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Going after a few more of your questions today. Didn’t really mean to power through so many in short order, as I meant to space ’em out a bit, but it is what it is. You know, folks can still add more questions to that linked post above!
Paul spooks me with
“How would you reboot the Harvey Comics Universe to make it appeal to the youth of today?”
That’s…a good question. My immediate reaction would have been, if we were still in the world of the CW attractive-20-something-year-olds-playing-teenagers TV shows, saying “make ’em all high schoolers with weird powers or obsessions or wealth” and go all Riverdale with it.
Or (and this isn’t inconsistent with my previous statement) take the supernatural characters (Casper, Hot Stuff, Wendy, Spooky, etc.) and make ’em paranormal investigators. The other kids (little Lotta Little Audrey, Little Dot) as part of their support team…Little Lotta would be the muscle when necessary, of course. Richie Rich is the money guy behind the team, funding their work and passing out assignments.
Not sure how, like, Baby Huey would fit in. But if I’m remaking the Harvey characters into an ersatz BPRD, then Baby Huey could be our Hellboy analog. “DUH, I HATE BOGGARTS AND NAZIS.”
And I’m really not sure how Stumbo the Giant works here. Maybe a recurring antagonist that the team has to take down?
Anyway, I’m kinda vague on details with some of the characters, I know, but if someone’s willing to give me a paycheck, I’ll flesh out the pitch.
• • •
William Gatevackes opens up with
“Who would be on your ‘Mount Rushmore’ of comic book creators?”
Assuming we’re limited to four giant heads on a mountainside, my kneejerk reaction if “Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster.” I know, I know, that’s a whole lotta white guys, I’m sorry. Maybe replace Ditko (who almost certainly wouldn’t have wanted a giant representation of his face carved into a mountain) with Osamu Tezuka. But then we’re stuck with all guys, still. So, what the hell, add a fifth head, and make it Ramona Fradon.
I mean, it’s hard to represent everyone who should be up there, especially if you’re limiting the number of visages. I’m not denying that so many people are worthy. However, I’m pretty insistent that Jack, Jerry and Joe have to be on there. And Bob Kane’s face can be on the trashcans for the tourists.
• • •
googum googumed.
“Hey, was ACTION COMICS WEEKLY direct sales only? I didn’t think it was newsstand, but just checking; figured you’d know!”
I am unsure. My source for checking this is the Grand Comics Database, where the Action Comics Weekly entry shows under the “Cover Scans” section no separate entries for “newsstand” and “direct” covers. (Compare to Fury of Firestorm, which does have separate scans for these variations.)
Here, on the cover of the first weekly issue, #601:
…you can see the little box that’s usually used for a UPC code, but instead it lists the names of the featured characters. Other issues retain the box but in a non-UPC shape. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen one with the UPC code required for newsstand sales, and Googling about doesn’t seem to turn up any.
If I had to put my thirty nickels down, I’d say Action Comics Weekly was not distributed to newsstands because, like, your local convenience store or supermarket wouldn’t want to deal with a weekly book, or, since they weren’t used to dealing with weekly comics, take the previous issue off for stripped cover returns and replace it with a new issue, giving that old one only a weeklong sales window. I mean, I don’t know if that would’ve happened. And Marvel’s biweekly series Marvel Comics Presents had newsstand distribution for most of its run, so a quicker publication pace wasn’t a problem for them, I don’t think.
If anyone’s got more information on this than I do, I’m all ears. (Ew, gross.)
• • •
Derek Moreland
expands his territory with
“How are the ENERGON UNIVERSE (Transformers, G.I. Joe minis, Void Rivals) selling for you? Corollary question: is Transformers doing better now than the MtMtE/RiD days at IDW?”
They’re actually doing relatively well…the “name” series (Transformers and G.I. Joe doing the best, with Void Rivals trailing behind). My numbers on TF/GIJ were startlingly small when they were at IDW, but all it took was slapping an Image logo on them (and some smart marketing/creative team decisions) and suddenly interest is up again. Let’s hope it keeps up, as I can always use more good-selling books.
• • •
And that’s plenty for today. Thanks for reading, pals, and I’ll be back on Wednesday, with any luck.
from Casper TV Showtime #5 (October 1980)
Okay, so that was a couple of weeks of prediction coverage…hope you all enjoyed the last few posts while I took care of that. I’m still taking 2017 industry predictions in this post here, but we’re nearing the end of January, so I’m probably going to shut down comments there shortly. Get them in while you can! …I’m not sure if I’m going to take 2018 predictions after the next new year, but I still have some time to think about it. Your thoughts could sway this vital decision.
Let me catch up on a few things, here:
A couple or three weeks ago twitter pal Dan put up a picture of the cutest darn Swamp Thing that you ever did see, and one “uh, how much do you want for that?” DM later, I have it in my hot little hands:
Look at how adorable that is. …Dan also designed my Twitter icon, and you can see more of his swell art here.
Recently, I was pricing up a bunch of comics that, um, I may have acquired a while ago and am only getting around to processing now, when I came across this Richie Rich cover and the following thought got stuck in my head and I had to let it out:
…Well, I mean, he is hangin’ out with Casper and all. Also, I had to create the letters “T” and “H” by altering other letters in the same balloon. This is a dumb amount of effort, but now this exists so…um, there it is, I guess.
My blogging sister Tegan just celebrated her lucky thirteenth anniversary of her blog about a week ago, and I certainly wanted to point you in her direction for more of her great writing. Tegan said a few very kind words about me in said post, for which I am most appreciative and flattered. She’s always been one of the comics blogosphere’s (if I may still use the term) foremost essayists on the topic of funnybooks and the industry that mostly supports them, and is always worth reading. (And you can help fund her work via her Patreon.)
Speaking of Patreons, Dog Boy creator Steve Lafler just started one up to support a new series of political cartoons. I do like Steve Lafler comics, so I signed up, and maybe you can, too. I mean, yes, it is political in nature, so you may not see eye-to-eye with him, and that’s okay. However, if you do like his work, Patreon makes it easy to throw a dollar or two his way to directly support his efforts.
But one thing we can all agree on is that Nazis are terrible, and Bully, the Little Bull Stuffed with Patriotism, brings us another of his Ten of a Kind posts featuring those lousy Ratzis getting what-for, and how.
from Spyman #1 (September 1966) by Jim Steranko and George Tuska
1. Okay, that better be
non-alcoholic cloud beer.
2. And if it isn’t…surely Wendy wouldn’t be drinking and broom-flying, setting a horrible example for young witches everywhere.
3. Why is Casper drinking? What good that does him, unless he likes having a bunch of brownish liquid visibly sloshing around inside him given the previously established semipermeability of ghost skins in the Harveyverse.
4. Hold on, maybe that’s just brown water coming from dirty clouds. Ew.
5. What’s holding that spigot in place? And don’t tell me “magic” — I demand scientific rationality from my comics starring a dead boy and the youngest member of the coven.
Meanwhile, Richie Rich is basically just daring the poor of Richville to rise up:
“Richie, please, can I have just a dollar? I’m so hungry.”
“Ha ha, oh Freckles, you’re so funny. But seriously, all this money…! What to do, what to do.”
cover from Wendy the Good Little Witch #38 (October 1966); panel excerpted from a 1970s Harvey house ad
In other news, Veronica has got herself some of that Spider-Man eyeliner:
“Here, try some of our other ‘eye fantasy’ styles, most of which will probably not result in any sort of permanent blindness. We recommend Style 4 in the bottom right corner, ‘Scrambled Eggs and Painted Fingernails.'”
Everyone say hello to Alphonse:
“HELLO, ALPHONSE.”
images from Hot Stuff The Little Devil #118 (September 1973) and Laugh #208 (June 1968)
§ December 1st, 2014 § Filed under harvey § 1 Comment
So I already posted this on the Twitterers with the caption “HARVEY COMICS BODY HORROR” because c’mon, this is just a little terrifying:
…even though once again one of Harvey’s ghost spirits reveals its intermittent intangibility. It looks like Spooky lacks
Casper’s fine control over his phantasmal form.
Also interesting, I think, is this:
I don’t think I’d ever seen the Comics Code stamp covered up like that before. Sure, I’ve seen it
altered, but obscured almost entirely while still nominally on the cover? That’s new on me. I mean, sure, it’s plainly obvious that this comic featuring the post-life torture of a ruffian haint is perfectly acceptable entertainment for all ages, Code or no Code, but I would hazard a guess that a letter would have made its way from the CCA offices to Harvey if this happened one too many times.
Now, had you come up to me in recent years, right there at the comic book shop, dollar bills in hand, and demanded that you be allowed, this very instant, to buy all of our copies of the comic based on 1992’s greatest movie starring a giant Saint Bernard named after a legendary composer and co-starring Charles “King Kong (1976)” Grodin, I could very well have said “I’m sorry to disappoint you sir and / or ma’am, but there ain’t no such animal,” — and I would have been totally wrong, because BEHOLD:
There I was, digging through one of about ten thousand boxes of funnybooks dumped on us from another comic shop that had downsized its stock, thus upsizing our own, when this comic appeared. I really, truly had forgotten this had ever existed. I mean, I remember other Harvey Comics licensed properties from around this time.
Beetlejuice,
Back to the Future, even
The Incredible Crash Dummies. But
Beethoven? Whatever brain cells I had devoted to remembering that comic had been published have since been overwritten by, well,
more important information, I guess.
This particular issue, dated May 1994, features two stories by Angelo DeCesare and Howard Bender in which our titular hero finds himself in a series of giant dog-related shenanigans, such as getting embroiled in a museum mystery:
Okay, there’s no actual “mystery” as such evident in that panel, but trust me, that image is fraught with foreboding for the terrifying and suspenseful twists and turns that are about infringe upon Beethoven’s idyllic doggie world.
But here, please enjoy Beethoven’s amazing doggie-mugging for the camera from that story, as he contemplates infringing the intellectual property of McGruff the Crime Dog:
Anyway, there were three issues total of this series, at least as far as I can tell. But perhaps it’s still being published today, disseminated via some shadowy network of comics distribution that’s even
more shadowy than the one that already exists, passing along copies of
Beethoven out of my sight, hidden from my knowledge.
Also, I have a hard time believing the scripts for the Beethoven movies were anywhere close to being this sophisticated:
…you’re gonna turn up your nose at this outfit:
…when you normally dress like this:
…you drive one of these:
…you talked your butler into joining you on this:
…and, as
noted before, you own one of these horrible things:
You sure draw the line at the oddest places, Richie Rich.
Also, you say stuff like this. I mean, what the hell.
(Some images “borrowed” from the Grand Comics Database.)
Some found art from the back cover of the Harvey Comics AstroComics 1973 airline giveaway:
“Little Dot” looks
terrifying, frankly. It’s those soulless coal-lump eyes, I think.
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