Galactus clearly states his position.

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…Just in case anyone was, you know, wondering.

BONUS GALACTUS CONTENT: Galactus has a good belly-laugh:


Actually, he looks a bit like he’s having a seizure, or that he needs the Heimlich Maneuver, or something. Granted, laughing ain’t something Galactus does very often, so I’m guessing it does hurt a bit.

If I recall correctly, he has a good laugh in the last issue of Bob Layton’s first Hercules mini-series as well. Alas, my copy is misplaced in the Vast Mikester Comic Archives, so a scan will follow later in the week. In the meantime, here’s pal Dorian with a taste from that same ish.

images from Fantastic Four #175 (October 1976) by Roy Thomas & John Buscema, and from Rom #26 (January 1982) by Bill Mantlo, Sal Buscema & Joe Sinnott — that’s two, two, two Buscemas in one post, at no extra charge!

I demand some consistency from my 20-year-old trading cards.

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Here’s probably my favorite trading card image of Galactus, drawn by Art Adams and taken from the 1991 Marvel Universe set from Impel:


That’s a nice, imposing image of Galactus, there…is it just me, or does it have a little Moebius feel to it? Also, Adams did a handful of other very nice cards for this set, including one of Absorbing Man that, at the time, former employee Rob was trying to corner the market on, or something. He had, like, dozens of the damned things. I still have no idea why. Probably best to remain blissfully ignorant.

Anyway, back to the Galactus card…the characters in this set were given power ratings on the card backs, and here are the Big G’s:


And that’s all well and good, I suppose. I get the “stamina” thing, since he’s gotta eat a planet every few days or his blood space-sugar gets dangerously low. And his agility is low, presumably due to his size, so he’s probably not going to be doing any pirouettes. But let’s take a look at the stats from his trading card the following year:


It looks like Galactus took some dumb pills because his intelligence stat dropped a couple of points. Or maybe because he maxed out the first set of stats, they readjusted the scale to get a more accurate reading. Or maybe they’re just making this crap up off the top of their heads. Whatever.

But get a load of the speed stats on both cards. With his speed score maxed out, and his agility score as low as it is…this guy’s going to be tripping over a lot of footstools and walking into walls. And given that he’s already wearing a hat pretty much designed to keep you walking through doorways sideways, this is seriously a disaster waiting to happen. Keep him out of the china shop!

In other mostly non-Galactus news:

  • Pal Dorian is celebrating his 5th anniversary of blogging this week, kicking off with pics of some of his favorite men, and continues with a look at the first comic he ever read. So congrats, Dor! Thanks for keeping at this blogging thing for as long as you have…if it weren’t for you, pal, I don’t think I’d have as much fun as I do with this site.

    And by the way…Dor’s Uncomfortable Plot Summaries post just keeps going and going and going…I keep seeing new links to it pop up all the time. Even from people who actually get the Rocky joke. He was even on the front page of the Internet Movie Database, for God’s sake. And Neil Gaiman his own self was a good sport about a joke at his expense that, er, I may have been involved with. Dor’s shown me his traffic stats, and he’s getting some crazy-ass numbers….that post is probably the single most popular thing ever generated by someone in the comicsweblogosphere. You’d think some of the bigger comics sites would have noted it by now.

    So again, congrats to Dor for five years of blogging. He’s a swell guy, so give him your best wishes!

  • Over at the great Flash fan site Speed Force, there’s a brief discussion about how the continuity-heavy Free Comic Book Day offering Blackest Night #0 is intended to preach to the converted, rather than grab readers new to comics. And, yes, there’s that, I’m not disagreeing…but the last time I worried about a continuity-heavy FCBD offering from DC, JLA #0, the girlfriend’s nieces ate it up. So I’m not going to worry too much about it this time. No, it’s likely not going to make kids come in every Wednesday and get the latest installment of the crossover…but I’ll settle for kids popping in once in a while to buy a comic or two because they enjoyed the free comics they got.
  • P-TOR shares a dream he had about me and Neilalien. A dream…or a nightmare?

Ah, what the hell…let’s do "Galactus Week."

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EMO GALACTUS IS EMO:


By the way, the “mutate” referred to by Galactus’s little robot helper is none other than Marvel’s disco queen superhero, Dazzler, who had been recruited by the big G to do some damned thing or ‘nother that he couldn’t do for whatever reason. Anyway, that’s not important. But what is important is that after, what, three days, suddenly Galactus is all moody (well, moodier) after crushing hard on the celebrity babe he’d just kidnapped. You just know after he stomped off to his room in that last panel, he logged into his InsaneJournal to post private entries about his breaking heart. “Current music: Air Supply – ‘All Out of Love.'”

And now, for no good reason, I see Galactus grabbing a succession of disco singers to help him cope with whatever nefarious plans and/or emotional issues he’s dealing with. “GLORIA GAYNOR — YOUR SONG ‘I WILL SURVIVE’ HAS TOUCHED THE LONG-DORMANT HEART OF GALACTUS. YOU HAVE GIVEN ME THE RESOLVE TO CONTINUE, TO SURVIVE. TRULY THE POWER COSMIC PALES IN COMPARISON TO THE POWER OF DISCO.”

Okay, at this point, I have no idea what the heck I’m saying.

And yes, Galactus’s head-wing-antenna-thingie is missing in that first panel. Hey, he’s Galactus, he can do stuff like make part of his headgear disappear.

images from Dazzler #11 (January 1982) by Danny Fingeroth, Frank Springer & Vince Colletta

Galactus means business.

filed under Categories galactus

from Fantastic Four #75 (June 1968) by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby & Joe Sinnott


Sorry…got in late and had no time to properly blog. So, here’s another swell pic of Galactus. We all love Galactus, don’t we? Sure we do.

I’m probably not doing “Galactus Week” as suggested by pal Cully, at least not right now…but I totally could.

I should be writing a little something about Free Comic Book Day…

filed under Categories galactus

…but that can wait for later. Instead, have a pic of pissed-off Galactus:

from Fantastic Four #123 (June 1972) by Stan Lee, John Buscema & Joe Sinnott


I don’t know that Galactus is my favorite Marvel character, but he’s certainly in the top five…along with Howard the Duck, Man-Thing, Dr. Doom, and the Thing. If there were a comic that teamed up all five characters for an exciting “novel-length 18-page adventure,” I’d be all over it.

And then there was that time Spock turned his back on his Vulcan heritage so he could totally laugh at tiny naked Mr. Scott.

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from Star Trek #25 (July 1974) – scan courtesy of Kevin Church,
so I didn’t have to bust the spine on my copy of Enterprise Logs #3 to get the pic


Or maybe Spock was simply trying to fit in, and he was doing this completely insincere and creepy robotic laugh to show Kirk that he was totally down with his Earth humor based on embarrassment and humiliation.

At any rate, I certainly hope Scotty reported this to Space Human Resources. Or kept this little incident in mind the next time Kirk hit him up for some hooch.

Plugs, and Free Comic Book Day.

filed under Categories free comic book day
  • Released at last! America’s finest comic book:


    TALES DESIGNED TO THRIZZLE #5

    This one’s heavy on the Twain and Einstein, but also contains many other features of interest and amusement. Download a four-page preview at the link, there.

    And for those of you who need a little convincing to try something that’s not from DC or Marvel: it’s a “Dark Reign” crossover. Also, Batman is in it. No, really, you should buy it and check it out. I wouldn’t lie to you.

  • It’s both what you want and what you need! It’s the third and final chapter THE CHRONICLES OF SOLOMON STONE issue #1, as revealed by Solomon Stone’s secret helpers Chris Sims, Matthew Allen Smith, and Benjamin Birdie. Read it for free! Heck, read it naked! I mean, if you’re home alone, and not looking at this on your iPhone while riding the train or anything.
  • We received the balance of our books for Free Comic Book Day, coming May 2nd to a shop near you, and hopefully that shop won’t screw it up by making the books only “free with purchase” or something stupid like that. Er, anyway…now that I’ve had a good look at all the books: this is a pretty nice, balanced selection this time around, I think.

    One of the better books to look out for is Drawn & Quarterly’s Nancy/Melvin the Monster flip-book, featuring John Stanley’s fine cartooning printed in color on faux-yellowed pages. It looks fantastic. Fantagraphics has a fine Love & Rockets sampler, and Bongo, as always, presents a great package of their Simpsons comics, and those are always a big hit. Boom Studios is putting out a freebie for their Cars series, based on the animated film, and I’m curious to see what reaction to that will be like from our younger customers.

    But overall, quality seems to be a bit higher across the board for the freebies this year. And every year we get increasingly larger crowds at the shop for the event, so I’m anticipating a day of slightly-controlled mayhem weekend after next. So drop by…see how much grayer Mike’s hair is at the end of the day!

    Also, I was interviewed over the phone for the local paper regarding FCBD a week or so ago, but I don’t think the article’s been printed yet. I wanted to tell the reporter all the stuff I’ve been telling you folks on my site for the past five years about FCBD, but I think all that came out was “DUH COMICS FREE COME GETTUM.” Hopefully a little friendly editing will make that into something coherent.

    EDIT: The article is now online.

IT CAME FROM MIKE’S PARENTS’ GARAGE.

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So my dad was cleaning his garage and found a few old boxes of my stuff, and he gave me call and asked me to come by and pick ’em up if I wanted them. Mostly it was a bunch of old books (which doesn’t surprise me) and binders of trading cards (which DID surprise me, since I thought I had them all at my house, but apparently were stored there during one of my moves years ago).

Anyway, I brought the boxes back home and started sorting through them…and found a few things of interest. For example, I totally thought I’d long ago sold off those Doctor Who books I mentioned in this post, but nope — here they are:


Well, that’s a picture of a couple of them, anyway. There were about a dozen in one of these boxes, but it seemed like I had a lot more of these at the time. Heck, maybe I do…there’re still quite a few boxes left to go through in my parents’ garage. I think I’m going to give some of these a quick rereading now that I’m a little more up on my Who.

Another book I found was this slim volume of Star Trek stories from 1982:


“Travel with your favorite Star Trek II characters into six new and original short stories written especially for you!” …For me? Aw, you shouldn’t have! I like how it’s specifically Star Trek II stories, since, you know, the movie an’ all. I suppose the stories take place in more or less the same timeframe, but a quick flip-through doesn’t reveal anything specifically tied to the second film (like any mentions of Khan or Saavik or anything). I could be wrong.

The back cover does have this great shot of Scotty and his mesmerizing Space Moustache:


GAZE INTO MY MOUSTACHE AND KNOW FEAR

Had a handful of books like these in the boxes as well:


Man, I sure liked reading about video games. Now, I wasn’t one of those kids who obsessed about getting high scores and perfecting my gameplay or anything. I just liked reading about video games, about the mechanics of the games, about games on other systems, about arcade games I haven’t seen yet, and so on. Still do, in fact…a link to this very technically detailed examination of Pac Man made the rounds again recently, and I found myself sucked into it again.

So, yeah, I’ve got a few of these books floating around in my possession. I’m looking forward to rereading these now that I’ve got them in my hands again.

Okay, now for some of the trading cards…there were about a half dozen thick binders of these, which included all my Marvel Universe cards, my Death of Superman set, the first TSR Dungeons & Dragons set (not quite sure why I have those), and many others. I can see why I had most of the sets in these binders, but I really have no idea why I have a full set of Home Improvement cards:


I mean, I liked the show and all, but still…seriously, how does a thing like this happen?

I even have a full set of the special removable “static cling” cards:


Hmmm…”Big Tool.” Yeah, I think that’s a fairly good self-assessment. I was really into the trading card thing at one point in my life, and there was a time or two when I didn’t show a whole lot of…discretion, shall we say.

However, I have absolutely no regrets about owning these:


Superman III trading cards, baby. A full set, including stickers. I can feel your jealousy over the intertubes.

And one more item from Mike’s Boxes of Mystery: I realize this may slightly contradict my previous claim that I wasn’t a video game score hound, but, you know, Activision used to offer prizes for people who scored a certain number of points (or otherwise achieved some specific goal) on their games, and if I managed to get that score, I certainly wanted my prize. Usually it was a sew-on patch (and I collected…and still have…a few of those), but for their Stampede game, you still got a patch, but you also got one of these:


That would be a genuine metal Stampede buckle, my friends, still in the original cellophane wrapper. The 40 year old me is thinking “put this on eBay,” but the 12 year old me is saying “PUT THAT BAD BOY ON A BELT.”

I think the 12 year old me is going to win.

Oh, sure, why don’t I just hang onto a sheet of Legion of Super-Heroes stickers for 12 years.

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This was a promo giveaway for the Legion of Super-Heroes, 1st reboot version, from 1997. The sheet is 5 inches by 8 inches, with each sticker about an inch on each side, and drawn by (I think) Jeffrey Moy.

You know, looking at this…I kinda miss Gates (fifth row down, second from right), though he’s been popping up in the kinda missing-in-action Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds mini-series. (Speaking of which…how weird is that going to look on the rack when the next issue comes out? It’s almost going to be like seeing a new comic with the old “Atlantis Attacks!” crossover banner on it.)

Also, that Proty sticker in the lower left hand corner? I think you’ll agree with me that it’s completely awesome.

So I finally saw The Spirit.

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Visually it’s a very striking, very attractive film, and the performances are very much of the Adam West “play it straight to enhance the hilarity” school of thought, with the possible exception of Samuel Jackson, who seemed intent on sinking his teeth into every piece of scenery that came within reach. The dialogue is pulpier than a pulpy thing filled with pulp, but that fit right in with the general over-the-top goofy tone of the film. It’s Frank Miller’s Spirit, not Will Eisner’s, obviously, but hell, it kept my attention and it made me laugh. And that initial fight scene between the Octopus and the Spirit was a hoot. Toilets are always funny.

So, yeah, I liked it quite a bit. Let the admonishments begin.