So a while back, when he popped into the shop, I pestered Jed Dougherty about maybe commissioning a piece on a sketch cover for his new Image Comics series Free Planet. Jed (who’s an old friend of pal Dorian and a regular at the shop) said he’d be happy to do something for me, and asked what I’d like. I just said “oh, surprise me.”
And sure enough, Jed did surprise me, as a couple of days ago he popped back into the shop with this:
Now, I had expected a character or situation from the Free Planet comic itself, but, you know, I’ll take an original Zatanna drawing, absolutely. And as I said to Jed, maybe she is in the comic, just standing behind someone in a crowd scene or something.
That was some nice work by Jed, and I’m glad to have it. And if you all haven’t been reading Free Planet, give it a try!
So in a collection obtained on Thursday, I found one of the many MAD-a-likes that had been published over the years, hoping to ride the coattails of that famous magazine’s success. And it was in fact one I’d never heard of, through, I’d bet one American dollar, whatever that’s worth now, that I probably spotted a copy in one my visits to various newsstands in the early ’80s.
That mag is Wacko:
“Okay, so it’s wacko, what’s the name?” Pipe down back there, smart-aleck. Wacko was a very short-lived example of this genre of rip-off, lasting only three issues and maybe into 1981, I’m not sure.
The interiors are…MAD-esque, with a lead TV parody that’s illustrated very much in the Mort Drucker/Angelo Torres style. And there’s even Wacko‘s own version of MAD‘s “Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions,” or Cracked‘s “Shut Ups,” or even, as I was reminded of on Bluesky, Trash‘s “Trash Can-Its” — the very “hello fellow kids” article entitled “Wisecrack Responses Young People Come Up With.”
However, let’s get back to that cover. The large fella we see front and center there appears to be the mascot of the mag, though I can’t seem to track down a name for him. There’s even a Reddit thread, or at least an attempt at one, trying to find out his name, but three years on there have been no responses.
But there on the cover you can see the gentleman stomping on the mascots of other humor mags. From left to right, there’s The Nebbish from Marvel’s Crazy, that Alfred fella from whatever that mag was, Sylvester P. Smythe from Cracked, and then that last one took me a second.
Well, just a second, as I was showing this to a customer and he asked who that was. My immediate guess was that he from from Sick, another MAD knockoff that was a comic book originally, then run as a black and white mag in the late ’70s. It in fact ended its run right around the time Wacko started. Anyway, here’s a pic of Sick‘s fella in his natural environment:
The name of Sick‘s mascot was “Huckleberry Fink,” though the late ’70s seemed to be a little past the sell-date for “fink” as an automatically funny word (Johnny Hart’s comic strips notwithstanding).
But there we go, Wacko, one of the last gasps of that particular genre of humor mag…I mean, sure, Crazy and Cracked continued on for some time, but how many new MAD knockoffs were launched after that? Feels like the ’70s were kind of the final heyday for those sorts of publishing endeavors.
So here’s a comic I acquired in a collection recently:
I’ve never seen What Changed Mr. Grumpy? before, I’ve never heard of it, there’s no listing of it in the Overstreet Price Guide (in either the main listings or the Promotional section).
Searching the internet doesn’t bring up a whole lot, and what I did find took a little digging.
First thing I found, which was at the time one of the only three Google results for this comic (one of which is me, from my Bluesky account) was this catalog listing I found on Archive.org:
Interestingly, this gives the book a 1955 date, when the copy I have on hand is copyright 1979. So, to make sure we’re talking about the same book here, I looked up “Hal Allen,” the credited author.
Now, the Mr. Grumpy comic, since I haven’t said yet, is a comic that explains to young newspaper carriers the proper methods of doing their jobs. Here is a sample interior page, where we see our hero, newspaper boy Homer, and one of his encounters with our titular Mr. Grumpy:
First, looking at the artwork, it does feel a little 1950s-ish, particularly in Homer’s design, which had me wondering about that 1979 date on my copy.
I wasn’t able to find too many other examples of Mr. Allen’s artwork online, but I did find this poster on Facebook, part of which is excerpted here:
And yes, that art and the art i the Mr. Grumpy book look like the same artist.
I also found this short article about Mr. Allen, from his old stomping grounds of Oregon, talking about his cartooning life (and revealing that he passed away about 1999). It mentions that he published a book of his cartoons in 1973, and that he worked for Disney after World War II, among other interesting bits.
Remember those three Google results for the title of the book? The third (which doesn’t seem to show up now) was for a listing on Worthpoint, where someone actually had one for sale. I think they got the date wrong, unless there was a 1977 edition. Anyway, you need a login to get the price it sold for, so if anyone has one and can let me know, I’d appreciate it! At the very least you can see more interior pages there.
This is one of those entries where I hope it helps out someone down the line who gets a copy of this same comic and has questions about it too. I hope the info I gathered together here is of some us, theoretical future comics researcher!
Still at the one-vote level of the Final ’90s Countdown…remember what I’ve said before, that there’s no shame in getting just a single vote, it’s just an indication of the wide range of titles still being published during what was generally considered a downturn in the industry.
The Nocturnals (Malibu/Bravura, 1995)
Here’s another title that I shockingly didn’t not read, coming out as it did when the comics market was in serious flux and so was my disposable income. Now, the person who voted for this title actually voted for Nocturnals: Black Planet, which was the 1998 trade paperback edition published by Oni Press and was kinda its own thing which I’ll discuss in a moment.
But this is the series that introduced the Nocturnals to the world, so it’s as good a place as any to start. Written and drawn — or, rather, painted — by Dan Brereton, the comic follows the pulp action adventures of Doc Horror and his team of weirdly-powered misfits as they defend their city from supernatural events. Well, that actually sounds pretty fun to me, and as someone who’s all-in on Hellboy and his parade of spin-offs, I feel like I missed a bet by not buying this series myself. Plus, the painted artwork is quite striking and not quite like anything else on the stands.
Luckily the Nocturnals comics, of which there were a handful in the late ’90s/early ’00s, including a serial in Dark Horse Presents, have been reprinted. That aforementioned Black Planet TPB includes this entire first series, as well as a sketchbook section by Brereton, and pin-ups by Gene Colan, Mike Allred, Bruce Timm, and others.
There are two Nocturnals omnibuses from Dark Horse Comics in 2021 which appear to collect all the previously published material. And good news, everyone, they are still available for reorder from Penguin Random House. Also, there is a rerelease of the Nocturnals graphic novel, “The Sinister Path,” as a mini-series that’s starting next month (the first appearance of this story in periodical form)! Oh, the timeliness of this post.
Comicsbeat ran an article about the lack of Clark Kent in the new film. Specifically, the whole “double identity” thing in relation to his life in Metropolis and at the Daily Planet. We do get a little of that in the film, the article notes, but for the most part the “Clark” bits are with folks who know of his double life.
I mean, granted, Superman was otherwise occupied for most of this flick, but I certainly would have liked seeing him frustrating Steve Lombard’s attempted pranks on him throughout the work day. Yes, that’s what I want in my multi-million dollar blockbuster film.
What’s more interesting about the film’s version of Clark is, of course, how the movie’s tail is wagging the DC Comics’ publishing dog. (I do realize the argument can be made for the metaphorical dog and its tail to swap in this case.) And this is happening despite the relatively small appearance of the Traditional Clark Kent in the film.
Some time ago, we started getting our Superman movie trailers, and our first glace of David Corenswet as Mr. Kent:
And in a bit of corporate synergy, the Clark of the comics starts getting an equivalent mop-top, this example of which is taken from the recent Superman Unlimited #1:
I was going to say once the film’s run is over, Comics Clark will remember how to start combing his hair properly again. The success (so far) of this new Superman movie could mean this minor redesign mighjt stick around longer than expected, but we’ll have to see.
Speaking of Kryptonian hair styles, the cute ‘n’ fuzzy cinematic Krypto has inspired a similar redesign in the comics. I’m okay with extra-fuzzy Krypto in the movies. I’m also okay with Clark’s new look. But I’m not ready to see that version of Krypto in the comics:
As we all saw recently in the new facsimile edition of Adventure Comics #210, the original version of Krypto had a duo-toned mug and mmmmmm not my preference, I’m afraid.
This is still my Krypto:
Well, let me amend that…my Krypto is the one who thinks coherent thoughts in plain English:
And if he had a crown and some royal robes, that would be okay too.
So I don’t know by what means, fair or foul, a fellow Discord-ian found the above image of Superman’s Kryptonian parents, Jor-El and Lara, from James Gunn’s new Superman movie. But, let me tell you, it sure definitely answered for me the question I had since I couldn’t recall propoerly, “did Jor-El have the Superman ‘S” crest on his outfit?”
I mean, I put the question out to a few people, in fact to a couple of folks who were going to be going out that very evening to see it again, and they promised me they would check and report back. And they did, in the negative. And another pal I asked said he specifically looked for that “S” on their costumes the first time he saw the film, and did not see it.
Thus, the evidence mounted, but the screenshot clinches it. And why was I so concerned about that particular costume detail, you may ask? I’ll get to that in a moment.
I’d also like to note that my questioning certainly brought up an important factor in the success (at least, thus far) of this film — repeat viewings! It’s been a while since I’ve heard about folks going back to see the same movie again and again, given 1) COVID, 2) ticket prices, and 3) it’ll be streaming in about 4 to 6 months. This, and its opening weekend box office, seems to indicate DC may have a hit with some traction on its hands.
I mean, it’s only been out a few days, who knows what will happen a week from now, or even when the Fantastic Four movie comes out later this month, but I had been genuinely curious if the public would really be interested in yet another Superman film. And so far, the answer seems to be “yes.” Most folks seem to really, really like it.
Most folks.
I have seen some criticism of this film…by which I mean, real, sincere criticism, not the screeches of “IT’S GONE WOKE” from the usual parade of grifters out for your attention and your wallet. And the specific criticism I’m thinking of, the one I feel a little more qualified to talk about, is the demonizing of Superman’s “foreign” parents and the apparent erasing of his heritage at the end of the film.
I really, really don’t think this was Gunn’s intention, but of course once art is out for the public to see, the public is free to interpret it as per their personal thoughts and experiences. And looking at the film, particularly in the historical moment in which my fellow Americans are living, where awareness of immigration and heritage is at sky-high levels, I can absolutely understand how they can see these elements of the film in the way they do. So, please, if any of them are reading this, what I’m writing here is not an attack on them.
But what I think is happening here is that we are seeing a conflict between Superman’s allegorical weight regarding the immigrant experience and Superman’s sci-fi plot tropes that arise from his being a literal extraterrestrial. More than anything else, I think the complaints are caused by a bit of bad timing regarding this conflict.
Yes, technically, Superman is an immigrant. Even an illegal immigrant, as per this episode of Smallville:
But that aspect tends to be downplayed, especially in more recent decades. The preference appears to be that Superman, while of Kryptonian heritage, is Of Earth, as per this page from #6 of John Byrne’s Man of Steel mini-series:
There are, in fact, multiple stories of Superman resisting the imposition of Kryptonian values upon Earth and himself. His battles against the Eradicator, and his conflict with Bar-El and Lilo-El.
But obviously Superman does not reject Kryptonian culture outright. He has a Fortress of Solitude, in some versions of the story based on Kryptonian architecture, that contains Kryptonian technology. He has (in some versions) a surviving city of Krypton, shrunken by his nemesis Brainiac, which he occasionally visits. He wears an outfit that emblazoned with what is, in some versions of the story, a Kryptonian symbol.
Speaking of that symbol, I said earlier on that I was wondering if Superman’s Kryptonian parents were wearing it. So many versions of Superman’s origin story, especially of late, put that “S” on Jor-El just so we know there’s a connection between that man we’re seeing onscreen and the baby that’s about to be rocketed into space.
As you saw, there’s no “S” there, which does away with my argument that ultimately, at the end of the film, when Superman has replaced images of Jor-El and Lara with images of the Kents, his Earth parents, for display in the Fortress, it’s hard to say that he’s rejected his heritage fully when he’s still got a Kryptonian symbol on his chest. Except, we don’t know that it is. In several versions of the Superman story, it is, but here, we’re not sure.
Despite that, the idea that he’s fully rejected where he comes from is still sort of belied by thge fact he’s still surrounded by presumably Kryptonian technology, robots seemingly built from that same advanced tech, in a Fortress that also seems to come from that same tech. Granted, yes, we don’t know any of that stuff for sure, but at the very least the Fortress’s appearance evokes every other cinematic version, all of which come from Krypton science.
The real problem arises when the sci-fi plot twist shows up, when the partially damaged final message from Jor-El and Lara is restored, and instead of simply being an expressive of love and hope for Kal-El, it reveals their desire for their son to subjugate the Earth, to take many wives and spread the Kryptonian bloodline. It makes Jor-El and Lara into villains, along the lines of other pro-Krypton adversaries like the Eradicator and (in Superman: The Animated Series) Brainiac. And Superman resists them, denies them this influence, by removing their images from his Fortress.
This is an interesting twist on the Superman story, one that we haven’t quite seen before in the mainline Superman comics. (The return of an older, crankier Jor-El in relatively recent Superman continuity may come close.) However, like I said, the problem is timing.
The demonizing of the foreign Els, who are sneaking their immigrant offspring into our county/planet in order to destroy us, only to have said offspring reject completely where he came from and meld into this new society…yeah, putting it that way, you can see why some people are upset, especially, like, right now.
I still think this is a good, solid superhero movie, with some minor issues (I don’t like one of the antagonists being killed off at the end…at the very least, they could have shown him in a wheelchair with casts on each limb to show he survived the fall). Given the number of other superheroes in the film, Gunn manages a good balance of keeping Superman the star while giving everyone else their moment or three.
I’m truly sorry what some folks saw in this film ruined it for them…nobody wanted that, for sure. There were more controversies than just this, but those are whole other posts I’m not quite ready to make yet.
At the very least we can all agree that Krypto is amazing. The Superdog heals all division.
So one of these came into the shop the other day via a collection someone was trying to sell, and I passed on it:
…mostly because it was a little too beat up, and also didn’t include the flexidisc. But it did bring back some memories.
It was 1980, and was 10 or 11 years old, depending on far into 1980 we were. I spotted a new MAD special on the stands, but it wasn’t one of the usual MAD Super Specials, but some new, standalone thing. It was MAD Disco, making fun of the musical fad of the times.
When I picked it up, the first thing I noticed was just how thin it felt. It had kind of a stiff paper cover, a little higher quality than your usual MAD, but otherwise felt like a slim pamphlet compared to the other members of the MAD family.
But what I remember that especially shocked me was the price. This thinner MAD was a whole two dollars. Yes, the magazine did contain a flexidisc, which I presumed then was the primary impetus for the higher cost.
It was still a new MAD thing, and given this was 1980, and I was still in my prime MAD readership phase (starting about ’76, ending about ’82), I somehow either scraped together the money, or bugged one of parents to buy it, and I took it home.
And I enjoyed the mag, and the record, quite a bit. The record was quite the elaborate enterprise, with full silly disco arrangements for funny songs, and you could kinda see why MAD needed that full $2 for their publication. As for the comics, I think the coin-operated disco gag drawn by Sergio Aragones amused my friends and I the most.
Alas, all these years later, that MAD, along with many other childhood magazines, were disposed of during a spring cleaning. I had hoped the disco flexidisc survived the purge by being kept with my record collection, but I have not yet found it. (In fact, I just now checked again, and nope, still not there, but I do still have my original “Pac-Man Fever” single, received when we preordered “Pac-Man” for the Atari 2600, and my “Young Fresh Fellows Vs. Scruffy the Cat” split 7 inch.)
But, regarding the mag’s apparenbt thinness: checking the Grand Comics Database, the page count is given as 36 pages, including covers presumably. And remember, this was for $2, including the record.
I thought I’d compare it to other MADs from the period, like this standard monthly issue here, #215:
…containing my all-time favorite title for a MAD movie parody, “A Crock O’ [Blip] Now!” Anyhow, this page count is given as 52 pages, with a cover price of $0.75. No inserts, no nuttin’, but color covers and black and white interiors.
Also from 1980 is MAD Super Special #30:
…which is 100 pages for $1.25. Extra sized yes, special inserts no.
More of a point of comparison is the next special, #31:
…which also contains a record, albeit a one-sided dsic versus the two-sided disco record. 84 pages, all reprints, for $1.50.
And the next couple of specials follow sort of the same pattern…if there’s an insert, the page count drops a little and the price stays at $1.50. If there is no insert, you get more pages for $1.50. Then in ’81 you get the special that includes a giant fold-out U.S. map with illustrations by Aragones, and that’s 80-something pages for $2.
But looking back, I was right to be surprised at the higher price point on that MAD Disco mag. It is significantly higher than the other available MAD publications, though looking back at it now I can see why.
The mag was all new material, and the production costs on a double-sided flexidisc was certainly much higher than the standard one-sider. Plus, there was the actual production of the songs themselves…they had to be written, they had to be performed, produced, mixed, other terms I’m not quite sure about.
To the best of my knowledge there wasn’t a full rerelease of all these songs on CD, but three of them can be found on MAD Grooves, a CD released in the mid-1990s. In fact, there are a lot of MAD albums that could stand some kind of new release…maybe not on CD, which would be my preference, but digital at least. Well, maybe the All in the Family parody may be a bit rough on today’s ears, but there’s a lot of funny stuff just languishing, out of print.
Though…shhhh, don’t tell anyone, but you might something of interest at this link. (Warning: may autoplay on you.)
It’s a real pleasure to read one of these oversized treasury comics where the artwork is drawn to take advantage of the larger dimensions of the pages. Plenty of full page illos and double-page spreads, and while this may annoy in your standard-sized monthly periodical comics, it feels like a special bonus to get such imagery in these books. Bruno Redondo (along with assists from various artists like Dan Jurgens and Brett Breeding) knocks it out of the park here, and the comic is never anything but delightful to look at.
Now, the story…it takes place slightly in the past, where Superman and Lois’s son Jon was still a boy, before getting aged up for reasons I’ll touch upon shortly. And because it’s the aforementioned Dan Jurgens is the writer, we get more Jurgens creations in addition to Jon popping up throughout the story, such as [reminder: SPOILERS] the Cyborg Superman and Maxima. (Well, okay, Jurgens didn’t create Maxima, but he sure used her a lot.)
As I was reading this, I was just slightly disappointed that these particular characters got dragged out from the last thirty years or so of Superman’s history. I’d hoped for something a little less deep-cut-ish and more accessible for new readers, rather than Jurgens doing a “My Greatest Superman Hits.” But, in fairness, it was either “yet another Superman Vs. Luthor” story versus something that showed off some variety in Superman’s rogues gallery, so ultimately, in retrospect, I suppose I don’t actually have a problem with this.
One this this story does do is establish the history of the current version of Superman, spending a few pages outlining the character’s Big Events (death by Doomsday, his marriage, etc.) and trying to get straight just what exactly is canon for this character, who had his from-scratch reboot in 1986 and has gone through some various revisions in the decades since.
(Also of note: it’s confirmed that Maxima was once a Justice League member, from way back in the pre-Zero Hour DC Universe.)
(Also of note: the “timeline,” as such, ends around the time Superman first encounters his father Jor-El, who survived Krypton’s destruction, but takes place before Jor-El takes Jon on his space trip, during which, due to time travel/dilation/timey-wimey stuff, he ages into his late teens. So Jurgens is really threading the needle here of when this story took place.)
After the story are some pages promoting the new Superman film, with nice big color photos of the cast. Overall, it’s a fun, attractive book…would’ve been okay with not seeing the Cyborg Superman yet again, but, eh, it’s fine. Hopefully this comic will sell well enough to encourge DC to publish more new treasury comics, instead of just reprinting the old ones.
Kevin Smith his own self writes this crossover between the world of Archie and the View Askewniverse, and while not wildly over-the-top funny, it’s certainly amusing enough and will inspire a few Sensible Chuckles.
A good chunk of the humor is in the contrast between the filthy language used by Smith’s characters versus the general innocence of the Archies, commented upon within the book itself:
And I’m not made of stone, seeing characters drawn in the Archie style, in a comic published by Archie Comics, use naughty words made me laugh a bit.
The plot itself works its way up from smaller character pieces and interactions into a giant climactic event at a concert, but I felt the smaller scale scenes worked better. There was just more focus in the earlier bits of the book, while things just got a little too chaotic at the end. Might have been the sort of scene that would work better cinematically but falls a little flat on the page. Not that it wasn’t amusing, it just didn’t entirely work for me.
But overall I enjoyed the comic, which reminded me a little of the Good Ol’ Days of the early Clerks comics from Oni Press. I wouldn’t mind seeing more of these, though I suspect we were lucky to just get the one.
Also, I liked the running gags referencing specific Archie comics titles. I knew that Pep wasn’t in there just by chance!
On a related note, I was listening to some old mix discs of mine (remember mix discs? ask your grandparents) and came across this one track, which is about the first 30 or 40 seconds of this very Not Safe for Work video. That still makes me laugh.
So I had one of the above comics show up in a collection the other day, a copy of 1994’s Brinke of Eternity autographed by actress and writer Brinke Stevens. And judging by context clues from other items in the collection (price tags and such) there is a very good chance this came from a signing we had at my previous place of employment.
Now at that shop, one of our regular customers was a friend of Brinke’s (and in fact would later script the movie Hybrid in which she was featured) and helped set up the event. Brinke showed up in costume, brought a bunch of photos ‘n’ such to sell, autographed a boatload of comics, and was just as nice as could be. And when I ran into her two or three times in the years after that, she continued to be just an absolutely delightful person.
So the end result was that there are plenty of signed copies of this book floating around out here in Ventura County and surrounding environs, with the usual attrition that happens to many comic collections after thirty years (water damage, dog ate it, stolen by aliens, y’know, the usual). I mean, I’m supposing there are, since I haven’t seen too many over the decades. I’m assuming everyone’s just hangin’ onto them.
There was only one issue for Brinke of Eternity, but the follow-up endeavor Brinke of Destruction in 1995 ran three issues:
Pictured is the first issue with the Boris Vallejo cover. Interestingly, the third issue contains illustrations/pin-up pages by Stan Sakai and Sergio Aragones, with the latter featuring…Groo the Wanderer? Hoo boy, it’s off to eBay for me, I guess.
In 1997, issue #1 was re-released with an audio cassette:
…and, try as I might, I couldn’t find it on YouTube. Either I’m not typing in the right search terms, or somehow the Copyright Cops actually managed to keep it from being uploaded. I’m mostly curious as to the credits…did Brinke herself do any of the voicework?
The next original comic in the “Brinke” series is Brinke of Disaster in 1996:
…and this is surprisingly the only one with a photo cover, featuring Brinke as “Brinke,” and Cynthia Johns as “The Blonde Avenger.”
The final entry in the Brinke Saga — so far — is another iteration of Brinke of Destruction in 1997:
…which was another one-shot, featuring new material and not reprints from the previous Brinke of Destruction series.
So there you go, the Brinke Stevens comics collection. A nice little selection of comics created and/or inspired by a very nice person.Maybe she’ll get back to them someday…may I suggest “Brinke of Ruin,” named after her favorite long-running comics blog, of course?
Here’s another title that I shockingly didn’t not read, coming out as it did when the comics market was in serious flux and so was my disposable income. Now, the person who voted for this title actually voted for Nocturnals: Black Planet, which was the 1998 trade paperback edition published by Oni Press and was kinda its own thing which I’ll discuss in a moment. 
