Mikester

The cowl stays on.

filed under Categories batman, dc comics, publishing 23 Comments


Last time, jmurphy brought up

“But the good news is that LCE #51 is being reprinted full size.”

And indeed they are! The Limited Collectors’ Edition #51 treasury edition from 1977 is coming to shelves in a facsimile edition next month, collecting together theh original Ra’s al Ghul saga by Denny O’Neil, Neal Adams. Irv Novick, and Dick Giordano.

The only image I can find on the distributor sites for this facsimile is the one I posted above, showing its original cover. I’m hoping the cover is reproduced authentically, and not “retouched” as they did with 2004 reprint of DC 100 Page Super Spectacular #6 (original / reprint). Or (ahem) “recolored” as some other Adams reprints have been.

I realize I’m probably worrying for nothing, as DC’s facsimile editions of late haven’t had that much after-the-fact fiddling and are presented more-or-less as originally printed. (Though to be fair I haven’t really taken that close a lot to see if the Golden Age facsimiles, like the Superman #1, are the redrawn versions that appeared in the early DC Archives).

The big change of course is getting the material on nice, white paper, versus the newsprint of the originals. Of course, yes, I’ve commented before about the dissonance about seeing work that originally lived on newprint suddenly being all bright and shiny, but having it on those nice, big treasury-sized pages will certainly be welcome and much easier on the ol’ eyeballs.

This will be, I think, DC’s first reprint of a treasury duplicating the original format, versus the treasury-sized hardcover edition they did of Superman Vs. Muhammad Ali (which is Peak Neal Adams Superman in my opinion). There was also a smaller “deluxe edition” hardcover published at the same time, with a new Adams cover and extra bonus material not included in the larger facsimile. I don’t know if the smaller book was given the “recoloring” treatment. Anyway, that story needs to be seen at full size, so I’m not sure why you’d want that “deluxe” version anyway.

But back to this Ra’s al Ghul treasury, which is probably about as good as this particular Bat-villain ever got in print form (outside the frankly demented and evil and great usage in the Batman Beyond cartoon). The treasury includes his first appearance and conflict with Batman, including the famed shirtless (but not cowlless) sword fight:


…and c’mon, if anything deserves to be reprinted on bigger than normal pages, it’s this.

With any luck this facsimile will do well enough to open up more reprints of DC’s treasuries (and spur Marvel along to do the same). It’s obvious why they started with this one (Batman drawn by Neal Adams, duh), but it’d be nice if they brought the Superman Vs. Wonder Woman story drawn by Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez back into print — it did get a treasury-sized hardcover reprint a few years back, but man, it should always be available.

And personally I’d like some of those Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer treasuries just to get more Sheldon Mayer in my life. Not really holding my breath for this to happen, honestly.

I hope future treasury reprints, if any, will focus on the ones with new stories that have only appeared there, versus reprinting books that contain reprints themselves. Not to say that something like this Adams Batman collection isn’t worthwhile, and nice to have on Big Ol’ Pages, but I’d rather have any new material from these show up in its original dimensions rather than being shrunk down.

That unofficial Aquaman/Sub-Mariner crossover probably is left out too.

filed under Categories dc comics 8 Comments

Big news is that Marvel and DC are bringing their intercompany crossovers back into print…well, most of them, anyway, as the one pictured above obviously is out, and JLA/Avengers I suspect will come along eventually. Probably too soon after the last reprinting, maybe, but I suspect the demand for that book goosed Marvel and DC into finally realizing “oh hey we’re leaving money on the table.”

Everything else is being reprinted in two of the Omnibus editions, those large, thick, relatively ungainly hardcovers. One will have all the standalone crossovers, including the O.G. (am I using that right?) Superman/Spider-Man team-ups, Batman/Hulk, and X-Men/Teen Titans, along with all the one-shots that popped up in the 1990s. The second volume will include the Marvel Vs. DC mini-series, the Amalgam one-shots (featuring “merged” versions of Marvel and DC characters, like Wolverine and Batman being combined into “Dark Claw”) and the two Access mini-series (starring the character who can cross between the Marvel and DC universes).

On one hand, from a personal perspective, I wouldn’t mind having these for myself, simply because I gave up nearly all of these to the shop when I opened up lo these many years ago. And having them in this larger format would certainly be easier on the eyes…I do still have my copy of the original trade paperback reprinting the 1970s/1980s crossovers, and having those treasury edition-sized comics squeezed down to regular comic dimensions is not so easy on the peepers any more.

On the other hand, this is a terrible way to rerelease everything. Will the small number of sales at the much higher omnibus price point equal out to selling more copies at a cheaper price point in a more standard comic book format? I could probably sell tons of most of these crossover comics as, say, individual $7.99 facsimile editions. Or even $9.99 ones, versus the tiny handful of omnibus editions that, by the way, generally only sell at discounted prices. Even a series of trade paperbacks gathering all these together would be preferable.

On the third hand, I suppose this is easier on the publishers, not worrying about some trades selling better because they had the choice team-ups, and letting other trades fall out of print right away. Or having to go through the trouble of soliciting for individual reprints. The omnibus lets ’em say “here’s everything in two books, you want that Steve Rude Hulk/Superman, you gotta take that Punisher/Azrael-Batman crossover too.”

I am sort of curious about how they’re going to arrange the comics in the volume with Marvel Vs. DC and Amalgam. The first wave of those Amalgam comics take place, and were released, between a couple of issues of the Marvel Vs. DC mini. I wonder if they’ll keep ’em that way in the book.

Anyway, if you want these, order ’em now. Like the ROM and Micronauts omnibuses, they’ll likely not be in print for very long. Again, they’ll almost certainly be discounted upon release, but once they’re out of print and “collectible” — urgh.

As someone who likes Ralph Snart, I would have appreciated that.

filed under Categories publishing 12 Comments

I’ve written before about my nostalgic perusal of the magazine racks whilst shopping at the grocery store. I still do it, every Sunday evening (my usual hunting-and-gathering time) though the selection doesn’t change a whole lot between visits, and usually it’s only publications like this:


I mean, no offense to anyone out there into coloring cat farts, ready to frame, and I know there must be a few of you since this is Volume Freakin’ Eleven, but I just don’t swing that way, friends.

But every once in a while I spot something that at least gets me to pick it up and flip through it as I decide whether or not to take it home, like some Lord of the Rings mag that’s been on the rack there for a while. But this past Sunday I spotted this (one of the two copies left, so I’m presuming it must have sold at least a few copies) and had to get it:


At last, I have the Ultimate Guide. Sorry Scott McCloud, this is what will finally help me understand comics.

Okay, I make fun, but I honestly haven’t done much more than skim through it so far and it looks…you know, at least surface level sufficient in covering comic book history. It’s certainly not going to be so granular as to explain why Bob Kane sucks or how come the whole “Quack-Fu” thing in the Howard the Duck comic was a multi-layered parody/social commentary versus just another duck pun in the film, but for someone just dipping their toes in, it may whet their appetite.

The tiny heading at the top of the cover reads “Hollywood Spotlight,” a brand name that’s also brought you similar mags about the Transformers and the A-Team and various Marvel movies, so that’s the impetus for this publication. It’s for the reader who’s seen the superhero films and maybe wants to learn more about the source material, which, you know, isn’t a bad thing. The timing maybe is a little bad, given the superhero movie market is, if not dying, then at least stumbling around a bit coughing blood spittle into its hands (I mean, we’ll see how Deadpool & Wolverine does), but there’s always someone discovering these characters via the films that do exist and this mag might make a good primer.

That said, like I noted above I haven’t read it yet. The Golden Age and the Silver Age of comics each get about three or four pages apiece, I see an article about horror comics and Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent and the Comics Code, a thing about event comics like Crisis on Infinite Earths and Secret Wars, and so on. The focus is of course on Marvel and DC (with a handful of movie stills to remind us of the final evolved form of comic books, natch), though there a feature on indie comics, a sidebar about Maus, and, well, back to DC with Watchmen and Dark Knight. Can’t wait to read what they say about Alan Moore.

Hey, here’s a bit about Gail Simone and “Women in Refrigerators” which is not something I expected in here. And of particular interest to me is this article about the ’90s market crash, ooh yeah feed that into my eyeballs. “Origin of Image Comics” is in here too, which I always said was “Marvel artists leave Marvel to create their own Marvel,” but it looks like this article goes a little deeper into that.

It all wraps up with “How Comics Took Over Hollywood,” likely without the addendum that, um, not so much anymore, but overall it looks like a very general overall approach to comics history. I don’t know what they’ve got wrong yet, and they’re covering a lot of ground for a ~100 page magazine, so certainly Your Favorite Topics undoubtedly got short shrift (“no 10-page examination of Ralph Snart, c’mon“). But it appears to do what it’s meant to do, give someone who knows all these “Holy Classic Characters, Batman!” from their media adaptations at least somewhat of an idea of where it all came from. Hopefully that’ll be enough to get them to at least look deeper into the parts that only get passing mentions.

Oh, and I’m afraid to say one of the first full page images in the mag is of Bob Kane posing with a Batman painting I’m sure he claimed he painted. SPOILER: he didn’t.

The one with the gannet.

filed under Categories marvel, publishing, variant covers 9 Comments


Well, this is certainly something.

I know, I’m a little late to this polybag party, but boy howdy what a weirdly pandering idea that’s only going to contribute to the idea that kids aren’t welcome to modern superhero comics. Which is okay, I guess, because kids got their own stuff goin’ on, and aren’t likely to be interested in Marvels outside of Miles Morales and Deadpool anyway.

Basically, Marvel has announced that they’ll be releasing a comic, Blood Hunt #1, where apparently you won’t have to hunt far for that blood as a “Mature Readers” version of the title with all the gore and violence you crave will be presented in an unexpurgated fashion. Meanwhile, they’ll also produce a censored “general audiences” version of the same book that won’t sell. The naughty version, naturally selling for a buck more than its bowdlerized counterpart, will be sealed in a polybag for that extra attention from parents who already think superhero comics are all too violent for their kids anyway.

Perhaps I sound a little annoyed at this.

Now chances are pretty good this series will go over like a thing that doesn’t go over very well, and the whole “pay that extra buck, see what the butler saw” gimmick will drop off the face of the direct market. Or everyone will decide “I don’t want the stupid version made for babies, gimme that explicit content” and it’ll sell like gangbusters and suddenly every Marvel comic has a polybag. (Then Marvel can push the “pure and innocent” unbagged variants and charge more for those.)

I was put in mind of Marvel’s publishing…let’s say “strategy” in regards to their initial attempt at doing Miracleman. In this post (and please excuse my optimism that new stories were “close”), I noted that they were polybagging Miracleman issues despite the content usually not warranting it. My assumption was that 1) it was a mature readers book under the Marvel logo, and thus should be hidden from theoretically innocent eyes, and 2) by polybagging every issue, when they got to the “birth” issue it wouldn’t stand out as the only polybagged one.

And also there’s 3) the hoped-for sales boost by providing the lure of the forbidden by sealing the contents away, which didn’t work and sales continued to plummet because nobody cared.

There is a chance this may not be the case with Marvel books, though, particularly ones set in the mainstream Marvel universe, under the Marvel banner, in a standard comic book format, and not shoved under some distancing mature-reader label like “MAX” or “Epic” or “Star.” (Yes, Star, that Heathcliff was a freak.)

As I said above, the main problem with this is the perception from parents in my shop that all superhero comics are “violent” and “gory.” I always try to tell them “there are plenty of kid-friendly superhero books.” But seeing this on the stands…well, okay, it’s just the one so far, but it’ll be more of a problem once Marvel starts cranking out more of them. Or, to be honest, folks tend to home right in on the very thing you’d prefer they didn’t notice, trust me on this. But this isn’t going to help dissuade the notion that superhero comics are scary and gross. (I mean, sure, some are, but not all of them!)

Also I’m being reminded of another time publishers tried this sort of thing, when Aircel offered “adults only” and “general audiences” versions of Barry Blair’s Leather and Lace. As I said there, given the overall look ‘n’ feel of even the supposed general audiences version, there was no way in hell I was going to sell that to kids. I’m hoping history doesn’t repeat itself with this newest iteration of the gimmick.

Not a sponsor, but could be.

filed under Categories retailing 7 Comments


So I got a couple of promotional emails for Comic Shop News, the freebie newspaper that’s been running for decades and given away in comic shops. The emails’ focus was on pushing a multi-part preview for a forthcoming comic and making sure we all had enough on hand…

…but the surprising part was the information that Comic Shop News (CSN here on) was only carried in 10% of comic shops. Or “top 10% of comic shops” as they put it, thank you, I’ll take the compliment.

That number honestly shocks me. I mean, I know personally of shops that don’t carry it, but that always felt to me like the exception, not the apparent rule. I’ve always carried it at my shop (except for the occasional time when Diamond forgets to pack it into my boxes, or somehow manage to send me a single copy of CSN instead of the bundle of 90 or 100, bafflingly). And my previous place of employment always carried it as well, from the very beginning. Somewhere in the home archives, I have a #1…and at that same, you can see the pic of #0(!) which was sent to retailers to sell ads.

Having a print newsletter like this may seem archaic in this modern age of beepity-booping and looking everything up online, and may be part of the reason why so many stores stopped carrying it, or never carried it at all. This reticence seems a little strange, particularly since these shops’ clientele should be predisposed toward consuming print media anyway, so why would they resist a free newsletter?

But the fact of the matter is…not everyone is living online constantly. And if they are online, they aren’t necessarily looking at comic news sites (such as they are). There are some customers for whom “walking into the shop and looking at the rack” is their primary comics news source. Having a free newsletter they can pick up, take home and read seems to be appreciated by all my customers, regardless of how online they may be.

It’s a good sales tool, in that I have a number of folks who’ll walk in with a copy of the paper, folded and marked up with notes, or maybe clippings of specific ads/articles, asking after ordering the items therein. Plus it’s just a good customer relations tool…people like free things. Even those who are just wandering through the store trying to figure out what all this stuff is will ask if they can take a copy, and, you know, sure! Maybe they’ll look through it and, even if they don’t find something they want to buy, they’ll at least get an idea that this is a real business with a whole world of activity that they’d not been exposed to before.

What I enjoy is the occasion person who asks if I print up these CSNs myself. Geez louise, the very thought of putting together one of these every week on top of running the shop just makes me exhausted.

Anyway, I feel like carrying CSN has more positive aspects than negative ones. I can understand if some shops don’t carry it because their budgets are just too tight and need to trim where they can (“do I spend the money on comics to sell, or one a giveaway telling customers what to buy?”). Or maybe they’re just carrying comics as a side thing. But a full-service shop should carry Comic Shop News as well, in my opinion.

• • •

Writer Nancy A. Collins (novelist and former Swamp Thing scribe) is facing some big medical bills, and could use a hand. If you can drop a few bucks in her GoFundMe, I’m sure she’d appreciate it.

The Final ’80s Countdown, Part Twenty-Six.

filed under Categories final countdown 6 Comments

Here we are, at the next-to-last entry in the Final ’80s Countdown, as voted by YOU! And me, but the one I voted for will be the next and final entry in this series. However, I would have voted for many of the comics I’ve covered here, and this one was really, really close….

Zot! (Eclipse Comics 1984-1991)

Well, this will be a tricky entry since I spent a couple or three posts talking about Scott McCloud’s Zot! about a year ago. (Note: the third post mentioned that a fourth post was coming, regarding something I found in a Zot! letters page…and then I got distracted and didn’t cover that topic back then, and I can’t remember now what I found! So I’ll have to peruse my Zot!s and see if I can’t remind myself for yet another future post!)

Anyway, there’s probably going to be some minor duplication of information here, but I’ll see what I can do. For the uninitiated, Zot! is about a young lady in our world named Jenny, who is surprised by a teen gentleman in gravity boots who flies through a portal from his world. His world, by the way, is Earth of the far-flung future of 1965 (Jenny’s, our, Earth being in 1984 at the time). Zachary T. Paleozogt, AKA Zot, is a young hero of his near-utopian Buck Rogers-esque Earth, with its advanced science and space travel and other technological marvels…not to mention the occasional villain!

Jenny of course prefers Zot’s magical world to her own “real” imperfect world of crime and misery an’ such, and spends a lot of time there with Zot and his friends and family through most of the first half of the run (which had a year-and-a-half gap between issues 10 and 11). For the latter part of the series, Zot! has it’s run of “Earth Stories,” in which Zot is trapped on Jenny’s Earth and finds his optimistic point of view contrasted against the real world at large. This run of stories also focus on the various personalities and issues of Jenny’s friends, dealing sensitively with teen romance and homosexuality.

Notably, that aforementioned publishing gap resulted in a shift in presentation and tone for the series. The first ten issues were a generally light-hearted sci-fi adventure (though not without its serious emotional moments), all in color. Starting after the gap, with issue #11, the series goes entirely black and white, and the storytelling becomes more somber and introspective as well. Not that there isn’t still humor and adventure, but there’s a larger emphasis on the emotional worlds these characters inhabit, versus the two literal worlds that are the settings for these stories. Though as I cover in this post, some questions are raised (and never answered) about the actual nature of Zot’s Earth.

It should also be noted that there are a couple of special related issues published along the way, but not by McCloud! Between issue #10 and #11 was the nigh-infamous Zot! #10 1/2 by mini-comics genius Matt Feazell, as seen here scanned from my very own personal copy:


I’ve probably said here before (and told Mr. McCloud his own self) that this was the very first Zot! comic I’d ever read, and went back and bought the previous 10 before #11 came out.

In addition, there’s a Matt Feazell-created Adventures of Zot! #10 1/2 issue #14 1/2. And Feazell provides “10 1/2” Zot adventures as back-ups starting in #11.

The series eventually came to an end with #36, with the only follow-up being a webcomic McCloud created and serialized originally on a comic news/reviews site, and is now hosted at his own webpage. And that’s it for Zot!, a mostly self-contained story aside from those previously mentioned unanswered questions. It’s a wonderful piece of work, with beautiful cartooning supporting a story that mixes adventure, silliness, and real emotion in just the right proportions.

I covered in this post about the various reprints available for the series. You can check there (things haven’t changed since I wrote that), but in short: the black and white issues are mostly reprinted in a book called The Complete Black and White Collection which is currently available. Issues #19 and #20 are only represented by McCloud’s layouts, as the stories had been drawn by another artist.

The first ten color issues have appeared in an out-of-print single volume from the now-defunct Kitchen Sink, and may go for premium pricing. Feazell’s 10 1/2 mini-comic and issue #14 1/2 remain unreprinted to the best of my knowledge. It should be noted that single issues of the series are relatively inexpensive though it may take some tracking down. The Feazell issues may be a little harder to spot.

I feel like a Zot! omnibus collecting everything together would make for a handsome, if mildly cumbersome, package. At the very least, it would be nice to have the first 10 issues back in print as a necessary, I think, contrast to the back half of the series.

Zot! stands as one of the classic indies of the period, and well worth seeking out if you haven’t read it. McCloud may be more famous now for his Understanding Comics series of books, but I’ll always have a soft spot for Zot, Jenny, Butch, Dekko, 9-Jack-9, Woody, Terry, Uncle Max, and so many more.

You know what?

filed under Categories low content mode 3 Comments

I need a small break, so I’m going to let today’s post slide and I’ll be back on Monday with some real content. Perhaps the penultimate entry in the Favorite ’80s Indie Title series? We shall see!

Be good out there, and I’ll see you in a couple of days.

How much sin must a man commit in a single lifetime to end up with two Return of Swamp Thing enamel pins?

filed under Categories pal plugging, podcast, swamp thing 2 Comments

So a while back, I was a Kickstarter backer for the Rifftrax-ed version of the 1989 cinematic classic The Return of Swamp Thing, now currently available here. As part of my Kickstartering package, I received the following enamel pin:

A couple of weeks ago, my friend Brook (the same one who turned me on to this piece of Nancy art I bought, as well as this “Nobody Loves the Hulk” record) came back from a trip to Georgia, where he visited the Graveface Museum. While there, he picked up for me…a Return of Swamp Thing enamel pin:

Both clearly inspired by the film’s classy and sedate movie posters:


…of which that’s one, and you can see others here (where you can see which posters provided inspiration for which pin). Do I have a Return of Swamp Thing poster? You bet! Do I have the one that has the words “Sheer Nightgowns!” in a balloon burst? I’m afraid so.

And is that all the new Swamp Thing stuff your pal Mike has in his hands? Why no, of course not, thanks to my little envelope-stuffing bull pal, Bully, who mailed me this sticker designed by comics superstar Kyle Starks:


The real mystery here, of course, is how did Bully hold the pen with his little hooves when addressing the letter? Anyway, a big thanks to Bully for this surprise gift!

AND WAIT, THERE’S MORE! Longtime pals Matt and Chris have reached episode #666 of their longrunning podcast War Rocket Ajax! To celebrate this most diabolically evil of achievements, the Bits Boys called for contributions to their regular “Thursday Night Raw” segment revolving around Hell, demons, and all sorts of other deviltry. For those unfamiliar, this segment seeks to find and rank the “rawest” moments in comics.

I had an entry ready to submit for a while now, but never got around to it…but this seemed like the opportune time given the theme. My entry, of course, being from Swamp Thing Annual #2 (1985) by Alan Moore, Steve Bissette and John Totleben, in which Swamp Thing, having journeyed to Hell to rescue Abby, encounters his old nemesis Arcane:


Perhaps…too raw? What do Matt & Chris think of my submission? Other than probably being glad I didn’t make another Frank Miller’s The Spirit joke? You’ll have to listen to find out!

(Also, for the benefit of the boys who appear to have forgotten…I have been a sponsor of the show! Granted, it’s been five years…probably about time to do so again!)