Mikester

“Come back, little man! Krogg kill you!”

filed under Categories sir-links-a-lot, superman 10 Comments

So I was given this 1978 Superman puzzle the other day:


This “Superman O-So-Long 3 Foot Jigsaw Puzzle” features a portion of a story by Gerry Conway, Curt Swan and Jack Abel that was originally presented in Superman Family #187 (Jan/Feb 1978). I didn’t have access to this particular issue, either at the shop or in the Vast Mikester Comic Archives, but I did have part one of the story in #186, which featured the Earth-2 Superman. That it seemed to be the Earth-2 version featured in the puzzle surprised me just a little, although, aside from the altered “S” shield you can see in the excerpt below, there are no parallel-Earth shenanigans readily evident:


…And as it turns out, it wasn’t strictly speaking the Earth-2 Superman as such. According to this brief synopsis, this Krogg dude is too much for any one Superman to handle, so using a “transmatter machine” the two Supermen are merged into one “Super-Superman.” At which point, Super-Superman straight-up kills Krogg and calls it a day. Basically, Super-Superman notices some kind of energy build-up in Krogg, and helps it along by adding to the energy with his heat vision, until, well, you saw what happened up there.

Anyway, my only real exposure to this story is via this hip new jigsaw puzzle format in which all the kids are reading their comics nowadays, so I don’t know if there’s a reference to Krogg being some kind of “artificial lifeform” or “android” or something in the full version. Otherwise…yeah, Superman’s plan was to raise Krogg’s critical mass until he went kablooie. No indication he was about to kablooie on his own, like “hmmm, he’s about to explode, so my heat vision will speed the process!” It’s totally “hey, he’s got too much energy inside him, I’ll just add to it ’til he pops!” …Maybe they changed it for the puzzle, but reading that synopsis, it doesn’t seem like it.

I wonder if there’s a database somewhere of all the times Superman just kills people. That seems like something appropriately obsessive for a comics fan to do.

…Why are you all looking at me?

• • •

In other news:

  • Thanks for your responses to my Comics Code Authority post from the other day…they’ve made for some interesting reading. I don’t know that I have any kind of follow-up or meta-analysis or anything, but I liked hearing from you folks anyway. By the way, check out this article, which claims the CCA has essentially been out of business for a while now.

  • Swamp Thing and Man-Thing: best pals! (Thanks to Reader Rob for the link!)

  • Calling the New Guardians “Nobody’s Favorites” would seem almost redundant…but I kind of have a soft spot for them anyway. I have a fondness for Englehart’s ’80s DC work, including Green Lantern, Millennium and, yes, New Guardians. So damned silly and earnest, but still evoke that nostalgic twinge.

I have a question about the Comics Code.

filed under Categories comics code, retailing 27 Comments

Not to kick a code when it’s down, but just out of curiosity…has anyone reading this experienced any kind of real-world impact of the Comics Code Authority? I don’t mean the behind the scenes stuff, where maybe the publisher altered some art at the CCA’s request, or they objected to some content and the publisher just put out the book anyway, sans approval stamp. I’m sure that happened all the time.

What I’m talking about is people running shops or newsstands who explicitly said that they would not carry comics without the Comics Code stamp on the front cover. Or parents who specifically looked for the stamp on the cover before allowing their children to read it. That sort of thing.

As I can recall, I’ve only run into it once in my century or two of comics retail, where a parent told her child to just look at the comics with the stamp on the front. However, I don’t think that counts, since I’m pretty sure we told her about the CCA stamp. She was getting pretty antsy about her kid’s interest in funnybooks and we reassured her that so long as the code was on the front cover, there probably wasn’t anything objectionable inside…so relax and enjoy!

Anyway, if any of you folks have any stories like that, I’d be interested, particularly if it’s from the last, oh, decade or so. But if some of you out there have…experienced more of life, and have got any tales of CCA woe from the ’50s or ’60s, I’d be curious about that, too. Please drop ’em in the comments if you’ve got ’em. It doesn’t even have to be anything drawn out and complicated…even if it’s just “my mom wouldn’t let me read non-code books,” that would be fine. I’m just kind of curious what sort of actual impact the CCA had in the marketplace, especially in recent years.

In the meantime, let’s congratulate DC and Archie on finally reclaiming that extra square quarter-inch of cover space!

In fact, Marvel probably can stop doing Wolverine comics now.

filed under Categories sir-links-a-lot 1 Comment

Celebrate Christmas in January with Superman taking off his pants!

filed under Categories advertising, superman 7 Comments


…Or maybe he’s putting them on. But it’s still kinda weird.



What th — !? “MAGIC?” Superman’s one weakness that isn’t kryptonite?
What kind of nefarious scheme is this?



Unrealistic expectations ahoy!



The company that made the scuba gear also made a set of Superman horseshoes. I looked it up, since this pic seemed like a case of “one of these things is not like the other” — unless they’re underwater horseshoes.



Click the above pic for the full enchilada. And if you’re wondering about the Super-Suits, I already addressed them a few years back.

ad from 1955 DC Comics

Okay, I’ll stop talking about Zero Hour after this.

filed under Categories retailing, this week's comics 2 Comments

Well, without overly belaboring the topic again, thanks to you folks for responding to my query yesterday about Zero Hour sales. I’m going with It’s Just One of Those Things in regards to why it’s experiencing a sales bump at our shop, a possible combination of my throwing it on the featured book rack, and the Dan Jurgens/possible implications for future events factor. As pal Andres noted, just by my putting the trade on display I obviously contributed to its increased sales, but that alone wouldn’t explain the sudden demand for the actual back issues, except for, as mentioned, possible ties to current DC shenanigans.

In response to commenter Joe, who suggests I put other books on the Featured Graphic Novels shelf and see what happens…that’s pretty much what we do. Right now, we’re using that space for the Walking Dead hardcovers (which have slowed down in sales since Christmas, but still move occasionally), Chew (one of the current Hot Things), Ex Machina (which had bit of a sales spurt up until we put it on the Featured Shelf rack, go figure), and Zero Hour, plus what new books get released each week. Joe suggested that I throw Dark Knight Strikes Again up there, but frankly, that and its predecessor, Dark Knight Returns, already sell pretty regularly from the Batman shelf as it is. Anyway, it’s not working with Ex Machina, as noted, but maybe I’ll try another DC “event” book and see what happens. (Shame Final Night seems to be out of print.)

Commenter Nimbus wonders if maybe, given the involvement of Green Lantern and Parallax in the Zero Hour storyline, that maybe interest in the forthcoming Green Lantern film might have had something to do with it. I actually haven’t seen a GL movie sales bump just yet, aside from some very infrequent requests for “early Green Lantern stories” (which the Green Lantern Chronicles and Showcase Presents Green Lantern books satisfy quite nicely). The GL franchise comics are still selling quite well, having dipped only very slightly since the height of the Blackest Night hoohar, but if there is usual pre-movie release uptick in interest from the general public, they probably couldn’t have picked a worse time to sample a GL comic, what with all the event tie-ins and multitudes of characters who aren’t Hal Jordan and the Red Lanterns vomiting blood or whatever it is they’re doing. But hopefully any of these theoretical new customers will go for the paperback collections, where the worst that’ll happen is that I’ll have to explain/apologize for the whole calling-his-sidekick-“Pieface” thing.

Did I say “without overly belaboring the topic” at the beginning of this? Why, yes, I suppose I did. Um…sorry about that.

Let’s see, what else is going on…ah, I know: folks seem generally pleased that most of DC’s comics have dipped to $2.99 across the board. Too early to tell yet if this is going to have any kind of significant increase in sales…mostly it seems that people who were already buying the $3.99 series are glad to be only paying $2.99 for them now. Haven’t heard any complaints or even many comments about the story page count dipping down to 20, but most of the DCs I’ve read in the last couple of weeks have been pretty heavy on plot and dialogue and the two extra pages weren’t missed. Of course, that may simply be the result of 22-page scripts being squeezed into 20 pages (which I’ve heard at least one comic writer confirm was the case with his script), but we’ll see what happens once we’re sure everyone’s writing for 20 pages. So long as we’re not getting half of those pages as splashes, everything should be fine.

Speaking of new comics, here’s some stuff coming out this week:

  • Smurfs Vol. 4: Smurfette – I sincerely hope that, when the movie comes out and crashes in the box office, that it doesn’t kill this reprint program. The Smurfs comics are fantastic.

  • Wolverine & Jubilee #1 – Wolverine should just regularly team up with teenage girl superheroes who then become ninjas over the course of the story.

  • Steampunk Palin – well, that’s certainly some timing.

  • Hellblazer #275 – two things come to mind about this comic. One…good gravy, I’ve been buying this on a monthly basis since #1. This is about 30 issues longer than the Silver Age Flash’s original comic book run. Two…$4.99, for this “special oversized anniversary issue?” Urgh. Good thing the other DCs I’m buying are $2.99.

  • Not a comic, but horror film mag Fangoria is releasing its issue #300 this week. We’re usually good for selling at least one copy of this to somebody every month. Mostly, I’m just amazed it’s still hanging in there during a time when this kind of showbiz publication is barely surviving in competition with free online sources. Good on ’em. Wouldn’t be the same without something horrible and bloody staring back at me from the magazine racks. I mean, aside from any comics featuring the Red Lanterns.

I’m certainly not complaining about the sales.

filed under Categories retailing 20 Comments


Those of you unfortunate enough to have been reading my site for nearly six years may remember me mentioning this before, but briefly: several years ago, I received over the course of a week multiple calls from buyers all across the country seeking the last issue of Marvel’s Masters of the Universe series. And, as far as I can tell, there was no connection between the callers…or, at least, none that any of those folks were willing to admit to me. Anyway, you can read more about it that that link.

I bring that up because it’s kinda sort happening again, only with the customers who are actually walking into our shop, and with DC’s 1994 “event” series Zero Hour: Crisis in Time.

Now, I thought part of it may be that the trade paperback collecting the series was just recently reissued in a new printing…but that printing was dated 2006, which isn’t as recent as I thought.

It basically started when Employee Aaron noted that we were out of the Zero Hour trade, so I put in a reorder, and when it showed up, we just put in on the new arrivals bookshelf, intending eventually to file it onto the regular bookshelves. And it sold. Immediately. So I ordered another one, and when that came in, we put it on a little “featured graphic novels” shelf that we have. And it sold again.

And it keeps happening. And it isn’t just that we’re displaying it to customers and it’s an impulse buy. I’ve had multiple requests from folks looking for the copies of the five issue run of the series, whether or not the book itself is on display. Sometimes I get requests before I’ve restocked the Zero Hour bin after the previous sale, and I have to scurry back into the backroom and pull more sets.

I realize I’m making it sound like we’re selling hundreds of these things, and we’re not. It’s more like a dozen and a half or so over a few weeks, but given that sales on both the back issues and the collection have been hovering around slim-to-none for well over a decade and half, this sudden upswing in demand can’t help but stand out. I’ve probably sold more Zero Hour, in either format, in the last month than I have in the previous five years.

So, I’m wondering what’s the deal. When I noted this on the Twitter, pal Andres, who was one of the folks who purchased a copy of the trade from us, replied that he’d simply missed it the first time around and picked it up. He also opined that it may be a result of the current popularity of the Green Lantern franchise (as Hal Jordon is prominently featured in the series), which is possible, I suppose. Plus, there’s the fact that Dan Jurgens wrote and drew the series, and he’s one of DC’s more dependable creators, and a lot of the time-travel themes and characters he likes to explore (recently in Booster Gold and currently in the new Time Masters mini) are in this comic. (And there was that Booster Gold Zero Hour tie-in in the most recent series, but that was published a couple of years ago and doesn’t seem to have a whole lot to do with the current interest.) Or maybe it’s just that it’s a fun and colorful superhero story, with lots of guys and gals flyin’ around and punching each other, with some time travel stuff mixed in, and some nice Jurgens/Ordway art.

None of that explains why people are deciding to look for it and buy it now. Just coincidence? Something in the comic news media or a price-guide push or a footnoted “* see Zero Hour #3 for details! – Editor” in a comic I didn’t read? I suppose the next step is quizzing the customers about it, but I probably annoy them enough as it is.

…

Of course, simply by making a big deal about it here, we’ll now never sell another copy. Wouldn’t that just figure.

If any of you folks out there have noticed a similar upswing in sales of this series, or perhaps have your own theories, or even just believe I’m thinking about this too much, let me know in the comments.