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So I picked this up from Bluesky pal Dan Membiela. It’s a short, attractive mini-comic extolling the idea that old, grizzled (yet only my age, 55) Batman goes out of his way to take no lives in the books.
A sample page from within:
It’s more “illustrated essay” than “comic” but it’s a fun companion to tuck away inside the back cover of your Dark Knight trade paperback or hardcover. Pick it up from Dan’s store (and he’s got plenty more available there too!).
And speaking of Bluesky pals, Andy passed along a link to this forthcoming game:
Lots more details here, where you can create a Hot, Extreme, Cover Gimmick-Laden Comic Book and ride the wave of the 1990s boom…but can you cash out before the bust? Friends, this is called “microtargeting your pal Mike with a product.” Looks fun…though it could very well cause some flashbacks for me.
It’s another miscellaneous post, as I’m too scatterbrained right now to focus on a single topic, so bear with me until I can get my head on straight again.
• • •
First off, I wanted to plug my pals over there at
Vintage Video, the podcast what is plowing its way through all of 1980s major film releases with observations, analyses and trivia imparted in an easy-going and humorous manner, with only the occasional F-bomb. I’ve added a link to the sidebar there that will take you to their site and their archive of over 400 episodes, not even counting the bonus ones you’d get via their
Patreon.
Oh, and have I been on this podcast, you may be asking? Why yes, I have, this very episode right here where we discuss the Heavy Metal animated film (and I wrote about the experience here). …And will I be making another appearance on there in the near future? You’ll just have to wait and see!
But, despite my appearing on the show, I hope you check out this podcast. It really is one of my favorites.
• • •
So a couple of days ago over on the Blueskies I
talked about how well the
Doom one-shot was selling for me:
I’m posting the Adi Granov cover variant here because that’s the one I specifically got the most requests for, and who could blame folks for wanting it?
I implied that it was more of that dreaded speculation that was firing up demand for the book. I was asked why they wanted it, and my assumption was that it wasn’t for any specific reason, just that it was in short supply and that was enough to attract folks with dollar signs in their eyes. I’ve seen it happen plenty of times before. (Frankly, if there was a reason, I would’ve said it was the shots of Dr. Doom’s unmasked face, which they seemed to be more free about showing than in the past.)
However, Chad, the person who had asked me about the speculation in the first place, found the actual reason…apparently there’s a tribute to the late rapper MF DOOM, utilizing one of his lyrics. Well, his fans found out, and showed up a week late to get the comic because retailers aren’t ordering piles of titles to sit around for eventual sale, they ideally order to sell out or close to the initial week.
You can read all about these latest comics market shenanigans in this Comic Book Resources article. ANd I’m sure we’ll get a second printing in six to eight weeks or so, just in time for the MF DOOM fans to be no longer interested, but I’m sure I can still move copies to the regular comic fans. Ah well, What Can You Do?
• • •
A sad farewell to Tom Luth, the long-running, and recently retired, colorist for Sergio Aragones’
Groo the Wanderer. Mark Evanier
wrote a bit about his colleague, as did
Sergio. The man did amazing work, somehow keeping up with Sergio’s highly detailed artwork, month after month, decade after decade.
So long, Tom.
Okay, first off, before I get into the rest of the post, I want to get this link in here because I was dumb and forgot last time. Old pal Mark, co-creator of Fake AP Stylebook on what used to be Twitter, and co-editor of the spinoff book Write More Good, can use your help.
Mark is currently in an uncomfortable living situation and needs some funds to rehouse himself. He’s reached his stated financial goal, but he can use more scratch just in case, you know? Please contribute if you can:
Thanks for anything you can do.
• • •
Not that I don’t have enough physical comics piled up to read, after being behind for the last several years, I’ve been using the DC Comics digital comics app to look at some old stories I may have missed, and revisit some books that I gave up to the shop/don’t feel like digging out of my boxes at home.
Since I’ve been on an Armored Lex kick lately, I reread this three-parter, probably for the first time since it appeared in print back in 1985:
That’s the middle chapter of a story that ran in Superman #410, #412 and #413 (#411 was a surprise issue celebrating Superman’s editor Julius Schwartz), written by Cary Bates, illustrated by Curt Swan and Al Williamson, covers (which I liked!) by Klaus Janson.
I’ve written before about different inkers’ effects on Swan’s pencils, but I was struck by the expressiveness in the faces here in this particular sequence of panels from #412:
Isn’t that nice? Those are some good looks from Superman that you don’t normally see.
But what I wanted to mention for sure here was…well, let me give you a brief set-up. The story is about Clark reporting on an event Superman was involved in, only it turns out Superman imagined said event and it makes it look like Clark fabricated the whole thing. Clark is fired, and his reputation is shot so he can’t get another reporting job.
Obviously this is a plot by You-Know-Who, but Clark is left adrift in the meantime. As such, he pays a visit to another former Daily Planet/WGBS employee, Steve Lombard, who is currently running a sporting goods store. As you recall, Steve was the one continually pulling pranks on Clark in an attempt to pick on him (pranks that usually backfired due to Clark using some super power or ‘nother).
Now, the digital archive is incompelete for the Super-books, and my own memory of the stories from the time is a little spotty, so I don’t recall the circumstances of Steve losing his job, or on what terms he and Clark were on. But in this particular issue, we see the characters reunite:
…and Steve’s tomfoolery aside, it looks like the two get along just fine. They are genuinely pleased to see each other, and in fact Steve gives Clark a part-time job.
I thought this was a nice bit of character growth for Steve after, what, a decade or so of him being a pain in Clark’s rear? It feels like some of his arrogance has worn away, laughingly admitting his own foolishness in the panels above. It’s a real shame this is butting right up against the Byrne reboot, which would wipe this all away, as I would have liked to have seen more of this mildly less-obnoxious Steve Lombard. Ah well.
• • •
And here, since this seem relevant to the
recent Superhero Violence post from the other day, is a
panel found by Bluesky pal WormDrivePRO. From
Spectacular Spider-Man #118 (1986) by Peter David, Mike Zeck and Bob McLeod, comes this inversion of the “Abandoned Building Battleground” trope:
Huh, just like Thom H. said!
WormDrivePRO is a good follow if you like nice big scans of curated comic panels. It’s a fun feed that I recommend!
Okay, I don’t want to overload you with Byrne Superman Reboot talk, so I’ll probably stick to posting about that once or twice a week ’til I feel like I’ve said enough. But keep your comments and questions coming, since, as is my wont, I’ll probably spend some time responding to them in the near future.
I did want to cover a couple of other topics here, such as the fact I didn’t talk much — well, at all — about this year’s Free Comic Book Day. It’s not like I haven’t talked about before, and you can clickity-click that link to have my vast wisdom imparted upon you.
Like the last two or three years or however long it’s been, I can’t keep track, I’ll be posting the freebie tables in front of the store, instead of going through the trouble of rearranging the interior layout to make room for them. As you may recall, I started doing this post-COVID to reduce the number of bodies crammed into my little shop and hopefully lessen the risk of cooties exposure. Seems to have worked out great so far, since my creaky bones no longer have to strain at moving a ton of back issue boxes and heavy wooden tables in the shop, and having a huge crowd in front of the store around tables of free comics certainly grabs attention. And I certainly didn’t see any reduction of folks coming into the shop to take advantage of the sales.
So, yes, it still got a little crowded in the shop, but not nearly as much as if I was trying to have a big sale AND a freebie giveaway in the same space at the same time. It all works out.
I’m mostly ready to go…the bulk of the work occurs the night before and the morning of, so I just gotta get cracking soon as my doors close Friday evening. Plus I’m prepping other material to be given away, so that’ll probably take up my Friday afternoon. Oh, and I’m also taking in a large comics collection on Friday as well, from an out-of-town pal whose only opportunity to bring ’em by is that day, so I’ll probably be doing a little comics juggling over the next 24 hours. If the GUMBY OF SUCCESS was planning on making another visit to my store, now is the time!
Anyway, is this like the…23rd Free Comic Book Day? I mean, I guess it depends if you count that one year where it was called off due to COVID and the freebies were just sent out a few at a time to be given away each week. However you count it, I’ve worked ’em all, and look forward to doing it again this year!
• • •
They said it couldn’t be done, and yet Adam Farrar has done dood it:
an oral history of the 1990s Marvel UK comic book series
Blackwulf! (Here’s
Part Two and
Part Three.) It’s a whole lotta comics people in here talking, not just about
Blackwulf, but the ’90s comics business in general. And who better to speak about ’90s comics than the man who saw ’em in and escorted ’em out…yours truly, Michael Ricardo Anatoly Sterling. I’m mostly in the first part, with a brief cameo in the second, but you should overcome your disappointment at the lack of me in the third part and read it anyway, but it’s all great.
• • •
Mark Evanier is trying to set the visual record straight on comics legends Robert Kanigher and Bill Finger, in that a photo of the former keeps getting identified as the latter. So he’s
asked if comics folks would post this pic (leaving the file name unchanged, in case you decide to download it from here and post it yourself) to get those search engines to propagate the correct information:
Also the title of this very post is my attempt at getting some other Batman-related info scraped up and spread around.
So last time I was talking about Carmine Infantino’s alleged list of “things what you put onna cover to make a funnybook sell.” It’s just one of those things that’s generally common shared knowledge in the comics world.
But like many things that are common shared knowledge, there’s more to the story, and to the rescue is Comics Worth Reading‘s Johanna, who drops a link to a Bluesky interaction between Mark Waid (editor of that Secret Origins comic I presented last time) and Kurt Busiek, a couple of comics fellas who obviously know more about what’s going on here than I do.
In short, publisher Irwin Donenfeld came up with the list in the 1950s, which Infantino related to Waid in the ’80s. But I think we can all agree comics would be improved if we returned to list.
• • •
Hey, Old Timey Comics Blog Readers? You remember Dave Campbell, don’t you? The man who brought us “
Dave’s Long Box,” which ended in 2008 and that seems like
so long ago. Good gravy.
Anyway, Dave’s been busy lately, working on a documentary about Hal Needham’s 1982 film Megaforce, starring Barry Bostwick, and remembered by all of you for the “DEEDS NOT WORDS” ads that were all over the back covers of comics at the time. The doc, Making Megaforce, is currently funding on Indiegogo.
Plenty of contributor levels, which can get you Blu-rays and/or digital downloads of the doc, autographs, patches, screen credits, and at the top of the heap…an actual film-used (non-operable) dune buggy from the original movie! Only one of those buggies are being offered, so don’t worry, I didn’t take that option so it’s still available for you to get!
I like Dave, and hope this project reaches its goal. Looks like a lot of fun.
• • •
The latest comics drama to break out is a
noted cartoonist allegedly being a creep to a young lady. I’m using the word “allegedly” for my own protection here, but…said alleged creep has shut down his social media, and I’d seen reports of the associated popular YouTube show being closed down as well. A quick look at YouTube shows ’em all still up and running, so who knows.
Now this just happened over the weekend, so we’ll probably get some actual reporting on these events in the next day or two (or likely a reposting of the chat screenshots and some additional commentary, like what everyone’s doing on Xwitter and Bluesky). It’s an ugly situation, and the person who was the object of the reported harassment (she is also a cartoonist) has been driven off social media by people attacking her because of course they are. Waiting to see how all this shakes out…it sure doesn’t seem good.
• • •
And on a much lighter topic…I watched
Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom the other night, and I think I may have liked it more than the first one. Not that the initial installment was bad, it was enjoyable, but it just felt very “by the numbers” superhero filmmaking. It could be I’d just seen enough “superhero origin” movies by that point that getting yet another one was trying my patience.
The second one just felt more fun, with an enjoyable dynamic between Aquaman and his half-brother Orm AKA “Ocean Master.” I think the fact that the main antagonist of the film was Black Manta, who appeared briefly in the previous movie. He’s here full-time however, and there’s no logical reason in the world as to why that costume should work in live action, but boy it looks cool.
It’s goofy and outlandish and Randall Park’s character “Dr. Shin” should have died no less than like a half-dozen times during the course of this story, and if I never see a diaper-changing scene ever again where the dad gets a stream of pee directly to the face it’ll be too soon…but it’s a breezy ride and I enjoyed it. Two movies is probably enough, though, so it’s probably just as well it’s ending here 1) because I think the sequel only barely broke even at the box office, and 2) they’re clearing the way for the new DC Media Adaptation regime by James Gunn and that other guy whose name I never remember.
I think there’s been some talk about Aquaman star Jason Momoa turning up as Lobo, maybe possibly, and I can see that.
So a while back, I was a Kickstarter backer for the Rifftrax-ed version of the 1989 cinematic classic The Return of Swamp Thing, now currently available here. As part of my Kickstartering package, I received the following enamel pin:
A couple of weeks ago, my friend Brook (the same one who turned me on to this piece of Nancy art I bought, as well as this “Nobody Loves the Hulk” record) came back from a trip to Georgia, where he visited the Graveface Museum. While there, he picked up for me…a Return of Swamp Thing enamel pin:
Both clearly inspired by the film’s classy and sedate movie posters:
…of which that’s one, and you can see others here (where you can see which posters provided inspiration for which pin). Do I have a Return of Swamp Thing poster? You bet! Do I have the one that has the words “Sheer Nightgowns!” in a balloon burst? I’m afraid so.
And is that all the new Swamp Thing stuff your pal Mike has in his hands? Why no, of course not, thanks to my little envelope-stuffing bull pal, Bully, who mailed me this sticker designed by comics superstar Kyle Starks:
The real mystery here, of course, is how did Bully hold the pen with his little hooves when addressing the letter? Anyway, a big thanks to Bully for this surprise gift!
AND WAIT, THERE’S MORE! Longtime pals Matt and Chris have reached episode #666 of their longrunning podcast War Rocket Ajax! To celebrate this most diabolically evil of achievements, the Bits Boys called for contributions to their regular “Thursday Night Raw” segment revolving around Hell, demons, and all sorts of other deviltry. For those unfamiliar, this segment seeks to find and rank the “rawest” moments in comics.
I had an entry ready to submit for a while now, but never got around to it…but this seemed like the opportune time given the theme. My entry, of course, being from Swamp Thing Annual #2 (1985) by Alan Moore, Steve Bissette and John Totleben, in which Swamp Thing, having journeyed to Hell to rescue Abby, encounters his old nemesis Arcane:
Perhaps…too raw? What do Matt & Chris think of my submission? Other than probably being glad I didn’t make another Frank Miller’s The Spirit joke? You’ll have to listen to find out!
(Also, for the benefit of the boys who appear to have forgotten…I have been a sponsor of the show! Granted, it’s been five years…probably about time to do so again!)
Thanks, gang, for the positive response to my 20th anniversary post, both here and elsewhere. And thanks to most of you for not making fun of my appearance in the Youtube video, Andrew. Ah, just kidding with ya, I knew my face was goofy when I took it.
But anyhoo, I was going to dive back into the 1990s comics thing, and I promise I’ll get back to the 1980s comics thing next week, but I thought I’d respond to a couple of recent comments before they’re lost to the mists of blogging time.
First, Donald G mentions
“May you be here for many more and not disappear like so many others.”
I’ve talked about this before, but it’s likely been, oh, a decade or more, so it probably won’t hurt to address it again. Barring accident or sudden health issues or something, like a big cartoony piano being hauled up the side of a building suddenly snaps its rope and it comes crashing down, accordionizing me beneath it, I promise if it comes time to shut off the lights here, I will let you know. I won’t leave y’all hanging.
I’ve seen a lot of blogs over the years where the last post reads something like “sorry, been busy, will post again soon!” and the entry is marked like five or six years before the current date. It was prevalent enough to where when I when post something like “sorry gang, no post today, will be back later” I’d add something like “no really, I’m coming back, I’m not like those other blogs.”
I used to post every day, because I read something once long ago that you should post every day to maintain your readership, get people used to the idea that Regular Content would appear on your site. Well, maybe doing that in the early years helped build an audience, but now I’m on a more…sporadic schedule (usually Mon-Wed-Fri, but not always) and that doesn’t seem to have hurt anything. I mean, someday the schedule may get even looser…once a week, three times a month, something like that, but don’t worry, I don’t plan to scale it back that far anytime soon.
BUT…scaling it back is likely inevitable. As long as I’m in the comics business, I plan on keeping this site going (so if you want this place to continue, the obvious solution is sending lots of money to my store). But it may be as free time decreases, or the simple desire to post as much wanes, new content here will diminish. I can’t see ever not wanting to talk about comics, so the site staying open so I can continue to pontificate at excruciating length at least once in a while.
Like I said, that’s a long, long way off before I do anything like that, at least three or four months, so don’t worry about it. One of the ultimate goals for this site is to create an index page, with links to specific posts or categories of posts, so that even when I decide to stop the blog or slow it to a crawl, it can remain a more easily-searchable resource. I used to have in the site’s sidebar links to posts of note…it would be sort of like that, only perhaps a little more comprehensive.
One thing I won’t being doing if/when I bring the site to an end is “Scorched Earth.” This was a post I thought about doing very early on, before I realized this site was going to become a lifelong task. It would be the final entry here, where I stopped being polite and started getting real, just laying into the people who annoyed me, crushing my enemies, speak truth to power, etc.
But if I’ve changed at all in the last couple of decades, it’s that I’ve mellowed out a bit. I don’t get quite as worked up over the whole “Someone Is Wrong on The Internet!” thing as I used to, mostly just shaking my head at the absurdity of it all. Besides, I’ve outlived most of my enemies, at least here on the Information Superhighway, so the burning need to do a Scorched Earth post has diminished over the years. …Wait, I just thought of that one guy. OOOOH I hate that guy. NEVER MIND, SCORCHED EARTH IS BACK ON.
The TOO LONG, DIDN’T READ version: I’ll tell you when I’m stopping the blog. Unless I’m hit by a train or something, in which case someone else can tell you.
• • •
Here’s a quickie link to something amusing you folks might like. I know
I did! Matthew Murray
gives us the mini-comic
Juchebert for free, free, free, in which
Dilbert strips are mashed up with North Korean propaganda slogans. Very strange and amusing, and you can download it your own self
here.
• • •
Lastly, customer Sean
asks, among other things, if I’d rank the various Swamp Thing runs. Well, I did, a while back, in these two posts:
1 2. It’s been nearly seven years, probably pointing folks to them again wouldn’t hurt. Anyway, this is the sort of thing a big ol’ index page would come in handy for.
• • •
Thanks for reading, pals, and it’s back to Business as Usual Monday!
When you weren’t looking, someone took the moribund Flash Gordon newspaper strip, in reruns for decades, and revived it into something awesome. Dan Schkade started on the strip a couple of weeks ago, and has really been kicking butt and taking names. Fast-paced, beautifully illustrated, wittily dialogued, it’s a solid demonstration that just because something’s been around forever and left to basically rot, it doesn’t mean someone can’t come along and apply a little elbow grease and get things working again. It’s a great strip, and I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier as the first couple of installments are behind a paywall now, but you can catch on to what’s going on easily enough.
Amusingly in the comments now and again are a tiny handful of people upset that Flash Gordon is suddenly new and interesting, wishing for the return of artists who have done them the disfavor of no longer being alive. Anyway, you have to kind of admire the commitment of the same four or five people who turn up at that site every day to click the “ANGRY” response button for each strip. But frankly, all things considered, they should be grateful anyone’s even bothering to maintain the comic at all.
• • •
Andrew Farago has written an
excellent obituary for the late and, needless to say, great Keith Giffen for
The Comics Journal. He rightly lists the accolades, while not ignoring one of the more…unfortunate periods of his career (to which I just barely alluded in
my own barely-adequate remembrance).
So check out Andrew’s coverage of everything Giffen did for the comics industry over the last few decades. His influence is probably greater than you realize. Or even I realized…even though I read most of the stuff he worked on for the last thirty years as it was coming out, seeing it all assembled and quantified as to its importance to this medium (and its expansion into film) was a real eye-opener. Giffen was a giant, even if we didn’t always understand just how tall he was.
It’s here, it’s here, in my hot little hands direct from Jason Sandberg himself, as predicted by prophecy, the new Jupiter #1:
Jupiter was a black and white indie publisher too briefly in the 1990s, and I discussed that run here. Then in 2018 Jason put up a digital compilation of the best of Jupiter. And now, here we are, with a brand new color comic featuring his weird and wonderful cartooning.
Now, ever since I wrote that first blog post about Jupiter way back when, Jason and I have been online pals, chatting regularly, me hopefully being encouraging about his work, and he sending me the occasional goodie in the mail (like when he sent a stack of mini-comics he did for me to give away on Free Comic Book Day).
This time, he made sure I had plenty of the new Jupiter on hand, along with a few extra bits of business just for me.
First, he sent me a signed copy. That was nice!
Then there were the membership/fan club cards:
And of course, the official Jupiter coin:
Then, inexplicably, or perhaps entirely explicably, this WildC.A.T.s promo trading card:
He also sent me a personal note, but that’s personal, like I said. MIND YOUR OWN BEESWAX
Last but not least, yours truly gets not one, but two mentions within this mind-shattering publication, including a plug for the very site you’re theoretically reading right now:
…as well as for the store I reportedly own:
“Drop?” “Drop in?” “DROP IT, PUNK?” “Dropout Boogie by Captain Beefheart?” You’ll have to buy the comic, or surreptitiously sneak a peek in the shop, to see the whole pulse-pounding prose Jason attached to mentions of ME ME ME.
Anyway, there it is. YEARS IN THE MAKING! I’m glad Jason’s funding campaigns were a success, and that hopefully more people will get exposed to his wonderful cartooning.
I think you can still order it from that Indiegogo link? I’m not sure. But while supplies last, you can order them from me! Tell me I sent you!
At long last…Official Pal of the Site Rich Handley (of “In The Special Features on Planet of the Apes DVDs” fame) has finished his comprehensive overview of pre-Flashpoint Swamp Thing and will be coming to us in book form.
Born on the Bayou: A Pre-Flashpoint Chronology of Swamp Thing and Hellblazer (or BOTBAPFCOSTAH for short) will be shambling its way out of the marsh this September. Rich sent me an advance copy of the manuscript, and I can guarantee, if it’s not in this book, it’s not Swamp Thing or John Constantine-related. It has a foreword by famed Swamp Thing artist (and my Close Personal Friend) Steve Bissette! And I hear tell that I personally may be referenced more than a few times in the book itself! Just look in the index for “Swamp Thing, Best Friend of…” and there I’ll be.
But seriously, it’s a great book, a teeming repository of Swamp Thing knowledge you’ll lose yourself in. Check it out this fall, and tell them…well, don’t tell them Mike sent you, that’d be weird. Just tell ’em “gimme that swamp book, I gots to start readin’!”
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