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Found in an old t-shirt catalog:

You wore this shirt design, didn’t you? ADMIT IT.

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I’ll give Marvel’s Civil War series this: it’s a lot easier to explain to the uninitiated than Infinite Crisis.

“What’s Civil War about?”

“There’s a superhero-related disaster that kills a lot of people, which causes the government to step in and attempt to regulate the heroes, which then divides said heroes into two camps…for regulation and against.”

“What’s Infinite Crisis about?”

“Well, when DC’s multiverse was collapsed down to a single universe as a result of Crisis on Infinite Earths, the Superman of Earth-2 and his wife, Lois Lane, the Superboy from Earth-Prime, the son of Lex Luthor from Earth-3 survived, but return to the modern DC universe to….”

“Whoa, hold on, I think my nose is bleeding.”

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Pal The Ferrett, inspired by that discussion I found, poses a question of his own: which superhero has the largest…er, manhood?

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Ever get the feeling that arguing about comics is like two crocodiles fighting over a rapidly evaporating stagnant pond at the height of an African summer?

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Thank goodness for the Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes comic, so that I have at least one Supergirl comic on the stands that young girls would be interested in. Because it sure as heck isn’t the regular series.

And yes, that means I have young girls buying Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes at our store.

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The thought occurred to me that Marvel’s Sentry character is similar in some respects to DC’s ’90s character Triumph, in that they were both past superheroes forgotten by the rest of the heroes in their respective universes, and reintroduced into modern continuity…but it looks like Wikipedia beat me to it. Darn, and here I was thinking I was all clever and insightful and stuff.

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Via the godfather of comics-weblogging, Neilalien, comes Peanuts characters drawn as Marvel characters. This one is my favorite:

In a similar vein, here is the Battlestar Galactica cast as the Simpsons, which has already been posted on every weblog ever, but there’s the link anyway.

So I have on my hard drive a folder filled with thousands of scans of items that I’ve listed on the eBay over the years…no, I have no idea why I still have them either, but you never know when you might need a scan of a Transformers comic pre-pack:

This next photo is a tad blurry, so you’re just gonna have to take my word that on this pair of X-Men holographic glasses, Wolverine is facing off against the Juggernaut…or something like that, anyway. Nothing says “cool” like a pair o’ these:

Several years ago, we had one of these figures opened up at the store…”I’ve got claws, I can use them” was a catchphrase around the shop for perhaps a little too long:

You know, as promotional freebie gifts go, a flimsy little foil sticker is kinda lame:

Rob Liefeld’s 7-inch Shaft…old joke, still funny:

And now…10-INCH GIANT MAUL:

Surely the person who started this thread knew it wasn’t going to end well:

“not trying to be gay or anything…. “

“….but has anyone else noticed that on the blue beetle cover #2* his ‘package’ so to speak seems to…. stand out……..”

“It’s okay, most men check out the competion at the gym. Or urinal. Or comic book cover,”

“No I think both of you guys are gay. I don’t check out other ‘men’ at the urinal or at the gym. Non of my male friends check out other ‘men’ at the urinal or the gym. As a matter of fact, the idea to check out any part of another man’s body has never occurred to me. So my guest is you are both gay. Well maybe not the first guy who might have noticed it by accident. That is to say without looking at the cartoon’s package. The second guy who defended the idea of looking at a cartoon and taking a peep at the guy next to you at the urinal. The second guy is gay.”

“don’t believe you and i think you might be gay as you seem very afraid of it.”

“No I never have. I went to catholic school we had a gym locker. I showered next to other guys in school. I never looked at another guys joint. […] The idea of looking comparing or whatever gay term you want to use for checking out a guys package has never been in my head. But, I grew up in Brooklyn N.Y. I guess other parts of the world are naturally more gay.”

“Dude- you are so gay. How much time do you spend thinking about how Not Gay you are? Couple hours a day?”

Okay, back to the topic at hand:

“I think it is a codpiece. I haven’t looked at it myself, but a lot of armor designs have codpieces to protect men’s bits and intimidate the enemy. It is sort of like an athletic supporter with a cup inside of it. It is most likely part of Blue Beetle’s armor/exoskeleton that protects his bits from being kicked or punched.”

“i looked at the cover and the costume is not thin enough bec. i cannot see the 2 balls distinctly bec. i am quite sure there should be”

“Maybe the new Blue Beetle is the new gay character? Or he could be the DC counterpart to Spider-Man who makes people gay by looking at him?”

“i think the gay community can give dc artists some advice on how to draw the bulges on a gay superhero to avoid adding any more art mistakes to the many in infinite crisis 1-7.”

“I have the utmost faith in Phil Jimenez as both artist and consultant when it comes to package design.”

THE TRUTH REVEALED:

“i just made a topic based on a friends observation because i figured someone would get a laugh out of it, but guess this has turned into the psychology of being gay class, its very odd…..but hey who am i complaining its kinda funny seeing the reactions of evryone on this board”

The final word:

“Frankly, I think you’re ALL gay.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”

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PLEASE DON’T FEED THE FETISHIST – found while forum-hopping…no link, it’s pretty much just this:

“I was just wondering if anyone can post a scan of supergirl using her frost/super breath if not how about her eye beam?”

* The final printed version covers the area in question.

So Employee Nathan was putting away this comic today:

…when he pointed out the slightly peculiar wording used in this particular blurb:

…which immediately reminded me of this:

“Flash and Green Lantern face their greatest challenge in…‘The Mouthwatering Menace of Mutual Cannibalism!’ (Story: Gardner Fox / Art: Gil Kane & Sid Greene)”

I just heard Kid Chris openly mock Swamp Thing on UCLA Radio.

He’ll pay for this. Oh, how he’ll pay.

(Inspired by pal Dorian, who was inspired by Chris, who was inspired by this Newsarama discussion) (EDIT: But it apparently started here)

So in the Superman: The Ten Cent Adventure one-shot from a couple years back, Daily Planet editor-in-chief Perry White confronts Clark Kent about Kent’s passport, found dusty and forgotten in a storage closet. If Kent has been travelling around the world, reporting on important international events, White rightfully wonders, how is it that his passport is unused? The chief’s pretty steamed about it:

And how does Clark get out of it? “Sorry to run, Perry, but I see Jimmy Olsen over there! We’ll have to discuss this later!” And he dashes off to perform some super-action, leaving Perry to wonder…

…though apparently Perry doesn’t dwell on it, as we never hear about this passport thing ever again.

Now this was an interesting idea, I thought, though it does make Clark/Superman look a little dopey (oh, if only he had some kind of secret Arctic fortress in which he could hide stuff like this). His double identity is put on the spot, and if he owns up to never using his passport (since, unknown to Perry, he simply flew to where he needed to go under his own power), all of his reporting suddenly becomes suspect. From Perry’s perspective, either Clark made all these international stories up, or he otherwise misrepresented his involvement in procuring the story (using secondary sources rather than investigating firsthand, as it’s implied Perry had believed). Either way, his credibility takes a hit (admittedly more in the former case than the latter).

Or Clark could just own up to Perry that he’s Superman, but then that brings up the old question of Clark’s ethics (having got his job at the Planet by reporting a story on himself as Supes, and continuing to report on himself over the years).

But it’s a moot point since, as I said, Clark and Perry never speak of it again, to the best of my memory.

Another plot point that came and went was in Saga of the Swamp Thing #16 (1983), where Swamp Thing and crew exhume the body of Linda Holland, only to find that the body had already been taken. Swampy makes reference to having found “that device…designed to keep people away…from those graves…!”

Huh? What device? I don’t remember any device being found in any issues of Swamp Thing leading up to this. Well, according to the footnote, the story of said device would be told in an upcoming issue of the Superman team-up book DC Comics Presents…which also never happened. The next issue of DCCP to feature Swamp Thing was this one, and it had nothing to do with Linda Holland’s grave or devices guarding it.

This wasn’t nearly as annoying as the Superman’s passport situation…where that was an interesting complication in Superman’s life that was tossed away, making both Clark and Perry look foolish as a result, the Swamp Thing plot point was just an unexplained aside that didn’t really impact the story one way or the other. Plus, as Alan Moore took over and drove the book into an all-new, horrific direction, the many subplots and tangents from the earlier issues suddenly seemed less important. That particular DC Comics Presents story never came to pass, but no one much missed it, either.

Any other subplots/plot points you can think of that just fell to the wayside like that? Stuff that seemed like it should be a big deal, but just dried up, disappeared, or otherwise amounted to nothing?

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On a slightly related note, the new volume of The Complete Peanuts 1959-60 featured the following strip, which I remembered reading in one of the paperback reprints as a young Mikester, and recalled this punchline every time one of Snoopy’s numerous brothers turned up in the strip:

The volume also contains this strip, which has nothing to do with forgotten/altered storylines, but does seem to feature a huge ol’ typo on Schulz’ part:

Given the context in which it’s used, and the lack of reasons why Lucy would just suddenly shout “BOING!” — it seems that Schulz left the letter “R” out of the word “boring.” I’m sure it’s been noted before by somebody, and probably old news to Nat, but couldn’t find any references. Still, just thought that was interesting.

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I probably have some final thoughts on Free Comic Book Day, but I’ll get to those tomorrow. I need a break from thinking about the free books!

I am currently having some intermittent e-mail issues. If you have sent e-mail to me in the last day or so, I may not have received it. Please try sending your messages again in the next day or so…hopefully the problems will have resolved by then. Thank you!

I think I’ve got everything sorted…not how I wanted to spend my Sunday evening, I’ll tell you what.

Basically, my ISP stopped accepting e-mails forwarded from my progressiveruin.com and mikesterling.com addresses to my primary ISP address. A call to the company where I registered my domains and managed the e-mail forwards revealed 1) I wasn’t the only person having this problem with my ISP, and 2) the problem was at the ISP’s end, not the registrar’s. A call to the ISP was of no use (“What operating system are you using? Are you using Mac? I’ll transfer you to the Mac department.” “MY OPERATING SYSTEM ISN’T THE PROBLEM.”) so rather than wait until someone there got a clue and figured out something was wrong, I’ve essentially given up on their e-mail system and gone the Gmail route.

It took a while to get all the options set the way I wanted them, and to get a second e-mail program to handle the varying accounts…and I’m sure this is all terribly interesting to you.

The upshot is…I’m about 88% sure I can get e-mail again. So fire away! And if you sent anything to me over the weekend…fire away again!

GOD HELP US ALL

Don’t forget Twomorrows is also offering a free sample of one of their magazines for FCBD. (I picked Back Issue #3.)

Reviews of the free comics may be found at pal Dorian’s site and at Comics Worth Reading (1, 2, 3).

My picks: you need to get Owly (cuter than a cute thing that’s cute…look at last year’s Owly FCBD book for a sample), the Bongo freebie (a bit fanboy-humorish but the Comic Book Guy story is good for a larf), Preposterous Voyages of Ironhide Tom (silly and amusing), and Donald Duck (which contains one of my all-time favorite Don Rosa shorts).

Picks to miss: I think next year we can safely skip whatever it is that Wizard plans on offering.

Anyway, good luck to all of you folks out there, on either side of the counter. I’ll report back and let you know how it went at our store.

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Additional linkage:

“Holy free comics, Batman!”

“Shazam! It’s free comics day today”

“Literacy campaign targets comic readers”

“…Educators say [comic books] can provide the same function as other children’s books — acting as a gateway to more advanced reading and thought.”

See? It’s educational, too!

So, just out of curiosity, and out of a need to lessen my own guilt a tad, I decided to return to the eBay and see what the Civil War Michael Turner 1 in 75 sketch cover variants have been selling for. I looked at only closed auctions, and only at auctions for just the sketch variant (there were quite a few that had all three versions of the cover, or just the two variants), and took only the first twenty auctions I came across (I figure that was enough of a sampling). Here is what I found:

Lowest price: $75.00

Highest price: $115.00

Average price of all 20: $96.87

And once these start going through the CGC “professional grading” process and getting relisted, we’ll probably be looking at prices several times that amount. Well, at least until Civil War goes the way of Secret Wars II and Atlantis Attacks and we’ve all moved on to the next big “nothing will ever be the same” event series.

So, I suppose, I could have put that Turner sketch cover on the eBay and got a few more bucks for it, but that smacks of “effort.” And a bird in the hand is worth two on the internet, as the saying doesn’t go but probably should. Plus, I didn’t have to worry about the PayPal fees, and eBay fees, and packing the comic up, and wondering if it arrived, and so on.

And thus, I’m going to be happy with our seventy-five bucks, the customer is going to be happy with his comic (I just found out that he had bought other copies of the same variant elsewhere, so he’s almost certainly going to be reselling them), and we can put that money to some good use…buying more manga books, or keeping us stocked in Lenore, or keeping the bourbon flowing…you know, whatever.

I also took a look at what the regular Turner variants were selling for…I didn’t do an exact average or anything, but they looked like they were selling in the $25 to $30 range. And someone sold a set of both variants for $177. Goodness.

And here’s someone who sold the Civil War promo postcard for $0.75. You know, I still have a bunch of these on the front counter…hmmmmm….

Oh, relax, I’m only kidding.

Maybe.