Mikester

Yes, I know “semi-unique” doesn’t really mean much of anything.

filed under Categories question time, this week's comics 5 Comments


So I read the original Savage Dragon mini-series back in ye ancient tymes, in my samplings of the early Image Comics releases. (For the record: read Spawn ’til about issue 20 or so, wasn’t interested in Youngblood (sorry, Rob!), found WildC.A.T.s incomprehensible, Shadowhawk was…well, it wasn’t normalman.) I thought Savage Dragon was probably the best of the bunch, but I didn’t follow it past those initial installments, for reasons more to do with my personal budget than anything about the book itself.

Now as it turned out, of all the Image books, it was ol’ SD’s creator Erik Larsen who the the greatest staying power, writing and drawing all 252 issues, and counting, of the title…evening including doing an extra issue to kinda/sorta “replace” an issue of the run done by a guest team. (Details here.) It’s a incredibly impressive run by a single creator, who’s maintained his personal vision on this book, and isn’t afraid to really changes things up on a regular basis.

All of which makes me wish I’d kept reading from the beginning, but What Can You Do? I’m glad it exists, I’m glad Larsen’s able to do this on his own terms, and I hope he’s able to do it for as long as he wants.

Now since that initial mini (and I think the first issue of the monthly series), I haven’t picked up very many of the series. There were one or two specials along the way, where Mr. Dragon would occasionally cross over with characters of interest (like Megaton Man, Destroyer Duck, or Marshal Law), and I think I glommed onto a Free Comic Book Day issue or two, however many there were.

At long last, I’ve had another reason to pick up an issue, this time an actual issue of the series rather than a spin-off, as it intersected with a couple of my interests. Pictured above is the second printing of Savage Dragon #252, released this week, with a cover image of what should be obvious inspiration. Now, I may not as big a Peanuts fan as some of my friends, I still do love them enough to be properly amused by this cover and want to have a copy for myself.

the other interest of mine this comic tickled is “comic strip parody,” which fills this publication. Dick Tracy, Calvin and Hobbes, Little Nemo…even Tumbleweeds. Tumbleweeds. Who parodies Tumbleweeds in this, the Never-Ending Year of Our Lord 2020? Well, Erik Larsen dood it, right here in this funnybook. That’s all I need, friends, and this book is at home, waiting for my full perusal. Looks like it’s stand-alone enough so I hopefully won’t be too lost with any specific references to regular continuity. But the cover alone is fun bit of parody and, as they say, worth the price of admission.

• • •

Now you folks had a lot to say in response to Monday’s post, and I do want to address more of what you all said soon, which I have a little more time and energy. But let me at least say something in regards to this question from Thelonius_Nick:

“You’ve mentioned ‘local market conditions’ several times on your site in the past. Are there really back issues that might be systematically more common in one part of the country than another? Not just a random issue here and there for whatever reason, but something structural, like maybe Flash is all over stores in Oregon because they like track there?”

I have to admit, “local market conditions” is more of a caveat, an acknowledgement that my own personal experiences in terms of comics retail and such are not necessarily universal, or perhaps unique, or semi-unique, to whatever it is I’m doing. It’s not really exact knowledge of what’s going on here, there or anywhere, but it’s my assumption that there are countless variables involved in retail than can affect sales or demand for certain products in one place that may not be duplicated elsewhere.

Now admittedly, there can be a sameness across the retailing board regarding certain trends…ask your local funnybook slinger if he has plenty of copies of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin #1 floating around, and watch him/her/them sigh deeply. Or maybe there’s a shop that is just swimming in copies of Last Ronin somewhere, wishing he could get rid of them. That would be a difference in local market conditions!

I remember talking to a shop owner in the Los Angeles area sometime around…1990, I guess, where he mentioned he couldn’t move any copies of Legion of Super-Heroes. I was like “whoa, we sell lots of those!” which 1) probably shouldn’t have rubbed the poor guy’s nose in it quite like that, and 2) clued me in to the idea that not everything sells equally everywhere.

Another thing is that I’ve taken to pricing first issues on certain comics maybe a buck or three above the guide value. I can put a full run of U.S. 1 in the new arrivals boxes, someone will come along and snap up that #1, leaving me with the rest to languish. If I’m going to sell one and not the rest, I’d better get better value for the one I do sell. I’m sure not everyone does that, and I’m also sure some folks price ’em up even higher than I do. More of them local market conditions.

Or some days, maybe it’s just raining. A local weather condition that affects the local market condition.

Okay, that’s just me being silly. But you provide several other examples in your question, Mr. T. Nick, and all of those are just as valid. You never know what can mess up or bolster sales. That’s what makes this business so fun! Or “fun,” as it were.

Happy Anniversary, Happy Anniversary, Happy Anniversary, HAAAAAPY Anniversary!

filed under Categories sterling silver comics 7 Comments

I’ll be back to regular posting tomorrow, but did want to pop in now to let folks know that today is the sixth anniversary of my opening up Sterling Silver Comics for business. Thanks to all of you who’ve expressed your support over the years, starting with my initial announcement here all the way ’til today. It means a lot to me that I’ve had so many of you wishing for my success. It has its ups and downs (especially this year!) but running my own business has been rewarding and fun, and I’m sorry it took so long to finally make the jump.

Again, thanks to all of you, and I’ll be back tomorrow with your regular dose of industry talk mixed with silliness.

Yes, I’m complaining about that again.

filed under Categories collecting 23 Comments

So I had one of my longtime customers ask me the other day what my thoughts were on the collector focus and increased pricing on newstand editions of certain comics versus those that were sold through comic shops. By and large, the only difference between the two are the UPC codes, where the one that went through traditional outlets like newsstands, convenience stores and the like would have ’em, and comics sold in the direct market either didn’t have UPC codes or had the UPC marked “Direct Sales” to differentiate from the other.

Now, my personal feeling is that pricing on the two variations of a comic, newsstand or comic shop, should be the same so long as the only difference between the two is the UPC code. If there are other variants, like different cover images (like Amazing Spider-Man Annual #21) or other changes in details about the comic (like the “9 cent” Fantastic Four having the regular cover price for newsstands), then maybe, sure, there may be some variations in pricing.

I did briefly posit that this newsstand/direct disparity in back issue pricing felt like it was a trend of forcing something into collectibility, but the customer noted something about that I hadn’t considered. That said forcing of collectibility was coming about because actual older collectible comics are in much shorter supply than they used to be. Golden Age, and even a lot of Silver (particularly Marvel) don’t just drop out of the sky every day like they used to. Maybe, he theorized, collectors are trying to make some silk purses out of their boxes full of sow’s ears by claiming some of the comics they do have access to now have some extra value accrued to them.

Now technically, I suppose newsstand editions are “variants,” particularly in latter days when newsstand distribution of comics dropped and new comics were primarily available through comic book stores. As my customer suggested, in earlier years, newsstand distribution was, of course, much higher, but as soon as UPC codes started being affixed to periodicals in the late-ish 1970s, we were at the beginning of the end for that form of distribution as comic shops took over.

As a result, newsstand editions were in less supply (and also more likely to end up in the hands of non-collectors, who were apt to destroy or damage the comic beyond collectibility, effectively removing it from the secondary market ecosystem). Even in cases like Alf, which apparently sold extremely well on newsstands versus its fairly moribund movement in comic stores, seems in short supply for these reasons. I mean, I’m just making some assumptions here, based on my observation of local market conditions…for all I know the state of Vermont is flush in Alf comics, the streets of Burlington just swimming with copies of the Alf Holiday Special.

I’ve seen this sort of forced collectibility before…in fact, I see it a lot now, as I get phone calls and walk-ins requesting copies of whatever the Hot Book of the Week is, usually featuring the first appearance of whomever, which is already listed for get-rich-quick prices on eBay. Remember when folks were all frantic about the first appearance of the Gold Lantern in Legion of Super-Heroes? …Yeah, I know, “who?” Anything that even feels like a first appearance of somebody is an investment potential…but not every first appearance, so don’t bother trying to order lots of copies ahead of time, because you won’t know for sure you’ll need them ’til the day of release which is when everyone will start asking.

And it all depends on “supply,” too. I could order extra numbers of all the later appearances of Gold Lantern…but so could everyone else, and now that it’s readily available, no one’s interested. Or that recent “X of Swords” event for Marvel…early issues were in high demand, because orders on it were generally low. That same demand hasn’t turned up for newer installments, ordered in numbers based on all the folks clamoring to for first installments, a lot of whom didn’t come back for the rest. Even restocks of those “hot” first installments have barely moved, now that anyone can get them.

I’m getting a little off track here, ranting about things I’ve already ranted about, as per usual. Back to the increased pricing on newsstand books…look, I can see why, particularly in cases where newsstand sales were less than the same book’s direct market circulation. It’s just after years where the conventional wisdom was that the two versions were priced the same, and now they’re not. As an old person, I hate change, but I suppose I need to get used to this new paradigm sooner rather than later.

Hey, I eventually got used to using “Bronze Age” (once described in Overstreet’s glossary as “widely unaccepted”). I use it fairly freely now…but I’m still drawing the line at Copper Age. I mean, c’mon, honestly.

You’d think at some point in the ’60s they’d have published Jughead’s Freak-Out, but no.

filed under Categories archie, collecting 5 Comments

As noted by the folks in the comments to my wishing for reprints of Jughead’s Folly and Jughead’s Fantasy…lo, they were indeed reprinted. Folly was reprinted, apparently in its entirety (as there were more stories than the “Jughead becomes a rock star” lead) in the Best of Archie Comics #3 digest/book from 2013, and again in the Archie 75th Anniversary digest from 2017. Likewise, the three issues ofJughead’s Fantasy have been reprinted multiple times from the 1960s into the 2010s (and I’ll let you look at the individual entries for that info).

So my hasty supposition that Jughead’s Folly not being reprinted, and my inference that Fantasy also had not, was completely incorrect. Look, not everyone has the time to put in the whole 10 seconds of research it would have taken me to find this info out in the first place.

I suppose I could probably seek these reissued forms of the original stories…comic book sized preferred, as my aged and long-distressed eyes are no longer up to the challenge of digest-sized comics. I realize there’s no real difference in reading the story in a more recent comic versus reading it in its original release, but I just plain like the look of Archie covers from that period. I’m gonna be one of those guys who’s got to have the originals for their look ‘n’ feel.

A second choice would be “facsimile editions,” like what Marvel and DC have been doing of late. Just more or less exact reprints of the original comics, except on better paper and a higher price. I’ve picked up a handful of those over the last couple of years…they’re fun to have, and that way I can get a copy of the comic without taking something out of the shop I might actually be able to sell for money.

Third choice would be a some kind of handsome hardcover or softcover, which would hopefully include full-color and full-sized reproductions of the covers (and not just little thumbnails on the back cover).

I suppose a fourth choice would be digital editions, but frankly I’d rather have a physical edition. Even if, er, a digital version would be slightly easier for me to read now.

I don’t know…maybe I’ll get luckly and someone will bring all these Jughead comics into the shop for me to buy. I figure if my store is open long enough, every comic I want will eventually pass through! That’s my fantasy…or, more likely, my folly.

Spoilers for Batman: Three Jokers #3 herein.

filed under Categories batman 16 Comments

So in Justice League #42 (cover date September 2015, released July 2015), the following happens. Batman, gets a hold of Metron’s Mobius Chair, a repository of nearly every bit of information from across the universe that it was possible to obtain, gathered by the chair’s (former) owner.

Once he plants his Bat-butt into the seat, Batman decides to test the chair’s accuracy by asking it a question:


The chair makes some pinging sounds (pinging panels omitted from this brief recap) and delivers the answer:


As you see there, Batman acknowledges that the answer was correct, pauses for a moment as he ponders his next move, then asks for the Joker’s “true name.”

The chair beeps and boops further, before delivering a tantalizingly unseen answer to Batman, who responds thusly:


And how do you keep a sucker in suspense? We’ll tell you what Batman heard several months later in Justice League #50, cover date July 2016, released May 2016:


Now, cut to Fall 2020, where this Three Jokers business is finally being addressed in a prestige mini-series titled, what else, Batman: Three Jokers. I’ve gone on about the first two installments in the series, at length on the first issue here and I managed to restrain myself a bit for #2 here. The conclusion to the series is out now, and like I said in the title way up above there, there’s gonna be SPOILERS, so don’t come crying to me.

At first glance, the conclusion of Three Jokers appears inconsistent with the set-up in Justice League #42 shown above. Batman asks the Mobius Chair for the Joker’s real name. One of the big reveals in Three Jokers #3 is that Batman’s known the Joker’s real name all this time. If he knew, why’d he ask?

Well, looking back at the Justice League comics, I suppose there’s kind of an out. Batman tested the chair with a question he already knew the answer to (that Joe Chill was the murderer of his parents). Maaaaaybe, if you squint a little, one could claim that his next question about the Joker’s real name was also a test, to see if the chair would spit out the right name. The twist in that story is, of course, as we eventually find out, the whole triad of the Clown Prince of Crime thing.

The problem with that interpretation is that the comics do not read that way. In context it feels that Batman’s question about the Joker’s real name was made as a sincere inquiry, not a further test of the system. It’s…that pause before he asks, and the intensity with which he asks it. It doesn’t feel like a question being asked by a man who already knows the answer. It reads like someone excited by the chance at gaining knowledge he’s desperately sought and now finally has a chance to have.

That said, there is enough ambiguity to where both the Justice League stories and Three Jokers can remain consistent. When Green Lantern is prodding Batman in JL #50, trying to find out what the chair said, Batman evades the issue at first. He’s being deliberately cagey in relation to any questions about the Joker’s true identity, perhaps because of what we know now from the ending of #3. He doesn’t want to discuss the subject in order to protect….

…Well, yes, protect whom? So way back when, Alan Moore and Brian Bolland’s Batman: The Killing Joke gives us a backstory for the Joker, told in flashback and implied heavily to be the Joker’s own memories. We see a failed stand-up comedian who has agreed to participate in a crime to gain money to care for his wife and his as-yet unborn child. However, policemen find him sitting in a bar to inform him that his pregnant wife was killed in an accident…one of the tragedies leading to this comedian’s coming transformation. However, the text of that comic tells us the backstory as shown isn’t necessarily the backstory for the Joker, as his own memories are likely unreliable. But it’s the Joker saying this and he’s the very definition of unreliable, his narration saying one thing with the truth being another.

It’s left ambiguous in The Killing Joke, but that ambiguity is stripped away as, in no uncertain terms, it’s revealed that was very much the Joker’s backstory. That the pregnant wife in fact faked her death to get away from the now-revealed-to-be abusive comedian husband to raise her child, and that the Batman keeps the Joker’s name to himself to keep the media from tracking her down somehow.

Now…I’m okay with this conclusion, actually. I like the idea of Batman being smart enough to actually know who the Joker’s been all this time, and that he has good reason to keep it a secret based on information revealed in previous stories. Like I said, it does remove the uncertainty from Killing Joke, but, you know, eh.

Of course, that begs the question “if Batman was smart enough to know that, how was he not smart enough to know he was dealing with three different people saying they’re the Joker?” Especially since at least one of them looks like he’s drawn visibly older than the others. Whatever process they’re using to make more Jokers is making them physically identical, I guess? I don’t know, Batman’s being bamboozled by this ruse doesn’t seem to follow.

Also, as discussed in my look at the first issue, it’s said in-story that the Joker first appeared, quote, “decades ago.” But #3 has Bruce Wayne looking in on the Joker’s wife and son wherever they’re living out their lives…and the son appears to be, well, still a kid. Not 20 years old or so, as the “decades ago” comment would imply. I am presuming this is a flashback, but nothing seems to indicate as such, aside from the child’s age. Those panels aren’t colored differently, like the other flashback panels involving the Joker’s family. I mean, it has to be some kind of flashback to Batman looking in on them just a few years after they started their new lives. But that’s not what it feels like when you hit that point of the story.

It is snowing in that particular sequence, and I don’t recall if the current time of year was established for this mini-series, and that the snow was to imply a change in time frame (like sometime in the past). I just figured they were in Alaska, hiding out with Jesse Pinkman. (Um, spoilers for El Camino, too, I guess.)

Overall…I enjoyed this series for what it was, though whether there is any longterm impact on Batman comics from here on out remains to be seen, if it’s not just outright ignored. Jason Fabok’s art is gorgeous throughout, and I do think the thematic interweaving of Batgirl’s trauma from The Killing Joke and the Red Hood’s trauma from “A Death in the Family” was interesting. I like the symmetry of Batman and the Joker keeping each other’s identities secret for their own reasons. And as I said above, I think the big reveals at the end of #3 were fine. It’s just that the set-up, that there were multiple Jokers running around, requires Batman to be dumb, and nobody likes a dumb Batman.

Ah, well, I suppose we can look forward to the major work years later by some other creative team, reaching back to repurpose Geoff Johns’s story for the eventual “The Joker’s Son” special event. Turnabout is fair play, I guess. Maybe they can team up the Joker’s Son with the weird Clark Kent/Dr. Manhattan amalgam kid from the end of Doomsday Clock. Run with that, Future Hot Writer and Artist!

Actually, only ’til 1 in the morning this time.

filed under Categories archie, question time 5 Comments

Once again, getting a late start on the ol’ question thingie, plus I have plans for a Tuesday post here (WHAT!?!? GASP!) so let’s take a look at a couple of easier (i.e. “Mike won’t be typing ’til 2 in the morning”) inquiries here:

William Burns is on fire with the following

“Now that Big Bang Theory is receding into the mist of yesteryear, do people still do that “Where’s Sheldon” routine in your store?”

Come to think of it…it has been a while. And it’s not like 1) it’s been all that long since the series wrapped, and 2) it’s not like there’s not some cable channel that seems to be Big Bang 24/7, so it shouldn’t be out of our collective memory (no matter how hard some of you are trying to forget it, I know). I suppose it can at least be partially attributed to fewer casual passerby dropping in just to say their BBT remark that I’ve never, ever heard before and move on without, you know, buying anything, due to the whole Captain Trips bug currently ravaging the globe.

You might be inclined to believe that this is something of a relief to me, and to a certain extent, it is, as part of me was getting a little tired of hearing it. But on the other hand, as I’d said before and probably bears repeating, these folks weren’t coming in to say these things in a disparaging manner…they were actually amused, or happy, to see that such a thing as “a comic book store” actually existed, like the one on the television show they enjoyed so much. And as far as I’m concerned, anything that makes The General Public associate “comic book store” with positive feelings is just fine and dandy with me. Believe me, I spent plenty of years dealing with people who’d rather be doing the backstroke through the sewers than crossing the threshold of a comic shop, so I welcomed this shift in perception.

• • •

Daniel T tees up this one

“What back issue would you most like to own but know you never will? (And I don’t mean, like, a 9.0 Action #1. Something that is theoretically attainable but unlikely due to JUST being out of your price range or because it’s just hard to find one.)”

Please, a 10.0 Action #1! DREAM BIG, MY FRIEND.

Okay, seriously…I wrote on this site a long time ago (and frankly, I’ve been doing this site long enough that it’d probably be easier to note things I haven’t written about) about how lucky I was that I started reading comics when I did, which meant I got in on things on the ground floor that would later be harder to piece together (like Eclipse’s Miracleman. Or, something that occurred to me just the other day in fact, how lucky I was that I got into comics before the current wave of rebooting and relaunching beginning with Crisis on Infinite Earths, that I had a better sense of what had come before, and what changed after, as it was happening rather than trying to figure out what the hell happened decades after the fact.

As such, pretty much anything I was interested in reading over, say, the last thirty years, I bought new off the shelf. Anything earlier than that I was interested in, I was able to pick up at generally reasonable prices. For example, I’m glad I completed my run of all the original issues of Doom Patrol when I did, back in the early ’90s, paying what was probably only a fraction of the price I’d have to dole out today. Or getting most of Turok Son of Stone, including the earliest Four Color issues. Or buying all those Comic Reader fanzines at a dime a dozen.

So, a lot of the back issues I was seriously interested in picking up, I picked up. Which isn’t to say there aren’t a few white whales out there I wouldn’t mind getting my mitts on. Now, luckily, being in a comic shop most of my time, there is a non-zero chance something I’m actively interested in obtaining will float on in…for example, this Showcase issue introducing Dolphin. I’d been wanting one of those for years, and, whaddaya know, there it is. And stuff like that has happened then and again…an issue of Yummy Fur I’d been missing forever finally turned up, and that Virginian one-shot from 1963 came into my store not all that long ago. Oh, and I was gifted a new-conditioned copy of the original “black and white” Love and Rockets #1 as a store-warming present from Jaime Hernandez his own self, so I was able to scratch that off the list!

But there’s the stuff I would like, but expect will never make it into my hands. I mean, it’s not impossible, but not terribly likely. I’d sure like an authentic Cerebus #1 for my run of that series, but I’m going to have to be satisfied with this recent reissue, I imagine.

I actually had a chance at Four Color #178, the first appearance of Uncle Scrooge McDuck, when my former boss had one at my former place of employment, waaaay early on in my comics retailing “career.” I just couldn’t spring the, what, $175 or whatever it was at the time, and I’m sure I couldn’t spring the thousands of dollars that same copy would bring now. Well, not spending that kind of money and expecting to keep it, at any rate.

But I think the big one I would like to have, which, unlike those other two, I don’t think has ever been reprinted, is Jughead’s Folly, a single issue released in 1957:


I’ve actually read a copy of this that someone brought into the other shop long ago, but it’s been such a while that I don’t recall that much of it. But it’s basically Jughead (perhaps my favorite Archie character) as Elvis Style Rock Star, and it’s pretty amazing. And hard to find. If one came into the shop, I would totally throw money at the person selling it until it was mine, all mine, yes, my precious.

Though I wouldn’t thumb my nose at a run of Jughead’s Fantasy, either.

I just make the same gag with googum’s questions every time.

filed under Categories question time 23 Comments

Getting a late start on the ol’ blogging tonight, so let me see if I can answer a couple of your questions right quick:

Bruce Baugh breaks in the following

“From time to time, Marvel and DC would launch a series that stood on its own, then later fold it into their regularity continuing – I’m thinking here of the Eternals, Omega the Unknown, and such. If you could pick a series now embedded in a larger continuity (regardless of whether it began that way or not) and pull it out to be its own stand-alone thing for ever after, what’d you go for?”

It’s funny, that when you ask this question, I immediately thought of the reverse, in that I’d love to see the cast of Atari Force returned from licensing purgatory and given a home in DC Universe proper. Dart in the Suicide Squad? Babe in the Teen Titans? Martin Champion working for S.T.A.R. Labs?

Hmm, the S.T.A.R. Labs thing could be the vector for getting Atari Force into the mainline DC continuity (whatever that is). With some minor rejiggering (and some relettering/art touch-up of the originals) we could have S.T.A.R. Force, with the team originating with a future version of S.T.A.R. Labs, trapped in the current DC Universe after a time travel mishap. …If I recall correctly, Dan Jurgens took characters from the outside-continuity Sun Devils sci-fi mini and brought them into his Superman comics, so there’s some minor precedent.

Anyway, it’s a moot point, since I believe all the Atari Force I.P. is owned by whoever it is that owns the Atari brand now, and no longer under any control by DC. But it’s nice to think about.

And that wasn’t your question anyway. What would I extract from the larger DC and/or Marvel continuity to be its own thing? Maybe DC’s Warlord, Mike Grell’s sci-fantasy weird adventure comic which began as its own non-DCU property and, eventually, particularly near the end of the initial series run and after, was merged into the larger shared universe. It’s very possible I’m remembering that timeline incorrectly, and aside from some short bursts here and there, I wasn’t a regular reader of the title. But whatever connection there was I don’t think was ever that strong, and removing Warlord from the DCU would do any harm, aside from losing a team-up where he and Green Arrow could compare their similar beards:


Oh, and also Jack Kirby’s New Gods should stand apart from the DC Universe, if only to keep comics folks who don’t understand it from, like, diminishing Darkseid with overuse outside his original context. If that means making the surprise villain of “The Great Darkness Saga” Terra-Man, well, what’s gotta be has gotta be.

I know it was part of the shared universe from the get-go, via Jimmy Olsen of all characters, but it should have just all been one solid run, from beginning to end, by Kirby, over and done when he concluded it, and that was it. This means losing Simonson’s Orion, which would be a hard blow, and some of the wilder stuff Morrison did, but SACRIFICES MUST BE MADE.

Over on the Marvel end of things…hmm, that’s a little trickier. Just to keep it simple, so I’m not typing all night, let’s say Ghost Rider. Yes, Johnny Blaze. Make that a standalone horror comic, instead of putting a literal damned soul chained to a demon in the middle of a bunch of superheroes who don’t really lift a finger to help him.

Oh, and Tomb of Dracula, too, which was a moody horror-action comic that was chugging along just fine ’til “Guest-Starring the Silver Surfer.” And then we had to wonder “why aren’t the Avengers stepping in to take care of this immortal blood-sucking monster?” I’m sure it was addressed at some point in larger Marvel continuity, but it still seems weird.

If you disagree, please send your letters of complaint to pal Ian. Thanks.

• • •

googum googummed

“What comic event series left you holding the most stock, and do you still have it?”

Let’s end this session on a depressing note as I bring up the specter of the Secret Wars series from a couple of years back, where the main series itself sold fine, it’s just the too-many tie-in mini-series launched to coincide with the event that tanked. I ended up dumping most of them in the bargain bin, though I still maintain most of a short box of bagged and priced back issues in case anyone specifically comes in looking for them. Which they do, surprisingly.

The recently completed Empyre was not exactly flying off the shelves either, but I did manage to move most, if not all, my copies of the main series from 2 on, but was stuck with a few too many variants for the first issue. The tie-in minis weren’t nearly as numerous, though several were planned that were canned, and the ones that did some out did…okay. This is certainly informing my orders on the forthcoming “King in Black” event at Marvel, which also has a main mini and a handful of tie-in minis which I’m ordering close to the bone.

I mean, none of these are a patch on Deathmate, of course, but my dealings with that series was at another shop and a lifetime ago. I don’t think I have even a single issue of Deathmate in my store right now.

Good.

I know technically the title is “Omaha” The Cat Dancer.

filed under Categories records, undergrounds 10 Comments

Yet another comic book-related record made it into my hands this week…I managed to find a copy the Omaha the Cat Dancer picture disc for dirt cheap on the eBays. Here’s the beautiful front cover:


…and who needs any stinkin’ liner notes when you can just print all the info on the record itself?


This is the original plastic envelope in which the album came, and I’ve already been told that’s not a good longterm storage option for vinyl, so I’ll get it into something else soon.

Released in 1988, and is credited to the band The Shakers, which features Omaha’s creators Kate Worley and Reed Waller as members. It’s not a bad album…, 11 tracks in all, kind of blues-ish, kind of rock-ish, kind of ballad-ish, with some catchy tunes and clever lyrics. Speaking of lyrics…the “info” side of the disc notes that if the lyric sheet wasn’t included with the record, check at the store’s front counter to see if they have it. Alas, my record did not come with said lyric sheet, and I checked my front counter and it wasn’t there either, so I guess I’ll do without.

Now, I wasn’t a reader of Omaha the Cat Dancer, though I was certainly aware of it (and its fairly convoluted publishing history). I remember it, and its collected editions, selling relatively well for us at the previous place of employment. I think it’s…well, I don’t want to say “mostly forgotten,” but I bet we could use a new release of the material for the current marketplace (and some of the sexually explicit content in the series may not seem so outré decades after its initial publication).

I did pick up the two-part Images of Omaha series from 1992, published to raise money for Worley’s medical care. That featured a lot of work from several creators I liked (Cerebus cover on #2!). And maybe someday, if that theoretical new edition of the original comics ever rolled around, maybe I’d try to sample it this time. Of course, I say that about every series I missed out on, so who do I write to in order to get an additional century or two added onto my lifespan so I can finally catch up?

Thus does the “records released by/in conjunction with comic book companies” collection expand even further (after that Tim Truman platter). Always keeping my peepers peeled for more!

I’ll never tire of making fun of the “Qualified Near Mint” grade.

filed under Categories collecting, retailing 16 Comments

So here’s a weird thing a customer brought in for me to deal with. It’s a copy of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea #1 from 1964:


…which was at one point apparently processed by the Library of Congress:


The customer said that the seller he bought it from had mentioned that apparently that the Library of Congress had ended up with an extra copy of this comic in the system and unloaded it, which seemed a little odd to me but apparently the ol’ LoC does stuff like that.

When I posted about this on the Twitters, pal Nat responded that it may not have ever been in the Library’s archives, but just a copy submitted for copyright reasons and stamped during the process.

I mean, Nat’s probably right, he knows from publishing, after all, and my own knowledge of how the government actually operates is pretty lousy, leaving me suitable just for selling comics or being a Supreme Court nominee, so I defer to his wisdom. Regardless, this seems fairly unusual, as I’ve not seen something like this in the too many years I’ve been on the job. Or, who knows, maybe they’re common as dirt around, oh, say, Washington, D.C. “Ah, geez, another one,” says the manager of Lincoln Memorial Comics and Games, as he tosses his third LoC-stamped copy of H.A.R.D. Corps #1 in to the recycle bin.

I’m not entirely sure what to do with it…the customer is okay with me selling it on consignment, though I’m not sure what to charge. It’s not a bad copy, aside from that crumpled corner. so probably somewhere between Very Good and “Qualified Near Mint,” I reckon.

In other back issue news, I was going through some of the many boxes of comics that have been piled upon me by folks over the last few years of my store’s operation, pulling out things I can use right now. And one of those things was a 1991 issue of Silver Surfer, autographed in that very same year by the book’s artist, Ron Lim:


Well, that’s kind of a neat surprise! Alas, the comic itself is not in the greatest of shape, so any premium I was thinking of putting on the book (which wasn’t going to be an outrageous mark-up at any rate) was rendered mostly moot. But still…kind of a neat thing to be surprised by!

Low Contrast Mode.

filed under Categories batman, eyeball, publishing 15 Comments

So as many of you know (and I mostly can’t shut up about) I have had some eye trouble over the last couple of years, which has (among other things) interfered with my ability to read comics. Slowing me down at first, then, now and again, stopping me entirely.

While I’m still having the occasional bout of clouded vision, it’s a little less often, and my sight is pretty much as good as it’s going to be. My left eye is mostly good, my right eye is somewhat impaired, and my prescription glasses do help quite a bit, and I’m functioning more-or-less normally. I do have bit of a problem dealing with low contrast writing and images, but I’m adjusting best I can.

As my vision has stabilized, I’ve attempted to catch up on all those comics I’ve been accumulating but not reading. For example, I just finished reading something like 20 issues of the current run of Daredevil this past week. And I’ve done similar bulk-reads of titles trying to get current (and stay current as each new issue comes out).

One of the tools I’m using to read comics I’m behind on is the DC Universe digital library. While I do have print copies of the books I’m reading via this method, this actually makes it easier on the eyes to have larger (and sometimes clearer) panels that I can read a little more quickly than their on-paper counterparts. (And yes, I know I can get free digital copies of several Marvel titles, I’m just too lazy to go through the process of typing in the codes printed in the back of the books.)

Mostly I use my iPad mini to do the DC digital thing…my parents had ended up with a couple of free ones after buying a pair of iPhones, and gave one to me, which was nice. I have half-considered buying a larger iPad for my funnybook perusing, but that can wait for now. But I have used the DC Universe app via my television to read some material when certain troubles arose, in this case being the 2018 mini-series The Batman Who Laughs.

“Trouble you say?” I’m sure the three of you what still read the blogs are asking. Yes, the trouble is the very thing I’ve been having difficulty with ever since this particular evil Batman was introduced…his goldurned black-on-red word balloons:


It’s…not easy for me to make out in print comics, and even reading it on my iPad, zoomed in as much as I’m able, was a pain in the rear. I made it through an issue on my pad, and then opted to try reading it through my television instead.

That did the trick…blowing it up nice ‘n’ big on a large flatscreen made the red-on-black balloons a tad easer to discern. But apparently this mini-series realized it was being far too lenient on me, and unleased its secret weapon: RED ON GREY TEXT:


Man, there’s, like, almost no way I could have read this except for being blown up on a flatscreen, and even then it was a struggle. When I was doing screengrabs on my computer for this post, I found I couldn’t make them out, and I have a pretty good-sized monitor for my desktop computotron.

I eventually muddled through the series (I ended up enjoying it, despite everything), but man, I have a real distaste for these novelty-colored captions and word balloons. I think Swamp Thing’s black-on-orange dialogue is about as far as I’m willing to travel, and even that isn’t quite as legible to my peepers as it once was. If comics are going to continue to do that sort of thing, either bold the text more, or use higher contrast colors (the Batman Who Laughs seems to have white-on-black balloons in current appearances, which is a vast improvement).

And in short order DC Universe (when it becomes the digital comics only DC Univesre Infinite) is going strictly to tables/phones/computers, dropping TV support. I’m sure there are workarounds, but it won’t be as convenient as “selecting the app on my Roku” easy, so I may be losing that option for reading other comic lettering in this style.

Okay, okay, that’s enough waving my red-tipped cane at you publishers. I just hope they take things like “readability” into consideration when they do stuff like this.

I do have one more question arising from my Batman Who Laughs reading: what was the Gotham street planning commission meeting like that resulted in putting up an actual damn street sign that reads “Crime Alley?”


I mean, yeah, sure, it’s Gotham, this is probably the least crazy thing the city’s government has done. However, even assuming there are no businesses or residents on this particular stretch of road, surely anyone located nearby would be all “WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO OUR PROPERTY VALUES?”

I always figured “Crime Alley” was the nickname inhabitants of Gothan had for the road, I never realized it was an officially sanctioned street name. Though I suppose we’re lucky millionaire socialite Bruce Wayne didn’t insist that it be called “My Parents Are Deaaaaaad Way.”