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Back from Wizard World L.A., and pal Dorian and I survived the experience. It was a day full of costumes, comics, miles of long boxes, poop, loud music, spandex tragedy, lots of walking, a couple of nice places to eat, and brushes with certain death.

Still in Low Content Mode this weekend. Expect my full Wiz World report Monday.

SLUGGO STUNNED BY NEWS:

from Nancy & Sluggo #125 (Oct. 1955)

“Oh, you must be laughing at Mike and pal Dorian, since they’ll be spending their entire Saturday at…”

“Oh, sure…fine. Be that way. But when we’re fishing those cheaply-priced Golden Age off-brand funny animal comics out of the bargain bins*, you’ll be laughing out of the other side of your faces, just you wait and see.”

* Let the boy dream.

Mark Evanier has his can of Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup that he puts on his site to indicate he doesn’t have time for proper posting…

…and I have this:

BEATNIK SLUGGO
I’ll be back…well, Sunday, since I’m going to Wizard World L.A. with pal Dorian tomorrow, so expect some Saturday Sluggo, too.

But I do want to say thank you for all the birthday wishes you sent me yesterday, and please spare some for my sister today, as it’s now her birthday.

Anyway, even though I’ll be walking through the valley of the shadow of comics, I will fear no CGC and bring you a report back from the Wiz event after the weekend. Wish me luck!

LATER THAT DAY:

from Superman #227 (June/July 1970), reprinted from
Action Comics #296 (Jan 1963) – art by Al Plastino

And before you ask…”sign language?” Yeah, I don’t know what Lois was thinking, either.

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In other news:

• Diesel Sweeties will be offering ten webstrip-reprint ebook PDF files for free…I say FREE, m’boy…starting today! First one is up already: keep checking R. Steven’s “news” section for the necessary linkage!
• Tim O’Neil makes a good point about the Watchmen comic containing its own defense against any film adaptations.
• New comics weblog: I Was Ben. Nice, clean design, good back-to-basics comics blogging, has me listed in the “Old School” links section. I’m “Old School,” baby, and don’t you forget it! Also, I happen to know at least one of the people behind this site has a long blogging history, comics and otherwise, so I totally vouch for him. Go, visit, encourage this behavior, because I want to keep reading it.
• Pal Dorian posts the truth about Sean Connery, somehow manages to implicate me. Also, Dor has posted a brief discussion he and I had the other day, in case you want to see what we get up to when you’re not looking. No, no, nothing dirty. C’mon.

So long, Dave.
(Pictured: Alien Worlds #2 (May 1983), which is the first Dave Stevens comic I read.)

So Monday night, I found myself watching an episode of the mid-’80s version of the Super Friends cartoon, when Firestorm and Darkseid were featured characters. The episode was “Darkseid’s Golden Trap,” in which Darkseid and his henchmen, Desaad and a nearly-unrecognizable Kalibak, travel into distant space to attend the 532nd Annual Intergalactic Criminal Auction, or whatever it was called. I do remember that it was specifically referred to as the 500-something-th annual, which had me wondering which time scale from what alien world they were using to determine the “annual” bit of that title.

Anyway, Darkseid’s there to bid on a piece of Gold Kryptonite to use against Superman. Even though the bidding begins at something like 100,000 bleens (bleens being the currency of choice among space criminals, apparently), Darkseid simply says “I bid…one bleen,” thus showing that even being on the Super Friends doesn’t make him any less of a badass.

It so happens that some Super Friends (Wonder Woman, Black Vulcan, and Firestorm) are there in disguise to get the Gold Kryptonite themselves for safekeeping, and Darkseid finds them out and catches them, and blah blah blah. Back on Earth, Superman, Batman, and El Dorado discover there’s trouble…well, actually, Darkseid gives them a space-call to tell them 1) he captured the other heroes, and 2) he’s got Gold Kryptonite, instead of just keeping his mouth shut and quietly putting together some kind of secret Gold Kryptonite trap that could catch Supes by surprise. No, he’s got to tell him ahead of time so that the Friends can go chasing after him, whip up a cunning plan to defeat him, and prepare for the fact that he has Gold Kryptonite.

Okay, look, here’s what I would have done if I was Darkseid. First, I’d fire Desaad. I mean, honestly, that guy gives me the creeps. Second, okay, I’d still make the space-call to the Hall of Justice to let the Super Friends know that, hey, I got your pals here, oh my, I guess you’d better come and rescue them. What I wouldn’t do is say, “oh, and by the way, I have the one known piece of Gold Kryptonite, so y’all better plan ahead.” No, I’d wait for Supes, Bats, and, er, El D to show up, let them give me the “Your plans are finished, Darkseid” speech, and when Superman tries to put the cuffs on me, whip out that Gold Kryptonite out from under my lead-lined hat. “What th–!? Gold Kryptonite! I so totally wasn’t expecting that!” Superman would shout, as his powers depart from him forever. And now there’s nothing, nothing to stop me from conquering the universe! Ah HA HA HA!

Er, yeah.

Now this guy, El Dorado:

Okay, I had to grab these stills off of some Youtubed SF footage, and not from the show I watched, so I apologize for the quality. But as I was watching El Dorado in action, it sorta looked like that he had the superpower of having whatever superpower happened to be convenient at that moment. He can read minds, he was able to create armor around himself, and he was able to cast an illusion over Batman, making him look like Superman long enough to fool Darkseid into throwing the whole chunk of Gold Kryptonite at him.

However, El Dorado had the best line in the entire episode, as he summed up Darkseid like so few others have been able to:

“Darkseid is one tricky hombre.”

Yes. Yes, indeed. God bless you and your wisdom, El Dorado.

A couple other things that shouldn’t have surprised me, as I’m pretty sure I was aware of both of these things before, but clearly haven’t thought about them in a while. For example, it was good to hear The Man himself, Adam West, voicing Batman. Even though they had him saying some ridiculous things throughout the course of this story, he can sell a Batman line like nobody else.

Also, looking at the credits, I spotted Geof Darrow’s name…the same Geof Darrow who later brought us Hard Boiled, among others. Hey, if Alex Toth could do it….

I was completely wrong about this, but I swear to you, some of the background aliens in the auctions sequences early in the episode looked like they were drawn by Skip Williamson. That’s one of the reasons I watched the credits so closely. I know, I know, that’s the talk of a madman, but I wish I did have screenshots from this episode to prove that I’m not crazy for thinking so, I’m not.

Just now, I was looking up something else about this episode, and noticed that Rene Auberjonois voiced Desaad. “Clayton, nooooo!”

So anyway, Super Friends. I haven’t sat through an episode of this in years, and this was, in fact, the first time I’d seen an episode from the Darkseid era of the show. And really, Firestorm’s rock-solid ‘n’ unmoving flame-hair was very distracting:

I know it would have been a pain to animate, but c’mon, just look at it. It’s like he’s wearing a blooming flower hat.

But hey, the show was good for some laughs, and even in this somewhat lessened form, Darkseid is still Darkseid. More or less.

So I was doing a little restocking of the Battlestar Galactica back issues, and if I had to see this cover, so do you:

Also, I’m still a little annoyed (just a little, no big whoop) by the closeness of the logos for the comic book based on the original ’70s TV series, and the comic based on the Sci-Fi Channel revival. Here’s the ’70s version:

And here’s the “modern” version:

They’re marginally different, but if you’re going through a bunch of these at once, trying to keep them straight can be mildly problematic, particularly with the occasional cover featuring an unrecognizably-drawn character or two. And this is coming from someone who’s watched both versions of the show…someone else more unfamiliar with the properties would likely find this just a tad more frustrating.

Again, it’s not that big of a deal. Just a minor gripe, really. However, the series based on the original TV show is actually called Classic Battlestar Galactica, according to the indicia inside. We couldn’t get a tiny “c l a s s i c” above the logo or anything?

(And yes, I know the cover illustrations should make it obvious which series is which. But they don’t always…particularly when the old-style Cylons pop up on the covers of the modern-era series.)

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In other news:

• I mentioned on Thursday that nearly all our copies of last Wednesday’s Cable #1 had loose centerfolds. I’ve since heard from a couple other stores that they had bunk copies of Cable #1 as well…along with some other Marvel books from that week. And I’ve noticed a copy or two of the new Clan Destine is a bit iffy as well.

  As long as it was just the one comic with a loose centerfold problem, there was a chance that maybe, just maybe, Marvel might produce replacements. But if it’s more widespread than that, the likelihood that Marvel would essentially reissue a week’s worth of new books is incredibly small. Maybe I’ll be surprised, but I’m not betting on it.

• I was going to cover a couple more points people have brought up about the Watchmen costumes, and just spent about twenty minutes fiddling with what I was going to post, and then I realized that, really, enough’s enough. I think you all know where I’m coming from by now.

  But, I wanted to keep this next part of the post, just to remind everyone that Lynda Carter managed to make even this costume work:

  
  …just through the awesome power of Being Lynda Carter. Huzzah!

Herbie plays, and greets, ball:

from Herbie #7 (Feb. 1965)

BONUS HERBIE FOOTAGE – Herbie flies into action:

from Herbie #8 (Mar. 1965)

Herbie Archives Volume 1 HC:

“Make way for the Fat Fury! The unlikeliest superhero of all time makes his mark in this new Dark Horse archival series.”

[…]

“Herbie Archives Volume One is the first of a new archive series collecting the finest works of 1960s comics publisher ACG.

“Herbie Archives Volume 1 collects the earliest appearances of Herbie, as he battles monsters, bends time and space, and gets the better of Fidel Castro! Herbie is a delightfully weird, all-ages barrel of laughs!”

(Thanks to reader John L. for the tip!)

EDIT: Bill (at Comics Should Be Good) and I are on the exact same wavelength.

Well, since I brought up the other day that I’ve had a devil of a time trying to get any of my customers to buy this at the shop, and that both Dirk and Tom have pointed out this particular retailing failure of mine in their respective weblogs, and that I’ve heard from a couple folks that they can’t find any copies at their shops, I’ve decided to take drastic measures.

So here you go…I have Locke & Key #1 available for sale through our eBay store. Multiple copies available…I’ve only put a few copies up to start with, but I’ll reload if it becomes necessary.

Here’s what the cover looks like:

The publisher has a five-page preview.

And hey, the film rights were just picked up.

Plus, every copy you purchase through our store will be lovingly and carefully hand-packed by yours truly, and prepared to withstand the tender mercies of the postal office.

…

I apologize for the blatant sales pitch, but at least I don’t do this sort of thing too often. You’re all still my pals, right?

Right?

Er, hello?