Snippets ahoy!

filed under Categories retailing 6 Comments

 

  • Ordering for DC’s Convergence event is a problem, in that I’m being asked to place numbers on what will essentially be a few dozen out-of-continuity short-run mini-series that will either 1) attract a lot of fans interested in new stories featuring pre-New 52 versions (or approximations thereof) of their favorite characters, or 2) will be skipped entirely by folks more interested in following current continuity rather than flashing back to what’s gone before. (Or, of course, 3) used as jumping-off points for readers looking for good stopping points.)

    The solution, of course, is to order in conservative excess. I’ll put my smallest giant to work on it right away.

  • Marvel’s Star Wars franchise kicked off to huge success, as I’m sure everyone noticed, as that first Star Wars #1 blew off comic shop shelves and into second and third printings. The success of that initial first issue was early enough for retailers to adjust orders on the then-forthcoming Darth Vader #1 accordingly, so as a result there are plenty of those to be had everywhere, most likely. But I’m already seeing the sales normalizing on these…that Star Wars #1 sold largely on its “historical” value as the first Marvel Star Wars comic in a couple of decades. There’s already a large drop-off on the second issue, and Darth #1 didn’t see the same sort of rack sales either. Plus, I’ve already sensed some resistance to the forthcoming Princess Leia series, whether it’s because “a third series?” or just disinterest in the character.

    Now, I’m not saying any of these post-Star Wars #1 releases are tanking…they’re all selling great, just not at the levels of that initial release, but there are always dropoffs after debuts. So long as they don’t sink down to the levels of Dark Horse’s run in its latter years, which shouldn’t happen if they can avoid oversaturation of the market. But then, it’s Marvel…they’re the House of Oversaturation.

  • The announcement from Oni Press that they’ll be publishing an Invader Zim series, based on the cartoon by the Johnny the Homicidal Maniac creator Jhonen Vasquez, is welcome, but to my mind about a decade too late. Back when I could still get, rack and sell JTHM comics on a continual basis (as well as similar titles like Lenore), one of the things I was regularly asked for was an Invader Zim comic, based on the then still-running (or at least still existing in recent memory) television series.

    Now, years later, long after the demand (and reliable availability) for those comics has dwindled, and requests for Invader Zim comics have died away, now comes the Zim comic. I feel like this will be aimed at nostalgic adults like a number of other decade-old cartoon properties on the comic shelves, but after a brief discussion (read: rant) on the Twitter about this, some of my few remaining Twitter friends informed me that they still see kids wearing Zim shirts and that perhaps there’s access to the cartoons via various streaming services, so maybe kids are still aware of the property.

    I mean, I hope so. I want an Invader Zim comic to do well. I want every comic to do well. I like making money. Just…well, just wish the timing was better.

    I am reminded of my long-ago times in comics retail, back when I was a young Mikester and my hair was naturally this color instead of being chemically enhanced, when we had customers clamoring for Simpsons comics. Every day, “where are the Simpsons comics?” “where are the Simpsons comics?” This when on for like a year or so, and then the demands dried up.

    And then a Simpsons comic was announced. “Oh, great,” I thought. “Where were you a year ago? It’s too late now…nobody’s looking for Simpsons comics anymore.”

    Turns out I may have been incorrect about that. Maybe I’ll be incorrect about the timeliness of the Invader Zim comic, too.

A live-action Syzygy would be pretty cool looking, I’d think.

filed under Categories pal plugging, television 7 Comments


So probably at the top of my “least expected comic book news” list, right beneath “Steve Ditko Joins Andy Kaufman for Dancing with The Stars,” is “Dreadstar to Become TV Show,” and yet, here we are. Doesn’t mean it’s absolutely 100% going to happen, but that this is even an announcement in Variety is pretty amazing. I hope it does make it to air, at least long enough for the scene in the panel presented above to appear directly and faithfully translated to screen.

And as I noted on the Twitterers, I would like the first season to be an adaptation of Metamorphosis Odyssey (the Epic Illustrated serialized series that introduced Vanth Dreadstar) if only to enjoy the television viewing public’s almost inevitable reaction of “…what did I just watch?”

I hope at the very least we get out of this, if not new Dreadstar comics, then relatively inexpensive and complete reprints of the older comics. There aren’t really that many issues: 64 in the original comic series, plus 6 in the follow-up mini from Malibu, and all the Epic Illustrated stuff plus the two graphic novels fit into that one hardcover from a few years back. Oh, and that cameo in ‘Breed III as well. And that First Comics crossover thing. …And I’m probably missing something else, but honestly, that’s not a whole lot. Let’s get some books of these things, even if you have to slap “FROM THE CREATOR OF THANOS” across the tops of the covers.

• • •

In other news:

  • Pal Dave just wrapped up a year’s worth of entries in his “I Had That!” series, looking back at all the toys and games and media tie-ins and what-have-yous that most of us accumulated through our formative years. Interesting reading, as Dave examines these artifacts mostly not just through romanticized nostalgic filters but through an after-the-fact understanding of what it was that made us want to possess via plastic tchotchkes whatever passing cultural zeitgeist that caught our attention. He and I are about the same age, so I promise you, I declared “I had that, too!” with a disturbingly large number of each of the series’ installments. Highly recommended.

  • Pal Andrew’s most recent Nobody’s Favorites covers a comic featuring a characters that, given my love of the original Saturday Night Live, should have been entirely within my wheelhouse, but man, I just couldn’t do it. I don’t even think I ever saw more than a few minutes of the film.

  • Bully, the Little Stuffed Bull who is strong in the Force, is presenting 365 Days of Star Wars in his own inimitable little fuzzy way. Probably should have mentioned that sooner, as he’s quite a few segments in. You’d better go catch up before he comes after you with the cutest little lightsaber you’ve ever seen.

 
 

image from Dreadstar #14 (October 1984) by Jim Starlin

I mean, honestly, did The Count of Monte Cristo end with two monsters sword fighting in a swamp?

filed under Categories swamp thing 9 Comments

So reader Rodney asked, in response to my post from Friday:

“I started my copy of the latest Showcase Presents Legion of Super-Heroes Vol 5 today and in the reprint of Superboy #198 Clark and Lana are about to enter a ‘Horror Haven’ tent and on either side of the entrance is Man-Thing and Swamp Thing.
And then my next thought was ‘Does Mike know about this?'”

Ah, a question in the grand old Progressive Ruin tradition of insinuating myself into your minds to the extent that you think of me whenever you encounter Swamp Thing. Or All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder. Or Frank Miller’s The Spirit.

Rodney, thank you for asking. I’ve probably been aware of it, though I don’t have that actual comic in my collection. I do have the Legion of Super-Heroes Archive Edition hardcover volume #10, which reprints said story, recolored and on better paper:


…so at least I have a version of it, if not, as I’m suspecting, with the exact same colors as in the originals. Now, if I were still at my old job, I’d just check in one of the fourteen Superboy back issue boxes on the shelves and pull out that #198 to see if our Man-Thing stand-in was colored in more copyright-stretching yet more character-accurate greenish hues. Alas, my new store is still in the process of backstock-building, so I don’t believe I have a local copy to check at the moment. Anyone out there able to confirm Man-Thing’s coloring in the original?

Anyway, as I said, I was sure I must have been aware of these particular cameos at one time even if just from reading these reprints. However, I probably haven’t looked inside this Archives hardcover since I originally read through it the first time (back in…hold on, lemme check the copyright date…eek, the far-flung future year of 2000) so it had slipped my mind. Thanks for the reminder, Rodney!

A couple of other questions from that comments section: Michael Grabowski asks

“…Exactly how vast is/was the vast Mikester Comic Archives? Anywhere close to WorldRecord-Man (the fellow in Mission Viejo Guinness recently named), or closer to ‘just vast enough to supply the better part of a newly-opened shop?'”

Well, it was pretty goodly sized…a couple dozen long boxes, a few dozen short, several magazine boxes. Approximately half of what I owned went in for sale at the shop. I’m still needing to sort through the rest of the boxes to decide what I want to take to the store and what I want to still keep. No rush at the moment, however, given that I’ve recently acquired several long boxes’ worth of collections and that should keep me swimmin’ in funnybooks for the immediate future.

And Bill D. asks about that Go-Go comic:

“Does this issue have a Blooperman story in it? I’ve heard those are kind of fun.”

Sadly, no Blooperman. I’m presuming that a Superman parody, or at least a more general parody of superheroes. It would have been interesting to see how this comic would’ve handled it, given the stories in the issue I have mostly emphasized more general-audience non-superhero shenanigans.

• • •

So long to Swamp Thing and The Return of Swamp Thing star Louis Jourdan, who passed away this weekend. …Maybe he did more popular and more highly-regarded films, but those are the two most important to me.

Besides, few are the films that are better than Swamp Thing and The Return of Swamp Thing.

“Outasite! Miss Bikini Luv in Space!”

filed under Categories from the vast Mikester comic archives, retailing 7 Comments

This is one of the last back issues I got for myself from the old job before departing my employment there:


…I’d forgotten that I even had it, until I came across it while reorganizing some comics at home. I tried glancing through it right now, and boy, I think I’ll need to wait ’til I’m more awake than I am because I just can’t just process the information this comic is throwing at me. I mean, I can barely run the gauntlet that is this book’s cover, there’s so much going on there. The stories do give the appearance of trying really hard to achieve that crazy anything-goes wackiness that all you late 1960s nutty teens were into.

The best, or at least most tolerable, of the bunch is probably the Bikini Luv story:


…drawn by Jim Aparo, of all people, sorta/kinda circling around a vague Wally Wood-esque style.

Since opening my shop, aside from the few new comics I pick up every week, I’ve kept precious little for myself from any collections that have entered the store. In fact, it has primarily gone in the other direction, the vast Mikester Comic Archives having been about 1/2 to 2/3rds sacrificed to the store’s back issue bins. But there have been one or two things that have made it back to my house, such as finally putting this in the ol’ swamp monster collection. And there was this comic (speaking of 1960s comics trying awfully hard to be funny) which nicely filled a hole in a run.

But I’ve been good. I need to make money, and I can’t make money if I keep everything for myself, so I’ve been behaving. I did mention to a customer that I kept that Supernatural Thrillers, and he said “that collecting urge never really goes away, does it?”

No…no, not really.

Now that you mention it, he does kind of look like a PEZ dispenser.

filed under Categories hulk, superman 9 Comments

Now here’s a thing I’ve not seen before:


This is copy of the Marvel Milestone reprint of the original Hulk #1, sealed in a polybag promoting the 1994 Incredible Hulk video game. Sealed inside the polybag is a smaller pack of…something, sealed within its own cellophane wrapper:


It appears to be a stack of three or four large-ish trading cards, or perhaps stickers, but it’s hard to say.

I’ve never seen this comic packaged like this before, but I wasn’t frequenting video game stores or even video game sections of toy and department stores, so it’s easy to believe that I missed it. What is odd is that I haven’t come across these in any collections in the ensuing 20+ years until this past week. But then again, I hadn’t seen one of these ’til this past week either, so there are still plenty of surprises out there for me.

Anyway, if any of you folks out there have bought and opened one of these wrapped Hulk comics, please let me know if those are trading cards or something else in that little package there. Thanks!

• • •

Commenter reaction to the Superman cover scan I posted yesterday was fairly unanimous in their negative responses to John Romita Jr.’s drawing. And…yeah, that’s not a great cover. Things look significantly better within the actual book, honest. I generally like JRJR’s art, though, as I believe I’ve stated on this site before, it’s a rarity for his art to be on a project I have any interest in reading. In fact, it’s been quite a while. On Superman he and Geoff Johns been doing fun work, bringing some life to a franchise that had been mostly ill-served by DC’s linewide revamping…though, as I’d said, Superman comics as a whole have been improving of late. We can probably stand to have one or two fewer Superman comics on the shelves, maybe, but what can you do.

Someone take my quotation mark keyboard key away from me.

filed under Categories superman 11 Comments

SPOILERS for Superman #38 to follow:


So this issue contained two big events in the history of the Man of Steel: first, the acquisition, or, rather, revelation of a new power (the ability of expel all the solar radiation in his cells at once, creating a big explosion and hopefully not giving everyone in the immediate area cancer), and second, finally revealing to his best pal Jimmy Olsen that he and Clark Kent are one and the same.

I’m okay with both of these things, which I’m sure the powers-that-be at DC are relieved to hear. When I first heard “new power,” I figured it’d be some crazy thing that’d be around for a couple of issues until plot machinations or creative team forgetfulness/disdain did away with it. I mean, they still might, but it’s nice that the new power is explained as a natural extension of how we understand Superman’s powers to work. Plus, it has that Space Battleship Yamato/”wave motion gun” effect of Superman only getting one shot at using it before having to wait a day for his “solar batteries” and superpowers to recharge. (It also reminds me a little of the nova blast power of the Fantastic Four’s Human Torch.)

And regarding Jimmy…well, there’s not a lot to say about that other than it’s sort of about time. The issue’s been brought up before, as I recall, particularly in the Silver Age, where Jimmy would say something along the lines of “it’s best I don’t know Superman’s secret identity, so that his enemies don’t use me to get to him!” Again, it’s a change that can be undone in short order, but I’m looking forward to seeing the repercussions of Jimmy sort of taking the position of “normal person confidant” that Lois held in the pre-New 52 universe.

Now, I said I’m “okay” with this, but…well, this is kind of the weird aspect to it, in that I’m sort of not “feeling” the full impact of these changes. This New 52 Superman still doesn’t quite feel like the “real” Superman to me, which is a completely ridiculous thing to think about a comic book character, but there it is. Of course, then you have to ask, well, who is the real Superman, and there’s no good answer to that, either. Superman’s undergone enough changes/soft reboots/full-on reboots over the years: the Golden Age Superman certainly feels different in tone from the Silver Age Superman, and 1970s/early ’80s Superman is a different animal from the previous versions, and the the post-Crisis John Byrne start-from-scratch reboot is a whole other hoohar altogether.

But the thing about all those Supermen is that you can sort of feel a connecting thread through them all, that they were all drawing from the same essence-of-Superman well. Even the Byrne relaunch, though perhaps a bit on the rough side at first, eventually came ’round to feeling more Superman-ish, though perhaps that’s more due to 25+ years of dozens (hundreds?) of creators churning out lots of Superman material that, averaged out, gave us a recognizable modern Superman that outgrew his ’86 reboot.

The New 52 Superman seemed to break that thread, likely due to a seeming lack of a plan aside from “do something different,” giving us a character that sort of looked like Superman but didn’t really feel like him or act like him, and, aside from Grant Morrison’s entertaining efforts in early issues of Action Comics, didn’t really have much of interest going on in any of his comic book appearances. Of late, that’s changed for the better, as recent Superman-starring titles have had a reasonable increase in quality, and have gone a long way in rehabilitating Superman’s character in that he now sort of feels like the Superman we remember.

That said, this version of Superman (the New 52 version, which itself seems to have have a number of different sub-versions since the 2011 relaunch) doesn’t feel like he’s been around long enough yet for These Big Changes to have the impact they should have. There’s too significant a break between Superman Now and Superman That Has Come Before for these changes to feel like additions to the legend. Right now they just feel like “here’s something else different that we’re experimenting with for this Superman-like character we’re publishing while the real Superman is on hiatus.”

Totally not a fair thing to think, and honestly, I have been enjoying the Superman comics of late, and I do look forward to seeing how they’ll follow up…but man, what I wouldn’t give to have seen the Curt Swan-drawn Superman telling Jimmy he’s Clark Kent, and having it stick as part of the ongoing saga, and not as a dream, hoax, or imaginary story.

Oh, and there’s a third change to Superman, in that his New 52 costume is now mildly less terrible, though it still has that awful collar and there’s no forgiveness for that.

And I’ll be the third Google reference.

filed under Categories from the vast Mikester comic archives 4 Comments

So in that big collection I picked up last weekend were a couple of rare-ish goodies, such as this digest-sized parody of Charles M. Schulz’s religiously-themed non-Peanuts cartoons:


That’s just the title from the front cover; clicking that image will bring up the entire cover which may offend the more sensitive viewer. I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it, as eBay tends to be a bit iffy on adult-y material like this, taking some auctions down and leaving other auctions for the exact same item up seemingly at random. Not that other people having this same thing on eBay would have been much of a problem…the only Google references I could find at first were some webpages from one of the artists responsible. However, you can now find this review from pal Nat, since I avoided the whole eBay issue by selling the darned thing to him.

Another rarity is Rick Altergott’s first self-published issue of Doofus from 1992:


…prior to Fantagraphics unleashing the Doofus-verse across an unsuspecting world. It’s in a squarish format, about 8 by 8 inches, with a stated print run of 350 copies.

• • •

I apologize for the extended communications blackout over the last week and a half. A combination of a lingering illness and extra hours/projects at the new store have left me with little blogging energy in the evenings. Thank you for sticking around and hopefully I’ll be back up to speed here sooner rather than later.

Low content mode continues…

filed under Categories low content mode, pal plugging, retailing 4 Comments

…or “no content mode,” as this site sort of took a vacation after last Wednesday, due to my recovering from a chest cold only to go full bore into a nasty headcold I’m still recovering from. And, as it turns out, when you own your own business and you’re the only employee, you don’t get a day off to shake off the sniffles. Ah, well, “as a wise man once said” an’ all that.

To follow up on my last post, all those Groots that once danced their little hearts out in my shop are now scattered to the four winds. I knew Groot was fairly beloved in my area, judging by the mostly positive reaction to that giant cardboard standee of Groot in my window, but it was still pretty shocking how quickly the Dancing Groot toy hightailed it out of here. And despite my initial trepidation, the demo-ing of Dancing Groots did not drive me crazy, possibly due to the brevity of their presence, but several customers would push the demo button and immediately apologize to me, figuring I was sick of listening to that clip of “I Want You Back.” Honestly, it didn’t bother me, though I was quick to remind folks that pushing the button again didn’t stop the clip, but rather, extended the play.

Also, the melodious strains of the Jackson 5 have been haunting me in my dreams, but perhaps that is an unrelated issue. Not unrelated, however, is this amusing image contributed by reader Brian, combining our favorite ambulatory plantlife that isn’t Swamp Thing with one of our favorite Lois Lane covers.

Another little adventure I undertook this weekend was making a quick trip to Los Angeles to the studio of famed artist Coop to acquire a largish collection of comics he was looking to get out of his way. I probably could have just stayed there all day, looking at all the neat things he had tucked away in all corners of his workspace. And Coop himself is a swell guy…I recommend Coop to all my friends and family. Here is some photo evidence of the gentleman artist tolerating my proximity.

Speaking of artists and their endeavors, there’s another Kickstarter I’d like to promote…it’s already met its funding goal, but you may still be interested in getting a copy of Death Saves, a comics anthology about characters in role-playing games and how they met their respective demises. I’m specifically recommending it due to a story written by blogging-and-birthday-brother Andrew Weiss and illustrated by longtime ProgRuin pal Matthew Digges. So contribute already!

Remember the last Kickstarter I recommended to you guys? It just wrapped up, making over three times its goal! I’m pretty sure that was all thanks to me, so let’s try to do the same for Death Saves, too!

What if the surprise villain in the new Fantastic Four movie is just a completely faithful adaptation of the Impossible Man?

filed under Categories fantastic four, retailing 12 Comments

So I put it in my Twitter feed, I put on my store’s website, I put it on the store’s Facebook page, so what the heck, let’s put it here, too:


My first response upon cracking open the case of these Dancing Groots was “oh no, they have ‘try me’ buttons” which means I can expect to hear these every single day for what little remains of the rest of my life. And then the thought occurred to me “I wonder what it would sound like if I pressed all of the buttons at more or less the same time,” quickly followed by the idea that I should take a video of it and share it in all the places listed previously. And thus, there it is…the Camarillo Local Groots Choir, performing just for you.

In other news, there’s buzz about for the new Fantastic Four trailer, mostly because we’ve been hearing terrible things about changes made to the concept that strayed perhaps too far from its comic book origins, and this is our first look at what the filmmakers were actually doing. And…well, it at least seems like it will look nice. Some have noted that the trailer seems a mite too serious for something that’s called the “Fantastic Four,” but the more somber tone does differentiate itself from the previous FF movies. Plus, it now looks like a highbrow sci-fi movie rather than just another superhero film, which I find a bit more interesting, and perhaps more in line with the actual origins of the comics. Well, okay, maybe not the “highbrow” part, but you know what I mean.

As for the reported changes in the FF’s origin….I don’t know, I think so long as we end up with something approximating the characters and relationships we know from the comics, it almost doesn’t matter how they start out. It’s almost enough that the receive their abilities from scientific misadventure, which is close enough. (And most people going to see the movie won’t notice or care that the origin’s been fiddled with.) At any rate, the trailer did its job: it’s piqued my interest in a film I was somewhat indifferent/mildly negative about. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like to someday have an actual Doctor Doom in a Fantastic Four film who was Reed’s college roommate who blew up his own face in a failed experiment and later got armor from monks, but there’s always the next reboot in, like, four or five years from now.