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So, DC’s weekly series 52 is just about to end, and a new weekly, Countdown, is on its way. A couple observations:

• The first issue of 52 sold very well, and dipped with the issues immediately following (as expected). However, I did expect 52-fatigue to set in about — I don’t know, halfway through the series, maybe? — but it never happened. Sales have remained consistently stable and strong throughout the run. I did have a few folks threaten to drop the book, saying things like “okay, I’ll give this series just one more issue,” but they kept with it.
• I did have a few people complain that there wasn’t enough Superman, Batman, and/or Wonder Woman in 52. Um, that was the point, I thought…52 was supposed to show us what was going on in the DC Universe without the Big Three looming over everything.
• I’m curious just how Countdown is going to do. I’ve been hearing quite a few customers saying that, while they followed and enjoyed 52, one year-long weekly series was enough, thank you, and that they’ll probably pass on Countdown. A few have cited the price increase, from 52‘s $2.50 to the new series’ $2.99, as a factor against the series as well. I’m guessing that at least some of these folks will probably cave, and sample the series anyway. I mean, if you’re coming in every week for your funnybooks, you’re going to see a new Countdown on the shelf, and it’s just one more $2.99 book to add to the pile…it’s not that big of a deal.

  Nonetheless, I am expecting to see a slight dip in sales, compared to 52.

  Another barrier for some of my customers is their disinterest in the cast of characters for Countdown. How anyone can resist the tagline of “JIMMY OLSEN MUST DIE,” I have no idea. But, since I had similar complaints about 52 (again, the lack of Supes, Bats, and, er, Wondy, I guess), and sales still remained strong on that series, I imagine it won’t be that much of a problem for this new weekly.

In other non-weekly comic news:

• Okay, so we haven’t sold any back issues of Ka-Zar in…geez, I don’t know, a good long while. Ka-Zar has been, for quite a while now, a real “who cares?” kind of title. So what happens? On Saturday, someone comes in and buys a whole boatload of Ka-Zar. Fine, great, it was bound to happen eventually. The very next day…someone else comes in and asks for Ka-Zar, before I’ve had a chance to pull extras out of storage, process ‘n’ price ’em, and restock the back issue bins. If the universe is going to mock me, I wish it would use a medium aside from Ka-Zar back issues.
• Dear person who calls every week for the new edition of the Overstreet Price Guide: IT’S NOT MY FAULT IT’S NOT OUT YET. It’s not like I’m in the basement printing the books myself. (Besides, my basement printing equipment is currently tied up with Ultimates 2 #13.)
• Requests for a new issue of Ultimate Wolverine Vs. Hulk increased slightly this past week. It’s cute when fans have hope and faith.
• I have no idea:
  
  EDIT: Reader Skip has provided a translation. Thanks, Skip!

• Currently processing a nice collection of books, ranging from the Golden Age into the mid-1980s. Highlight of the collection so far (though I don’t see much surpassing this): a couple hundred original E.C. comics, including full runs of Weird Science, Weird Fantasy, Shock Suspenstories, and the 3-D books (all two of them), and near-full runs of Tales from the Crypt, Haunt of Fear, and Vault of Horror…plus a handful of Mads and other random E.C.s. I’ll let you folks know when they’re available for sale.

  However, what I’m most excited about in this collection are the issues of Nancy & Sluggo and Fox and the Crow. I’m not letting you know when these are available for sale, because I’m keeping them. So there.

  (I should also make up some kind of “pedigree” name for this collection, like the, I don’t know, “Seaside Funnybooks in Cardboard Boxes Collection,” and price them accordingly. Plus, I can tell exciting stories about how the collection was acquired: “Well, one day, a guy called and asked if we wanted to buy his comics, and we said ‘sure, let us take a look at ’em,’ and we saw he had some pretty good stuff, so we bought them. The end.”)

• I’ve been trying my darnedest to avoid buying action figures, but I really found this one to be oddly compelling:
  
  That would be the “Kryptonite Batman” figure from DC Direct. You know, I wasn’t even that big of a fan of the Superman/Batman storyline that this figure was taken from…but it just strikes me as being neat, for some reason.

  Plus, it glows in the dark, so he can fight my glow-in-the-dark Swamp Thing figure. BOTH OF THEM.

• Speaking of Swamp Thing, which, I realize, I barely do, I’ve been sent this link several times, and I totally forgot to say anything about it here. So thanks to the most recent e-mailer, reader Michael, for reminding me that I should mention Swamp Thing’s placement on the “Top 20 FX Suits” list.
• Your least-expected comic book reference for the day, from this article on the evolving appearances of female dancers:
  

  “Look at the women in British ensembles like Random Dance or the Henri Oguike Dance Company. Look at Sylvie Guillem with her ripped physique and steely limbs. They’re amazing. Like comic-book heroines, like Promethea or Lady Deathstrike.”

• Right now, I am picturing Don Ho in Heaven, singing “Tiny Bubbles” to Kurt Vonnegut.

  We all have our own way of mourning.

from a coverless Sugar & Spike comic (1969)

• Something must be in the air…after beating Mr. Evanier to the punch (by about 16 hours) with my discussion of my…or rather, our…favorite B.C. gag, it turns out that Mr. Folded Soup preceded me in my discussion of superhero cakes.

  With the amount of content being generated for weblogs like ours, near-simultaneous duplications like these are almost inevitable. In the case of Mr. Evanier and I approaching our favorite B.C. gag from the same angle…well, Johnny Hart did just pass away, so naturally there’s going to be a lot of discussion about him, and this sort of coincidence was bound to happen. Plus, it just confirms Evanier’s already solid reputation as a man of quality and taste, since he’s agreed with me on a good B.C. gag.

  But the cake thing…okay, that’s just weird. I happened across that auction on the eBay while looking for other stuff, and wanted to share. I had no idea Senior Soup recently addressed the topic, and in a far more amusing fashion (so go look already).

  So, to sum up…nobody copied anybody, it was all just coincidence. Besides, if I was going to rip anybody off, it’d probably be Sims, since I could totally take him in a fight.

• Speaking of the eBay…I’m linking to this old post of mine about how to ship comic books safely and economically for the benefit of Employees Aaron and Jeff, who hadn’t seen it. The topic came up when I came across the prop envelope from that post the other day, mixed in with my shipping supplies, and they were wondering just what the heck was up with it. “Look to my site, my friends,” I cried out, and lo, they did rush to their Internets and found themselves confronted with wisdom and glory.

  Anyway, if you reread that post, please note that the flat rate priority shipping is now $4.05…soon to be $4.60, beginning in May.

• Also speaking of the eBay, I occasionally get the urge to find the original Black Hole action figures for V.I.N.Cent and Old B.O.B., and I hie myself hither to the eBay and do some searching. I never bid…I come to my senses before I do so, but I do like looking at the figures, since those are probably two of my favorite movie robot designs. Yeah, I know that’s probably a weird thing to have favorites for…my nerdity has unplumbed depths.

  Anyway, I found someone selling a V.I.N.Cent, but he was charging a cool $12.00 domestic shipping. Dude, I could probably ship that toy for half that price at most…unless it’s heavier than it looks, it would most likely even ship at the minimum $4.05 price. Six to eight bucks “handling fees” seems a tad excessive. Even using the flat rate priority box, it would only cost $8.10 max (or nine-something starting in May).

  “So, Mike, bitchy much?”

• Nothing really to do with comics, much like the rest of this post, but I came across this vintage Dungeons & Dragons ad in an old Omni magazine:
  
  You know, I can think of a few times when I would have liked to have had a sword while out eating dinner.

One of my favorite gags from Johnny Hart’s B.C. comic wasn’t in one of the strips, but rather the title of one of the many paperback reprint collections:

By itself, I think that’s pretty amusing, but it’s this note on the title page (and also at the bottom of the front cover) that really makes it for me:

I wonder how high in price the title eventually got…though I suppose once you get to “Life is a five dollar ninety-nine cent paperback,” it’s no longer funny as much as it is depressing.

EDIT: Mark Evanier just put up a post discussing this very same book…and mentions that there was a British edition (Life is a fifty pence paperback).

Johnny Hart passed away over the weekend, and I know the man had his share of controversy regarding his strips, and that the strip’s humor suffered in its later years…but Hart’s earlier work is funny and witty and just plain silly, and as a young Mikester I read and reread and read again all the B.C. paperbacks I could get my hands on. So thank you for that, at least, Mr. Hart.

Slightly related story…when I was a senior in high school, just about to graduate, I went on a tour of the University of California Irvine campus for their annual “spend your parents’ money at our school” membership drive. The mascot of the school is the anteater, inspired by the anteater character from B.C., and the sound effect associated with that character, “Zot,” also became a part of the school’s culture.

Anyway, as our particular group was being shown around campus, our student tour leader attempted to explain the mascot to us. After telling us it was an anteater, she explained that the school cheer was “Zot” because “um…I think it’s because that’s the noise an anteater makes when it eats an ant.”

So, yeah, pretty much no clue that it came from B.C.. Okay, it may have been technically correct, at least on the comic strip’s terms…and no, I didn’t try to elaborate on her explanation. I didn’t want to be that guy. Well, not until I got my own weblog, anyway.

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Speaking of those paperback reprints…I haven’t been to the humor section of a bookstore lately, at least not looking for strip reprints, but it seems to me that this particular format is pretty much dead. Instead, we have those larger format books, like the collections for Foxtrot and Dilbert. The last time I saw those old-style paperbacks was in the late ’90s, when I was on a Peanuts kick and I was tracking down reprints of those latter-day Schulz strips. There was at least one Peanuts collection I found in that original paperback format, and it was priced (as I joked about that B.C. paperback above) at $5.99. I thought that was just a little too dear for what I was getting, so I passed on purchasing (but in retrospect, the cost per strip was probably comparable to what you’re getting in, say, one of the later Foxtrot volumes…someday I’ll do the math).

So, is that standard-sized pocketbook strip reprint format gone now? A quick Amazon search on the most likely suspect to still be in that format, Family Circus, reveals that it’s been about ten years since the last release in that format (and Good Lord, thirty-two bucks?). I guess the perceived value of those smaller reprint books just isn’t enough to maintain sales, compared to the larger volumes.

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One more thing about B.C.‘s influence on me…whenever I see a “DIP” or “DIP IN ROAD” street sign, I always, always, recall this cover:

from Flash #208 (Aug. 1971) by Robert Kanigher, Irv Novick & Murphy Anderson

Happy Easter, everyone! And if you don’t celebrate Easter…Happy Sunday!

See you tomorrow!

“WILTON SUPER HERO CAKE PAN SET ~ 1977 BATMAN SUPERMAN !”

“These DC comic characters are long ago retired. They were revived again in the 1980’s with a more futuristic design but these are the originals from the ‘good old days’ DC comics!

Features

1. A durable heavy-duty aluminium pan about 36cm x 35cm.
2. Plus Batman and Superman plastic face and shield (5 pieces total)
3. Pan takes 1 standard 2-layer cake mix
4. Baking and Decorating Instruction booklet
5. An additional retro cake leaflet
6. Fabulous collectable and practical use for the home baker or retail cake designer”

There’s a newer Superman cake pan available, but it’s not quite as charming as the ’77 model:

Well, perhaps it’s a bit early to judge, but for its first day of sales, Fallen Son: Wolverine (the first “death of Captain America” spinoff) just kinda sat there. I hardly moved any copies. It’s not as if we weren’t busy…we had plenty of customers come in, and we sold tons of comics, but perhaps nobody wants to read a series of one-shots featuring characters being mopey about a hero’s death that’ll be undone in short order anyway.

Ah, well, at least it has nice art by Leinil Yu inside. Maybe sales’ll pick up on it by the weekend. And I know I’ve said it before…but all those folks who rushed in to buy the Cap death issue? They’re not going to come back for this. They’ll be back eventually…in a few years, when it’s time to sell that death issue for the thousands of dollars it almost certainly will be worth.

Also from Marvel, the “Planet Hulk” storyline wraps up with this week’s issue, laying the groundwork for the forthcoming “World War Hulk” event, and giving Hulk plenty of reason to be pissed off at Earth’s heroes. I’m a longtime Hulk fan, and I love the premise of WWH (heroes try to get rid of Hulk, and not only does Hulk end up gaining experience in war strategy and leadership, but he also gets plenty of reason to really be mad), and I am looking forward to the event…but still, I gotta wonder, how’s Marvel going to screw this one up? They already throttled sales on later issues of “Planet Hulk” by not rushing out, for once, a trade paperback for the early issues, allowing readers to jump on and follow the story. And once WWH gets going…will it have shipping delays, like Civil War? Will it have heroes acting remarkably out of character, like Civil War? Will it sorta peter out in the end, like, oh, say, Civil War? I hope not.

Oh, and apparently WWH will involve the Sentry, a character Marvel keeps inflicting on us, even though I’m not convinced anyone actually likes him. Am I wrong? Let me know.

Here’s a little something about the new issue of Justice League of America…it has two covers, which fit together to form a larger image of the team. One cover prominently features Superman and Batman, the other Wonder Woman and Green Lantern. I have them racked side by side on the shelf, and, if given the choice, people tend to take the Supes/Bats cover. Also, it may also be as folks are perusing the shelves from left to right, they hit the Supes/Bats cover first, and that’s the one they grab. So, as I was pulling books for our store’s comic savers, they all got the WW/GL cover to redress the balance. ‘Course, that won’t stop them from swapping out for the other cover, but hey, at least I tried.

Something else: I screwed up on Buffy the Vampire Slayer #2, forgetting to bump our orders up after seeing sales on #1, thus causing us to run out right away. Now, when I placed our reorder on the first issue, effectively doubling our order, a while back, I may have been a little on the optimistic side, as the initial rush of sales ended up fading away right quick. They picked up slightly recently, and I think it’ll be a consistent back issue seller, at least while the series is running, so I’m not worried about having the extra stock. My reorder on #2, however, is slightly more realistic.

The other Whedon-written book this week, Runaways, will be the test on whether Whedon can sell comics to his fans that are 1) not based on one of his TV properties, and 2) not featuring Marvel superheroes that those folks would recognize from movies or TV shows. Given the large number of customers we had on Wednesday, and the number of copies of Runaways we didn’t sell that day, it doesn’t look good. But, again, it’s just one day, and maybe once word gets around that, hey, Whedon’s writing a new series, it’ll move. I managed to handsell a copy or two on the basis of Whedon’s name, so maybe those two factors I mentioned won’t be too much of a detriment.

…

Geez, I’m a grump. Okay, one thing I did love this week: Marvel Zombies/Army of Darkness #2 had the greatest last page ever. Well, it made me laugh, anyway.

from Wonder Woman #62 (Nov/Dec 1953 – 1977 reprint)

I think I’ve seen this particular sequence featured somewhere-or-other before, but I couldn’t Google it up, and, what the heck, it won’t kill anyone to see it again. Maybe.

I have no reason for posting these two Batman panels, aside from 1) they amused me, and 2) they’re good examples of how Batman generally isn’t presented anymore:

from World’s Finest #250 (May 1978) by Gerry Conway, George Tuska & Vince Colletta

You know, for my money, Batman doesn’t fight Panzers nearly enough nowadays.

In other news:

• A couple folks popped up in the comments section for this post, opining that perhaps the kids drawings were in fact by an adult attempting to mimic a childlike style. I’m inclined to disagree…something about the designs, and particularly the wording of the descriptions, just speaks of their authenticity to me. I also noted in the comments that, perhaps, any similarities in the artstyles could be attributed to an adult redrawing or tracing the originals due to reproduction/printing concerns.

  I don’t know, honestly…if any of you folks have better info, pass it along my way, if you could be so kind.

• “The Ignoble Death of Captain America.” BeaucoupKevin makes with the funny.
• I was talking with a customer of mine, a longtime Transformers fan, about how I have several friends and acquaintances, all about a year or two younger than me, who were big, big fans of the original Transformers TV show. I apparently had just fallen out of the TV cartoon habit, and thus missed catching the big Transformers wave that swept away those folks. I am really ignorant when it comes to Transformer stuff, and said as such to my customer.

  He said that this makes me the perfect test audience for the Transfomers movie, since all the old fans will probably be frustrated by one aspect of the film or other…the whole “that’s not what [character] looks like!” thing. I’d be going in with a fresh, open mind, unfettered by preconceived notions of what the Transformers are and/or should be.

  Then again, I would be attending this movie with my preconceived notions about director Michael Bay, who can blow things up real good, aaaaaand that’s about it, really. (And just to cut you off, World’s Biggest Michael Bay Fan, I’m exaggerating a tad. Relax.)

• We’ve lost a little something with all the upgrading in printing processes for funnybooks. Chris Karath shows us what.