• So the other day, as we’re processing that large collection of ’70s comics I’d mentioned previously, employee Aaron pointed to a cover of Pebbles and Bam-Bam (based on this cartoon) and asked….

  Aaron: “Hey, Mike, who’s this character?”

  Me: “Oh, that’s Schleprock.”

  Aaron. “Schleprock, huh? Okay, thanks.”

  Me: “WHY DO I KNOW THIS?”

  Okay, that’s not a terribly obscure bit of trivia of anything. But it just reminded me that one of the side effects of selling funnybooks for a living is that memories of childhood ephemera don’t fade into vague impressions and mental background noise. They remain fresh and clear and almost certainly occupying that part of the brain that could be of more use, say, keeping track of your home mortgage’s impound account. Ah, well, the price one pays…..

• Speaking of childhood memories, I wish I could wipe my mind of this:
  
  This is from 1968, though Archie cartoons were created and rerun through the ’70s, and they were all just as annoying. I dare you to listen to Jughead’s voice (at the 40 second mark) and not want to put a fist through your monitor.

  And whoever had the soul-withering idea to add laugh tracks to cartoons…gaaaah, it’s too much to bear.

• I saw someone point out that there’s a splash page in the latest issue of Civil War where one character is holding another character, beaten and battered, in his arms, while standing in a doorway. The drawing has the notation “after Keown” — i.e. Dale Keown, who drew a similar image during his run on Incredible Hulk.

  So there’s only one way that particular scene could have been drawn? I mean, all you needed to do is, say, shift the camera angle a tad, and viola, “homage” no longer required. Just seemed a bit odd to me, is all.

• Okay, that said…I kinda like the idea of that character returning to the Marvel Universe and interacting with superheroes. Well, I like it in theory, anyway, in some odd, nostalgic way, and not in a “oh, boy, I can’t wait to buy another series starring that character” way.
• It’s no secret which character I’m talking about, is it? No, not “U.S. War Machine.”
• Dear customer: even if I did know the phone number of a particular Big Name Funnybook Artist, I’m not going to give it to you so you can call him at, most likely, 3 in the morning and pitch your “great” ideas.
• One of the things I miss about having pal Dorian working at the store is the ability to immediately show him crazy comics the second I come across them in any collections I’m processing. Now I have to wait for him to turn up at the shop to get his comics, and I have to remember which comics I wanted to show him that I’d seen earlier in the week, and…heck, sometimes it’s just easier to scan everything and let him see ’em on my site.
• For your information, the soundtrack CD for the new Tenacious D movie isn’t work-safe. Just sayin’.*
• As pal Dorian and I were talking the other day about, well, comics…I know, big surprise…I realized that we no longer have people asking about the extremely late and I’m not convinced will ever actually finish Ultimate Hulk Vs. Wolverine mini-series. The fans have given up hope, their spirits broken, shattered, faded mockeries of their former selves, wandering the comic shop aisles with a vague unease over that one series, from so long ago, the name of which they can no longer remember, which remains uncompleted to this very day.

  Or they just shrugged their shoulders, said “eh, typical,” and soldiered on to the next late, hot series.

• Can’t resist these image-“memes,” even when I should. My contribution to Beaucoupkevin‘s:
  
  EDIT: More Validus pics here.

* Yes, I knew that before I even put the CD in the player. No, I didn’t play it while customers** were in the store.

** Dorian doesn’t count.

Person on the phone: “I’ve lived in Ventura all my life, and I have your address here, but I’m not sure where you are. Can you give me an idea where you’re at?”

Me: “Sure…we’re near the corner of Seaward and Main Street.”

P.O.T.P.: “Okay, where is that? What are you near?”

Me: “Um…there’s a cleaners on the corner, we’re right across the street from the huge bike shop, we’re next door to the optometrist….”

P.O.T.P.: “I’m still not sure where you’re at. Is there anything else you’re near?”

Me: “We’re on the other side of Seaward from Ventura High School.”

P.O.T.P.: “Hmmmm, okay, I’m still not sure where you’re at. I’m on Main Street now, by the Target…are you far from there?”

Me: “We’re just a couple miles away. Keep driving down Main, like you’re driving toward Santa Barbara, and we’ll be on the right hand side of the street. If you hit the Seaward intersection, you’ve just passed us.”

P.O.T.P.: “Well, I hope I can find you.”

Me: “Well, since you said you have the address, and you’re already on this street, just drive along Main, which is the main drag through town, which is a fairly straight and uncomplicated thoroughfare, which should be entirely familiar to anyone who’s lived in this town for all their lives, and follow the street numbers on the buildings until you get to the ones that are close to the address you have for us. It’s really not that hard. But failing that, we’re at 34°, 16′, 30″ N by 119°, 13′, 40″ W.”

Epilogue: I don’t think this person ever made it to the store.

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So this week’s arrival of the conclusion of Daredevil: Father #6 got me thinking as to how long it took for this series to finally wrap up. I went to our store’s cycle sheets and…well, our Daredevil cycle sheets appear to be not where they’re supposed to be, at the moment, so I checked the dates over at Comiclist.com:

#1 – 4/28/04
#2 – 8/31/05
#3 – 9/21/05
#4 – 11/9/05
#5 – 12/29/05
#6 – 11/15/06

Well, it looked like issues #2-#5 almost came out on a regular schedule, anyway.

Just out of curiosity, I pulled out the arrival dates for Civil War:

#1 – 5/3/06
#2 – 6/14/06
#3 – 7/19/06
#4 – 9/20/06
#5 – 11/15/06

And just to be a jerk:

Daredevil: The Target #1 – 11/13/02. Issues #2-#4 of the series? Don’t hold your breath.

I would have looked up that Ultimate Hulk Vs. Wolverine (or whatever it’s called), but the thought of it just depressed me.

And just to keep anyone from complaining that my anti-Marvel, pro-DC bias is showing, let’s take a look at, say, Seven Soldiers: the last issue of the Seven Soldiers: Frankenstein series came out on April 26th…and that was it until the conclusion of the series, Seven Soldiers #1 popped up on October 25th.

The botched Wonder Woman relaunch has had only two issues so far, the first arriving on June 7th, the second on August 23rd, the third still pending, apparently.

The last issue of Superman/Batman we’ve seen, aside from the annual, is #29 from 8/30/06.

And then there’s All-Star Batman and Robin, where the series’ chronic lateness problems is its sole flaw:

#1 – 7/13/05
#2 – 9/14/05
#3 – 12/29/05
#4 – 5/17/06

Only one issue for 2006. Geez. But, you know, that’s okay, because I think I got one year’s worth of entertainment out of that issue.

The moral of the story? Companies, please put your comics out on time, because I, as a mere comics salesman, am the one who takes the most crap when your books are late. Thank you.

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I’ve been mentioning over the last couple of New Comics Day posts that I’m slowly trying to cut down the reading list a bit, winnowing out the few books that I’ve been buying out of habit and not enjoying. I noted that I was real close to cutting Green Lantern Corps, as I was enjoying the bits with Guy Gardner and, um, not much else. However, this issue kept me around because 1) more Dave Gibbons art, 2) I’m finally beginning to get interested in the other characters, and 3) a couple elements from Alan Moore’s Abin Sur story (from this annual) pop up in this issue (at least, I don’t remember those elements being mentioned in this series before). So, okay, you got me, I’m stickin’ around.

Now, Hellblazer…okay, had this been any other book, I probably would have dropped it, but I like the John Constantine character, and (most importantly) it’s a Swamp Thing spin-off character, so “Fanboy” beats out “Rational Adult in Charge of Finances” in this case. Because, really, I’m oversimplifying things a bit, but John ‘n’ pals are fighting a demon that causes people to be sad, and the way to fight it is be happy and in love. And I think this story has been going on for, like, eight, nine years now. Oh come on.

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For reading all that, I give you Spandexwear.com – Good Lord, that Batgirl costume is even more terrifying in real life. Egads. And this instills fear in nobody.

GAH! Really, I should have known better than to sign up for Blogger Beta. Signing up for Beta anything is usually a bad idea…just ask Beta Flight. Dead (presumably), dead, dead, villain(s)…at least, that was the status of those characters last time I checked. I’m sure someone out there will set me straight.

Er, anyway, got off topic a bit there. What I’m trying to say is if you see any weird glitches on my site, like archive links that go nowhere, or permalinks that are on the fritz, please let me know. Stupid Blogger Beta.

I’m also planning on 1) changing the background and title banner on the site again, and 2) weeding some of the dead sites out of the sidebar. If you own a site in the sidebar, and you haven’t updated in, say, about six months, but you plan to start doing so again Any Day Now, drop me a line and I’ll leave the link up.

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A couple brief comic news snippets:

• “Snyder Says No Sequels for Watchmen“ – yeah, I wasn’t exactly holding my breath for the first movie actually getting made, much less Watchmen II: Rorschach’s Revenge.
• Film studio apparently hasn’t seen Ghost Rider trailer, signs Nicolas Cage to another comic book movie.
• And I know most of you have seen it already, but…it’s the Simpsons trailer! I wonder if there’s any implied commentary in Homer’s ultimate fate in the trailer vis-a-vis fan expectations for this film (i.e. where the cartoon’s creators will find themselves stuck)? Or maybe I’m just reading too much into it.

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I don’t have any info on this beyond what it says at the YouTube link (“this is the arabic opening of batman”), but darn if that’s not a catchy theme song…if perhaps not exactly going along with the intent of the animators:

Blogger Beta…feh, I say, feh!

EDIT: My archive pages should work now, which means the permalinks for my posts should work now as well. My FTP directory is a mess, Blogger Beta tells me that it’s getting a server error whenever I update my site, but it’s updating anyway, and…ah, heck, you don’t want to hear about it.

But, really, honestly…if you’re using Blogger, and don’t want to switch to another weblogging system…hold off on upgrading to Blogger Beta. It’ll break your spirit.

On the bright side, a whole lot of people got to see my swell 404 page today.

• Heard at the store – Mom: “Hey, look at this comic, Franklin Richards…this looks funny!” Kid (takes quick flip through book): “Nah, this is just a rip-off of Calvin & Hobbes.”
• The specific increment of time between the weblog posting of a negative review of a comic and the appearance of that comic’s creator (or an overly-defensive fan, or just an outright “sock puppet“) in that particular post’s comment section may be referred to as “a Tokyopop.” (See also Chris’ opening statement in his latest review.)
• The likelihood of our ability to purchase a comic collection from someone not immersed in the hobby decreases by, say, about 50% if that person owns a price guide that he or she clearly doesn’t know how to use. Our offer of anything less than the top mint price for any particular book, regardless of its condition, is an obvious attempt to rip people off, you see.
• Is there a term for going through the blocked-bidder list in your account on the eBay, and checking the current feedback and/or status of the bidders in that list, and being very satisfied that the majority of them are no longer registered eBay members? I mean, a term aside from “being a smug jerk?”
• Conversations I do not want to have any more: Person on phone asks for list of what came out this week. I run down the list of most of the new major arrivals. Person on phone then asks “Actually, I’m just wondering if Wolverine came out. Did it?” NOTE TO SELF: Ask if there’s anything they’re specifically looking for first.
• On a related note: kid and (presumably) his mom who call every day asking about the Alex Ross Justice line of action figures, asking which ones we have, then telling us they’re just looking for the Superman figure. DON’T CIRCLE AROUND THE QUESTION, JUST ASK IT.
• The more I look at this article that I linked to the other day, the more dumb it seems to get. Okay, yay, “did you know that like pretty much every other entertainment form on the planet, there are comics for kids and comics for adults,” that’s a message that still needs to get out there. But…man, this article needs some editorial interference, stat!
• No, you can’t leave your wallet with us as collateral so you can borrow one of our books and go make photocopies out of it. “You lose…good day, sir!”
• Dear creator: I like how, in the promo material you sent to us, you go out of your way to assure us that your comic, starring an HIV-positive character, doesn’t address the topic of sexual identity. Of course it doesn’t, otherwise your publisher, who has publicly stated that he doesn’t like “the gays,” wouldn’t touch it. DUH.
• I was this close to saying something really nasty about National Novel Writing Month, but too many people I actually like are doing it, so I’ll just keep it to myself. It was really mean, though. I’m a bad man.
• Something pal Dorian brought up regarding the return of Peter Parker’s clone Ben Reilly – ah, so that’s how they’re going to get out of the “Peter’s revealed his ID as Spidey” thing! (Well, you know, it’s possible….)
• Spider-Man 3 trailer – I’m seeing lessons not learned from the latter films of the ’80s-’90s Batman franchise.