Mike Sterling's Progressive Ruin
Putting the bomp in the bomp-bah-bomp-bah-bomp since 1969
And here is the come-on for the next issue, from inside the front cover:
So I should probably note that I wasn’t ill, or in dire straits (or even in Dire Straits) over the last week, given some of the concern I’ve received of late over my brief hiatus. I appreciate the comments, the emails, and folks popping by the store seeing how I was doing, but I assure you, everything’s fine. There was some house stuff, some troublesome appliances, and plenty of general “life getting in the way” type things that simply kept me from devoting time to the worrisome endeavor that is my website. It is nice to know that people do care, and I thank you kind people for your attention.
One event that occurred over the weekend was a small comic convention being held at a local library. We sent Employee Timmy over with some kid-friendly books and merchandise for Seth’s dealer table:
In addition, Sergio Aragones was the guest-speaker at the con, and alas I wasn’t able to be there in the evening for that event, but both at the shop and during my brief presence at the library I certainly heard from several people who were excited to see him. Pal Casie did report the next day that the talk was quite successful and attracted a good crowd, which is very good to hear.
Anyway, not bad for a first try at a library-con here, and we look forward to doing it again. Plus, when I showed up in the evening to help Timmy break down the table and take everything back to the shop, I got some heavy librarian-nostalgia vibes while transporting boxes through the back rooms. I almost felt like shelving some books. Instead I went back to the store and…um, shelved some books there. Or, rather, Timmy did. I supervised.
Another event this past weekend was the Halloween ComicFest, which is the industry’s attempt at creating a second Free Comic Book Day later in the year. Now we didn’t have anything really approaching the craziness of our last FCBD event, and I’m not sure the idea of “Halloween ComicFest” has really caught on yet with the general public (due to the lack of that all-important word “FREE” in the name), but we had plenty of people show up throughout the day and get themselves some free Halloween-ish comics, as well as availing themselves of our in-store weekend sales. So, you know, that was fine. I did a little pushing of it this year prior to the event, but I think next year I’ll try to find the time to go all out with costume contests and such to make it more of a thing. We are offering discounts to people who show up at the shop in costume, so at least there’s that! (I mean, real costumes, not just showing up in your regular clothes and saying “I’m dressed as a movie extra!” or anything like that.)
…I’m taking the rest of the week off. I’ll be back Monday, though I may have some kind of thing on Saturday. We’ll see.
In the meantime, that Swamp Thing cartoon I posted here the other day? You can totally get that as a high quality print now. Tell ’em your pal Mike sent you! (And they’ll respond with “…Who?”)
See you Monday (or maybe Saturday).
So it appears that with Fantagraphics’ The Complete Peanuts: 1989 to 1990, we are fully into the “Snoopy likes cookies” jokes phase of the strip:
I think my stance on this pressing issue is a bit more forgiving now, since I find myself enjoying the strips not so much as, you know, any kind of deep insight into the human (or beagle) condition, or as a laugh-out-loud gag, but as just a…I don’t know, a soft smile or a quiet sense of gentle bemusement as a familiar character repeatedly expressed his quirk. Also, I think I’ve since come to appreciate Schulz’s commitment to the cookie joke repetition…he decided that Snoopy liked cookies, that he thought it was funny, and by God he was going to use his comic strip to explore every freakin’ facet of that comedy gem. Plus, the dude did work on this strip for fifty years. If anyone deserved being cut a little slack, it’s him.
There may also be a small element of reappreciating someone’s work in the light of “well, there ain’t gonna be no more, so enjoy what you have.” I’ve mentioned this before in relation to Jack Kirby’s 1970s output, which was mocked in some quarters at the time, but now try to find someone who doesn’t love Devil Dinosaur.
Also in this book is this reference to Siskel and Ebert, as Sally and Charlie Brown discuss a movie they’re about to see:
And here’s yet another terrifying example of Snoopy just straight-up speaking:
So pal Kevin pointed this out to me on the Twitters, and being immediately enamored with it, I asked the artist’s permission to post it here on my own site:
And lo, there were solicits for the Miracleman revival:
MIRACLEMAN #1 & 2
THE ORIGINAL WRITER & MICK ANGLO (W)
GARRY LEACH, ALAN DAVIS, PAUL NEARY, STEVE DILLON & MICK ANGLO (A)
ISSUE #1 – COVER BY JOE QUESADA
Variant COVER BY JOHN CASSADAY
Variant COVER BY MARK BUCKINGHAM
Variant COVER BY JEROME OPENA
Variant COVER BY LEINIL FRANCIS YU
Sketch VARIANT BY JOE QUESADA
YOUNG VARIANT BY SKOTTIE YOUNG
CLASSIC VARIANT BY GARRY LEACHISSUE #2 – COVER BY ALAN DAVIS
Variant COVER BY ARTHUR ADAMS
Variant COVER BY MIKE PERKINS
Variant COVER BY MIKE MCKONE
Sketch VARIANT BY ALAN DAVIS• KIMOTA! With one magic word, a long-forgotten legend lives again!
• Freelance reporter Michael Moran always knew he was meant for something more — now, a strange series of events leads him to reclaim his destiny!
• Relive the ground-breaking eighties adventures that captured lightning in a bottle — or experience them for the first time — in these digitally restored, fully relettered editions!
• Issue 1 includes material originally presented in WARRIOR #1 and MIRACLEMAN #1, plus the MARVELMAN PRIMER. Issue #2 includes material originally presented in WARRIOR #1-5, plus bonus material.
ISSUE #1 – 64 PGS./Parental Advisory…$5.99
ISSUE #2 – 48 PGS./Parental Advisory…$4.99
First off…holy crow, that’s a lotta variants.
Second, since Steve Dillon is mentioned as one of the included contributors, I think that means we are getting that previously-unreprinted story from Warrior #4.
Third, “The Original Writer” is what they’ll be calling Alan Moore on this, since Marvel is following Moore’s wishes not to associate his name with the work, I guess. There goes a major selling point to the uninitiated (though I imagine any comic fans with interest in this material pretty much already know).
Fourth…well, it looks like Marvel is depending on the reputation of the material to sell the books, what with a $5.99 debut issue that, if I’m interpreting things correctly, includes the redialogued classic Marvelman story that began the Eclipse Comics MM #1, the initial 8-page installment of Moore and Leach’s revival from Warrior, and your second chance to not read all that stuff from the Miracleman Primer you didn’t read in the first place. So, like, 18 pages of comics, and 46 pages of other stuff if, again, I’m understanding correctly. And I’m guessing the “material from Warrior #1” business in issue #2 is a typo, since there ain’t that much MM stuff in Warrior #1 to begin with, unless they’re splitting an 8-page story across two issues of reprints.
At a $5.99 price point, that’s basically telling the reader who may have a casual interest to not bother. Modern comic fans aren’t necessarily going to dive into this long-unavailable comic simply because the names Moore and Gaiman are attached. (Well, not attached, in Moore’s case, but no media coverage of this comic is not going to mention him.) No matter how special and in how high of regard old fanboys like me who originally bought these comics way back when hold them, it’s still reprints of decades-old comics starring a superhero nobody’s heard of and featuring storytelling tropes that everyone’s seen by now and really why should I, a young, hip comic book reader who follows all two dozen Avengers titles done in the cool modern styles of today, bother to read this old thing just because Grandpa read it and liked it?
I exaggerate, but only a bit. I’ve already seen people expressing disinterest, folks who once enjoyed Moore’s and Gaiman’s work, now no longer so enthused about their output for whatever reasons. And I’ve seen people who might have tried out the comic decide to pass at the proffered price points, particularly since it seems these will be coming out at a more-than-monthly pace given the dual solicitation in a single month’s catalog. I would have loved to see an introductory issue at the promotional $1.00 price point — just comics, with maybe a minimal historical text piece, all killer, no filler — that could have grabbed a much larger base readership. A base that, having been exposed to the material, may be far more willing to follow along with the series at $3.99 per subsequent installment.
But instead we have $5.99 on #1, effectively capping the potential audience. There are the completists who’ll buy it regardless. There are the people who have genuine desire to finally own this material after hearing about it all these years. And there may even be some people who, despite Marvel’s best efforts to dissuade them, will pick up the first issue anyway out of curiosity. And those initial sales numbers will dwindle as the series progresses, until finally bumping up again as the new material finally appears in the series and all the original old Miracleman fans return to the book after previously having given up on rebuying comics they already owned.
I hope I’m wrong. I hope they do sell well. I love the old Eclipse Miracleman comics. I reread them every once in a while and they’re still as entertaining and fascinating to me now as they were when I first experienced them. And I’m really, genuinely happy that Miracleman will soon be available again for everyone to read. I’m simply hoping the strength and beauty, the joy and wonder, of the material can overcome the initial hobbling of its presentation.
Anyway, I’m sure these will eventually make a nice series of hardcovers. Assuming they don’t blow this “relettering” they keep ballyhooing.
That of course means those of us who’ve been waiting…hold on, let me look it up…oh Good Lord, since mid-1993 for a follow-up to that bit of a cliffhanger Neil ‘n’ Mark left us on in #24 are going to have to wait a little while longer to see how that all plays out.
Despite my wishful thinking on the Twitterers:
On the other hand, maybe it won’t take that long to get through all the old stuff to reach the new stuff since, as I noted at the end of this post, Marvel ain’t shy about turning the faucets open all the way and flooding the shelves as quickly as they’re able with successive issues of any given series. So, 24 reprint issues before getting new Miracleman? Eh, ten, eleven months, tops.
Okay, technically 23 issues, since Eclipse’s #8 was a reprint issue, though with some new pin-ups and a brief framing sequence drawn by Chuck Austen (AKA Chuck Beckum). But then again, they could speed up the process by printing more stories per issue…the first seven issues of the Miracleman series featured stories told in 6 to 8 page chapters, mostly reprinted from the UK magazine Warrior (though some of the later chapters were drawn new from scripts that never made it into that magazine). And some of the follow-up “full-length” installments were only 16 pages long. I don’t know how economically feasible it is to put out a regular series of 48-pagers in order to squeeze in more material, nor do I think readers are going to want to pay the inevitable $4.99 to $6.99 per issue in order to subsidize the printing costs simply because I, your pal Mike, wants to get his filthy, filthy mitts on new Miracleman comics right this very second. I’ve seen it mentioned that the first issue includes material from Alan Davis, who didn’t start on the feature ’til its sixth chapter (which was reprinted in Eclipse MM #2) so maybe we are getting more miraclebang per buck in each issue. We’ll see.
Most likely Marvel will stretch things out best as they’re able, and there are a handful of shorter Miracleman-related stories to round out any 32-page format comics containing just one 16-page main story. Maybe we’ll even get that bit of business from Warrior #4 that never made it to the States. And of course there’s that “new material” and interviews and such that Marvel noted in their press releases that will probably fill up any shortfall in any given issue. They also mention “the stories are being completely relettered to meet today’s standards,” which gives me the twitchy eyeball, as I recall certain other publishers relettering some high-profile reprint projects and introducing a whole new world of lovely typos and spelling errors into some classic material. Here’s hoping there’s no editing-by-spellcheck goin’ on this time.
I do like the idea that they’re keeping the “Miracleman” name for this particular story started by Moore and (presumably) to be ended by Gaiman. I had assumed that the name change (originally necessitated by a U.S. publisher that wasn’t Marvel Comics reprinting the material) would be reversed now that Marvel does have the work under its banner, but it looks like they’re keeping the Miracleman name for this project, and “Marvelman” for when he’s in the actual Marvel Universe and joins the Thunderbolts or whatever. And I think that’s fine. It was pretty well known at the time that Eclipse had to change the character’s name to keep Marvel happy, but I came to know the feature as Miracleman, and it would feel strange to pick up the story again with his name changed back. Just one of those funny fanboy quirks, I know. Hey, I’m allowed one or two of those.
Of course, the Miracleman name could be a problem, too, if the publisher of this comic ever turns up with some ceasing-and-desisting.
So relatively recently, apparently, we’ve been selling back issues of the Morbius series from the early 1990s. Now I knew we’d at least sold the issues crossing over with the Siege of Darkness storyline, since we’d had folks specifically seeking those issues out. However, when I finally stuck my nose into the box to see what issues I had to pull out of the backroom to restock, lo and behold, the section was nearly empty.
Basically what I’m telling you is that it’s been a while since I’ve done the full restock on the Morbius books. I’ve dipped into the backstock boxes to pull out more copies of the Siege of Darkness issues, and the first issue Rise of the Midnight Sons crossover tie-in, but that’s about it. I haven’t really given that old, cobwebbed Morbius box — underlit, mysterious shades roaming about it in the darkness, the quiet sound of a slow drip of water into a shallow pool — in the backroom a good going-through. And what I found whilst digging through said box was a small stack of these:
Anyway, I’d completely forgotten that this particular reprint even existed. I knew Marvel did stuff like this, like reprinting the first Silver Sable appearance when she received her own series. But nope, this thing totally slipped my mind, as did the Morbius Revisted reprint series that briefly ran concurrently with the main series, during that crazy time in this industry when the market could support two series starring the Living Vampire. (As, you know, opposed to now, where it can’t even support one.)
Of course, the annoying thing about a reprint like this is the fact that the story totally ends on a cliffhanger, with Morbius teaming up with the Lizard to take on ol’ Webhead, leaving it up to you to find the then 20-year-old #102 to wrap up the story. (Or, um, Marvel Tales #253 from 1991, reprinting #102.)
Just thought this was an interesting artifact of its time, created to support the launch of a series starring one of Marvel’s third-stringers, now primarily only of import because it’s a reprint of a pricy Amazing Spider-Man back issue. Plus, it’s, like, the middle chapter of the Amazing Spider-Man’s Six Arms Saga, and where’s our trade paperback and / or live action film adaptation of that?
