Mikester

If only there were an audio adaptation of that “King Kong” story.

filed under Categories byrne reboot, superman 14 Comments

So pal Brook showed me the other day this reprint of Man of Steel #6, the final issue of 1980s mini-series that kicked off John Byrne’s relaunch of the Superman franchise.


It’s of slightly smaller dimensions than a standard comic book, about 9 by 6 inches. The story is reprinted in color, and appeared to be unedited, though I didn’t go through every single word balloon. All the pages do seem to be there.

To fill out the booklet, there are three black and white cover reproductions captioned “GREAT MOMENTS IN SUPERMAN’S HISTORY.” You know, like this one:


…for, you know, certain values of “GREAT,” I suppose.

The back cover is this slightly menacing image:


…which I’m sure I’ve seen before, but can’t quite place it.

Anyway, this comic was released as part of an audiobook series in the late 1980s. It’s acted out with multiple performers, with music and sound effects, and, well, you can experience it right here in this handy embedded video (which features an image of the accompanying cassette’s J-card insert):


Well…that’s certainly…something. It’s weird hearing real people reciting Byrne’s dialogue, and some of the performances are…well, Your Mileage May Vary, I guess. The voice for Superman/Clark Kent takes some getting used to, no offense to whoever played him.

It’s an interesting artifact, certainly, and one I hadn’t known existed. Thanks to Brook for cluing me in on this.

Many would swear *at* Superman 64.

filed under Categories marvel, the thing, video games 12 Comments

Just in case you ever thought comments on old posts ever got past me…nope, they sure don’t! Here’s Reader Pete with a comment on my relatively recent video game post:

“I know I’m a few weeks late to comment on this post, but reading this reminded of the Questprobe game and tie-in comics from Marvel in the mid-80’s. I had the Hulk and Thing/Human Torch games for my Commodore 64 which I remember formatted like a ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ book. I bought the Hulk and Spider-Man comics as back issues later on, but could never find the Thing/Human Torch one. It seemed like comics & video games would have been a much more natural partnership but that didn’t seem to develop until years later.”

The Questprobe computer games were illustrated “interactive fiction,” where the player would read text and type in commands of the “GO NORTH” and “TAKE AXE” variety, accompanies with still digital drawings.

There were programmed by Scott Adams — no, not that one, but rather this gentleman. And I suggest looking at that Wikipedia page to see the pic of Mr. Adams from 1982, which is literally the greatest.

Now, despite my affinity for computer and video gaming and (surprise) comics in the mid-’80s, I didn’t acquire these games. I’m not even sure I ever saw them for sale in the wild, and I regularly haunted the game software shelves at any store that stocked this sort of thing.

I was aware of the games, absolutely, as I definitely bought at least the first issue of Marvel’s tie-in Questprobe comic book series. (And according to the Grand Comics Database entry linked there, the look of the antagonist in this series was designed after Adams himself — again, reference that photo from Adams’ Wikipedia page.

Adams worked with John Byrne to put together a plan for the overall series of games, and of course the related comics, for a run of about a dozen installments. Only three games came out, due to the game company shutting down, which also ended the related comic book series. However, a comic based on the unreleased fourth game was created, and eventually released in issue #33 of Marvel’s Island of Misfit Stories, Marvel Fanfare.


And because the late writer Mark Gruenwald forgot nothing, some of this Questprobe stuff would turn up in his run of Quasar.

A couple of additional points: despite missing the games during their initial release window, I did sample one or two of them via emulation decades later. Which, unfortunately, is probably not the way to try them out given how very dated they feel now. As I recall, even the text interface seemed relatively primitive compared to the more complex commands available in, say, the contemporary Infocom games.

The Questprobe games had the affectation of the user prompt being, like, “SPIDER-MAN I WANT YOU TO” after which you would type in the command, like you’re controlling the character from afar. Here’s a playthrough of the Spider-Man game to show you what I mean:

The other point I wanted to make is that reader Pete (remember Pete? This is a post about Pete) said he couldn’t find the third issue of the run, feaeturing the Thing and the Human Torch:


And this is an issue we fans probably shouldn’t miss, as it features the excellent artwork of noted Thing artist (from the self-titled series and from many Marvel Two-in-Ones) Ron Wilson. I just checked, and this issue is not included in the recent The Thing Omnibus, almost certainly due to licensing issues, so folks, keep your peepers peeled for that lost gem. EDIT: Ignore all that, it is in the Omnibus, somehow I missed it when scanning the covers on the book’s back cover.

In my more nostalgic moods I might say that superhero video games never got any better than the Atari 2600 Superman from 1979. The best games? Maybe the recent Spider-Man games…maybe the Batman Arkham series. Many would swear by, say, the X-Men arcade game, or the various LEGO games.

These Questprobe games were an interesting attempt at moving superheroes into the then-burgeoning home computer market, but producing them as essentially text adventures with some pictures seemed to miss the point a little. I mean, yes, comic books themselves are pictures with some text, but if you’re handed a game, when you think “superheroes” you probably don’t want to spend hours guessing what noun-verb combination is the correct one to get you to the next guessing of a noun-verb combination.

Superheroes imply action, and in a video game market that means directly moving characters onscreen as per your controller interface. And with the release of the recent Batman virtual reality game, the games are coming closer and closer to actually just straight up living out the world are presented in comic books, with fewer apparent steps of remove.

They were a good match on Grimjack, too.

filed under Categories dc comics, question time 8 Comments

So I find myself in the position of gathering up and doing some research for a future post, and leaving myself with little time to write an actual post for today. As such, let me go ahead and look at some of your recent comments now, and I’ll return to your questions and having content soon!

Thom H asks

“I never read the Ostrander/Mandrake Martian Manhunter series. Is it good? From what I saw of it, it seemed kind of heavy and depressing. I don’t need my MM to love Oreos, but he can get kind of melancholy for my tastes.”


One of the reasons I want to reread Martian Manhunter is that it’s been a while since I’ve read it, and as such I don’t remember a whole lot of specifics about the run. I do recall enjoying it (I mean, it’s Ostrander and Mandrake, it’s gonna be good), but yes, as per Chris V’s noting of the tragic circumstances behind the scenes. It can be, as you say Thom, melancholy, but this superhero book embedded with emotional gravitas is well worth checking out, I think.

It’s not all like that…Ostrander has his silly side, and we get an issue about J’onn’s addiction to “Chocos” (the legally-distinct name of cream-filled cookies that are somewhat like Oreos).


The thing about J’onn J’onzz, the Martian Manhunter, is that he’s kind of a blank slate. I mean, we know the basics…trapped Earth by accident, his family is gone, has a weakness to fire, disguised himself as a human detective. Outside of his appearances in Justice League of America, maybe, Ostrander likely wrote the longest and most in-depth examination of the character, fleshing out his personality, his backstory, his rogues gallery, and so on.

Yes, it can be a downer at times, but based on what memories I have, I still think it’s worth a read. And I’m looking forward to tackling that when I’m done with Spectre.

Plus, J’emm, Son of Saturn, pops up in it. That’s gotta sell you on it!

• • •

Oliver says

“Mandrake’s style was a bad fit for the post-Crisis Shazam reboot but looked much better on Batman and the Spectre.”

Back in 2010, I did a post about a short sequence from the Shazam! A New Beginning mini-series by Roy Thomas and Mandrake. Some comments to that post agree with you, Oliver, that Mandrake’s style was a poor match for Captain Marvel.

Now…okay, I’m not trying to be contrary, I do agree with this sentiment, but in an odd way Mandrake’s art did fit this very specific version of the character. This was a darker, 1980s-post-Dark-Knight-gritty reinterpretation, requiring dark, gritty, moody art. The problem was that the entire series was entirely misguided, changing the tone of Captain Marvel too far. If DC has to squeeze the Shazam franchise into their larger shared universe, there are ways to do it, and it has been done (most successfully, I think, by Jerry Ordway’s Power of Shazam! series).

Mandrake’s work reminds me in a way of Gene Colan’s, suited for dark and moody tales while still adaptable to appropriate superhero books. As Oliver notes above, Batman and Spectre are solid fits for Mandrake, and for the stories Ostrander was telling, a good fit with Martian Manhunter as well. I’d like to see him do more Swamp Thing, which he’s done a handful of times in the past.

In fact, I’d love to see both Ostrander and Mandrake on a Swamp Thing series, doing what they did on Spectre and Martian Manhunter: a darker, edgier book that’s still on the outskirts of the regular DC Universe. Pulling together all the disparate strands of the character into some kind of cohesive, recognizable whole.

• • •

Anyway, thanks for putting up with this “fill-in” ppst, and for all your great comments. I appreciate all the feedback!

I sure use the word “milieu” a lot.

filed under Categories dc comics, low content mode, this week's comics 7 Comments

Hi pals! Thanks for all your responses to the recent “Question Time” posts…I will get back to those with some responses and reactions in the near-ish future. Unfortunately, I’m short on blogging time this evening so it’ll have to wait ’til next week, maybe.

In the meantime, let me tell you that I’ve read Absolute Wonder Woman #1, and it’s an enjoyable new take on the character. Yes, it’s a darker, edgier version of our favorite Amazon, as per the entire Absolute Universe milieu, but it’s well-told and has me looking forward to more.

Also, despite the fact that I’m still catching up on actual physical copies of things I have here in my home, I’m also trying to justify my subscription to the DC Universe Infinite digital comics service by reading stuff there too. Or, in this case, re-reading, as I’ve been revisiting the 1990s John Ostrander/Tom Mandrake Spectre series, which just keeps me burning through issue after issue. The art is amazing, dark and moody and filling just every square inch on the page. The writing, exploring the nature of justice vs. evil and the Spectre’s role in doling out vengeance.

It’s very much of its time — does Bill Clinton show up? You bet he does. Is there an O.J. Simpson stand-in (“B.J. Harrison”) who is caught trying to escape the scene of his murder of his ex-wife and her boyfriend in his white Bronco, and the Spectre takes care of him good? Yup again.

But it addresses some tough issues, despite giving some easy passes here and there (like Superman not going after the Spectre for literally wiping out an entire country). It remains a good read overall, and I’ll likely reread this creative team’s Martain Manhunter series afterwards.

Okay, gotta wrap it up here. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you next week.

The era of the superstar comics blogger continues, however.

filed under Categories question time 16 Comments

Answer a few more of your questions? Oh, if you insist!

Nate A asks

“Is the era of the superstar penciller over? Will there be another Byrne or Lee (proportionate to the current baseline sales) or did something happen in the market to make that impossible?”

That’s a question I’ve been thinking about since I saw you ask it. Given the current comics market ecosystem (and for the purposes of this question, I’m sticking to just the “superhero-dominated direct comics market” as implied by the examples of Byrne and Lee, otherwise I’d just say like “Raina Telgemeier” and be done with it) is, for whatever reason, isn’t one in which one or two artists can rise to dominance.

Part of it is the market size. In the 1990s, if a comic sold 500,000 or a million or more copies, that went a long way toward making its artist a “hot” one. Your standard comic book nowadays isn’t reaching such lofty heights. There are lots of good artists, and lots of popular artists working on great books that sell well (as graded on the current curve), but the “superstar” ranking probably remains an artifact of the ’90s.

And as such, the remaining “superstar” artists are the ones who achieved that status before and haven’t done anything to undermine it. Jim Lee is the superstar artist of today. Maybe Todd McFarlane. Byrne is basically retired, sticking to commissions and his X-Men fanfic. And there are a couple of others from that period whose fortunes have waxed and mostly waned over in the decades since.

There is a new Batman run by Lee, with Jeph Loeb, a sequel to that jukebox-musical of a popular story Hush, coming, and we’ll see how demand and sales look on that to determine Lee’s remaining superstar status. (Though his $20,000 price tag on commissions probably locked that in pretty well.)

McFarlane’s ongoing devotion to Spawn doesn’t necessarily burn up the shelves, but he still retains that superstar reputation. He has name recognition value, and customers are always curious about what he’s doing, and his old Spider-Man and early Spawn sell incredibly well. And if he were to ever do a Spawn/Spider-Man crossover special, that would probably be the biggest selling superhero comic in recent memory.

• • •

Matthew sorts out the following

“You’ve had your own store for ten years (good job! congrats!), what’s the biggest mistake you’ve made (comics related or not)?”

Yup, it’ll be 10 years on…um, Election Day here in the States, it looks like. Huh.

Biggest mistake, I think, was not keeping all the stock in the backroom completely sorted from the get-go. Part of the problem was — and this is not something I expected — once you open a comic book store, people are dying to just give you boxes and boxes of comics. I ended up with several boxes from multiple collections coming into the store in short order, too much to easily sort right away, so they got put to the side to be done at a nigh-mythical “later date.”

At least most everything’s on shelves back there, though I wish I can devote the time to properly sorting everything out. It’s gonna take me hiring someone else to do it for me, because it’s just too many at this point for me to do it. But I go through ’em on a pretty regular basis so even if it’s not as organized as I’d like, I at least have a fairly good idea where stuff is.

• • •

Tom W dares to ask

“Do your comics retailer abilities, honed over many years, mean your comics are in mint even after you’ve read them?”

Now, I wish I had the power to make low grade books suddenly mint just with my mere touch, but I know that’s not what you meant. If it’s mint when I get it, or “Near Mint,” more likely, or…let’s just say “new” condition…it stays that way after I’ve had my way. I mean, it’s not like I’m eating ribs or anything while paging through the latest Batman/Scooby Doo.

I am (contrary to popular belief) only human, and maybe I’ll accidentially drop or bump a comic, or otherwise damage it, and I just kinda shrug and deal with it. But that’s the exception, not the rule.

• • •

Thanks as always for all the great questions, pals. If you need clarification on any of my answers, always feel free to ask!

Nice while it lasted.

filed under Categories dc comics, publishing 16 Comments

So I came across this flyer sent out to retailers in 1995: DC Comics describing the new paper stocks and formats for their books:


(You can click that to make it larger, if you so desire.)

I remember a time when I was really into the whole “paper stock”/price levels thing, particularly back when I was fan prior to ascending into Comics Retail Heaven. “Sure, the standard DC Comics are now 75 cents, but look at this nice white Mando paper on these Atari Forces!” And of course there was Baxter paper for DC’s $1.50 (or occasionally more) books, but that extra expense was well worth it for the thicker paper and better, clearer printing and bright coloring (which took ’em a bit to figure out so that it wasn’t too bright.) (And let us not speak about Flexographic printing.)

Now by the time we got to the mid-1990s, I wasn’t paying that much attention to paper stock names and such, aside from missing the good ol’ days of just plain ol’ Baxter and Mando paper. A couple of these paper/format types I either forgot or just didn’t know in the first place. But “Miraweb” is a name I already knew:


…though I associated that with Frank Miller’s Ronin from a decade earlier, but I might be remembering that incorrectly. But I do recall these comics, particularly the Superman books, suddenly getting printed on really shiny paper (and priced at $1.95). It was an attractive package, with clear and colorful printing and felt like it was worth the price.

Okay, I didn’t remember the name “Fracote” gettin’ thrown around:


…but I honestly can’t recall any significant difference to the texture or printing of these titles. Granted, I wasn’t reading a lot of these specific books at he time (I did have those Babylon 5 books), but I don’t recall ever thinking “wow, look at this paper stock!” or anything.

“Rebax” feels new to me too:


…and I don’t believe I thought anything about the paper stock here either. I mean, aside it was nice and presented the art well, but at some time between being a fan in the mid-1980s and working behind the counter in the mid-1990s my concern with what these things were being printed on dissipated beyond “is this readable and colored well?”

Right now, I couldn’t tell you the paper stock of any comic book being currently published, unless something is just obviously printed on newsprint. I do wonder occasionally, like that recent G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero omnibus is massively thick but incredibly light. That paper has no weight to it, and yet seems sturdy and presents the artwork quite well.

What I notice more nowadays is the paper being used for covers. The real nadir of this was Gladstone using “self-covered” comics, where the cover was the exact same stock as the story pages inside. Like torn covers? This is for you!

And a number of comics today, particularly from the Big Two, have cover stock that is…not the most durable. I mean, sure, DC will ding you an extra buck for the cardstock variants, but for most comic covers the quality can vary. Sometimes the paper is slick, sometimes it’s barely slicker, sometimes it feels like it should be interior page stock (though still a little thicker, but not much more so, than the pages inside the specific comic)…it’s just all over the map.

This is an interesting artifact of the time, one you don’t see today, of retailers ballyhooing their printing quality. Comics look quite nice now, certainly much improved over what our caveman ancestors had to tolerate. But I kind of like not knowing stuff like the specific manufacturer name of the paper used. Just make it legible and somewhat durable, that’s all I ask.

And by the way;


…no, comic retailers are never satisfied. It’s just our nature.

Or maybe those were parodies of Wolveroach from Cerebus.

filed under Categories dc comics, indies, publishing, retailing 5 Comments

So, alas, I’ve been going through the collection of a late customer of mine…a longtime customer, in fact, going back to the early days of my toil at the previous place of employment. Probably about 30 years or so…when I opened up my shop, he followed me over, which I always appreciated.

He passed away last year, and his brother brought me most of his collection then, but this week brought me several more boxes. I took a first pass through them and pulled out some items of interest…and he was a huge Lobo fan, so he had lots of Lobo ‘n’ related comics, including one I haven’t seen in decades. I thought I’d present a few of them here today.

From the “Lobo-related” category, here are a couple of parodies, starting with Spoof Comics Presents #9, featuring “Hobo: Patricide.”


The title is a parody of the 1992 DC Comics mini Lobo: Infanticide, a title I still can’t believe actually made it to the stands. Anyway, like many parody comics of the period, part of the joke was gender-flipping the characters, so we get a Lady Lobo here. This Is A Fetish for Someone™, as a very wise and stunningly handsome person once said.

Speaking of which, there was a later one-shot by the same company titled Wolverbroad Vs. Hobo…Wolverbroad being a parody of, oh, I don’t know, the old Legion of Super-Heroes character Timber Wolf I think.

In the non-gender-flipped category of parody was this comic, somewhat surprisingly from Eclipse Comics in 1992. It’s Loco Vs. Pulverine #1:


…Pulverine, of course, being a parody of, oh, I don’t know, Puck from Alpha Flight I think. This comic had an amusing wraparound cover, inspired by the similar cameo-filled cover on the famous Superman Vs. Muhammad Ali treasury.

Here’s the back cover:


…where you can see such luminaries as Hagar the Horrible:


…and here is celebrity power couple Krazy and Ignatz from the classic Krazy Kat strip.


Plus, here’s a special note from creator Gary Yap:


Last but not least is the comic I was shocked to see in this collection…well, okay, not shocked that in was in this collection, given the preponderance of Lobo stuff, just shocked that I’ve finally seen it again after all this time. It’s the infamous The Wisdom of Lobo one-shot from 1992:


I last wrote about this on my site in 2011 in these two posts, in which I noted I hadn’t seen it in forever even back then.

To recap, this came in a slipcased set, with the slipcase featuring an image of Lobo’s face. The books inside were Lobo’s Greatest Hits (a compilation of early Lobo appearances from Omega MenLobo mini-series, and this Wisdom of Lobo thing. We sold a lot of these sets, and demand for Lobo was high enough that we even broke up some of these sets and sold the components individually.

I mentioned in one of my earlier posts that the Grand Comics Database included a note on the Wisdom book that retailers were annoyed by the gimmick (in that the 64 pages inside were blank, you see), but that note seems to be gone now. But as I said then, it didn’t really annoy us, and when pricing out the components of the slipcased set vis-à-vis its retail price, the Wisdom book was essentially free.

I didn’t remember then what we sold the Wisdom comic for on its own, but the copy from this collection still had the old shop’s price tag. For a mere $1.50, you could have had this Lobo-branded sketch book for your very own.

To continue repeating myself from those older posts, I’m surprised that I haven’t seen more of these over the decades. I know we sold a ton of those slipcased sets, I figured eventually some would make their way back to me. It took 32 years, and the unfortunate passing one of my favorite customers, but here it is, filling in that little gap in my remembrances of comics retail past.

Thanks, Dale, for the opportunity to see these weird Lobo things again. I’ll find good homes for them.

One tough Gazookus wot hates all Palookas.

filed under Categories eyeball, popeye, question time 8 Comments

More of your questions, more of my answers!

ExistentialMan gets down to earth with

You’ve mentioned your comic reading backlog (and unfortunate eye challenges) several times over the years. I’m curious if you have a system for how you tackle your stacks of books. Do you just read them in the order you placed ’em in the longbox? Selectively choose back issues that relate to current titles? Toss a random dart at the stack? Please enlighten us.

For those of you new to the site, what EM is referring to is the fact I’ve had some vision issues in relation to actual physical problems with my eyeballs, discussed enough here that the topic has its own category.

Now, the eyeball situation has mostly stabilized, though I’m still getting treatments (i.e. the dreaded injections) in the left eye about once every couple of months…a vast improvement over getting shots in both eyes every month like I had been at the beginning. And I haven’t had a vision-obscuring bleeding incident in my eyes for quite some time now. So, you know, good news all around.

My vision is diminished from what it was, requiring glasses now. And though I no longer need the regular treatment on my right eye, the vision in that eye is impaired. I can see out of it, but not at the…resolution, I guess, as I can with my left eye, which is mostly at normal when using said glasses.

Anyway, as mentioned by EM, my reading had been slowed down a bit, after about an 18-month period at the beginning of all this when I read virtually nothing. When I did start reading again, it was slow going as I adjusted to my new vision status quo, and between bouts of eye-bleeds that would prevent me from reading again.

One result is that I gave up entirely on reading comics for a while, even during those periods when I could do so. I watched a lot of TV instead, which, thanks to a big ol’ flatscreen, was much easier for me to see than small print on paper pages. I was still picking up the comics I wanted to read, but setting them aside for a later date.

And that later date has been the last couple of years or so, as I’ve been making a stronger attempt at catching up on the backlog. I’ve adjusted to my vision, I’ve got a reading lamp that helps quite a bit, so I’ve been making some progress.

When I started to try catching up, my priority was the stuff I was reading on a serialized monthly basis. Gathering together all the Superman stuff, the Hulk stuff, so on and so forth, and reading through them a series at the time. Then, as new books come out, I read those as I get ’em and I stay caught up on those series.

Then there are the one-shots and the miscellaneous minis that have come out over the years, that got backlogged and I get to those as I find the time. There are probably still some of those DC/Hanna Barbera specials I haven’t read yet. But I’m getting through them as I can.

The real roadblocks are the magazines and the graphic novels/trades. I don’t get every issue of Back Issue, but about one out of every three issues or so there’s one stuffed with articles I want to read (“special DC Comics 1980s mini-series issue!” — DAMMIT) and I’ll pull it aside and I think I’m years behind on those and really need to stop picking them up. But then this month they had an issue about DC’s horror comics and DAMMIT.

Graphic novels, 100 to 200 or more pages a throw there, take a lot longer for me to plow through, but lately I’ve been trying to put more effort into reading them. For example, not long ago I finally read Matt Wagner’s newly expanded Grendel: Devil by the Deed, about a year after its release.

Now it’s not like I’m just talking home piles and piles of books every week. I have made an active effort to keep my personal pulls to a minimum, as I try to find a balance amongst 1) what new stuff I really want to read, 2) what I have time to read, and 3) how much backlog I still need to whittle down.

This isn’t even counting all the regular prose books I need to catch up on. I just read Opposable Thumbs, a book about the history of film critics Gene Siskel, Roger Ebert, and their partnership, and it took me like a year to get to that.

• • •

Adam Farrar gets up close and personal with

“I’ve never read any of the original Popeye comics. But I’m missing out, yeah? My library has the six volumes from Fantagraphics. Should I try to find the pre-Popeye Thimble Theater strips to read first?”

Adam, Adam, Adam…how dare you come here, into my very own website, without having read any Popeye. Friend, run, do not walk, to that library and get those volumes into your hands. If it’s closed when you show up, break in. Do not delay feeding Popeye into your peepers any longer than you already have.

You do not need to read the earlier Thimble Theater strips. The first of those Fantagraphics volumes contain several non-Popeye TT strips, kicking off that storyline and eventually leading to Popeye’s introduction. That should give you enough of the taste as to what those early strips were like.

Should you ever decide to continue beyond those Fantagraphics reprints once you’ve caught Popeye fever, maybe you can try some Thimble Theater (available in very large and expensive, but nice, hardcovers). Or you can look at a bunch of the facsimile editions IDW published of 1940s-50s Popeye comics by Segar’s successor Bud Sagendorf, which can be found in single issue or collected form. there were also a couple volumes reprinting Bobbly London’s run on the strip from the late ’80s/early ’90s.

There’s a current Popeye comic, Eye Lie Popeye, done in a nigh-anime style that’s a little off-model from the original strips, maybe, but still a lot of fun.

But read those Segar comics! And always remember what Popeye says about cartoonists:

Fleshing out the pitch, and other things you shouldn’t say.

filed under Categories harvey, question time 15 Comments

Going after a few more of your questions today. Didn’t really mean to power through so many in short order, as I meant to space ’em out a bit, but it is what it is. You know, folks can still add more questions to that linked post above!

Paul spooks me with

“How would you reboot the Harvey Comics Universe to make it appeal to the youth of today?”

That’s…a good question. My immediate reaction would have been, if we were still in the world of the CW attractive-20-something-year-olds-playing-teenagers TV shows, saying “make ’em all high schoolers with weird powers or obsessions or wealth” and go all Riverdale with it.

Or (and this isn’t inconsistent with my previous statement) take the supernatural characters (Casper, Hot Stuff, Wendy, Spooky, etc.) and make ’em paranormal investigators. The other kids (little Lotta Little Audrey, Little Dot) as part of their support team…Little Lotta would be the muscle when necessary, of course. Richie Rich is the money guy behind the team, funding their work and passing out assignments.

Not sure how, like, Baby Huey would fit in. But if I’m remaking the Harvey characters into an ersatz BPRD, then Baby Huey could be our Hellboy analog. “DUH, I HATE BOGGARTS AND NAZIS.”

And I’m really not sure how Stumbo the Giant works here. Maybe a recurring antagonist that the team has to take down?

Anyway, I’m kinda vague on details with some of the characters, I know, but if someone’s willing to give me a paycheck, I’ll flesh out the pitch.

• • •

William Gatevackes opens up with

“Who would be on your ‘Mount Rushmore’ of comic book creators?”

Assuming we’re limited to four giant heads on a mountainside, my kneejerk reaction if “Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster.” I know, I know, that’s a whole lotta white guys, I’m sorry. Maybe replace Ditko (who almost certainly wouldn’t have wanted a giant representation of his face carved into a mountain) with Osamu Tezuka. But then we’re stuck with all guys, still. So, what the hell, add a fifth head, and make it Ramona Fradon.

I mean, it’s hard to represent everyone who should be up there, especially if you’re limiting the number of visages. I’m not denying that so many people are worthy. However, I’m pretty insistent that Jack, Jerry and Joe have to be on there. And Bob Kane’s face can be on the trashcans for the tourists.

• • •

googum googumed.

“Hey, was ACTION COMICS WEEKLY direct sales only? I didn’t think it was newsstand, but just checking; figured you’d know!”

I am unsure. My source for checking this is the Grand Comics Database, where the Action Comics Weekly entry shows under the “Cover Scans” section no separate entries for “newsstand” and “direct” covers. (Compare to Fury of Firestorm, which does have separate scans for these variations.)

Here, on the cover of the first weekly issue, #601:


…you can see the little box that’s usually used for a UPC code, but instead it lists the names of the featured characters. Other issues retain the box but in a non-UPC shape. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen one with the UPC code required for newsstand sales, and Googling about doesn’t seem to turn up any.

If I had to put my thirty nickels down, I’d say Action Comics Weekly was not distributed to newsstands because, like, your local convenience store or supermarket wouldn’t want to deal with a weekly book, or, since they weren’t used to dealing with weekly comics, take the previous issue off for stripped cover returns and replace it with a new issue, giving that old one only a weeklong sales window. I mean, I don’t know if that would’ve happened. And Marvel’s biweekly series Marvel Comics Presents had newsstand distribution for most of its run, so a quicker publication pace wasn’t a problem for them, I don’t think.

If anyone’s got more information on this than I do, I’m all ears. (Ew, gross.)

• • •

Derek Moreland expands his territory with

“How are the ENERGON UNIVERSE (Transformers, G.I. Joe minis, Void Rivals) selling for you? Corollary question: is Transformers doing better now than the MtMtE/RiD days at IDW?”

They’re actually doing relatively well…the “name” series (Transformers and G.I. Joe doing the best, with Void Rivals trailing behind). My numbers on TF/GIJ were startlingly small when they were at IDW, but all it took was slapping an Image logo on them (and some smart marketing/creative team decisions) and suddenly interest is up again. Let’s hope it keeps up, as I can always use more good-selling books.

• • •

And that’s plenty for today. Thanks for reading, pals, and I’ll be back on Wednesday, with any luck.

The shocking return of VARIANT TALK.

filed under Categories pal plugging, question time, self-promotion, variant covers 15 Comments

First, a couple of things:

One, I finally got a Threads account open under my original personal Instagram account name, mikesterjr. For various reasons I had opened one up under a different name, but ignore that one if you know about it…”mikesterjr” is where you’ll find me there. (Alas, “mikester” and “mikesterling” were taken by folks surely unworthy of my good name.) Anyway, not that I need another social media thing (Bluesky is mostly enough for me right now), but in this scary post-Xwitter world, I’m just trying to hedge my bets.

Two, blogging-and-birthday-brother Andrew is doing his Halloween Countdown over on Armagideon Time. One of my all-time favorite writers on these here internets.

Three, let’s try to get to another of your questions:

JohnJ hits me with

“How in the world do you decide how many variant covers to order of some books, especially with DC’s extra dollar for variant cardstock covers?
The multiple covers bit started when I still was ordering comics in the 90s and it drove me nuts. It’s got to be ten times worse today with damn near every book having multiple covers.
How about the blank covers for sketches? Do you have customers that ask for those?”

Yeah, I occasionally think about how good we had it in the ’90s in regards to variants. At the time, it was annoying because, unless it was a ratio variant where we had to reach certain ordering plateaus to get that 1 in 25/50/100 copy, guessing what covers customers were going to want was quite the trick.

And it’s even more of a trick now, given that nearly every Marvel and DC comic has multiple covers, and many Image books have variants, and several Dark Horse comics have variants, and oy Dynamite Comics….

For the most part, the customers mostly want the main (or “A”) covers, although some folks don’t care what cover they get. I order enough “A”s to cover pulls and rack sales, and a smaller number of each variant for impulse buys and for those occasions when people prefer that variant to the main cover.

In the case of DC, where the variants can cost a buck (or more, if it’s a fancier variant with extra embossing or whatever), I’m a little more stingy about ordering some of those, sometimes just getting one or two copies, or maybe skipping a variant entirely if past sales data for a title indicates a big fat “nobody cares” on those. But if it’s a variant by Jim Lee or Artgerm, I’ll get a few extras because those always sell well.

For Marvel and other companies, the variants all have the same cover price (aside from the ratio variants, though I’ll sometimes just put the 1 in 10 covers out at regular price) so I feel a little more comfortable ordering extras on those. Like I said, “A” covers are generally preferred, so I’ll order heavier on those, though I notice on indie titles, some people don’t much care which cover they get. It’s the Marvels where customers are a little more insistent on getting the main cover if possible.

At this point, I’ve been ordering these long enough to get a general feel for what covers sell in what quantities, though sometimes I’ll get surprised by demand (like, it took some reordering to get enough of the recent Doctor Doom variants on some recent Marvels), but my typical strategy of “lots of ‘A’s, a coupe or three of the variants” works out. And I can usually place reorders if necessary.

I do have some customers who get every variant (or close to) of their favorite titles, so I make sure to accommodate them. And sometime a comic will pop up in the order form with more individual variants for me to order than copies I sell in the store, so I order enough “A”s and then pick and choose the likely variants that might sell, and hope for the best.

As for blank covers…I don’t always order those, but it depends on the title. I went ahead and got a copy of the blank Absolute Batman #1, for example (which as of this writing hasn’t sold yet, though I blew through all the other variants for this title in short order). Once in a blue moon I have someone show up asking for every sketch cover I have in the shop, so I like to have a few of those available.

I feel like, even as much of rambling answer I gave there, more discussion may be necessary. I mean, aside from the year or so I was doing these themed variant cover posts. Anyway, if any clarification is needed, just let me know.

• • •

Also, wish my dad a happy birthday today. He reads the site, so he’ll see it!