Just wait ’til Ultimate Slapstick hits the stands.

§ December 4th, 2024 § Filed under question time § 9 Comments

Am I answering more questions? Sure, I’m answering more questions! (And don’t forget to check back in on this site tomorrow!)

King of the Moon shines down on me with

“Is anyone under college age interested in the new Ultimate titles?”

Marvel’s relaunch of the Ultimate line has been very successful so far, bringing us yet more new interpretations of their classic franchises:


Ultimate Spider-Man remains the top seller for me, with Ultimates close behind. Ultimate X-Men and Ultimate Black Panther have okay numbers, selling about 1/2 to 2/3 of the Spider title. The forthcoming Ultimate Wolverine feels like it may outsell them all, at least at first.

But, Your Moonjesty, that’s not what you asked. You asked if any kids are interested. And the answer is…yes, I do have some high school and younger children seeking out these books. Well, mostly just Ultimate Spider-Man, but Spider-Man just has kinda universal appeal and I have a pretty sizable kid clientele, so that helps. Plus, it’s been getting new customers through my doors, which is always welcome.

• • •

John wonders

“The Eternal Query: Who would win in a fight – Dennis Dunphy, or Bibbo Bibbowski?”

Dennis Dunphy is, of course, better known as the Marvel character Demolition Man, who always looks like an off-model Wolverine to me:


And Bibbo is a pal and admirer of Superman, and also owns a bar in Metropolis:


Now, Demolition Man has actual super powers, in that he’super-strong. Bibbo is a normal human, though likely stronger and more imposing than most, but his strength is within norms. By all rights, the winner in such a conflict should be D-Man, but I think Bibbo would win by inviting D-Man to his Ace O’Clubs to hang out and have some milk or something. Bibbo’s a good guy who patterns himself after Superman and would probably find a way to resolve any conflict that would make “his fav’rit” proud.

• • •

LouReedRichards stretches in with following

“s there a property that you once wanted to see adapted into another media that you now hope is never touched, so it remains in its ‘purest’ form?”

I’m going to say the George R.R. Martin-edited Wild Cards novels, which, in short, comprise an all-prose multi-author series of novels that have been going on, with occasional breaks, since the late 1980s.

Now these have had comic books based on the characters, with the most recent mini from Marvel adapting the initial story from the first book. The comics have been…interesting, usually okay, but the thought that keeps coming to mind is a comment in Amazing Heroes #185 (November 1990) by Adam-Troy Castro in his column “Infernal Gall.”


He goes on to say that the comic itself is fine, but just..redundant.

So that colors the comics for me, though I’m sure I’ll keep reading them if they keep doing them.

What I don’t want to see is a live-action adaptation of the books. Well, okay, I’d see it anyway because I’d be wondering how they’d do it (see also me with anything Watchmen not by Moore and Gibbons). But, really, I’d be okay if they never attempted to make the translation. It’s been threatened once or twice over the decades, but hasn’t yet made the jump. The Great Superhero Movie Scare of the 2000s I thought for sure would have unleashed a Wild Cards movie on us, though none is impending, I think. I haven’t Googled to check, and I’m not going to. I shall live in ignorance.

Anyway, the stories are so much a “prose” thing, thick with detail, that are part and parcel of the Wild Cards experience. Paring it all down to fit into a film feels like cutting away too much of what makes the books appealling. I imagine something at least entertaining could be made this way, but I don’t think I’d be missing anything if a Wild Cards movie never happened.

• • •

Okay, that’s enough typing for today. Hopefully you’ll all come back tomorrow for a rare Thursday post!

Yes, yes, and Ask Jeeves, I know.

§ December 2nd, 2024 § Filed under question time § 8 Comments

Hi pals…I have another early morning medical thing again, so as I write this the night before, I’m gonna keep it short. Sorry, that’s been happening a bit too often lately, but this should be the last one for about a month or so. Thanks for your patience.

So, I’m going to try to tackle another question, such as this one from Rob S. who asks

I’ll piggyback onto Daniel T’s question by asking another. Assuming the ‘every comic is someone’s first comic’ maxim is true — do readers want the same thing in their first comic today than they did 40 years ago? Does clarity of action & characters in an ongoing storyline matter to new readers now? Did it, in actuality, matter then? Or was/is the dazzling incomprehensibilty of it part of the attraction?

Of course I get to a question that has no really easy answer.

It almost doesn’t matter what readers want as comics storytelling has changed significantly in the last few decades. I touched on this a bit in my response to Daniel T linked above, but I feel like most comics (by which I mean the Marvel/DC/Image/etc. superhero comics that dominate the direct market) today are not necessarily written to be completely accessible for a new reader. If it’s part four of six parts and that’s where you’re jumping in, well, hang on and figure it out as you go, effendi.

But the flipside of that is…most regular comic book readers don’t really need their first issue of whatever comic to be new reader friendly. If you’ve read enough comics, you know how things go, you can figure out what’s going on. If you’re really confused about a point or two, there’s always Google or Bing or, I don’t know, Alta Vista, I guess? Is that still a thing?

I think it’s just as likely a person trying out a comic for the first time is more sampling the creative teams involved, rather than trying to get in at a good starting position with the ongoing plot. Modern readers probably work under the assumption that getting in on the ground floor of something isn’t as easy as it used to be, unless there’s a “#1” on the cover…and maybe not even then.

As long as an issue demonstrates what the series is generally like, with the regular creative teams involved, with the storytelling on display, a reader can decide if this is the book for them without knowing all the character’s names and motivations and whatnot. I think. Given pagecounts and prices spending less time on exposition and more time on moving the story forward seems to be the priority, and I’m pretty sure most readers get that.

I realize that’s all about folks who already read comics. For people brand new to comics, it’s not too much different. By and large anyone coming to comics now are familiar with the characters from TV and movies…I don’t know that they expect to know exactly everything that’s going on with whatever comic they pick up. It’s an interest in seeing a character in its original medium, which may not be in an entirely self-explanatory story but will hopefully demonstrate Comics In Action in a sufficiently entertaining way.

And if it’s a little kid…ah, they’ll be fine. They can figure it out.

• • •

Okay, thanks for reading, and hopefully I’ll have more of a post on Wednesday. And, maybe, juuuuuust maybe…a special post on Thursday? You’ll just have to wait and see!

A mark, a yen, a buck or a pound.

§ November 29th, 2024 § Filed under question time § 3 Comments

There was a bit of garbled HTML in Wednesday’s post which is fixed now, so Wayne’s question is now properly credited to him. Sorry about that!

But let me attempt one more question here, since I’ve working off a large Thanksgiving dinner as I write this and I ain’t up to typing much.

MisterJayEm wants to know

“What’s something (the biggest thing?) about the comics business that comic book buyers/fans don’t understand?

“Make me smarter about my ignorance, Mike!”

Believe it or not, this is a hard question for me to answer. Sometimes on social media someone will post the discussion prompt “what’s something about your industry that people don’t know?” and I always want to add my one cent (I can’t afford two cents, I am working in comics after all).

I think the problem is that the business is so small and so many elements of the industry are so transparent and “out there” for people to examine and discuss, I don’t know what’s left for people to not know.

Actually, my off-the-cuff one/two cents gag above may be a clue. I think most buyers/fans aren’t aware of the economic realities of comic books. I mean, I’m not even certain of all the behind the scenes stuff involved in getting comics into your hands. A lot of creators can’t make a living just working in comics. Variant covers help bump up sales and bring in much needed extra income. Other little financial decisions that affect prices and print runs and lengths of series and relaunches and so on. Pretty much the answer to every question about “why did they do [x] with that comic?” is $$$.

Sigh. Depressing, I know. I’ll try to be funnier with the next answer to a question.

Thanks for reading, pals, and I’ll see you Monday!

Swamp Thing versus Despero, coming soon.

§ November 27th, 2024 § Filed under popeye, question time, swamp thing § 7 Comments

Okay, you Swampheads…keep an eye out for Justice League Unlimited #1, the new series debuting today at a good comic shop near you, or even mine. Specifically, I’m talking about variant cover “D” with art by Howard Porter:


…where our favorite muck-encrusted mockery of a man is hanging out:

You can also find our floral friend on variant cover “E” by Ed Benes, off to the side there apparently making room for less-important characters:


A closer look:


So, can we expect a Swamp Thing-focused Justice League adventure in this book in the near future? One can hope!

• • •

And let’s take a look at one more of your questions:

Wayne sez

“Mike. What are the odds tthat this was the original concept for THE THREE JOKERS?”

Wayne is referring to the pic I used as the header for the initial questions post, which I’ll reproduce here at slightly smaller size:


…and Three Jokers, for those who haven’t heard, was an intended out-of-contintuity story resolving an in-continuity mystery that was later Chip Zdarsky tried to make part of regular continuity in a one-off panel but I’m pretty sure everyone’s just trying to move past the whole thing. Anyway, it proposed that there literally three different people as The Joker, which is dumb and by extension makes Batman seem dumb as well.

Wayne was just being silly, which is fine, but it reminded me of some entries from the Bobby London’s 1986-1992 run on the Popeye comic strip. Specifically, instances where there were multiple versions of the same character.

Well, this one doesn’t really count, I guess, as we see Popeye being reverted into versions of himself from previous years, which I thought was a nice image:


But the storyline I specifically wanted to note was the one where Bluto returns to bedevil Popeye, this time with an army of multiple versions of Brutus:


Okay, I’m gonna let Mark Evanier explain why Brutus replaced Bluto for a time in the comics an’ such. But here you go, Wayne, Bobby London’s dozen-ish Brutuses laugh mockingly at the stinginess of only Three Jokers.

I’m probably just going to recycle the pile of Wonder Man #1s that was in here.

§ November 25th, 2024 § Filed under collecting § 11 Comments


So what you see above is some of my well-gotten gains from the week, retrieved from a good-sized plastic storage box similar to this:


That jumble of comics you see above (Uncanny X-Men #281, the wraparound cover version of the 1991 X-Men #1, and the second printing of the foil-embossed Silver Surfer #50 weren’t the only books inside…there were multiple copies of Infinity Gauntlet (every issue represented, but only single copies of a couple so not multiple runs), Wolverine #41 and #42 (Wolvie Vs. Sabertooth battle, briefly a hot book), a whole lotta Darkhawk, various other variants of the 1991 X-Men #1, and other similar items.

When I mentioned the collection on Bluesky, I called it a collection of “investment comics” and that’s clearly what it was. Some of these comics do have value (despite being printing literally in the millions, I have no trouble moving theseX-Men #1s), their method of preservation could have been better.

When I started pulling these comics out of the container, the plastic bags started splintering into tiny little fragments that I’ve mostly cleaned up but darn if I don’t keep finding more of them on the counter or floor. Anyway, as I noticed this I asked the seller if this box had been kept in a warm garage, and no surprise when the answer was “yes.”

Surprisingly, the comics were mostly still intact and in reasonable shape. I say “surprisingly” because this sort of plastic storage box isn’t meant for keeping your comics, especially if, like this collector, you had the comics standing and not laying flat, meaning lots of shifting and falling over an’ such. A few comics did come out straight up bent in half (thankfully, mostly just New Warriors), and at least two super sun-faded Ghost Riders (maybe stored by a window?).

I was asked by another Bluesky user how much I paid for these, in that surely this paid for someone’s college education. Alas, I paid them enough to buy maybe a college textbook…one of those big too-expensive-for-what-you’re-getting volumes. Others on Bluesky commented on how none of these pictured books are worth anything, “like five bucks” being a common refrain.

Well, that’s not my experience with the X-Men #1 or the Silver Surfer #50 (any printing), at least. Despite the improper long-term storage of these books, they remain in nice condition…lots of Near Mint copies, though the X-Men #1s will have to be graded down due to most of them having dinged corners. And they’ll sell for pretty good money, all things considered.

Despite being relatively common, there is still huge demand for X-Men back issues, both of the 1991 series and the original Uncanny run. (Not so much for later relaunches for Uncanny, but I’ve got a whole ‘nother post about that in the near future.) Plus, that Silver Surfer embossed cover remains a popular novelty item. Gimmick cover burnout was a thing long ago, but enough people buying comics now weren’t there when everything was foil or die-cut, so it’s all new and fresh and appealing to them.

Even decades after the fact, there are still collections like this, in varying degrees of condition, sitting untouched in garages and attics and basements and deep in closets. Sitting unmoved for years, or perhaps hauled from place to place with each subsequent changing of residences, there are boxes filled with perceived fortunes. The one I just acquired at least had comics that I could sell, but it still feels a little weird dismantling someone’s comic investment-collecting dream.

“Wedding? I didn’t see no swamp priest there.”

§ November 22nd, 2024 § Filed under swamp thing § 9 Comments


So comics artist Ron Randall spoke a bit about working with Alan Moore on Saga of Swamp Thing #33 from the mid-1980s. So if you click on the pic above, or on this link right here, you’ll be whisked away to a thread of posts on Bluesky where Mr. Randall has nothing but good things to say about the experience.

Issue #33 is, of course, this one:


…in which they reprint the very first Swamp Thing story from House of Secrets #92, the cover for which inspired the Saga cover above. Said reprint was incorporated into that new story by Moore and Randall.

Now, as I recall, this was a bit of a last second fill-in, as the story originally intended for issue #33 was the so-called “wedding of Swamp Thing and Abby,” as seen in this coming comics listing from Amazing Heroes #58:


However, the story was pushed back to #34, and the new story for #33 was announced here in Amazing Heroes #59:

And just so it’s clear, the “wedding” story is the one that is probably better known as the “Swampy and Abby Have Sex” issue, the one with this cover:

But anyway, for being a “fill-in” story, what ended up being in #33 had a huge impact on the Swamp Thing milieu, as it introduced the idea that was an ongoing chain of Swamp Things through Earth’s history. The Alex Olsen Swamp Thing in the House of Secrets story was just one of the many that had preceded. This establishes the groundwork for Swamp Thing’s status as an Earth Elemental (though he was called an elemental in the earlier Swamp Thing Annual #2, hinting at what was to come) and the eventual creation of the Parliament of Trees.

So, for a reprint issue, quite a lot got accomplished. Was Moore heading in this direction anyway, or was having to churn out a fill-in story worked around the original introductory tale of the character the inspiration for this major addition to the mythos? Honestly, I don’t know…I bet he said in an interview somewhere. I’ll have to keep an eye out.

Hopefully a Planet of Vampires movie is as misleading as the comic.

§ November 20th, 2024 § Filed under question time § 10 Comments

I’m going to take a break from answering your questions to…answer your questions, specifically a couple of queries that popped up in response to some of my recent posts. I just wanted to touch on them before they disappeared down the memory hole.

First off here’s Matthew with

“I’ve seen that groundhog cover a few times before, but don’t think I’ve ever noticed the $1.11 price before. I know I’ve seen at least one title with a price of $6.66 (the original printings of Jay Stephen’s Dwellings), but what’s your opinion on ‘non-standard’ prices like this? Annoying or something else?”

The $1.11 price he’s talking about from was the nigh-legendary Shadow of the Groundhog, the cover of which I’m reprinting here again because why not.


Now, my feeling about this specific gimmick cover price was that it was a plot to get more “1s” on the front cover, to emphasize that this was a BIG FIRST ISSUE and that you should buy an entire longbox-worth of them, like that sad bastard I saw at a con trying to unload them.

But in general weird prices like this don’t bother me too much, especially nowadays when it feels like there are so many different price points already, what’s one more? Just so long as they actually put the price somewhere on the cover, they can price it whatever they want.

One early example of this was the Lobo Paramilitary Christmas Special, which had a cover price of $2.39, playing off the fact that the first issue of the popular Lobo mini had the unusual 99 cents price point. I can’t remember if other Lobo comics had “funny” prices, and I think that one Harley Quinn special with the scratch ‘n’ sniff pot smell missed a bet by not being $4.20.

• • •

Customer Sean asks

“…What is your opinion, Mike–and other folks–about the recent news that Atlas-Seaboard is trying to make a comeback through licensing toys based on its characters and also trying to have an Atlas-Seaboard Cinematic Universe? I believe Devilina, Phoenix, and Grim Ghost have been optioned for films. I would love to see David Cronenbourg direct a Tarantula film.”

Any excuse to reprint a Grim Ghost cover:


This very short-lived comic publisher from the mid-1970s cranked out a slew of comics of varying but mostly good quality, with solid art and interesting ideas. And also the odd twist of the premises of some of the books shifting dramatically even within the very short three to four issue runs more of these had.

Anyhoo, I think this is the second pass through the news cycle of Seaboard/Atlas getting optioned for films/etc. (I mentioned it on the blog back in 2019.) It’s real “all the other licenses were already snapped up” energy, but I wouldn’t mind seeing a live action version of the Grim Ghost pictured above, as long as they’re prepared for moviegoers who don’t know any better calling it a Spawn rip-off.

I honestly don’t know what’s there otherwise that required putting out ther scratch to get the rights, since not a lot there is particularly so unique that you couldn’t do similar knock-offs. I mean, Scorpion, maybe? Or you could do your own super spy thing. Iron Jaw? You could do your own barbarian thing (though, okay, if you needed him to have, well, an iron jam….). That could apply to most superhero things, so that what a studio is really buying is the known name, but most of these Atlas books don’t even have that.

Ah, well, I’m sounding more down on it that I actually am. I do like these Atlas books and wouldn’t mind seeing what’s done with them. Even if what’s done is not anything I’ll end up recognizing. It may turn out to be no more than a footnote in that superhero movie gold rush, bought up by a studio during that brief window when anything based on a comic book did gangbusters business, but wasn’t exploited until that post-period when it’s less of a sure thing.

What if this was someone’s first comics blog post they’d ever read?

§ November 18th, 2024 § Filed under question time § 13 Comments

Back to more of your questions!

Davey-Boy has this Goliath of an inquiry

“John Wagner, Alan grant, pat mills, any thoughts on the 2000ad trinity when they dipped their toes in marvel and DC in the 80s/90s?”

Nothing really specific for either Wagner or Grant, aside from admiring their professional and imaginative work. Grant, of course, we all know from his Batman comics and his association with Keith Giffen on Lobo. And the main thing I associate Wagner with was this almost-forgotten series (cowritten with Grant):


Great Mike McMahon art on this series, too!

Now, Pat Mills…good ol’ amazing Pat Mills. The thing I most remember about him…well, when they were more active in the genre, people would say Alan Moore and Grant Morrision “hated” superheroes. And this particular aspersion was cast upon other creators, too, but I feel like Moore and Morrision got it the hardest.

Friends, Uncle Al and Big Grant loved superhero comics. At least at the time…I know Alan’s had some different opinions of late. But at the time, it was funny to me that folks were shouting about how much this guy or that guy hated superheroes, when all actual evidence showed that they liked ’em just fine, and this whole time here was Pat Mills doing Marshal Law with Kevin O’Neill:


You want a comics guy who hates superheroes? Here you go. (And if you haven’t read this, oh man, at least read the initial six-issue mini.)

Mills also wrote Punisher 2099, which is one long pisstake on tough guy super comics, and it’s high-larious.


Anyway, these three guys were great writers and we were lucky to have them in our favorite ridiculous medium.

• • •

Daniel T asks a question that took me a minute to figure out how to quote here

“Stan Lee supposedly said something like ‘Every comic is/could be someone’s first comic.’

“How true do you think this ever was and is today?”

I feel like Jim Shooter was a huge proponent of this line of thinking during his tenure at Marvel. And the basic premise was “make sure you identify each character,” and “show ’em using their powers” and “catch ’em up on what’s gone before” and so on. Which, you know, fair enough.

Daniel kind of touches on this in the rest of his question (which you can read at that link) but there was a time when comics had huge print runs and tons of people read them and there was probably a much higher incidence of any comic being someone’s first.

With smaller print runs of today, and a more restricted distribution (and I should clarify, I’m talking about your standard issue periodical comic book), the likelihood of a non-zero percentage of published comics not being someone’s first has increased.

And as such, I think comic book storytelling has arced away from the “every comic is someone’s first” philosophy. If you’re coming in at part four of the six-part-story-written-for-the-eventual-trade, the amount of exposition you’ll get is fairly minimal, if at all. (Especially since that exposition will look out of place once the story hits its intended collected format.) It’s not like the old days, when Jim Shooter would burn off the first three or four pages of each issue of Dreadstar telling the reader what’s happened in [range from “last issue” to “since the beginning of time”].

The goal is for each individual issue of a serialized story to be a satisfying, intriguing, and/or interesting read, so that even if you’re not sure what exactly is going on, you’d still be drawn in to the action and want to continue reading (and hunting through back issues for previous parts). There are plenty of times where I’ve read superhero comics as a kid that explicitly didn’t provide any onboarding for new readers, but liked what I read enough to, at minimum, enjoy that singular experience, or sometimes even keep coming back for follow-up issues.

Too long/didn’t read answer: “every comic is someone’s first” was a popular storytelling strategy, not always followed in the past and less so now.

• • •

Allan Hoffman wonders

“If you could give advice to your past self when you were planning your store what would it be?”

Spend a little more time organizing acquired collections, rather than just dumping boxes in the back room and thinking “I’ll deal with it later.” Ugh. I mean, I do have a plan now to deal with a lot of that stuff that isn’t “come to my big bonfire, everyone!” so I’ll probably get rid of a lot of that stuff. But, shoudn’t have done that to myself in the first place.

• • •

Andrew delves deep with

“Have you found that the natural impulses of a collector versus those of a successful purveyor of comics have led to an irreversible psychotic break? A comic shop Jekyll and Hyde situation, if you like?”

It’s actually not been too bad, as I’ve restricted myself to just the few new comics I want to continue reading, and while ooh-ing and ah-ing over some of the back issues I’ve taken in, I’ve kept it at that and sold them. Yes, the temptation to keep that Amazing Fantasy #15 was strong, but the giant chunk of money I received for it suited the business better than having another comic just sitting in a box at home.

The biggest temptation was having an original non-counterfeit copy of Cerebus #1 in the shop, which, as some of you may remember, is a series I’m trying to fill the early issues on after just having them in the Swords of Cerebus reprint volumes. However, I let it go, figuring the signed reprint edition I got through Kickstarter was good enough.

Back issues I do keep for myself if they come through the shop include Nancy, Popeye, the few 1970s Seaboard/Atlas books I still need (mostly a couple issues of Vicki), and any fanzines. In general, not really anything my own clientele is clamoring for.

The big problem for me, where Collector Mike is a pain to Retailer Mike, is the ease of keeping some graphic novel collections for myself, since it takes me forever to getting around to reading them. (Like, for example, the year it took me to finally peruse that new Grendel: Devil by the Deed edition.) It’s just too easy to type in that order number for a book that strikes my fancy, despite the fact I just don’t have the time to read them…but I also know if I don’t get it now, the likelihood of it being available later is slim to none, so AAAAUGH there’s that psychotic break you were wondering about, Andrew.

• • •

Michael Grabowski gets a hold of me with this

“‘Yoo-sa-gi’ or ‘oo-sa-gi’? I had heard of Usagi Yojimbo for ever but only started reading it five years ago and completed (and started over) just this summer. If this was in your 80’s or 90’s extensive survey/poll, I’ll go back and look but if not, can you offer some commentary on it as both a series that you perhaps have enjoyed or as a comics property that you have seen customers enjoy? And if you already dealt with most of that elsewhere around here, can you just answer the first question, please?”

Usagi Yojimbo was indeed in the Final ’80s Countdown reader pool, and I talked about it in the middle of last year. I will say that Usagi comics were initially a slow starter at my shop when I first opened, but have been picking up in recent years. Good!

As to the pronunciation…well, let’s go to the source, Stan Sakai his own self, and hear how he says the name in this brief interview:


Um…at about the 37 second mark is sounds like “yoo” and at the 58 second mark is sounds a little like “oo” so, my answer to your opening query is an unqualified “yes.”

But seriously, if anyone out there has better ears out there that haven’t been reduced in function by too much rocking and rolling, please give a listen and tell me what you think.

• • •

Thanks for reading, pals, and we’ll answer more questions, and maybe even do some other stuff, in the near future!

I refused to call it Avengers West Coast.

§ November 15th, 2024 § Filed under marvel § 7 Comments

Sorry, didn’t have time to do a proper post last night, so please enjoy this stack of West Coast Avengers that I’m supposed to be pricing at the shop today. Enjoy!

Marvel will just have to publish their own facsimile of Power Pachyderms.

§ November 13th, 2024 § Filed under indies, question time § 9 Comments

Smichal smasks

“You get to curate a big chonky omnibus from the post-TMNT black-and-white indy boom. Roughly 1,000 pages. What’s going in it? (Choices do not have to be animal-related.)”

Oh Smichal, Smichal, Smichal…you say the choices don’t have to be animal-related, but friend, there’s only one choice for such an omnibus. And that choice is ALL THE TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES RIP-OFFS:


Most of these are pretty short runs, like the three issue run of the above. That would leave more room for the knock-offs that had slightly longer lifespans, like the Hamsters books:


I feel like some kind of more permanent record is needed to remember a lot of these books, especially since the Overstreet Price Guide has declined to list several series from the 1980s black and white boom.

Some decisions will have to be made regarding comics like Aristocratic Extraterrestrial Time-Traveling Thieves:


…which apes the title style but doesn’t quite feel like the a Turtles rip-off (and in fact changes its name to X-Thieves down the line).

Or does Miami Mice make the cut?

Or even the dreaded…


Some editorial decisions would have to be made, clearly. Anyway, you can see a selection of TMNT-inspired books here.

I feel like this would be a solid collection, particularly if it included supplemental text pieces providing some historical context and background information. We’re getting farther and farther away from this period of time and it shouldn’t just be up to blogs to remember the madness of the times.

So to sum up…either a big book of Turtles knock-offs, or a complete collection of every GRIPS title.

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