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…is flipping through some old comic or magazine and looking at the ads, seeing some ridiculously cool thing for what seems to modern eyes an incredibly cheap price, and wishing, even for just a moment, that access was had to a time machine that we may whisk away to the past and, say, not rescue President Kennedy or kill Hitler, but instead obtain said item for such a paltry and affordable sum:

This ad in a Famous Monsters of Filmland from 1966 triggered that response in me, even though 1) I’d never shown much skill or enthusiasm for model making; 2) while I did enjoy The Munsters, I can’t say I’m enough of a fan to collect Munsters ephemera; and 3) seriously, I don’t need any more crap cluttering up the house, obtained via time travel or not. (Except more Swamp Thing stuff…that’s not crap.) But..darned if that’s not a pretty neat-looking model kit,

Of course, if one were to travel through time to buy collectible merchandise, you’d better have era-appropriate money. Don’t know that I could find a whole lot of 1966 paper money floating around, but I could probably scrape together two bucks’ worth of 1966 quarters right quick. Or I could write a check, I guess, but that’d be one hell of a post-date on it if I’d want it to clear. I wouldn’t want to write a bad check, because what kind of time traveler bounces a bad check written on a non-yet-existing account on some unsuspecting merchant in the past? The dick kind, that’s who.

But perhaps I digress.

This particular model kit has been reissuedbut alas, now priced in the $20 range. Though I suppose nerds of the future may look back through ancient Internet archives via the chip directly implanted into their highly-evolved supersized brains and espy the Amazon listing, causing them to also wistfully wish for access to a time machine and a way to convert their Mercurian Space Credits to PayPal. (Actually, the family time machine is out in the garage, but I suspect our theoretical Future Nerd has been grounded for wasting too much time on his Internet brain chip looking at old Amazon listings and naughty pictures of Future-Mankind’s tiny-headed ancestors.)

But perhaps I digress again.

Here are some shots of the original model kit, which notes that one collectible guide lists the item at $1,200. Well, that $20 sounds a little better to me already.

I like the detail in one of the photos there (and obscured in the ad above) that Herman is actually on the TV, implying they’re watching a show about themselves. Well, it’s a little early for the “reality TV” craze, but I suspect, perhaps Herman turned up in the local news often enough that odds were you turned on the TV, there he was.

Anyway, the Munsters Hobby Kit. Pretty neat. Probably coveted by time travelers. Think about it, won’t you?

So pal Tom F. dropped off another load of books at the shop, and in this particular stash was an item I’d mentioned just a few days ago that I’d been looking for:

Yes, the Al Williamson adaptation of the 1980 Flash Gordon movie. While we had the recent Al Williamson Flash Gordon book in stock at our shop, with the complete artwork of this adaptation presented in nice, clear black and white, I kind of wanted it as it originally was printed, garish (and I do mean garish) coloring and all. Kind of a nostalgic, “present the material with all the cheesiness it was intended to have,” kind of thing, I guess.

Anyway, it’s finally in my possession. I CLAIM THIS COMIC IN THE NAME OF MIKE.

Here’s another goodie from the box of books:

Lots and lots of interviews and quotes with the stars, about all the fun they had, all the work that went into costumes and special effects, and George Clooney saying “playing Batman is the high point of my career.” Yeah, yeah, I know, it’s not like he was going to say “boy, I’m pretty sure I’m going to regret ever having done this film,” but still, it’s interesting reading a book like this, designed to pump up and promote the film in the most positive way possible, from the perspective of years after the fact, when the film’s tarnished reputation has been firmly established. It’s like reading a tragedy, where you know the tragic ending is coming, but it never actually arrives in the book itself.

• Sort of surprised that my post about Electric Superman got the response it did. Most of you had fond memories of this storyline, a few of you really didn’t care for it, and quite a few folks commented on this version of Superman being used by Grant Morrison during his run on JLA. I remember at the time thinking that it was a shame Morrison couldn’t use Superman Classic (well, Superman in His Regular Costume, I mean…Superman Classic is, of course, edited by Mort Weisinger and drawn by Curt Swan). I don’t know why I thought that, really, since I was enjoying the storyline in the Superman books. Maybe it was a personal perception that the Justice League book should be free of the story machinations in the characters’ individual titles…as was also noted, the “Death of Wonder Woman” story was reflected in the series as well. I know that probably wouldn’t happen with the main Justice League series, since it has to be in continuity and fit in with everything else being published or people will gripe. But still…Morrison did a good job with the toys he was allowed to use.

  As for the storyline proper, as it appeared in the Superman books…I did quite enjoy it. The Superman line wasn’t quite firing on all cylinders like it was during the whole Death/Return thing, but it was perfectly fine serialized superhero shenaniganery. One of these days I should go through and do an overview of all of the post-Death event storylines. I suspect “Death of Clark Kent” will rank highest on the “Biggest Groaner” chart.

• BEHOLD: Pal Andrew, the giant brain behind Armagideon Time, has unleashed a new website for you fans of funnybooks and its portrayal of youthful counterculture – COMICPUNX.
• Johnny Bacardi has a new batch of reviews up at Popdose, which I wanted to point out since this is, I think, the first review of Darkwing Duck to note writer pal Ian‘s status as a founding member of the Associated Comics And Pop Culture Webloggers Of Ventura County, CA And Outlying Environs (which is, as I’m sure you guessed, ACAPCWOVCCAOE for short). Thanks, Johnny!
• Neilalien continues to post limericks, and posted mine the other day. Gasp in horror at the most strained rhyme ever!

Thanks to pal Sean, his iPad, and his awesome artistic skills.

(Context, if you need it.)

(Also, please pardon my crazy-man beard.)

For some reason, the fact that it bounces after you makes it even more grotesquely disturbing.

By the way, Pebbles never does get to complete her sentence, there. “They’re” — what? “They’re incredibly hideous, as is implied by the name.” “They’re quite tasty when served with white wine.” “They’re afflicted with anatomically-improbable giant buck teeth that they must constantly gnaw with to wear them down, or they grow too large to allow for proper eating, and they slowly starve to death.” Alas, we may never know Pebbles’ words of wisdom.

image from Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm #27 (June 1975)

So pal Tom F. popped by the store the other day to drop off some boxes of goodies…”hey, some of this stuff may pop up on my site” I said to him, and so not to make a liar out of me, here we are:

This is a folder of promotional material for Comico, from 1985, and if one were to open it, like, perhaps, one did in preparation for one to put together a blog post about it:

…you would see the vast array of fliers and posters and other hoohar for the discerning retailer to peruse. On the left there you can see one of the in-store “Coming This Month from Comico” handouts and the two posters, and on the right are the individual fliers for each of the series being pushed by this particular promotion, as well as a couple of letters with a brief history of the company and a detailed list of what promotional items and opportunities exist for their line of books.

Here is the included Mage poster, which brought back some nostalgic memories of seeing one of these on the wall of Ye Olde Funniebook Store:

And here is the flier for Mage, appropriately colored given the whole “Magic is Green” tagline for the series:

The other poster is for Robotech Masters, which…well, I never got into Robotech, sorry, but I’m sure someone out there will think this is neat:

And here’s a detail from the Elementals flier which amused me for no good reason I can name:

This was back in the days when Elementals was good…a very long time ago. That was one of the early “hot” indies, and those early issues used to go for a bit of cash. The Elementals first appeared in Justice Machine Annual #1, which was the only issue of Justice Machine that we ever seemed to sell.

And you can see in the pic of the open folder up there a flier for Next Man, which is apparently coming back, according to that press release. And there’s a Next Man site, which I can’t get to load at the moment.

Anyway, that was today’s installment of “Let’s Look at a Promo Package for a Defunct Publisher,” courtesy of pal Tom F. Somewhere around here I also have one for First Comics…remind me to dig that out sometime.

• • •
In other news:

• As I write this, word is spreading that legendary comics artist Al Williamson has passed away. You’ll likely hear a lot about his work in the next few days, but I wanted to point out how much I loved his work for EC Comics, and how interesting it was when he inked Curt Swan on Superman stories for a brief period in the ’80s. It was a bit odd-looking, and not as sleek as you’d expect from your average Superman comic, but it sure was pretty. Also, someday, I will own his adaptation of the ’80s Flash Gordon movie, because there is no way that could be anything less than awesome.

  So long, Al.

• Those swell gals over at the Star Trek/William Shatner podcast Look at His Butt talk about my favorite topic — me! in their latest episode. Oh, and they talk about Bill’s UFO experience, too.
• Your comic book limericks, give them to Neilalien at his new e-mail address.

1. I’ve mentioned it before on the site, but I really enjoy the new artwork you’d get on the covers of DC’s digest reprints from the ’70s/’80s.

2. That’s totally an extraneous “the” on Jimmy Olsen’s “Elastic Lad” costume. “THE ELASTIC LAD” doesn’t have quite the same ominous tone as “THE DARK KNIGHT.”

image from Best of DC Digest #46 (March 1984) by Howard Bender & Dick Giordano

Our shipping company sent one of the boxes from our comic book distributor on a free trip to the San Fernando Valley, so we were out 60 lbs. of new funnybooks today. SIXTY POUNDS. No Punishermax. No Chew. No Buzzard. No Uncle Scrooge. Not a single luxury.

Thankfully, our customers were understanding about it, and the box should be at the shop Thursday, but this still means I essentially have to do the comic saver pulls twice, and frankly I’m not all that good at doing them once a week, so we’ll see how this goes.

Some of the things we did get in this week:

• Batman #700 – fun story from Grant Morrison with multiple Batmen, multiple artists (yay, more Frank Quitely!), and time travel. The $4.99 price point for this Extra! Special! Big! Issue! is a damned shame, and if they’d cut the pin-ups and the Guide to the Batcave that I’ll probably never get around to looking at, maybe this could have been $3.99, which is still an ol’ kick in the pocketbook but then I wouldn’t be paying and extra buck for a bunch of stuff I really don’t care about and you know I think I probably have a period around here somewhere, oh, look, here it is.
• Wednesday Comics HC – which I know actually came out a couple of weeks ago, but the copies we first received weren’t packed properly for shipping and had crunched corners…and given these were $50 books, I didn’t feel right charging full price for ’em. Anyway, we received replacement copies this week, and they were pristine, and all was right with the world.

  By the way, pal Sean bought one of the tweaked one, which he got with his Former Employee Discount so he didn’t pay full price for it, at least. He popped it open to let me take a look…and surprisingly, the unpleasantly difficult-to-read Wonder Woman story had been relettered from its original printing in the newspaper format, making it slightly less unpleasantly difficult-to-read. The rest of the book looks nice, too. This has been Mike’s In-Depth Review.

• Doom Patrol #11 – I finally really enjoyed a Doom Patrol story in this comic, which is probably a terrible thing to say eleven issues in, but Doom Patrol is one of those titles/groups/concepts that I’ll buy regardless, which probably makes me a bad comics fan that’s hurting the health of the medium, but screw you, it’s my money. I mean, Doom Patrol has never been really bad…well, okay, the Byrne issues were at least enjoyable in a “these are really dopey and amusing” sort of way. At least for me. Don’t look at me like that. But this new series was…interesting, but never really grabbed me, especially when we were forced to compare the lead DP story with the excellent and sadly missed Metal Men back-ups. But this issue everything finally clicked with me, I guess, what with the usage of that one Giffen character, and a few more Morrison concepts creeping back in. Really got a kick out of it.
• Star Trek: Leonard McCoy #3 – This is the one with Larry Niven’s Puppeteer alien on the front cover. Well, one of the front covers, since this needed to have a 50/50 split of variant covers, for some reason. The Puppeteer is not on the inside, sorry. Anyway, Niven fanboys, be on the alert. The red alert! I have no idea what I’m saying.
• Ooh, ooh, Tom Strong and the Robots of Doom #1 – I really liked this comic. Yeah, it’s not Alan Moore writing it, but it is Peter Hogan writing, and Chris Sprouse drawing, and it fits in perfectly well with any of the Moore stories. Great set-up, can’t wait to see how everything plays out.
• X-Men Forever 2 #1 – Oh, I’m sure this totally needed restarting with a new #1.
• Jonah Hex #56 has a Darwyn Cooke cover and comes polybagged with a Jonah Hex movie poster. Man oh man, this movie. I suspect it won’t be any good, but it’ll be entirely entertaining. The comic’s always good, though…you should read it.
• Justice League: Generation Lost #3 – Entertaining, but I’m already getting the feeling that this 26-issue biweekly series will be about 13 issues too long. Too soon to really say, I realize, so I’ll update my reaction here in a few months. Pretty sure it’ll be better than Trinity.
• Red Sonja #50 – Number fifty? Really?

• • •
In other news:

• There’s some kind of rumor that Swamp Thing will be making his reappearance in the non-Vertigo DC Universe in the forthcoming Plastic Man series, to which the creator of said PM series said “uh, no” so I guess that’s not happening. Anyway, you’ll just have to take my word for this because over my dead body I’m linking to the site where all this is going on.

  In lighter Swamp Thing news, there’s this discussion where the main concern is apparently the number of times Batman has taken a beating from Swamp Thing. Sez one gentleman, he sez

  “The Vertigo community which I’m part of feels this is just a ploy so that they can pit Batman and Swamp Thing back together and rectify, two of Batman’s very few losses.”

  …which not only indicates that there’s two places on the nerdinet where Swamp Thing beating Batman is a point of contention, but that it’s felt this is the reason that Swampy was moved away from the mature reader Vertigo into the slightly-less mature reader DC Universe. And not, say, that the Vertigo-ized Swampy was a bit played out and needed to be retooled, or that one of DC’s more recognizable characters needed some rehabilitation for marketing exploitation, or something. Actually, I don’t care about the reasons, just bring me more Swamp Thing comics. Of any kind. And make it snappy.

• Pal Dorian presents…Previews for Gays. BONUS: Dor breaks his Archie silence to comment on the imminent arrival of Archie’s first (openly) gay character.
• War Rocket Ajax copilot and fellow Bureau Chief Eugene has gifted you all with a swell new song that you should all go listen to. Its “beats” are very “phat,” I believe you kids would say.

1977 comic book ad

I wonder how quickly this emissions-cutting promise was forgotten?

from Iron Man #88 (July 1976)