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Quickie linkies:

1. If you haven’t gone to see pal Dorian’s list of 100 things that annoy him about comics…well, go look already. I didn’t want to encourage a “Top 100 Things I Hate” trend, but if anyone had to do that sort of list, who better than the birthday boy?

1a. Yeah, that’s right, it’s Dorian’s birthday today. I’m sure he didn’t want me to say anything, but then, according to #44 on his list, I’m not a nice guy and thus he should have expected me to do something evil, like, say, reveal his darkest secrets. (insert maniacal laughter here)

2. Also on the ACAPCWOVCCAOE* front, pal Sean has put up the latest installment of “Surviving Geek Heaven,” his guide to the San Diego Comic Con. Check it out, kids.

3. A big congrats to pal Ian, for somehow blackmailing the staff of The Comics Journal into running a couple of his reviews in the newest issue!

* The Associated Comics And Pop Culture Webloggers of Ventura County, CA And Outlying Environs. Hey, I haven’t explained the abbreviation in a while, so cut me some slack.

Wait just a gosh-darned second…please tell me I didn’t just see Green Arrow using Elongated Man as a bow in order to shoot Red Tornado at the nefarious Merlyn the Archer:

Oh, dear, it appears that I did.

Anyway, in this same story (“At Last…Clark Kent, Super-Hero!” from Action Comics #443, Jan. 1975), sportcaster Steve Lombard has been, as usual, acting like a complete prick to Clark.* Clark, with the help of his Justice League buddies, decides to get even.

The Justice Leaguers, dressed in their civvies, show up at the WGBS building** for a tour and, in full view of Steve, go nuts when they see Clark. They rush up to him, asking for his autograph, making Steve jealous of the attention. He moves in on the scene, exclaiming “you folks probably know who I am…the ace sportscaster and all-star quarterback–!”

Black Canary (in her secret identity of Dinah Lance) interrupts: “Why, certainly! You’re Steve Lombard…”

Okay, I can buy Oliver “Green Arrow” Queen giving a raspberry. But, my friends, that’s Bruce “Batman” Wayne dealing out a hearty, Snoopy-style “BLEAHH!” Add that to your list of things Batman doesn’t do anymore.

Also, apparently all crime everywhere in the world has been taken care of, if the JLA has time to screw with one of Clark’s coworkers.

* Well, normally, he’s a jerk to Clark. In this specific story, Superman is the object of his abuse…long story.

** There are times I miss the “Clark Kent as WGBS TV reporter” variation on the Superman legend. That went on for almost 15 years, didn’t it?

Customer: “Do you have Flash Gordon? With Buster Crabbe?”

Me: “Um…you mean the comic strips?” (seeing as how we’re a comic store and all)

Customer: “No, do you have Flash Gordon on video or DVD?”

Me: “No, I’m sorry, we don’t.”

Customer: “Oh, okay. Do you have The Lone Ranger?”

Me: “No, I’m sorry, we don’t have any of The Lone Ranger serials on video.”

Customer: “No, I meant the comic books. Do you have any Lone Ranger comics?”

Me: “Sure…” (I pull down a box) “…here you go.”

Customer: “Great…do you have any westerns?”

Me: “Yes, there are more western comics in that box there with The Lone Ranger.”

Customer: “No, I meant the movie serials.”

Me: “AAAAAAGH! QUIT CHANGING GEARS ON ME!”

(Well, okay, I really didn’t say that last bit.)

The mighty Jog the Blog discusses inadvertently spoiling future issues of Concrete: The Human Dilemma for himself over on Dark Horse Comics’ publication database. I couldn’t resist looking to see if I was right about a certain forthcoming event in the book (and as it turns out, I was), so, yeah, there’s a danger of spoiling things for yourself. But I’m with Mr. Jog in his appreciation of Dark Horse’s cataloging efforts.

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Wow, here’s a page belonging to a Swedish pin collector, with a special focus on cartoon and comic character pins. Here’s a page full o’Batman pins, for example…or how about some Andy Capp pins? I’m totally jealous…I’m a minor collector of pins and buttons as well (I’m not cataloging them or anything, I’m just kinda accumulating them), and thus I’ll probably be spending a lot of time looking at the images on this site and drooling.

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My conversation with pal Dorian the other day:

Dor: “Hey, did Skywald ever publish any good comics?”

Me: “Nope.”

Okay, okay, save the angry e-mails, I was only being half-facetious when I said that. Here’s a checklist of story credits for Skywald’s publications, and there were quite a few talented people working on their magazines. Pablo Marcos, Chic Stone, Ricardo Villamonte, Doug Wildey, Gene Day, Bernie Wrightson, Gray Morrow, so on, so forth…poke through the checklist and see for yourself. Of course, there is a lot of filler material to slog through in any given Skywald publication, but there are a few gems to be found.

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Found via Memepool, a randomly-generating comic strip comprised of images from LiveJournal accounts. Strangely compelling.

Just a couple random notes about last night’s Justice League Unlimited episode:

1. I’m not sure I like the talking Doomsday. The more animalistic Doomsday from the original “Death of Superman” comics was much more menacing. However, it was nice to see a full-out battle between Superman and a foe as strong, if not stronger, than he is. We don’t get enough of that…we barely got it in the Superman cartoon itself.

2. Best part of the episode: everyone groaning in dismay when Batman mentions that he has the Question working on their project. It’s good to know that not everyone in the Justice League is palsy-walsies with everyone else.

3. I did appreciate that the episode built on incidents from previous installments (centering around Amanda Waller and her efforts to “protect the world” from superheroes) without feeling crowded with excessive subplottery or without excluding people who may not have seen the eariler episodes in question. Plus, having Waller not simply be the “evil menace trying to stop our Super Friends” brings about an interesting conflict, as by the end of the episode Batman is very clearly considering her position.

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I was doing some random searching with the Google (oh, okay, I was Googling my own name) when I found this Yahoo directory for comic book weblogs. I know some of the descriptions come from the webloggers themselves, but others (including the one for my own site) are from some anonymous Yahoo-ite, I’m presuming. Interesting. Not that I’m complaining about my description…it’s accurate enough. Hopefully they’ll get around to correcting the spelling on pal Dorian‘s name someday, though.

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How to make Mike feel old, Part 1: I was helping a customer (hi, Mark!) out yesterday with Nexus back-issues, trying to figure out at what particular issue his collection leaves off. In the process, I pull up #8, at which point I immediately have two thoughts:

1. “Wow, I remember anxiously waiting for this issue to come out!”

2. “Oh, God, this comic is twenty years old!”

You young’uns out there, you mark my words…once you start measuring chunks of your life in 20-year spans, there’s no going back.

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In response to this gentleman’s request for Paul Lynde comics (and following up on this good person‘s detective work), here is a page with an image showing all of the Dell Bewitched covers…none of which have any Paul Lynde goodness, I’m afraid. Now if only there were Hollywood Squares comics….

While I think a Krypto TV show is fine and dandy, apparently these folks aren’t similarly inclined.

Is there no joy in their hearts? Can’t they see that this image in particular is absolutely fantastic? That’s Ace the freakin’ Bat-Hound, for God’s sake.

(thanks to pal Dorian for reminding me about the show’s impending debut)

1. Pal Sean, the quietest member of the ACAPCWOVCCAOE (which is ironic, if you know him in real life), has finally updated Fleshhead’s Treehouse with the first of a series of articles on his preparations for the San Diego Comic Con.

2. Sooner or later, someone was going to customize Smurf figurines to look like the Hulk, Freddy Krueger, Spider-Man, and, yes, Batman and Robin.

3. From the Marvel solicits: actually, I kind of like the idea of a Giant Size X-Men #3. And while that Maximum Fantastic Four hardcover (an annotated overview of Stan ‘n’ Jack’s first FF, with essays and such) sounds pretty neat, it’s still going to be a hard sell at $49.99. And I know someone else on the comicsweblogosphere noted this, but I’m going to agree: Machine Teen is a great title. No idea if the comic’s any good, but that title and the James Jean cover are going to be hard to match.

Samurai Squirrel #1 (1986) – art by Kelley Jarvis & Richard Maurizio

1. Not a good sign: saw on our invoice, which I received from Diamond on Sunday, that a couple of the reissued Sin City trades were due to arrive this Wednesday. I thought I’d get a jump on reorders (since for the past couple of months we’ve had plenty of people asking for them), and sent in a reorder via e-mail Sunday evening. I come back in to work Tuesday morning, check the reorder confirmation…and sure enough, the Sin City trades are on back order.

Hopefully this is just a temporary situation…maybe Dark Horse is reserving all copies for initial orders, and will release more copies for reorders in a week or two. I have no idea. I’m really hoping that this won’t be a repeat of the Hellboy situation, where the books were only rarely available for the duration of the movie-spawned demand.

Oh, and copies of Hellblazer: Dangerous Habits, the book from which the producers of the Constantine movie appear to have drawn some minor inspiration, are also on back order.

2. Hey, I don’t have anything against Man-Thing!

3. As already covered by everyone else, the DC solicits are up, but I don’t really have much to say about them this time. A couple things, though: I suppose the cancellation of Fallen Angel is official, what with the “Final Issue” tag. And I share pal Dorian‘s feelings about the artist for the Superman: Infinite City hardcover. Shame, as I may have been interested in picking it up, otherwise. Hey, and Desolation Jones is solicited…I’ve been looking forward to this since I was lucky enough to read the script. Should be fun!

EDIT: 4. My thanks to Fred for pointing out a few more Top 100 lists on his site that I may have missed otherwise…I’ve since added them to my increasingly long-winded and awkward sentence o’links at the beginning of my own list!

EDIT AGAIN: 5. Aaaaargh! I can’t believe I left Kim Deitch off my list!

Just enough time for a brief note, before I’m off to work (what with a bunch of auctions ending today)…I wanted to express my appreciation to everybody who did the 100 Things I Love About Comics thing over the last few days. I know we have a couple more apparently still in the offing, but when they’re done, I’ll add them to the link list in my post. Speaking of which, look for that sentence (the one that currently reads “And here are quite a few more fine lists that I have found”) to become longer and even more awkward as more lists turn up. That sentence started out as “and here are some more” with only three links originally!

I did see the idea casually mentioned here and there about lists of 100 Things we all hate about comics, but that seems almost unnecessarily negative. Besides, I’m not sure I can come up with that many…and I’m sure too many of mine would be specific to managing a comic book store (“72. People asking me for the next issue of Battle Chasers“).

However, coming up with the top 100 was no problem. In fact, in no time at all I had a handwritten list of about 150 or so, and could easily have gone to 200. Well, there’s always next year.

Alan provided 100 Annotations to his list of 100 Things, and while I don’t think I’m quite up for that, I did have a friend of mine did ask why I picked Elliot S! Maggin over Cary “Mr. Surprise” Bates (both primary ’70s Superman writers) for my list. Well, I do like Mr. Bates’ work, and had the list gone to 200, I would have certainly had him on there. But, I gave the nod to Maggin as I really appreciated 1) the backstory and future-history he worked out for the Superman saga and continually referred to in his stories, and 2) his intelligent, arrogant, and somewhat quirky Lex Luthor who, while overwhelmed with hatred for Superman, was not an unfeeling monster…occasionally even being treated sympathetically. I don’t have time to go into detail right now, but you might get the idea by reading some of the stuff on Mr. Maggin’s own site.

And yes, I promise…next time, Gorilla Grodd’s on the list!

Remember…keep checking my post for additional links to other lists…I’ll add ’em as I find ’em! (Fred’s keeping a list, too.)