Mikester

Something I was discussing with pal Corey earlier…all the serialized stories that ran in Action Comics Weekly that have never turned up in any collections anywhere. It may be a bit late for the Deadman stories by Mike Baron, Kelley Jones, and others, given the fate of the recent Deadman series, and that the Green Lantern serials (featuring work by Peter David and Gil Kane, not on the same stories) haven’t been collected is a darn shame…but the real tragedy is that the Sunday page-style strips by Roger Stern and Curt Swan from this series are now out of print. This was good stuff…a breath of classic Superman air in the midst of the hot Byrne/Wolfman revamp gale (“he said, stretching out his really awful metaphor”).

ADDITIONAL LINKAGE:

I found this mind-boggling convention sketch by Tim Vigil of the death of Green Lantern supporting character Katma Tui (an event from one of the Action Comics Weekly GL serials).

Fark‘s latest Photoshop thread features “situation’s [sic] where a superhero’s powers would be a liability.” High speed connections would help…dial-ups, pack a lunch while you wait for it to load.

1. Apparently I’m providing content to Retrocrush. Hey, you’re welcome!

2. Finally, some Groo news!

3. The new issue of Supernatural Law, #39, has a parody of Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan…even down to the art style and eyestrain-o-vision typesetting. Fairly amusing, and worth a look for Acme Novelty Library fans. Look for the cover with the Art Adams purple gorilla!

4. Well, now that Jim Valentino is no longer publisher of Image Comics, you know what that probably means, don’t you? More Shadowhawk, I bet!

4a. Actually, I wouldn’t say “no” to more normalman, but I’m not holding my breath.

5. According to pal Ian, Adrienne Barbeau was on Bill O’Reilly’s show, where Bill complimented her on her performance in the Swamp Thing film! Oh, this is the very definition of mixed emotions.

So at the store today we received an mass-mailing e-mail from some comic publishing company, asking if we wanted to host a signing with some of their creators.

However, due to some screw-up on their end, any e-mail sent to that publisher’s address was immediately sent back out to all the people on the mailing list. Lots and lots of messages, most of which read “PLEASE REMOVE ME FROM YOUR MAILING LIST,” ended up in our (and everyone else’s) mailbox.

Bad, right? And this wasn’t the first time this particular publisher has had this problem…the same thing happened a few months ago.

It gets worse. Some of the retailers on the mailing list, sensing an opportunity, start sending e-mails advertising themselves, conventions, what have you, to the publisher’s e-mail address on purpose, effectively spamming everyone else stuck on this godforsaken mailing list. Yes, really. Like we don’t have enough spam, and like we don’t have enough people on this mailing list continually sending “take me off this list” messages. We really need your advertising, too.

Now, I’m not going to name names (though I could…I’ve saved every message), but this really cheesed my crackers, and I hope the next time this happens (and it probably will), those would-be spammers keep their e-mails to themselves and not make a confusing situation worse.

Confidential to the person who found my site with a Google search for “Sealab 2021 slash fiction:”

Sorry, I got nothin’.

Agent JP e-mailed me about this Bernard Krigstein site, where you can read several of his early comic works, including a Wildcat story he did for DC Comics.

1. Re: the X-Men Reloaded thing…insert snarky comment about being able to save lots of money on X-Men books here.

2. Some more thoughts about the upcoming Firestorm series…as I said before, I read the entire previous series. All 100 issues, plus the annuals. The first, say, couple dozen issues are the best, and still stand up as good comics. The last couple dozen issues, which feature a drastically different take on the character, are pretty good as well. The middle fifty issues are, well, not all that good, really. I liked them when I was younger, but looking back at them now…well, they still have some nostalgic appeal to me, but I don’t want to see a new series that treads the same old ground.

3. Abadazad is just as good as I’d hoped it would be. I was buying it mainly for the rare comics illustration job by Mike Ploog, but thankfully J.M. DeMatteis seems to be on his game here. This issue is all set-up, but it’s the best kind of set-up…you can’t wait for the next issue.

4. Picked up Nabiel Kanan’s Now & Then just on a whim…the art of the lead story (described in that link) appealed to me, but the rest of the book (old music industry gags, some other one page strips) didn’t really do much for me. That first story is very nicely done, however. Take a look, sez I.

5. I have no good excuse for liking Superman/Batman, but I like it anyway. It’s just a big, loud, dumb comic book and it knows it. Perfect. I’m a little tired of the shared Supes/Bats narrative voices, though.

from Batman #408 (June 1987) by Max Allan Collins, Chris Warner, and Mike DeCarlo

(thanks to pal JP)

Back in the good old days of 1983, when Atari was still top of the heap of the video game world, Marvel Comics published seven issues of their comic book-sized video game magazine Blip…actually, when I originally wrote that sentence, I said “three issues” — a quick look in ye olde Overstreet tells me differently. I don’t think I’ve ever seen 4 through 7! How embarrassing.

Anyway, you at least have to credit Marvel with trying something different…and by different I mean “waiting until just before the big video game crash to jump on the bandwagon instead of doing it a little sooner.” The two issues I have before me, #1 and #2, are comprised mostly of articles, with very little actual comic-story content in them. The first issue has the article “Video Games of the Stars,” where they speak to a bunch of people you barely remember as well as Bruce Boxleitner, who talks about having to play several video games at the Disney studios to prep for Tron. There are also hints for playing Missile Command and Centipede, the appalling “Video Jokes” section (“Q: How do you keep the Krytolians from charging in Missile Command? A: Take away their credit cards!” — they at least admit these are bad jokes, but, really, there’s no excuse), an in-depth look at Pitfall and Dig Dug, and, best of all, a six page comics story featuring Mario and Donkey Kong by Steven Grant and Bob Hall:

According to this page, this is the very first comic book appearance of Mario. I’m sure that’s important to somebody.



Issue #2 had more of the same, but also included the article that provides the topmost image of this post, “Spider-Man Plays ‘Spider-Man!'” Fourteen kids, two guys in bodysuits, and Stan Lee all crammed around a 13″ screen TV to play an Atari game that might vaguely remind one of Spider-Man, sort of — there’s your article. In all fairness, the Spider-Man video game was kind of fun, and pretty challenging. Hey, that’s all we had back then, so you kids with your Zeldas and your Grand Theft Autos keep your snickering to yourselves.

That article is followed by a six-page comic by David Kraft and John Romita, where the Green Goblin, having escaped jail, happens upon a couple kids playing that very video game from the previous pages. The Goblin has the only rational reaction to the game: “Who has created this outrage? Who has humiliated me for their own petty profit?” Anyway, Spidey fights the Goblin, Gobbie’s hauled off to the hoosegow to do his nickel up the river (or, er, something like that), and, wait for it, the prison has a brand new recreation facility stocked with copies of the new Spider-Man video game! Oh, the painful irony.

As video game magazines go, Blip wasn’t too bad. For a buck, it was less than half the cost of other video game mags at the time, and you got pretty much the same content — just with lower production values. And comics!