publishing

The Progressive Ruiin Swimsuit Special remains an unrealized dream.

filed under Categories publishing, zines 4 Comments

Just a reminder: reader Daniel pointed out that Kwakk.info, which had featured search engines for Amazing Heroes and The Comics Journal, has been greatly expanded. Now it includes Wizard, Hero Illustrated, Comics Interview, Comics Scene, Comics Feature, Marvel Age, FOOM(!) and The Comic Reader(!!!).

The Comic Reader database is the one I’m most excited about, being a huge fan and collector of that particular ‘zine. This search engine covers issues #75 through the end of the run, #219, with some scattered earlier issues.

When looking at the Amazing Heroes page, I noticed in the little rotating cover gallery they have there a cover from the post-Fantagraphics era of the magazine, when it was acquired by another publisher. Now when I went to look this up on Wikipedia, that article claims the title was obtained by Personality Comics, but “nothing came of it.”

Except something did come of it…Personality (under its Spoof Comics imprint) published at least two issues of new(?) Swimsuit Specials in 1993 (numbered 4 and 5), like this one:

And there were at least four issues of Amazing Heroes Interviews published in 1993 from “Amazing Heroes Publishing,” which I am presuming was another imprint of Personality:


I don’t have these on hand…I seem to recall looking at these at the time and thinking “…nah” (hence the “borrowed from eBay” images)…and I can’t find a lot of info on them online aside from finding sale listings. I think the interviews are new…doing a search on some specific phrases from the Walter Koenig interview only turns up references to the later magazine, not the original Fantagraphics series. And speaking of which, many online sources refer to the interview mag as “Fantagraphics,” though that doesn’t look like their trade dress. Maybe someone can set me straight.

So there you go. Despite Wikipedia’s assertion, another publisher did use the “Amazing Heroes” name, if even justr briefly. Perhaps amending the reference to “almost nothing came of it” would be more appropriate.

• • •

Anyway, speaking of thirty years ago, I’ve been monitoring your responses to my quest for the most 1990s comic and I do plan on addressing the ensuing shenanigans there. I personally still think the ’90s remain Rob Liefeld’s world, and we were just living in it, though I waffle a bit on which comic is the most representative. I said Youngblood at first, but am now leaning toward, teeth gritted and my contorted footless body backed by speedlines, towards X-Force #1. It’s the perfect storm of both artistic and marketing…let’s say “qualities” of the time.

But you folks are bringing up some compelling arguments for other books. Like I said, I’ll get back to this and crown the ’90s King eventually (which may go to my choice, because this is my website and I’m a jerk) but keep on chiming in with your thoughts. I always appreciate them.

Yes, I know a buck each for Brigade is too much.

filed under Categories 1990s Sins, publishing 30 Comments

So I related this story on my Bluesky account (follow me there if you can, and I have a couple of spare invite codes if anyone needs ’em) where a customer came in looking for a present for a friend of his. Said friend was described as a “big collector” of comics during the ’90s, and wanted to find a special comic that would essentially symbolize that time in this person’s life.

Well, of course the initial thought that ran through my head was to run to the dollar bins and pull out a full run of Brigade, but I couldn’t do that to a complete and presumably innocent stranger. Plus, of course this customer was looking for something “giftworthy,” so we’re probably looking at a single issue of a comic that was a tad more substantial (i.e. dollar-iffic) than some random ’90s thing that was better off as a tree fished out of the Boxes of Misfit Comics.

My next thought was something like Spawn or Youngblood, both titles that in their own different, yet surprisingly similar, ways were emblematic of the excesses of that particular partial decade prior to the market’s Big Crunch.

But before I could voice these suggestions, my customer spotted an item that fit the bill perfectly, a special comic that is near and dear to my heart. Yes, friends, it could only be one thing:


Yes ineedy, the Death of Superman, Superman #75, rears its head yet again. After a couple of questions from the customer (“Is it the original? Is the bag sealed?”) I had me a sale and he had him a piece of 1990s comics history.

Anyway, after telling this story (in a much-truncated less-that-300-characters fashion) I posed the following question to my Bluesky pals: “what would you pick to be THE most 1990s comic book?”

I had quite a few responses, including one or two for books like Starman, which, you know, while definitely good, I’m not sure that’s exactly what I was looking for here. I mean, yes, we shouldn’t ignore the fact that very nicely done, high quality comics were in fact published, but I tend to associate (as I said earlier) publishing excesses to the earlier part of the decade, and “the stink of desperation” to the latter. Perhaps unfortunately, for having lived through it as a funnybook seller, my perspective is a little more cynical. Which is on me, admittedly.

Perhaps my question is better phrased “what most exemplified the” (here’s that word again) “excesses of the era?” The “Death of Superman” issue is certainly one aspect of it, the immense hype and overwrought demand for a “collectible” item. Which would also apply to, say, Youngblood #1, where a talk show appearance the night before release drummed up business for a comic that…mmm. perhaps was not the medium putting its best foot forward for an audience that normally did not buy comics. (And I wonder how many of these new folks, if any of them even bothered to look inside, still picture that as what all comics are like.)

Now I had some good suggestions for other titles, like pal Ian dropping Darker Image #1 on us (a title that promised big things but ultimately never made it past that first issue). Or stuff like X-Men #1 or X-Force #1, selling millions of copies on the basis of multiple covers or card inserts, representing the gimmicky methods publishers used to push comic sales above and beyond and reasoable (or healthy) expectation. (And I don’t need to tell you the multiple cover strategy is still in play today, on much smaller scales but for basically the same reasons.)

Or titles like Alley Cat, part of that small trend of basing comics around models/actresses, who would often have their pictures featured on the covers. (A precursor to the modern trend of “cosplay” covers, I think.) No less a personage than Rusty Shackles brought up the comic based on the mostly-forgotten Barbi Twins, for which I owe him my revenge.

But I think, personally, it comes down to pretty much any comic by Rob Liefeld…Youngblood, or X-Force #1, or Deathmate Red (another suggestion), or titles like that. It’s what I picture in my head when I think of my 1990s toiling in the comics mines, in between slinging POGs and wondering what these new Magic: The Gathering cards were all about.

I’ll ask you the same question: what is the most 1990s comic? I don’t mean “what’s your favorite 1990s comic” — I’ll get to that question eventually, when I’m done with my ’80s countdown — but what comic do you look at and think “yeah, this is what the ’90s comic industry was like, for good or for ill.” Please let me know in the comments.

Meanwhile, please enjoy this 1993 cable access comic book show I found on the YouTubes. WARNING: the DC Comics commercial at 11:55 will give you an aneurysm.

The ghost of Harlan is going to get me for putting his book so close to a Fantagraphics thing.

filed under Categories publishing, zines 5 Comments

My apologies for skipping out on Friday’s post…I’d been a little under the weather, and I’m still recovering though I’m feeling much better now. Not COVID, thankfully (and I got the most recent booster just a couple of weeks ago), but still, enough to throw me off my game.

So I’ll just try to do a little catch-up today, noting some things of interest, like (courtesy Daniel T.) this search engine for the Amazing Heroes comics ‘zine. Well, the link takes you to a page explaining how it was made, with a link to the search engine itself. But it’s worth reading the behind-the-scenes because, man, if I spent this much time putting something together I’d want people to read about my travails, too.

But I’ve tested it out on a couple of things, and it seems to work fine. Now I have an whole run of Amazing Heroes and its associated specials here at home, and over the years, mostly because of writing for this site, I’ve had to dive deep into the collection to research somethin’ or ‘nother and it would take a while because unless I knew right off the top of my head where it would have been, I otherwise would only have a vague sense of where to locate it and I would spend an inordinate amount of time paging through the mags. Anyway, this was quite the project, and I hope it stays around.

Also of note, I just found out there’s a new edition of Harlan Ellison’s legendary anthology Dangerous Visions on its way early in 2024:


That’s a wild color. I discovered this via a post on Bluesky via J. Michael J. Straczynski, who says he’s providing a new introduction to the volume (which makes sense, since the infamously-unpublished Last Dangerous Visions is in his hands). Another new intro is by Patton Oswalt, which…I mean, sure, why not, I like him, I’m sure both he and JMS can provide a modern context as to the importance of this book, and the cutting-edge nature of the work at the time.

It’s been a while since I’ve read Dangerous Visions. I don’t even own a copy, which is why I’m happy to have this new edition (and my choice of hard or soft covers, apparently being released simultaneously next March). I do wonder how the stories have aged since the book was first released in 1967, and how much time may have blunted those cutting edges. I do own a battered hardcover of Again, Dangerous Visions which is probably due a new poke-through after sitting on my shelf for many a year. (Or I can wait for that book’s reissue next summer.)

I don’t want to relitigate the whole Last Dangerous Visions thing here, which you can read about on Wikipedia if you don’t know the details. But I do wish JMS the best of luck wrestling that beast…the Wiki entry does claim that Blackstone (the publisher of the DV reissue) will be releasing Last Dangerous Visions late next year, but surely no one can blame me if I say “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

I don’t know how unsuccessful it was, all my readers apparently bought Grendel from a newsstand.

filed under Categories fanzines, publishing 6 Comments

Hi pals…I’m pretty wiped out today so I’m going to apologize up front for a less thorough post. But you folks really stepped up with some info regarding the woes of comics publisher Comico, researching and finding relevant articles in The Comics Journal that I didn’t.

What I was doing when looking through my Journals for the last post was specifically searching out articles along the lines of “COMICO DISTRIBUTES TO NEWSSTANDS.” I stuck mostly to Journals released around mid-1986 through mid-1987. However, if I’d kept going through December 1987, I might have found this feature the mag ran in December ’87, presented here courtesy reader Lars. This is more in the context of Comico’s large printer debt, which the article states

“…Was at least partly incurred as the result of an apparently unsuccessful nationwide newsstand distribution of such Comico titles as Jonny Quest, Grendel, and the three Robotech titles….”

The article also notes other reasons for Comico’s money woes, including the collapse of some distribution companies that owed the publisher money. That particularly rings a worrying bell right now, as the industry is currently splintering amongst multiple distributors after many years of just one company bringing us our comics. I mean, it’s a different situation now — it’s not likely Penguin Random House is suddenly going to disappear overnight — but those of us who remember distributors dropping like flies can’t help but think of those days.

Anyway, thank you Lars for the scans, and thanks also to ChrisB for pointing out other issues of the Journal for me to check out. As Michael points out, the mag’s “Newswatch” section is pretty consistently amazing, and I found myself just paging through article after article being reminded of the many events of the time. This is one of the reasons I like ‘zines, reading about comics news as reported contemporaneously. As I noted on Bluesky, “this is my comics nostalgia.”

I plan on digging through more of these Journals and seeing if I can find any more articles of note, not just about Comico but other topics as well. Though I did spot an editorial by Gary Groth about the end of the black and white/investment boom which I also can’t wait to revisit.

Honestly, I love Canada, I once wrote a report on the country that I used, unchanged, in two different school years.*

filed under Categories publishing 9 Comments

So a few of you folks popped into my comments to note that yes, you too bought Grendel off the newsstands back in ’86, along with Johnny Quest, another Comico-published property. (And then Matthew brings up the Canadian newsstand distribution of Melody: Story of a Nude Dancer, and, well, Canada being a lawless land is perhaps a topic for another day….)

Anyhoo, I spent my Thursday evening going through the mid-1980s portion of my Comics Journal, looking at the news sections and trying to find any mention of Comico’s newsstand distribution plans, along with any note of how those could have been a factor in the publisher’s demise. Alas, I found nothing, but with the caveat that one of my issues from that run is AWOL, possibly in the stacks of unsorted material that I am currently reorganizing at the house. And also, I could have just plain missed it. I should check my Amazing Heroes from the same period, when it’s not approaching midnight (as I write this), along with their Preview Specials, to see if there’s any mention there.

Well, hold on, I still have the Previews Specials here next to my desk, so let me poke through ’em real quick-like and see if I can find anything.

[TEMPUS FUGITS RIGHT ALONG]

Nope, no mention in the Grendel entries in those.

Anyway, suffice to say Comico was experimenting with distribution outside the comic book store direct market. Much like how Now Comics would also attempt it not too much later. I am curious if Grendel ever got any blowback from “concerned parents” or news crews lookin’ for controversy, as, as the articles I was seeing in Comics Journal of the period remind me, comic content and censorship in the industry was a real hot topic. Just news item after news item of shops being harassed, publishers issuing subject matter guidelines, creators parting ways (or getting fired for complaining) with DC after announcing their content-labeling plans, complaints about the Miracleman birth issue…it was a real mess. Even putting “PARENTAL GUIDANCE SUGGESTED” across the top of their comic, like Comico did with Grendel #1, wouldn’t stop anyone from startin’ any trouble with them. If anything, it would just make them a target.

That’s…probably a bigger topic than I have time to really tackle here. I was actually specifically reminded of the whole “look at the filthy comics your kids are reading!” hoohar that went around whenever comics started selling reasonably well in the last couple of decades. Lots of people always willing to hitch their agenda wagon to whatever seems popular, and if comics are popular, well, that’s a good hook to rail against the sinfulness in society and “protecting” the children. Of course now video games an’ such get much more attention, so those are more attractive to those types, so it doesn’t matter if Batman says a swear, or whatever.

So, the thing that specifically reminded me of this. I was looking up old San Diego Comic Con videos on YouTube and found this one, a San Diego news programs retrospective of their own coverage of the event over the years. It’s pretty neat seeing the sales floor and the people in costumes, and the coverage ranges from “comic books are weird” to “comic fans are weird” to “oh thank God normal celebrities and big movies are here,” but keep a lookout for the coverage in the 1990s where, gasp, adult comics are on sale here in full view of children!


So going back three or four topics, I’ll keep my eye out and see if I can’t spot any info on Comico’s newsstand distribution. Also, at one point Comico was piggybacking on DC for a bit, offering their books through DC’s distributor solicitations. That’s kinda weird too.
 
 

* BONUS: the two teachers were spouses.

Another lazy post.

filed under Categories publishing 15 Comments

So another night where things got away from me…I do plan on the next installment of the Final ’80s Countdown, which I’ll try to get to next week. But in the meantime:

Sean asked about the alternate history Spider-Man comics published in Mexico, post-Gwen’s death. Apparently Mexican fans, and the folks making the comics, weren’t having it, so they continued along with new stories where Gwen didn’t get thrown off a bridge by the Green Goblin and then get killed when Spider-Man grabbed her in mid-air, snapping her neck. This article in the Guardian tells you all about it (and even interviews the original artist of those stories).

It’s brought up in the article, but it is very surprising to me that an English translation hasn’t been released in the U.S. But then, Marvel has so much Spidey stuff produced in the U.S. to pull from for trades and hardcovers, the added expense of hiring a translator to redo all the text may be enough to put them off. So I guess y’all better start hunting the back issue bins to put together your own run. I think in the 35 years I’ve been selling comics, I’ve seen an issue from this series…maybe twice. So good luck!

Mike Loughlin notes that Wizard said about pricing foreign edition comics

“…The UK edition of the ’60s Avengers comic was worth less than the US edition.”

…and that was likely true at the time. But Wizard died off before the weird, almost frantic drive to find “hot” comics that afflicted collectors starting not all that long ago, and driven to extremes during the height of society actually acknowledging a pandemic was happening. Things not as hot before were a lot warmer now, including international “variants” of American books. It was, and still is, a weird time, what can I tell you.

Sean also asked if I could get into the alternate version of various characters like the Captain Atom and the Shadow published in Australia. I didn’t have to resond, but in swoops Chris B with some Aussie comical info.

Here’s one, as s sample:


I don’t know…Casual Day for the Shadow isn’t really that great of a look.

Computers make everything easier!

filed under Categories publishing 3 Comments

Well, I’m left with almost no time to post at the moment because I spent the evening trying to figure out how to reset the password on my desktop Macintosh. Wasn’t getting “reset password” options on the login screen, and it took forever to find help online that wasn’t specific to 1) laptops, 2) phones, and 3) older Macs. Oddly, the password I’d been using forever (bad idea, don’t do as I do, kids) suddenly stopped working, and I’m not sure why. (When I had to reenter the old password later, after the reset, it worked fine.)

Anyway, all is good now unless it happens again tomorrow, but we’ll see. But I’ve changed the password to something a little easier to deal with, so nobody tell anyone that it’s now “seanmageeanisastinker,” okay?

All that said, I wanted to thank you folks for all the great comments you’ve been leaving lately. I do read every one, and I appreciate the civil discussion.

I’ll try to address a couple of questions from last time here.

First, JohnO asks

“Question regarding overseas reprints…what if it is a reprint of a key issue from the UK/Australia? Are those also ‘cheaper?’ Obviously, they go for less than the original but how much more are they able to sell for since they are in English? Thanks and keep up the great work.”

I actually got into this a couple of years ago, where the answer at the time was, in general, they were worth about the same, if not more, at least for the UK editions. The ones I was speaking of back then were essentially identical to the U.S. versions, likely printed at the same time, with only the cover priced altered. (There were some comics that were the U.S. editions, just ink-stamped with a UK price, which are priced as normal per their condition including said stamp.)

Basically, if they’re the same book otherwise, the cover price being printing in a different denomination doesn’t change things much, usually. When I had those Silver Age Marvels with the printed UK prices, I had no problem moving them at current U.S. market pricing.

Jim Kosmicki suggests

“I’m not in comics retailing anymore, but this really strikes me as a put it up on eBay and let the market price it situation, depending on what you have invested in it already.”

It is tempting, and I’ve done so in the past, but I’ve really been shying away from using eBay for selling of late. However, I feel like the fees are getting more and more burdensome there, and would rather avoid it if at all possible. I do still have a few things on there for the shop, but it’s mostly things I’m trying to unload that I couldn’t sell locally. This particular comic I’m pretty sure I can sell in-store without giving a giant megacorporation a quarter of my take.

And will richards responds to JohnO by noting UK reprints of U.S. comics don’t sell for a whole lot, which reminds me I should make a distinction in my own response to JohnO above. I was talking about straight-up UK editions of U.S. books…not “reprints,” like that Superman/Batman book from Germany, which is a whole separate publication reissuing previously-published stories from the U.S. which will is talking about. Yes, the UK-specific reprint mags containing “key” reprint material don’t sell for as high premiums, but can sell for a bit depending on exactly what it is. Having, like he said, the first appearance of Wolverine in a UK reprint is enough of a novelty to get those prices pushed upward.

Okay, here’s hoping to no computer problems before the next post. Thanks for reading, pals.

There goes my Fables stage musical.

filed under Categories dc comics, publishing, retailing 19 Comments

An update to Friday’s post about Bill Willingham declaring his Fables comic to be in the public domain: in a shocking turn of events, the publisher of Fables, DC Comics, has a problem with that. They released an announcement that basically says “Fables is ours, don’t even try it, we’re looking at you Rob Liefeld” and okay I added that last part, but still, they’re not into the whole “public domain” thing as one would expect.

And like I said, this ain’t gonna be settled ’til there’s been a lawsuit or three, so…um, don’t make up stories based on public domain fairy tale characters that even slightly resemble those published under the Fables label, I guess? And certainly don’t call it Fables.

Anyway, there may be a lot of probable…grey area to this story, as has been brought up in the comments to Friday’s post. We’ll see how this plays out.

To answer the question Sean brought up regarding who owns Willingham’s superhero team the Elementals: I actually Googled the phrase “who owns the elementals comic book” and up popped the name “Andrew Rev.”

“Comico’s publisher, Andrew Rev, purchased the Elementals property from Willingham in the 1990s.”

So I presume ol’ Andrew is still just sitting on the rights, and doing nothing with them. Or trying to do something with them and none of us know about it because it hasn’t been going anywhere. Ah well.

• • •

In other news, I’ve got medical stuff going on in the mornings for the first part of the week, so…posting may be light on Wednesday. I’m only getting this much typing done right now because I got an early start Sunday evening. But at least I wanted to show you this picture:


Believe it or not, I thought I was smiling. But I guess comics are Serious Bizness so my stern look of disapproval at all of you is the best I can manage.

So anyway, those comics. That Amazing Fantasy #15 and Amazing Spider-Man #1. About a year and a half ago a gentlemen brought in some Silver Age Marvel for sale and I purchased them from him. He and his family had inherited these and over a few weeks he offered up several comics to me that I of course had to buy. Then one week he showed me those two omics in the picture there. He wasn’t quite sure if he wanted to part with them just yet, but we talked about them and how we’d sell them and so on.

I saw him a few more times over the following months, buying other comics from him but he still wasn’t ready to part with those two books. Until he was, just recently! And before you ask…no, they’re sold, I don’t have them hanging around the store, so keep your Ocean’s 11-style shenanigans out of my shop. But I guess after all our dealings together he decided he liked the cut of my jib and asked me to handle these two beauties.

More and more stuff has shown up from this collection, and one of the unintended consequences of letting people know I had an Amazing Fantasy #15 is that I’m seeing and hearing from a lot of people about what I have to offer in my shop. Now, while I’ve been in this business for three and a half decades, I’m not a Big Name Retailer. I’m probably not even the biggest retailer in the county. So it probably came as a surprise to a lot of folks that this nobody with a tiny shop out in Camarillo, CA is suddenly awash in The Big Books.

This won’t last forever, of course. This collection will eventually run out (though there’s plenty of good stuff I still need to process) and once I no longer had The Big Books folks will move on. Unless more people bring me stuff like this after seeing…um, that I had stuff like this. I don’t know, we’ll see. But it’s been fun looking through these books that I haven’t had in my hands in a while.

…Like that Amazing Fantasy #15. Last time I held one of those in my hands was just before the big price jump in the…1990s, I think? Back when we had it for a few hundred dollars, as opposed to the…quite a bit more it commands now? Quite the item, and it was good to see it in person once again.

Not a lawyer, not even a little bit.

filed under Categories dc comics, publishing 19 Comments

So I suppose the big, surprising news of the week is Bill Willingham announcing that he is giving Fables over to the public domain. According to his press release (warning: Substack link), his frustrations with the current publisher of Fables, DC Comics, has brought him to this decision.

There has been an enormous amount of commentary on this already, and here I am slopping more on the pile. You’ll see a lot of people saying things like “I’m not a copyright lawyer, but” and then pontificating on the ramifications of this, and look, I’m only human. I’m gonna ramble on about it myself, because there are a few questions I have, a few responses I want to relate, and so on.

First off, can Bill Willingham even do this? Can you announce that something is just “public domain” now and that’s that? A few years back Tom Lehrer put all his music into the public domain, and apparently it was quite the chore on his part to do so. Granted, I’m getting the “quite the chore” part second hand, since I’m not finding a primary source for that, but Tom definitely dood it. And I presume the hard part was getting any record labels with whom he had prior arrangements to play along.

But what does this Fables announcement mean, exactly? Various commentators have noted dumping a thing into the public domain isn’t necessarily a thing you can do. The Techdirt article link I posted suggest that really the best you can do is say “I won’t, and no heirs (if any) will, sue you if you use this thing I own.” As pal Nat said on Bluesky, maybe Willingham can offer what amounts to a free license to everyone to use his Fables material…which may conflict with preexisting contracts Willingham has with DC.

Willingham’s take is that, while he’s under contract to DC, he himself can’t do anything with Fables outside their purview…but by offering Fables up for free, everyone else can. Now I’m sure there’s going to be a test case for this eventually, as, say, Dynamite decides to publish their own Fables book, and DC/Warner/Discovery says “hold on there, pardner,” and slaps a big lawsuit or, at minimum, a cease and desist on them. The legality of “anyone can use Fables is going to be settled by courts, I’m almost positive.

It’s that contract with DC that I’m now wondering about, after Nat pointed it out. I am presuming Willingham’s lawyers looked over everything and gave him the “sure, go ahead” with this announcement. As he says repeatedly, he is the sole owner of the property, and outside the agreements he has with DC, he can do whatever he wants with it. But I suspect DC is going to spend at least a little money in legal action deciding if in fact this is the case. Willingham said that part of what moved him to this course of action was that he couldn’t afford the time or money to sue DC, but he may end up in court about this anyway.

As anther Bluesky user said (and Neil Gaiman concurred), this may be less about getting Fables into the public domain than about basically putting the screws to DC regarding their own ability to make new Fables comics. After all, ol’ Bill was pretty pissed at DC. (Given that he lost control over a previous comic he created, Elementals, I imagine he’s pretty sensitive about ownership of his work.)

Also, as many folks have joked, “at last, we can do stories about Snow White and the Big Bad Wolf!” I know, I know, Fables primarily concerned itself with characters from fairy tales, all of whom were already in the public domain. The situations, stories, and character interpretations are all Willingham’s, of course, and that’s what he’s offering up. It’s like, anyone can do Frankenstein’s Monster, but only Universal Studios can do the Frankenstein’s Monster you immediately thought of when you read the name.

I’m reminded a bit of Dave Sim, who has said that Cerebus would enter the public domain upon his death. Again, this is likely the “no one will sue you” option more than actual public domain, but Dave owns Cerebus outright and, far as I know, has no legal contracts involving the character with outside parties. Quite a different situation than that with Fables, where an entertainment conglomerate has at least some minor interest in the property.

Basically what I’m saying is, nobody knows for sure how this is going to work until someone tries to make it work, and we see how DC reacts. Like, don’t look for “Stan Lee Presents Fables” from Marvel anytime soon. Though…if Marvel still has publication rights to comics based on Once Upon A Time, maybe we can get that crossover we’ve always wanted…!

News Flash.

filed under Categories dc comics, flash, publishing 5 Comments

Update to the William Messner-Loebs talk from last week (reminder: here’s his GoFundMe) — a couple of you noted that DC has announced a new omnibus reprint of his (and Greg LaRocque’s) run on The Flash.


I haven’t found an issue listing yet, but that’s definitely the cover from the first issue on that omnibus there. That has me wondering if they’re going to include the first 14 issues of this Flash series written by Mike Baron, or just pick up from #15, Messner-Loebs’ first. I mean, I presume not, I just see Loebs’ name there. It’s good stuff, regardless, and Loebs picks up from Baron’s run, fleshing out situations and characters and keeping things weird and exciting.

I would kind of preferred paperbacks, but as was noted in my comments, maybe those will come later. But so long as some money is getting to Loebs from this, it’s a welcome move from DC.