…courtesy of the Great Stuffed Bull of the Galaxy, Bully: 100 Things That Make Star Trek Great, a real tour-DeForest of amusing pics and appropriate fontage. (Bully asks that you add your own Things That Make Star Trek Great in the comments, which, um, I may have done.)
The reader’s curse.
So you know how it is when you’re working in a comic book store, and you have this big ol’ pile of old comics you’re processing for the back issue section, and there are a whole lot of issues of Love and Rockets and Eightball in said pile, and you think to yourself “well, I have all these, and they’re really good, but it’s been a while since I’ve looked at them…I should pull them all out and read them again” and of course you don’t really have any time to do any such thing, you’ve barely had a chance to finish reading new comics from last week or the week before, not to mention this Complete Peanuts 1985-1986 which is still awaiting your attention, now you want to add Eightballs and Love and Rockets you’ve already read to the pending read-these-soon stack too?
I think you know where I’m coming from. But apparently I have time to watch TV, because I just watched all of the first season of the new BBC Sherlock series over the last couple of nights, and it turns out it’s quite good. Have you heard of it? You should check it out sometime. …And of course watching that makes me want to whip out far too many Sherlock Holmes books from my shelves, by Doyle and those ones not by Doyle where Holmes turns out to be a time-traveling alien and that sort of thing, and reread those, too. The end result is that, somehow, I need to increase my reading speed, which is already excessively fast, or I need to somehow slow the rotation of the Earth and thus lengthen our days to give me more reading time, or I can somehow talk the boss into letting me stay home and read and he pays me anyway. …So, slowing the rotation of the Earth it is, then.
And there’s that stack of other books sitting on the table next to my bed I need to get through, and let’s not even mention the electronic book-tablet thingie my parents gave me for my birthday a few months ago, and the backlog of books I’m trying to get through on that.
I know, I know, you’re probably thinking “but Mike, maybe you should just not acquire so many things to read, maybe pace yourself a bit” but we should really focus on realistic ideas on how to handle my little problem here. More caffeine and less sleep seems to be the only logical and healthy response.
Anyway, speaking of people getting too much stuff to read, my New Zealand pal Bob is back from his trip (which required guest-bloggers for his site, resulting in this excellent “piece of [in-depth criticism]” from yours truly), and he details the swell bunch of reading material he picked up during his travels. …Hmmm, a couple of those things sound pretty good. I should pick ’em up myself.
“This is terrible” or “And now, a thing Popeye actually said” or “That is one versatile bull” or “Let’s start an argument about how to spell ‘balogna.'”
from Hospitaliky (1937)
Or maybe I should just enjoy this comic and not think about it so much.
So I don’t buy older back issues for myself too much anymore…partially because I just don’t have the budget to do so, and partially because I have far too many comics as it is, and it’s already a Heculean task awaiting those who have to clear out my home after my eventual demise. But, “he says, after going super-dark in the very first line,” I find a deal I can’t pass up, and this week’s deal is…
…Archie Annual #9, from 1957-8. It’s nearly 100 pages of comics, it’s from my favorite period of Archies, it’s in reasonable and readable condition, and it was under nine bucks. Plus, it has the cutest Midge ever:
…but don’t tell Moose I said that.
Anyway, I do love giant special comics…when I was a kid, I sought out those special anniversary issues, like Detective Comics #500 and Justice League of America #200…I bought the annuals, the anniversary issues, and a couple of decades back, I started collecting all of DC’s Eighty Page (then 64-page, then 48-page) Giants, back when they were still affordable. I used to fish DC’s 100-Page Giants out of the quarter bins, back when “aw, these are just reprints, who wants these” was the prevailing school of thought. I guess that’s just the…frugal side of my collecting bug, wanting more for my money.
Plus, there just seems to be some more…significant about the extra-sized issues. The historical value of the reprinted stories. The special event-ness of the superhero anniversary issues, where, like the “mythology” episodes of X-Files or Lost, something wrapped up, something concluded, something was revealed or something changed, where the running-in-place status quo actually seemed to run forward an inch or two (until maintainers of the franchise forced things to return to where they were). Or, like this Archie annual, the sheer amount of content you received for your money was in itself special, where you were getting, like it said on the cover, a “BIG COMPLETE BOOK” with a squarebound spine and everything, not like that floppy, thin, and not nearly as permanent-seeming magazine that you could get every month.
And as I drove home, with this copy of Archie Annual #9 sitting on the seat next to me, I thought about how there were once stacks of these sitting on newsstands over 50 years ago, in brand new condition, being bought by kids with their quarters, brought home, read, passed along to friends, confiscated by teachers, or left behind and tossed out when it came time for parents to reclaim the former rooms of their grown-up children, and how this copy, this very copy right here now sitting on my desk next to me as I type this, managed to survive the decades and end up with me. So thanks to that kid, who may have been seven or ten or so years old at the time, who’d be at least in his or her sixties now or just about, for investing your quarter so long ago and beginning the chain of events that continued with my Thursday purchase of this comic. And that chain will continue on when the time comes for this comic to move on to someone else.
To that person who eventually gets this comic, hopefully sometime in the distant future, who may think back about the people were part of the chain that eventually passed it down to him: you’re welcome.
His is a hairy and wild-eyed people.
So we were a bit shorthanded at the shop on Tuesday, and thus were forced to call in a member of the Legion of Former Employees…the dreaded Aaron of the Forest Tribe:
…pictured here wielding his clan’s traditional weapon of Spawn posters.
Anyway, I probably want to talk more about Swamp Thing — yes, I know, shocking — and some of your comments regarding Monday’s post, but that’ll wait ’til later in the week when I’m not dog-tired. But at the very least, reader Adam was good enough to post a link to Swampy’s cameo in the recent Robot Chicken special. Very short, involves what could only technically be called “a joke,” but has some nice stop-motion animation using that recent Mattel Swamp Thing figure and a Barbie doll or something similar made up to look like Abby. WARNING: May have to watch a 30 second commercial before watching the 4 second clip.
I might spoil a bit of Swamp Thing #0 in this post.
So I went into this New 52 Era of Swamp Thing under the presumption that, well, everything that had gone before, all that Vertigo stuff and Challengers of the Unknown team-ups and Alec’s brother Edward and so on, was still part of the Swamp Thing back story. Okay, maybe not Edward, but what I figured was going to happen was that, as part of this new direction, the focus would be more on “moving ahead” and not so much “worryin’ about all that old stuff.” You know, not going too out of the way to just throw out all those old stories, but, hey, we’ve got new stories to tell, let’s all just jump in with this fresh start and let’s go, gang!
I thought that about Swamp Thing, simply because there wasn’t really too much that directly contradicted anything that had gone before…well, sure, there’s some small measure of retconning, and tying in Arcane to the whole “Rotworld” business, which is all well and good. But it wasn’t like, say, Fury of Firestorm, which explicitly reboots the entire concept of the character, ignoring anything that happened before. It’s more like the Green Lantern books, where, aside from some minor continuity tweaks, they continued on pretty much business-as-usual in this brave new New 52 world.
Well, Swamp Thing #0, part of DC’s Zero Month, where we get a peek at the backstories of their various characters, sorta did away with that preconceived notion of mine. We get an altered version of Swamp Thing’s origin as well as a drastically altered Arcane. Arcane had been tied to the Rotworld concept before, but I figured it was one of those minor “retconnings” I’d mentioned before…that he was still a mad scientist whose search for immortality put him at odds with our mossy hero, but now, in the New 52, we were going to learn the real truth behind all of his previous shenanigans.
Nope (and here comes the SPOILER part)…turns out he’s an evil monster who can disguise himself in the flesh of other humans, has served the Rot for centuries, and hunts and kills Earth elementals like our pal Swampy. Also, he was directly responsible for Alec Holland’s death and (presumably) the rise of the human host-lacking Swamp Thing that we all were familiar with from previous series.
You may be surprised to hear that I’m cool with these changes…Swamp Thing exists under the long shadow of what Alan Moore had done with the character, and the New 52 reboot gives this new creative team the opportunity to retool basic concepts of the series in order to do new and hopefully interesting things. And so far, it has kept my interest. I’m okay with Arcane’s new status quo, making him a sort of “anti-elemental,” and doing away with his horror movie “mad scientist” origins, though…I can imagine the plot permutations possible to keep those original Arcane stories sort-of in continuity. I mean, Abby Arcane has to come from somewhere, right?
Besides, to make a point that has been made many times over…it’s not as if those previous Swamp Thing comics stopped existing or anything. I can always reread those if I want.
A couple of other points: another change that bumps up against my preconceptions of the character is the specific reference to Alec Holland’s death being “five years ago,” which I need to wrap my head around given the kinda real-time progression of Swamp Thing’s previous adventures. I always thought Swamp Thing’s timeline was more along the lines of twenty-something years, which was a problem when there were stronger ties to the regular DC Universe, but less of a problem once it was moved into the DCU-free Vertigo line. Now that it’s back in the DCU as of the New 52 relaunch, “five years” is the new across-the-board paradigm for this Age of Heroes, and I guess Swampy’s got to fit in there somehow.
Another thing is Arcane’s appearance, which originally was the result of being poorly-repaired by his Un-Men following his fall at the end of his debut story. Now, post-New 52, I guessed he always looked like that (or his appearance has a different origin, or the same origin recontextualized, or…well, I certainly nailed that down). Not a complaint or a criticism, just an observation.
One thing I’m sure we can all agree on, however, that of all the details regarding the New 52 version for Swamp Thing, this is the most important thing: Cranius is still around:
So remember friends…even if you’re put out by Swamp Thing’s recent changes, at the very least the return of Cranius offers us all some hope.
Still adorable.
So the other day I was reminded of Marvel’s 1981 comics adaptation of Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits, and what an overlooked gem it is. I mean, the adaptation is by Steve Parkhouse, just-prior-to-V for Vendetta David Lloyd, and John Stokes, so it’s certainly a quality production. It’s a very solid and thorough retelling of the movie, and in fact I had and reread this comic for a good year or three before ever actually seeing the film.
Anyway, I’m not going to oversell it…just if you’re a fan of the film, or would enjoy a crazy 48-page no-ads funnybook featuring some swell cartooning, you can (and should!) probably find a copy of this on the cheap. And I’m pretty sure we still have a few of these layin’ around.
I was noting on the Twitter about how I’d like to see this as a deluxe hardcover, with recolored art on nice white pages, but I think the ol’ floppy newsprint format is a sizable part of the charm.
Also, David Warner plays a major role in Time Bandits, and I think you all know how I feel about David Warner.
There might be a minor spoiler or two for The Omen, which is nearly 40 years old, but you know someone would complain.
So the other night I saw that The Omen was on Netflix Watch Instantly, and I realized a couple of things. One, it had been years since I’ve seen it…in fact, I probably wasn’t any more than about 10 years old, and I probably only saw parts of it on whatever local pay-cable channel we had as a precursor to HBO at the time. Two, my memories of the movie were primarily of the Mad Magazine parody from issue #189 (March 1977):
Actually, that’s not the panel burned into my head, but the ones specifically concerned with the fate of David Warner’s character, which might be a bit much to hit you with without any warning, so I picked that panel above as being a little more representative of the parody as a whole.
I wonder how many more movies and TV shows with which I have passing familiarity mostly because of the Mad parodies, versus actually seeing the darned things. I keep meaning to get around to watching A Clockwork Orange, which, yeah, I know, I haven’t seen it yet, I’m a bad person, but I’ll tell you I still have images from the George Woodbridge-illustrated Mad parody stuck in my brain. And since it seems like I’ll never get around to actually watching Blade Runner, I should find its Mad parody and just settle for that.
Anyway, speaking of what happens to David Warner’s character, I thought I’d be a smart guy and post this to the Twitter the other night:
I thought I’d just remembered the images from the Mad parody involving this scene, but apparently I remembered the joke, too, since I apparently just up and stole it. (Not the “pageboy haircut is adorable” part, but the “losing your head” part. Though David Warner is adorable in this movie.)
Another thing I hadn’t remembered about the film is that Patrick Troughton, Doctor Who‘s Second Doctor, has a significant part:
…Which of course caused me to make Yet Another Obvious Twitter Joke™:
Yes, I think I’m hilarious.
…And this has been another installment of “What Mike Does in His Spare Time.”
A couple of you had more questions from the other day, re: Spawn and related merchandise:
Heli asks
“…Have you covered the ‘party Angela’ phenomenon?”
For those of you who aren’t familiar with this, I’m going to strip away your innocence forever: McFarlane Toys produced an action figure of Spawn supporting character Angela (the warrior angel character created by Neil Gaiman), but, alas, lacked the paint job beneath the figure’s loin-armor or whatever that is to give her warrior angel-appropriate undergarments. Thus, this figure, and, according to my brief-but-probably-getting-me-on-watch-lists Googling, other figures that have similarly gone commando are referred to as “party” figures. And in case you’re wondering, that term does seem more appalling the more you think about it. …I remember a brief hubbub about it at the time, but it seemed to die down once people realized they were getting overly excited about a toy not having paint-panties, and hopefully that nipped it in the bud. Well, except on eBay, where no bud is ever nipped.
Tim O’Neil asks
“What about modern sales of Spawn? Has the series picked up new readers since it entered its 20 year anniversary with all the variant covers and such?”
I haven’t seen any real boost in sales, no…I think we may have gained a new reader or two on the series, but otherwise sales have been very consistent as a low-to-mid range seller. During 2010, when only four issues were released, that may have…well, “put the nail in the coffin” is a bit strong. Maybe “pushed it down the stairs” is more like it.
COMING NEXT WEEK: Yes, I’ll probably talk about Swamp Thing #0, don’t nag me. Also, more comic book talk! Maybe! And not so much about the pogs!
Special thanks to Bully the Little Stuffed Bull for providing the Mad image.
Was Todd six inches or only three?
In response to Monday’s post, where I rambled on at length about Spawn toys and their lack of secondary-market interest, readers Corey and Doc Arkham brought up the first issue of the Spawn comic book. To quote Doc, in his response to Corey’s comment about Spawn #1’s ease of sale:
“Spawn #1 is an easy sell, but every 90s collection is almost guaranteed to have at least one copy in it. It’s such a readily available resource that it doesn’t even figure into an offer price.”
I see early Spawns all the time. In fact, I purchased part of a collection at the shop yesterday, but passed on those very Spawns. Spawn comics, especially #1, are among those where far more people are interested in selling them to me than buying them from me. (Kinda like sets of Marvel trading cards, but that’s a story for another time.) I do sell those #1s on occasion, but too often people who ask about it are trying to price their own copies and are often amazed that it isn’t hundreds of dollars. Now, Spawn comics from about issue 50 to 100 or so…those I could use.
To clarify some of my comments from Monday…yes, while a lot of McFarlane toy sets warm the pegs quite nicely, there are certain figures I could always use. Some of the more famous modern monster figures, like Freddy Krueger or Jason, I could sell those all day. Or this Six Faces of Madness series…that was an enormously popular set. Or Spawn. Not “Medieval Spawn” or “Spawn as He Appeared on the Cover of Issue # Whatever” or Wings of Redemption Spawn. Just plain ol’ Spawn, with the chains and the big cape, as he appeared in that first issue. I could probably sell those.
As for the Todd McFarlane figure, Heli has this to say:
“Unless I’m mistaken, that figure was actually originally thrown in with some Spawn movie playset or other as ‘the bum,’ and then carded and resold through the club.”
That did stir some ancient memories in my tired brain, and that set was Spawn Alley. That linked page includes the note that the “Todd the Bum” figure (pictured here) was only in the sets distributed through Diamond Comics. My memory was that the movie playsets were actually produced at a smaller scale than the standard Spawn figures (like at about 3 inches), while that Collector’s Club figure was at the usual 6-inch Spawn scale. However, the “Todd the Bum” and Todd McFarlane figures are the same sculpt (with different color schemes), even if they are, possibly, if I’m recalling correctly, different sizes. Please correct me if any of you out there know for certain. I know the Spawn.com listings have them at the 6-inch scale, but I’m certain at least one of those sets was at a smaller scale.
One final comment, from the amazingly-named Suckmaster Burstingfoam:
“Do you really wear a toupée? Interesting.”
To paraphrase an old David Letterman joke…if I needed a toupée, would I buy one that looked like this?
From the back room of misfit toys.
Well, technically, today’s toy isn’t from the back room, where lurk even more toys both terrifying and depressing, but from a collection essentially dumped on us at the shop about a week ago.
I generally don’t buy secondary-market toys for the shop from collections. I mean, if something really cool and hard-to-find came in, sure, I’d buy it. But alas, like an old man telling me he has 1940s comics for sale and I look in the box and it’s Bloodlines annuals, every time I’m told “I have a bunch of really old toys for sale” it’s an endless parade of Spawn action figures. And frankly, the one endless parade of Spawn action figures already residing in our storage is enough, thank you.
Old McFarlane figures are very hard sells…well, I mean, there are the “hot” figures, only distributed one per case, or the few sets where most of the figures do command some collector interest. But 99% of the time, it’s, like, this guy. And even the Spawn figures from the very first series, which you’d think would be sought after, took literally years to sell after we picked up a few in a collection, mostly because, compared to the newer Spawn lines, that first series looks tame and unimpressive.
So, yeah, I don’t tend to buy a lot of old toys. But like I said way back when, back in the ancient times up there at the beginning of this post, I recently ended up with a handful of McFarlane figs, and I now have to figure out what to do with them. By which I mean, “throw on the eBay with low starting bids.” And as McFarlane figures go…these might sell. The Blair Witch and Candyman figures seem to get a variety of prices on eBay, and this Kaneda Akira figure hopefully will sell…but I remember having all these before and not having much auction luck with them. But, who knows, maybe things are slightly different now. And it’s not like I have a whole lot of money tied up in them.
And then there’s this figure:
Yup, Todd McFarlane his own self, immortalized in plastic and, once upon a time in the late 1990s, available exclusively through his Collector’s Club thingie. And sure, one could make fun, but I tell you, if I had my own action figure company, you’re darned tootin’ I’d have a figure made of myself. “ACTION MIKE, with Diet Coke and Stylish Toupée Accessories.”
Anyway, get a load of this handsome bastard:
The included “sketch” features a message with which we, as a people, can all agree:
And here is a close-up of one of his powerful gloved hands, which I’m featuring for no good reason beyond being amused at the idea that he’s out there street-fighting when not managing his Spawn empire:
So, yeah, ol’ Todd’s goin’ on the eBay, where, judging by past performance there, I might get a sawbuck. Or maybe some Loonies. Who can say?
Before you ask…no, I don’t know why Todd’s face is all slashed and blood-splattered on the figure’s backing. …Other than meeting certain levels of expectation, I suppose.