"Why isn’t the Earth aflame?"

filed under Categories Uncategorized

A few moments from Super Powers #5 (Nov. 1984) by Jack Kirby and Greg Theakston:

Metron is so startled, he leaves the letter “t” off of “thought:”


Honestly, who hasn’t had days like this:


Here’s a short sequence of Robin being teleported off the Justice League satellite to Batman’s location, mostly notable for demonstrating how all those crazy kids liked the rock videos back in the day…even superhero kids:


SPECIAL BONUS KIRBY BATMAN:

Kirby Batman just sittin’ in a chair wasn’t enough, so here’s Batman opening up a can of King Jack Whup-Ass on a Joisey-accented alien, from Super Powers Vol. 2, #5 (Jan. 1986):

"We hate Superman! He is the most atrocious man we know."

filed under Categories superman

So I pulled out my copy of Action Comics #309 (Feb. 1964) for those “Look-Alike Squad” panels to accompany this post, and upon my re-perusal of the book, I wanted to note a couple of other things.

The comic is primarily remembered for its use of President John F. Kennedy as an important plot point…specifically, due to lead times and distribution and such, that it was out at about the same time JFK was assassinated (comics being dated far ahead of their release dates, in case you’re wondering about the “Feb. 1964” thing). You can see the JFK panels in question at Fred Hembeck’s site, under “November 22nd,” and Fred has a full synopsis along with one of his patented cover reproductions here.

Speaking of the cover, that was the first thing I wanted to mention. I find myself more than a little amused by Batman’s cherubic smile, behind Supergirl’s head of hair, there:


I blew it up nice and big for extra creepiness. No need to thank me. Also, if you look at the full cover, you’ll notice that while everyone else in line is looking in the general direction of Superman, Batman appears to be staring straight out at the reader…I know there’s no pupils visible, but he’s definitely facing forward. Distracted by a crime in the distance? An Animal Man-esque awareness of the reader? Trying to get a good sniff of Supergirl’s hair? Your guess is as good as mine.

Here’s something else you don’t see Batman do too much of anymore…going way out of his way to mess with someone, and having a good laugh at that person’s expense:


I love the “why do I put up with this crap” look on Lois’ face at the end. (And to think about it a little further…this situation only occurs for plot reasons, to remove Batman as a potential “Clark Kent” stand-in for when Supes and Clark are supposed to meet face to face. But when you consider it…what Batman has done is, for an event celebrating Superman, gone out of his way to don elaborate make-up specifically to tweak Superman’s girlfriend. Is Batman that desperate for attention? “Hey, look at me, everyone! I’ve got Bizarro make-up on and I fooled Lois Lane! WOOOOO!” He might as well just put on the lampshade and make a complete spectacle of himself.)

On the letters page, I found myself disappointed when I realized that someone was writing this letter “in character” (or “characters,” as it were). It was so much better when I briefly thought it was a fan expressing his actual murderous distaste for Superman…’course, that sort of thing wouldn’t get that much attention or play until many years later, when ‘blogs were created:


And then there’s this letter, where it may sound like the guy’s going overboard describing the potential greatness of a Jimmy Olsen Annual:


…except for the fact that he’s absolutely, 100% correct (and assuming this isn’t a letter from the editor, if you get my drift).

Citizen Kane. The Mona Lisa. Michelangelo’s David. And this:


That humanity can bring such beauty into the world yet gives me hope.

"Metropolis has Clark Kent, Gotham City has Bruce Wayne, but Louisville has Lancelot Pertwillaby….!"

filed under Categories Uncategorized

My first exposure to the work of Don Rosa was in the early 1980s, as installments of his Captain Kentucky comic strip were reprinted in the very late and much lamented Comic Reader fanzine.

I loved those strips for many reasons…every square inch of the page was filled with art and writing, even including little messages to the reader between the panels. And within the panels themselves, the art was busy and detailed but never felt cluttered. In a way, in reminded me of Mad Magazine, where paying attention to the background details revealed additional jokes.

The character of Captain Kentucky himself had great appeal — an everyday guy with great powers protects the great city of Louisville with some success but little respect, his tales told with a great sense of the absurd, a lot of satire, and just the rare moment of schmaltz. And, of course, plenty of in-jokes for fellow Kentuckians…I didn’t get the local references at the time, but I recognized that they were in-jokes for the locals, and appreciated these additional personal touches of Rosa’s.

In fact, that may be one of the main reasons I liked the Captain Kentucky strips as much as I did. Every single element of the strip just reflected Rosa’s personality…reading, say, Superman or Batman comics didn’t tell you much about the creative teams working on them. They’re processed, prepackaged, created to fill a marketing niche and to appear on toys. The character is more important than the creator. But here, I think this was my first exposure to the idea that even a superhero comic can have a point of view, an expressive personality. (Some of Jack Kirby’s work would fit this mold as well, I think, but at this point I was still a few years away from a true appreciation of the King’s work.)

That this was all by one person, too, appealed to my obsession with amateur creators…folks creating stories and art outside of the usual corporate outlets, just for themselves or for otherwise limited audiences. And here was Rosa’s Captain Kentucky, a one-man show, which to my eyes, then and now, was just as polished and well-written and entertaining as any superhero comic Marvel or DC could crank out…but with the additional advantage of being personal.

It wasn’t until a little later, when Fantagraphics published Don Rosa’s Comics & Stories #1, that I learned of the Captain’s pre-superhero life as non-powered intellectual adventurer Lance Pertwillaby. I think I may have read that first issue dozens of times, enjoying the wide-ranging scope of the story, along with its humor and its fascinatingly-detailed art style. I patiently waited for the second issue…and waited, and waited, but I never did see it, somehow, and I wouldn’t find a copy of it until about two years ago (and it was a moot point by then, anyway, which I’ll get to in a moment).

After that, I learned Rosa was going to be working on a story for the recently-relaunched Disney comics line from Gladstone Publishing. I hadn’t read Disney comics since sometime in the mid-1970s, but if Rosa was going to write and draw an Uncle Scrooge comic, I’d be willing to give it a try.

That comic was the classic “Son of the Sun” in Uncle Scrooge #219 (1987), and like the other Rosa comics I read before it, it was filled with detailed art, humorous adventure, and Rosa’s personality. And as a side effect, it reopened my awareness of the Duck books, as I kept buying each new issue containing Rosa’s work. That brought me to, of course, the work of Carl Barks, which got me to buying the entire Carl Barks Library series…so I have Rosa to thank for that as well!

Now, I started thinking about Captain Kentucky again because of Tom Spurgeon’s Five for Friday from last week, in which he asked what our favorite non-Marvel/DC heroes from the last 50 years were. As I was making my list, I realized that a couple of the answers that popped into my head were fairly obvious — Nexus, of course, along with one Spurgeon already mentioned, Zot! — but thinking about it made me recall how much I loved those old Captain Kentucky strips, and how I looked forward to each new issue of the Comic Reader to read the latest installments.

I didn’t have all the issues of TCR, so I missed some strips, but in 2001 all of Rosa’s Pertwillaby work, including all the Captain Kentucky comics (and that second issue of Comics & Stories I missed), were reprinted in two handsome hardcover volumes from a Norwegian publisher. Here’s the CK volume:


I think I’ll be spending the next couple of days rereading this book, reimmersing myself in the world of Captain Kentucky, its in-jokes I sorta get, its craziness, its sledgehammer satire, and its pure fun. Thanks, Mr. Rosa, for this great strip, and thanks, Tom, for inspiring me to remember how much I enjoyed it.

Candor about Kandor.

filed under Categories superman

So Saturday, pal Dorian and I were poking through the Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen comics at the shop, when Dor brought up the very unusual coincidence that there just happened to be a number of people in Superman’s bottle city of Kandor who look exactly like most of Clark Kent’s friends…not to mention Clark Kent himself, as in this example from Action Comics #309 (Feb 1964):


Now, I’m not sure how many Kryptonians are supposed to be in the shrunken city of Kandor…let’s say it’s about the size of Los Angeles, so there’s about 4 million people in there. What are the odds that four people in Kandor’s population happen to look exactly like the terrestrial friends (Lois, Jimmy, Perry, and Clark) of Krypton’s most famous survivor? Even if the city had a New York style population, with about 8 million, that would still slightly stretch credulity, I think. Perhaps someone better than me at odds and statistics can tell me how likely it is that a random set of people from cities of these sizes would contain exact duplicates of people from outside that set.

If we were choosing look-a-likes from the entire population of Krypton, I might be more willing to buy it. But we’re picking from a small fraction of Krypton’s inhabitants…four people who look exactly like another four people from another planet, who all happened to be in Kandor when it was shrunk by Braniac and thus survived Krypton’s destruction.

I’m not trying to do another in-depth analysis or anything, but there may be a couple explanations that’ll make this coincidence a little easier to swallow.

My cyncial explanation for this is a bit out of character for Superman, but may be enjoyed by those fans of the “Superman’s a big jerk” school of humor. Superman seemed to do an awful lot of time-traveling in his pre-Crisis days, and popped up on a pre-exploded Krypton with some regularity. Perhaps Superman made several other undocumented trips to various points of Krypton’s history, surreptitiously guiding populations, manipulating relationships between certain people, and just generally guiding Kryptonian genetic development and reproduction so that certain physical aspects are bred to Superman’s benefit; i.e. that people whose appearances resemble his friends from Earth will 1) be born sometime close to the abduction of Kandor, and 2) will actually physically be in Kandor at the time of its shrinkage.

Just picture Superman, on one of his many time trips to ensure the success of this manipulation, wearing a fake mustache and handing a flyer to red-haired, freckled Kryptonian kid, reading “JOBS AVAILABLE – enquire in KANDOR – freckles a PLUS.” The kid rushes off to Kandor, visions of employment pushing him forward to his fate, while Superman laughs gently to himself, knowing that one more piece of the future “Look-Alike Squad” is in place.

See, told you it was cynical. It does have the added benefit of letting you imagine that there was an entire population of red-haired, freckled Kryptonians wandering around, caused by Superman’s genetic meddling. “THE JIMMY OLSEN ARMY OF KRYPTON” — the greatest Silver Age Superman story you never read.

The other option is that Krypton was a world of advanced science. As the announcer says in that first panel, the Look-Alike Squad “resembles” Supeman’s Earth friends. Whatever resemblance nature created could be enhanced by Kandor’s super-cosmetic surgery.

Or it was just a big ol’ coincidence, which, let’s face it, ain’t nothing unusual in the Superman milieu.

Another thing Dor and I discussed was Kandor’s dealing with their limited space. Probably strict population control, an extensive recycling program…once Superman took over care of the bottled city, problems like waste and garbage extraction were probably handled by him. But prior to that, as Dor noted, Kandor was just kept on a shelf in Brainiac’s ship, with (apparently) only an air hose attached to the top. Brainiac strikes me as a guy who just collects things (in this case, shrunken cities) just for the sake of collecting them, without much regard for their care. I doubt he gave much thought to Kandor’s inhabitants beyond the air hose, making the population/gargage and waste production issues all that more important. I don’t want to come right out and admit I used the phrase “Kryptonians drinking their own recycled, reprocessed urine,” but, you know, c’mon.

Richie Rich #220 (November 1986).

filed under Categories harvey, richie rich 4 Comments


As we observe this scene, the primary action has already occurred…the burglar is already unconscious, the bump on his head already formed, the bag of coins already at rest on the floor, the loose coins already scattered about, Richie Rich already present, hands smugly on hips, delivering his pithy bon mots. All of the objects of the cover gag, as they are drawn here, are already at rest. The gag has happened, and we are seeing the results.

However, the cover contains an incongruous action element; there are motion lines tracing the path of the falling bag from the broken shelf, to the burglar’s head, and to its stopping point on the floor. This motion is out of place, though perhaps we can forgive the motion lines around the pieces of shelving and the bag itself, perhaps representing some residual “wobbling” from the event. What we are seeing is the end result of a sequence of events; the action is completed. The motion lines more rightly belong in a theoretical “previous panel” to the cover’s “current panel” – a scene in which the burglar, still conscious and upright and in the midst of his crime, is impacted upon his head by the falling coin bag, perhaps even with an exclamation of “Ow!” or “Hey” or “What’s all this, then?” That is an action scene, and that is where the motion lines should come into play.

As it stands now, the motion lines only seem to serve as a hint to the less astute members of this comic magazine’s readership, spelling out the joke for those who can’t look at the broken shelf, who can’t infer that the large bag of coins once sat on that shelf and are clearly the only item in that room able to cause such a goose egg on the burglar’s head, and who can’t even take the hint from Richie Rich’s own dialogue.

A secondary problem in this cover image is the position of the robber. Only a moment’s consideration will reveal that the burglar’s head, when he is standing, is above the shelf in question.

Let us assume, firstly, that the duties of Irona, the Rich household’s robotic maid, do not extend into the confines of the many walk-in safes on the premises. (I realize this may in fact be contradicted by other Richie Rich comics over the years, but a consistent continuity is hardly the franchise’s primary concern…wither “Super-Richie,” for example.) Thus, perhaps the scattering of coins upon the safe’s floor were not from the falling coin bag, but present on the floor to begin with…coins dropped in the Riches’ haste to store away their money and depart to acquire more, and never cleaned up by Irona. Those coins, representing an easy acquisition, attract the burglar’s attention first, causing him to bend over to pick them up.

Judging from the burglar’s current post-impact position, it looks as if he’d fallen backwards against the wall. However, if he had been bent over in that general position when the coin bag fell, it would have impacted his lower back, if it would have hit him at all. Going by the motion line path presented on the cover, the coin bag didn’t make it that far away laterally from its starting point. Its path was primarily straight down, until it made its impact upon the burglar and bounced to the side.

Alternatively, the burglar could have been bent over facing the wall with the shelf. The coin bag falls, hits the burglar…and in the burglar’s moments prior to lapsing in unconsciousness, he perhaps could have spun around, plopped himself down back against the wall, and passed out.

The third option is that the burglar was already sitting underneath the shelf when the coin bag impact occurred, which not only explains the burglar’s position as Richie Rich finds him, but also works with the coin bag’s presented trajectory. Why he was sitting we can only theorize: tired from entering the Rich mansion, he needed to sit and rest, or perhaps he had a bad back, and it was easier for him to sit down and pick up the spilled coins rather then bend over. Who can say?

This third option also answers another question implied by the image: would a bag filled with coins falling from that short of a distance from the shelf to the burglar’s head really be enough to render him unconscious? It would certainly be an unpleasant experience, having that much weight fall upon one’s head, but would it strike with enough of a sharp blow to knock out a full grown adult?

There is a possible solution to this as well, and one that may perhaps even incorporate the seemingly out of place motion lines discussed earlier.

At first glance, the cover presents us with a burglar knocked out by a falling bag of coins. But consider this alternative sequence of events:

1. Burglar enters walk-in safe.

2. Burglar spots coins on the floor, sits to pick up coins with his back against the wall just beneath the shelf.

3. Burglar stands up quickly, possibly alarmed by the noise of someone (most likely, Richie Rich) approaching.

4. Burglar’s head impacts the shelf above, hard enough to not only break the shelf, but to also render him unconscious.

5. The breaking of the shelf dislodges a precariously placed bag of coins, located somewhere off to the side (instead of directly above the burglar’s head). The bag of coin rolls over and falls down through the break in the shelf, off the burglar, and onto the floor.

If this is the sequence of events, then this resolves the cover’s contradictory “completed action” of the unconscious burglar with the “current action” of the falling coin bag. The falling coin bag is not ultimately responsible for the burglar’s unconscious state; he is already out when the bag falls. The falling bag (which is occurring, and we — along with Richie Rich — are observing, in the “now” of the cover image) is simply adding insult to the implied off-panel shelf-impact injury.

And really, “coin-ked out?” I don’t have any explanation for that…that’s just stupid.

Additional thoughts, opinions, and arguments from my fellow scholars are, as always, welcomed.

"I CAN CATCH UNICORNS."

filed under Categories Uncategorized

So I have no idea what happened to yesterday’s post for most of the day. If you’re a regular reader of the site, you know I usually post the next day’s post before I drag my carcass to bed. Well, Wednesday night Blogger was having some updating issues, but finally it appeared as if I managed to coax my Thursday post through…only to have that post cruelly, horribly snatched back from my page when I wasn’t looking. It wasn’t until reader Steve wrote me yesterday afternoon to let me know “Hey, that Joker post of yours disappeared…wha’ happened?” that I found out about it.

And it wasn’t just some weird browser cache glitch or anything…it was on the site! Honest! Reader Steve saw it! I’M NOT CRAZY.

I’m sure you all found that terribly interesting.

Not that my post was all that or anything, but I couldn’t resist playing with pal Reid’s scan, and it made for a quick, easy post since I was otherwise occupied Wednesday night with some important business. And by “important business” I mean Civilization III, and by “otherwise occupied” I mean “trying to establish a beachhead on an island occupied by several enemy nations.”

Sigh. It’s sad when it happens to someone you know, isn’t it?

In other news:

  • I spent most of my Thursday afternoon assisting a couple ladies from the local library system, who were making a purchase from us to the tune of several thousand dollars. They’d made a similarly large purchase from us last year, and since those books were exceedingly popular they came back for more.

    Like last time, they focused on books appropriate for kids and young adults, but this time they were a little more adventurous with the manga purchasing. They only picked out first volumes of several series before, but now they took whole chunks of runs. They also bought the Essential and Showcase volumes…they shied away from these during their last visit, but decided this time to take one of each.

    And this is how I sold one of the books to them:

    “Here, try Banana Sunday, this is a cute book.”

    “Really? Well….”

    “Hey, remember Dorian, who used to work here?”

    “Yeah, sure!”

    “Well –” (I turn the book over to show her the back) “–that quote on the back cover is from Dorian…he reviewed it on his website!”

    “Oh, okay, I’ll take it!”

    So, pal Dorian, our customers are taking your word over mine, even though you haven’t worked here for two years. LET THE GLOATING BEGIN.

  • A CORRECTION: When I was writing about the whole Spidey marriage/future status quo hoohar, I noted that I was working from vague memories of the Free Comic Book Day Amazing Spider-Man giveaway when I mentioned that Aunt May’s status was left vague as she was only mentioned in dialogue. Well, Thursday I happened to come across a copy of that comic and flipped through it…and “vague” nothing, Aunt May’s totally in it.

    Just thought I’d mention that before someone decided to lord it over me.

  • So did anyone else get a Jack Black vibe off this particular image of former JLA sidekick Snapper Carr from the Green Arrow/Black Canary Wedding Special:


    Okay, I ran that thought past a couple folks, and someone said it was just Amanda Conner’s light cartoony touch that gave him a Jack Blackian countenance. But his disheveled appearance here (and in the later group shot), and his description by several characters in the book as “an idiot” — I can easily see Snapper reimagined as a typical Jack Black-style “well-meaning, but lazy and disaster-prone slacker” character in DC’s ongoing quest to make him Not Rick Jones.

    That’s a lot to read into two pictures and a couple pieces of dialogue, isn’t it?

  • So, those of you out there who are in the funnybook-selling business…have you experienced any rush on that one issue of Hitman with Special Guest Star Superman this week? Particularly since that issue provides the background for the JLA/Hitman mini-series that just debuted?

    I’ve had a couple requests for it, but for the most part it appears to be Hitman fans who are picking up this new mini at our store, and thus have already read that issue of Hitman. I’m just wondering if it’s any different anywhere else.

    I haven’t read any interviews or press or anything in regards to this mini-series, but I suspect its sales are being used to gauge whether or not any further Hitman trade paperback collections will be released. I have no idea why they haven’t finished reprinting the series, given that it’s by a popular writer and that, perhaps, a promise of completing volumes might jumpstart sales on the earlier books. (A collection of Ennis and McCrea’s Demon — some of which also feature Hitman — would be nice, too.) Did the sales on the previous books just tank so hard that DC’s a bit gunshy (har har) about doing more? I suppose I could look that up myself, but that smacks of “effort” and I’ve had a long enough day.

  • Dave has his way with those all-black “aren’t I edgy and dangerous” t-shirts we’re all sick of looking at. (My suggestion: “I CAN CATCH UNICORNS.” And Chris Sims has one for sale.)
  • Pal Tom is reviewing the Fall 2007 TV season, because he’s a crazy person. Let Tom tell you what crap you can safely avoid, which, so far, is pretty much everything. (His dismissal of Gossip Girl is classic Tom. Good on you, sir!)

    He’s only just started, so keep checking back for each shocking update!

  • Neilalien wants to know…who’s the guy in the blue hat?

    And now that’s he’s pointed it out…I want to know, too. That’s just…peculiar. The shades, the odd symbol on the hat…what was going on there, exactly?

    The world may never know.

Five ways Walt Simonson kicked my ass with Thor #337 (Nov. 1983).

filed under Categories thor

1. The cover. – Who didn’t look at this cover and think “What the holy heck is going on here?”

That was our very first clue that this wasn’t just another rack-filling, copyright-protecting issue of a comic long past its prime. It signaled to us that, hey, maybe something cool and unusual is finally happening in a comic long since taken for granted.

2. “DOOM!” – The first occurrence of this mysterious being, forging…something…in some unknown realm. Not even the lousy printjob can diminish the power of this full-page, full-bleed image:

We’ll see this fella for the next year or so, a page or two at a time, and the suspense will just keep building until his plotline finally intersects Thor’s.

If I may quote the Unsinkable Chris Sims on the matter:

“It’s a full-page shot of a giant making a sword out of a dead star. And the sound ‘reverberates through a billion billion worlds.’ That’s like eighteen zeroes. Eighteen!”

Indeed. Simonson finally brought back some god-sized storytelling to a comic that had been far too mundane for far too long.

3. “I am called Bill — Beta Ray Bill!” – Thor’s first confrontation with, and our first full-on view of, the alien warrior with the remarkably unlikely but absolutely perfect name:

He looks like a completely formidable opponent for Thor, and he certainly looks like a nasty, evil fellow, but that assumption is turned upside down within just a couple pages….

4. Beta Ray Bill acquires Thor’s hammer! – Thor is defeated and has reverted, unconscious, to his mortal form of Dr. Donald Blake. Bill picks up Blake’s cane, finding it in the hammer’s place. Frustrated, Bill smacks the cane against the wall:

Whoa, hey now. According to the inscription on the hammer itself, by Odin’s own decree, “Whosoever holds this hammer, if he be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor.” So maybe Beta Ray Bill’s not the bad ol’ nasty we thought he was.

5. Odin’s not too big on detail work. – Thor’s old man pops in, requiring the presence of his son…and since Bill’s currently holding the hammer and the power of Thor, that’s who Odin grabs:

…leaving Thor trapped in Blake’s form, crying out for the father who has forsaken him:

…And then Walt Simonson proceeded to continue kicking my ass on this comic for the next few years, giving us the best Thor comic stories (outside of Kirby, of course) ever published. I can’t believe this comic came out 24 years ago…it still feels just like yesterday when I found the last copy of this book on the newsstand.

Even after all this time, even after being a funnybook salesman for as long as I have…I can still feel the sense of wonder this comic gave me when I originally read it back in ’83. It’s good to know that I’m not entirely jaded.

In which Mike takes his time getting to what passes for some kind of point.

filed under Categories Uncategorized

So Monday evening I gave my girlfriend a ride to the Los Angeles Airport, as she’s on her way to Mexico for an extended visit with some of her family down there. I’m not really much of a traveler, so I don’t tend to spend a lot of time at the airport, and the last few times I’ve been at LAX, it was just to pick up/drop off one of her relatives so we didn’t hang out there for too long.

This time, however, we had time to kill before her flight departed, so we did a little wandering through the airport, looking at the shops and eating at a restaurant. Actually, there were very few shops…they just seemed to repeat themselves several times. We stopped in one of the something like two dozen Hudson Newsstands ‘n’ bookstores just to look around, and I noticed a couple things:

1. The new Agent Pendergast novel is out, so somehow I’ll have to scrape together the moolah to pick it up.

2. There was a small shelf of graphic novels by the register, which is what all this preamble was leading up to.

This is what the airport bookstore was selling:

Several Civil War collections, including the volumes for Fantastic Four, Amazing Spider-Man, and the mini-series proper. There was also a thick stack of the Thunderbolts volume which looked very un-looked through.

A few copies of Teen Titans volume 4.

One copy of the 300 hardcover.

And a copy or two of this graphic novel adaptation of Beowulf by Gareth Hinds.

And that was pretty much it. Oh, there were some Mad Libs books on the same shelves, too.

Given the kind of captive audience these newsstands have (people desperate for something to read on the plane flight, or just plain waiting for a plane), it’s a shame DC didn’t have, say, copies of Watchmen up there, too, particularly with the movie allegedly coming out. Yeah, sure, there’s the potential problem of folks being offended by Dr. Manhattan’s naked blue penis…but, c’mon, they were selling 300. If folks can handle that, they could handle Watchmen.

I also wondered briefly if Marvel was being ill-served by having a bunch of their Civil War books on display together. Seeing what looks like a bunch of books in the same series, with no particular indication of what order in which to read them, might cut down the impulse buys a bit. Then again, the people most likely to buy them 1) already know what they are, or 2) are getting them to give to the kids to keep them quiet. But maybe Marvel could just have had the Civil War book up there, which is more or less self-contained, along with maybe a handful of other graphic novels representing the rest of their line that don’t tie into a mega-crossover. Assuming they have any say in the matter, of course.

The Showcase and Essential books would have been natural for airport bookstores, too, I think. They’re fat with comics, and they’re cheap. Those’ll keep you busy as you sit in the plane for the next six hours, waiting for take-off.

A manga book or two might have been nice as well. Didn’t see a single one. But then again, we only looked in one of the apparently dozens of these stores. Maybe there was a better selection elsewhere in the airport.

A follow-up to a Twitter post I sent a couple Saturdays ago: yes, the first issue of Captain America: The Chosen, written by Rambo creator David Morrell, has sold quite well. However, according to all the feedback I’ve received from our customers, nobody liked it.

‘Course, in the world of comics, “not liking it” doesn’t always mean “not reading it,” so I’m curious as to how issue #2 is going to do. If it completely tanks, our orders on #3 will get knocked down to a more reasonable number. But I suspect it’ll continue to do okay…some residual post-“death” Captain America awareness among our customers, coupled with the writer stunt-casting (a gimmick that’s becoming less of a sales-driving novelty as time goes on) will still move some copies off the shelves.

I’m ashamed I didn’t know about this earlier…Scott Saavedra, whose Comic Book Heaven ‘zine was one of the major inspirations for this very site of mine, has returned, at least for now, to the weblogging.

So, go, read…see the guy who showed the rest of us how the funny comic book commentary should be done.