sir-links-a-lot

Yes, it’s another time-savin’ post. Sorry about that.

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  • That one National Lampoon cover must surely be one of the most mimicked in publishing history…and our little stuffed pal Bully gathers together several examples from the funnybook world.

  • Discussing this particular Nobody’s Favorite Alpha Flight character started a brief discussion among a few pals of mine about the early issues of that series and its focus on “body horror”-type stories. Probably an essay in there somewhere, should I ever find the time.

  • Dr. Polite Scott takes a look at one of the few Curt Swan-drawn PSAs from Silver Age DC Comics…the article includes links to the other two Swan PSAs.

  • So they announced the soundtrack listing for the Avengers movie, and lo, there was a wailing despair heard across the land. I don’t know, the soundtrack doesn’t look that bad.

No, seriously, you’d be completely wrong.

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Keeping it short today.

filed under Categories obituary, sir-links-a-lot 1 Comment

1. So it would appear to be that the mystery caricature on the cover of Spoof #3 is apparently Tom Jones, based on some of the images I’ve been sent, and the fact that the editor of the book, Roy Thomas, seems to think it’s him, too. Close enough for horseshoes, my friends.

And anyway, we ended up selling that copy of Spoof on Saturday. The mystery was exchanged for about seven bucks.

2. Lost a couple of big names from the comics/sci-fi world just recently: Golden Age great Sheldon Moldoff, and the man who gave Star Wars its look, artist Ralph McQuarrie. My condolences to their families and friends.

3. Pal Dave gives you the latest installment of This Used to Be The Future…funnybook sci-fi, 1960s-style!

4. Pals Dorian and Ken unleash another installment of In A World, their monthly review of the newest movie trailers. This is one of my favorite things. Also [SPOILER] The Lorax appears to be an unholy abomination.

YOGI NOOOOOOO

filed under Categories cranius, sir-links-a-lot, swamp thing, what is it good for 9 Comments

Ah, how could I have forgotten CRANIUS:


When wondering about how many “classic villains” Swamp Thing actually had, I totally forgot about Cranius, the most Un of all the Un-Men, until my blogging brother Tim O’Neil was good enough to remind me of our brain-handed friend.

Don’t worry…I’m not going to get all Cranius-crazy on you again, but yeah…the return of Cranius. Wouldn’t that be something if that were the case?

Anyway, in some site news…I almost decided to fix the commenting settings to require names and email addresses from folks who want to leave a comment, but decided I didn’t want to inconvenience everyone. Besides, it’s not as if someone couldn’t stick a fake email address in there or anything. However, I can ban IP addresses…I don’t want to, and hopefully I won’t have to.

Enough about that…let’s get to some more entertaining stuff:

  • Happy Birthday, Superman!

  • Here are some Frank Frazetta-inspired Cerebus drawings by Dave Sim…including a interesting color commission that sort of expresses Dave’s feelings about superheroes.

  • Finally, one of these “Keep Calm” things that I actually like…almost certainly because it features a certain Little Stuffed Bull of some note.

  • Andrew picked a good’un for the latest installment of Nobody’s Favorites…but mostly I’m just jealous of that post title that I wish I’d thought of first.

  • And now, some “Then…KOREA” pics.

    First, from the aforementioned Bully, the Little Stuffed Bull, comes this slightly revamped version of a post of his from a couple of days ago:


    From the equally aforementioned Andrew comes this shocking tale of an evening’s festivities gone horribly wrong:


    And the esteemed Dr. K has this, a tale of tragedy:


    Oh dear.

I will probably never look at Charlie Brown the same way again.

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Getting an early start on tomorrow’s EoC post, so today’s post is a bit short.

filed under Categories gelatinous cube, sir-links-a-lot 3 Comments

 

  • So Greg, on the Twitter, pointed me in the direction of a couple of message board threads in which the Gelatinous Cube is discussed: first, it is wondered what a dead Cube would look like, and lo, it is revealed. Secondly, in another thread, the supposed origin of the Gelatinous Cube is dished out.

  • Bully, the Little Stuffed Bull, and his pal, Shelly the Little Otter Puppet, try out their new ping pong kit with adorably animated results. …Okay, not strictly speaking “comics,” but it’s awesome and you should go look anyway.

  • This week’s entry in pal Andrew’s ongoing Nobody’s Favorites is sure to honk off some of you. And I don’t use the phrase “honk off” lightly.

  • Also not comics, but pal Dorian is going to be doing in-depth looks at the work of novelist John Connolly every Monday, so if you like those mystery-type books, go check it out.

MY FIRST GELATINOUS CUBE POST FOR 2012.

filed under Categories gelatinous cube, pal plugging, sir-links-a-lot

So Bully, the Little Stuffed Bull Who Apparently Can Work an iPad with His Little Hooves, knowing of my particular obsession with the classic Dungeons & Dragons monster the Gelatinous Cube, sent along this screenshot from the iPad game Puzzle Quest 2:


Oh, you poor, misguided warrior. There is no defeating…the Gelatinous Cube.

In other news:

  • Speaking of Bully, I helped him out a bit with his “366 Days of Alfred Pennyworth” project.

  • If you remember this Sluggo Saturday (the one with the wholly-inappropriate Dolly Parton gag I made), the folks at Boing Boing present the strip in full, and come to sort of the same conclusion I had about what was going on there. (Thanks to pal Andres for letting me know about this!)

  • ~P~ at Sanctum Sanctorum wants you to put words in Dr. Strange’s mouth! (~P~’s example of what he’s kind of looking for is…slightly Not Safe for Work…but what are you doing goofing off at work and looking at comic book websites for anyway? Well, except for mine, of course.)

  • Not comics, but pal Dawn has written a book (FaeMaker: Making Fantasy Characters with Polymer Clay) and I thought I’d point that out to you folks. You might have seen her selling her wares at a San Diego Con or two, and she’s a swell gal…so please pick up her book if that sounds like something you’d be into!

  • Pal Dave whips out a long-awaited new installment of “This Used to Be The Future” with…The Secret Story of Ray-Gun 64!

  • As pal Dorian says: “Useful.”

I have no idea if The Shade has “The” in its title, or if Huntress doesn’t, and I’m not going to check. So there.

filed under Categories blogging about blogging is a sin, dc comics, retailing, sir-links-a-lot 10 Comments

So Trevor A asked in a comment yesterday if I’d discuss some of DC’s post-New 52 titles and how they’re doing in this brave new retail world. The two he mentions specifically are The Shade and Huntress, and…they’re both doing…okay, I suppose, with Huntress selling just slightly better. They’re definitely at the low end of the sales scale when compared to the New 52 line…not as low as Static Shock or I, Vampire, but maybe around Voodoo levels. Not great, but they seem to be consistent from issue to issue at least, enough so that when I heard that talk about The Shade mini-series possibly getting canned halfway through, I was a bit surprised. It doesn’t seem likely now, as that would be definite egg in DC’s face if they had to cut a mini-series short so soon after their big publishing initiative.

Plus, not that I’m some big publishing marketing genius or anything, but I’d think there’d be a payoff in finishing the mini and collecting it into a trade as a companion to the Starman series it spun off from. …Which of course begs the question why they wouldn’t just go straight to graphic novel format to begin with, but that wouldn’t be a strategy they’d take with a third-stringer like the Shade, I’d imagine.

Well, that went off on a tangent a bit. So, Trevor A, what I’m trying to tell you is that those two series at least are selling okay, if not great. Other post-52 series like T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents and My Greatest Adventure are selling about as well, with Penguin: Pain and Prejudice being kind of the surprise hit, necessitating multiple reorders to fill back issue requests.

In other news:

  • Super-Team Family presents…Swamp Thing and Man-Thing!

  • A new storyline over at The Rack begins with Three Days of the Con, Part One.

  • Tony Isabella re-presents: Watchmen 2: Rorschach’s Revenge.

  • REMINDER: you need more robot detectives in your life. Thus, Copernicus Jones.

  • Oh, right…this isn’t a link to anything, but I wanted to thank longtime reader and commenter philip (with the lowercase “p”) for dropping by the store and daring to meet me in person, thus getting to see me in my natural unshaved and mostly undyed state. I of course thanked him for his visit by prying as much money as I could out of his hands. Thanks, philip, for coming by!

  • Pals Dorian and Ken have another batch cooked up of those movie trailer reviews that I like so much.

  • Bully, the Little Stuffed Bull That Walks Like A Little Stuffed Bull, brings us all what we didn’t know we wanted, but what we definitely needed: 366 Days of Alfred Pennyworth. …It is far more than we deserve.

  • Also, I wanted to thank all of you for still coming back and reading my site. December was…not a great month for me, with health issues and working extra hours and just plain getting a bit burnt out, which of course affected content here. I’m feeling a lot better now, so hopefully everything will be up and running here as normal. Or whatever passes for normal. …Thanks, gang, and I’ll see you tomorrow.

Believe it or not, I wasn’t specifically looking for “Swamp Thing” on Archive.org.

filed under Categories sir-links-a-lot 5 Comments

So I’m still looking for your opinions on the New DC titles now that we’re a few months in and can see how everything’s shaking out at this point. I’m sure in a day or two I’ll get around to doing some kind of meta-analysis of your responses…or more likely, I’ll just directly respond to some of your comments in my trademark “writing a post for a weblog” fashion. At any rate, I’m enjoying what you’re having to say, and I look forward to more responses.

In the meantime, let’s do some linky-linky: