Also, Superman should still be able to push around the bones and muscles in his face to disguise himself, like he did in the Golden Age.

filed under Categories batman, superman, this week's comics 6 Comments

[SPOILERS AHEAD]


The new Superman Red and Blue 2025 Special was certainly a welcome arrival this week, given the Red and Blue mini-series from a couple of years back was about 95% great (there’s that unpleasant story in the first issue where Superman is captured and tortured, which does not sit well).

This special has four stories presented in the limited palette gimmick, each tale colored with only shades of red and blue and somehow manages to look great anyway. The story I specifically want to note is “Out of the Ordinary” written by Dan Abnett, drawn by Caitlin Yarsky, and colored by Alex Guimaraes. And just so I’m clear, I liked this entire comic, and I enjoyed seeing Superman doing super things and being nice without having to worry about the continuity of the DC Universe at large.

And I liked “Out of the Ordinary.” But I did get stopped short at one point when Superman just up and admits to this small town reporter he befriends that, oh, yeah, I have a secret identity. Here’s a little piece of that:


Now here’s the problem. It’s me, I’m the guy who’s been reading Superman comics since the John Byrne relaunch in 1986 and have picked up every issue of Superman and Action and the other ongoings. That’s spitting distance within 40 years, which clearly no sane person should have done.

Stuck in my head from the promotion for the ’80s Superman relaunch was Byrne’s insistence that in this new version of the mythos, the fact that Superman even has a double identity wouldn’t be common knowledge. You can read more about that here. Prior to this, Superman having a secret identity was known by the general public, and often a major plot point as bad guys (or Lois) try to get Supes to spill the beans or trick him into revealing it.

That little bit of knowledge is always there, whenever I read a modern Superman comic, whether or not it’s still an active thing or if it’s gone the way of the fancy cuffs that were the last remnants of Jim Lee’s terrible redesign of Supes’ costume. Realistically, I know in the nearly four decades since the relaunch happened, some storytelling choice made way back when, by someone who doesn’t even work in comics anymore, is not going to be enforced.

But that didn’t keep your pal Mike from being tripped up by Superman telling this young lady “oh, yeah, I grew up in a place like this, and I have a regular job when I’m not Superman, etc.” Then again, he was just telling one person, not, like, announcing it on TV or anything. And she probably knows “oh, yeah, I should keep this to myself.”

I am reminded by that story where Jimmy Olsen gets a photo of Superman’s hand, showing a wedding ring (which he neglected to remove before going into action, as he usually would). After some shenanigans regarding that photo getting out to the public, and getting explained away as a Justice League thing, Superman does confide to Jimmy that he is married, but his private life is private. And Jimmy, being Superman’s Pal, of course keeps that under his hat.

Okay, that’s a lot of typing that’s basically “Mike can’t let things go,” but I do want to add this story is still a fun and pleasant one. As are all the stories in this comic.

• • •


Normally, in current comics, especially with the limited page counts and occasionally sparse storytelling, I can find myself resenting any full-page illustrations, or God help us, two-page spreads that aren’t the opening splash pages. That usually just feels like wasted space, eating up valuable real estate.

Daniel Warren Johnson’s story in Absolute Batman Annual #1 delivers multiple full-page splashes and two two-page spreads, and they are earned and fantastic.

I make my own page terrible with these two mighty human hands.

filed under Categories Uncategorized 15 Comments

So despite having promised “no A.I. on this site, no intelligence of any kind on this site,” here I am discussing a little A.I. stuff with you. But it’s stuff that was inflicted on me, not anything I created to, I don’t know, save time by making my page terrible.

But anyhoo, I was searching for something regarding my site on the increasingly aggravating Google, which threw up (I mean that almost literally) one of its A.I. “summaries” or “hallucinations,” whichever more closely applies, that included this statement about this webpage’s name, “Mike Sterling’s Progressive Ruin.”


Leaving aside the awkward hyphenation of the word “modern,” I am here to say “Mike Sterling’s Progressive Ruin” refers to neither of those things. Especially that last bit, which makes me sound like one of those weepy whiners who gets all aggro because Thor is a woman for a couple of years. Or because anything in comics is a woman. Or not white. Or not straight.

Okay, enough scolding, back to the site’s title. “Mike Sterling’s Progressive Ruin” is something of a self-effacing, dark-humored gag. As revealed waaaaaaay back in my first year anniversary post, when I was sure I’d probably only be doing this comics blog thing for another couple of years or so, I said

“…Well, it’s a reference to the fact that…um, well, I’m going to grow older, my body is going to weaken, my cognitive faculties will dull, and I’m eventually going to die…and as such, any record of my actions and experiences, such as through a collection of comic strips I’ve drawn, or posts on a weblog, can be seen as a document of that steady decline. Or, if you will, of my progressing ruin.”

I was only 35 years old (I think) when I wrote that. Ah, I had no idea how much my body would fail me in the future, especially my eyeballs.

That’s enough of that. I’m tempted to continue generating Google A.I. results about my site to see what else they got wrong, but I don’t want to, like, dry up Lake Michigan or whatever.

• • •

I thought I was done with the posts about licensed comics from last week, but I’ve got a few straggling questions if you don’t mind me answering.

This first one isn’t a question, I just wanted to point out Pete’s extensive coverage in my comments about the ALF comics, which I somehow neglected. He does a good job, and you should give it a read.

Here’s something from JesusWasBatman (hold on, changing my religion) who adds this bit of trivia about a licensed book:

“In terms of similarity to the source material, there’s the story about the “Seaquest DSV” comic that was cancelled after one issue, because the lead actor Roy Scheider thought it had been excessively violent and action-oriented, and withdrew permission to use his likeness.”

Now, I remember knowing this at the time it happened, but I couldn’t tell you where this information came from. Not like “if I told you I’d have to kill you” (which wouldn’t work, you’d just roll back the giant penny from the mouth of the Batcave on the third day and come out good as new), but as in “I have no idea how I knew this.”

I figure I must have caught an interview or an announcement from Diamond or some darn thing. This SeqQuest fan page here has a quote from the comic’s writer as to what happened, and it jibes perfectly with what you said.

Sean brings up the fact that the Dell/Gold Key/Whitman melange was/were pretty much the king/kings of licensed books, which I think I only barely touched upon by mentioning the Duck comics. But they did…well, pretty much everything. And most of what they put out was…close enough, I suppose. (Folks bring up the Star Trek comics from this period, where the creative teams often had to work from stills and scripts and did the best they can with varying results.) I’m not going to be able to cover this/these companies in a small paragraph, or even Charlton too, so we’ll see about doing a post on this in the future.

And just so Daniel T doesn’t think I forgot about him:

“Mike, how do you think the DC Star Trek books would work for someone who’s not really into Star Trek? I’ve always been kind of vaguely interested in them because of the talent involved.

“(My experience of ST is I’ve seen the first four movies and First Contact. If I’ve seen an episode of TOS I was too young to remember it. I’ve seen one episode of TNG, one of Voyager and one of Discovery.)”

If that’s the Trek you’ve been exposed to, when the original DC series (the only started by Mike W. Barr and Tom Sutton) will probbably be your best bet. Keep in mind that one of the early multi-issue storylines involves the Mirror Universe, an alternate universe where evil duplicates of our crew lives, that basically functions as a follow-up to an episode of the original series.

But there are many stories in the run that don’t depend on much deeper knowledge that whatever you may have gleaned from the films, so you’ll do fine. And when you get to that point in the reading, there are comic book adaptations of films 5 and 6 you can read, too! (But honestly, just watch ’em…5 is better than its reputation would have you believe, and 6 is a fun send-off for that portion of the franchise.)

• • •

Thanks as usual for all the great comments, and we’ll see what we can get up to on Wednesday that isn’t part five of this series of posts!

Three whole posts on this topic and I forgot to even bring up ALF.

filed under Categories publishing, question time 12 Comments

Okay, one more brief post on Alistair’s question regarding licensed comics and the relationship between “official-ness” and fan acceptance. (Here’s post #1 and post #2.)

First off, Chris V has some several points to make about the various iterations of the X-Files comic, and I can’t really argue with any of it, so I’m just going to direct you there.

I’d written about the X-Files comics before (here and here…and look, there’s Chris V again in that second link!) As I recall, at the old shop we drastically underestimated the popularity of the first X-Files comic from Topps, so we were caught flat-footed by the demand for it…hence the proliferation of reprints and the then-soaring prices, long since dissipated, in the collectors’ market.

Also in that second link, the one with the ubiquitous Chris V, I touch upon the topic currently at hand, whether a licensed comic performs better if it’s explicitly part of official continuity. That post sorta supports Chris V’s comment from my Wednesday entry, in which he suggests that the X-Files comics were better off when they didn’t tie into the shows themselves. Of course, the example I’m using is the actual adaptations of episodes Topps produced, and Chris V also provides all the extenuating circumstances as to why sales where how they are.

Now, onto the stuff I wanted to mention today, which I’ll keep brief: licensed comic books based on animated cartoons/movies. For these, it would seem that fidelity of the tie-in to the original, at least visually, would be paramount. Or, at least close enough given the stylistic flourishes of the artists involved.

For example, I mentioned the other day that early in the production of Simpsons comics, there was one where the artwork was just…askew a little bit, and off-putting. Someone was attempting the house style, got close, but not close enough, and it made the book hard to look at.

Now, eventually we would see some artistic variety in the Simpsons comics, particularly in the Treehouse of Horror anthologies (where just about anything goes) or with Sergio Aragaones’ various contributions. Those, of course, aren’t off-putting…those are artists just drawing the Simpsons characters in their own way, adapting the house style to their own. So…drawn perfectly: Yes. drawn just shy of perfectly: No. Drawn in a completely different art style by a talented artist but still recognizably Simpsons? Yes again.

But otherwise…the art is the (relaively speaking) easy part. Either it looks like what it’s adapting or it’s not. But the stories….

To be fair, I’m sure in most cases, for all licensed comics, someone representing the owner of the license is keeping an eye out, making sure Finn doesn’t behead the Ice King or something. So it’s really up to the reader…”does this comic book based on an animated presentation rightfully represent the original work?”

There are lots of changes from screen to page at times. Like, the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote are suddenly very talkative in the comics, and Mr. Runner, who speaks in rhyme, apparently has three…sons? Nephews? Something like that. But it all still feels like the Road Runner somehow.

Tom and Jerry, that cat ‘n’ mouse duo, also find their voices in the comics…and it didn’t seem to bother anyone there since the comic ran for nearly 350 issues over several decades.

Let’s not forget the Disney comics, taking characters primarily known for comedic short films and putting them into lengthy adventure stories. (Maybe I’m forgetting a cartoon where, I don’t know, Goofy climbs the forbidden mountains and finds the Old Gods, but I think you get what I mean.)

And there are plenty of comics over the years where they seem to jibe with the source just fine. Adventure Time, Teen Titans Go, Ren and Stimpy Show more or less, I particularly liked that last one, least until the whole thing was tainted by the creator’s issues.

There’s also that new breed of licensed children comics, the Serious Adventure Take, which…well, okay, for a nominally sci-fi adventure like Thundercats, sure, but Your Mileage May Vary when the same is done to Space Ghost. (Which, I should mention, is very popular at my shop, and getting good notice, and I’m not trying to disparage it…just commenting on the distance between the mild camp of the cartoons and the current interpretation.)

End result is that things are a little less cut ‘n’ dried when it comes to the licensed animation comics. Completely faithful versions and new updated versions (Mark Russell’s Flintstones, anyone?) rise and fall on their own merits, regardless of fidelity to the property.

This was a quick overview, for which I apologize…got a late start Thursday evening. However, you’re welcome to contribute in the comments sections, as always, and maybe I can do a follow-up post in the near future. Thanks for reading, pals, and thanks to Alistair for the great questions!

I didn’t even mention Peter David wrote some of those DC Trek comics.

filed under Categories question time 7 Comments

I may have done my answer to Alistair last time a slight disservice. But first, let me get out of the way that my light joshing of the length of Alistair’s question was not intended as a critique, but more a way of poking a little fun at my own predilection for excessive typing — a gag that perhaps may have fallen flat. But I think anyone who’s read my site for any length of time knows that there was no danger of me not outstripping the word count of Alistair’s query.

But at any rate, Alistair had asked about comic books based on licensed properties, and my favorites thereof, and my answers at the end were mostly adaptations of specific films (like Close Encounters of the Third Kind) rather than ongoing series with continuing adventures based on various licenses (like Marvel’s initial Star Wars, which I’d mentioned).

Now I know I’m splitting hairs here that maybe only I can see, but given that Alistair’s initial question was about the faithfulness of (inferred) ongoing series based on said properties, I think I should have focused more on those ongoing series versus the direct film/TV show adaptations. Faithfulness in a specific translation of a film/episode to a comic should be slightly more expected, but the real trick is when the creators of the comics go off on their own taking inspiration from the licenses.

As such, let me note a couple of comic book series based on licensed properties that I enjoyed.

DC’s Star Trek, right from where they first got the rights in the ’80s, and up almost through the end in the ’90s. I got a little burnt out on these comics as their conclusion loomed, and while I did like the Next Generation comics too, I can happily skip over the introductory mini for it.

But likenesses were generally good, stories where very much in line with what you could potentially see in Trek live action (if said TV/movie Trek had an unlimited budget). About ten years ago I did write a bit about DC’s first Star Trek series about a decade ago, talking about how the comic cleverly dealt with Spock’s status quo between films III and IV.

Now there were plenty of Trek comics before and since…I never read much of the original Marvel run, or any of the Marvel books when they got the license back post-DC, and the original Gold Key comics I have read here and there, and it can be a real mixed bag. Every once in a while I’ll dip into IDW’s current Trek line if a story sounds interested, but the only one I read consistently is Lower Decks, which is of course great.

But those DC Treks…those are still some of my favorites. They absolutely felt like part of the same universe (most of the time, there’s a clunker or two). If you haven’t read them, they’re well worth tracking down.

DC’s Welcome Back, Kotter series had solid, easily-identifiable caricatures of the cast, stories that…well, were maybe a little outside the range of what you’d see on the show (I mean, there’s an elephant in this story), but Mark Evanier, who also worked on the show, was a contributing writer here as well. And hey, putting the characters in situations you wouldn’t necessarily see the actual actors do onscreen could have been a good selling point!

I’m cheating with this one a little, but I’ve unfortunately only read a very few of these Marvel mags, long ago, so I can’t say as to how well the human characters from the films translated to the page, if any did at all. But by golly, and the apes, chimpanzees, and orangutans looked the way they should, and that was good enough for me.

Oh, wait, I forgot I talked about Marvel’s color Apes comic, which reprinted from these magazines. It may have been short on exact likenesses, but it was definitely long on butts.

Now I haven’t cracked a cover on one of these since the comic ended, but I read ’em all so I must have liked them. Carmine Infantino (of Star Wars and probably some other comics fame) drew these, and as such everyone looked like Infantino characters…which isn’t a bad thing, don’t get me wrong! You knew who everyone was supposed to be, like I said about his work on Star Wars last time, and therefore he worked out fine.

I do not remember the timing of the comics vis-à-vis the mini-series or the TV series, so I don’t know how closely they tied in to events in those shows. None of these comics were direct adaptations of any of the live-action releases that I recall. I do want to direct you to the Comics Database so you can see how DC handled having a giant “V” on the front cover of each issue. Actually looks pretty striking.

• • •

Now my list here just covered comics based on live-action properties. I didn’t cover the translations-to-page of toys, cartoons, that sort of thing. The matter of “faithfulness” applies here as well, though one wonders if you can really just how closely the Team America or ROM Space Knight comics hew to their origins, and if any points of departure actually matter.

Plus, I do recall one early comic in the Simpsons line that was just barely on the wrong side of having a professional art job, and being just that little bit off was enough to make the whole thing unreadable. So, you know, there’s probably room for discussion here too.

But not in this entry…perhaps more on Friday? See, Alistair, by comparison to my answers, your question isn’t long at all!

“Long in the tooth,” get it.

filed under Categories publishing, question time, star trek, star wars 5 Comments

Alistair asks a question that may be longer than my potential answer…let’s see how I do!

“In your experience as a retailer, do you think the success of licensed comics which aren’t aimed at very young kids tends to depend on how closely they connect to their source material? For example, did the Dark Horse Buffy comics become more popular when they started doing an official continuation from the show with contributions by Whedon and the other television writers, versus the ones that came out while the show was ongoing which Whedon had kept at arms length?”

Some sort of close kinship with the source material is usually preferred when it comes to licensed properties. You didn’t mention the art specifically, Alistair, but one of the things that would turn people off from adaptations of movies or television shows is artwork where the drawn characters don’t look at least within reasonable spitting distance of the actors. On the other hand, a comic that looked like it was all traced from photo reference would be a turn-off as well, a weird sort of “uncanny valley” for comics.

That sounds like a…fine line to walk, but in practice there’s more room to breathe for artists on these adaptations, so long as they’re, as I said, reasonably accurate, and consistent, it’s all good. I was reading one particular series based on a sci-fi property, and had to drop it because eventually I couldn’t recognize many of the characters. Not “the comic’s plot changed everybody around,” but “these characters in the comics are supposed to be those characters from the TV show/movies, but unless they’re referred to by name in the dialogue, they’re unrecognizable.”

I get that it’s probably a difficult job to do, making these caricatures of real people “act” on a page while keeping them identifiable as those performers. But that has to be the minimum level of what is acceptable for comics like this.

Okay, that was a lengthy aside to Alistair’s question. What’s being asked here is “does a comic get a boost from being promoted as an “official” continuation of the source material?” And the answer is…not always, but it doesn’t hurt.

In the case of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the Buffy comics had been going on a bit, and were getting to be a little long in the tooth. Sales had been relatively strong at first, but the novelty had worn off as time went on. The “Season 8” series was in effect a relaunch of the comics property, with the added value of show creator’s Joss Whedon’s involvement. Heavily promoted as the actual, real continuation of the TV series, backed up with Whedon’s presence, the Buffy comics got a real shot in the arm that lasted for years ’til the franchise sort of petered out again.

So, in a way, in this case at least, being the “official continuation of the show” did attract a lot of attention. The promotion, the creator’s involvement, the timing of reinvigorating the license right when it needed it…all came together to make a successful relaunch.

Other “Season [n]” comics were released in the wake of Buffy Season 8’s success, including Smallville Season 11 and X-Files Season 10 (and evenually, 11). Didn’t make quite the big splashes the Buffy seasons did, but they had their fans.

“I wonder if that’s why one hears so much more about, say, Star Wars comics versus Star Trek comics: it’s always been the case that the former are an ‘official’ part of Star Wars, part of the ‘official’ what-happened-next stories (along with all the games, novels etc.) whereas with Star Trek comics it’s a lot more nebulous.”

Yeah, early on as the Star Wars Expanded Universe was in its infancy, someone decided “all these tie-ins are going to be consistent with each other,” and for the most part, they were. That first novel of this new era, Heir to the Empire, contained references to events in Dark Horse’s first mini Star Wars: Dark Empire, and given the book probably had an audience many times the size of the comic, there are probably fans who still don’t know what the deal was with all that. (Unless they looked it all up on Wookiepedia or whatever.)

And Star Trek, by contrast, was just kinda all over the place, not adhering to any particular thread of continuity. Nobody in a Star Trek: Discovery comic book is referencing events from, I don’t know, the 1982 Adobe of Life Trek novel by G. Harry Stine writing as “Lee Correy.” (One exception: Lower Decks would absolutely refer to a 40-year-old Trek book.) There were tie-ins to movies and TV that were “official” parts of those stories, like Star Trek: Countdown (a prequel to the 2009 film), and a Picard comic that tied into the series, which received a little bit of attention, anyway.

I don’t know how much being part of “official” continuity is helping the Star Wars comics. The initial burst of sales on those coincided with Marvel’s reacquiring of the license and their sales push for the new launch. That they’re consistent with other Star Wars media may be a plus, but at this point that level of consistency may be expected from the franchise, or may simply be taken for granted and not singled out at all as part of the appeal of the comics.

But here’s the thing: being part of “official continuity” ultimately doesn’t make any difference. I believe it was the Star Wars folks who came up with the levels of “canon” to the material they were releasing. The movies were the immutable, absolute story of the Star Wars universe. The books and comics and such, while kept consistent with the films, the films were not beholden to anything in them (despite occasionally borrowing names and characters). And then there’s the stuff like the Holiday Special which goes to the Star Wars canon-level where only the amazing stuff happens.

Now, I don’t know if those rankings are still in play, but I think it’s still safe to assume that the movies (and presumably, the live-action TV shows) are under no obligation to maintain continuity with the books and comics, but the books and comics are absolutely required to be in continuity with the movies and TV shows. (And there’s stuff like the Clone Wars cartoon, which I presume is mostly canon, but I’ve already got a headache talking about all this.)

In short, “official” just means “we don’t contradict anything from what we’re adapting,” even those that official status could be bounced at any time. It helps a little as a sales point, and it helped a lot in that initial Buffy Season 8 thing (partially because they were one of the first out of the gate with that pitch), but it doesn’t really seem as necessary now.

And none of what I discussed really gets into comics for, like, Predator or Alien and the like, as those tend to run more episodic and self-contained. (Those the early Dark Horse Aliens comics had an ongoing continuity in some of their early releases…thrown off by events when the Alien 3 movie came out.)

“If that’s not really a straightforward question to answer, I will instead ask in the alternative: do you have any favourite licensed comics?”

I’m going to go ahead and answer this, too, since you asked so nicely. I still have a soft spot for the first three or four years’ worth of the original Marvel Star Wars that began in the 1970s. Some wild somewhat off-model but still amazing Carmine Infantino art in some of those…that’s a good example of actor likenesses not being spot-on but everyone still being instantly recognizable.

I also love the treasury-sized Close Encounters of the Third Kind adaptation from Marvel, drawn by Walt Simonson. I think this was a case where they weren’t allowed to use the actors’ likenesses, but you don’t even notice.

Also drawn by Simonson is the adaptation of the original Alien film. There are few perfect things in this fallen world, but this is one of them (well, aside from the binding).

And how can any discussion of licensed books be complete without noting the greatest of all time:

Sheer madness from Steve Bissette and Rick Veitch. I love this comic. Get your hands on one if you can, because it’s pure joy.

And his middle name is “Midas,” which came even later, don’t get me started on that.

filed under Categories undergrounds 11 Comments

So in 1971, the following two issues of the underground comic Air Pirates Funnies were released:


And as you can probably see, these comics are heavy on Disney parody, and being undergrounds, they’re especially heavy on the, shall we say, more adult elements.

As you might imagine, the Walt Disney Company was…unamused, and lawsuits were filed, and court cases were held, and anyway you can read all about that on the Wikipedia page. But the upshot of all of it is that Air Pirates Funnies is very out of print and legally will stay that way.

Or…will it?

A thought occurred to me when I was talking to pal Brook about this comic, that Mickey Mouse, at least the first year version of him, is now public domain. And that got me to wondering…when do the other Disney characters used in Air Pirates Funnies enter the public domain?

Now, I don’t own copies of these, unfortunately, so I’m depending on the Grand Comics Database entries and whatever I’m catching in the issues they have on the Internet Archive to get all the Disney characters used.

Now this is a pretty wide spread of characters, so anybody I may have missed probably fit in this range anyway, but let me know if I missed someone important.

If I may also note, I AM NOT A COPYRIGHT LAWYER OR EXPERT. I’m simply basing these numbers on the “enters public domain after 95 years” calculation. If there are other circumstances at play here that would affect PD status, I do not know them.

So, here we go:

Mickey Mouse – first appeared in 1928, entered public domain in 2024

Minnie Mouse – first appeared in 1928, entered public domain in 2024

Goofy – first appeared in 1932 as “Dippy Dawg,” then known as “Goofy” by 1934. Enters the public domain as Dippy in 2028, as Goofy in 2030

Zeke Wolf AKA Big Bad Wolf – first appeared in 1933 as The Big Bad Wolf, gains the name “Zeke” in 1946. Enters the public domain in 2029 as Big Bad Wolf, and as Zeke in 2042

Three Little Pigs – first appeared in 1933, enters the public domain in 2029

Phantom Blot – first appeared in 1939, enters the public domain in 2035

Pete – first appeared in 1925, entered the public domain in 2021

Sylvester Shyster – first appeared in 1930, enters the public domain in 2026

Chief O’Hara (no, not that one) – first appeared in 1939, enters the public domain in 2035

Horace Horsecollar – first appeared in 1929, entered public domain in 2025

There are of course some caveats, as what is entering the public domain is the version from that year…later depictions of, say, Horace, aren’t public domain yet, just how he looked in 1929. And as you see in the Goofy entry, the Dippy Dawg version precedes the Goofy name by a couple of years.

The real sticking point here is Zeke Wolf, who is referred to by that name in the Air Pirates comics. While his character first shows up in a Disney production in 1933, his actual first name doesn’t appear ’til well over a decade later. Thus, the earliest that all the Disney characters in Air Pirates Funnies are public domain, making this comic safe(?) to reprint, is 2042, unless they carefully excise each occurrence of the name “Zeke” in the stories.

If 2042 is the potential date for a reprinting, then by that time later versions of the other characters would have entered the public domain as well. Even if they do edit out the “Zeke” usage and get the reprints out in 2036 (when the Phantom Blot enters the public domain), I think it’s likely okay. The Disney parodies are mostly based on the Floyd Gottfredson newspaper strips, and those versions of the characters would, I think, be mostly public domain by the mid 2030s.

I know, I know, I’m talking about this like it’s a sure thing, that someone will do it and risk the Giant Burning Eye of Disney shifting its baleful gaze upon them. But Erik Larsen got was with Mickey and Minnie in some recent-ish issues of Savage Dragon where Mickey performed some Not Corporately-Approved Shenanigans, and far as I know Disney hasn’t crushed Larsen beneath a truckload of cease-and-desists.

But I think it’s important for the study of parody and copyright law and our legal system, and a good book reprinting the comics with plenty of historical context and interviews would be of immense value to the comics industry, and to anyone else working in satire and parody.

I mean, any Mike, doesn’t have to be me.

filed under Categories how the sausage is made, pal plugging, podcast, swamp thing 6 Comments

I apologize for missing my usual Monday update, and even not managing to get one available a day late for Tuesday. Most of you know my primary blogging time is late at night, after the day’s duties are done, and before go into my beauty sleep that still isn’t working. Unfortunately, the last few days I’ve been just too tired to Generate The Content™ that you’ve come to depend on here, the Internet’s Only Comic Book Website.

So now that I’m back, first let me tell you that I’m sorry that I keep identifying the artist of this proposed original cover for Swamp Thing #88:


…as the late Michael Zulli, but it is in fact by Rick Veitch, which I promise I knew, once, but somehow Zulli’s name got into my head, and there you go. Thanks to BobH for giving me a virtual punch in the arm to straighten me out.

And more Swamp Thing news out of the New York Comic Con from last weekend…DC Comics is teaming up with Boom! Studios for a comic pairing up our favorite muck-encrusted mockery of a man with the still-ongoing suspense/horror series Something Is Killing the Children, in a comic that could only be titled


Well, sure, why not. Also, Something Is Killing the Children has been going on for, like, 50 issues now, shouldn’t they have figured out what that “something” is by now? Sorry, haven’t read the series, no idea what’s going on in there.

But sure, I’ll read this new series, due out next year sometime, and who knows, maybe I’ll find myself hooked on the original SIKTC story. Yes, that’s how it’s abbreviated, that’s not a misspelling of the sound effect you get when Wolverine pops his claws.

What the Swamp Thing Is Killing the Children title reminds me of is that “If you see Swamp Thing, say Swamp Thing” faux poster that seemed like it was all over the internet a couple or four years back, and now all I can find is this Pinterest link.

Oh, and there’s also this fun announcement video for the Swamp Thing Is Killing… comic that you can see on the Instagrams.

• • •

Oh, hey, I’m still helping out the Longbox Heroes podcast boys with their monthly Previewing the Past show, in which they scour the 30 year old Previews (and other distributor) catalogs and deliver informative and funny commentary. I’m not on the podcast, but I write out my own notes and observations that they read out on the show.

Anyway, a new episode of Previewing the Past just came out, but its behind the Patreon paywall…pay $5 a month and get it right away, or pay just $1 and get it two weeks later. They’ve got plenty of podcasts to listen to, some free, some Patreon only, all worth listening to. Let ’em know Mike sent you.

If anything, the Zulli cover they’re using is even more upsetting.

filed under Categories swamp thing 13 Comments

Okay, gang, the announcement has finally been…um, announced, so I can tell you all that the original conclusion for Rick Veitch’s Swamp Thing run, originally slated for release in 1989, is now going to be unleashed upon the world early next year!

It will continue the original numbering (issues #88 through #91), and will feature the original trade dress (i.e. the classic Swamp Thing logo).

However, unless there’s, like, a 1 in 25 ratio, or 1 in 100 ratio, variant that they’re hiding, it appears they may not be using Michael Zulli’s Veitch’s original cover for #88, the issue in which Swamp Thing encounters Jesus:


Based on the promotional material shown at the New York Comic Con on Thursday (which is why these pics are a bit askew, as I trimmed the covers from the whole slides), the main cover will be this also-symbolic Veitch image of Swamp Thing holding a lamb:


And the variant (or one of the variants, we know how this goes) by Zulli features a close-up of Swamp Thing’s face, chest and shoulders, adorned with a crown of thorns, the crucified bits all tastefully off-panel:


I am disappointed that the “cross” cover doesn’t appear to be the primary one, if it’s a cover at all, but I guess DC is trying to play it at least a little safe given, you know, [waves hands about at everything].

At any rate, I was reading Swamp Thing at the time and was aware of all this going down, and how disappointed I was that DC put Veitch in a position where he felt he had to leave the title. You know, folks wondered, when Alan Moore left the book, who could possibly replace him? And, amazingly, by getting Veitch, they stuck the landing. He was absolutely the right person. And even though it’s taken quite a while, it’s nice that he finally gets to put the proper end onto his story.

Just a little peek at what was goin’ on 26 years ago.

filed under Categories retailing 10 Comments


So I had a few Diamond Comics retailer informational thingies sitting around, back in the days when Diamond would produce a thick color monthly mag and a weekly black and white multipage newsletter.

One of the things you’d see in the newsletter, Diamond Dateline, are listings of the top reordered items. And this particular issue I’m looking at, from December 1st, 1999, includes the chart of the top reordered comic books that’s at the top of this post.

(And yes, there is a “top reorders by retail” that orders entries by the cumulative total cost of each reordered item.)

I don’t know that there are a lot of surprises on that list. Tomb Raider is kind of one, given the recent years spent as mostly a nostalgia brand, getting dragged back into the spotlight with new video games and media adaptations every once in a while. But one forgets that in 1999, the franchise was still a popular one, and thus retailers scrambling for more copies at the time begins to make sense.

The X-Men titles’ presence on the reorder list also comes as bit of a surprise, as I don’t recall sales fluctuating a whole lot on these then. The X-titles sell as the X-titles sell, with rarely much of a change. But looking at X-Men #96 we see it’s apparently part of some storyline involving the villain Apocalypse, and also Alan Davis drew it, so that may have goosed orders a bit. The Uncanny here is part of the storyline, so demand for that probably caught retailers off-guard a little as well. (Also applies to Cable #75 and X-Men Unlimited #25, the latter of which didn’t even note on the cover that it was a part of the crossover.)

That Batman: War on Crime book is one of those oversized Alex Ross productions. This is not a shock that demand for the book would have outstripped retailers’ initial orders, given the unusual format and how most retailers probably order conservatively on paperbacks. That said, the Superman one was just the year before, so maybe folks should’ve been able to estimate the number of needed books a little more clearly, but ah well….

I’d totally forgotten about M Rex, so it’s weird to see it here, at one point a Top Ten reordered comic book in the country. Probably stories putting all the Image Comics money into Tomb Raider #1 and forgetting about the other titles for the month.

Danger Girl is no surprise…mostly forgotten now, except by the occasional hopeful holdout, but it was red hot at the time and the cliché of “printing money” seemed to apply very thoroughly to this specific comic. I wonder if those reorders were even filled at the time…I imagine leftover stock didn’t last very long.

Steampunk: Catechism was a one-shot lead-in to the ongoing (at least for a bit) Steampunk series, a comic that I mostly recall for customers asking me “yeah, what’s all this about?” The art was nice, though, and based on the reorders on this initial installment there was a large amount of anticipation for what was to come.

A legion of comics.

filed under Categories legion of super-heroes, question time 17 Comments

DavidG asks what he probably thought would be an easy question for me to answer

“There’s now about eleventy million versions of the Legion. My list of them in order of appearance below, yours may vary. How would you rank them and why?

“OG
Five years later/no Superboy
Archie legion
Threeboot
Retro boot
Bendis boot”

Now I gotta be honest, it too me a second to puzzle out what eras a couple of those were referencing. For example, I’d never heard the term “Archie Legion” before…shockingly, as it turns out, when I looked it up and it seems to be in common usage in referring to this particular era. More on that when I get to it.

Anyway, I’m going to address these general eras in order, staring with the “OG,” which of course stands for “Original Garth Ranzz:”


This is The Big One, the longest last incarnation of the Legion (continuing on into the next era, more on that in a moment), starting in Adventure Comics in 1958 and running straight through ’til Legion of Super-Heroes Volume…Three, I’m pretty sure, in 1989. (Again, doesn’t exactly end here, which I’ll address.)

Over this period of time we had a natural growth of the team, as members came on, dropped out, even died, with subplots and soap opera-esque elements keeping the readers involved and interested in the relationships of their favorite characters. This was a storytelling strategy that would work so well in later team books such as X-Men and New Teen Titans, and I think we can thank Teen Jim Shooter for coming aboard and showing the grown-ups how its done.

And it certainly worked on me…I really enjoyed the variety of characters and their interactions and the occasionally oddball stuff they all got up to, particularly in the Silver Age era. I’ve noted before I started reading Legion in the early ’80s, and worked my way backwards through back issue purchases and, later, the Archive editions, and still get a kick out of these comics to this day.

This was the era of the Legion that worked the best, I think, with its established history and long-standing relationships and plots and such. I wrote quite a bit about it before in response to a question from…hmmm, looks like a certain Mr. DavidG. Interesting.

Now, DavidG, you just asked me to rank these, really, and here I am just typing my little fingers off about this series and, well, probably every other Legion series on this list, too. But if I were to rank it, this Legion, the Original Stuff, is my favorite Legion.

And now here’s the “Five Years Later Legion:


…and I wrote about this at length some time ago, as did blogging brother Andrew. As such, I won’t go overboard writing about this era, running from ’89 to ’94 (ironically, about five years), but to say this is not an entirely separate incarnation of the Legion, but rather an extension of the original material. As implied by the “Five Years Later,” Legion continuity jumps ahead five years, everything is different, things are a mess, not everything is explicitly explained to you, so this ain’t a comic you can scan through in six minutes and say you’ve read it. You gotta sit down with it and absorb that story.

The storytelling and setting eventually…normalizes, so it’s easier to follow, but things get more complicated when a younger, more innocent version of the Legion shows up. A spin-off title, Legionnaires, is added to accommodate the extra characters, but eventually it all ends up getting rebooted by DC’s Zero Hour crossover event.

As far as ranking goes…I will say that I really did find this series a fascinating read at first, reading and rereading each new issue as it came out, and being rewarded for the effort. And I was caught up in the mystery of the young Legionnaires, though I wish that had resolved differently than it did. Still, this is a solid #2 in my Legion ranking.

That Zero Hour reboot brought us to this:


…the first actual complete fresh start for the Legion. Everything that had gone on before? Forget it, this is All New! And it was also…pretty good. This is the version of the Legion where Princess Projectra was a giant snake person, which seems to stick out in folks’ minds. Interestingly, this new reboot of the Legion did not cause the cancellation and relaunching, with new #1s, of the two ongoing Legion titles. There were #0 issues introducing the new status quo, then just jumped back into the series’ normal numbering and continued on. A rare show of restraint, I thought.

Oh, right, and this is the “Archie Legion” series, so called because the characters were so young, some of the art reminded folks of Archie character designs, and Jughead joined up as “Hamburger Lad.” One of those may not be true.

This was also the era that had the relatively dark, but effective, Legion Lost mini-series, where members of the team were trapped in unknown space dealing with new threats (and maybe a familiar one). I quite liked that series.

Okay, ranking, ranking…we’ll just call this #3 of my favorite Legion runs, but honestly the space between #2 and #3 is very, very small.

And now, the THREEBOOT:


…because, you know, this is technically the third full reboot of the Legion. Started in 2004, ended in 2009. Repurposes the team as working under, and against, an oppressive society that disapproves of their shenanigans. An interesting note about the series is that it temporarily changes its name to Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes when she comes to the future to join the group.

Also I should point out that Jim Shooter, writer from the original Legions, comes back to write the last dozen or so issues of this series. However, the final issue, #50, is credited to a pseudonym and I’ve never bothered to read it. I have it in a box somewhere should I ever decide to do so, but that seems increasingly unlikely.

How to rank it? It’s a brief-ish run, though not as brief as other Legion runs to come. It is good, though, and I like that it’s a shorter standalone read, even if the whole thing ends on a slightly sour note. (Or maybe it’s great…like I said, I hadn’t read that issue.) If I had to rank it, I’d put it maybe at #3.5, which is maybe cheating a little. This was a solid attempt at trying to do something a little different with the Legion while still honoring the stories that had come before. Shame it didn’t last longer.

Now, it’s about this point that I decided I was done with Legion (save for the classic reprints) for the time being. So I wasn’t reading DC’s next attempt at making the Legion work, the “retroboot:”


I realize that New 52 cover is jumping ahead a bit. This version of the Legion began in the “post-Infinite Crisis” era around 2007, first appearing in Justice League of America and Justice Society of America, then in other books before getting their own title. The “Retroboot” team is a return, more or less, to the pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths continuity of the Legion books from the original era. It’s not exactly 1:1, but close enough, I guess.

Somewhere in here the Final Crisis tie-in Legion of 3 Worlds shows up, teaming up all the reboots of the Legion into one big adventure, and trying to establish which Legion is the main continuity Legion now. (Spoiler: it’s this one, the post-Infinite Crisis one.)

This is the same Legion that makes it through the New 52 relaunch relatively unscathed, and even gets an additional title, Legion Lost. However, this era still comes to an end around 2015.

I can’t rank this, since I didn’t read any of these (except the Legion of 3 Worlds, and I barely remember that (outside of the George Pérez art). All I can say was that my interest in Legion had been diminished by the multiple reboots and didn’t feel like diving back into yet another attempt at this point. That’s not to say I *didn’t* like the reboots, but I certainly didn’t like getting invested in a series only to have it go away and be given yet another restart.

And then, here we are, the last on DavidG’s list, the Brian Michael Bendis scripted reboot from 2019:


By this point I’d been out of current Legion books for about a decade, so I was willing to give this new version a try. I did like the two-issue intro mini-series (Legion of Super-Heroes: Millennium) where we follow an immortal character into the time of he Legion. But the new Legion series itself…the art by Ryan Sook was nice, but the story definitely felt like we were pushed into the deep end of the pool in regards to the setting and the number of characters. Using Superboy as the reader-viewpoint character should have been a natural “in” to everything, but in execution it all still felt cluttered and convoluted.

Most shocking was after the promotion and big build-up, this new series only got 12 issues (plus a two-issue “Future State” tie-in, among other appearances). I’d put this run at #4 on my list…I wanted to like it, I gave it a chance, but I don’t know if the sales were there or what but it felt like DC didn’t give it much of a chance. Could it have improved given more time? Sure. But what we got wasn’t enough and it wasn’t great, art aside.

I know I didn’t discuss every single appearance and iteration of the Legion here…I mean, there’s the Doomsday Clock tie-in, there’s the stuff going on right now in the Superman books, that sort of thing. Not sure what the future (cough) holds for the Legion, whether we have yet another new attempt at a series sooner rather than later. Will it be Absolute Legion of Super-Heroes? Might be one of the few ways to get it to sell for sure at this point.