Mikester

Or it could just as easily be a prequel to 1966 Batman.

filed under Categories batman 1 Comment


Was just browsing the DC Comics section of HBO Max, hoping they’d added back on those remastered Shazam! ’70s TV shows I didn’t finish watching on the DC Universe channel, where I saw they had the first two seasons of Pennyworth available. Well, I gave the first episode a try over the weekend…and now I’m about four episodes in and it’s pretty great.

When I first heard they were doing an “Origin of Batman’s butler Alfred” series, I was…well, not “skeptical,” because, you know, whatever, do your show, but more “indifferent.” As of a couple years ago, I had already been mostly burnt out on the sheer amount of superhero TV and had really cut out a bunch of the shows I’d been watching, so I wasn’t really in the mood to start up yet another series. Helping that decision was that Pennyworth was originally airing on Epix, a streaming channel I didn’t, and still don’t, have.

Now in the couple of years since the show launched, whatever little I’d heard about Pennyworth was very positive, with folks describing it as kind of a wild ride. And now that I’ve seen it…yup, that’s a fairly apt description. It’s an action/adventure set in 1960-ish alternate-history England, that in a way feels like similar adventure shows made in the ’60s, along the lines of The Avengers and such. Only, you know, with more swearing. Great opening credit sequence, too.

I said somewhat naively on the Twitters “yeah, the Alfred in this series I could definitely see growing up to be the Alfred in Gotham,” which was another buckwild TV take on the Batman saga. Apparently this connection, or lack thereof, had been a point of contention since Pennyworth started. The two shows are very much of a piece, and at that link there it quotes one of the honchos from the show as just straight out saying “yes, Pennyworth is a prequel to Gotham, so I guess that’s that.

Anyway, good show, glad I finally tried it out, and now I just need to figure out when to watch my free entertainment time seems to just grow smaller and smaller nowadays. But the seasons are a short 10-episode run apiece, and the episodes go over easy. I should also note that the show hasn’t really leaned into “look at this, this will be a Batman thing in the future!” much at all, aside from the presence of Bruce Wayne’s eventual parents Thomas Wayne and Martha Wayne née Kane. I’m hoping it stays that way, but I wouldn’t put it past this show to lay a giant penny on us at some point.

I’d like to see Marvel Vs. DC get reprinted someday as well.

filed under Categories dc comics, marvel, publishing 12 Comments


So as I’m sure you’re aware, JLA/Avengers is finally getting a new printing via the comics industry charity Hero Initiative, with all profits going to it. That is, all profits from direct distribution to retailers, but more on that in a second.

What’s putting folks out about this particular minor miracle, which saw Marvel and DC work together for the first time in years in order to allow this republication to happen, is that so few copies, relatively speaking, are going to be available. There’s a printing cap of 7,000 copies, for reasons I’ve seen here and there on the internet ranging from “that’s all we can get printed with the time and resources available” to “lawyers, man, whatcha gonna do?” No idea what the actual answer is, beyond the fact that Hero Initiative probably didn’t sign on to keep the book in print forever, so a max print run had to be set somewhere.

And as you also know, the legendary Mr. Pérez recently announced that he’s stricken with a terminal condition, with only months to live, hence the rush to get this book out while he can still see it. It’s nice that Marvel and DC were able to come to terms to allow a charity reprinting of this series, for which I presume “neither of us are getting the money from this so we’ve got nothing to fight about” helped things along.

But like I said, only 7,000 copies are going to make it out to the world with this printing, minus however many copies get damaged during distribution to retailers. One would hope that DC and Marvel are currently looking at the frenzy this limited availability is causing and are reconsidering any future publishing plans regarding this title. I know there’s some hoohar over profit-sharing on this book, to the point where not publishing it at all and making no money on it is somehow preferable to getting it out there and making at least a little money on it. I’ve said in the past that my solution is just let each publisher release their own trade paperback of JLA/Avengers (or Avengers/JLA for the Marvel book) and keep all profits from their own publication. But I’m sure there are legal/financial reasons from even that being able to happen.

Anyway, all I know is that I’ve been deluged with requests for this book, and I’ve started a first-come/first-served waiting list. For once, the people who actually want the book to read and enjoy were in reasonably early, while the Usual Suspects with the eBay auction listings all ready to go are a day late and a Bitcoin short. But make no mistake, this book is going to be flogged at some sky-high prices the second it’s out. Way to honor George Pérez, guys.

But because there is a limited quantity, and order allocations are almost certain to occur, it is very possible the only person on the list I’ll be able to provide for is the first one who got his name on the list. It is actually very possible, depending on how other stores place their orders, that I get zero copies. If enough bastards out there type “7000” into the order slot on the distributor website to get max allocations, maybe there won’t be enough left over for anyone else.

I’m guessing I’ll get at least the one copy, though. I am ordering a larger number of total copies under the assumption it’s going to be reduced. I was guessing that I’d likely only get about 10% of what I ordered and placed numbers accordingly, but I’m beginning to think 10% is highly optimistic. I also don’t want to order too high, then hear “oh, we’ve upped the print run, everyone’s getting every copy they ordered!” and then I’m stuck with all 7,000 copies. Er, I mean, someone is stuck with that many, I certainly didn’t order 7,000.

Ultimately I hope Marvel and DC do see that people want a nice collected edition of this beautifully-illustrated goofy mess of a comic. The amount of love Pérez put into this comic shouldn’t be forgotten by history or kept out of the hands of fans new to the hobby. I mean, right now the Justice League and the Avengers are at what may very well be their height of cultural awareness (admittedly for drastically different, and not always good, reasons). Strike while that iron (man) is hot.

I am glad it’s back, even for as small a print run as it is, but I’m hoping this leads the way to more copies of it from Marvel and/or DC.

P.S. I always wonder how much negotiation when into things like that cover above. “Superman has to be taller than Captain America.” “Okay, fine, but Cap is standing in front.” “We’ll give you that, but the Atom has to be standing on his shield.”

P.P.S. When reading a few online articles about this, came across one site giving a brief history of Marvel/DC team-ups and saying

“…Doomsday Clock noted a future Marvel and DC crossover called Secret Crisis, but it’s not certain if this is actually in the works.”

NO, IT’S NOT IN THE WORKS, it’s just something Geoff Johns threw in there while making his point about Big Crossover Events. Not saying it can’t happen, especially after Disney buys Warner Bros., but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t intended as an Actual Thing in the Works.

P.P.P.S. Variant cover-age Monday posts are returning, they’re just resting for a moment.

“I can see you!”

filed under Categories promo, undergrounds 8 Comments

So the other day my former boss Ralph brought in another box of comics for me to sell in my store on his behalf. He had emailed me a list of the books ahead of time, and as I was perusing it I spotted a title I didn’t recognize. “CCA Comix” was the name, and by the use of the term “comix” I presumed it was some kind of underground.

When Ralph showed up, I asked about the CCA Comix, which I had thought maybe, because of those initials, it was a book critical of the Comics Code Authority or somesuch. But no, what it was, was this:

…a short comics pamphlet on the importance of tree conservation and the usages for paper, particularly for the purposes of packaging. The “CCA” in the title stands for “Container Corporation of America.”

When Ralph was telling me about the comic, he described the art as a cross between Ernie Bushmiller and Robert Crumb, at which I point I said “yes, I’ll be keeping this.” And looking through it…I think that’s a fairly good description, though maybe more George Hansen than Crumb, if I may split hairs a tad. The actual art is by Bob Zoell, a creator of fine art of some note.

This panel stuck out to me right away, being the fan that I am of self-referentialism:

This is the first page of the comic, for a more representative sampling:

What’s wild about this comic is that Ralph had said he couldn’t find a trace of it in a price guide or online. I looked in the Grand Comics Database and it wasn’t there (so I suppose I, as a card-carrying but not terribly active contributor to the site, should fix that). I even used the Internet Wayback Machine to check the old ugcomix.com site to see if it was listed there (even though this is more an educational giveaway comic that looks like an underground than an actual underground) and didn’t spot it there either.

I meant to ask Ralph if he’d checked one of the newer underground price guides in addition to the original Jay Kennedy guide from the early ’80s (yes, the prices are out of date, but the info is usually still good). I’m guessing he had, but I wanted to double-check. Anyway, neither of us searched The Entire Internet looking for this, so if someone spots a reference to this comic out there in the wild, please let me know.

EDIT: Reader John added a link to this PDF in the comments, featuring the following blurb from a 1977 industry newsletter:

Interesting that the copyright date in the comic itself is 1975, but here it is being plugged in late ’77. Took a while to print? Maybe they had a bunch still sitting around after that initial ’75 distribution? …And yes, they spelled it “Slugo.” How dare they.

Trying to scratch that itch.

filed under Categories indies, publishing 1 Comment

So I was processing a stack of Tick comics acquired from my previous place of employment — stack pictured here:

…and boy, there sure were a lot of Tick comics released in the 1999-2002 period. (Of course, the one on top of that stack is from a few years earlier, but I assure you, those are mostly 1999-2001 Tick books.)

I mean, there was Tick: Heroes of the City and Tick Color and Tick and Arthur and Tick & Artie (not to be confused with Tick and Arthur) and The Tick’s Big Cruise Vacation Special and multiple Big Yule Log Specials and The Tick: Circus Maximus and The Tick’s Golden Age Comic and The Tick: The Pseudo Edition (supposedly #13 of creator Ben Edlund’s original Tick series, but not by Edlund) and The Tick’s Incredible Internet Comic and a couple Big Halloween Specials, one of which is inexplicably pricey in the secondary market, and well you get the idea. Perhaps not a patch on the number of Batman books published during the same period, but certainly a lot for a black and white indie title being published during one of the comic industry’s leaner periods.

Now I suppose the popularity of the mid-1990s Tick cartoon spurred the release of all these Tick funnybooks, as well as the then-impending, and then almost immediately cancelled, 2011 live-action TV show. And yes, Tick comics were still relatively popular with readers during this period, so a market definitely existed for all these different publications.

Currently, there are no Tick comics currently being released. Aside from giveaways for Free Comic Book Day and Halloweenfest events, the most recent Tick comic is Tick 2017, released specifically to capitalize on then-new now-defunct Amazon Prime series. I mean, I went back and looked at the original order solicitations, and they specifically cite that TV show, so I’m reasonably sure that was the impetus for this iteration of the comic.

I was a big fan of Ben Edlund’s original 12 issue Tick series. A college buddy of mine had talked about the first issue and it sounded funny, and given I’d just started work at a comic book store, I was in the perfect position to check it out for myself. And I happily stuck with the series through its very erratically-published run.

As it turned out, while I really liked the Tick, I think I only really specifically liked Ben Edlund‘s Tick. I tried other Tick comics, especially after it became obvious Edlund wasn’t going to be producing very many on his own and I wanted more of the character. I sampled many of the spin-offs (I think that Karma Tornado was one of the first) and…they didn’t really do anything for me. They didn’t feel right…like the balance of jokes was off, or the tone wasn’t right, or something.

It’s like reading Plastic Man comics not by Jack Cole, or Peanuts comics not by Charles Schulz, or Howard the Duck stories not written by Steve Gerber. There’s an ineffable quality imparted upon these creations by their creators that other writers/artists can’t really duplicate, and the Tick, at least for me, is no exception. (At least in comic book form, as all the different TV shows are great.)

This is not me being down on all these comics. They have fans, people love ’em, that’s great. They just Weren’t For Me, and not every comic has to be. But I really would like a new, ongoing Tick series of some kind, even if Edlund isn’t around to do it. The Tick is still a popular character people have a lot of affection for, and its absence from the stands is felt. Something new, with a strong creative team, published on a regular basis — that’s what I’d like. Of course, in this weird marketplace we find ourselves in, even building it is no guarantee they’ll come, if I may paraphrase that one movie.

End of an era.

filed under Categories retailing 10 Comments

From the “About Us” page on the old Ralph’s Comic Corner website:

“In the late 1970s, Ralph Holt joined forces with a friend of his and began selling comic books and baseball cards at the Santa Barbara swap meet and conventions all over California. Eventually they opened up the Andromeda Bookshop, a store specializing in science fiction books and comic books, in Santa Barbara, CA. After a couple of years, Ralph decided to head out on his own. He made his way about 40 miles down the coast to Ventura, CA, and, in May of 1980, opened up the very first incarnation of Ralph’s Comic Corner. Originally located in the back of a thrift store (where it literally was just a corner), he carried only new and used comics. Ralph moved to a larger location, with his very own storefront, down the road in 1984. In 1990 Ralph moved the shop across the street to an even larger store. In 1997, the store doubled in size again, having moved next door to its current location of 2379 E. Main Street, becoming the Cultural Hub of Ventura County. Along the way, the store added trading cards (both sport and non-sport), role-playing games, science fiction paperbacks, card games, trade paperbacks, T-shirts, posters, board games, Japanese animation and manga, Pogs, and everything else you might expect to find at a Giant Pop Art Emporium.”

Not mentioned in that history I wrote for that site way back when:

1. My hiring in 1988 to replace departing employee Ray.

2. Seth, who’d been working at a comic shop north of us, coming down and buying out the gaming half of the store in the mid-ish 2000s, thus launching his own store “Seth’s Games and Anime.” Which means, yes, there were two stores operating side by side in the same location. Even, for a while, with different hours, which took some doing, let me tell you.

3. A number of years later, Seth would take over pretty much the entire shop save for Ralph’s own back issues. And eventually Ralph would stop being an active participant in the shop, meaning the entire store became Seth’s Games and Anime. (Ralph would continue to have an office there, and sell comics independently of the shop…does this all sound complicated? It is. At one point between Points 2 and 3 I was getting two paychecks, one from Ralph, one from Seth, which meant I have to keep track of what hours I worked for whom.)

So anyway, as of Point 3 “Ralph’s Comic Corner” pretty much stopped being its own storefront, and while there was a continuity of existence between Ralph’s store and Seth’s, the Comic Corner as we knew it was over.

Which takes me to the current sad news: Seth’s Games and Anime will be closing its doors for good at the end of this month.

As anyone who’s been following my social media probably knows, I’ve had some feelings about this. Now I’m at my own shop, a few towns over, and have been for years. This closing doesn’t directly impact me. But nonetheless, it’s left me somewhat discombobulated since I’d heard the news.

Part of it is that continuity of existence I mentioned before. Yes, it’s no longer Ralph’s Comic Corner, nor has it been in a while, but it’s still where I worked for many years, learning the trade and creating relationships, several of which I still maintain at my current shop. I moved the contents of this store twice, I built shelves and arranged stock, created displays and tried hard to make it a friendly, accessible place. Working for Ralph’s and later Seth’s represents well over a quarter century of my life.

As pal Andrew put it on Twitter:

“It was the apprenticeship and booster rocket that helped get you where you are now.”

Ralph’s Comic Corner, and the shop it became later, loom large in my history and development. And I guess I always sort of took for granted that they’d always be there. But as I was there the other night, picking up some stock for my own store at Seth’s urging, I knew this would be the last time I’d be seeing the inside of this building. It definitely wasn’t the comic shop I remember, but I could look around and see where it had been, beneath the new arrangement of fixtures and varieties of stock that existed there now. When I come back and the building’s been rented out to, I don’t know, the Screen Doors for Submarines store, even that connection to my past will be gone.

So, it’s been a pretty sad day for a lot of us, whether we were old-timey Ralph’s customers or folks who just started popping into Seth’s recently. I of course wish everyone there the best.

Ralph will still be around…I’m still doing business with him, and I’m sure he’ll turn up filling in for me at the shop once in a while.

Speaking of Ralph, pal (and also former Ralph’s employee) Cully sent me a scan of a panel that appeared in Gilbert Hernandez’s Luba #6 (2002)…warning, dirty words, don’t look kids:


In case you didn’t know, Ralph’s Comic Corner was the first comic shop anywhere that carried Love and Rockets, the original black and white covered one they self-published. Ralph often said “I told them to send it to Fantagraphics, that was the kind of thing they’d publish!” (Also, Jaime noted that Ralph’s was the first comic shop he and his brothers had ever been to.)

Ralph did make an appearance in an early Love and Rockets…#4 (1983), to be exact, in a story by Mario:


Mario would sneak Ralph into the mag again in issue #50.

Here’s one of Ralph’s appearances in Groo the Wanderer #28 (1987) by Mark Evanier and Sergio Aragones…Sergio was just over the hill from us in Ojai, and would pop in on a regular basis:

And here’s Ralph in Tom Foxmarnick’s story for Taboo #2 (1989)…Tom’s an old friend of Ralph, and in fact drew Ralph’s business cards and various flyers and even that logo at the beginning of this post (a very pixelated GIF from the website…I’m sure I’ve got a good black and white scan of the original art somewhere):


By the way, the photo references Tom took of Ralph for this story are pretty great, but I haven’t seen them in 30 years. Hopefully Ralph can turn them up again.

Ralph’s shown up in other places here and there as well…both Ralph and I have a “thank you” in Scott McCloud’s Reinventing Comics, as well as the recent Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventures omnibus collecting Evan Dorkin’s work on the title. And at one point whoever was putting together the “Death of Gwen Stacy” paperback for Marvel inexplicably didn’t have a good scan of Amazing Spider-Man #122’s cover, and called us for one in exchange for a credit in the book. Sure enough, when said book was released there was a “thanks to Ralph’s Comic Corner” inside…at least for the first printing. For all I know Marvel’s still using our scan for things.

It’s fun stuff like this that I’ll try to hang onto, the memories and occasionally weird experiences I had in my 2 1/2 decades of working for Ralph’s and Seth’s. The stores may no longer be with us, but everything I learned there is still with me now, and informs how I approach this business. As the cliché goes, so long as someone remembers, they’ll never really be gone.

A dream of variants.

filed under Categories miraclemarvelman, variant covers 6 Comments

Okay, I had planned to jump back into Variant Cover-age Mondays here on the site again, but as I was working on the planned subjects for said post, I realized I didn’t have the info I needed to properly put them in their retailing/collecting context. So, let’s have that one sit in the oven a little longer.

Instead, I’m going to go on a variant tangent, as well as touching another popular topic on this here website, and take notice of this forthcoming variant for the Marvel Comics one-shot Timeless:


Due out in a couple of months, it plays up the fact that (spoiler, I guess) a character has visions of the Miracleman (or is it?) logo, revealed at the end of the story. I found out about that particular twist just in time for me to have sold out of my last copy…I did get a restock of some of the variants, but none of those did anything for me. And the forthcoming 2nd printing features that awful Punisher redesign, so a hard pass on that.

But that third printing? With ol’ MM front and center? Drawn by Mark Buckingham, the fella who illustrated Neil Gaiman’s truncated run on the character? Yes sir, that’s for me.

Now Miracleman at Marvel has not had an easy time of it. First, Alan Moore asked that his writing credit be removed (replaced by “The Original Writer”). Then the comics themselves were bloated, expensive messes, featuring the comics people actually wanted to read, backed up with extra editorial pages and reprints of “pre-return” Marvelman stories that nobody really wanted. And then of course there were the printing screw-ups, which, by the way, Marvel never did reissue corrected copies of that comic. Plus there’s the fact that the promise of new stories picking up from where the original series left off (with Eclipse Comics going out of business) was never fulfilled.

Well, Marvel put a lot of cash and time into straightening out all the rights issues and getting the character under their umbrella, so I guess they need to get their money’s worth. Now whether this is a new version of Marvelman (separate from the Miracleman comics by Moore and Gaiman), still called Miracleman but again separate from Moore/Gaiman, or (the most hilarious option) the next chapter of that Moore/Gaiman story, with MM dipping into the Marvel U. between installments of his own book.

I have no idea what will be the case, of course, and one wonders what kind of a fit MM would have in the Marvel Universe, even if only temporarily (see also: DC Universe and Watchmen). But we’re either getting an ongoing series with the character out of this, or (crossing fingers) those new stories from Gaiman and Buckingham picking up from where they left off decades ago will finally see the light of day.

Anyway, writing about this reminded me of the limited-run non-3D editions of Miracleman 3-D Eclipse offered way back in Ye Olden Tymes. This article seems to have that pretty well covered.

And now…me.

filed under Categories self-promotion

Just a little ol’ link round-up today:

  • I asked my pals over at Pittsburgh Comics about how they keep tabs on “hot book” weekly surprises, and lo they answered.

    •  

  • After a several year break, I started doing the @yourtvlistings account at Twitter again. Fictional listings for TV shows through a horror lens…or a critical one, or a just plain weird one. Should update most weekdays, ’til I stop doing it again.

    •  

  • Hey, remember @FakeAPStylebook, for which I was one of the contributors? (Here’s my favorite of the ones I wrote.) Remember that we wrote an actual book, published by an actual publisher and everything? Well, it turns out that Marvel’s new distributor, Penguin Random House, is also the distrtibutor of FakeAPStylebook’s official release Write More Good. As such, once I recalled this important bit of information, ordered a bunch of copies for my shop!

    I’ve almost run through my first order, but I plan on getting more, if only to make the folks working the PRH warehouse wonder why someone’s started asking for those books way back there on the dusty shelves.

Don’t look at the filename for that picture of Vibe.

filed under Categories justice league 9 Comments

I typed a lot about comic industry predictions and stuff over the last month, so let me pop in here with something Current and Now to tell you…


…that courtesy the DC Universe Infinite app, I’m finally reading straight through, for the first time, the 1980s Detroit-era Justice League of America and you can’t stop me.

This iteration of the team, which lasted ’til the end of the series’ run in 1987, was introduced in Annual #2 in 1984. I didn’t pick that up, which was weird because, being a fan at the time of “anniversary” and annual issues, I usually bought all of them. And for JLA I picked up #1 in ’83, and #3 in ’85, but skipped the second. …Which I did finally read and, well, I liked the set-up, with JLA founding member and current chairman Aquaman disbanding the team after a disastrous adventure in which all the League’s Big Guns (Supes, Bats, etc.) were otherwise occupied. He then reforms the League with members who can devote all their time to the team, including superhero veterans and a handful of newcomers.

The execution overall is…acceptable, with utilitarian art, and stories that are entertaining enough if sort of average-ish. Now I have read issues from this run before, mostly the Crisis on Infinite Earths tie-ins (which would explain why I picked up Annual #3, which is one) and the Legends tie-in issues that concluded the series. Those final issues were particularly good, as I recall, by a different creative team than the one that began this era of the book. But we’ll see how I think about them once I read them in the full context of the run. I suspect I’ll still like them.

I will note I was unduly excited to come across a pre-Crisis appearance of the Monitor and Harbinger I hadn’t seen before in one of the earlier issues. Even after all this time Crisis shenanigans can still pluck my little nerd heartstrings.

Once I get through ’em all I’ll try to report back here. Will I turn into the World’s Biggest Fan of Vibe?

Stay tuned and find out!

Your 2021 Predictions, Epilogue: Blanche and the Younger Man.

filed under Categories predictions 4 Comments

So yes, I spent 1/12th of 2022 looking back at your 2021 comic industry predictions. Well, what can I tell you…you guys left me a lot last time. Anyway, today’s post will be catching upon on a few corrections/clarifications over my responses from the last (ahem) month, since I’m only mostly human and can’t catch every single thing that rolls down the road here. Look back at the previous installments (one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, and eight) and then let’s see what exactly I have to say for myself.

(I did edit in a correction into the body of the main post of part two, in regards to preliminary work on a Legion of Super-Heroes cartoon being announced, which I missed.)

• • •

From Part Three:

Here Daniel gives me a general explanation of the economics of streaming services. I mean, I figured it was something like that, but it’s nice to have it all spelled out.

Patrick Gaffney makes no mistake in saying

“There was a reprint of The New Warriors Omnibus in 2021, with a new Vol 2 coming in 2022. Maybe that hit the copyright needs of the above poster?”

…in reference to the suggestion that Marvel would put out a New Warriors issue maybe just for trademark purposes. Frankly, I think it would take a bit longer for New Warriors to get out from under Marvel’s control. But at least there was a New Warriors publication of some sort that got there.

• • •

From Post Four:

In reply to my not knowing about companies that put out a first issue then skipping to releasing the whole story in a collection, Glen came out of seclusion with

“Scout has an imprint called Nonstop that publishes a first issue and then a full ‘collection.'”

…and I took a look and sure ‘nough. I don’t see anything about the other “issues” being available digitally, which was a stipulation of the prediction, but hey, it’s close enough. (And I tried to edit that info into the original post at the time and messed it up, so here it is properly! And I fixed it in that post, too.)

• • •

From Part Six:

Billy boings on in with

“Who owns the Harvey properties now and why is that a thing?”

Harvey is now owned by Classic Media, though when I wrote my comment about Harvey’s owners probably wouldn’t want “adult” updated versions of their characters out there (like what DC did with Looney Tunes and Hanna Barbara) I somehow thought Harvey properties were still in control of someone from that Harvey family. Some properties, however, are still under the Harvey family purview, such as Sad Sack and Black Cat (as per Wikipedia). But the other characters…well, I still don’t think we’ll be seeing a deconstructive and lightly-edgy take on Stumbo the Giant anytime soon.

Also in this comments section was discussion over my statement that Marvel probably wouldn’t reprint Kirby’s 2001: A Space Odyssey because that would involve licensing fees and stuff like that, since Marvel didn’t own it. There was some question as to who does actually own the rights to the film, which was under the MGM banner. This recent Forbes article, in short, says that Ted Turner bought the rights to a huge chunk of MGM library…which then fell under the Warner Bros. label when the two merged. As such…DC Comics is more likely to reprint that 2001 comic than Marvel. 2001 is currently streaming on HBO Max, in fact.

The rest of MGM’s catalog was just bought by Amazon, including the James Bond series, in case you were wondering where the rest of the studio went.

And in an email response to an omission from Part Six, where in talking about Legion of Super-Heroes reprints I forgot about the Before the Darkness HC Vol. 1, which not only came out in 2021, but I actually read the darned thing too.


Just slipped my dumb mind for some reason. Thanks to Paul for pointing this out.

• • •

From Part Seven:

Daniel (that dude again) asks

“[If comic books went away and trades/graphic novels took over] could most comic shops survive that change to what would essentially be a bookstore model?”

That’s a question folks in the biz have been wondering for years. Switching customers from visiting on a weekly basis to buy monthly-released comics over to…pricier formats released on a biannual or less frequent basis feels like quite the challenge. But a comic bookstore (versus a comic book store) would require more stock, and more diversity, to encourage more browsing and more buying….

I can’t go into every detail on this right this second, but I think if the change was gradual stores would probably be okay. If Marvel and DC said suddenly Scarlet Witch-style “no more floppies” that could be a problem.

Wayne Allen Sallee wonders

“did INFERIOR 5 finish the run? I thought COVID-19 killed it about 4 issues in, same with TERRIFICS, actually. The two month break and all.”

Both completed their runs in trade paperbacks, which included unpublished (at least in physical form) issues. I still need to finish reading Terrifics, in fact…that was a really good comic.

• • •

From Part Eight:

Matthew notes, in response to the prediction of a wisecracking kid version of John Constantine showing up

“We did get The Mystery of the Meanest Teacher: A Johnny Constantine Graphic Novel, so the ‘kid’ part of that came true at least.”

There you go! I meant to read this, but I’ll have to add it to the pile of approximately a million other things I need to read.

I boggle Daniel T’s mind with

“Have you really not read a Spider-Man comic in 20 years?”

I really do think that 9/11 issue was the last new Spidey-Sam comic I read from beginning to end. I’m just not a Spider-Man Comics guy, at least when it comes to recent stuff. I read all the McFarlane issues when they came out, and I actually had a subscription to the title around 1979, which was actually a replacement title when my Pizzazz subscription ended because that mag was cancelled.

Now I have read Spider-Man comics in the last 20 years, but mostly revisited the classic Lee/Ditko run, and I have a particular fondness for ’70s Spidey. But nothing going on in Spider-Man comics in the last couple of decades have been of any interest to me. Sorry, just Not My Thing, I guess.

And yes, in fairness to Chris V, the Big Wheel apparently has shown up in Iron Man, so he gets at least partial credit for his prediction of the return of this…whatever it is.

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OKAY, IT’S FINALLY OVER…at least until next January, when I go over your predictions for this year! Thanks for reading, everyone, and we’ll see you Wednesday!