dc comics

Letting it all hang out.

filed under Categories dc comics, marvel, publishing, retailing 7 Comments

So Marvel unleashed its “Ultimate” Universe in 2000/2001, starting with Ultimate Spider-Man and Ultimate X-Men, partially out of a need to have some “new reader friendly” material on the stands free of the deep continuity in the regular Marvel Universe. Also, a collapsed comics market and Marvel being on the verge of “going away” for good probably helped push along any desperate ideas to keep them afloat. Whatever the reason, the Ultimate books came out, giving fresh starts to their properties separate from the still-ongoing Marvel Universe proper…until they became just as convoluted as the mainline universe and purpose successfully defeated.

But it ran a long time, and made lots of money and had a strong readership, and “the sweet taste of success attracts many tongues,” as no one but me says, and DC was trying to figure out how to get some of that Ultimate scratch.

First they tried with their “All-Star” line in the mid-2000s, with All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder and All-Star Superman…both sold amazingly well, though one got a little more critical acclaim than the other. All-Star Superman was a mini and wrapped up after 12 issues, while the Batman title stopped mid-story with #10, and planned Batgirl and Wonder Woman titles for the line never appeared.

Then DC tried out the “Earth One” line of graphic novels, starting in 2009, again giving fresh starts to their major properties and hoping to catch a new bookstore audience with them. The Superman and Batman series for this imprint put out multiple volumes, but never really seemed to catch any traction. The Wonder Woman run of three books was generally well received, as was the Green Lantern run. But it looks like this effort was finally abandoned a few years ago (though a collection of the Wonder Woman books as part of DC’s Compact Line has done well for me!).

And then, finally, The Third Time’s the Charm, as they say, as just a couple years ago DC launched their Absolute line. Similar to the Ultimate Universe, the Absolute Universe gave fresh starts to their heavy hitters (Supes, Bats, and Wondy) in continuities separate from the mainstream DCU. Interestingly, the milieu spins out of one of DC’s Big Event titles, positing a reality centered around the Omega Energy of the seemingly fallen Darkseid. Sorry if that sounds a little inside-baseball for anyone coming onto this out of context, but the general idea is that this is not just a darker universe, but an existence where the heroes we know lack the advantages their regular counterparts have.

At any rate, this line (which quickly added a handful of new titles) is pretty much DC just printing money at this point. Absolute Batman is far and away the biggest hit. DC just keeps issuing reprint after reprint of the entire run of individual comics, and I keep putting them on my shelves, and they keep selling. They’re up to, like, a 12th printing on #1. This is almost unheard of for just a regular monthly title at DC, especially after the trade paperback collections started getting released.

And it’s not to speculators…it’s new readers, it’s teenagers, it’s adults who’d heard about this thing online somewhere. It’s the Holy Grail of what DC and Marvel have been looking for, A Title That Gets New Readers into Comic Shops Specifically for Their Thing.

The other Absolute titles also do well, if not at quite the extreme Absolute Batman does, but they’ve found their levels and move off the shelves.

Anyway, now that DC has found its Ultimate line, Marvel seems like it’s going to try to find its Absolute line, with this new Midnight publishing initiative they’re about to launch. I was going to say “I don’t know that this is directly a response to DC’s Absolute line,” but the headline of this article, “Marvel’s new Midnight universe makes DC’s Absolute comics look ‘pretty polite,’ says Spider-Man writer Phillip Kennedy Johnson,” seems to clear up any confusion.

The “Midnight” line is horror-centric, apparently, separate from the regular Marvel Universe, with darker versions of Marvel’s mainstays, which feels like a misread of the Absolute line, but, well, we’ll see what they do with it. The solicit for the first issue of Midnight: Fantastic Four #1 reads

“FIRST STEPS INTO DARKNESS! An obsessive scientist delves into the secrets of the universe perhaps best left unknown to humankind, leaving himself and three others warped in strange and horrifying ways. What horrible secrets lie in the new dimensions they have discovered? And can humanity survive the discovery? From the twisted minds of Benjamin Percy (WOLVERINE, PUNISHER) and Kev Walker (INFERNAL HULK, DOCTOR STRANGE) comes a tale of existential dread and secrets best kept…”

I can do without the “from the twisted minds of…” business, I mean c’mon, but I don’t know, Fantastic Four as a cosmic horror comic? Or even, dare I say, Lovecraftian? Yeah, I’d be all for that.

Just so we’re clear, I’m not criticizing anything they’re doing here. I obviously haven’t read any of these yet. They could be great! They have solid creative teams. But the question is, will these capture the same attention and sales as DC’s Absolute line?

This is something I had to ask myself when I was finalizing orders on the initial releases from this line. And while I tend to order conservatively on new titles, I did bump orders up quite a bit for these books. I think they will do very well, at least at first, as everyone tries to get in on the ground floor of what they think will be the Next Big Thing. And maybe they’ll be right, and it will be the Next Big Thing.

But I honestly think it will be at best a good selling new Marvel line to already established comic fans, and not the constantly-selling, new customer-attracting, phenomenon that Absolute has been. That niche is already filled, you see, and lightning striking again seems highly unlikely.

Again, just my feeling. I could be wrong, and maybe I’ll still be selling the 12th printing of Midnight: X-Men #1 off my shelves two years from now. And I’ll be cursing myself for not having ordered ten times the amount I did for the first printing of that issue.

We’ll all see soon enough how the Midnight line does. And whether I was on target with my orders. I’ve had strong interest from my regular clientele regarding these books, and I’ll be interested to see if there’s any demand beyond that.

The post I would title “And now, escapism” except I’ve already used that one.

filed under Categories dc comics, retailing 12 Comments

So I’ve been otherwise occupied, both at work and at home, and with doing some behind-the-scenes tinkering with this here website, so today I’ll show you a picture of stacks of 1960s/1970s DC war comics I picked up over the weekend:


What a glorious, terrible-conditioned mess of books these are. Stored poorly, some water damaged, many put in comic bags that had no flaps, so what good were they…these may be in lousy condition, but at least they’ll be cheap!

I’m hoping to get started on pricing them this Tuesday, when I have some free time on my hands and presumably the rest of my body…when the customer visits will likely be low, and I won’t mind smelling more like decaying newsprint than I usually do.

Anyway, war comics! Heavy on the Sgt. Rock/Our Army at Wars, and with inexplicably a modern Spider-Man comic that’s a retailer exclusive variant. Anyway, I don’t think I’ve ever received so many of the DC war books in one shot like this before. It was a nice surprise, even with the wear and tear on them. It’s one of the joys of owning a comic book store, getting to play with old comics like these.

Did I get a headache juggling all these dates around? I won’t say “no.”

filed under Categories dc comics 10 Comments

[NOTE: some of this post was written In Real Time as I got more information from An Important Personage Related to This Subject, so I apologize if it reads a little awkwardly.]

So, speaking of Red Tornado…a couple of you bought up in the last post‘s comments the Kurt Busiek/Carmine Infantino mini-series that was running concurrently with the Crisis on Infinite Earths event.


Now, as I noted in the comments last time, I really like this mini. It goes a long way towards establishing Reddy as a force to be reckoned with, something more than a mopey robot that hangs around the Justice League and gets blown up a lot. He spends the series fighting the Construct, an evil artificial intelligence and a good contrast to the humanity-adjacent Tornado. The series also wraps up with our hero having a few words for his “father,” the villainous mad scientist T.O. Morrow, about being his own person and not subservient to his creator. Infantino, with inker Frank McLaughlin, provide a lot of visual variety to the proceedings, and man, who does rushing wind better than Infantino?

The series ends with “John Smith” (the Red Tornado’s civilian guise) finding a new perspective on life, and looking forward to new experiences with his partner Kathy and their adopted daughter Traya. As the walk off into the figurative sunset, the three of them brainstorm new names to replace the apparently too normal “John Smith” moniker:


It’s a fun panel upon which to end the story, with plenty of in-jokes and references stuffed in there…Stan ‘n’ Jack, Jughead, Dave from “Alvin and the Chipmunks,” one Ghostbuster, and many more get shoutouts, either under their more well-known names or otherwise.

Anyway, it’s a fresh, revitalizing start to the character, a solid foundation upon which to build future adventures.

Except for, you know, the timing.

Based on the release date information from the Grand Comics Database (which I find takes this info from the then-current Amazing Heroes ‘zine), the four-issue Red Tornado mini-series launched on March 19th, 1985 (just six days after my 16th birthday!). It wrapped up with #4’s release on June 18th. (But more on those dates momentarily.)

The 8th issue of Crisis on Infinite Earths, featuring the apparent death of the Red Tornado (and, by odd coincidence, another character known for wearing lots of red), came out on July 9th of that year. The Justice League of America Annual #3, with the evolution of the Red Tornado into his new antagonistic form, came out one week later, on July 16th. Thus, Red Tornado and family got a whole three weeks of a happy ending.

What this reminds me of just a little is the final issue of Brightest Day, DC’s last big pre-New 52 event where a lot of upcoming storylines in the DC Universe are teased in multiple epilogues. And then the transitional event of Flashpoint commenced less than a month later, beginning what would turn into the New 52. And all those teased storylines in Brightest Day? Pretty much wiped away, giving some credence to the idea that the whole company-wide refurbishing was a last-second decision.

I did ask Mr. Busiek on the social media about the timing of this series vis-à-vis the events in Crisis, and he replied that he’d actually written the series in 1983, without even knowing that Crisis, still in its early planning stages then, was even a thing. Interestingly, he says “they blew Reddy up between issues 2 and 3, which put a real damper on sales,” which messes with the release date timeline I’m pulling off of the Grand Comics Database.

Further investigation using the ‘zine search engine looking at the “Coming Distractions” new release columns in Amazing Heroes, it does indeed give, say, #4 of Red Tornado a release date of 6/18, like it says on the GCD. However, there is a second shipping date given to #4 of 8/20.


I can’t find similar relistings for #2 or #3, but if those shipped later than indicated in the Amazing Heroes columns, then that would jibe with Mr. Busiek’s comments about that Crisis issue landing squarely in the middle of the mini’s run. Anyway, I asked him about any possible delays to the shipping, but some to think of it, maybe that the series started later than the information Amazing Heroes was initially provided and didn’t get the correct dates listed ’til the final issue.

Okay, was just about to his “Publish” when Mr. Busiek got back to me. He remembers no production delays (which I didn’t think there would be), but he “was definitely under the impression he got Crisised before the mini was over.” As such, in the interest of not bugging this poor man with my obsessive weirdness, I’m going to say that the entire series shipped two months later than would be indicated by most of the Amazing Heroes-sourced shipping dates you can find online, aside from that updated shipping date for #4 I noted above. Between that and his specific memory of sales taking a hit on the Red Tornado mini, I think it’s a reasonable conclusion.

Someone else asked if they were essentially “burning off” this series, and the other “pre-Crisis” Lois Lane mini just to clear out these stories and make way for the New DC, to which Kurt replied “that might well be.” I mean, DC paid for these, might as publish ’em. And in the case of that Red Tornado mini, I’m glad they did. Still haven’t read that Lois Lane mini…I keep meaning to.

Anyway, that’s a lot of Red Tornado talk. So, here’s more! I posted about Reddy’s “Secret Origin,” and a nice character bit with Firestorm, here, and a cute character bit with his daughter Traya here.

Not to be confused with Dolemite.

filed under Categories dc comics 19 Comments

So in all that crazy amounts of free time I have, I’ve been poking through the supplement book in the Crisis on Infinite Earths slipcased edition. Among other things (like the constant drubbing the Flash comic was getting therein, discussed on my Bluesky), I noticed the repeated references to the desire to make the android hero Red Tornado into a villain.

Now, I can get the impulse. As character development goes, his primary contributions to stories (as detailed in a probably inadvertently-hilarious Wikipedia summary) is to be Blown Up Read Good, then repaired just to be blown up again. Rinse. Explode. Repeat.

In an effort to make the character, you know, interesting, particularly in the wake of DC’s crosstown rivals having their own android, the Vision, on their own superteam, the Avengers, and getting a bit more traction with him…DC decided to blow up Reddy one final time in Crisis on Infinite Earths #8, courtesy Marv Wolfman, George Pérez, and Jerry Ordway. In this sequence, an already pre-blown-up Red Tornado is on the Justice League satellite, when it’s discovered he’s booby-trapped with a bomb:


Exuent R. Tornado from the Crisis series proper, but his story continues in Justice League of America Annual #3, by Dan Mishkin, Rick Hoberg, and Bob Gustovich. Through various means and reasons I’m not going to get into here (hie thee hither to the previously linked Wiki entry), the Red Tornado reforms without his robot body into a…well, human tornado:


That lady in the last panel is Kathy, the Red Tornado’s girlfriend, whom he addresses in the very next panel:


Yeah, the whole “Tornado Champion” stuff…long story, but in short it’s an alien intelligence that was accidentally embedded into the Red Tornado’s shell and gave him life beyond his programming.

Anyhoo, Reddy in this new incarnation is ready to blow the whole world down and rebuild it anew:


But not before Kathy manages to have a private heart-to-heart with him, managing to convince him to work with humanity to fix the world, not against them:


And of course, the second the Red Tornado drops his guard, and before Kathy can tell everyone “hold on, it’s all good,” Superman takes initiative with his super freezing breath:


…which Reddy eventually escapes from, and proceeds to flounce on out of there, but not without one final threat:


And off the Tornado goes, in his new status quo as Enemy of the Justice League and the Whole World, Maybe, to someday return in…well, Firestorm the Nuclear Man #91 (1989) by John Ostrander and Tom Mandrake:


In #93 Firestorm rebuilds the Red Tornado’s body, essentially undoing the changes in Crisis and restoring him, more or less, to his status quo:


…and then it’s on to Primal Force and Young Justice through the rest of the ’90s/early ’00s. And Tornado pops up more recently in One Star Squadron and the current Justice League Unlimited comic, as well as having a pivotal role in Justice League: Red. As to how much of the old Crisis-era shenanigans still hold in continuity, I’m not sure.

But it is kinda weird that for all the talk and build-up for the Red Tornado’s Big Change in Crisis, it amounted to only a couple of appearances before being undone. Just another small sample of DC looking back at Crisis in the ensuing years and saying “in retrospect, maybe we shouldn’t have.”

Did I almost include a picture of Sand Saref from Frank Miller’s The Spirit in this post? Maaaaybe.

filed under Categories blogging about blogging is a sin, dc comics 7 Comments

First off, a few notes about the site. Yes, I tinkered with the appearance a bit, bringing it a little more in line with What Had Come Before. The post titles are now all caps again, we’ve got serif fonts back, and most importantly, I’ve brought the comments and category links to the top of each entry. Honestly, that last bit was driving me crazy ’til I fixed it.

I also enlarged the size of the text in the body of the posts a little, so I hope that helps with readability.

Anyway, I appreciate all your comments and thoughts on the new design. Coming up next…a musical background for the site that continually loops “Hamburger Lady” by Throbbing Gristle. That’ll improve the ol’ experience!

• • •

Following up on my Absolute Crisis post from Wednesday:

Somehow I didn’t clock that the cover to the main book in the set was the original George Pérez wraparound drawing produced for the previous hardcover edition, only without Alex Ross’s paintjob and now inked by Jerry Ordway. Here’s a bit of it, since the book is too big to fit onto my scanner:


Ooh, nice, right? Thanks for pointing that out, Greta!

And Daniel T notes some other reprintings of the Crisis series, such as this big ol’ box set:


…and if you peek your peepers at that link, you’ll see that box set has everything. Hardcovers for all the Crisis on Multiple Earths books, all the Crisis tie-ins, all the pre-Crisis Monitor appearances, the JLA/JSA team-ups…I mean, really, the whole shebang. Yes, even that Legends of the DC Universe special I was lamenting last time.

DC is also currently in the midst of publishing paperbacks of the Crisis-specific materal as part of their DC Finest line:


…that is presenting the main mini and DC’s many, many tie-ins in story order. Thanks, Daniel, for reminding me and my aging brain.

I’ve actually made my way through a few more pages of the supplementary book since we last met. I’m kinda/sorta skimming over Marv Wolfman’s plot outlines for now, though I definitely want to go over them more thoroughly to see what’s changed. I did notice some differences already, but I want to pin down some more specific ones to perhaps discuss here at some point.

Instead, I’m favoring the in-company memos on the book, especially the novel-length ones from Roy Thomas to the Crisis team, most of which amount to “don’t screw up my future plans for Infinity Inc..” Thomas does seem cooperative and willing to help with the event, but there are so many requests to leave this, that, or the other thing alone. It’s pretty amazing.

There’s also a memo to editors reminding them that if any new characters were developed and to be included idn Crisis, they first need to be established that they are DC Comics property and that creators don’t claim ownership. I mean, I realize that’s just how things are with some of these characters at the Big Two, but it still felt semi-dystopian to see it spelled out like that.

Speaking of the Big Two, there was some bullets fired over at Marvel’s own Big Crossover Event, Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars, with the book text referring to its “short-lived” changes, and Marv himself calling it a “catastrophe” in one of his memos. (But one that sold tie-ins, which he was encouraging.)

So that Absolute Crisis just keeps on giving the right gifts. Like I said last time, we’re probably getting a lightly whitewashed series of events. That TwoMorrows Crisis Companion will likely be a little more forthcoming.

Crisis of Infinite Reprints.

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So when Crisis on Infinite Earths came out in 1985, I dutifully bought each installment, starting by peeling off the top copy from the giant stack of the first issue on the shop’s glass counter. It was a fun run of books, with each chapter (more or less) delivering wild twists and shocking changes. It was an actual Event Comic, with genuine excitement (and anxiety) at what new surprises would come in the next story. I’ve noted several times here that folks who come to Crisis after the fact, especially in the context subsequent multiple reboots/relaunches of superhero universes, miss its primary ingredient: the coming of actual change, not just the “illusion of change” that is often invoked.

All that said, DC’s been doing its best over the last few decades poking at Crisis‘ scab, peeling it off and pressing it back on again, trying to figure out ways to recapture the DC Universe That Was, or at least apply some patchwork to some of the cracks left over from that series’ impact.

The twelve-issue run been collected a couple of times, initially in a hardcover/slipcase set in 1998. The dustjacket features an Alex Ross painting over George Pérez’s art, and (I think) includes every character that appears in Crisis? I think that’s right. I have a copy of this, and I think I recall someone from DC saying at some point that Crisis would never be released in paperback, due to whatever production issues would be involved. Anyway, the first paperback edition came out in 2000, and that’s the one that’s been in print more or less ever since.

Within the last couple years, DC Comics released “facsimile editions” of each of the 12 issues in the series…complete reprints of each issue, down to the ads. There were variants with foil covers, and because I’m 1/16th crow on my mother’s side, I of course picked up every one of Those Shiny Things.

And then there’s the Absolute Crisis on Infinite Earths slipcased set, recently released to the comics market. Like all the Absolute volumes, it’s an oversized hardcover, presenting the artwork at larger dimensions. One of my regulars ordered a copy of this, and when it came in, he unwrapped the shrinkwrap and let me take a look inside.

Now, I don’t need a fourth iteration of this series in my life. I really don’t. I sold all my copies of the original release through the shop, which was okay because that 1998 hardcover is a solidly replacement. Plus, if I really need to look at it in periodical form, I can always look at my glittery and gleaming foil facsimiles, oh yes, my pretties.

However, this Absolute edition came with something I hadn’t realized…a second volume. And in that second volume…all the behind the scenes stuff. The plot outlines, and character sketches, and office memos, and all the planning and replanning and adjusting. The memo telling the editors that you will feature this new character, The Monitor, in two issues of your titles during the year leading up to Crisis‘s launch. This is all absolute catnip to me, and I, semi-grudgingly, ordered a copy of this Absolute set for myself.

I’ve only just started to read this supplementary book, which starts off with a thorough explanation of the history of comic book character crossovers, and how it eventually brought DC to the point where it thought it needed something like Crisis to straighten everything out. I’m currently at the point where the lead up has begun, including the memo I referenced above, and Marv Wolfman’s plot outlines, and explanations to DC’s editors as to what’s going on. My favorite bit is the handdrawn note DC’s chief editor Dick Giordano sent to company president Jenette Kahn, asking if they could kill off Supergirl (with little spaces to check off either “yes” or “no,” among other options).

I don’t know how “warts and all” this history will get…I mean, I haven’t got to the Roy Thomas section yet (“Hey Roy, we’re getting rid of Earth 2, okay seeya” “Um…what?”). I mean, if Marvel ever did anything like this for Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars, they probably wouldn’t bring up the “little f**ks” memo, so I don’t imagine anything similar, if it existed at all, would turn up here. Regardless, I’m glad to have all this stuff in one place.

Here, I took a few pictures to give you an idea of what this thing looks like, inside and out.

Like, here’s the slipcase:


And the books inside, reusing that Ross/Pérez image from the 1998 hardcover:


The reproduction is beautiful, showing off the art nicely:


Even the letters pages are included, a welcome feature:


On top of everything else, the book also includes the two-part History of the DC Universe, originally intended as the final bit of the Crisis series itself, but instead released as a two-part prestige format mini.


Here’s a look at a page from this part of the book, and yes, I picked this image deliberately:


Now, the supplementary book has lots of goodies inside, like the memos I keep going on about:


…as well as sketches and print ads:


Oh, and just some original pencil art:


Not to mention several foldouts:


…and I can just keep going on and on. The History of the DC Universe portfolio is in here! The cover to the Crisis prose novel Wolfman wrote (of which I have a signed copy around here somewhere)! There’s just so much in here, and I can’t wait to dig through it all. Not included is the Legends of the DCU: Crisis on Infinite Earths special Wolfman wrote in 1999, unless I missed it somewhere in these books. This is a lot of material to get through.

Anyway, as you can tell, I’m excited by this set. In a weird coincidence, this showed up this week from TwoMorrows:


…with even more behind the scenes stuff, interviews with those involved, issue-by-issue examinations, and so on. It’s a good time to be a guy in his middish/late-50s who really likes Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Should add that DC is soon releasing a Crisis collection in their $9.99 Compact format. Speaking of being a guy in his middish/late-50s, I don’t think my eyes will be quite up to looking at all of Pérez’s tiny panels at that size, so I’ll probably pass on a fifth version of the comic entering my home.

Not quite through digesting yet.

filed under Categories dc comics, turok 16 Comments

[NOTE: due to medical stuff and other commitments, I’m on a Tuesday/Thursday schedule this week. I should be back to the regular routine next week.]

So funny that I was talking about digests last Friday, when on Saturday some came in and sold me the following collection:


And in that collection, a whole lotta digests:


Now, this collection wasn’t in the best condition. It was hauled in by the seller within a couple of pieces of wheeled luggage, piled kinda every which way, and not pictured in that first image are the two sizeable piles of comics with heavy water damage. Those were just kinda dumped on me along with the comics I actually wanted, so I’ll be figuring out what to do with those in (hopefully) short order.

But back to the digests. Boy, that’s a pretty good pile of them, including many that I remember buying myself. A brief perusal through a handful of them demonstrated to me that my aged peepers are no longer quite up to the challenge of their printed contents, but I can still admire these wonderful covers with (usually) new art on the front and back.

That said, I did keep one digest for myself, despite the fact I can feel my eyes throw up their hands and declare “I give up” when I look inside. It’s just I’m still in the process of finishing a run of Turok Son of Stone and I feel I need this, Golden Comics Digest #31 from 1973:


This reprints Turok’s first two appearances in Four Color Comics plus material from a couple of other issues…I have those comics, so I can read the stories if I want, but it’s nice to finally have the digest in my weary hands.

As for those other giants…you folks reminded me in Friday’s comments section about Adventure Comics, which changed format from a regular-sized comic book into a digest, starting with #492 in 1982:


This anthology title focused heavily on reprinting Legion of Super-Heroes stories from the 1960s, as well as re-presenting Aquaman stories, Plastic Man, the Challengers of the Unknown, and several others, rangings from the Golden Age even up into the very early 1980s. Alex Toth fans may want to know that there’s a Black Canary story he drew into that very issue I have pictured here.

This run of Adventure was of particular interest to me because, well, yes, those Legion reprints, I wanted those, but there was a new Captain Marvel/Shazam story by E. Nelson Bridwell and Don Newton in that first issue (wrapping up the run of their stories that had been in the regular-formatted comic). After that, there were several Golden Age reprints of Shazam! stories in later issues. With the DC Archives for the Legion, and the hardcover collections that continued that chronological reprinting, having those stories in those digests is largely redundant. Plus, those hardcovers are a lot easier to read. (And the new Shazam! stories by Bridwell/Newton were all reprinted in this series of books.)

I gave up my copies to the shop when I opened, and like with other items I put in the store to sell, I regret it just a little bit. It was a nice little 13-issue oddity to own (with DC ending this, one of their oldest titles, at #503 in September 1983), and I liked a lot of the new covers. I mean, on that #492, there’s Captain Marvel being chomped on by Satan, as depicted by Keith Giffen and Mike DeCarlo. Friends, I know art when I see it, ande we’re all lookin’ at it right there.

Aside from the digests, there was one other particular comic of note that showed up in this collection, and that comic is, of course, Superman #369, featuring my one and only letter of comment to a comic book:


If you want to read what Young Mike had to say, I put a scan of that letter in my very first anniversary post. Guess maybe that was the origin of my blog, that one letter I wrote when I was 12 years old.

Anyway, that copy of Superman #369 is for sale. Only $1,500, cheap! $2,000 if you want it autographed!

And also starring Jesus’s twin brother, Thor.

filed under Categories dc comics, found art, marvel, this week's comics 9 Comments

So anyway, I was reading the new Spider-Man/Superman book released by Marvel this week (NOTE: THIS IS A NEW COMIC AND NOT THE SAME AS THE SUPERMAN/SPIDER-MAN COMIC RELEASED A MONTH AGO, DON’T LET IT FALTER IN SALES LIKE THE SECOND BATMAN/DEADPOOL TEAM-UP), and seeing one of the back-up stories,. the one by Geoff Johns and Gary Frank:


…it reminded me of somethin’. What we see here is a big battle between DC and Marvel characters, primarily good guys versus bad guys, though the Hulk as pictured is giving Superman what for. And what all that hoohar brought to mind was this bit from Doomsday Clock #12, also by Johns and Frank:

This was the bit at the end of this series where John forecast some future events in the DC universe, in particular what is obviously a Marvel versus DC battle in 2030. We’re still a few years off from that, of course, but who knows how long this current détente between the two publishers will last, and thus John ‘n’ Frank got in their predicted big battle a little early.

Granted, the “sacrifice” described in that Doomsday Clock excerpt doesn’t happen in this story. But as we’ve seen in these recent intercompany team-up books, the back-up stories often end after having resolved whatever emotional core existed at the center of the plot, leaving the traditional “good guys versus bad guys” battle for an unseen denouement. Perhaps, if you need to tie up a loose end from Doomsday Clock, this story can suffice as the foretold conflict, with the Hulk’s death still coming after the end of the story we see here.

Anyway, it’s fun to pretend.

• • •

Now, you sinners need some superhero love in your life, so here are some pics my old, old pal William took of a vehicle he spotted whilst out and about:


If you want bigger pics, William’s got ’em in this Bluesky post — let them pay for the bandwidth! But seriously, this vehicle is amazing. William and I live in the same general area, so I’m amazed I haven’t seen it driving around my own self. Unless it was just passing through on its way to spread the good super-Word throughout our country.

Just one official Swamp Thing/Man-Thing crossover, I don’t ask for much.

filed under Categories dc comics, marvel 17 Comments


So Deadpool/Batman #1 (or, more accurately, “Marvel/DC: Deadpool/Batman #1″) has finally been unleashed to, far as I can tell from my wee little comicks shoppe, a very popular item.

In my case I ordered a lot, more than I would normally order on what would be considered a Big Comic, out of my belief that this would have legs. Most new comics that come out have their primary sales window in the first week of release, with a few straggling sales in the following weeks, maybe, before they get pulled for back issues and to make room for the new issue, if there’s one coming in.

I think Deadpool/Batman will have a longer sales run than that, as it is the first Marvel/DC crossover in 20 years, and for a lot of people buying it, the first they’ve experienced as a new release. Also, it’s a one shot with a variety of features and (of course) variant covers, making it easy to collect. Just buy the one (or two, or six, if you want the different covers) and you’re done.

Of course, there’s the DC/Marvel Batman/Deadpool coming out in a month or two, so it’s not all done yet. And I am kind of curious if the turnout for this first release will be matched by that for the second. We will see.

But back to this comic that’s here right now, currently on my new comics rack, being picked up by just about everybody coming in. I joked (or “joked”) not long ago that some days, my shop just felt like an outlet for DC’s Absolute Comics line. Well, now sometimes it feels like and outlet those that, still, and this new crossover. I’m seeing lots of new customers buzz in to pick up this new comic specifically.

Yes, yes, but is it any good? Sure, it’s fine. It delivers what the people want, a crossover between Marvel characters and DC characters. The lead story with the title characters is fun, with only a few slightly off-color jokes from Mr. Pool as he and Batman do their thing against a particular bad guy, I don’t remember if it’s general knowledge who it is. Slight but entertaining.

The other stories are pretty much as expected…a Daredevil/Green Arrow story written by Kevin Smith, a cute Krypto/Jeff the Land Shark story, a wild Dark Knight-era Batman/Old Man Logan short by Frank Miller…it’s a good mix of work. The one story people seem to be complaining about is the Wonder Woman/Captain America WWII-era crossover, where they corner Hitler and argue over straight up killing him or taking him in to face justice. If we were still in the Golden Age, there might be an issue, but as the characters are interpreted today, frankly they both would have put him down immediately. But ah well, What Can You Do?

The sales success of this comic (and, hopefully, the follow-up produced by DC) could very well lead to more of thse Marvel/DC events in the future, but here’s hoping they don’t overdo it like they did in the ’90s/’00s. Sure, there were a lot of good ones (that Hulk/Superman one drawn by Steve Rude is something else), but it really did get to the point where they just weren’t special anymore. (At least until JLA/Avengers came out, which was absolutely special.)

As such, if these two companies contiue to work together for releases like these, maybe keeping it down to just three or four a year at the absolute most would be ideal. Or even just two, like the Deadpool and Batman books, with each company producing their own versions of each team up.

As online pal Jacob notes, there’s a time limit on this, set by whenever one company or the other or both get annoyed with each other and puts an end to these co-publishing money-makers for another couple of decades. I just hope they hold it together enough to get a wide reprinting (versus the limited one they did a couple of years back) of JLA/Avengers, because honestly, that’s just leaving cash on the table.

What if GIganta wins, and all this results in a bunch of Giganta-fronted stuff?

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Continuing your Swamp Thing updates this week, is our mossy pal’s appearance in DC K.O., DC Comics answer to “what if you could read a console fighting game?” I know they’ve tried that before, what with Injustice and various Mortal Kombat books, but this sounds closer to the core idea that those other titles.

DC describes the comic as a “bracket tournament [that] pits heroes against one another in escalating battles—each round unlocking new power, new consequences, and new revelations,” so, sure, what the heck.

There will be 32 characters battling it out here, and if you go to that previous link you’ll see the character select screen for this story, but I’ve excerpted a bit here:


And yeah, there’s Swampy. Now, there’s zero chance that Swamp Thing is coming out on top here, but the Easy, Obvious Answers (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman) seem like they’d be too obvious. Thus, I’m putting my Giant Batcave Penny down on either Lex Luthor (for the “edgy, surprising” result) or Supergirl (for the “let’s get yet another trade paperback ready to tie into a forthcoming movie” result).

Anyway, just having a book where a bunch of your characters are just whaling on each other for a short-run series is perfectly fine. It’s all part of the War Against Darkseid or Apokolips or whatever. Much as I’d like to see Swamp Thing be at the forefront of that, and even with former Swamp Thing writer Scott Snyder doing this series, I don’t expect that to happen. Maybe if we were closer to that supposed Swamp Thing movie James Gunn said is coming. Ah well.

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By the by, this month marks my 37th year in comics retail. Some folks would say that’s a long time. Almost…too long.