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So as promised, here’s a pic of Employee Aaron’s fiance Kempo dressed as the Red Lantern cat Dex-Starr. BONUS: she’s in the pic with Dex-Starr’s co-creator, Geoff Johns:
Pretty awesome, I think. I wonder which is weirder: being dressed as a character and running into that character’s creator, or being the character’s creator and seeing people dressed as him/her/it. Luckily, thanks to my
Spunky the Monkey cosplay, I think I’m relatively safe from any awkward encounters since I’m pretty sure everyone involved in the strip is long-departed.
Also, she got to ask during a DC Universe panel if Dex-Starr would be fighting Krypto the Superdog EDIT: Streaky the Supercat at some point, and Johns responded in the affirmative. WE’RE HOLDING YOU TO THIS, JOHNS.
Apparently, Employee Aaron was also in line to ask a question, but he wasn’t able to ask before question-time was cut off. His inquiry? How DC plans on reintroducing Swamp Thing into the regular, non-Vertigo DC Universe. …I’ve trained the boy well.
• • •
Hey, you look like you have a dollar. And I would like you to spend it by just clicking on that image just below, there:
Fellow
Bureau Chief and
Fake AP Stylebook contributor Eugene, under the name “Adam WarRock,” has released his single “Ira Glass,” and you can choose your purchasing and download options
right here. (Use the Bandcamp option, since they take less off the top, which means more coin of the realm for the Euge Machine.)
BONUS: Cover art, as seen above, by The Rack‘s Benjamin Birdie. He’s also a swell cat who deserves your support.
Anyway, Eugene has gifted us with plenty of free songs over the last few months (including multiple theme songs for the comics podcast War Rocket Ajax) so please, throw down a buck for at least this one thing. Help a brother out.
And yes, I realize the rap and the hipping and the hopping isn’t to everyone’s taste. Not my own preferred musical genres, usually, but I’ve been enjoying Euge’s work over the last few months, and hopefully most of you will, too.
• • •
This week’s sidebar icon image comes from
Chris Sims,
Chad Bowers and
Matt Digges‘s webcomic
Awesome Hospital. It’s from
this particular page (WARNING: cartoon naked butt), and I was informed, as I’d
wondered previously, that the image in question
is in fact a specific reference to me.
So of course I totally stole it. SWAMP THING IN AN “M” HAT WANTS TO BE FREE.
…but Kempo and Employee Aaron later reenacted the question-popping for friends and other well-wishers while still at the convention:
I’m reasonably certain the raygun-coercion wasn’t a part of the actual event, but I’m going to pretend it was anyway.
So while attending the San Diego Comic Con, Employee Aaron, as seen here:
…asked for the hand in marriage of his girlfriend Kempo, as seen here:
…and she must not have heard the question, because she actually said “yes” and now she’s pretty much stuck having to marry the guy.
Seriously, though, congratulations to both of them…I’ve known Kempo since she was just a kid, and now here she is, marrying this Aaron fella. Tempus sure does fugit when you ain’t lookin’.
Here’s a nice photo of the both of them, taken during one of those rare occasions Aaron remembered which side of the razor goes against his face:
Okay, I pick on Aaron a lot, but he really is a nice guy — don’t tell him I said that! — and I do wish these two the best.
• • •
In other news:
- Yes, that really is Kempo in the Plastic Man get-up…that photo was taken a couple of San Diegos ago. She has quite the affinity for costume-making, and this year she went to the con dressed as Dex-Starr. Yes, the Red Lantern cat. Soon as I get a photo, I’ll run it here. If Kempo doesn’t kill me for running the Plastic Man pic first.
- Isn’t this like the third time Smallville character Chloe Sullivan has been announced as entering the DC Universe proper? No idea what the hold-up was the previous times (probably no more than “didn’t have the right time and place to squeeze her in,” or maybe the show’s producers put the kibosh on it…really no clue), but it should be interesting to see how they alter/merge her Smallville backstory to fit into Superman’s comic book continuity (such as it is).
- Holy cow, Fantagraphics will be publishing the complete Floyd Gottfredson Mickey Mouse comic strips. I don’t do a whole lot of Disney stuff on this site, I realize, because, oh, hello Disney lawyers, but I am a fan of the Gottfredson Mickey strips and can’t wait to see this book.
Hopefully someday we’ll get a collection of those early Donald Duck strips, too, which Gladstone used to reprint in their early Donald Duck comics.
- So the Infinity Gauntlet will be in the Thor movie. I’m still fanboy enough to think that’s neat. And as Augie De Blieck said on this Twitter thingie, that explains the recent hardcover release of the original Infinity Gauntlet mini-series.
- I knew attending the Injury-to-Eye panel was a bad idea. Okay, it may turn out no one was actually “stabbed” as such, so there goes my jokes about how after all this time, a fan finally decided to literally “go stabby,” but according to the article someone was scratched near the eye with “a pen or an inflatable toy” or perhaps a puppy or maybe a Ford Fiesta, no one’s quite sure, it seems.
- David Wolkin has been posting his “Internal Monologue Reviews” of the con, and they’re weirdly amusing and disturbing. Also, he dropped by our store to say hello on his way down to San Diego, and he is one handsome bastard.
- Huh, new Rocketeer stories, by a bunch of name creators. This mini-series would come very close to doubling the amount of Rocketeer comics in existence, wouldn’t it? Anyway, it won’t be Dave Stevens, alas, but it sounds like it could be interesting.
- Here’s an announcement I didn’t expect: John Byrne’s Next Men is coming back. As I recall, when Byrne ended the series in the mid 1990s, the plan was to revive it when the comic industry’s health improved to the point that it’d be economically feasible to return to the title. Well, I guess he got tired of waiting, because here we go. I am looking forward to this, as Next Men was an enjoyable comic, allowing Byrne’s Byrne-ness to be unfettered by corporate hoohar and goings-on.
- Here’s a trio of Dark Horse Comics related news items: a movie trailer for The Goon (video autoplays, have to watch an ad), a new Witchfinder mini-series drawn by John freakin’ Severin, and Dark Horse Presents is coming back, with a new Concrete story in the first issue. These are all good things.
- Scanning some of the online photo galleries of this year’s costumes…now, it’s kinda weird that someone dressed up their six or seven year old daughter as Hit-Girl from Kick Ass, right? It’s not just me thinkin’ that? Another thought I had seeing some of these costumes…they realize they’re going to have to be walking through huge crowds on hot days, right? Maybe a giant costume made of thick fabric and/or with pointy, stick-outy bits is not the best of ideas?
Also, apparently the Slave Leias are multiplying. At this rate, by the year 2040 approximately 88% of Earth’s population will be Slave Leias. …I hope George Lucas is happy.
…when I came across this item:
First, it never occurred to me that there was a tie-in item of this particular type for the
Superman Returns movie, though if you can
dress up as Supes, I guess Lex is fair game.
Second, “Luthor” is totally misspelled on the package. I’m reasonably sure this is an official item, which makes the error fairly surprising…and I’ve also found pictures of this product with the correct spelling, so it was caught eventually, in case you were as worried about this as I was.
In other news:
…for one of our very semi-occasional Midnight Madness sales, so I’m downright pooped as I write this (at 1:40 Sunday morning). Thus, all you’re getting today is a photo taken at said event, featuring Employee Aaron and Kempo, his lovely significant other:
I’m pretty sure this photo is weapons-grade cuteness.
Anyway, they’re going to the San Diego Comic Con next week, so if you see them there, be sure to ask Aaron to show you his cat ears. It’s good luck if you rub them.
…after a long day and a longer evening and seriously, folks, I’ve got nothing. I have nothing I particularly want to write about, nothing to scan, nothing happening at work that’s particularly interesting to talk about…
…so let’s instead wish Employee Aaron a happy birthday!
This is where I keep Aaron between his 14-hour workdays at the shop, by the way.
Happy birthday, Aaron! Here’s to at least a half-dozen or so more!
So first, Employee Aaron drew this:
And then I drew this in response:
Neither of us were particularly sad at the time, so I have no explanation. But that won’t stop me from slapping these pics up on the site for all to…”enjoy.”
In other news:
- Say, you know what’s five years old this week? Why, the weblog of Bully, the Little Stuffed Bull, that’s what! Since Bully is only six years old, he’s been doing his site for 5/6ths of his life! And who among us can say that?
Congrats, Bully! May you defeat all the matadors life throws at you!
- Fellow Bureau Chief Matt Wilson penned an article looking at the problems with “nerd news” reporting. Some interesting food for thought in there (especially the bit about some folks just not being able to admit they were wrong about something).
- Here’s something I didn’t expect to see…the all-seeing Neilalien turns his Eye of Agamotto upon the last episode of Lost. It’s a short, thoughtful, and reasoned response to the show, and I can’t disagree with it.
Speaking of Lost, get a load of Nedroid‘s “Twitpic” stream, with plenty of Lost comics and illustrations. If this strip doesn’t make you wish for a follow-up TV series with those two characters, then I don’t know what to tell you.
- Longtime customer Kevin started a sketch blog and I’ve kept meaning to link to it. So here you go. The man wields a mighty pen.
- If you somehow missed out on ordering the print version of The Journal of MODOK Studies fanzine, like I did, you can now get all three issues as PDFs from the official website. You’re welcome.
So no less than THREE
current and former employees had this to say upon seeing the Copperhead action figure…without having heard the others say these things, by the way:
- “Copperhead? Really?”
- “Is he a member of [G.I. Joe’s counterpart terrorist organization] Cobra?”
End result: I had to kill all three of them. Sometimes it’s best.
Don’t know why Copperhead stood out so much…I thought it was more strange that you just had a random member of the Metal Men (Iron) in the assortment. Did get a few comments about the Desaad figure in the assortment, though, which isn’t nearly as disturbing as the Super Powers version from the ’80s, but still…”enjoy your action figure of a sadistic torturer, kids!”
Also of note, the Mary Marvel figure in the set is named “Mary Batson,” because of, well, you know, the whole Marvel Comics thing. (Like that set of SHAZAM figures from DC Direct a while back, with “Captain, Jr.” an’ all). Plus, if you get all the figures, each package has a piece o’Darkseid that you can assemble: you can see some of the figures and the fully-assembled Darkseid here.
The figures come with some pinback buttons featuring oddly-cropped cover images of classic, and not-so-classic, DC Comics (though the one I saw of this cover wasn’t too bad). Those pins weren’t nuthin’ on the pins Employee Aaron and I made a while back.
Yup. Those were some good pins we made. Too bad Aaron had to die.
So pretty much out of nowhere at work yesterday, Employee Aaron whips out this decade-plus old bit of promo material:
That’s a sticker, measuring about 4 inches across, advertising the
Hawk and Dove mini-series that I don’t remember a single thing about. Oh, I remember that it exists, and that we have it in stock at the store. I just couldn’t tell you anything that happened in it, if any of it is still relevant to current continuity, etc. I didn’t remember the sticker, either, since we obviously didn’t use it. Neat design, though…nice play on the whole yin and yang thing.
Speaking of Employee Aaron, we had this conversation at the shop:
Aaron: “Hey, what’s this comic?”
Me: “That? That, m’boy, is U.S. 1.”
Aaron: “What’s it about?”
Me: “Truckin’.”
Aaron: “AWESOME. I’m buying it!”
And time will tell whether I did a good thing or a bad thing.
I did wonder momentarily if U.S. 1 experienced the same phenomenon that other normally scorned and shunned comics seem to have in the past…that after a decade or two of being ignored and dumped in bargain boxes and such, people are starting to realize that, maybe, actual mint copies of the series are hard to come by. And, as such, maybe prices on the books are beginning to creep up.
Now, the other two examples I had in mind for this sort of thing are DC’s Shazam! revival of the 1970s (way overprinted beyond demand, as I recall), and Hex (DC’s sci-fi revamp of the western hero, rejected by a readership not ready for its total awesomeness). They pretty much lived in quarter boxes for years…until relatively recently, when the prices jumped up quite a bit for the nice copies. But these two titles had other advantages, such as the characters involved still being around in one form or another, and thus still in the public eye and memory. U.S. 1 was pretty much self-contained, rarely referenced after the fact, and, at this point, yet another forgotten Big Two mini-series. Plus, it was critically reviled at the time, though it’s not like the ’70s Shazam and Hex were exactly embraced by the audiences of their respective times, either.
Anyway, upshot to all this: U.S. 1 guides in Near Mint at $2.50 a pop, so I guess it’s not yet begun its upward price creep. Though I’d be surprised as hell if anyone’s selling it for $2.50. $2.50 for a full run, maybe. (And I’m sure someone’s put one in a plastic “officially graded” sealed slab and sold it for $100 or something dumb like that. Please don’t tell me if that’s the case.)
In fairness, there’s nothing particularly wrong with U.S. 1…it’s a goofy, dopey, and fun comic book that just takes its premise and runs with it. We could use a few more U.S. 1s on the rack nowadays.
It’s like a ready-made symbolic representation of something:
Like the mosquito could be labeled “DC/MARVEL” and the elephant can be, I don’t know, “THE DIRECT MARKET.” Whee, instant editorial cartoon of…dubious meaning, I guess. It came about when, at the end of the day, Employee Aaron got his hands on a piece of paper and asked if I wanted him to draw anything, and I told the very thing that’s in the subject line of this post. So there you go. And yes, maybe it’s a regular-sized elephant and a really freakin’ huge mosquito, or a regular-sized mosquito and a
very tiny elephant. But whatever.
Anyway, I didn’t ask you here to show you that. I asked you all to meet me here today for you to ask me questions. Yes, it’s been about a year since the last time I did this (though that “question time” tag brings up a post from 2007, and I know I did it more recently than that), but I think it’s been long enough. So, you, my internet pals, know the routine…please drop a question in the comments section for this post, and, in a few days (let’s say, Monday) I’ll start answering them. As usual, try to keep ’em clean and friendly and not too terribly nosy, and at least kinda related to things on this site. And as before, I reserve the right to reject questions, but I haven’t so far. (Don’t take that as a challenge, by the way!)
If you have any questions, please drop ’em in the comment box down there. I always enjoy doing this and I hope you folks get something out of it, too. (And, since it happened the last couple of times I did this…please don’t answer my questions for me by responding to them in the comments. Thank you!)
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