I can still remember someone having “ALL TROLLORDS” on their pull list.

filed under Categories question time 8 Comments

Just answerin’ a couple more of your questions here:

Mike Loughlin markets himself with

“Some comic book writers promoting themselves as brands, and having sub-lines dedicated to their work. Notably, the ads in comics by James Tynion IV, Jeff Lemiere, and Kieran Gillen are for their other work. In sales and/or buzz, how effective do you think the “writer-as-brand” strategy has been working?”

I mean, to some extent, yes, it’s been working. Probably the most successful example of this right now is Robert Kirkman, who shot to fame due to Walking Dead, and has folksinterested in his other works under the “Skybound” banner. The other writers you mention also seem to get a slight “bump” on their books. Not huge, but in this marketplace anything that can put a thumb on the scale even in the slightest is probably a net positive. It hasn’t quite made it to the point where someone will walk in and ask “where are your Tiny Onion books?” but every little bit helps, as they say.

• • •

LouReedRichards makes some unstable molecule music with

“From your experience what is the percentage of comics readers who are ‘agnostic’ about writers and or artists and just read comics to follow a character vs. those who are much more dedicated to following a creator regardless of the title.”

Slightly related to the previous question, I think! It’s difficult to pin down, aside from looking at patterns on my pull lists, where by and large those customers are more character/title-centric versus creator centric. And aside from some of the examples I pointed out above in the first question, it feels like that’s mostly guiding readership of most new titles. I have, for example, only buying certain X-Men titles because of their writers, and once they’re off the book, I imagine they’re gone, too.

In my personal reason, I tend towards following titles versus characters, with some exceptions. I’ll buy anything by the Hernandez Bros. or Sergio Aragones, for example. But largely I’ll, like, buy Hulk or Fantastic Four comics regardless of who’s doing them. And of late, I’ve been buying Daredevil since I picked up Mark Waid’s first issue, the first for me since Frank Miller was on the title, and have been reading it ever since as every following creative team I’ve enjoyed. Now, will this last when I hit a creator I’m indifferent on? Who knows? I’ve definitely hit some rough spots in my Hulk runs but kept going, but maybe that title was just grandfathered in to my ongoing collection.

Another example: I did buy the new Captain America series, a comic I don’t normally follow, because Chip Zdarsky is writing. Will I continue when he leaves the book? Seems unlikely, but who knows?

Perhaps the best metric is “what am I ordering for the shop?” I haven’t done much adjusting upward or downward on most titles, except for the occasional first issue bump…like, Matt Fraction’s Batman #1 sold great, but that may be more because it’s a Batman #1 than because of whoever’s writing it. (No shade on Mr. Fraction intended — he did a great job — but that’s just kinda how it is with Batman.) I expect numbers to settle back down to where they were in short order…still high, but not shockingly high like that new number one.

Anyway, whether that lack of order adjustment is due to people jumping off titles when the creative team changes, and about the same number jumping on for the same reason, I don’t know. Or if just stays constant because, say, Flash sells a certain number and will always sell a certain number to the same basic group of people, I also don’t know. At any rate, we’re a long time when half my pull lists for the (old) shop had “ALL ALAN MOORE” or “ALL JOHN BYRNE” notations.

A brief reminder.

filed under Categories how the sausage is made

If you see a trolling, hate-filled reply in my comments, or even if it’s just garden-variety spam that somehow slipped through, don’t respond or interact with it, please. I’ll dispose of it accordingly as soon as I’m able. Thanks.

Leaving comments “on” may prove to be a mistake.

filed under Categories this week's comics 18 Comments

Without getting into the entire series of circumstances here (which you can read about in this article), the new fairly-well-anticipated ongoing Red Hood series that came out last Wednesday has already been canceled by DC Comics, who issued a statement regarding “standard of conduct” policies, credited the full cost of the comics back to retailers, and, I don’t know, probably salted the earth besides.

Anyway, I had a few copies still on the shelf come Thursday morning following the news of the series’ ending, for which I had a sudden influx of folks immediately interested in picking it up. Sometimes even multiple copies.

Now, when I posted about this on Bluesky, I had some folks asking maybe if they were being bought to be destroyed in protest of the comic’s writer, and no, I didn’t get that vibe from anyone. Most likely it’s either 1) curiosity about the comic itself, or (especially in the case of the multiple issue pick-ups) 2) immediate flipping on the eBays. Sure enough, we’ve got some wild prices on that #1 over there already, so “an ill wind…” and all that.

It’s a weird situation, brought about by the most unfortunate events. And just so we’re clear…no matter how abhorrent or even dangerous I found the man’s beliefs, shooting him was not the answer. If anything, regardless of the shooter’s reasons for doing so, it’s just made things more difficult in sociopolitical conditions that are already deeply damaged.

And frankly, given some of the man’s past statements, I can understand why the comic’s writer would be extremely unhappy with him. And that’s fine. You don’t have to like anyone. You don’t even have to mourn someone you didn’t like when they’re gone. But let’s draw the line at, like, shooting them. Maybe just yell at them instead.

Sigh. I said I wasn’t going to get into it, but it’s kind of hard not to. I didn’t even want to write about this for today’s post, but I felt like I just couldn’t ignore it. So there you go, a real world ugly political mess that’s pushed its way into comics. Not what anybody wanted.

And please, also, don’t forget the victims of the Evergreen High School shooting that happened the same day. Or the Historically Black Colleges that are under lockdown over what will hopefully be spurious bomb threats.

Just…be careful out there. And be good to each other.

Of course, that Green Lantern space story kinda didn’t end well.

filed under Categories obituary, this week's comics 5 Comments

[SPOILERS ahead]


Sophie Campbell’s Supergirl continues to be a delight, this time with guest-artists Rosi Kampe and Paulina Ganucheau, who do quite nicely) and turning over the issue to the various super-animals that have turned up so far in this title’s brief run thus far.

One particularly fun innovation to a Super-Pets story that I don’t think I’ve seen before is that Ms. Campbell has the animals unable to directly “speak” (or telepathically “think”) at each other, like you would see in the various Pre-Crisis stories. That leaves all the animals unsure of each other’s motives, which leads to some cute moments. Highly recommended, as per usual.


This issue goes hard, twisting some of the supporting characters from previous issues into forms more closely approaching those we are more familiar with from the regular DC Universe, in the worst way possible. Gruesome and brutal, but not in an off-putting way, which is the real trick. Scott Snyder and Nick Dragotta know how to keep you hooked and all you want to do is see how it plays out in the next issue. Probably one of the best examples of a serialized story in American comics keeping you invested from issue to issue.


Sometimes I just wish Green Lantern would be on Earth trying to figure out how to keep Goldface from robbing banks. I don’t mind the intra-Corps in-fighting/politics and the Huge Reality-Threatening Battles on occasion, but I’m remembering that bit of business in the ’80s where GL was forced to leave Earth and had to go fight space crime and how unusual that felt.

So what am I trying to say here. Maybe we can…scale things down a bit? The stakes are always enormously high, and it always comes down to armies of space cops shooting beams at whatever. Don’t get me wrong…I’ve been reading Green Lantern comics since about 1981, and I like the characters and the situations and I’m enjoying Sinestro as a “frenemy” type character. I just feel like we’re all just trying to do the “Sinestro Corps War” saga over and over again and could use a little more variety.

That said, the new issue of Green Lantern Corps announces the return of a particular Big Green Lantern Villain that’s an old favorite of mine, and oh Green Lantern, I can’t ever hate you.


The brain-switcheroo in Smallville and Fire and Ice’s sojourn in Hell all come to a swift end in this issue. It feels like it wraps up a little too quickly in this issue, in that I was thinking maybe there was going to be a 7th issue by the time I was 2/3rds of the way through this one. But all the problems are solved and everything’s wrapped up nicely and it’s a joy just to see Fire and Ice — Bea and Tora — just being friends, and that friendship is the real centerpiece of this comic. Well, that and the light goofiness of the Smallville supporting cast. Here’s hoping for a third mini-series.

• • •

Wanted to note the passing of online pal Nick, the two of us having followed each other on various social media for some time. I mean, we weren’t close, dear pals, but we traveled in some of the same circles, shared some interests, had friendly interactions. Seemed like a good guy, and I’m sorry he passed so young. So long, Nick.

Bonjour, Monsieur Swamp Thing.

filed under Categories question time 13 Comments

Okay, let’s see if I can knock out a few more of your questions:

Dave sez

“…Do you think the new Rogue Trooper film and presumably some sort of comics push from 2000ad could see the character break into the USA?”

Well, looking what’s coming from one of my distributors, we’ll definitely have some Rogue Trooper paperbacks reprinting all the original material, due out this month.

And this year is the given release date for the film, though I can’t seem to find any information narrowing the window any farther than that. Only about four months to go, friends, better get it out there.

The movie itself is described as an “adult animated feature” which to be frank doesn’t seem to bode well for box office success. But, who knows, maybe enough people will see the trailer, think it looks cool, and give it a shot.

Regardless, I don’t think this is the breakthrough moment for Rogue Trooper in the U.S., unless someone licenses the property and puts out a monthly outgoing. Or even just reprint the originals in color comics like they did in the ’80s, only with good reproduction.

Even then, I don’t think hitting it big, if at all, in the American direct sales comics market really counts as “getting over.” I mean, if somehow we can talk Raina Telgemeier or Dav Pilkey into doing a Rogue Trooper book aimed at younger readers, you might have something.

• • •

will richards also sez

“Does your interest in collecting Swamp Thing appearances extend to overseas (reprint) editions?”

Yes, actually. I’ve posted about a few I’ve gotten my mitts on over the years, such as this one from Australia reprinting a few of the Nestor Redondo issues in black and white:


…or this Spanish edition of the New 52 first issue:


…and ah, oui oui, le Swamp Thing en français:


And there are a few others, here and there, most of which I’ve shown on this site over the past, oh, nearly 22 years, so I don’t blame you if you missed ’em. I’m always lookin’ for more, too! Like maybe getting another chance at those ’70s Swamp Things from Mexico…I had just missed an eBay auction for those some years back and it still burns my butt.

• • •

Paul Di Filippo sez as well

“What are the odds that the next SUPERMAN movie by James Gunn will feature the scenario from Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #29 (June 1958), wherein Krypto becomes Jimmy Olsen’s pet?”

We sorta already know what the next James Gunn Superman flick is going to be about, since ol’ JG posted this Jim Lee pic online along with an announcement of the sequel’s arrival in 2027, assuming by then we’re not living in a post-apocalyptic wasteland or anything. Here’s the pic:


Two takeaways:

1) Jim Lee has a lot to answer for, in putting that high collar on Superman’s costume.

2. I guess we’re just getting full-on Luthor 1980s Battlesuit (without its Lexor origins, which I’m saying just to show off, not because I thought that was ever a possibility).

Oh, also 3) I guess that drawing is supposed to be funny, in that Superman is holding a screwdriver and Lex has a few screws loose (so to speak) beneath him. But honestly, that image just doesn’t sell it for me.

As for Jimmy getting Krypto…look, Jimmy’s too busy getting the ladies and also turning into Giant Turtle Jimmy to be taking care of a super-dog. Unless Krypto is there functioning as Jimmy’s wingman…or wingdog, helping him attract the opposite sex, and also turn into a giant turtle man.

But honestly, I am wondering what role Krypto will play in the next Superman film. Audiences now expect to see him, and though he’s presumably be in the forthcoming Supergirl movie, folks will probably want him back with the Man of Steel. You don’t want burn people out on Krypto (which hardly seems possible, but still) but now that’s he’s been introduced, he’s part of the mix. How much of a part is going to be the question Gunn and the other fella in charge of the DC stuff whose name I never remember will have to think about as, or if, the Super-movies continue.

Well, that, and if Krypto will be in the promised Swamp Thing flick. I mean, look, Bernie Wrightson his own self drew a precedent!

What if GIganta wins, and all this results in a bunch of Giganta-fronted stuff?

filed under Categories dc comics, swamp thing 14 Comments

Continuing your Swamp Thing updates this week, is our mossy pal’s appearance in DC K.O., DC Comics answer to “what if you could read a console fighting game?” I know they’ve tried that before, what with Injustice and various Mortal Kombat books, but this sounds closer to the core idea that those other titles.

DC describes the comic as a “bracket tournament [that] pits heroes against one another in escalating battles—each round unlocking new power, new consequences, and new revelations,” so, sure, what the heck.

There will be 32 characters battling it out here, and if you go to that previous link you’ll see the character select screen for this story, but I’ve excerpted a bit here:


And yeah, there’s Swampy. Now, there’s zero chance that Swamp Thing is coming out on top here, but the Easy, Obvious Answers (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman) seem like they’d be too obvious. Thus, I’m putting my Giant Batcave Penny down on either Lex Luthor (for the “edgy, surprising” result) or Supergirl (for the “let’s get yet another trade paperback ready to tie into a forthcoming movie” result).

Anyway, just having a book where a bunch of your characters are just whaling on each other for a short-run series is perfectly fine. It’s all part of the War Against Darkseid or Apokolips or whatever. Much as I’d like to see Swamp Thing be at the forefront of that, and even with former Swamp Thing writer Scott Snyder doing this series, I don’t expect that to happen. Maybe if we were closer to that supposed Swamp Thing movie James Gunn said is coming. Ah well.

• • •

By the by, this month marks my 37th year in comics retail. Some folks would say that’s a long time. Almost…too long.

Was Swamp Thing a Teen Titan and I just didn’t know?

filed under Categories swamp thing 9 Comments

So anyway, this trade paperback is apparently coming out early next year:

If you’re having trouble reading the text, here’s what it says:

“The Roots of Horror Twist Through Time

“A journey through DC’s dark corners–past, present, and future–with Swamp Thing as your haunted guide.

“As Rick Veitch deepens his visionary take on the character, Swamp Thing becomes untethered from the present and spirals across time. From Revolutionary battlefields to Arthurian legends, each stop is a meditation on violence, identity, and the monstrous. Meanwhile, Abby and John Constantine face disturbing revelations of their own in the here and now.

“A thematically rich chapter in DC’s horror canon.
Collects The New Titans #0, Swamp Thing #80-87, Swamp Thing Annual #5, Neil Gaiman’s Midnight Days Deluxe Edition #1, and Swamp Thing/Vertigo Special #1-4.”

And here’s the important bit…well, “bits,” as I have questions about New Titans #0, but there’s that “Swamp Thing/Vertigo Special #1-4” listed at the end there. Far as I know, that’s not a thing that exists…at least, not yet.

I was first clued into this by reader Tom, who linked me to this Reddit post. That post makes the good point that Rick Veitch left the book with only four issues to go…and there’s that Vertigo Special listed in the book’s contents, running four issues….

And there’s the fact that Veitch himself has been plugging the book on his Facebook page, so I expect big news a’comin’.

For those of you late to the party, the reason Veitch left Swamp Thing in the first place was that he had a time travel story he was working on, and a particular chapter had been approved and nearly completed before being canned, which torqued off Mr. Veitch somethin’ fierce.

And here’s the cover to that story, which, if those Vertigo Specials are released separately and not just part of the trade paperback, had better be the cover to that #1:


DO IT, YOU COWARDS.

I’ve written a bit about this in the past, most recently in this post here.

And because I’m That Guy, I’m wondering how “in continuity” the original ending to Veitch’s run will be. With all the reboots and such going on, DC could just straight out say “yeah, this is Swamp Thing’s history now” which would wreak a little havoc on the Swamp Thing timeline. For instance, if I remember the plot summaries of these final four Veitch issues that ran in Comics Buyers’ Guide after he left the book, Big Changes would happen to his arch-nemesis, and Swamp and Abby’s daughter (her birth being part of those last four comics) would have been entirely different as well.

“What, DC mess with continuity?” Yeah, I know, it’s hard to believe.

Plus, one final question…what did New Titans #0 have to do with Swamp Thing? I don’t have a copy around to check myself.

The Final ’90s Countdown: Part Fourteen.

filed under Categories final '90s countdown 6 Comments

Just movin’ right along with the next one-vote receiver in the Final ’90s Countdown:

Sailor Moon (Tokyopop, 1998-2001)

Now the heading here, indicating Sailor Moon‘s Tokyopop run starting in 1998, may be a tiny bit misleading. This series is, I believe, the first ongoing U.S. series featuring the property, but the series, created by Naoko Takeuchi, was originally serialized in the Japanese magazine Nakayoshi starting in 1991.

Sailor Moon was an immense hit, appearing in many publications around the world, not to mention multiple animated adaptations. Sailor Moon was a real kick in the pants to the “magical girl” genre, which had preexisted the series by decades, and inspired many other creative works that followed.

The premise of the series is fairly straightforward, in that a young student discovers she is, in fact, the reincarnation of the magically-powered Sailor Moon, and is soon joined by other similarly powered beings (Sailor Mars, Sailor Jupiter…well, you get the idea). All these Sailors then spend their time protecting their fellow man, saving the world, all that jazz.

I remember the initial Sailor Moon comics doing quite well for us at the shop at the time, and subsequent releases of various Sailor Moon books and other products found a ready audience as well.

I’m not going to try to listen every single permutation of Sailor Moon books here, but I can note that there was a ten volume series of Sailor Moon Eternal Edition which appears to reprint the entire original serialized story. Those are still available for order.

Keep in mind here, I’m no expert on Sailor Moon or manga in general. I had to look up a lot of what I wrote up there. But I do know that Sailor Moon is a perennial favorite and a popular seller, and is one of those classics that should always be in print and available.

I’m also waiting for a collection of Dan Schkade’s Flash Gordon strips.

filed under Categories comic strips, nancy, question time, sluggo 10 Comments

Well, it’s time for another one of your questions, this time from Michael Grabowski, who clutches me with

“We know of your esteem for Bushmiller’sNancy as well as the current (I think, still?) Olivia Jaimes strips, and you’ve also discussed your fondness for not just Segar’s but also Sagendorf’s (and I think the much later London’s) work on Thimble Theatre/Popeye.

“What other classic newspaper (or current news’paper’) strips do you especially enjoy, and in what editions?”

Well, Olivia Jaimes still appears to be hard at work cooking up new Nancy comics, for which the world should be grateful. And yes, I love Popeye of pretty much any stripe, such as the ones you mentioned, plus the Charlton Comics run, the current Randy Milholland stuff, the works. Put that Popeye into…um, my eyes, I guess. The only Popeye I’ve actively disliked were those cartoons they tried a few years ago where none of the characters were voiced. Yuck.

As for other strips…well, there are certainly a few, and probably not any surprises. I should get Dilbert out of the way, which was a strip I really adored until it very much got to the point where you couldn’t ignore the cartoonist behind the curtain. And remember, this is a guy who read all of Cerebus saying this. I still have a shelf full of Dilbert books, complete to the point when I stopped buying them, and sadly, no plans to revisit them at any point in the future.

For the complete opposite of Dilbert, I have several collections of the Zippy the Pinhead strip by Bill Griffith. Meticulously drawn, intelligently and absurdly written, the comic never stops being a joy. There’s no uniform format for the books…several permutations of paperbacks, a hardcover (signed and numbered!) of color Sundays, and 20 issues, I think, of a Zippy mag from Fantagraphics reprinting strips. Absolutely beautiful stuff.

Another still active strip for which I’ve been buying the paperback collections is Foxtrot, the family strip with the clever math/science/nerd gags. Not much to say there except that the books sure have slowed down since the comic went Sundays only.

An active strip for which I no longer buy the collections is Doonesbury…I think I stopped sometime in the early ’90s, but I have a complete set of the books prior to that. I didn’t stop for any particular reason other than financial, as I still enjoy the strip when I get a chance to read it. This and MAD Magazine is how I learned all about Watergate!

For completed strips, there is of course the king of them all…Peanuts by Charles Schulz. Fantagraphics putting out this series was a much needed addition to world culture, getting all this work back into everyone’s hands. Just an absolute master class in the study of human nature.

And then there’s the body of work by Berke Breathed, of Bloom County, Outland, and Opus, and am I forgetting something else? fame. I had the (not necessarily complete) paperback releases, but the six volume hardcover set reprinting everything was a nice thing to get my hands on. Okay, technically, maybe this strip isn’t entirely over, as Breathed was doing new strips on Facebook for a while, many of those reprinted in a couple of paperbacks from IDW.

There are the Big Book Sets, the giant slipcased things that contain everything, which are great in their own way if slightly inconvenient to haul around. I have the Calvin and Hobbes one and the Far Side one. I think I actually still retain the paperbacks too, for the extra material not reprinted in the Big Books.

And just looking at my shelf…I also have several of Matt Groening’s Life in Hell strip collections, which I’d actually bought after seeing his strip in weekly papers an’ such…before the Simpsons, so I was into it before it was cool, maaaaan. I don’t have nearly all of them (I just looked at a list and hoo boy, there are a lot) but I loved those earlier books. I know the strip changed a bit once Groening was, y’know, running a whole-ass TV show, but I’d still be interested in picking up the rest of these at some point in what’s left of my future.

Plus I have a couple of one-offs that I’d like to find more of…I have the complete Gahan Wilson Playboy cartoons book set (not salacious by any means, just weirdo monster type stuff), and a copy of My Crowd by Charles Addams. Can always use more of their work in my life.

Archival strip books I should’a bought: Dick Tracy. Man, those are the best, but for some reason I didn’t get in on the ground floor with those and how they’re up to, like, volume 83. Ah well. I do have a couple of hardcover “best of” collections and several reprints of, shall we say, varying quality in comic book form, and that’ll just have to be good enough for me.

“Also, a related suggestion once your 90’s comics survey coverage ends: would you consider doing a similar survey for comics strips (classic, modern, free weekly, and/or web) including comments on available collections of them?”

Egads. It’s certainly an interesting idea, though I’m not as up on webcomics as I used to be. As you may have noticed, I’ve struggled a bit with descriptions of some of the entries so far in the Final ’90s Countdown, as I don’t have a lot of experience with some of these titles aside from 1) selling them when they were new, and 2) seeing them in the back issue bins. It wasn’t like the ’80s Countdown where it felt like I knew a little somethin’ about everything.

I’m afraid with comic strips I’d be more the former than that latter. Sure, I could hold my own with Hagar the Horrible or Marvin, but if you throw, like, Steve Roper, or Wash Tubbs, or, God help us, Boner’s Ark at me, I’d be flailing about like Kermit the Frog. It’s worth a thought, though, so let me get through the ’90s books first, hopefully something in the next year or three, and then I can consider my next step.

“P.S. I started consistently reading this blog at the tail end of the Sluggo Saturdays feature. I really miss that!”

Yeah, I miss it, too. When I started doing Sluggo Saturday, you weren’t getting a lot of Nancy and Sluggo content in the ol’ comicsweblogosphere. That’s changed quite a bit since then (and so has the comicsweblogosphere, for that matter), and Nancy and Sluggo awareness is at an absolute peak, for which I take sole credit.

Well, okay, not really, there were members of the Sluggo-scenti already out in full force before I ever stepped into the scene. The aforementioned Bill Griffith was an advocate (which I got him to immortalize in this original sketch I purchased from him), and dare I mention Scott McCloud’s nigh-infamous 5-Card Nancy? I do dare!

But don’t you worry…Sluggo Saturday is not dead, only resting, and will return to us in our time of greatest need. Which frankly is right now, come to think of it. I’ll see what I can do.