Uncategorized

…it occurred to me that I never showed these to you, a couple of Hellboy promo cards a friend of mine picked up for me at the San Diego Comic Con about ten years ago:

They’re blank on the back for autographs and sketches, which my friend also happened to get for me. Hellboy creator Mike Mignola slapped his John Hancock on the back of one card, and on the back of the other, he did this:

Pretty neat, I think.

So this comic came out last week:

…which also happened to be the same week this comic came out:

We sold out of the former. We have yet to sell a single copy of the latter.

The theological implications are staggering.

So there I was, helping a customer track down some back issues, when suddenly he asks me, “So…this is kind of a strange one, but do you have any…Mighty Mites?”

“Do I?” sez I, and I direct the gentleman not to our miscellaneous M section, not to our “black and white indies of the 1980s” section, but, by God, to our honest-to-goodness for real “Mighty Mites” section.

As I was going through these with the customer, I opened up one issue to check on its publication date for him…this issue, Mighty Mites Vol. 2 #2 (September 1987) in fact:

And what do I happen to find within?

A SWAMP THING PARODY I DID NOT PREVIOUSLY KNOW ABOUT:

“Sump Thing” shows up as an antagonist for the Mighty Mites, and along the way there are brief cameos from other stars of the 1980s black and white indie boon…like the Miami Mice, Boris the Bear, Cerebus, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and so on. However, there is an extended guest-appearance by another star of the ’80s scene, who pops in to save the day:

Yup, that’s Mr. Monster, drawn (and presumably dialoged) by Mike Gilbert, and lettered by regular Mr. Monster letterer Ken Bruzenak (and appear courtesy Eclipse Comics…thanks pals!) So that makes appearances of two characters (or parodies of characters) of interest to me that I had not known about for over 20 years. Well, better late than never, I suppose.

Coincidentally enough, the customer bought pretty much every issue except that particular one with the Swamp Thing parody. I swear I didn’t plead with him to not buy it.

Of extra interest to Swamp Thing fans is the included riff on the “battle” Swamp Thing and his allies had with…well, the giant Embodiment of Evil from issue #50. Like Swampy and pals in that issue, the Mites find themselves trapped within Sump Thing’s body, attempting to explain to the creature what its purpose is. Sort of a moot point, since (SPOILER) Sump Thing gets totally smoked by Mr. Monster’s big guns.

Yours truly, unshaven, in his red shirt, with his Red Lantern ring, taking pictures of old Star Wars action figures from the backroom using his makeshift “art studio” (two magazine boxes arranged to make a white background).

This is how the eBay magic happens, people.

(Photo by Employee Aaron, who will pay for this someday.)

At long, long last, the entire “Metamorphosis Odyssey,” Jim Starlin’s serialized space opera from the early issues of Epic Illustrated, is now under one cover. Well, it had been reprinted before, but…um, not very well, shall we say, and let’s leave it at that. But this version includes the color on the pages that originally were in color, and hasn’t also been relettered with extra typos, so there you go.

“Metamorphosis Odyssey” was one of my favorite stories as a teenaged Mikester…a sprawling space adventure with lots of oddball characters and a slightly whacked-out cosmic plot and with a solution to the heroes’ problems that is, perhaps, a tad on the extreme side. (You can read the plot summary here if you want to know what I’m talking about.) Anyway, it’s nice to have it all under one cover, since I’m too lazy to dig out the Epics whenever I want to reread it.

The book also includes the two graphic novels The Price (introducing Dreadstar supporting character Syzygy Darklock) and Dreadstar, as well as the one-off story from a later Epic introducing Willow. The stories are as they originally appeared…any black and white pages in the stories aren’t colorized, and The Price is the original version, not the slightly censored version that appeared in Dreadstar Annual #1. Yes, that means there’s no smoke obscuring your cat-god penis, in case you were concerned. And I know you were.

I keep hoping Starlin will return to the Dreadstar universe someday, if only just to wrap the whole thing up once and for all, but in the meantime, I’m glad I finally was able to get a collection of that serial. And to think the only reason I got into Dreadstar in the first place was because Berni(e) Wrightson did a back-up story in issue #6, causing me to pick it up, and I ended up enjoying the lead story as well.

Oh, and someone tell Dynamite it’s “Vanth Dreadstar,” not “Vance” — easy enough mistake to make, but still.

• • •
In other news:

• Matt Digges tells his side of the story re: Free Comic Book Day. Includes a comic strip!
• As I originally noted here, some of my fellow Bureau Chiefs, the folks what are behind Fake AP Stylebook, went to a conference in Massachusetts, and Dave and Andrew were Bad Enough Dudes to bring back photos and reports of their experiences.
• Who gets the chicks? Hank McCoy gets the chicks. And how.

…because he’s been busy with things and, you know, stuff. As such, I’m calling a “time out” for today, and will instead suggest you go read Max Huffman’s Mocktopus Comics, because they’re fantastic. This one is still my favorite. Plus, the kid’s only, like, sixteen years old. When I was sixteen, I was still trying to work out “left” and “your other left.”

Anyway, go read his comic, and also feel free to berate me for my laziness in the comments section here.

So Ken Lowery and Mark Hale, creators of Fake AP Stylebook, will be appearing at ROFLCon II in Cambridge, MA this weekend, on Saturday afternoon from 3:30 to 5 PM. Other members of The Bureau Chiefs will be in attendance…sadly, not me, as Massachusetts won’t have me back after, you know, that one thing.

But I am making my presence felt there, anyway, as I, along with a few other Chiefs, “guest-edited” several columns for the Weekly Dig, a local indie paper. And by “guest-edited,” I mean “inspired the several pages of readers’ hate mail and editors’ apologies in the next issue.”

So, please, enjoy! And if you’re in the area, go say “hi” to Mark and Ken for me.

SNOOPY, NO

NOT THE EXTRANEOUS APOSTROPHE

from The Complete Peanuts 1973-1974

So we picked all these up from a local yard sale…a bunch of JFK memorial photo mags published in 1964 which are all surprisingly in reasonably good shape:

In Memoriam has a full-color centerspread “pin up” of Jackie Kennedy, which seems a little odd, considering. Also, not sure why the Four Dark Days mag above is pictured in the corner of the In Memoriam cover, since the two appear to have different publishers. (Unless of course they are from the same publisher, using two different names and addresses.

This “Federal City” one is a mix of pages regarding the life and assassination of Kennedy, with a photo tour guide of sites of note around Washington, DC.

This next one was published in 1965: Article of note: “What The Stars Say about Bobby’s Presidential Hopes.” And not “stars” as in “Gina Lollobrigida” — I mean, and I quote:

“A wry sense of humor is suggested by the position of Venus in Capricorn near the mid-heaven, favored by a conjunction with Jupiter.”

This is all very depressing.

image from Super Powers Collection: Parademons (1984)

I could use a Tower of Rage. It’d be a nice trade-up from my current Bathroom of Annoyance.