death of superman

The All-New Progressive Ruin #1! (Six months later) The All-New, All-Different Progressive Ruin #1!

filed under Categories death of superman, market crash, publishing, retailing 7 Comments

JohnJ Week continues, as he’s left another comment to which I wanted to respond:

“And you only get a month’s rest before you have to decide how many copies of Amazing Spider-Man #800, supposedly a big 80-pages for a whopping $9.99.

“My biggest screw-up ordering comics when I had my store was over the Superman-Lois wedding special. I thought it would sell in the kind of numbers the death of Superman could have sold in if I’d known that was going to be a big news item. But they tried too hard to coordinate it with the wedding on ‘The Adventure of Lois and Clark’ on tv, which really killed off interest in the comic.”

Now for me, Amazing Spider-Man #800 isn’t quite as difficult to order as you might think. Marvel’s past $9.99 books (almost entirely special issues in the Deadpool series) I’ve ordered reasonably okay on, as I’ve got some solid sales history for Deadpool to refer to. Oddly enough, the only $9.99 issue of Deadpool I sort of blew it on was #25 [EDIT 3/11/18: actually, it’s $5.99…still blew that order, though], where I got just a few too many for inexplicable reasons and thus I’ve just kept it on the shelf, selling a copy every once in a while.

Amazing Spider-Man sales of late have been slowly increasing, probably because of the impending 800th issue, partially because of the plotlines, and partially because Marvel sales have been slowly climbing for me just kind of across the board on many of their main books. Of course, that’ll come to an end when Marvel begins their next round of relaunches, killing that momentum, but hey, maybe I’m just being cynical and this eighth or ninth time really will be the charm.

Anyway, getting back on track…even though the increased demand for Amazing Spider-Man has caught a lot of folks off guard recently, after kind of bottoming-out for a while there, I think I may have kind of a handle on orders for it now and can make a realistic guess as to how #800 will do for me. And, historically, and even still today, “anniversary” issues of Amazing tend to sell well even as back issues, so if I still have a few left over on the shelves after the initial sales window is complete, I’m not going to be too worried.

Now, the next part of JohnJ’s comment had me wondering how our own sales on the Superman wedding issues were, back at my previous place of employment. I do remember, after being caught short on 1992’s Superman #75, the black-bagged “Death of Superman” issue, we ordered much higher numbers for 1993’s white-bagged Adventures of Superman #500…and so did everyone else in the country. We sold plenty of that #500, but still were left with a boatload of them in stock. So don’t feel bad, JohnJ…that was our own “b-b-but Superman #75!” foul-up!

By the time 1996 and the Superman Wedding Special came around, we were still trying to recover from the comics crash, and the excesses of the late ’80s/early ’90s were mostly behind us. But our comic sales weren’t doing too badly, and there was still the occasional rush from the general public into shops whenever any particular comic hit the real world news (though, as you noted, that’s not an occurrence you can ever predict or readily depend upon). As I’ve been typing this, I’ve been trying to envision the Superman backstock boxes in the old storage room, and if I recall correctly, we did have some remaining copies of the Wedding Specials (both the white-covered Direct Edition and the John Byrne-covered Newsstand Edition, though more of the former). It wasn’t a lot, and I seem to recall selling quite a few of them on the stands, and continuing to sell them over the subsequent years (at the very least, I do remember having to fish ’em out of the back room every once in a while).

I can remember that, I just can’t recall what our initial orders were…it was a pretty good number, I think, but not so high that we were stuck with an enormous number of leftovers. And I can’t even recall if there was the aforementioned rush of folks who heard about it on the Evening News or wherever. If only I’d known I was going to be starting my comics retailing blog a mere seven years later, I would have kept better notes. Ah well, I’ll be talking to my old boss Ralph soon, so I’ll ask him and see if he remembers.

As for the Lois and Clark TV show fouling things up a bit…yeah, I do distinctly remember when the plan was to separate Lois and Clark in the comics for a bit to forestall the impending nuptials even further, complete with solicitations for future issues to that effect. Then, when the wedding was announced for the TV show, that tail wagged the dog sufficiently to cut short that separation storyline in the comics and fast-track the four-color version of the super-couple down the aisle. You can read more about that in this column by my comic article-writin’ pal Brian. …Thanks, JohnJ, for your blogging-inspirational commenting!

Now let me go back to something I said earlier in this post, regarding the Marvel “Fresh Start” publishing initiative. Perhaps I came across a little…agitated by the whole thing. I thought the recent Marvel Legacy deal was a good idea…trying to wean themselves off the constant relaunches and new #1s, focus on the lengthy histories and runs on these titles, give readers some confidence that they can follow a story without thinking it’s just going to up and restart with a new first issue. And as I said, I was seeing some improvement on many Marvel books…even Doctor Strange and Punisher were slowly climbing in sales. Will those gradual increases carry over into any new relaunched titles featuring the same characters? I sure hope so, but I don’t know.

I think what set me off was the announcement of the “new ongoing” Immortal Hulk, launching with its first issue in a few months. That made me snark a bit on the world’s primary snarking service, Twitters Dots Coms, because honestly, is there going to be an Immortal Hulk issue number, say, 35 on the stands three-something years from now? Or by “ongoing” do they mean like the old “maxiseries,” which would run a fixed 12 issues, in, out, and done? Don’t get me wrong…I’m a longtime Hulk comics fan, and Immortal Hulk sounds fine and I look forward to reading it. But…any reason why this couldn’t have just been done under the title Incredible Hulk? Does relaunching a long-running title with a new first issue still have any kind of extra selling power? Does any kind of sales boost that results stick around for any period of time? Is there a long term advantage to doing that versus just building an audience on an established title without breaking momentum with forced cancellations and restarts?

I’ve said before, I want comics to sell well. I mean, more than just because that’s how I make my living. I want comics to sell well because I like comics. And I want other people to like comics. But every single time there’s a series of relaunches like this, it really does make things difficult. It can confuse and irritate customers, and as has been said so often, jumping-on points are also jumping-off points.

It’s…a weird thing to be concerned about, I realize. It doesn’t really matter what the number is on the front of the comic so long as you’re enjoying what’s inside. Like I said above, I’ve read Hulk comics for a long time, and I’ve read them through, what, a half-dozen restarts and renumberings? But part of comic collecting is the “collecting” part, and it’s hard to escape the issue numbering mindset. These constant renumberings do have an impact, and having a big new “#1 First Issue Collector’s Item!” on the front cover isn’t quite the sales ploy it used to be.

“Occasionally?”

filed under Categories advertising, death of superman 4 Comments

Yet another goodie found whilst digging through the piles of promo stuff…this 1993 flyer advertising the then-forthcoming indie comic release Tandra #12:


The flyer alarmed me at first…I’m not overly familiar with the title, though we did carry it at the time, so I thought at first maybe it was a memorial issue for a deceased creator. No, they’re talking about one of the characters in the book. But, if you read between the lines a bit there, and by “read between the lines” I mean “get ready for that incoming sledgehammer to the forehead,” you can probably spot the (cough) implied criticism of the Death of Superman storyline from just prior to Tandra #12’s release.

That last line of “we will not be throwing a party!” is stirring up some vague memories…did DC have some kind of “Death of Superman” memorial event to advertise the storyline? Or were there such events arranged at stores across the country? At our store the only event we had was “wall-to-wall people inside, a giant line down the block outside,” so having a “party” on top of that would have seemed…impractical. But I’m reasonably sure something of the sort happened to inspire that final line in the advertisement.

Well, okay, we did do one special thing at the store to commemorate the event, and that was to make a window display of comic covers from years past showing many different “deaths” of Superman. …We may have occasionally been smart-asses at times.

Anyway, this I think is an interesting artifact of that period showing how at least this smaller publisher reacted to the overwhelming marketplace blitz of the Death of Superman story. That event did bring lots of customers into stores…but I bet plenty of indie publishers probably felt lost in the shuffle.

And somehow Mike gets another post out of the Death of Superman.

filed under Categories death of superman, retailing 3 Comments

So the other day I ran a little thread on the Twitteringabob about how, in the last few days, I have had an excessive number of people popping in to ask about the direct market edition of Superman #75, the infamous (and much discussed on this site) “Death of Superman” issue. In fact, in one instance there were a couple of guys hanging just outside my shop’s door, with one encouraging the other to “just go in and ask him, he’ll know!” As that happened, I even thought to myself “ooh, he’s going to ask me about the Death of Superman issue,” which was probably 15% Mike’s Psychic Powers manifesting themselves again, 90% Mike Has Been Dealing with As He Said Many Questions about This Comic for Days Now, and 3% Mike’s Not Very Good at Math.

Anyway, all these folks come in, inquiring about how much that particular issue is going for (and occasionally simultaneously wondering where their own copies may have been stashed away). As it happens, I’m currently out of stock on that issue, having recently sold through all my copies, but I inform them that my most recent price on that comic, in the sealed bag, in new condition, was $30. If you looked at that Twitter thingie I linked above, you’d have seen that I noted the general reaction was a slightly disappointed surprise, apparently at the fact that the price wasn’t much higher. Frankly, I’m surprised I can still sell them at that price…for years, back at the previous place of employment, we had ’em at $15 a pop, and even that started to creep up a small bit as we neared the end of my reign of terror there.

I opined in my Twitter posts that the “Death of Superman” issue, despite being sold in great numbers to people purchasing them as investments, likely suffered a sizeable attrition in sellable copies over the intervening decades due to poor storage, the kids getting at them, being peed upon by pets, whathaveyou. I know I’ve had several copies pass through the store in collections offered to me, only to pass on them because they were obviously wrecked. I knew I wrote about this on the site before, and it wasn’t even a year ago if you want to go back and read about this very thing in even greater detail.

In my view, then, at least locally, those bagged Superman funnybooks are getting harder to find in mint condition, so I feel at least a little justified in going $30 on them. I mean, I’m not getting much resistance at the price, and I’m out, so I guess that’s what the market will bear. I’m probably going to wait a while before that price scoots up any higher, though.

Oh, and at this late date, let me respond to Joe S. Walker’s comment there:

“How did you get on with all those copies of Teen Titans, The Falcon and the rest? Still got any?”

He’s referring to this, and I’m pretty sure my old boss Ralph got rid of all those in a massive back issue sale he made to another dealer. They’re Somebody Else’s Problem now!

Another topic brought up on Twitter that was discussed here on this site not too long ago was the 1980s black and white boom, mostly inspired by this tweet about my having a full run of Mark Bode’s Miami Mice in the shop. My primary reason for pointing it out was that I very rarely see later issues of the more obscure b&w boom indies of the period (assuming they had later issues…most were one Highly Investable Issue and done). For example, issue #1 and #2 of Miami Mice were familiar sights, but I can’t recall the last time I saw either #3 or #4. Of course, that’s because most people ordered heaviest on the first issues then slashed orders on the follow-ups so they could spend more money on other new first issues.

Like I say here, I wish I had more of a retailer’s eye view of the boom as it happened, though 30 years of comics-slinging later (tied together with having kept up with the comics press at the time) I have a general idea of what was going on. I just don’t have the memories of the stress of having to plow through the order forms of the time, trying to discern between people actually making an effort (like Bode’s Miami Mice), and people just cranking out shit to play the collectible market for some of that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles-style mad money (like titles I could mention here, but won’t). But then again, I’d probably trade ordering comics then with having to deal with variant covers now. It’s always something.

It’s always the 1990s here on Progressive Ruin Dot Com.

filed under Categories collecting, death of superman 7 Comments

So being in the comics retail industry in a location close to where Malibu Comics’s home base was located when it was active, we’ve seen a lot of the material produced by that company. And I don’t mean just the regular stuff, but promotional material, rare items, and just lots ‘n’ bundles of multiple copies of various products. I remember at one point obtaining what must have been a case of The Trouble with Girls graphic novels.

I’ve seen a pretty large number of the variant covers over the years, such as the full-cover hologram variants for Mortal Kombat and Star Trek Deep Space Nine and the like, not to mention plenty of those foil-variant Ultraverse covers. In fact, the other day I had a fellow who identified himself as a former employee of Malibu (and Marvel, after that company bought out the former) come by the shop, hand me a small pile of comics, and tell me “here, I’ve been sitting on these a while and you can have ’em if you can use ’em.” And yes, there were a few of the usual items in there, like those hologram covers I mentioned, and what I thought was just another foil Ultraverse variant:


…until I noticed this embossed stamp on the front cover:


…and this certificate explaining just what it was:


…and I was all set to write up a whole post about this, but just like two weeks ago this Ultraverse blog already put together a far better and more informative post about this very thing than I would have. The thing I learned from that post I found most interesting was that, despite the certificate stating “limited to 500 copies,” far fewer than that were actually created and distributed. The number given is about 30, though the picture in that blog post shows a certificate numbered 134, but who knows what kind of numbering shenanigans were going on. Perhaps earlier numbers were being reserved for employees and other special persons, since the copy in my hands is #7.

Anyway, I put it on the eBays to see who’d salute, so we’ll see how it goes.

Also recently acquired was the Platinum Edition of Adventures of Superman #500, which you can tell is totally the platinum edition of the comic because the bag surrounding it is clearly printed with the words “PLATINUM EDITION” along the bottom:


It’s kind of a drag that someone had this pinned up on a wall, apparently, as there are a couple of pinholes in the top center of the polybag…who’d buy a “hot, rare collectible” in a time where “hot, rare collectibles” were the be-all, end-all of the comics retail industry and then pin the sucker on a wall? That seems almost counter-intuitive to the investment mentality running rampant in the business then. It even had the $125(!) price tag still affixed to the comic bag it was being stored in.

I’ve come across these bagged platinum editions before, and always wondered if just the polybag itself was supposed to be the “platinum” bit (as this bag was black and silver, versus the red and white of the regular version) or if the comic inside was platinum-ized. I suppose if I really wondered that much, I could have Googled or eBay-searched it for myself before now, but I finally looked and found a few of these for sale:


This is one of those “pro-graded” slabbed copies, where they apparently removed the polybag before sealing the funnybook into its little plastic coffin. The color of this cover may be dimmed a bit, as you’re seeing it through about 1/16 inch or so of plastic, but that is definitely a “platinum” (well, silvery-whitish) version of a cover that is normally black. Plus it says “platinum” in the corner and they wouldn’t print it if it weren’t true. Another difference is that the logo on the platinum version features raised lettering while the regular version does not, a fact I just now went to check with my copy of the non-platinum version down in the No-Longer-Quite-As-Vast Mikester Comic Archives.

Speaking of polybags, I also picked up one of these:


…which is the regular cover edition Superman #82, which also had a chromium cover. However, this version of #82 polybagged with a poster was, according to my two seconds of Google research, a Walmart variant which I don’t believe I’d seen before. No UPC code on the comic cover, but said code was provided on the back of the bag itself. I don’t know what the poster itself looks like…my guess is that it’s that cover, but maybe someone can let me know.

Twenty-plus years on, I’m still talking about the Death of Superman. Let us look forward to a happy 2015 and, with any luck, even more posts about the Death of Superman. See you then, friends.

I haven’t mentioned the Death of Superman in a while, so here’s a post about the Death of Superman.

filed under Categories death of superman 11 Comments

So a fella dropped by the store the other day with an armload of comics that he wasn’t interested in selling…he just wanted to give them to us, so that they’d be our problem instead of just another pile of stuff he’d have to deal with. I was kind of busy when he came in and just told him “sure” without getting a good look at what he had, ’til about a half hour later when I finally had a chance to glance through the stack and see an awful lot of “Death of/Funeral for/Return of” Superman books. Most of them are destined for the bargain box, some of the lesser-conditioned copies will probably end up in, ahem, “the gentlemen’s library and washroom,” and then there’s this:


The World Without A Superman Special Collector’s Set, still sealed in its original shrinkwrap. This is kind of an interesting artifact for the time, particularly when you consider the details:


It’s only $5.33 for a $7.50 trade paperback, a $1.25 comic book, a “reprint” of Action Comics #1 (presumably just a reprint of the Superman content of that issue, judging by the apparent thickness) that – let’s say – is worth about a buck, and a poster that’s worth maybe another buck. So that’s about ten bucks worth of stuff for $5.33, which ain’t a bad deal, if a peculiar price point.

I don’t remember if it was on this site, or on the Twitter, or maybe just in an email to a friend (which you better not have read!) where I noted that while the cheapie Death of Superman trade DC rushed out right after the event had gone through some incredible number of printings, like twelve or fifteen or something like that, you could (at the time I was making this observation, a few years ago) still reorder the World Without a Superman book from Diamond Comics and receive a first printing. (It’s since been replaced by an edition with a $19.99 cover price.) So they printed a lot of these books, and I wonder if this cut-price package was, while also being good marketing to take advantage of heightened interest in the Superman franchise, a desperate attempt to clear out some warehouse space.

One thing that amused me…the need to indicate that Action Comics #1 was a “(REPRINT).” Probably because you just know if that “(REPRINT)” wasn’t there, someone was going to complain that they didn’t get an original Action #1, and then there’d be lawsuits and all sorts of unpleasantness and who’d want that. Although I notice that no such consideration was taken to indicate the “SUPERMAN #75 THE HISTORIC ISSUE OF SUPERMAN’S DEATH” included in this package was a fourth printing:


Remember when DC used to indicate printings with Roman numbers in the corner box? I wish they’d still do that, instead of what they do now with coloring the whole cover red, or printing “sketch” covers or whatever.

Also, when you get right down to it:


…this would be a weird damn poster to have hanging on your wall. “Hey, remember that time Pa Kent collapsed in the field after a heart attack? …If only there were a constant reminder of that incident hanging up in my house somewhere.” Probably not as weird as this, but pretty darned close.

Peeking at some of the faces visible on the cover of the trade:


I’m pretty sure most of Luthor’s history has been dumped post-Flashpoint, but man, even the whole “red-haired clone of Luthor” story that was going on at this point was basically unworkable prior to that due to other continuity-adjustments, if you really stopped to think about it. And I have. A lot. Maybe too much.


I don’t know why Sad Guy Gardner is striking me as funny. Maybe because he’s like super-angry and sad at the same time, which is totally in character and kind of awesome.


I’m not sure I even get what Bloodwynd’s whole deal was, even though I’m fairly certain I read the comics explaining the backstory at the time, and just now I looked at the Wikipedia entry and got that whole “reading other people’s mail” vibe I usually get when, for example, I read an X-Men comic or actually read other people’s mail. Also, his name sounds like a band that should be on a bill with Shadowfax, so long as we’re picking on a character that hasn’t been seen for about a decade.

So, anyway, the Death of Superman…nearly twenty years on, and there’s still no escaping from it. I expect that after I die, my condemned spirit will wander the world like Jacob Marley’s, weighed down by chains attached to long comic boxes filled with Adventures of Superman #500.

All times are approximate.

filed under Categories collecting, death of superman 13 Comments

So the amount of time that had passed between the release of this comic:


…and this comic:


…is kinda/sorta about the same, give or take a handful of months, as will have passed between the release of this comic:


…and the new Action Comics #1 coming this September:


First, to save me some “um, actually”-ing in the comments, please note I said “about,” not “exactly.” It’s close enough for my point, or what passes as my point.

Second, it’s a bit “one of these things is not like the other,” I realize, since one is a debut issue and the other two are reboots of one kind or another, though you could read the “Death of Superman” event as an equally-influential revitalization of the franchise.

But when looking at the spans of time involved here…the debut of Superman (and, if not the launch of the Golden Age of Comics, at least its most significant event) in 1938, followed eighteen years later by the launching of the Silver Age* with the debut of the new Flash (itself only seven years after the cancellation of the Golden Age Flash series, and five years after the G.A. Flash’s last appearance in All-Star Comics).

My only point to this really is that, when I was younger, and was first learning about all these events in comics history, it certainly felt like we were talking about longer periods of time. Given all the talk and bandying about of the terms “Golden Age” and “Silver Age,” it came as bit of a shock to realize that only about half a decade separated the two eras. I mean, that’s barely longer than it took Ultimate Wolverine Vs. Hulk to finish.

Conventional wisdom is that the customer base for comics turned over fairly quickly in those days. The kid who bought the last issue of the Golden Age Flash Comics, #104, had probably outgrown comics before Showcase #4 rolled along, and the kids who bought Showcase #4 probably had never seen the previous Flash. I mean, I wasn’t there, and I’m making some assumptions, and I know some people probably carried over from one “Age” to the next. But that was the general belief.

Compare to today, when most people who buy comics have been buying for years at a time. In my case, using the Superman example…I was buying the comic in the early 1980s, I bought the Man of Steel mini in 1986 which restarted Superman’s history from scratch, I bought (and am still buying) all the main Superman series from then ’til now, and I plan on picking up the new relaunched Superman titles in a couple of months. That’s bit of an extreme case, but comic fans following characters or series for years at a time is more the rule than the exception, nowadays. At least, those folks are the primary target of the superhero publishers. The “crossover event leading into the next crossover event” publishing strategy is obviously not one they could have pulled off in, say, 1948, when the audience turnover would have meant people reading the end result of this strategy without having been there at the beginning.

I picked the Death of Superman issue as an example because that’s a relatively recent event that a number of us recall happening during our comics-reading (and for some of us, our comics-retailing) history. It’s a pretty solid timestamp in our memories, a “where were you when…?” kind of thing. (Where was I? Explaining to an enormous and increasingly-irritable crowd of people “uh, only one customer, please.”) It doesn’t seem like that long ago to me, and yet the time that has passed is longer that the original run of The Spirit and the original run of Fawcett’s Captain Marvel.

Boy, this kind of got away from me. Another point I was intended to make was “it was a lot easier to get away with reboots back in the day” because, well, anyone complaining was probably going to stop reading comics soon anyway, and there were always more readers coming to replace them. Yet another point was simply realizing that less tempus had fugited than I thought when it came to certain historical events in the comics industry. That last point is simply the result of age, I’m sure…when I was 15, a five year span sure seemed like an eternity. Today: well, I’m pretty sure I’ve got socks that are older than five years. (Shut up…they’re in good shape!)

But if there were a primary point to all this babbling, it is simply that I was somewhat amused by comparing the two timespans above. And yes, I know not everyone who’s reading this has been reading comics for decades. Let me wallow in my dotage in peace.
 

* Some people mark the beginning of the Silver Age with the first appearance of the Martian Manhunter. And, y’know, that’s cool with me.

Oh, by the way, all images are from the Grand Comics Database. I was too lazy to dig out my copy of the original Action #1 to scan.

In which I don’t spoil the Fantastic Four “death.”

filed under Categories death of superman, investing, retailing 15 Comments

So the new Fantastic Four is the way-overhyped “death” issue, in which it looks bad for the character in question, sure, but not necessarily a cut ‘n’ dried demise by any means. I’m not going to get into spoilers, for those of you who’ve managed to miss the media blitz about the event which happily revealed the comic’s alleged starring corpse, but anyone reading the story can see it for the “all the other characters think this character is dead, but we’ll eventually catch up to that character and see what he/she’s been up to in the months during the apparent deceased-ness” situation that it is.

Not blaming the creative team of the book, I should note, which has been turning out a solid adventure serial. Jonathan Hickman and Steve Epting are presenting complex, interesting, intelligent and still fun superhero stories. This “death” was clearly just a plot twist in an ongoing saga that got blown out of proportion to a general audience of non-comic-readers who are becoming increasingly wary of these stunts. (Let me link again to this post of mine about this sort of promotion.) Unfortunately, I can’t really blame Marvel for this promotional stunt, as it’s hard to get widespread mainstream attention on comics that isn’t “somebody dies, no really!” or “soon to be a movie!” or “this comic has a swear in it, WON’T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CHILDREN” or, as pal Dorian noted to me, “found strewn about the killer’s apartment….” It’s a shame you usually can’t get this amount of attention simply by saying “this is a good comic people might enjoy,” but the saying isn’t “if it reads, it leads,” after all. You need a gimmick, and “SOMEBODY DIES!” is the one that gets the real world attention. Conversely, “SOMEBODY COMES BACK!” never works as well in grabbing the public, as every return of a dead character since that white-bagged Adventures of Superman #500 has shown.

It’s interesting to see that even the mainstream news media stories are now including the implied “what, again?” eyeroll regarding this kind of marketing stunt (such as in this spoiler-filled article), which may further undermine the influx of magpies clutching at the shiny investment potential of yet another temporary death. Especially since the last few have been reversed relatively quickly, turning hypothetical fortunes into just so much polybagged paper.

Ultimately, I expect we’ll sell out of this new FF…we didn’t go overboard on ordering it, and it comes sealed in a familiar-looking if fairly pixelated black bag which will certainly grab attention. But if we do get some new folks in looking for the comic, it’ll once again be a one-shot media-fueled bump, bringing a few bucks into the comics marketplace, but won’t be built upon, won’t be sustained, and will only return when the next “death” comes along, assuming there are still some people left who’ll continue to buy into the hype. The returns diminish each and every time.

…

Well, I’m certainly Mr. Downer-Pants. Here, let a little stuffed bull treat the topic at hand in the best way anyone can…with big laffs!

“Order proud!”

filed under Categories death of superman 7 Comments

This is a 1993 promotional card sent out to retailers plugging Wizard‘s tie-in to the whole “Death of Superman” brouhaha. The front is a shiny silver with embossed lettering, which is the sort of thing that never really comes through that well when I scan it, but you get the idea:


The back has all the important details you need to know:


In fairness, 1) it did have huge sales, but I’m not sure it was entirely due to whatever they were calling “foil covers” that week…frankly, it could have been a plain brown wrapper with stick figures drawn by the publisher’s 3-year-old nephew and it would have sold like gangbusters during the “Death of Superman” feeding frenzy; and 2) we did indeed sell every issue we ordered. Actually, as I recall this particular special was pretty good…lots of interviews and interesting features and, I have to admit, the cover was pretty snazzy.

Not sure what the whole “order proud!” thing was about, unless I’m not recalling our chests swelling with pride as we jotted down our numbers in the Previews order form. Ah, well.

Also, they used “its” when they meant “it’s.” C’MON, PEOPLE.

• • •

In totally unrelated news, I’d better note this article before my email box is filled with messages telling me about it:

“Justin Bieber to Star in Remake of Swamp Thing”

“‘We feel we had a lot to develop from Wes Craven’s original Swamp Thing,” said director Kenny Ortega, ‘Like more back-story on Dr. Alec Holland, or a more sinister Dr. Arcane, and, of course, more of Swamp Thing singing.'”

Yet another "Death of Superman" post.

filed under Categories death of superman


Finally got around to seeing Superman/Doomsday, DC’s inaugural effort in their new line of direct-to-DVD animated movies. So, now I can go back and read all the reviews and such that I sorta glossed over for the last month while avoiding “spoilers.” (Wait…Superman died, and came back? Get outta here!)

The film itself is fine, if a very stripped down, simplistic version of the near-epic “Death/Return of Superman” storyline from the early ’90s. While one could fill, oh, say, an entire blog post of the differences between the original comic book version of the story and the animated version, there is one primary difference I wanted to note. And this difference is intrinsic to the formats these two interpretations of the story have taken.

The actual impact of Superman’s death in the course of this story (um…SPOILER, I guess?) is much, much less in the cartoon, if only because Superman’s removal from the narrative is all of about fifteen minutes or so. It’s just a very brief plot twist, there to give Luthor the opportunity to replace him with with a clone Superman under his command. The real Supes eventually wakes up, recovers in his Fortress, and comes back for the big fight scene. The end. The viewer never really feels that Superman is gone, because, well, “how can I miss you when you won’t go away?”

On the other hand…after Superman’s death in the funnybooks, he was gone. For the couple months that followed, we had Superman books with no Superman…pages filled with funerals and tributes and mourners and no real clue given as to how Superman would eventually return. The Superman books even went on a brief hiatus…they stopped publishing for a month or so, which I was going to say would be unheard of today, delaying publication of a top selling comic book. But then I remembered DC’s botched relaunch of Wonder Woman, and Marvel’s year and a half (and growing) gap between issues of Ultimate Hulk/Wolverine, et al, so it’s not so uncommon nowadays, really.

But it really did make an impact when the Superman books stopped publishing, even for as briefly as they did, as the four Super-books had functioned essentially as one weekly title, a new issue of each Superman series every week. To have that schedule interrupted underscored the alleged death of the character. Okay, we had specials and whatnot in the interim, and when the titles relaunched a few weeks later, we still had no Superman. We had folks who took the Superman name, and maybe one or two who could have been a drastically changed Big Blue, but things weren’t quite back to normal yet…and it would still be a couple months before the situation was resolved.

In short, the comics gave us time to get used to the idea, to really feel the impact, of Superman being gone. The movie doesn’t. And, like I said, it’s intrinsic to the format…it can’t really be considered a criticism, because it’s not like the film could end with Superman’s death, with a note to “come back in Summer ’08 for the shocking conclusion.” Of course, no one familiar with comics really thought Superman was gone for good, but that extra gap the comics provided helped enhance the illusion.

The primary special feature on the disc is a longish documentary of the original “Death/Return” comics, with plenty of interviews with the folks responsible and lots of memories of the madness that followed. Period footage (I’m using “period” to refer to events from fifteen years ago…is that overstating it?) shows what the actual “Super-retreat” editorial meetings looked like, where the creative teams got together and hammered out the Superman plots for the following year. I’d always pictured editor Mike Carlin sitting in a throne like this one, making decrees with a wave of his scepter (tipped with the “S” logo), but seeing the actual meeting room in the documentary has spoiled that vision a bit.

There are some close-ups of the the white boards being used for plot notes in the meeting room, which allows for some DVD-pausin’ fun:


For some reason, the big “FIGHT!!!” notes make me laugh:


Interestingly, when discussing the four replacement Supermen that turned up in the “Return of Superman” storyline, Superboy is (aside from a brief shot of his legs) never shown onscreen. When discussing Steel, or the Cyborg Superman, and so on, lots and lots and lots of images from the comics featuring those characters are presented. Superboy? Nada. (Presumably because of this, I’m guessing.)

Something else I’ve learned from this documentary: creator Dan Jurgens does not age. The man still looks like he’s in high school. Clearly he’s found the Fountain of Youth, and must be forced to divulge its location.

There’s also a brief documentary focusing on the vocal talents behind the cartoon (Ray Wise as Perry White? No way!), which suffers from an extreme lack of any screentime for John DiMaggio, the voice of Futurama‘s Bender and the voice of the Toyman from this Superman cartoon. We also get a commentary track (which I haven’t listened to yet), a preview of the next animated film (The New Frontier, which doesn’t look half-bad), and one of those DVD games which I didn’t have the patience to try. Sorry.

Overall…slight but watchable, with good vocal performances, some satisfyingly destructive action scenes, and backed up with a solid documentary about the comics themselves. If you’re expecting anything close to the story that the original comics provided, forget about it. Taken on its own, however, it’s not a bad way to spend an hour or two.

In other news:

  • Apparently Green Lantern is on track to being a film, again, with more directors and writers and such tied to the project. Well, I’ll believe it when I see it. I’m still disappointed we’re not getting the Jack Black version, which would have kicked ass and you know it.

    From another article on the subject:

    “Michael Green, who also has prior experience with Berlanti on Everwood and Jack & Bobby, wrote Superman/Batman for Marvel Comics.”

    Whoops.

  • An article from my alma mater’s campus newspaper talks about Halloween costumes, and includes this passage of absolute truth:

    “One idea you may consider is being Wonder Woman or Swamp Thing, especially since Swamp Thing is probably the biggest badass ever.”

    You’re damn right. Though having Swamp Thing and Wonder Woman in the same sentence there briefly put the image of Swampy in WW’s bathing suit costume and tiara, and I don’t think I need that idea in my head. Get out, get out!