Uncategorized

Mark Evanier reports that longtime Mad Magazine cartoonist George Woodbridge has died.

Via Journalista, a link to an MP3 of “March of the Sinister Ducks” via Neil Gaiman.

I’m downloading it now…it’s kinda slow going at the moment, even on DSL. Hopefully it’ll sound better than the MP3 I made from my Critters flexidisc a couple years back (the same one Dirk Deppey mentions). I’d even made an MP3 of the B-side, “Right to The Blues,” which tied into Ty Templeton’s Teddy Payne story in this issue.

Holy crud! Gary Panter is offering original art for $100.00!

(found via Boingboing.net)

Flat Earth has a good idea for all those Peanuts collections that will, over the next few years, become redundant, what with Fantagraphics’ Complete Peanuts project — donate ’em. FE says hospitals, but also schools, libraries, churches…whoever could use them.

Now that new Peanuts strips are a thing of the past, the number of kids who only know it as a product line and not artistic expression will only increase. Today’s kids could use a little exposure to the original Peanuts strips…which, along with the collected works of William Shakespeare, tell you pretty much all you need to know about human nature.

Okay, I’ll probably hang onto my set of Mattel Peanuts hardcovers…but the rest are going to charities, I think.

Flat Earth — thanks for the darn good idea.

As a comic book retailer, you have the right to expect clear and concise solicitation information from publishers.

As a comic book retailer, you have a right to expect a monthly comic book to be published monthly, not bimonthly, weekly, daily, or whenever Marv..er, the publisher feels like it.

As a comic book retailer, you have the right not to be a daycare center.

As a comic book retailer, you have the responsibility to carry a wide range of comics and graphic novels, not just Marvels and a handful of DCs. Carry some manga, for God’s sake…it won’t kill you.

As a comic book retailer, you have the right not to be expected to offer a discount to a customer just because he’s buying what he calls “a whole bunch of comics” (i.e. about $10 worth).

As a comic book retailer, you have the responsibility to make a good faith effort toward obtaining comics and graphic novels requested by your customers, if they’re available for preorder or reorder. You also have the right not to be blamed if said comic or graphic novel is out of print or otherwise unavailable.

As a comic book retailer, you have the right not to believe a customer when he tells you that he has a copy of Action Comics #1 at home. (Just through personal experience, this would mean there are something like a hundred copies in our immediate area.)

As a comic book retailer, you have the responsibility to make your store a nice place to shop. One would think this would be obvious. Sweep, clean, stock the racks, keep Eminem off the store stereo, change those posters in the front window that are now all the same sunfaded blue color, wear clothes that aren’t torn or stained.

As a comic book retailer, you have the right to be respected as a real business, given that you treat it as a real business.

(EDIT: I just realized some people may not know what I’m referring to. Here is the original Comic Book Reader’s Bill of Rights…the permalink doesn’t seem to be working properly, but it was posted January 10th.)

The Charles M. Schulz Museum will be releasing Li’l Beginnings, a collection of the Peanuts precursor Li’l Folks, exclusively through the museum store and the website. (Via the Aaugh.com newsletter)

The comics connection is slight (Alex Toth did the designwork for the original cartoon), but the Sealab 2021 Captain Murphy Soundboard is a hoot. Harry Goz, you left us too soon.

I’ve mentioned before that I collect fanzines…and I just acquired another one this past week. It’s “Collector Issue No. 1” (I don’t imagine there was a No. 2) of The Wonderful World of Marvel, from 1976. Featured in this special “Howard the Duck Issue” —

• a three-color parody Warlock cover (“Warduck”) by Steve Leialoha
  

• Howard as Thor “The Thunder Duck” by Gene Day
  

• a three-page interview with Howard conducted by the editor, complete with photos of the editor (Doug Fratz, apparently active in comics and SF fandom in the 60s & 70s) with drawings of Howard pasted in, making it appear as if there’s a face-to-face going on
  

• The Comic Reader-style reproductions of forthcoming Marvel covers along with short news items (“In September, the Marvel seventeen page comics will go up to 30 cents.” Say it ain’t so!)
  

• and, of course, lots of ads (including a nice one for Bernie Wrightson prints)
  

An interesting artifact of this magazine is the discussion of the apparent scarcity of Howard the Duck #1…a whole page (with a black border, so you know it’s serious) is devoted to the controversy surrounding the comic’s faulty distribution and subsequent high prices. (It’s even mentioned in the Howard “interview!”) The article ends with “it has been speculated that if no one pays the inflated prices […] the comic will eventually become numerous and cheap.” Well, it did happen eventually…took a monstrous flop of a movie to do it, though.

The first fanzine I ever read was The Comic Reader… here’s a page with a sample issue from ’77 that, coincidentally, is using the descriptive text I wrote for the eBay auction mentioned there. In the early 80s, this fanzine was reprinting a comic strip called “Captain Kentucky” by Don Rosa. Well, I just loved this strip…I enjoyed the way every square millimeter of the page was filled with something, and the whole one-man-operation, rough around the edges, “let’s put on a show!” feel to it.

I snapped up Don Rosa’s Comics and Stories #1 when it came out in ’83, which reprinted his earlier “Pertwillaby Papers” humor-adventure strips. I never did see the second issue of this series on the stands, and I looked for the darn thing for nearly 20 years before a friend of mine found a copy for me in Los Angeles not too long ago. (Of course, all the “Pertwillaby Papers” material, including the spin-off “Captain Kentucky” strips, has since been collected in two nice hardcovers.)

When the announcement was made that Rosa was going to be doing a new Uncle Scrooge McDuck adventure for Gladstone Comics’ Disney line in ’87, I found myself looking at Disney comics for the first time since the early ’70s. Reading Rosa’s story, “The Son of the Sun,” got me hooked back into reading Duck comics, which of course brought me to the work of Carl Barks, which then resulted in my buying all several dozen Complete Carl Barks albums over a period of a decade, at a rate of about 2 a month (so the Complete Peanuts series, at two volumes a year for just over 12 years, should be a cakewalk).

And now Disney comics are coming out in the U.S. once again. Rosa stories that had only been available overseas are now being released in small doses…just in the $6.95 issues, not the $2.95 ones, of course. But hey, I’m not complaining…at least they’re available. And while I’m glad that Disney comics of any kind are available in the U.S. now, I’m also afraid that they’re selling mostly to adult Disney fans like me, and not enough to the younger potential fans.

Additional linkage:

DUCKhunt links to lots of Rosa articles and artwork all over the web.

A gallery of sketches, alternate pages, fanzine art, and more by Rosa.

This page has one of the most distressing Duck images you will ever see. Actually, this whole article on the history of Duckburg is good reading.

Spotted on Journalista was this link to a spirited defense of JLA/Avengers. I think I’m going to enjoy this weblog…already the phrase “witness perfect stupidity minions” has wedged itself into my brain.

Pal JP tipped me off to forthcoming Batwoman, Bat-Girl, Bat-Mite, and Ace (temp link) action figures. Soon I’ll be able to reenact my favorite Batman cover in the privacy of my own home! Well, theoretically, anyway. I wouldn’t actually do that. Honest.