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Ever find yourself writing a post and find yourself a little unsure of the exact spelling of a particular word, so you go ahead and spell it very incorrectly, figuring you’ll run your post through the Blogger spellcheck program and it’ll catch that word and fix it for you, without all the hassle and bother of, oh, I don’t know, opening a dictionary or anything, but then you go ahead and publish the whole post on your weblog without running the spellcheck because you forgot, and you don’t notice that the incorrectly-spelled word has been out there for the world to see until a few days and a few thousand visits later?

Yeah, me neither.

silhouette silhouette silhouette

from Life with Archie #24 (November 1963)

Scott Saavedra delineates a meeting between Devil Dinosaur and Wonder Woman (and the meeting’s inevitable conclusion), for no reason other than that Scott rules.

Mag at the Comic Treadmill posts streaming audio of a Plastic Man song for no reason other than that Mag is pure evil.

Please keep sending me your webcomic suggestions…I am taking them under advisement, I promise. Unshelved is a particularly good one, and one I can personally appreciate given that I used to work in a library, lo these many years ago.

Speaking of comic strips, I’m certainly not envious of what topical strips like Doonesbury and The Boondocks and Andy Capp* have to do during Presidential election weeks. Clearly they have to address the elections**, but they have to dance around the results until their lead times catch up with the actual printing of the strips. I think I’ve seen a couple variations on the “Boy, I sure am glad Clinton [or whoever] won” / “Boy, won’t we look silly if he didn’t win” gag over the years.

(EDIT: I didn’t notice that The Boondocks gag for today actually referred to this particular election-result-dodging phenomenon, otherwise I would have mentioned it! Thanks to pal Andy for pointing it out.)

On a completely different topic altogether…take a looksee at The Comic Treadmill for the Worst Song to Appear in A Comic Book Ever. Though I think this song, from Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane #9 from 1959, comes close:

“Come sing a song of Superman!

Low he strikes the villain’s plan!

And though bad men may have their day,

Repeatedly, he makes them pay!

Kryptonite may harm his skill…

Keeper of the law’s his will…

Eagle-eyed watcher of land, air and sea,

Ne’er does he cease to fight tyranny!–

To down men’s foes and set men free!”

Clark Kent wrote this for Pat Boone to sing, mind you.

* Just seeing if you’re paying attention.

** My one and only comment on the elections: AUGH!

…don’t forget to vote!

A couple things:

Finally finished the newest volume of the Complete Peanuts, and boy, that’s the stuff. We finally see, in its entirety, the sequence of Sundays with Charlie Brown and Lucy at a golf tournament (featuring the rare physical presence of adults). The book also contains the arrival of Charlotte Braun, a slightly more extroverted female version of Charlie Brown that didn’t stick around too long, I believe. The book wraps up with a note from the editors regarding the printing quality of some of the strips, given the source materials they had to work with, but they did an excellent job even so. One Sunday strip did have a top tier completely missing, which was reconstructed by the book’s designer Seth, but the promise was made that should a complete version of the strip be discovered, it would be reprinted in a later volume.

It should be noted that there is at least one Sunday strip in the book that is affected by the lack of color, on page 110. The joke is about Schroeder turning “three shades of green” from envy, and there is a three-panel sequence where Schroeder is intended to be literally colored in three different shades of green. It’s a very minor thing, admittedly…it’s not like I expected Fantagraphics to spot color the panels, but I just thought I’d mention it. If it bothers anyone that much, they can bust out the Crayolas and color it themselves.

Also, I did notice in the most recent Previews that Bongo Comics is soliciting orders for the second Futurama/Simpsons crossover, which is quite welcome as the first series was very entertaining. However, I didn’t pay much attention to the description of Simpsons Comics #102, until pal Dorian pointed it out to me:

“Uncle Burn$'” lust for gold leads them all to the island of Donrosa and the Gottfredson Trench, where the Simpsons begin to realize that there is something Huey, Dewey, and Screwy about the whole undertaking, and that they might be “Barks”ing up the wrong tree!

Normally, I’m not a big fan of mixing comic book in-jokes into titles aimed at a more general audience (a point I made previously about Alf comics)…but the Duck fan in me is looking forward to this funnybook.

Commenter Sean points out, and quite rightly so, that maybe I should have mentioned that a new Swamp Thing reprint volume, collecting the beginning of Rick Veitch’s run, was released last week. I mean, me, of all people, not to mention that…. Well, my only excuse is that my posting mojo was at minimal levels over the last few days due to a variety of real world doings, and thus Swamp Thing: Regenesis slipped my mind. Ah, well…what do you want for free?

At any rate, I’m glad to see DC remember that this particular Swamp Thing series didn’t end after Alan Moore left the book, as there was plenty of good stuff that followed (though it gets to be a bit of rough going around the “Quest for The Elementals” storyline). Rick Veitch’s particular off-kilter sensibilities gave this title a great new direction that was horrific (and black-humored) in its own way, not relying entirely on Moore. By the way, is there any official word on whether or not the unpublished “Swamp Thing Meets Jesus” story will pop up in these reprint volumes eventually?

Sugar and Spike #55 (Oct-Nov 1964) – art by Sheldon Mayer

Well, this fellow is gettin’ hitched today, so I’ll be at the wedding festivities along with a few of my fellow ACAPCWOVCCAOE members. While I’m doing that, maybe some of you can go enter some contests:

Ed at The Low Road is giving away a copy of Adam Sacks’ Salmon Doubts. Details here; ends Oct. 31st.

The Peiratikos are offering up copies of Scott Pilgrim, a Scott Pilgrim T-shirt, and an original watercolor by creator Bryan Lee O’Malley. Details here; ends Nov. 5th.

Shane at Near Mint Heroes is giving away a Walking Dead trade and a 24 Hour Comics trade. Details here; ends Oct. 31st.

And, what may be my favorite current contest…Tim at The Hurting wants you to insult him! Best insult (as judged by Tim’s wife) could win the DC Comics Encyclopedia (yes, that new one, the forty buck one), a copy of Warren Ellis’ Come in Alone, or Andi Watson’s Breakfast After Noon. Details here; ends Nov. 10th.

In non-contest news, a big ol’ THANK YOU goes out to Scott Saavedra for posting a swell Swamp Thing drawing on his site. Scott’s fanzine Comic Book Heaven was one of the inspirations for this weblog of mine, and it’s good to see his love of comic history’s bizarre moments continuing on his own weblog. If you haven’t checked it out, really, go take a look.