from the vast Mikester comic archives

Marvelman Special #1 (Quality, 1984) and Warrior #4 (Quality, 1982).

filed under Categories from the vast Mikester comic archives, miraclemarvelman 1 Comment


This black and white British magazine fits early into Alan Moore’s Marvelman/Miracleman continuity, after the events in “Zarathustra” (from Warrior #11, reprinted in Miracleman #3). A four page wraparound story, by Moore and Alan Davis, shows a two-man clean-up crew moving in to tidy up a secret government installation devastated by some Marvelman-created mayhem, and discovering a library of videotapes:


We then get a handful of original 1950s Marvelman stories from Mick Anglo’s studio, including “Invaders from the Future,” a rescripted version of which was used in Eclipse Comics’ Miracleman #1 (providing an innocent contrast to the grim ‘n’ gritty revamp that followed, as well as simply introducing the character to an audience that may not have been familiar with it). In the context of the Moore’s modernization of the character, these are some of the falsified adventures used as “programming” for Marvelman and his superpowered compatriots.

Rounding out the mag is a story starring the more-lighthearted Big Ben character, which is also presented as a video being watched by the cleaning crew.

Eclipse Comics did reprint this special (sans the Big Ben story) as the Miracleman 3-D Special in 1985.

I acquired this particular magazine shortly after the launch of Eclipse’s Miracleman comic, as it had been sitting on the shelf at the comic store for several months and, being quite taken with the comic and character, finally decided I needed to have it. It’s been 25 years, so I don’t remember the exact timing, but I think I may have bought and read the magazine before the Eclipse reprints reached that point in continuity. It must have been a tantalizing glimpse of events yet to come, if in fact that was when I bought it. I do remember that owning this magazine is the reason I never bought the Miracleman 3-D Special, since, hey, I already had it, and didn’t need to wear the special glasses to read it.

Speaking of glimpses of things yet to come:


Warrior #4 contains the story “The Yesterday Gambit,” which is unique in that it’s the only Alan Moore Marvelman story not (yet?) reprinted in the U.S. Also, it takes place much later in Marvelman continuity, hinting at events that wouldn’t arrive in the Marvelman storyline for a few years to come. In fact, the original Marvelman run in Warrior would never reach that point…it wouldn’t until Eclipse Comics finished reprinting UK-published material and started running first run work created by Moore and his collaborators. Specifically, “The Yesterday Gambit” takes place during the events of issue #15, published in 1988. However, instead of reprinting the original story, Moore and artist John Totleben take a handful of panels to essentially retell that adventure’s events.

The story itself is about Marvelman and a Warpsmith (a teleporting alien) traveling through time and trying to find sufficient energy and power for their final battle against a reawakened and totally evil Kid Marvelman. This is where the “tantalizing glimpse” aspect of the story comes in, because if I’ve figured the timing right, this story basically interrupted the adventure in progress from previous issues of Warrior…which just happened to be Marvelman’s first clash with the corrupt Kid Marvelman.

In essence, Marvelman clashes with past versions of himself, which allows the Warpsmith to gather the energy from those battles to bring back with them to the Kid Marvelman battle in the future. You know, writing it all out like this sounds completely convoluted and just a little nuts, but it all works in context, I swear. Anyhoo, one battle is drawn by Paul Neary, the other by Alan Davis (his initial work on the character), and the framing sequence for the whole thing is by Steve Dillon. Here’s a panel from the end of the story by Dillon, where Marvelman and the Warpsmith have returned to their own time to resume the Kid Marvelman battle:


And the story ends right after that, leaving the fans hanging for six years. And you folks who read Ultimate Wolverine Vs. Hulk thought you had it bad. Well, you did, but not for reasons of delay. Er, anyway.

I didn’t buy Warrior #4 in the shop…I wasn’t even aware* that there was an unreprinted Moore Marvelman story until relatively recently, so I had to depend on the eBay to bring it to me. And I’m not bothering with the usual Amazon links on this, since I didn’t find Warrior after spending, oh, a whole 30 seconds looking for it, and the Special is under a handful of different names at prices ranging from $35 to (egads) $90. I paid $2 for mine, which is probably about right. And if you have to have the story, the U.S. 3D version should be relatively inexpensive. Oh, and I paid around $9, including shipping, for the Warrior mag, in case you’re wondering. And I know you are!

* Or perhaps forgotten, because now that I think about it, it may have come up in the letters page at some point, and I’d just forgotten about it as the years passed and Miracleman remained a defunct title out of sight, out of mind.

Comic Book Confidential #1 (Sphinx Productions, 1988).

filed under Categories from the vast Mikester comic archives


This 16-page black and white comic was a promotional item for Ron Mann’s documentary about comic book creators Comic Book Confidential, and features a cover and first page by Yummy Fur‘s Chester Brown. Here’s one panel from that first page:


Most of the rest of the comic is comprised of very brief biographies and samples of art for all of the film’s interviewees, plus one representational quote apiece:


I’m not certain how these were distributed, as I’ve never seen it in the wild. Presumably stacks of them were placed at various locations where they were likely to grab the attention of the film’s target audience (comic shops, indie record stores, Protestant churches, etc.), and the inside front cover of my copy here has a sticker with information on where you could see the film:


I happened to find this in a dollar box at a convention, a bit late to attend that particular screening, wherever it was. In fact, despite knowing about this film since its release, despite having had a copy of the movie poster on my wall for a few years, I’ve never actually seen the film. Not on purpose…I was always open to seeing it, but for one reason or another I never got around to it. Checking the Netflix, I see that it’s supposed to be added to their “Watch Instantly” streaming library on February 1st, which is pretty good timing since I just happen to be thinking and writing about this film at this very moment. Thus, added to the queue, and maybe I’ll have a word or two to say about it here after I finally see it.

Couldn’t find the comic on Amazon, but, left to right, here are ads for the DVD, streaming Video on Demand Blu-ray and the old Voyager CD-ROM:

Space Ghost Coast to Coast "Vol. 1 No. 2" (Cartoon Network, 1994).

filed under Categories from the vast Mikester comic archives


This is an eight-page, full-color, slickly-printed promotional comic advertising the then-new Space Ghost Coast to Coast comedy/talk/cartoon show on Cartoon Network, and I have no idea how I got this in my collection. I don’t remember acquiring it, I don’t remember seeing it “in the wild” and deciding to add it to the collection, I don’t remember it being given to me. And yet, there it is, in all its shilling-ness. I also don’t have any idea why it’s #2, unless it’s an oblique reference to one of the Space Ghost comics that came before.

The story (writer and artist uncredited) gives the origin of the Coast to Coast talk show, presenting Space Ghost as a superhero whose enemies have all been caught, his friends all moved on (sidekicks Jan and Jace gone to college, space monkey Blip on an extended leave to be with family). He’s adrift in life, listless and without purpose:


…Until he discovers while studying broadcasts from Earth that a horrible disaster is looming:


Oh, Space Ghost, if only you’d come back and take care of our current talk show problems.

The inside back cover has a description of the show, noting the fictional crew (“Musical Director …………… Zorak”), the premise of the series, and a list of promised future guests. The back cover has Space Ghost requesting that you, the reader, contact your cable operator if you’re not already receiving Cartoon Network.

I didn’t find any copies on either eBay or Amazon during my brief investigations at either site, so I’ll just put up an ad for the DVDs for the Coast to Coast show:

EDIT: link dead

This was a pretty good show, I thought, if occasionally very uncomfortable when one of the live-action guests didn’t get into (or, alternatively, plain just didn’t get) the gag of being interviewed by a cartoon character…except that Bee Gees episode. That was awesome.
 
 
Revised 5/2022

"GJDRKZLXCBWQ" Comics (Glenn Bray/Basil Wolverton, 1973).

filed under Categories from the vast Mikester comic archives


This mini-comics digest features several full page gag illos of the sort Basil Wolverton was so famous for – portraits of nightmarish grotesqueries:


…as well as a handful of very short (two or three panel) gag sequences.

Don’t have a whole lot to say about this particular item, other than “drink in the beauty of that cover.” I’m pretty sure my initial exposure to Wolverton was via Mad Magazine, either from the concluding panel of “The Face upon the Floor” (reprinted in one of those Mad comic facsimiles inserted in the specials) or from one of his rare full articles in a ’70s Mad. However I first learned about him, I would generally pick up any comics that would reprint samples of his work, from the Eclipse Mr. Monster that would sometimes present a classic horror tale of his, or Fantagraphics’ several reprint books (such as Powerhouse Pepper or that Wolvertoons collection).

This item turned up in the same underground collection Das Kampf did, and as I said about that comic, mini-comics and comics digests always catch my eye. A mini-comic by Wolverton? Definitely a keeper.

Surprisingly, I found someone on Amazon selling this for $20, which I don’t think is entirely unreasonable. I wonder if anybody else is trying to sell it there, but misspelled the name? Wouldn’t be hard to do.

I still have a few more scarce-ish items from my collection in the hopper for display on my site. Hopefully you’re not sick of these yet!

Fresh-Man: The First Few Years (Scott Easley, circa 1988).

filed under Categories from the vast Mikester comic archives 3 Comments


When I was attending the University of California Santa Barbara, Scott Easley’s Fresh-Man was a welcome part of every Friday’s Daily Nexus, the school’s daily newspaper. Rocketed to UCSB from the doomed planet of Hometawn, young Chaz Kent lives among us as a mild-mannered college student. But, when danger looms, he cries out his magic word (“Werza-Pardee?”) and transforms to the cape-and-underwear clad champion of underclassmen everywhere, Fresh-Man!

The strip was a fun and amusingly drawn strip about college life (for which I, as a young college student, was the ideal audience), with problem roommates, classroom woes, some local UCSB references, and, of course, the occasional supervillain. Man, supervillains were the worst part about going to UCSB, I tell you what.

Speaking of supervillains, Fresh-Man’s arch-nemesis was the dreaded Professor F, seen here in a partial sequence taken from one of the strips:



(Before you say anything, yes, “surprise” is misspelled in that third panel. Hey, let’s see how good your spelling is when you’re in the heat of battle!)

Professor F was based on an actual professor at the college (and who was given a nod, by name, at the beginning of said strip). A year or two later, I found myself taking an English course with this professor, and all I could think about was the fact that he was the inspiration for Professor F, and hoping that was just a humorous exaggeration of his particular grading preferences. As it turned out, I did reasonably well in his class. And yes, his hair did look like that.

Anyway, I really enjoyed this strip, and I’m glad I snapped up this collection from the college bookstore way back when. It’s a nice bit of collegiate nostalgia for me.

Looking at the Amazon listings, there only appears to be one copy for sale, at $49.95. Goodness…that’s a far cry from the $5.95 I dropped on it:


I should note that the book itself has no publication data…no publisher, no year of release, etc. The strip finished its run during (if I recall correctly) my freshman year at UCSB, and I believe the book was published sometime during my sophomore year in 1988. I’m not 100% of that 1988 publication date, but I know it’s certainly not the 1980 date I’ve seen given to it here and there on the internet.

By the way, that little green blob with the tongue at the lower left of the cover? That’s Glorp, some dorm food Fresh-Man’s roommate Oswald brought home and kept as a pet. Again, pretty much an accurate depiction of college life.

Rudy in Hollywood (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1984).

filed under Categories from the vast Mikester comic archives 4 Comments

Here’s another one I’ve mentioned on the site before:


William Overgard’s Rudy is one of the classic overlooked newspaper strips, running only for about a year or so in the mid 1980s. Rudy is a talking chimpanzee, a retired vaudeville star and stage performer, and the strip chronicles his semi-return to the outskirts of showbiz. I first encountered it during that brief period in the Los Angeles Times…a paper we didn’t get in our household, but one I would look at on occasion at the local library. Even just the few strips I saw there, and a tantalizing review that appeared in a long-ago issue of The Comics Journal, instilled in me the desire to track down its one and only paperback reprinting. Well, okay, that’s putting it a little dramatically, but I did keep an eye out for it at any used book stores or comic shops I happened to visit.

And of course, it takes the advent of eBay for me to finally track down the darned thing, where I managed to score a copy from there a couple of years back. I was pleased to discover that my anticipation for the item did not diminish the experience of actually having it in my hands and reading it…the linework was as finely detailed and elegant as I remembered from the strips I saw decades ago, the writing still witty and understated, preferring the subtle over the slapstick. The book is interspersed with text pieces allegedly written by Rudy himself, offering his opinions on various topics which generally would play into the next sequence of reprinted strips. It’s a wonderful presentation for these strips, giving it that touch of “Hollywood Tell-All Autobiography” that fits right in with Rudy‘s milieu. The only downside is that (I believe) there are still Rudy strips not reprinted, which will probably only happen on the extremely unlikely chance someone decides to do a Complete Rudy volume.


A quick look at Amazon has prices starting at about $35, and someone actually has a copy for $999. Why do people even do that? Are they really hoping someone will buy a copy for that price?


Anyway, it appears I got very lucky when I found my copy on eBay, as I didn’t pay anywhere close to that. The Comics Journal enters this story again, after a fashion, as I need to thank former TCJ editor Milo George for not getting into a bidding war with me over this very item. He opted not to bid on it when he saw that I was the high bidder, for which I am very grateful.

Maxwell the Magic Cat Volumes I-IV (Acme Press, 1986-7).

filed under Categories from the vast Mikester comic archives 3 Comments

I’m pretty sure I’ve talked about my Maxwell the Magic Cat books before on the site, but it’s been a while, and they seem to fit into my little tour of oddball books from my collection.


This was a series of four black and white staplebound books, measuring 8 1/4 by 11 inches, reprinting Alan Moore’s comic strip from The Northant Post. The strip ran about seven years, written and drawn by Moore under the homophonic pseudonym “Jill de Ray” (after a particularly nasty serial killer).

Here’s a sample strip from the series:



A lot of the strips were like this, metatextual examinations of the very idea of a comic strip and its format, but the strip ran the gamut from simple sight gags, to real groaners of puns, to political humor, to outright absurdity (such a favorite sequence of mine, where a snake carries on a torrid affair with Maxwell’s tail). Occasionally…well, mostly…Moore’s artistic reach exceeded his grasp, but his gag-writing is solid and usually clever, and the general roughness of the art is just part of the charm. If the drawing were more polished, it just wouldn’t be Maxwell the Magic Cat.

Now, I’d originally bought volumes 1 through 3 (pictured above) as they were released, in the mid ’80s. I never saw volume 4 on the shelf, and at the time I just assumed it never came out.

Eventually, I discovered that volume 4 had been released, but for some reason it appeared to have limited distribution. I don’t know if it actually did, or if it was just hard to find in my neck of the woods, or what the deal was, but several years of casual eBay and Amazon investigations seems to bear out my belief that the fourth book is the rarest of the volumes.

Luckily, a few years back a collection came into the shop containing one of these:


That would be the folder which accompanied the Complete Maxwell the Magic Cat Set of Volumes One Through Four, and indeed, volumes one through four were to be found within. Look, it’s number four, and it’s real! It exists! And it’s totally mine now!


These four volumes comprise the entire series of strips, which ended in 1987. Rounding out the fourth volume were guest artist illustrations, including work by Gilbert Shelton, David Lloyd, Brian Bolland, and this crazily wonderful piece by Kevin O’Neill:


When the Maxwell the Magic Cat revival comes, that’s what I want to see.

I didn’t find The Complete Litter set on Amazon, but all four books are being offered individually, hence the Wall o’Banners here:



The first book’s pricing starts at about twelve bucks, the second ranges around $30, the third only has one for sale at $65, and good gravy, some hopeful seller has the fourth at $249.99. Plus, a quick eBay search reveals plenty of the first volume, one copy of the second, and none of 3 and 4. I suspect a reprint of these, perhaps collecting all the strips into one book, would be in order…but I wouldn’t hold my breath.

The Complete Frank Miller Batman (Longmeadow Press, 1989).

filed under Categories batman, from the vast Mikester comic archives 1 Comment


This hardcover book (with a leatherish-style cover) was assembled by Longmeadow Press, a publishing imprint for a U.S. bookstore chain that, among other projects, created “bargain books” for sale in those stores. To quote a former Longmeadow employee from this interesting discussion I found, the goal was to make “high-end bargain books (i.e., they looked classy, not schlocky).” And this Complete Frank Miller Batman book ain’t bad-looking. It has a leatherish-bound hardcover with silver lettering on the spine (along with a dark blue Batsymbol), the metallic blue and silver image on the front cover (as seen above), a bound-in blue fabric bookmark, and clean white pages with a shiny silver trim at the edges. It should look garish, but it all seems to work together nicely, somehow. Or maybe I’m just used to it.

This book includes the entirety of The Dark Knight Returns and Batman: Year One, as well as the 1980 story “Wanted: Santa Claus – Dead or Alive” written by Denny O’Neil. Reproduction is strong, the coloring is good and faithful to the original (aside from the Santa Claus story, where the coloring is a bit slapdash, and too dark). Text pieces/forewords by Alan Moore, Richard Bruning and Miller himself are included. Of course, it’s no longer the “Complete” Frank Miller Batman, as we’ve had The Dark Knight Strikes Again and All Star Batman since then, but if anyone says this makes it the “Complete Good Frank Miller Batman,” I a’gonna punch you in the nose.

I remember the bookstore I bought this from had piles of these stacked by the entrance, and I always figured these were common as dirt. However, I hardly ever see these turn up in collections at the shop. My own copy has been a faithful companion, becoming my own definitive edition of these particular stories, which allowed me to sell off the originals. I even used it in college, during that one class where the Modern Narrative professor was cool enough to assign Dark Knight along with Don DeLillo’s White Noise. And given I was dragging it to class, the Batman book looks like it’s still brand new. That’s either a testament to the book’s durability or to my comic-fan obsessive-compulsive need to maintain that Near Mint condition.

Anyway, here’s another Amazon thing. There are plenty to be had of Complete Frank Miller Batman, apparently, starting at about eighteen bucks, and going all the way up to a dizzying $192:

(EDIT: SORRY, AMAZON LINK DEAD)

Yeah, I threw in a banner for White Noise, too. That was a pretty good book, as I recall.

ADDENDUM to the Superman Spectacular 1982 book I discussed a couple of days ago: the cowriter of the funnybook in question, Paul Kupperberg, popped up in the comments for that post (EDIT: link dead, sadly!) to briefly discuss his involvement in producing Superman stories for the overseas market. Bonus: Vinnie Colletta inking story! Thanks for stopping by, Mr. Kupperberg!

Das Kampf (Bagginer Productions/Vaughn Bodé Productions, 1977).

filed under Categories from the vast Mikester comic archives, undergrounds


Das Kampf is a digest-sized collection of cartoonist Vaughn Bodé’s musings and commentary upon war, in the format of a caption beginning “WAR is…” accompanying a single panel illustration. Here are a couple of samples:


According to the printing information on the back cover, the original edition from 1963 had a print run of about 100 copies, run off a mimeograph machine. This site has an image or two of the original version. (Also, the original 1963 publication would seem to contradict the assertion I’ve seen here and there that Das Kampf‘s “War Is” gag format was a parody of the Love Is… comic strip, which began in 1970.) The version I own, “the 1st comic publication” as it is described on the back cover, had a print run of 3,000. It was published in 1977, two years after Bodé’s death.

I acquired my copy as part of a largish underground comix collection bought by the store a number of years ago. Being something of a Bodé fan, and always on the lookout for odd-sized mini-comics/digests for reasons I can’t entirely explain, I decided to keep this particular item for myself. I’ve not seen another copy of this come through the shop, though a quick Googling seems to turn one up one or two for sale. Amazon has none available, but I’ll put on those product link thingies here anyway, just in case someone there decides to part with a copy of it someday:

Superman Spectacular 1982 (DC Comics, copyrighted 1981).

filed under Categories from the vast Mikester comic archives, superman 1 Comment


This is kind of an oddball item that I bought off the rack from one of the eighteen 7-11s that existed in my immediate area in the early ’80s. It’s larger than standard comic book size, measuring about 8 by 11 1/2 inches, with no ads…basically a “graphic novel” at the very beginning of the 1980s wave of graphic novels from the Big Two.

Written by Bob Rozakis and Paul Kupperberg, illustrated by Adrian Gonzales and Vince Colletta, the story features a battle between Superman and his two arch-nemeses Lex Luthor and…er, Terra-Man. Terra-Man, for the uninitiated, is a space cowboy who rides a winged horse. Through space. Who fights Superman.


Yes, this was as goofy, and as incredibly awesome, as it sounds. Anyway, during the course of the story, exposure to Red Kryptonite splits Superman into Superman-Red and Superman-Blue (in a reprise of the famous Silver Age imaginary story), and Terra-Man and Lex Luthor end up fighting Superman with magic energy channeled from another dimension, and…yeah, like that. The Grand Comic Book Database entry has a more complete synopsis. Despite of, or more likely because of, all the inherent goofiness in this here funnybook, it still remains a fondly nostalgic favorite of mine. Even just poking though it now for this post reminded me of just how much I enjoyed this book. I’m very pleased that 13-year-old Mike decided to pick this up.

This story was in fact originally prepared for the overseas market, and published there first before being reissued in a domestic version. Other Superman stories published about this time had their origins in DC’s foreign publishing program, including these two Gil Kane tours de force. Why this particular story was reprinted as an album rather than as a standard (albeit extra-long) comic I’m not sure, aside from testing the format in the marketplace.

Since dishing out my $1.95 for this item way back when, I’ve never seen another one, even in all the years and all the collections I’ve poked through at the shop. Even at the time, when it was brand new, I only saw it at the one convenience store I found it in, and not at any of the others I would check in my semi-regular comic-purchasing bicycle tour of Ventura County. Maybe there’s a store in, I don’t know, Idaho that has a two-foot stack of these and desperately wishing to unload ’em, but they’re sure scarce around here.

Amazon has a few for sale in the $15 to $20 range, which doesn’t seem too unreasonable to me, given its apparent scarcity:


Should also note: beautiful cover on this book, by the way. Certainly very eye-grabbing.