I spent my Friday at the shop rearranging the toy shelves in the front as well as the shelves of stored toys in the back…cleaning, restocking, shaking my head sadly over the Wetworks action figures.
Anyway, I was pushing a box back onto a shelf, when I noticed it was bumping into something, not allowing me to push it back all the way. I pulled that box out, looked to see what was impeding progress…and found a small cardboard box containing a few mini-comics. Specifically, it contained Wood-Eye #10 and Skulldog Comics #1, both from 1996, published by Full-Frontal Harvey.
I’ve mentioned Full-Frontal Harvey once or twice on this here weblog, but for the folks who don’t remember: FFH was a local mini-comics publishing concern founded by former coworker Rob, centered around the anthology title Wood-Eye (which ran twelve issues). In its four or five year lifespan, about 35 comics under the FFH banner were released, a list of which you can see at this archive of my old website. Featured cartoonists included Rob, of course, as well as myself, Fred Noland, and pal Cully, who was the creator of Skulldog Comics. In fact, Skulldog Comics may be one of my favorite publications from FFH, particularly because of Cully’s fantastic (har har) cover:
That’s Cully’s mighty head busting through the ground. And yes, I’m the one on fire. And that’s a deadly accurate rendition of Fred in the lower left.
The cover for Wood-Eye #10 was, sadly, less impressive…I think Rob and I drew it in about three minutes, and it showed. But the corner box still cracks me up…the box in the original drawing was only about an inch and half tall, and Rob, for whatever reason, drew in a crookedly off-center Eiffel Tower. To fill the empty space, I drew a monster:
We should have just blown that up to full-cover size and used it for the main image. Ah, well.
Actually, looking through my Wood-Eyes and the old site makes me kind of miss those mini-comics days. Maybe a Wood-Eye #13 is in order….
§ March 7th, 2005 § Filed under doom patrol, wood eye Comments Off on “A vague sense of hope.”
Regarding this cartoon I posted earlier today: I swear I’m a well-adjusted, emotionally-stable human being. Just my cartoons are pure evil, I promise. A lot of my comic strips from the Wood-Eye family o’comics digests were very, very dark-humored…why, I’m practically “goth,” I am.
The Doonesbury tribute to Hunter S. Thompson.
Via This is Pop, All The Rage discusses the dropping sales of the current Doom Patrol series and the possibility that its “reboot” of the team will be eventually reverted after the series’ cancellation. The idea noted in the column that this series may be considered to be a “Doom Patrol” TV series within the DC Universe reminds me of how Marvel explained away the stories in the Hulk black and white magazine as movies made by an alien filmmaker. Or how Steve Gerber planned, in this unpublished script, to retcon the Howard the Duck stories he didn’t write.
Like All The Rage, I don’t think DC needs to bother, should things come to this. It doesn’t appear anyone was paying any attention to the team’s rebooted status, anyway, given the throwaway gag in Identity Crisis referring to old DP continuity, not to mention Geoff Johns’ “revamp” of Beast Boy’s origin (which, from my brief glance at the story, just looks like he retold the origin without mentioning the DP’s involvement). In other words, the Doom Patrol’s reboot status has had little or no impact anywhere outside the Doom Patrol title itself, so, you know, big whoop.
There is no official news about cancellation of the title, but sales at least at our store have dropped quite a bit. The first issue sold quite well, but essentially continuing plotlines from the critically-slammed JLA story was a mistake, crippling the comic from the get-go. The book improved shortly after that initial two-parter, but too late to get the readers back, I’m afraid.
An old article about Archie toys that has a nice shot of a vintage action figure. (The possessive version of “it” is “its” – its!)
Reshoots on Fantastic Four planned for later this week. Insert your own joke/snarky comment here.
