Oh, hi! Welcome to our store! Sorry, I know we’re opening a bit late today. We try to shoot for our posted hours, but sometimes, well, you’re gonna be a half-hour or so late. What can you do? I hope you didn’t mind waiting.

Say, that’s a bit of a nasty cough, there. Hmmm? Oh, I don’t think it’s that dusty in here. I assure you, I dust and vacuum at least once a month, whether it needs it or not. Maybe you tracked something in with you.

Is there anything you’re looking f…whoa, hold on, that’s my cell phone. I gotta take it, gimme a sec.

Okay, sorry about that. Is there anything you’re looking for?

The new issue of that Stephen King comic? Sure, we got it here in the case…it’s $7.99.

What’s that? Oh, it’s been out for a week. Yeah, I know the cover price is $3.99, but it’s red hot right now…lots and lots of people are looking for it, and I have to take advantage of that, right? Yeah, you know what I’m talking about. I’m gonna make a ton of money on this book, especially once the reorder comes in.

Sure, we’ve got comics for kids. How old is your kid? Six? Well, here’s the new issue of Wolverine. Kids love Wolverine.

Not quite what you want, eh? Krypto? You want that for your kid? Well, it’s your money, I guess. There it is, on the new comic rack…yeah, right there, between Tarot Witch of the Black Rose and Pee Soup.

Hey, you’re right, it does kind of stand out, there.

Well, yeah, the rack isn’t terribly organized, I admit. We tried racking by publisher, and then just straight alphabetically. But we’d go through the trouble of organizing the rack on new comics day, and when the next new comics day rolled around and we checked the rack again, everything was a mess, so we stopped putting it back in order. Hey, if our customers can’t be bothered to care, why should we?

Interested in back issues? Yeah, we’ve got some, here. Silver Age comics? I’ve got a box of ’em around here, somewhere. Hang on, let me look for it.

Ah, here you go. Keep in mind, though, that the new price guide just came out, so we’re in the process of repricing our back issue stock. We should be done in the next week or so. In the meantime, the prices on the back issues may not necessarily be what we’re selling them at. I’ll reprice them at the register when you’re ready to ring up.

Hmmm, didn’t spend too long on the back issues, I see. Well, I’ll let you shop. Lemme know if you need anything.

Oh, got a question? Sure, let me finish this hand of Magic: The Gathering and I’ll be right with you.

So, what’cha need? Manga? Really? Um, okay, I got a couple manga volumes here. I’ve got Dragonball volume 13 and, um, another copy of Dragonball volume 13. Yeah, we’ve had these two for a while. I guess manga isn’t very popular around here.

Say, look what just walked in. Why, hello, miss, how can I service y…er, be of service to you today?

Why, sure we have comics for women. Supergirl…Wonder Woman…Witchblade. They all star chicks. Take your pick!

Huh? Yeah, I know your eyes are up there, why’re you telling me that?

Boy, she sure left quick. Girls, who can figure ’em, am I right, buddy?

Independent comics? Yeah, we got those. Image or Dark Horse?

Neither, huh? Okay, what are you looking for, then?

Love & Rickets? Oh, Rockets, sorry. That a sci-fi comic? Yeah, I don’t think I’ve heard of it. Is it new?

No, I’m pretty sure I don’t have any trade paperbacks of that love rocket book, either. You might want to check our sci-fi/mystery/superhero shelf, there, and see if you spot it.

Yes, our bookshelves are in order. I said it was the “sci-fi/mystery/superhero shelf,” didn’t I? Hey, they’re in better order than the new comics rack, so don’t complain.

Okay, if you’re ready to ring up, just take your stuff to the counter, there. Here, let me move my cheeseburger…watch out, don’t drop your comics on the mustard, there…gotta protect that investment, right?

Lessee…you sure about this Krypto comic? Okay, whatever…oh, hey, you’re buying the new Stormdrain-Runoff Man? I love this issue…I was totally surprised at the end when the hero’s girlfriend turned out to secretly be his archnemesis this whole time.

Huh? You changed your mind? You don’t want it? Boy, fickle, aren’t you?

All right, here’s your total, then. No, that total’s right. Well, yeah, I know the cover price on that Krypto is $2.25, but it’s last month’s issue, which technically makes it a back issue, so I added a buck. Hey, we got a lot of comics in here, I can’t put price tags on everything.

So here’s your change. Sorry, we’re out of pennies and nickels, so I rounded your total up. Hope you don’t mind.

Thanks for shopping! Here, take a business card…tell your frien….

That’s funny, he didn’t want a business card.

Wonder why?

“Comic books can be enjoyed on paper too”

I swear the opening lines of this article don’t refer to me; for one, I don’t wear my Swamp Thing t-shirt at the store:

“When is the last time you went into a comic book shop? Was is [sic] yesterday, or maybe last Wednesday? Or was it a month ago to pick up the back-issues that the friendly middle-aged clerk with the Swamp Thing shirt has been saving in your file for you?”

The article, however, is mostly about this:

“So why do comic book movies draw in the masses but comic books themselves are largely neglected? People accept the action and characters in the movies as suitable and entertaining for adults, but this same action and these same characters in print form are relegated to the realm of children’s amusement.”

No answers to be had, just further statements that, yes indeed, people would rather watch movies about superheroes than read comics about superheroes. The writer makes the point that, since “comic books themselves are often poorly written, with undeveloped, unchanging characters and predictable plots,” they make effective inspiration for dumbed-down flicks for the masses.

Just thought y’all would enjoy that.

---

In other news…well, not “news,” but a couple things that popped up at the store:

• Why is Dr. Strange/Dr. Doom: Triumph & Torment out of print? It’s drawn by Mike Mignola, bit of a name artist at the moment as I understand, which is reason enough right there; plus the fact that everyone enjoys a good Dr. Doom story, which this is. A nice, prestige-format comic book sized reprint of this graphic novel would make a good sales item. It’d be racked with Mignola’s Hellboys, natch.
• I’ve talked about this before, but I got it again this week and wanted to note it: I had a customer, a fairly regular one in fact, surprised by the very idea of multiple covers. “So are they same on the inside, or does the story continue from one comic to the other?” “No, no, it’s the exact same comic, just with different covers.” “Different covers…so they’re different comics?”

  If this were just a comics thing, I’d be less surprised by this. But T.V. Guide, of all mags, has done multiple covers…it’s common enough in the “real” world that people still being confused by the concept comes as bit of a minor shock to me.

  Other unfair judgement of customer questions: “Hey, what’s an ‘annual?'” “It’s a special issue of a comic book that comes out once a year. The term ‘annual’ is more or less its definition.” No, I don’t say that exact thing to them…I’m a little nicer than that. Not much nicer. And I realize it’s been a while since comic book annuals were commonplace…I should cut folks some slack.

• On Thursday: “Hey, I can’t afford to buy any of your comics. Is it okay if I take a pile of them, sit in an out-of-the-way part of your store, and read them all for free?”

  “Uh, no, but thank you for at least asking first.”

“Hello, um, I’m a concerned citizen, and I just happened to be driving on East Fifth Street in Oxnard right now, and I saw a billboard that had the Silver Surfer on it, and I was really concerned that they might be making a sequel to the Fantastic Four movie, which I hope is not true. I was hoping you could clarify this for me.

“Um…I’m just going to go drink instead. Thank you.”

from Coo Coo Comics #2 (Dec. 1942)

In other news:

• If you enjoyed the funny animal strip I posted yesterday, Mark has improved upon it.
• H at the Comic Treadmill tells of the day Dr. Fate met my namesake.
• From The Comics Journal #281 (out this week!), Steven Grant writes this in the intro to his interview with Gilbert Hernandez:
  

  “Then there are the Hernandez brothers. Coming out of nowhere (or Oxnard, Calif., which amounts to the same thing)….”

  As an Oxnard native and current resident, I have two things to say: “Hey!” — and “Well, actually, I can’t really argue with that.”

  But then again, our fine town was repeatedly referenced on Alf, so we’ve got that going for us.

• Related to pal Dorian’s “comics in antique stores” thing: there used to be an “antique store” (or “thrift store”…the difference between the two generally being the prices being asked) that would price any comics they got in by coming to our store and seeing our prices for the same books. Invariably, their books were in much worse shape than ours, so their comics would all end up being overpriced for their conditions.

  The specific example I remember is Avengers #1 (the Gold Key based on the ’60s TV show)…we had a very nice copy priced at $150. The thrift store folks also priced their copy at $150, and had it framed on the wall of their shop…where I was able to get a good look at it and determine that it had apparently been run over by a truck at some point in the comic’s history.

• Depressing thought of the day: having a very specific vision for a new direction for one’s favorite comic book character (like, oh, say, Swamp Thing), and 1) knowing with absolute certainty that there’s no way on God’s green Earth that the publisher would ever, ever go for it, 2) not that they’d even want to talk to me about it in the first place, and 3) the more I think about this particular direction, the more I gotta see it.

  Sad when it happens to someone you know, isn’t it?

• Just watched the new Invincible Iron Man cartoon, and I think Marvel’s direct-to-video animated movies have a serious case of diminishing returns. The first Ultimate Avengers was slight but watchable (if you avoid the appallingly-incompetent text commentary), and that was the best of them. The second Ultimate Avengers couldn’t keep my interest for the 80-minute running time, and Iron Man turned out to be a snoozefest as well. Characters I didn’t care about, action sequences that were more endured than enjoyed…it just didn’t do anything for me. The opening sequence from the forthcoming Dr. Strange movie that’s included on the disc didn’t fill me with high hopes for improvement.

  Here’s hoping the DC direct-to-video flicks are better…but then, they’d almost have to be.

• All hail the mighty Neilalien, who just celebrated seven years of comic book weblogging. We are all but humble followers in his giant footsteps.
• Spencer at Of Course, Yeah has announced the winners of the Do-It-Yourself “Get Your Civil War On” contest. Very funny stuff…almost justifies the existence of the Civil War crossover in the first place. Almost. (Related: newspaper columnist mistakenly believes Civil War has something to say about real-world events.)
• Pal Dorian let his kid brother Andy take over the site again in order to espouse his views on funnybooks. I can think of a few message boards where Andy would fit right in. (Special bonus, probably just for the day: the one animated GIF you’d least expect to see on Dor’s site. And no, I’m not talking about the eagle one.)
• In response to my post yesterday, commenter Chad asked the following question: “How is it that the Swamp Thing mythos appeals to you so much?” And that is a good question, one that probably deserves more of an answer than just one entry in a list of bullet-pointed links. I’ve been thinking about how to answer that for most of the past day, and I don’t know that I’m any closer to a reasonable response now than I was before.

  The simple answer is that the Swamp Thing comics have had the good fortune to have a series of imaginative and talented creative teams over the years, starting with the character’s creators (Len Wein & Bernie Wrightson), and continuing with such talents as Nestor Redondo, Tom Yeates, Marty Pasko, Steve Bissette, John Totleben, Alan Moore, Rick Veitch, Nancy A. Collins, Mark Millar, and many, many more.

  As to what specifically about the character appeals to me…I think the complexity of the character’s situation struck more of a chord with me than the typical superhero books I was reading as a kid. Swamp Thing wasn’t a superhero who reveled in his powers and ran around fighting bad guys. He was a character who was inherently tragic; trapped in a monstrous body, seeking a cure for the condition which gave him his special abilities…and he ran around fighting bad guys, admittedly, but that level of tragedy gave the character a sympathetic, emotional hook that drew me in more than the comparatively simplistic “guys in tights punching each other” stories.

  On a related note, as I was thinking about this question I thought about the fact that the very first issue of Swamp Thing I ever read was the issue where they began to futz with the concept (under “May 12”). I wonder if that has something to do with my inability to get too worked up whenever Marvel or DC does something drastically different (or drastically stupid) to one of their properties. I mean, my introduction to my favorite comic book character was when they took what was special about him, and began the thankfully-aborted attempt to turn him into a full-on superhero. After that, killing off Sue Dibny or giving Spider-Man a new bad costume…eh, no big whoop.

• I hadn’t noticed until the webmaster pointed it out in the comments…but the Roots of the Swamp Thing site has a nice banner pointing back to my weblog. Hey, thanks! (And I’ll get back to you on that Sunderland/Firestorm connection you’re asking about in your sidebar, there.) Go check it out, and dig the comprehensive timeline (which includes references to an unpublished story pitched by Bissette!).
• “THE INCREDIBLE HULK 3-D PAINTED Bowling Pin MARVEL”
  

  “THIS IS A 3-D AIRBRUSHED PIN OF THE HULK,THE FIST IS HAND SCULPTURED AND CAREFULLY BONDED WITH PIN ,,,THIS IS A ONE OF A KIND ITEM!!!!!”

  Fantastic.

So I’ve covered a couple dropped plot points in Swamp Thing over the last year or two. There was that long-haired fella who actually set up the bomb that killed Alec Holland…and somehow managed to evade mossy justice at the Swamp Thing’s hands. And then there was the mysterious device we were told about (but never shown) that kept folks away from Alec and Linda Holland’s graves…the story of which was to be told in a future issue of DC Comics Presents, which, alas, did not come to pass.

Here’s another Swamp Thing plot development from the original series that’s since been lost: Abby Arcane’s mystical powers. In issue #15 (Mar/Apr ’75) by David Michelinie and Nestor Redondo, Swamp Thing is possessed by a demon, while his soul is trapped in a magic globe. Abby has a sudden, mysterious insight into how to stop the infernal creature:

She determines that smashing the globe will not only cause no harm to Swampy’s soul, but it will also sufficiently weaken the demon so that it may be defeated. It’s possible that it’s just a lucky guess, but the narrative as much as tells you that she had some kind of mystical hoohar goin’ on.

This new ability of Abby’s is next brought up in Swamp Thing #17 (July ’75), as Matt Cable and Abby have a brief conversation about her unusual talents:

Okay, “I sense evil” isn’t much of a magical insight, I suppose, but Matt mentions that she “keep[s] having” these feelings, though the only one we see “onscreen” is the event in #15.

The power moves beyond “lucky guesses” and “feeling evil” in #18 (Sept ’75), as the good guys are tied or chained up by the bad guys…but before things move too far along, Abby’s powers free her from her bonds:

…And while in her magical trance, she turns and apparently sees the Swamp Thing through the wall of the building in which she’s trapped:

She calls out to him, Swampy smashes through the wall Kool-Aid Man style, beats the crap out of some people, and the good guys win again.

Matt Cable has further questions about Abby’s powers:

…but that’s the last we hear of them, as after the two-part story in #19 and #20, Matt ‘n’ Abby disappear from the Swamp Thing saga, until about a dozen and a half issues into the ’80s revivial of the series. And, by the time they reappear, the “Abby’s powers” subplot is long forgotten. Matt has weird powers by that point, but that’s another story entirely.

…

I’m the only person who cares about this, I realize. Thank you for tolerating my bizarre obsessions.

Just a couple brief notes:

1. Having glanced through the last issue of the Civil War series, my immediate thought was “this really wasn’t worth all the grief we had to put up with.” And to my customers who asked “Is this it? Is Civil War finally over?” — all I could do was sadly shake my head. More one-shots and other assorted follow-ups to come, my friends…keep your wallets ready.

2. My comments to Employee Aaron as I was going through some ’50s and ’60s Blackhawk comics:

“Okay, I know this isn’t how it worked, but looking at these things…it’s like, if a comic script wasn’t good enough for the Superman line of books, it was passed over to Batman and slightly rewritten for use there. If the script wasn’t good enough for Batman, it was passed down to the Blackhawk guys and rewritten for that team. And if the script wasn’t good enough for the Blackhawks, they gave it to Wonder Woman.”

I repeat: I KNOW THIS ISN’T WHAT THEY ACTUALLY DID. But after seeing the Blackhawks fight a bald scientist or the Blackhawk Revenge Sq…er, the League of Anti-Blackhawks or, for God’s sake, Cat-Man, you can’t help but wonder.

3. From the Newsarama article on Stephen King’s appearance at the New York con:

“[Marvel editor-in-chief Joe] Quesada went on to say that publishing the Dark Tower comic book has been the coming out party for the comic book industry, noting that this project will be able to reach far out into the mainstream, and show that comics are a serious art form, and ‘an art form to be reckoned with.'”

Well, no, it won’t, but it’ll sell well for a while, and it’s not a bad comic, so I can’t complain about that. But it’s not going to make everyone start taking the medium “seriously.” Like I said before, it’ll get non-comic-reading King fans in the door to buy Dark Tower (and only Dark Tower)…at least for a while, until they get tired of trying to keep up with a comic on a monthly basis (or whatever publishing schedule it finally ends up being on).

So after whatever sales-bump/media attention Marvel is getting from their current novelty publishing license dies down, mainstream news coverage will go from the “Hey, did you know there’s a Stephen King comic book” stories we’re getting now, and back to the “BAM! ZAP! POW! Comics are (worth money/corrupting kids/still being published, believe it or not/cheap R&D for movies where real money is to be made/read by freaks like this local collector we’re interviewing)” stories the industry usually gets. And non-comic-readers will go back (if they ever stopped) to looking upon comics with indifference, if not outright disdain.

Bitter cynicism aside…I thought it was kinda cool that Stephen King went to the New York Con to plug the project. I’m enough of a fanboy to admit it.