex Saviuk and Frank Giacoia featuring all of Superman’s guest-stars thus far in the series’ run, and shown here is a detail from that image with Swamp Thing and some of his super-pals:


Speaking of Swamp Thing and his super-pals, one of my readers directed me to this bit of business over at the DC Comics site presenting a Certain Mr. Swamp Creature of Some Renown popping up on the cover of a Certain Year-Long Superhero Event Maxi-Series of Some Notoriety.

We could use shredded copies of Deathmate for wedding confetti.

filed under Categories employee aaron, free comic book day 7 Comments

So I’m pretty sure we’ve got the majority of the Free Comic Book Day comics in our hands by now…huge stacks of boxes awaiting my sorting into age-appropriate bags (explanation here) once I have some free time the shop.

…

Sorry, had to pause for a moment while I laughed. And then cried. A lot.

Anyway, I think all we’re waiting for now is the Darkness freebie and some of those Green Lantern Heroclix I was poking fun at a while back. Hopefully they’ll pop up on the invoice for next week’s shipment, and not on the invoice for the shipment the week after Free Comic Book Day.

For those of you who don’t know, Free Comic Book Day is the first Saturday in May, which, by the way, also happens to be the day Employee Aaron marries his lovely significant-other Kempo, despite my efforts and substantial bribes to get Aaron to change the date. And since neither he nor Kempo want to move the ceremony to the shop, I’m going to have to leave the store for a while to attend the wedding.

Not sure of how I’m going to have this worked out, exactly, but the wedding is relatively close to the store and I should only be away for a couple of hours. During that time I will be calling upon the talents of pal Andres to be Substitute Mike and handle the comic-related inquiries and requests in my absence, so that the other employees at the shop who are more familiar with the games end of the business will have at least one comics expert on hand to keep things running smoothly. (Well, Ralph should be around, too, hopefully.)

Regardless, this will the first Free Comic Book Day where I won’t be in attendance the whole time, and thus I expect to find only a smoking crater in the ground where the store used to be upon my return from the wedding.

As for the comics themselves…I may do a little more comprehensive overview of this year’s FCBD offerings a little closer to the actual day, but so far I think my favorite book is Fantagraphic’s Mickey Mouse by Floyd Gottfredson. Yes, a collection of comic strips from 1935 is my top pick for this year. Go figure.

• • •

I would like to note the very sad and untimely passing of actress Elisabeth Sladen, who was best known as the loyal companion Sarah Jane Smith from Doctor Who. Her performance of the character spanned decades and Doctors, originally appearing with the 3rd and 4th Doctors in the 1970s, and returning for the 21st century revival of the series. Eventually Sladen and her character spun off into The Sarah Jane Adventures, a popular adventure show aimed at younger viewers.

She was a woman in her 60s starring in her own sci-fi action-adventure show, and that’s pretty awesome.

So long, Elisabeth.

Surely there is a need for a Wikipedia article on “Characters That Have Not Yet Been to The Fortress of Solitude.”

filed under Categories letters of comment, sir-links-a-lot 8 Comments

It always amused me that, in the old Answer Man columns Bob Rozakis used to do in DC Comics a decade or three back, there would be a non-stop parade of folks asking what their comics were worth, and it seemed like most of the time they were worth about thirty cents to a buck:


Of course, this was a while back, before the comics the readers were most likely to have were given labels like “Bronze Age” and “Copper Age” and priced upward accordingly. But enough questions like this appeared to be submitted that, if memory serves, a separate column was created just to handle the pricing inquiries. I think maybe I once saw a reader ask about a comic that turned about to be, like, five bucks or something.

I like the matter-of-factness response to this next question:


And I like the very specific nature of this next inquiry:


In the, oh, 30+ years since this was asked, has Black Lightning made it to the Fortress? I haven’t the foggiest.

I’m also picturing that this was just one of a series of questions the reader sent in. “Has Firestorm been to the Fortress?” “No.” “How about Animal Man?” “Um, not yet.” “Metamorpho?” “Not sure, really.” “Okay, has Johnny Thunder?” “Oh, from the Justice Society? Lemme check….” “No, I mean Johnny Thunder, the cowboy hero.” “…Don’t you have anyone else you can bother?”

• • •

In other news:

Here is a thing I didn’t know existed until a few days ago.

filed under Categories bouncing boy 7 Comments

BOUNCING BOY HEROCLIX FIGURINE:


Gaze into Bouncing Boy’s unforgiving glare:


I don’t play the Heroclix game, but I have a little shelf filled with a selection of figurines from the game I like. Swamp Thing and Man-Thing, of course, and Howard the Duck, and Lockjaw…haven’t got my hands on Devil Dinosaur yet, but it’s just a matter of time.

I’m not sure if I like the Bouncing Boy figurine enough to add my personal Heroclix display, but…man, that’s just a bit weird-looking. Though on this page you’ll see someone has repainted his Bouncing Boy figure to look like Fat Albert, and I don’t even know what to say to that.

For more on Bouncing Boy, please refer to my tribute to his moustache, and to this remarkably appalling question I had about his powers.

Seriously, that’s a whole lot of Pac-Man.

filed under Categories self-promotion, sir-links-a-lot 3 Comments

  • BLOG FROM ANOTHER UNIVERSE: #1 – Mark Millar’s Invisibles; #2 – Rob Liefeld’s Big Numbers; #3 – Jack Kirby’s Fantastic Four #5000.

  • That little stuffed bull, Bully, who is stuffed, little, and apparently also a bull, puts his horns to Charlton Comics’ pin-up-book-disguised-as-a-narrative Partridge Family series.

    I could have sworn I’ve discussed the Partridge Family on this site before, but I think I may be confusing discussing the book in shop with writing about it on the site, which is become more and more of a problem the longer I do this internet thingie here. Anyway…well, you should go read Bully’s post first before you read my little bit of business. Go on.

    …

    Okay, my specific example of what I remember from the Partridge Family comic totally backs up what Bully was saying…there was a three page story that was laid out like this: page one, with story title something like “Lost at Sea,” and a full page drawing of David Cassidy saying “Boy, that was some adventure I just had, when I was lost at sea!” Page two, an actual attempt of a narrative, with four or six panels showing a boat being tossed about in a storm, along with some narration from David about what a terrible storm it was. Page three, another full page drawing of David, saying something similar to “I sure am glad I was rescued from being lost at sea!” THE END.

  • So Anna has unleashed an Amethyst Tumblr, which serves as a nice reminder that this was a solid fantasy comic that deserves more attention than it gets. Though, as Anna mentions, the character is returning in the one Flashpoint event tie-in comic I plan on reading, Secret Seven. (I was planning on skipping Flashpoint altogether, but, you know, George Perez art. We all have our weaknesses.)

  • Suddenly…TOPLESS JACK KIRBY.

  • Sometimes I forget there was a Pac-Man cartoon. Or I wish I could forget, more accurately.

    By the way, if you’re a Pac-Man fan, I’m about to ruin your whole day.

  • Oh, hey, Life Magazine did a thing on our book Write More Good.

    Life. Oh my goodness.

“THE ACTION NEVER ENDS”

filed under Categories retailing 9 Comments

So we had a fella donate some boxes of comics to the shop the other day, because if it’s one thing we need, it’s more comics. Mostly it was ’80s superhero and girly comics, but there were some trading cards (in case you were wondering where that Jimmy Olsen card came from yesterday), and a handful of Marvel-produced retail bags, like this one from 1989:


I know Punisher was one of Marvel’s most popular characters at the time, but it’s still kind of weird seeing him there on the front of the bag instead of, say, Wolverine. Or Deadpool, if it were like a year ago.

And there he is again on the back of the bag:


Sorry, whoever it was who wrote the blurbs on the bag, I can say from experience that, no, people who liked the Punisher and Ghost Rider did not also like Destroyer, or, at the very least, didn’t buy it. Maybe they would have liked it if they’d bothered to look at it. Which they didn’t. …Would anyone out there like to buy some Destroyer magazines? How ’bout a dozen or so? Of each issue?

Actually, I did sell a run of those mags to a customer over the last weekend. That works about to, oh, about one set a decade. So if you want any for yourself, you better move fast!