It’s that weird time between Christmas and New Year’s Day, when all crime is legal, so I’m gonna hold off on Wolverine Talk for a tiny bit. Do I have more to say about Wolverine comics? Oh yes indeedy I do.
I also wanted to remind everyone that I’m looking for your comics industry predictions for 2025! I haven’t been hitting the reminders too hard either here or on social media, so I don’t have much of a turnout yet. Hopefully I’ll get a few more submissions, especially once I start reviewing the predictions from last year…that always seems to goose the numbers.
Now let’s go ahead and wrap up the last couple of inquiries from the most recent Question Time post:
Leonard. Or Bernard. Or both. “Swamp Leonard Bernard Thing, Esq.” So sayeth me, Michael Ricardo Anatoly Sterling!
• • •
And wrapping up that Question Time post is demoncat_4, with another Swamp Thing question
“if dc ever finaly mostly as a tie in to james gunn future swamp thing film finaly publishes the infamous swamp thing meets jesus issue swamp thing 88 how many issues will you order for your store and how many for your self.”
That…is an interesting question, actually. The art, by the late Michael Zulli, is pretty much done (judging by some photocopies I may or may not have seen, I admit nothing). And given some of the shenanigans DC has published in the interim (including Preacher, where the main antagonist is, well, God), the relatively reverent Swamp Thing meets Jesus story would hardly cause a ripple now, I think.
At the time the comic was supposed to be published, in the late ’80s, the industry was in the midst of getting more attention from the general public, laying the groundwork for the ’90s boom. That meant more sales and more presence in “real world” media…both good and bad. And DC, with a Bat-movie in hand and possibly more on the way, and with plenty of zealots and blame-placers ready to find simple reasons for their kids being assholes, comics became a real target.
Not saying it doesn’t happen now, but with your comic readership being, on average, about equal to the number of people who read my grocery lists (and stop doing that, you weirdos), the Usual Suspects have moved on to new targets that will get them more publicity. And this planned cover for the issue might have raised an eyebrow or two from the naysayers then:
…I suspect it would fly more under the radar now. (If the story gets mixed in with other reprints in a trade paperback, it’ll definitely slide on by, but let’s contiue assuming a single-issue release.)
Let’s say DC said “okay, the time is nigh for us to finally publish this comic” and they put out a “facsimile” of a comic that never was, Swamp Thing #87, The Tale Too Hot for TV. Who would buy this now, about 35 years on.
Well, if they go with this cover:
…I suspect they’d fly off the shelves, and not just into the hands of elderly Swamp Thing fans, such as myself. So, yeah, I’d probably order a pretty good number of these for the shop.
And speaking of me, as I so rarely do here…how many would I buy? Well, one of each cover, natch…the regular cover, the foil cover, the 1 in 25 variant cover. That would suffice.
• • •
And that’s that! I’ll be back to Wolverine Talk next week, probably, and in the meantime…give me more predictions!
Well, I said last week I was going to skip the Wolverine talk for a day or two, but just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in! I’ll do my best to keep it brief (uh oh, you know what that means) but I wanted to address a couple of things before Christmas hit.
First, there’s a comment or three that have been left on the Wolverine posts that I promise I will get to, once 1) I’m through with the main posts in the series, or 2) when I actually take a brief break from posting about specific Wolverine comics. So if you left a question recently, don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten you.
Second, I still have a couple of responses due for the most recent Question Time post. Haven’t forgotten those either! I’ll get to them soon.
Okay (phew) how ’bout some Wolverine?
Speaking of comments, Joe Gualtieri gives me a poke with
“No mention of #27? Its Jim Lee cover was used for the box art of the Wolverine NES game and seems to be at least as expensive as the other issues mentioned here.”
Well, Joe, there’s a perfectly good explanation for the omission, and that is…um, I forgot.
Here’s the cover under discussion, straight outta 1990:
That is indeed Mr. Jimothy Lee on art duties for that almost literally striking cover there. And all I can say is that the reason I forgot about this cover is that…I haven’t had one in my evil retailer hands in many a moon. Or if I did it sold so quickly that it left no impression on what’s left of my mind that I even had one around.
As such, I don’t have specific sales data I can give you all for this issue. I can make some assumptions, both from sources like the Hot Comics App and looking at sales on the eBays. It does seem to sell for a little more than your average issue of Wolverine from around this period, excluding the crazy-talk prices for the “professionally-grade” ones slabbed in their little plastic coffins.
So, what to rate this, on my scientifically-rigorous Three Claws Scale of Current and Possible Future Demand, 1 = “might sell under the right circumstances, eh” and 3 = “only hosers wouldn’t buy this” with 2 being somewhere between those two extremes.
And I think I’m going to rate Wolverine #27 at…a provisional Three Claws, until I get more more hands-on data with in-store sales. I mean, it’s a Jim Lee cover, it seems to sell online when priced right (I see a few sales at lower prices versus the higher priced copies that haven’t sold as of yet), and I don’t have any in stock. That seems to point to continual demand. I’ll pay more attention the next I have copies of this around, and maybe provide an update someday.
Next up, 1992’s release of the extra-sized issue #50, complete with the requisite gimmick cover:
The gimmick? See those “slashes” across the cover there? As if someone with a three-clawed hand left ragged cuts across this dossier? Those are actually die-cut gaps into the stiff cardstock cover, leaving three vertically oriented holes through which you can see the images printed on the page beneath.
As it turns out, those die-cuts were kind of a pain in the ass to rack at my previous place of employment, which at the time had wall-mounted wire racks. The comics were backed into the metal slots…not tightly, ideally, but it created kind of a pocket into which comics would slide in and out. Most comic covers were smooth, so that wasn’t a problem. But with literal ragged holes on the cover…pulling things out usually wasn’t a problem, but if someone removed a copy and decided against it, shoving the book back into the slot could mean catching the die-cuts and tearing the cover.
Our solution to this at the time (which we did with other die-cut covers, of which there thankfully weren’t too many) was to put comic bags on all our copies, thus creating that smooth surface necessary to prevent any catching. The other alternative was to have just one display copy out that customers could look at, and have the rest at the counter. Or we could get rid of the wire racks entirely and replace them with something sensible, but we wouldn’t do that for a while yet after this comic came out.
The comic was bit of a hot commodity for a while, and sold out of the back issue bins on a regular basis, mostly due to the gimmick cover and that it was one of the “anniversary” multiples-of-fifty special issues that always attract extra attention. It’s slowed down of late, at least for me, but I’ll give it a Two Claw rating as because it is a special issue, it will always be likely to have some measure of demand, even if it doesn’t fly out the door.
“It seems to me that longevity depends on the cover and issue number, and very little on the story content.”
Sure seems that way, in a lot of cases. At first the Byrne issues were sought after because they were, well, Byrne issues. People wanted the content. But as tempus fugit-ed and people forgot about Byrne, all that was left to attract people to those comics were the covers. Also, don’t forget the Sabretooth issues…those continue to be bought because people want to see Wolverine fight that guy.
There were some periods in the history of the Wolverine series where demand was story driven, such as during those brief Peter David and Warren Ellis arcs. But otherwise, yeah, Andrew, in many cases you are correct in your assertion.
That said, I have a couple of examples coming in the Very Near Future of Wolverine seeing demand, if even only for a while, because of what’s between the covers and not on them. We’ll see when we get there!
Thanks for reading, everyone, and I hope everyone enjoys whatever holiday they’re enjoying! I’ll probably have a short message on Christmas (shorter than this post, certainly…remember when I said I’d be brief?) and be back on Friday for more shenanigans. See you then.
“Is anyone under college age interested in the new Ultimate titles?”
Marvel’s relaunch of the Ultimate line has been very successful so far, bringing us yet more new interpretations of their classic franchises:
Ultimate Spider-Man remains the top seller for me, with Ultimates close behind. Ultimate X-Men and Ultimate Black Panther have okay numbers, selling about 1/2 to 2/3 of the Spider title. The forthcoming Ultimate Wolverine feels like it may outsell them all, at least at first.
But, Your Moonjesty, that’s not what you asked. You asked if any kids are interested. And the answer is…yes, I do have some high school and younger children seeking out these books. Well, mostly just Ultimate Spider-Man, but Spider-Man just has kinda universal appeal and I have a pretty sizable kid clientele, so that helps. Plus, it’s been getting new customers through my doors, which is always welcome.
“The Eternal Query: Who would win in a fight – Dennis Dunphy, or Bibbo Bibbowski?”
Dennis Dunphy is, of course, better known as the Marvel character Demolition Man, who always looks like an off-model Wolverine to me:
And Bibbo is a pal and admirer of Superman, and also owns a bar in Metropolis:
Now, Demolition Man has actual super powers, in that he’super-strong. Bibbo is a normal human, though likely stronger and more imposing than most, but his strength is within norms. By all rights, the winner in such a conflict should be D-Man, but I think Bibbo would win by inviting D-Man to his Ace O’Clubs to hang out and have some milk or something. Bibbo’s a good guy who patterns himself after Superman and would probably find a way to resolve any conflict that would make “his fav’rit” proud.
“s there a property that you once wanted to see adapted into another media that you now hope is never touched, so it remains in its ‘purest’ form?”
I’m going to say the George R.R. Martin-edited Wild Cards novels, which, in short, comprise an all-prose multi-author series of novels that have been going on, with occasional breaks, since the late 1980s.
Now these have had comic books based on the characters, with the most recent mini from Marvel adapting the initial story from the first book. The comics have been…interesting, usually okay, but the thought that keeps coming to mind is a comment in Amazing Heroes #185 (November 1990) by Adam-Troy Castro in his column “Infernal Gall.”
He goes on to say that the comic itself is fine, but just..redundant.
So that colors the comics for me, though I’m sure I’ll keep reading them if they keep doing them.
What I don’t want to see is a live-action adaptation of the books. Well, okay, I’d see it anyway because I’d be wondering how they’d do it (see also me with anything Watchmen not by Moore and Gibbons). But, really, I’d be okay if they never attempted to make the translation. It’s been threatened once or twice over the decades, but hasn’t yet made the jump. The Great Superhero Movie Scare of the 2000s I thought for sure would have unleashed a Wild Cards movie on us, though none is impending, I think. I haven’t Googled to check, and I’m not going to. I shall live in ignorance.
Anyway, the stories are so much a “prose” thing, thick with detail, that are part and parcel of the Wild Cards experience. Paring it all down to fit into a film feels like cutting away too much of what makes the books appealling. I imagine something at least entertaining could be made this way, but I don’t think I’d be missing anything if a Wild Cards movie never happened.
• • •
Okay, that’s enough typing for today. Hopefully you’ll all come back tomorrow for a rare Thursday post!
Hi pals…I have another early morning medical thing again, so as I write this the night before, I’m gonna keep it short. Sorry, that’s been happening a bit too often lately, but this should be the last one for about a month or so. Thanks for your patience.
So, I’m going to try to tackle another question, such as this one from Rob S. who asks
I’ll piggyback onto Daniel T’s question by asking another. Assuming the ‘every comic is someone’s first comic’ maxim is true — do readers want the same thing in their first comic today than they did 40 years ago? Does clarity of action & characters in an ongoing storyline matter to new readers now? Did it, in actuality, matter then? Or was/is the dazzling incomprehensibilty of it part of the attraction?
Of course I get to a question that has no really easy answer.
It almost doesn’t matter what readers want as comics storytelling has changed significantly in the last few decades. I touched on this a bit in my response to Daniel T linked above, but I feel like most comics (by which I mean the Marvel/DC/Image/etc. superhero comics that dominate the direct market) today are not necessarily written to be completely accessible for a new reader. If it’s part four of six parts and that’s where you’re jumping in, well, hang on and figure it out as you go, effendi.
But the flipside of that is…most regular comic book readers don’t really need their first issue of whatever comic to be new reader friendly. If you’ve read enough comics, you know how things go, you can figure out what’s going on. If you’re really confused about a point or two, there’s always Google or Bing or, I don’t know, Alta Vista, I guess? Is that still a thing?
I think it’s just as likely a person trying out a comic for the first time is more sampling the creative teams involved, rather than trying to get in at a good starting position with the ongoing plot. Modern readers probably work under the assumption that getting in on the ground floor of something isn’t as easy as it used to be, unless there’s a “#1” on the cover…and maybe not even then.
As long as an issue demonstrates what the series is generally like, with the regular creative teams involved, with the storytelling on display, a reader can decide if this is the book for them without knowing all the character’s names and motivations and whatnot. I think. Given pagecounts and prices spending less time on exposition and more time on moving the story forward seems to be the priority, and I’m pretty sure most readers get that.
I realize that’s all about folks who already read comics. For people brand new to comics, it’s not too much different. By and large anyone coming to comics now are familiar with the characters from TV and movies…I don’t know that they expect to know exactly everything that’s going on with whatever comic they pick up. It’s an interest in seeing a character in its original medium, which may not be in an entirely self-explanatory story but will hopefully demonstrate Comics In Action in a sufficiently entertaining way.
And if it’s a little kid…ah, they’ll be fine. They can figure it out.
• • •
Okay, thanks for reading, and hopefully I’ll have more of a post on Wednesday. And, maybe, juuuuuust maybe…a special post on Thursday? You’ll just have to wait and see!
“What’s something (the biggest thing?) about the comics business that comic book buyers/fans don’t understand?
“Make me smarter about my ignorance, Mike!”
Believe it or not, this is a hard question for me to answer. Sometimes on social media someone will post the discussion prompt “what’s something about your industry that people don’t know?” and I always want to add my one cent (I can’t afford two cents, I am working in comics after all).
I think the problem is that the business is so small and so many elements of the industry are so transparent and “out there” for people to examine and discuss, I don’t know what’s left for people to not know.
Actually, my off-the-cuff one/two cents gag above may be a clue. I think most buyers/fans aren’t aware of the economic realities of comic books. I mean, I’m not even certain of all the behind the scenes stuff involved in getting comics into your hands. A lot of creators can’t make a living just working in comics. Variant covers help bump up sales and bring in much needed extra income. Other little financial decisions that affect prices and print runs and lengths of series and relaunches and so on. Pretty much the answer to every question about “why did they do [x] with that comic?” is $$$.
Sigh. Depressing, I know. I’ll try to be funnier with the next answer to a question.
Thanks for reading, pals, and I’ll see you Monday!
Okay, you Swampheads…keep an eye out for Justice League Unlimited #1, the new series debuting today at a good comic shop near you, or even mine. Specifically, I’m talking about variant cover “D” with art by Howard Porter:
…where our favorite muck-encrusted mockery of a man is hanging out:
You can also find our floral friend on variant cover “E” by Ed Benes, off to the side there apparently making room for less-important characters:
A closer look:
So, can we expect a Swamp Thing-focused Justice League adventure in this book in the near future? One can hope!
• • •
And let’s take a look at one more of your questions:
“Mike. What are the odds tthat this was the original concept for THE THREE JOKERS?”
Wayne is referring to the pic I used as the header for the initial questions post, which I’ll reproduce here at slightly smaller size:
…and Three Jokers, for those who haven’t heard, was an intended out-of-contintuity story resolving an in-continuity mystery that was later Chip Zdarsky tried to make part of regular continuity in a one-off panel but I’m pretty sure everyone’s just trying to move past the whole thing. Anyway, it proposed that there literally three different people as The Joker, which is dumb and by extension makes Batman seem dumb as well.
Wayne was just being silly, which is fine, but it reminded me of some entries from the Bobby London’s 1986-1992 run on the Popeye comic strip. Specifically, instances where there were multiple versions of the same character.
Well, this one doesn’t really count, I guess, as we see Popeye being reverted into versions of himself from previous years, which I thought was a nice image:
But the storyline I specifically wanted to note was the one where Bluto returns to bedevil Popeye, this time with an army of multiple versions of Brutus:
Okay, I’m gonna let Mark Evanier explain why Brutus replaced Bluto for a time in the comics an’ such. But here you go, Wayne, Bobby London’s dozen-ish Brutuses laugh mockingly at the stinginess of only Three Jokers.
I’m going to take a break from answering your questions to…answer your questions, specifically a couple of queries that popped up in response to some of my recent posts. I just wanted to touch on them before they disappeared down the memory hole.
First off here’s Matthew with
“I’ve seen that groundhog cover a few times before, but don’t think I’ve ever noticed the $1.11 price before. I know I’ve seen at least one title with a price of $6.66 (the original printings of Jay Stephen’s Dwellings), but what’s your opinion on ‘non-standard’ prices like this? Annoying or something else?”
The $1.11 price he’s talking about from was the nigh-legendary Shadow of the Groundhog, the cover of which I’m reprinting here again because why not.
Now, my feeling about this specific gimmick cover price was that it was a plot to get more “1s” on the front cover, to emphasize that this was a BIG FIRST ISSUE and that you should buy an entire longbox-worth of them, like that sad bastard I saw at a con trying to unload them.
But in general weird prices like this don’t bother me too much, especially nowadays when it feels like there are so many different price points already, what’s one more? Just so long as they actually put the price somewhere on the cover, they can price it whatever they want.
One early example of this was the Lobo Paramilitary Christmas Special, which had a cover price of $2.39, playing off the fact that the first issue of the popular Lobo mini had the unusual 99 cents price point. I can’t remember if other Lobo comics had “funny” prices, and I think that one Harley Quinn special with the scratch ‘n’ sniff pot smell missed a bet by not being $4.20.
• • •
Customer Sean asks
“…What is your opinion, Mike–and other folks–about the recent news that Atlas-Seaboard is trying to make a comeback through licensing toys based on its characters and also trying to have an Atlas-Seaboard Cinematic Universe? I believe Devilina, Phoenix, and Grim Ghost have been optioned for films. I would love to see David Cronenbourg direct a Tarantula film.”
Any excuse to reprint a Grim Ghost cover:
This very short-lived comic publisher from the mid-1970s cranked out a slew of comics of varying but mostly good quality, with solid art and interesting ideas. And also the odd twist of the premises of some of the books shifting dramatically even within the very short three to four issue runs more of these had.
Anyhoo, I think this is the second pass through the news cycle of Seaboard/Atlas getting optioned for films/etc. (I mentioned it on the blog back in 2019.) It’s real “all the other licenses were already snapped up” energy, but I wouldn’t mind seeing a live action version of the Grim Ghost pictured above, as long as they’re prepared for moviegoers who don’t know any better calling it a Spawn rip-off.
I honestly don’t know what’s there otherwise that required putting out ther scratch to get the rights, since not a lot there is particularly so unique that you couldn’t do similar knock-offs. I mean, Scorpion, maybe? Or you could do your own super spy thing. Iron Jaw? You could do your own barbarian thing (though, okay, if you needed him to have, well, an iron jam….). That could apply to most superhero things, so that what a studio is really buying is the known name, but most of these Atlas books don’t even have that.
Ah, well, I’m sounding more down on it that I actually am. I do like these Atlas books and wouldn’t mind seeing what’s done with them. Even if what’s done is not anything I’ll end up recognizing. It may turn out to be no more than a footnote in that superhero movie gold rush, bought up by a studio during that brief window when anything based on a comic book did gangbusters business, but wasn’t exploited until that post-period when it’s less of a sure thing.
“John Wagner, Alan grant, pat mills, any thoughts on the 2000ad trinity when they dipped their toes in marvel and DC in the 80s/90s?”
Nothing really specific for either Wagner or Grant, aside from admiring their professional and imaginative work. Grant, of course, we all know from his Batman comics and his association with Keith Giffen on Lobo. And the main thing I associate Wagner with was this almost-forgotten series (cowritten with Grant):
Great Mike McMahon art on this series, too!
Now, Pat Mills…good ol’ amazing Pat Mills. The thing I most remember about him…well, when they were more active in the genre, people would say Alan Moore and Grant Morrision “hated” superheroes. And this particular aspersion was cast upon other creators, too, but I feel like Moore and Morrision got it the hardest.
Friends, Uncle Al and Big Grant loved superhero comics. At least at the time…I know Alan’s had some different opinions of late. But at the time, it was funny to me that folks were shouting about how much this guy or that guy hated superheroes, when all actual evidence showed that they liked ’em just fine, and this whole time here was Pat Mills doing Marshal Law with Kevin O’Neill:
You want a comics guy who hates superheroes? Here you go. (And if you haven’t read this, oh man, at least read the initial six-issue mini.)
Mills also wrote Punisher 2099, which is one long pisstake on tough guy super comics, and it’s high-larious.
Anyway, these three guys were great writers and we were lucky to have them in our favorite ridiculous medium.
• • •
Daniel T asks a question that took me a minute to figure out how to quote here
“Stan Lee supposedly said something like ‘Every comic is/could be someone’s first comic.’
“How true do you think this ever was and is today?”
I feel like Jim Shooter was a huge proponent of this line of thinking during his tenure at Marvel. And the basic premise was “make sure you identify each character,” and “show ’em using their powers” and “catch ’em up on what’s gone before” and so on. Which, you know, fair enough.
Daniel kind of touches on this in the rest of his question (which you can read at that link) but there was a time when comics had huge print runs and tons of people read them and there was probably a much higher incidence of any comic being someone’s first.
With smaller print runs of today, and a more restricted distribution (and I should clarify, I’m talking about your standard issue periodical comic book), the likelihood of a non-zero percentage of published comics not being someone’s first has increased.
And as such, I think comic book storytelling has arced away from the “every comic is someone’s first” philosophy. If you’re coming in at part four of the six-part-story-written-for-the-eventual-trade, the amount of exposition you’ll get is fairly minimal, if at all. (Especially since that exposition will look out of place once the story hits its intended collected format.) It’s not like the old days, when Jim Shooter would burn off the first three or four pages of each issue of Dreadstar telling the reader what’s happened in [range from “last issue” to “since the beginning of time”].
The goal is for each individual issue of a serialized story to be a satisfying, intriguing, and/or interesting read, so that even if you’re not sure what exactly is going on, you’d still be drawn in to the action and want to continue reading (and hunting through back issues for previous parts). There are plenty of times where I’ve read superhero comics as a kid that explicitly didn’t provide any onboarding for new readers, but liked what I read enough to, at minimum, enjoy that singular experience, or sometimes even keep coming back for follow-up issues.
Too long/didn’t read answer: “every comic is someone’s first” was a popular storytelling strategy, not always followed in the past and less so now.
“If you could give advice to your past self when you were planning your store what would it be?”
Spend a little more time organizing acquired collections, rather than just dumping boxes in the back room and thinking “I’ll deal with it later.” Ugh. I mean, I do have a plan now to deal with a lot of that stuff that isn’t “come to my big bonfire, everyone!” so I’ll probably get rid of a lot of that stuff. But, shoudn’t have done that to myself in the first place.
“Have you found that the natural impulses of a collector versus those of a successful purveyor of comics have led to an irreversible psychotic break? A comic shop Jekyll and Hyde situation, if you like?”
It’s actually not been too bad, as I’ve restricted myself to just the few new comics I want to continue reading, and while ooh-ing and ah-ing over some of the back issues I’ve taken in, I’ve kept it at that and sold them. Yes, the temptation to keep that Amazing Fantasy #15 was strong, but the giant chunk of money I received for it suited the business better than having another comic just sitting in a box at home.
The biggest temptation was having an original non-counterfeit copy of Cerebus #1 in the shop, which, as some of you may remember, is a series I’m trying to fill the early issues on after just having them in the Swords of Cerebus reprint volumes. However, I let it go, figuring the signed reprint edition I got through Kickstarter was good enough.
Back issues I do keep for myself if they come through the shop include Nancy, Popeye, the few 1970s Seaboard/Atlas books I still need (mostly a couple issues of Vicki), and any fanzines. In general, not really anything my own clientele is clamoring for.
The big problem for me, where Collector Mike is a pain to Retailer Mike, is the ease of keeping some graphic novel collections for myself, since it takes me forever to getting around to reading them. (Like, for example, the year it took me to finally peruse that new Grendel: Devil by the Deed edition.) It’s just too easy to type in that order number for a book that strikes my fancy, despite the fact I just don’t have the time to read them…but I also know if I don’t get it now, the likelihood of it being available later is slim to none, so AAAAUGH there’s that psychotic break you were wondering about, Andrew.
“‘Yoo-sa-gi’ or ‘oo-sa-gi’? I had heard of Usagi Yojimbo for ever but only started reading it five years ago and completed (and started over) just this summer. If this was in your 80’s or 90’s extensive survey/poll, I’ll go back and look but if not, can you offer some commentary on it as both a series that you perhaps have enjoyed or as a comics property that you have seen customers enjoy? And if you already dealt with most of that elsewhere around here, can you just answer the first question, please?”
Usagi Yojimbo was indeed in the Final ’80s Countdown reader pool, and I talked about it in the middle of last year. I will say that Usagi comics were initially a slow starter at my shop when I first opened, but have been picking up in recent years. Good!
As to the pronunciation…well, let’s go to the source, Stan Sakai his own self, and hear how he says the name in this brief interview:
Um…at about the 37 second mark is sounds like “yoo” and at the 58 second mark is sounds a little like “oo” so, my answer to your opening query is an unqualified “yes.”
But seriously, if anyone out there has better ears out there that haven’t been reduced in function by too much rocking and rolling, please give a listen and tell me what you think.
• • •
Thanks for reading, pals, and we’ll answer more questions, and maybe even do some other stuff, in the near future!
“You get to curate a big chonky omnibus from the post-TMNT black-and-white indy boom. Roughly 1,000 pages. What’s going in it? (Choices do not have to be animal-related.)”
Oh Smichal, Smichal, Smichal…you say the choices don’t have to be animal-related, but friend, there’s only one choice for such an omnibus. And that choice is ALL THE TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES RIP-OFFS:
Most of these are pretty short runs, like the three issue run of the above. That would leave more room for the knock-offs that had slightly longer lifespans, like the Hamsters books:
I feel like some kind of more permanent record is needed to remember a lot of these books, especially since the Overstreet Price Guide has declined to list several series from the 1980s black and white boom.
Some decisions will have to be made regarding comics like Aristocratic Extraterrestrial Time-Traveling Thieves:
…which apes the title style but doesn’t quite feel like the a Turtles rip-off (and in fact changes its name to X-Thieves down the line).
Or does Miami Mice make the cut?
Or even the dreaded…
Some editorial decisions would have to be made, clearly. Anyway, you can see a selection of TMNT-inspired books here.
I feel like this would be a solid collection, particularly if it included supplemental text pieces providing some historical context and background information. We’re getting farther and farther away from this period of time and it shouldn’t just be up to blogs to remember the madness of the times.
So to sum up…either a big book of Turtles knock-offs, or a complete collection of every GRIPS title.
Running a little behind (and have an early morning doctor’s appointment tomorrow) so I’m going to keep it short today and take on a couple of your questions.
“How much do you need to keep track of storylines for ordering purposes? Is it mostly character appearances and event tie-ins, or does it go deeper than that?”
I need to have at least some awareness, of course, even if I don’t read every single comic book and am not completely familiar with every single character. However, of late it doesn’t seem to make as much difference as it used to, as comic sales tend to be relatively consistent per title once things get going past the initial first issue bump (if that happens at all).
Like, for example, Marvel’s recent “Blood Hunt” event didn’t seem to do anything for tie-in issues of ongoing series. Fantastic Four didn’t see a bump upwards in people picking up its “Blood Hunt” story. (Shame, because it was a pretty good one!)
Now, this may just be me. I’m a small store, selling not huge amounts of some of these books in the first place so any sales alterations caused by storylines or guest-appearances (gosh, remember when Wolverine popping into a book would goose a comic’s numbers?) may be negligible or within standard fluctuations. For shop selling hundreds of copies of some of these books each month, an event-based fluctuation may be more significantly noticeable.
To be frank, I have to pay more attention to ordering the right numbers of the variant covers versus what’s actually going on inside the book, which is certainly a statement about something.
“Have your started your Cerebus read through yet? I have almost made it thought the first collection and it truly amazes me how the art progresses over that first year or two.”
I think I’ve said at least three times on this site, since Cerebus ended in 2004, that I was going to reread the entire series. And each time I’ve not got around to it. In more recent years, the problem is that the fine linework/small lettering/newsprint printing combination did not play well with my vision issues. But now, I own digital copies of the entire run, acquired on the cheap from a Humble Bundle offer, so I really don’t have any excuse. I promise you, someday, before I die, I will reread all of Cerebus. Well, maybe not all the text bits.
But yes, Dave Sim’s art improved by leaps and bounds in those early issues in an alarmingly short period of time. Without looking to double-check, I’m going to say…the first couple of issues are relatively crude, things get better pretty quickly after that, and then by the time you’re at the end of the first volume the dude’s like a master. It’s astounding.
“I’m always curious why people have the jobs they have, so: what drew you to comics, both as a hobby and as a profession?”
Simply said, I was a reader of pretty much anything I could get my hands on from a very young age, coming from a household filled with books and parents who used to read (and still do read!) constantly. Even my sister, who is mentally disabled, has a collection of books and magazines that she regularly flips through, so it’s just in the family DNA I suppose.
What specifically drew me to comics, I don’t know, other than they were colorful and interesting-looking and relatively inexpensive and easy to talk my parents into buying one or two for me. (My parents were also comic book readers as young’uns, so that probably didn’t take much convincing.) So, comics were part of my reading mix from early on.
As to what made me a comic book collector, versus a sporadic dabbler, was Star Wars. I know I’ve talked about this here before, but in short, when I saw the Star Wars comic had stories that took place after that initial movie, well, there we go, I was hooked. And that eventually spread to reading more and more comics, and now, today, here I am with three full short boxes of nothing but Hellboy-related comics.
How I got into comics retail…well, I’d been shopping at my Local Comic Shop for about five years, and one day in 1988 employee Buzz mentioned to me “oh, I’m going to be leaving.” I said, half-facetiously, “can I have your job, ha ha” and then next thing I knew, I was hired.
Now, as to what kept me in the comics biz…well, nothing else really appealed to me. I had tried a small handful of other jobs, but comics retail satisfied me in a way that other employment didn’t. And I don’t just mean “first pick of the new comics,” but I enjoyed the sorting and the pricing and talking to customers about them and breaking down new shipments (despite my complaining about distributors you might see me doing on social media) and it all just scratches an itch. I like looking at collections of old comics that are brought to me, and seeing things I haven’t come across in a while.
I just plain like handling comics. Which is a good thing, since I’ve been doing it for 36 years now!
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Egads, that was longer than I intended. Okay, off to bed…thanks for reading, pals, and I’ll get to more of your questions shortly!
