Mikester

We’ve lost one of the comic artform’s pioneers…Will Eisner has passed away. I’m sure we all wish his friends and loved ones the best.

According to the 2005 “IN/OUT” list at the Washington Post, “Ultimate Marvel” is OUT, “DC All-Stars” is IN.

(list found via TV Tattle)

That’s the opening panel for “Jimmy’s D-Day Adventure,” from Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #86 (July 1965)…how does Jimmy find himself in such an unusual predicament? Well, lemme ‘splain….

The story beings with our intrepid Daily Planet reporter at the Pentagon, watching vintage World War II films from a recently-opened Nazi archive. Jimmy looks admiringly at the canisters of film on the table next to the projector: “Those cans of film contain the greatest untold stories of the war!”

The next day, Jimmy opens up his carrying case, which he had conveniently left on the table next to the canisters while watching the film, and sure enough: “Oh, oh! One of the cans of film accidentally slipped inside my case!” Yeah, sure, Jimmy.

Anyway, he pops the film into his projector for his own private viewing, and what does he see but…someone who looks just like him, hanging with Hitler!

How to solve this mystery? Delve into old military records? Do actual reseach? Not in a Superman comic, mister! Fortunately for Jimmy, 1) he was able to get an authentic military outfit from a nearby costume shop, 2) he took German in high school, and 3) his scientist pal Professor Potter just happened to have given him an experimental time machine. The time machine, by the way, is a “time-bomb,” which apparently explodes and sends you hurtling back in time:

Seems like that would be slightly dangerous, but apparently it works, as Jimmy finds himself back in World War II. Although he spots General Eisenhower, Jimmy decides that it’s more important to go looking for his Nazi doppleganger, so he heads off to get behind enemy lines.

Eventually, Jimmy gets in over his head and finds himself pinned down in a battle zone with a paratroop squad. Disguising himself as a German soldier, Jimmy leads the squad to the enemy lines, telling the Nazi forces there that he has captured the Americans and that he’s “take the prisoners to the woods and execute them!” Of course, it’s just a ruse to allow the American soldiers to escape. Jimmy, however, sticks around, as he figures this is the best way to infiltrate the enemy army and find his mysterious double.

The German general confronts Jimmy (or “Von Olsen,” as he is now known) and asks how he “captured” the squad. For some reason, Jimmy claims that the “crystal ball” part of the time machine he’s lugging around is, in fact, a real crystal ball, allowing him to see the future and predict the movements of the enemy! In short order, Jimmy’s supposed clairvoyant powers (actually, a cheat sheet of WWII events and battles that he has hidden in his sleeve) are exploited by the Nazis. However, the story carefully notes, Jimmy never gives the Nazis enough information or time to really act on his predictions, so I don’t know why they put up with him for so long.

But put up they do, and it’s not long before Jimmy is brought before Adolph Hitler himself! Seeking to prove his “powers” to Hitler, Jimmy predicts another attack:

Again, the prediction comes too late to really be an advantage to the Nazis, and this pattern continues for several weeks:

Finally, the Nazis are fed up. They finally realize there’s something fishy with this Von Olsen guy, since all he ever does is predict Nazi defeats. Hermann Goering decides to test Jimmy’s loyalty….

Hitler and his entourage (including Jimmy) stop in at a Belgian farmhouse for a lunchtime meeting, and are waited upon by a peasant girl who is very obviously upset at having to serve her “guests.” As she is setting out the meals, she drops a piece of paper that, Jimmy discovers, is a message to the Allies reporting on German troop movements! Surprisingly, Jimmy rats her out…only to be told that this was a test of his loyalty, that this girl is in fact Lotte Lutz, a Gestapo agent!

Jimmy laughs to himself as he reflects on his vast breadth of knowledge: “She gave herself away! Belgian peasant girls usually wear wooden shoes, like the Dutch, not fancy high-heeled ones like this dame!”

Lotte Lutz is impressed with Jimmy, even as he reflects on the odd coincidence of her name while stretching his acting skills to the limit:

His loyalty proven, Hitler promotes Jimmy, and the ceremony is filmed…providing the very footage Jimmy saw on his “accidentally” acquired film reel! What a surprise, if you happened to miss the very first panel of the story.

Shortly afterwards, Hitler asks “Von Olsen” to predict the outcome of their next battle…which, as it turns out, is the Battle of the Bulge! “There will be a big break-through,” Jimmy responds ambiguously.

However, the next day as Jimmy returns to the Nazi headquarters, Hitler is pissed! Jimmy has failed to predict an assassination attempt on Hitler’s life by Hitler’s own officers! Believing Jimmy to be in on the conspiracy, Hitler orders him searched and Jimmy’s cheat sheet is discovered:

The jig is up…Jimmy beats feet, with Goering and Himmler hot on his tail. As he charges out of the headquarters, Lotte Lutz is waiting outside with her gun drawn. “Maybe this L L will be my doom, after all,” thinks Jimmy. “Usually L Ls bring me luck!” he adds, though I don’t think that particular assertion is supported by any other Superman family story, ever.

However, fortune does fall Jimmy’s way, as Lutz is the worst shot ever (or, perhaps, has fallen head over heels in love with the young time-travelling reporter and secretly decides to help…we never know for sure) and manages to shoot off pieces of the giant blue swastika over the headquarter’s entrance:

An S.S. guard throws a grenade at Jimmy, but as it goes off, Jimmy is whisked back into the future as the “time-bomb’s” energy supply has expended itself. Also, the film Jimmy acquired though unseemly means has disintegrated due to exposure to the time-bomb’s effects, destroying all evidence of his collusion with the Nazi forces.

The story wraps up with Jimmy extending his particular “L L = luck” delusion to ridiculous extremes:

Not shown: Jimmy getting hauled off by the feds for stealing and destroying U.S. government property.

Found via Boing Boing…artist (and frequent early Mad Magazine contributor) Frank Kelly Freas has passed away.

I was thinking about Heidi MacDonald’s comment from her excellent year-end wrap-up that Powers is selling 10,000 more copies now that it’s published by Marvel instead of Image, and whether 10,000 more people are reading it only because it’s Marvel. I thought I’d discuss our experience with this particular comic.

At our store, yes, we did bump orders up on the new Powers #1, for two reasons. First, it is a number one for a relatively popular series by a name writer, and it gets a great deal of press. We thought maybe people would use this new series as a jumping-on point.* And second, it’s a Marvel first issue…whether anyone wants to admit it or not, there are comic buyers who buy all Marvel #1s**, if not all Marvels period. (There is a third reason, I suppose…the fact that Marvel no longer supports reorders, requiring dealers to bump orders up just in case there is excess demand.)

Although the first couple issues of Powers did sell through for us, even at the higher orders, it has since gone back down to its Image numbers and we have adjusted our orders accordingly. (And yes, we do carry and prominently feature the Powers trade paperbacks, and we were trying to keep some of those new readers on the title.) I think we’ll probably see that “10,000” number diminish over the next few months, if other retailers are having the same experience that we’re having with this comic.

Marvel’s other ICON book, Kabuki, has gone through a similar rise and decline, though I’m pretty sure sales have even dropped to lower than pre-Marvel levels for us.

On a slightly related subject, has anyone noticed any increased demand for Marvel’s Amazing Fantasy title? Both pal Dorian and I have noted that Marvel’s promotion for this title includes how it’s being covered by the mainstream press in regards to its Latina lead, but none of this coverage has appeared to translate to sales. It’s selling to the same people who buy Marvel comics, and not to anyone new. It’s also being cancelled and restarted with a new #1 and a new name (Arana), which tells me that our sales situation isn’t unique.

In other news:

In my half-baked year-end round-up, I forgot to note Eightball #23 as one of my favorite comics from 2004. Please forgive me, Alan!

Scott at Polite Dissent lists his awards for Comic Book Medicine in 2004. Who else could have made such a list? Who else would dare?

Congratulations to Fred Hembeck on the two year anniversary of his fine site.

EDIT: Oh, right, the Swamp Thing Bad Seed contest…winners will be announced this week!

* I know this flies in the face of previous experience regarding series restarts by Marvel, in which just as many (if not more) people jump off, but we had high hopes, apple pie in the sky hopes.

** Which was the only way we were able to move any copies of Spider-Man: India, for example.

From the letters page of Amazing Spider-Man #113 (October 1972):

Aside from Asgard apparently being in New York, I’m having a hard time believing that there actually were “nay-sayers” to John Romita’s art. I wonder what those people would have thought about some of the artists Spidey was afflicted with all those years later.

Unless, of course, these people were bothered by being able to see Peter Parker’s eyes through the mask:

…which always reminds me of this guy:

(Diabolik cover image found on this fan site in the Netherlands.)

Okay, the absolute last reminder about this: the Swamp Thing Bad Seed contest ends tonight, so if you’re planning on sending 25 words or less to contest (at) progressiveruin.com telling me why you want one of the three copies of this book I have to give away, you’d better get the lead out.

…well, sorta. There are plenty of good year-in-reviews all over the comicsweblogosphere (I enjoyed pal Tom‘s various lists), and I wasn’t sure if I’d really have the time nor the inclination to add to the year-end fray. I did come up with a couple smart-alecky awards (the Tempest in a Teapot award to Identity Crisis, the Don’t Get Your Hopes Up award to the Sin City movie trailer), but that was about it. (Be sure to catch pal Dorian’s awards as well.)

(Speaking of awards…the newest issue of Wizard includes the ballot for their fan awards, and, as I do every year, I fill it out with write-in nominees since, oddly enough, I generally don’t care for any of their predetermined choices. I think one year I voted for Chris Ware as “Best Letterer.” Don’t look at me like that – he is a good letterer! I wonder if whoever is presumably counting the votes even bothers with my ballot, or just tosses it out.)

Anyway, lemme see what I can do here with my own year-end review:

Favorite comics: Well, I’m going to take the unpopular position (nothing new) and include Identity Crisis in this list, if only because of the discussion it’s engendered. Granted, a good portion of the discussion was along the lines of “how dare DC publish such perversion,” but there was some rational discussion out there as well.

Other favorites include Phil Foglio’s beautiful Girl Genius, Grant Morrison and Cameron Stewart’s nuttily wonderful Seaguy, Brian Wood and Becky Cloonan’s Demo, Jim Rugg and Brian Maruca’s Street Angel, the Hernandez Brothers’ Love and Rockets, Stuff of Dreams #2 by Kim Deitch, Plastic Man by Kyle Baker (and occasionally Scott Morse), Ex Machina by Brian K. Vaughan and Tony Harris, Scurvy Dogs by Andrew Boyd and Ryan Yount, Promethea by Alan Moore and J.H. Williams III, and others I’m sure I’m forgetting.

Oh, and Swamp Thing, of course. You can probably just include Swamp Thing as a given in any appropriate category.

Most surprising comic: I’ll probably have to go with Adam Strange. I’ve always liked the character, so I was looking forward to the series…and I had no idea it was going to be such a wonderfully-illustrated comic. Artist Pascal Ferry really made this a comic to treasure…and the movie-serial style writing by Andy Diggle ain’t all that bad, either.

Biggest disappointment: Not getting Crossgen’s American Power for Free Comic Book Day. I really wanted to see this, and for all the wrong reasons. You just knew this was going to be fantastic.

Favorite graphic novel: I’m gonna go with Mister O by Lewis Trondheim. I just reread it a couple days ago, and it still cracks me up. It’s just page after page of a little guy trying to get across a chasm, told in tiny panels, and it’s really very funny.

Best reprint: Thank you, Dark Horse Comics, for bringing us Little Lulu in convenient trade paperback format. And thank you, Fantagraphics, for The Complete Peanuts.

Favorite manga: The absolutely terrifying Gyo. I mean, honestly, what’s wrong with this guy? (And yeah, I probably shouldn’t seperate “manga” out from “comics,” but I’m old and set in my ways.)

Best comics-related thingie in another medium: I wanted to say American Splendor, but even though I didn’t see it until this year, it is from 2003, so I guess it’s out of the running. I did enjoy Spider-Man 2, but mostly for the fact that 1) they actually gave us a live action Doctor Octopus that worked* (thanks to actor Alfred Molina) and 2) they gave the people what they wanted – more J. Jonah Jameson. It certainly wasn’t for the least charismatic superhero/girlfriend couple of all time. And no, I haven’t seen The Incredibles yet…until I find a way to destroy cell phones that ring during the film with the sheer force of my mind, I have no real desire to return to a movie theatre.

So, I think I’ll go with Cartoon Network’s Justice League Unlimited. It’s fun, it’s generally well-written, it’s giving us superheroes that I’m sure none of us ever expected to see in a cartoon (Nemesis? Aztek???), and it’s probably the only way most of today’s kids are going to know any of these characters.

The gift that keeps on giving: Hey, I have a way to mention the American Splendor movie anyway, thanks to something pal Dorian said the other day. Of all the comic-related movies that have come out over the last few years, the one that is still driving sales of books to this day is American Splendor. Even the Ghost World TPB finally has petered out to normal sales levels. But boy, we still get plenty of people who want the comic that the movie was based on. Thankfully there are a couple trades still in print.

Favorite comics weblog: I don’t want to leave anyone out, so I’m just going to say that I appreciate all your weblogs and the work that you put into them. (Well, okay, there’s that one guy, but I like all the rest of you.) I haven’t brought them up much lately, but some of you who’ve been reading this site for a while know that I love old fanzines…and the comicsweblogosphere is like having a bunch of brand new fanzines every single day! I think it’s swell.

* Aside from that scene where he falls to the ground and shouts “NOOOOOOOOO!” My cliche-sense is tingling!