marvel

WARNING: HUGE SPOILERS FOR AVENGERS: ARMAGEDDON #4 (unless you’ve been on the internet during the last few weeks).

filed under Categories marvel, this week's comics 19 Comments

I’ve read the Avengers on and off over the years, never sticking around for a long time but long enough to experience some pretty good stories. The 1980s run by Roger Stern, John Buscema, and Tom Palmer may be primarily remembered now for containing the first appearance of future Marvel movie star Nebula, but it really peaked with the multi-part “Masters of Evil” storyline. It’s a knock-down, drag-out battle between our heroes and a powerful group of villains, containing enough characterization, drama, and heart to keep it from just being action figures being smashed together.

The next, and ’til now, last time I read the regular monthly Avengers title was in the ’90s, when Kurt Busiek and George Pérez gave us a superhero adventure comic filled with solid writing and great art. It really was the top of the line when it came to Big Two superhero books of the period, emerging from the “Image” style and showing how coherent storytelling and professional illustration could tell memorable stories.

Aside from the occasional annual or special issue, and that first Avengers Forever mini, that was pretty much that.

And then there was this Avengers: Armageddon series. I’ve been a fan of its writer, Chip Zdarsky, for a long time, and enjoying his current superhero work. And on top of that, Avengers: Armageddon was tying into current and/or recent Marvel storylines that I am following, like the Red Hulk stuff, and all the Doctor Doom shenanigans, and Zdarsky’s own Captain America series. And even though I held that first issue of this new mini in my hands as I thought about whether or not I wanted to read this, I still decided “no.” Despite everything going for it, I just felt like I didn’t need another comic to try to keep up with, given the backlog I’m still trying to work through.

However, I came across some online chatter about what was supposedly going to happen in this comic, and my interest was piqued. If what was being talked about was true, then I was absolutely going to want to read this series and see what was going on.

“And what was going on, Mike?” I’m glad you asked, and I hope you clocked the SPOILER WARNING in the title of this post, because I’m a’gettin’ into it.

Last chance. No one to blame but yourself at this point. It starts after the cover scan here.


So anyway, Miracleman is back, and this time he’s firmly in the Marvel Universe. Well, kinda sorta. It’s finally the payoff to this one-shot from a few years ago, hinting…well, okay, not so much “hinting” as “straight up saying” that the character would pop into the Marvel Universe eventually. It’s still too early to say to what extent, if any, this is connected to the Miracleman storyline by Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman, et al., but I suspect, given the latter writer’s current scandals, this is an entirely separate iteration.

Long story short, Marvel spent some cash establishing its ownership over the somewhat confused legal status of this intellectual property, and by golly if they’re no longer able to monetize the other stuff, they’re gonna make some new stuff with it. Plus, the stuff they were trying to monetize was hampered by problems even before Gaiman’s current troubles, many of which I cover in this post. Basically, format issues, printing errors, and the simple fact that the property was old and mostly forgotten was keeping Marvel’s attempts at revival from getting any traction.

As I say at the end of that post, I’ve held for a long time that when it finally happened, Marvel would revert back to using the “Marvelman” name for their Marvel Universe version of the character, to keep it separate from the different, pretty-much-its-own-thing Miracleman run. (I believe I first theorized that in this 2013 post.) Again, we just got Miracleman, or somebody like him, in this new Avengers: Armageddon issue, so I don’t know where we’re going yet. Tellingly, the “next issue” page for the issue directs readers to a “Who Is Miracleman?” story on their digital comics platform, so maybe they are sticking with the name? Too many characters with “Marvel” in their names already, perhaps?

By the way, that “Who Is Miracleman” comic, produced in 2023 presumably for the return of the Gaiman/Mark Buckingham “Silver Age” chapter, seems like it would be mostly confusing, if not incomprehensible, to anyone actually new to the character. It’s a short “highlights” reel of What Had Gone Before in the Moore/Gaiman era, and the huge gaps and jumps I can fill in myself because I’ve read it all, but I wonder how someone who hadn’t could deal with it. (And notably, aside from a Miracleman special by other creators, there is no other Miracleman material on the digital service.)

How much is any of that going to apply to what’s currently going on, anyway? To keep it very short, David Colton, who had been a replacement Captain America for Steve Rogers, is given new powers by a New Super Powers Machine (an “Origin Box” from the Ultimate Universe — yet another long story), putting him in the Miracle/Marvelman costume and presumably giving him that same power set. It’s even down to the same ability to do a Captain Marvel/”Shazam!”-esque transformation by saying the magic work “KIMOTA” (in a sequence deliberately cribbed from Moore’s very first Marvelman short). It doesn’t appear to be tied to the Mike Moran (Marvelman’s civilian identity) version of the character at all, but again, we’re still way early in the process here.

As I said, before this issue even came out, there was a lot of talk about this happening, which is probably the most interest the character has had in a long time. By forcing Marvel readers to engage with Miracleman (or whatever, I just keep using both names) by putting the concept squarely in the center of an Avengers comic, fans can’t just ignore it like they could some weird decades-old thing that was revived solely for people in their late middle age who 1) are still alive, 2) are still reading comics and 3) remember it from the last time it was on the stands. It is now officially A Marvel Thing, so, I guess, coming soon to a movie screen near you? We’ll see.

At any rate, I don’t know why I’ve been so antsy about spoiler warnings when Marvel itself just plain put Miracleman on one of the variant covers for this issue, which you can see if you click the Avengers: Armageddon cover I posted above. And yes, that’s the cover I took for myself. (And yes, by all rights I should put this post under the miraclemarvelman category, but I didn’t want that being an inadvertent spoiler right at the top of the page. I’ll add it later.)

EDIT: Marvel has put out a press release specifically identifying the character’s name as “Miracleman.”

Star surfing, across the universe.

filed under Categories collecting, marvel, pal plugging, silver surfer, star trek 18 Comments

So I got something in a collection the other day that I’ve never seen before. Well, I mean, I’ve seen the comic, of course, in its much more common “softcover book” variety. But for the first time ever, I’ve seen it in hardcover form:


It’s the 1978 Silver Surfer original graphic novel by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, along with Joe Sinnott, John Constanza, Glynis Wein, and cover artist Carl Norem, retelling an alternate version of the character’s origins without the involvement of the Fantastic Four. This was one of a handful of releases from Fireside Books/Simon and Schuster that included Origins of Marvel Comics.

Way back when, at onne of the local bargain stores, there were stacks of the softcover available at next-to-nothing prices. (Also available for deep discounts at the same store: DC’s Famous First Edition treasuries in piles and piles.) I never bought one then, which I of course regret, but not as much as I regret not buying all of them to now sell in my comic shop.

It’s probably because of that long-ago stock dump that I keep seeing copies of the softcover version turn up in collections. As I said above, however, this is the first time the hardcover edition has made its way into my funnybook-worn hands. The dust jacket has seen better days, but otherwise the book looks good.

Here’s the back cover:


The inner flaps of the dust jacket:


Unfortunately, there’s no design on the book’s covers themselves:


…but at least you get some inlaid silver lettering on the spine:


It’s a neat book, and believe it or not, for all the times I’ve come across it at both of the shops I’ve worked at, either in the original softcover or via Marvel’s later reprintings, I’ve never read it. I am seriously considering keeping this for myself. I know, I know, how am I going to make any money and stay in business if I keep all the cool stuff for myself (like all the Popeye comics and fanzines that come my way), but this is a neat time and I’m really tempted. I mean, I’ll at least give it a read before putting it out for sale.

• • •

My ol’ Pal of the Internet Kevin Church has written a nice piece in celebration of Star Trek‘s 60th anniversary, and I heartily recommend that you go read it.

I’m a little jealous of Kevin in that he remembers exactly when, and with which episode, he became a fan. I was one of those folks who picked up on Trek when it was in syndication in the early ’70s, that period when a lot of new fans discovered the series. I remember watching it on TV, both the original series and that cartoon, I had several of the toys (the Mego figures, the bridge set, even communicators and the tricorder), but I was perhaps too young to remember which episode to which I was first exposed.

And then Star Wars hit in 1977, and that began to occupy a large segment of my forming fandom brain…but I never forgot Star Trek, which has continued to this very day, finally achieving perfection with the greatest Trek series of all time:


“Search your feelings, you know it to be true,” as someone from a famous sci-fi franchise once said. I think it was Captain Janeway.

Letting it all hang out.

filed under Categories dc comics, marvel, publishing, retailing 9 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The worst Civil War prequel.

filed under Categories collecting, low content mode, marvel 9 Comments

Someone came by the shop and donated a short box full of comics…not really much of interest in there, the usual smattering of random ’90s Marvel comics, but it did have:


…nineteen copies of West Coast Avengers Annual #3 from 1988. That’s a book value of up to tens of dollars!

You know, I’ve never actually read this particular comic. Now’s my chance to…well, probably not do so again.

And also starring Jesus’s twin brother, Thor.

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

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


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

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

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

Anyway, it’s fun to pretend.

• • •

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


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

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

filed under Categories dc comics, marvel 17 Comments


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was all worth it just to hear Harrison Ford say the words “Captain America.”

filed under Categories marvel 23 Comments

So anyway, I decided to run my mouth off a bit about the Captain America: Brave New World film over there on the Blueskies. Here’s the thread, but I’ll repost all the entries right here:

As the new Captain America movie slowly crawls toward almost breaking even, I’m guessing that it just plain costs too much to make superhero movies for them to be profitable now, at least in most cases, and at this scale.

These movies are budgeted to have to make within a spitting distance of a billion dollars to be considered profitable, and that only happens if the films become cultural phenomenons.

FANTASTIC FOUR will be the big test this year for Marvel, but if that underperforms that just means no more FF films. The *real* test will be the new Avengers movies, and if they fail that’s what will cause Disney to rethink the whole superhero movie thing.

They might give it another shot with a new X-Men movie, and I think Spider-Man abd Deadool movies will likely continue to be profitable, but the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a whole will either be abandoned or *greatly* de-emphasized.

Or they can just start putting Deadpool into every new Marvel movie. THE AVENGERS STARRING DEADPOOL would do okay, I think.

Now, the DC movies are a whole ‘nother kettle of fish. No telling how that new Superman movie will do.

There had been a lot of stories going back and forth about just how expensive this movie ended up being, once the cost of the extended reshoots were factored in. However, the only seemingly verified budget I could find was $180 million, with reports of wild ballooning costs due to the reshoots being declared as unreliable.

The movie’s momentum is slowing, and the linked report there says it may end up with a total of $450 million in the box office. Said report also claims the break-even point for the film, factoring in the promotions budget, is about $425 million. And all that is assuming the reshoots ‘n’ such are all incliuded in that $180 million budget, and didn’t tack on another $100 mill or so as is rumored.

Now, why do I care? I mean, I’m not absolutely invested in the success or failure of this film, beyond wanting all superhero movies to be good and popular so that I can maybe sell more comics. I just find this…interesting, from a cultural standpoint, as to how the Marvel movie machine went from “unstoppable juggernaut” to “kind of a crapshoot” as far as their movies go. And this isn’t saying anything about the quality of the films…I enjoyed The Marvels, for example, and I’m sure Captain America: Brave New World is fine.

Assuming all the numbers are right, BNW making $25 million over the break-even point doesn’t seem like enough of a return on the investment. Though, as my old pal William pointed out somewhere in the original thread, who knows what that $25 mill will look like after the studio accountants rejigger everything.

Point being, I don’t think I said anything incorrect in my Bluesky thread. According to Box Office Mojo, as I write this the film is just shy of taking in $290 million. It’s not quite broken even yet, but it seems like it’s gonna get there eventually.

But these huge budgets do present a problem. Some of these films have enormous budgets, and as I said in that thread above, they’re budgeted so that close to a billion dollar box office is needed to make it all worthwhile. And that’s not a guarantee anymore, especially in this pandemic and/or streaming era.

I did get a little pushback on my comments here, like this statement someone made:


First off, I did specifically mention Deadpool as being one of the franchises that can, and does, make a lot of money. It’s not a typical “Marvel Cinematic Universe” movie, though, so its not quite the successful example this writer thinks it is.

The statement that BNW is “breaking even in its second week” is, as shown above, incorrect, which presents the general public’s misunderstanding of film budgeting. Not that I’m any kind of expert, but the cost to bring a movie to the marketplace is more than the actual outlay of cash to make the film. There’s also the advertising budget, which can be (but not always) as high as the actual production budget itself. Plus, in this specific case, there are the reshoots, which nobody seems quite sure how much that added to the budget, if anything. Only making back the production budget means the film lost money.

The concluding statement that implies that I’m saying “no one goes to these movies” is a non sequitur, since that’s not an argument I’m making. A box office take of hundreds of millions of dollars means people are seeing these films, there is still a lot of interest in superhero movies. My point is that the films themselves are too expensive, that even those millions of dollars in ticket sales are either barely enough or not enough to cover costs. As stated, to get that coveted billion dollar box office, a movie has to be more than a blockbuster, it has to be a cultural phenomenon, something special. And entry #40 or whatever in the Ongoing Marvel Cinematic Universe isn’t enough anymore, in and of itself, to give it that extra push.

In my thread above, I didn’t mention Thunderbolts, simply because I feel like that movie may be a non-starter. Again, I’m sure it’s perfectly fine, but we’re probably going to see the same slow crawl to almost breaking even, even with its smaller (relatively speaking) budget.

Fantastic Four could go either way…people might be excited to see a proper version of this superhero team on the big screen, or the general public may say “fool us three or four times, shame on us” and not bother. Frankly, I’m leaning more toward the former, but a quick Googling of the budget (perhaps as high as $250 million) means were looking at probably a half-billion break-even point.

Again, as I said above, even if all these movies underperform, that’s not the end of Marvel movies. It might be the end of these particular franchises, but Marvel still has their Avengers movies coming with the Hail Mary stunt casting of Robert Downey Jr. as Doctor Doom. If those films don’t do well, then it may just be Deadpool and Spider-Man movies from here on out. Honestly, I do think these new Avengers flicks will do fine. And we have the eventual X-Men movies to look forward to.

What’s the answer? I had a few responses noting the amount of excess and bloat on the productions ballooned their costs, and that other studios have achieved plenty in their effects-laden action films on much smaller budgets. I mean, yeah, sure, but I don’t know how possible that would be with Marvel at this point. If costs are cut, it’ll be on the production teams and not the actors, I suspect, and God knows the production teams don’t need their resources cut.

I’m not an expert on any of this (“yeah, no kidding,” says the person who actually works in Hollywood reading my post), but I just find it all…well, almost unworldly. Talking about hundreds of millions of dollars like this is almost like talking about magical fairies or UFOs for all the ability I have to relate to this stuff. But, as someone who owns a comic book store, I have a vested interest in what’s going on with these films, how the public is reacting to them, how excited folks who actually come into my store are about them, that sort of thing.

In the last entry in the Bluesky thread, I mention the coming Superman movie, and…well, that may be a topic for another time. A lot of pressure on that one to succeed, since that may indicate whether or not we get more DC movies in this cinematic universe. Here’s hoping we’re not going to see more Warner Bros. tax write-offs.

Yes, I know about that History of the DC Universe drawn by Pérez.

filed under Categories indies, marvel, pal plugging 28 Comments

So pal Nat has published via About Comics the complete Dalgoda Omnibus:


Featuring all the comics by Jan Strnad and Dennis Fujitake and others, starring your favorite space dog. Also includes images of promotional artwork, retailer posters and signs, and mag covers. Of note…I helped a very tiny bit with this publication, providing a scan of a magazine cover for the book’s art gallery. I’m thanked in there and everything.

So anyway, if you want copies, they’re out there for sale…and I’ll have ’em for sale at my shop, too. If I run out, I’ll just give pal Nat a ring-a-ding and get some more!

(I wrote a bit about Dalgoda here as part of my Final ’80s Countdown series on fave indie comics.)

• • •

Okay, I was maybe a little too harsh on my assessment of Marvel Saga, that company’s attempt at retelling the history of their shared universe via panels and sequences from their long history of publications, with additional text filling in the gaps. Like so:


A couple of you in the comments there expressed your appreciation of that project, which made me rethink my opinions on it. I may have come at it from a retailer perspective, looking at unsold copies sitting in a bin and so forth.

But I forgot what it’s like to be a fan, new to all this nonsense, not having immediate access to Everything That’s Come Before in the comics you were just starting to read. It reminds me a bit of a certain Mr. Roynaldo Thomas and his work at DC Comics in the early 1980s, particularly this series:


…where I, a kid who didn’t have a full run of every Golden Age superhero comic ever printed, could learn about DC’s past characters in stories set in a time from which they originally came into existence. And then there was the America Vs. The Justice Society mini, with its copious footnotes detailing the decades-past stories referenced during the main plot.

I devoured this stuff. I loved learning about DC’s Golden Age via these new comics. As it turns out, I find them somewhat hard to read now…just kinda overly dense and clunky in a way I don’t have patience for. Which isn’t to say I don’t still have positive feelings towards those comics and how they helped fill in some comic knowledge gaps when I was a young and eager fan.

And so, there’s Marvel Saga, presenting the breadth of the Marvel Universe, a relatively stable and consistent setting compared to DC’s own superhero setting which had at that time (and several times since) been recently reset. Plus, this particular format (previously used for the Super-Villain Classics retelling the story of Galactus) made a recent appearance in the similarly-purposed History of the Marvel Universe from just a few years ago:


I take back my initial dismissal of Marvel Saga and acknowledge its use as a guide through the company’s continuity, especially for those folks who could use the introduction or the refresher. There can be a steep learning curve for folks trying to get a handle on a superhero universe’s fictional setting, and books like this help. Sure they could use Wikipedia, but it’s more fun through the comics themselves.

Better Red than dead.

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Sorry pals, part 3 of the look at the October 85 Bud Plant catalog’s retailer tip sheet will have to wait ’til Monday. Which is okay, as there are a few titles in this next batch that I want to ask my former boss Ralph about anyway.

So no big post today, but take a gander at this sharp-looking Red Sonja cover by Mary Wilshire and Walt Simonson:


Boy, that just leaps out at you, right? I’ve seen the later “homage” cover by the current publisher of Red Sonja stuff, where they pull back the camera to make sure you get the breasts in the pic. But the original is perfect as is.