Normal service has resumed.

filed under Categories here comes the april fool

Just for posterity’s sake, here’s a screenshot of this site from yesterday’s April Fool’s shenanigans:


Since I actually had a couple people ask what was up with that, I’ll note here that it was a takeoff on Fanboy Rampage. Yes, I know most of you folks already knew that, but some didn’t. (Thanks to Graeme, under an assumed name, giving it that extra touch.)

And, in case you missed it, you really need to visit the Swamp Thing Blog. I had no idea that my life was missing Swamp Thing/Abby/Blue Devil/Black Orchid/Detective Chimp golfing fan fiction until I read it for myself.

I’m a little short on time this morning, so let me at least give you a couple links full o’good reading that I totally stole from Mark Evanier: an online Treasure Chest collection, and, even better, all the “This Godless Communism” stories in sequence. Fantastic. As J. Edgar Hoover himself says in the introduction:

“The most effective way for you to fight communism is to learn all you can about it.”

You don’t want those Commies to win, do you? Then get readin’.

Progressive Rampage #3!

filed under Categories here comes the april fool

“Can Superman break adamantium?”

“Well can he? And I mean any incarnation of him pre-crisis, post, Kingdom Come, Prime, 1 million etc. In the Heroes of the Holocaust crossover special in 1981 Doctor Doom created a robot out an alloy almost as powerful as adamantium but he quickly tears it apart.”

“Adamentium is the stringest thing on earth, supe is not from earth, he could break it with ease”

“…I must disagree. Superman can do it in the presence of a white star. It’s said that these stars give him the most energy.”

“Superman can’t break adamantium. The periodic table is constant throughout the universe. It’s just as strong on earth as it is anywhere else. If he can’t break it here he can’t do it anywhere.”

“Thor couldn’t break Adamantium. The Hulk couldn’t break Adamantium. They are both relatively stronger than Superman. Superman can’t break Adamantium. Simple applied reasoning.”

“The Hulk and Thor are nowhere near as strong as POST crisis Supes.”

“The Hulk and Thor are both way stronger than Post-Crisis Superman. Lobo kicked Post-Crisis Superman’s ass.”

I usually wouldn’t quote this much of a post, but this next one must be read in its entirety:

“HAHAHA, mend it blend it or melt it! I wish they’d do a cross over and we can see what happens. In the last cross over, supes knocked out Thor! I threw the mag away, didn’t buy it duh! But I was pissed! Then supes picked up Thors hammer like it was chicken sh.t! Darn that sulked, only to be told it was Thors dad that allowed it and I thought ‘what a bunch of crap!’ Where do they come up with these ideas? Gosh, so much favoritism for one character! Man, I’d like to see SUpes against Wolverine just to see how they make Spes kill wolverine. Cos if he can knock the sh.t out of Thor , I’d love to see what he does to Wolverine! Healing power or not! Cos the the more severe the injury, I do believe the longer time it takes to heal! Or can he heal it in an instant? Or what if he gets multiple injuries? Supes burning his ass with those laser eyes and moving faster than lighting? Gosh I’d buy a million copies. But we’ll have to wait.”

“No he cant” — and the poster must have had additional thoughts on the topic, for in the very next post: “and no kids sups cant beat the crap out of thor”

“post ,pre, and prime cou;counldnt break pure adimantium the only thing that can is vibrium anti metal B so unless soupie is mad outta dat i dont think so biatchess”

“This will depend on the absolute hardness of adamantium (diamond is 1500), its thoughness and thermodynamic stability.”

“Like most other super-materials in comic books, adamantium is unbreakable until somebody manages to break it”

Let’s wrap up with what should be the final word on the subject:

“only wolverine himself can truly hurt adamantium for he is the owner”

Well said.

Progressive Rampage #2!

filed under Categories here comes the april fool

“Didio VS. Quesada : The Final Payback!”

“(Now here’s a REAL “VS.” thread fa yo’ a$$)
With disregard for continuity and money-grubbing mentality at an all-time high…
Who would you say is running their company into the ground harder & faster?”

“A year ago, I would have said Marvel. But that’s changed. There’s now a push to bring back many characters not seen in years, and some (not all) of the stories have been quite good.” […] “Then there’s DC. What can I say? They seem unable to rise above B-grade silliness and constantly revamp and reboot in an endless bid to maintain sales and stay relevant. The dead rise again en masse and totally defeat the purpose many past storylines.”

“I HATE IT WHEN ESTABLISHED CHARACTERS GET REPLACED AS A SHORT TERM MARKETING STUNT. I COULD MAKE A GREAT TEAM BOOK FROM THE HEROES THAT ARE CURRENTLY ON HIATUS: AQUAMAN, HAWKMAN, BLUE BEETLE, ATOM, HAWKEYE, VISION (ORIGINAL), AND FIRESTORM (RONNIE). WE ARE PROBABLY GOING TO LOSE SOMEONE IN THE FLASH FAMILY AS WELL.”

“You are complaining about DC reboots when Marvel has given us 4 Captain America #1s since 1996? [devil] How many X-titles have been reworked, redone, rehashed?”

“You complain about that but how many times have we had a JLA#1?!?! And how many times have the Bat and Superman titles been reworked, redone and rehashed?!?! Pot meet kettle, kettle.. this is pot!”

“At present I would say Marvel are slightly better. I’ve enjoyed IC and all its buildup, but it doesn’t look like anything will actually come out of its conclusion, atleast nothing significant”

“Id say Quesada…just because he’s a total sh-t monger…but marvel is still outselling DC(which is a lode of bull)…people are idiots, when it comes to DC now people seem to be just whinney little b-tches…god get over it.”

“It’s like you can smell the desperation in DC’s books. The desperation that comes from knowing you’re big crossover event still didn’t put you over the top, sales-wise. I hope all the death, destruction and general carnage was worth it, DC.”

“Nor Didio or Quesada are driving each other’s company to the ground . Quite the contrary actually, for better or worse the two of them have been keeping both companies neck and neck on the top spots.”

“Let’s see,Im picking up about twenty titles from DC and only one from Marvel(X-Factor)andonly because Peter David is writing it and doing a great job at it.
So in my book Mr.Didio’s DC outdoes Marvel hands down!”

“I refuse to believe that there are 20 truly good titles at DC, Marvel or anywhere else at present. Methinks you are simply a completist.”

Progressive Rampage #1!

filed under Categories here comes the april fool, swamp thing

The Swamp Thing weblog.

I swear to God it’s not me. And yes, it’s done entirely in character, from Swampy’s perspective. God bless this person:

“The Shadowpact and I fought an extremely violent battle with Dark Hellchid today. We were in Bucharest, Romania–and the conflict took place under the foreboding omen of a solar eclipse. [the sign of the Shadowpact’s nemesis, Eclipso] The menacing creature who was once my beloved young protoge’ Suzy, the Black Orchid was now the demon-possessed fiendish archvillain known to us as Dark Hellchid.”

“Abby and I confronted King Toad today. We regarded the low, pathetically vile creature together with our quiet hatred. He shouted at us and mocked us in his bitter contempt.”

My official Favorite Thing of The Week must be the two posts about Swamp Thing playing golf with the Shadowpact, complete with photos (maybe NSFW, since the Black Orchid’s photo is basically a naked lady colored purple):

Abby, Suzy and I were invited by Blue Devil and Detective Chimp to come play golf with them today. […] The Chimp played an impressive first round, and challenged Abby to surprass it.”

“But then it came Black Orchid’s turn. […] “‘You want to play golf, Chimp. This is how you play it. Not with words, but with actions.'”

Later, Abby gives Swamp Thing some golfing lessons:

“In my first swing, unfortunately, I underestimated my strength and broke the club in half. Undaunted, Abby rushed into the house and came back out with a spare club to play with. This time, she showed me how to handle the club properly.”

This is the greatest weblog I have ever seen. You can pretty much stop making new weblogs now.

Dear Marvel trading cards…

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…I hate you.

Love, Mike

EDIT: P.S. But you’ve made me love you again with Punisher Scratch ‘n’ Sniff cards:


If you scratch the cloud of smoke, it smells like…well, like a bunch of chemicals that have soaked into a piece of cardboard, but bless your little heart anyway.

In which Mike is a big jerk.

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Things I never hear at the store:

“Is the new Youngblood out yet?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, it’s very rude for me to talk on my cell phone the entire time you’re trying to complete a transaction with me. Let me end my call so that we may conclude our business without distraction.”

“Does this ‘My Other Hard Drive Is The Millennium Falcon’* t-shirt look good on me?”

“Wow, I wasn’t expecting the new issue of Ultimates to be out so soon!”

“My young daughter is sure to love this new issue of Supergirl.”

“Mr. Sterling, put down the shotgun and broken wine bottle…we have the store surrounded.”

“Just look for the Comics Code Authority stamp, Little Billy…those are the comics that are appropriate for you.”

“$2.99? Well, considering the lower print runs and increased paper costs, not to mention the need to provide every person involved in the production and distribution process with a living wage, that’s actually quite a reasonable price for a comic book, and I’m glad to pay it.”

“‘Giant-Size Man-Thing?’ What’s so funny about that?”

“Hey, that last issue of Uncanny X-Men was really good!”

“I’d like to sell this old comic I have here…it’s kinda beat up, I think it’s pretty common, and, come to think of it, it’s really not all that old…a year or two at most. Actually, I’m sure it’s not worth anything….sorry to waste your time.”

“You know what I wish? I wish there was yet another new ongoing monthly Spider-Man title. A half-dozen just isn’t enough, frankly.”

“I was going to ask you to put this comic behind the counter for me so that I can come back to buy it later today, but, let’s face it, I’m going to get distracted and forget to return for it, so I might as well just leave it on the shelf.”

“Hey, Ian, you’re sober!”

“Do you have any other female-empowering comics, like Victoria’s Secret Service?”

“You know what I’d just love? If you secretly noted every stupid thing I say and post it later on your weblog. That’d be fantastic.”

My embarrassing moment of the day: asking one of our customers if he wanted the latest Spike one-shot, forgetting that he reads this site and finding out that he remembers my negative review of same. Um, heh. (You’re a trooper, Corey!)

The mighty Booksteve digs out a 20-year-old Swamp Thing fanzine cartoon for all to enjoy. Well done, sir.

Happy anniversary to Dave’s Long Box, you magnificent son of a bitch.

* Thanks to Employee Nathan for coming up with this mindbender. I don’t know what it means, either.

New comic book day…

filed under Categories free comic book day

…brought us a new issue of Alias Comics’ Victoria’s Secret Service:


“Thrust yourself crotch-first — into danger!”

Anyway, unlike previous weeks, our distributor managed to do a good job this time around with shipping us everything that appeared on the invoice, with only minor shortages (missing one copy of Blue Beetle) and a damaged comic. We even got a couple more copies of that issue of Spider-Girl we’d been shorted.

However, speaking of Blue Beetle…all you people who gnashed your teeth and tore your garments over the previous Blue Beetle biting the big one a few months back, all you folks who never read a single issue of a Blue Beetle comic and had fading memories of his appearances in 15-year-old Justice League comics who claimed your great love for the character, you’d better damn well buy this new Blue Beetle #1 or I’m going to go to your house and kick your ass.

Why, yes, I am well-regarded for my customer service, why do you ask?

We also received our t-shirts for Free Comic Book Day (May 6th, mark your calendars) with a reasonable amount of lead time, this time. That year we got them the Wednesday before the FCBD event…well, what good did that do, really? We need more time than that to be walking billboards, and thankfully we got that time this year.

Other new comic day notes:

Zombie Tales: The Dead #1 – another zombie-anthology, served up Boom! Studios-style, which short, (mostly) dark-humored stories about the shambling dead. All are good, but the standout to me was “Deadest Meat” by Keith Giffen and Ron Lim (whose work I haven’t seen in a while). This first person point-of-view story, told from the zombie’s perspective, gives us a look at a zombie semi-society that forms on a remote beach. Unique and particularly pathos-ridden, given the lead character’s awareness of the hopelessness of his situation, and the fate that awaits him. Worth the price of admission, but the rest of the book is entertaining as well.

All-Star Superman #3 – One of the stated purposes of this series was to evoke the Silver Age-era Superman stories, which short tales crammed full of bizarre ideas and memorable characters. The first two issues, while beautiful and engaging, and filled with odd concepts, still seemed just a tad…off from the Silver Age ideal, I guess. But this issue…Superman is confronted by competing heroes, who challenge him for Lois Lane…a challenge resolved in a remarkably schoolyard fashion. And I think that was the difference necessary. The Superman family of the Silver Age are immature, reacting to each other in childish ways. Just this wee bit of callback to those days in All-Star Superman was all it took to bring the Silver Age feel rushing back, at least for me.

Savage Dragon #124 – I love covers that look “pre-distressed” (even if they constantly make me do double-takes as I come across them in back-issues). Plus, this cover “liberates” one of my favorite Marvel story titles ever: “The Dismal Dregs of Defeat!”

Robin Screwso #1 – I can’t decide if this adult comic’s title is genius or stretching for a joke. It apparently involves a gal on an island, if you need help with the pun.

Superman/Batman #24 – I just read this comic, and I have no idea what’s going on. I think once #25 comes out, I’m gonna have to read the whole story from beginning to end and puzzle it out. Perhaps refreshing my memory with previous installments will help.

Star Wars: Return of Tag & Bink Special Edition #1 – Never enough funny Star Wars comics, for my money. Tag and Bink bumble their way through the movies’ events, with a particularly amusing revelation regarding just how exactly a blind Han Solo was able to so easily defeat Boba Fett on Jabba’s skiff. Fett fans who are utterly convinced of the character’s “coolness” may not want to read this issue.

East Coast Rising #1 – A Tokyopop original American manga…no, wait, don’t run away! This is a good’un, by a certain Becky Cloonan whom you may remember from Demo, and it’s all piratey and stuff. Give it a look.

For reading this far, you get a Superman Peanut Butter commercial, as found on the YouTube.

Man-Thing’s War on Swamp Thing!

filed under Categories giant-size man-thing 3 Comments

Well, sorta. At least it gives me an excuse to link to this cool Nestor Redondo image from an old Comic Buyer’s Guide cover again:


So anyway, in Man-Thing #3 (March 1973), this editorial reply appeared in response to reader inquiries as to the similarities between the two swamp creatures:


Swamp Thing, openly disparaged in the letter column of his direct competitor. Okay, so it’s probably partially true, though I think the huge sales of Swampy’s first appearance in House of Secrets #92 had more to do with the creation of the ongoing series than, as implied above, anything Marvel may have been doing.

But that implication pales in comparison to this editorial reply in Man-Thing #2 (January 1979). A letter writer asks about Manny’s origin, confusing it with Swampy’s, which results in this response:


Oh SNAP! Oh no you didn’t! You didn’t just describe Swamp Thing as also being a Hulk knock-off!

Of course, that’s not to say the S.O.O.S. (“Supporters of Ol’ Swampy”) contingent didn’t get their licks in, as in this excerpt from Man-Thing #16 (April 1975):

Of course, the Swamp Thing comic ended up co-opting, in a way, the Man-Thing character as a background member of the Parliament of Trees – the plant elemental tribe elders, after a fashion. He first pops up in Swamp Thing #47 (April ’86), the issue where Swamp Thing first encounters the Parliament…what appears to be an overgrown version of Man-Thing appears in a two-page spread:


And later in the issue, you get an extreme foreground close-up of his face:


And he pops up a few more times, in this issue and a few others. Alas, no official crossover has ever been published, though I was hoping for maybe a throwaway panel in JLA/Avengers. I mean, heck, they devoted a panel to Rick Jones versus Snapper Carr, after all.

(And just so there’s no misunderstanding…I greatly enjoyed the original Man-Thing series as well, despite my pro-Swamp Thing bias. It really is prime Steve Gerber, at his most quirky, earnest, and experimental, accompanied by some great artists – Mike Ploog, John Buscema, Val Mayerik. Good stuff!)

(Where’s my Essential Man-Thing reprint volume?)

More on storing comics.

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Commenter Chris had this to say in regards to my topic from this morning, regarding the storage of personal collections:

“Just curious: How many of the comics in your boxes do you pull out and read once they’re in?”

Er, yeah, that is a good question.

When I was younger, I seemed to have more time to reread older comics…nowadays, not so much. I’m glad to know that those comics are there in the vast Mikester Comic Archives, to pull out and read if and when I want to…but realistically, I don’t do to that terribly often.

That’s not to say I don’t. Last year I reread the Superman comics from about the “Death of Superman” period until the present, and right now I’m rereading JSA. And every once in a while I’ll go through and grab a random comic or two to read…or to use on the site, which gives me a great excuse to go digging through the stacks that I didn’t have before.

But there are a few things I own that I may never reread. That run of Silver Surfer, for instance…the Steve Englehart/Marshall Rogers/Jim Starlin/Ron Marz/Ron Lim series. I reread it a few years ago, and may never look at it again. But our store doesn’t need them, and I don’t particularly feel like selling them on the eBay for pennies on the dollar, so I guess I’ll just keep them in storage. They’re not in the way or anything, and who knows…maybe I’ll need to whip out one of those issues for something here on the site.

As for the graphic novels/trades/oversized volumes…I didn’t consider those in my initial query, but I’m glad you folks told me what you did with yours.

In my case, I’m lucky enough to have enough space to have an actual library room, with real shelves and everything. All of my books, graphic novels and all, are kept here, and I have large enough shelving to accomodate my treasury editions, Barry Windsor-Smith: Storyteller, and even Chris Ware’s most excessively-sized issues of Acme Novelty Library.

Also, I should note that I bag all my comics, if only because, during years of dealing in funnybooks, I’ve seen many unfortunate examples of ruined comics that could have been saved simply by slapping cheap plastic baggies over the stupid things. I don’t put backing boards in everything, but some of the more expensive (and thus, harder to replace) items do get ’em.

Please continue letting me know how you keep your comics…I’m finding it very interesting!

You and your old comics.

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I can’t believe I forgot to change my little corner box image yesterday. Having an impending dentist visit in the morning causes things to slip my mind a bit, I guess. Well, that and old age.

A couple memories from my ’70s childhood:

  • The neighbor girl whose house had a room where books were just tossed into a pile on the floor. Literally. They were apparently heavy readers — novels, digests, comics, anything — and when a book or magazine was finished, the door to that room was opened, the book was thrown in, the door was closed again. Occasionally I’d be allowed to borrow some books from the pile…it was huge, a sprawling wall-to-wall flattened haystack of books and mags, and one could dig through the strata seeking the treasures below.

    I read a whole lot of Richie Rich and Archie digests in this fashion. The temptation was to keep the books, since I knew they would simply just be thown back into the room where they would stay until Social Services paid a visit, but I never did keep any. Wish I did now, though.

    Oddly enough, that family was real protective of their books, given how they treated them. It took some doing to get them to let me borrow them in the first place.

  • Finding, at a friend’s house, a large open-topped cardboard box filled to the brim with pre-superhero Marvel monster comics, kept outside at the side of the house. Alas, I didn’t find this box until after the big rains earlier that week.

    Just felt like making you cringe with that.

One of the side effects of managing a comic shop is that, after a day of working with comic books, the last thing you want to do when you get home is put away your own funnybooks. As a result, I had about three months’ worth to file away in the vast Mikester Comic Archives on Monday.

In the stack to file…four issues of JSA Classifed, one issue of Ultimates 2. Three issues of Firestorm, one issue of Superman/Batman (though I’d give Jeph Loeb some slack for the lateness of that title, given his personal situations). One issue of Tales Designed to Thrizzle, no issues of Sonic Distruptors.

Thank God Marvel has eased on on their every two-to-three weeks schedule, for the most part…at least on the very few titles I get.

Anyway, I got to thinking…how do you guys sort out your comics in your personal collections? In general, currently running titles/companies in my collection are kept in a series of easily-accessable short boxes (i.e. my Flash boxes, or my Fantagraphics boxes). Some currently-running Marvel and DC series that don’t require their own boxes are in “Current Marvel Misc.” and “Current DC Misc.” boxes.

Completed series (either by design or by cancellation) are, in general kept in a series of long boxes.

I keep saying “in general” since there are some exceptions to this organization…my short boxes of Dell/Gold Key books are on the shelves next to the new books, and I have a long box of Disney books, to which I still add on a regular basis, with the older, completed collections. Ah, well, so long as I know where they’re at.

In short, the comics are organized, in both sections, by company first, then by title within each company. I keep meaning to put actual labels on the front of the boxes, but small pencilled notations are good enough for now.

And then there are the magazine boxes, and the fanzine boxes, and the giant Swamp Thing shrine with candles and silk curtains…but they’re all in some kind of reasonable order.

I’m assuming that most of you folks reading this site, having an interest in comics, probably have a stock of comics sorted away in a comparable fashion, and not just tossing them out as soon as you’re done, or keeping them all in shoeboxes or copy-paper boxes or ammo cases (all of which I’ve seen done).

So, how do you do it? Alphabetically in short boxes? On shelves? Just tossed into whatever box that happens to have some empty space? Do you bag everything? Do you board everything? Does everything go into a Mylar sleeve? Basically, are you as anal-retentive as I am? Are you more so, God help you?

Just curious, is all. Leave a comment if you’d like. No salesman will call.