WARNING: HUGE SPOILERS FOR AVENGERS: ARMAGEDDON #4 (unless you’ve been on the internet during the last few weeks).

filed under Categories marvel, this week's comics 12 Comments

I’ve read the Avengers on and off over the years, never sticking around for a long time but long enough to experience some pretty good stories. The 1980s run by Roger Stern, John Buscema, and Tom Palmer may be primarily remembered now for containing the first appearance of future Marvel movie star Nebula, but it really peaked with the multi-part “Masters of Evil” storyline. It’s a knock-down, drag-out battle between our heroes and a powerful group of villains, containing enough characterization, drama, and heart to keep it from just being action figures being smashed together.

The next, and ’til now, last time I read the regular monthly Avengers title was in the ’90s, when Kurt Busiek and George Pérez gave us a superhero adventure comic filled with solid writing and great art. It really was the top of the line when it came to Big Two superhero books of the period, emerging from the “Image” style and showing how coherent storytelling and professional illustration could tell memorable stories.

Aside from the occasional annual or special issue, and that first Avengers Forever mini, that was pretty much that.

And then there was this Avengers: Armageddon series. I’ve been a fan of its writer, Chip Zdarsky, for a long time, and enjoying his current superhero work. And on top of that, Avengers: Armageddon was tying into current and/or recent Marvel storylines that I am following, like the Red Hulk stuff, and all the Doctor Doom shenanigans, and Zdarsky’s own Captain America series. And even though I held that first issue of this new mini in my hands as I thought about whether or not I wanted to read this, I still decided “no.” Despite everything going for it, I just felt like I didn’t need another comic to try to keep up with, given the backlog I’m still trying to work through.

However, I came across some online chatter about what was supposedly going to happen in this comic, and my interest was piqued. If what was being talked about was true, then I was absolutely going to want to read this series and see what was going on.

“And what was going on, Mike?” I’m glad you asked, and I hope you clocked the SPOILER WARNING in the title of this post, because I’m a’gettin’ into it.

Last chance. No one to blame but yourself at this point. It starts after the cover scan here.


So anyway, Miracleman is back, and this time he’s firmly in the Marvel Universe. Well, kinda sorta. It’s finally the payoff to this one-shot from a few years ago, hinting…well, okay, not so much “hinting” as “straight up saying” that the character would pop into the Marvel Universe eventually. It’s still too early to say to what extent, if any, this is connected to the Miracleman storyline by Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman, et al., but I suspect, given the latter writer’s current scandals, this is an entirely separate iteration.

Long story short, Marvel spent some cash establishing its ownership over the somewhat confused legal status of this intellectual property, and by golly if they’re no longer able to monetize the other stuff, they’re gonna make some new stuff with it. Plus, the stuff they were trying to monetize was hampered by problems even before Gaiman’s current troubles, many of which I cover in this post. Basically, format issues, printing errors, and the simple fact that the property was old and mostly forgotten was keeping Marvel’s attempts at revival from getting any traction.

As I say at the end of that post, I’ve held for a long time that when it finally happened, Marvel would revert back to using the “Marvelman” name for their Marvel Universe version of the character, to keep it separate from the different, pretty-much-its-own-thing Miracleman run. (I believe I first theorized that in this 2013 post.) Again, we just got Miracleman, or somebody like him, in this new Avengers: Armageddon issue, so I don’t know where we’re going yet. Tellingly, the “next issue” page for the issue directs readers to a “Who Is Miracleman?” story on their digital comics platform, so maybe they are sticking with the name? Too many characters with “Marvel” in their names already, perhaps?

By the way, that “Who Is Miracleman” comic, produced in 2023 presumably for the return of the Gaiman/Mark Buckingham “Silver Age” chapter, seems like it would be mostly confusing, if not incomprehensible, to anyone actually new to the character. It’s a short “highlights” reel of What Had Gone Before in the Moore/Gaiman era, and the huge gaps and jumps I can fill in myself because I’ve read it all, but I wonder how someone who hadn’t could deal with it. (And notably, aside from a Miracleman special by other creators, there is no other Miracleman material on the digital service.)

How much is any of that going to apply to what’s currently going on, anyway? To keep it very short, David Colton, who had been a replacement Captain America for Steve Rogers, is given new powers by a New Super Powers Machine (an “Origin Box” from the Ultimate Universe — yet another long story), putting him in the Miracle/Marvelman costume and presumably giving him that same power set. It’s even down to the same ability to do a Captain Marvel/”Shazam!”-esque transformation by saying the magic work “KIMOTA” (in a sequence deliberately cribbed from Moore’s very first Marvelman short). It doesn’t appear to be tied to the Mike Moran (Marvelman’s civilian identity) version of the character at all, but again, we’re still way early in the process here.

As I said, before this issue even came out, there was a lot of talk about this happening, which is probably the most interest the character has had in a long time. By forcing Marvel readers to engage with Miracleman (or whatever, I just keep using both names) by putting the concept squarely in the center of an Avengers comic, fans can’t just ignore it like they could some weird decades-old thing that was revived solely for people in their late middle age who 1) are still alive, 2) are still reading comics and 3) remember it from the last time it was on the stands. It is now officially A Marvel Thing, so, I guess, coming soon to a movie screen near you? We’ll see.

At any rate, I don’t know why I’ve been so antsy about spoiler warnings when Marvel itself just plain put Miracleman on one of the variant covers for this issue, which you can see if you click the Avengers: Armageddon cover I posted above. And yes, that’s the cover I took for myself. (And yes, by all rights I should put this post under the miraclemarvelman category, but I didn’t want that being an inadvertent spoiler right at the top of the page. I’ll add it later.)

EDIT: Marvel has put out a press release specifically identifying the character’s name as “Miracleman.”

The Final ’90s Countdown, Part Twenty-Five.

filed under Categories final '90s countdown 9 Comments

And thus we begin the next phase of this countdown, the comics that got two votes in the poll for favorite ’90s indie comic. For those of you new to this thingie I’m doing, I just want to remind you that only getting one or two votes isn’t a knock on the quality of the book, but simply an indicator of how many good indie books were coming out during that period of time. In fact, today’s pick is one of my favorites as well! I had such a wide variety of submissions from readers I was wondering if I’d see any sort of consensus. (SPOILER: eventually I did!)

So here we go, today’s beloved comic series:

DORK! (Slave Labor Graphics, 1993-2006)

Absolutely one of the greats. I was already a big Evan Dorkin fan due to Pirate Corp$/Hectic Planet and, of course, those incorrigible dairy products Milk & Cheese. The series still lives large in my head, to the point where someone the other day was asking at the shop for a trade paperback collection of the new Image Comics series D’Orc, and I immediately reached for the most recent book reprint of Dork! (more about that book later). No offense to the good folks on D’Orc doin’ a popular comic, but I think Dork! is the superior choice for the discerning comics aficionado.

These eleven black and white comics are compilations of mostly original material (with some reprints from other sources), usually short humorous pieces, including Milk & Cheese. Of particular note are his newspaper “funny pages” parodies, featuring a virtual onslaught of multiple strips, varying from purposefully dumb, to very dark, to observational, to sometimes vulgar and violent (but hilariously so). One recurring strip is “Myron the Living Voodoo Doll,” who is shown wandering the streets and getting some form of damage inflicted on him, with the final panel showing a person experiencing the same damage while declaring “I’ve got to find that doll!”

Here’s a small sample of another of the strips, picked for perhaps obvious reasons to long-time readers of the site. This is one of those observational, yet still funny, ones:


Also included in this run of books is a reprint of the “Murder Family” strip from Marvel’s Epic Lite #1, along with new stories featuring those characters, as well as the “Kyle and Evan Critics at Large” music review strips that ran in Reflex Magazine, co-produced with Kyle Baker. His material from an earlier Dark Horse Comics anthology, Instant Piano, is collected here as well, along with strips he did for a book called Generation Ecch. Oh, and just flipping through my stack of Dork! here, I noticed that a cover he did for the UK version of Deadline magazine gets reprinted on one of the back covers.

Perhaps most famously are several installments of the “Eltingville Club,” stories about a group of friends who are comic book/fantasy/sci-fi/role-playing/etc. fans, and, shall we say, are not shown in the most favorable light. It’s here that Dorkin gets to unleash every critique of fandom behavior (and the exploitation thereof), and you can just feel his vitriol and/or pity and/or personal experience through every bit of ink crammed into each hilarious panel. “There but for the grace of God, I hope” sez I. Here’s a cover featuring those gentlemen:


And of course I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the Eltingville Club animated pilot, which did not go to series because, alas, the world was not prepared for such beauty.

This just barely scratches the surface of the amount of material present in these comics. And not an inch of space is wasted…every page is almost Kurtzman/Elder MAD-esque in its need to fill every space with something, and it’s just a pleasure to drink it all in.

Material meant for the never-published issue #12 ended up running in Dark Horse Presents (2011 series) #10-#12. That material was reprinted in turn in the 2012 House of Fun one-shot from the same company, making that, more or less, the 12th issue.

Now…to the reprints! Look, I’m just gonna cut to the chase and tell you that all the Dork! material, the House of Fun stuff, all the extra Eltingville Club stories, every Milk & Cheese strip, can be found in this one, currently-in-print, giant volume of cartooning called Nerd Inferno:


No need to chase down out-of-print collections. It’s all here! Waiting for you! Watching your every move!

There were previous collections, like the Dork! hardcover in 2018, which contains, I think, everything except the Eltingville Club stories. Those get reprinted in their own Eltingville Club hardcover from 2016, including their first appearance from Instant Piano, as well as the two-issue mini-series from 2014 that wraps up that particular saga. (And just to be complete about it, there’s also a Milk & Cheese: Dairy Products Gone Bad hardcover from 2018.) But like I said, it’s all there in Nerd Inferno.

Look, I admit it may not be for everyone. It can be a little abrasive at times, but that’s a feature, not a bug. Those with sensitive constitutions may not want to read more than a few pages at one sitting. Me, I’ll park in my Egg Chair and read the entirety of Nerd Inferno cover to cover if I could make the time, and I’m a guy who’s already read all this stuff. It is top quality hilarious cartooning that I just adore. Evan Dorkin has been a favorite of mine ever since I picked up that one comic because I wanted to know why that weird alien was wearing a Fishbone t-shirt, and his comics never disappoint.

Star surfing, across the universe.

filed under Categories collecting, marvel, pal plugging, silver surfer, star trek 17 Comments

So I got something in a collection the other day that I’ve never seen before. Well, I mean, I’ve seen the comic, of course, in its much more common “softcover book” variety. But for the first time ever, I’ve seen it in hardcover form:


It’s the 1978 Silver Surfer original graphic novel by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, along with Joe Sinnott, John Constanza, Glynis Wein, and cover artist Carl Norem, retelling an alternate version of the character’s origins without the involvement of the Fantastic Four. This was one of a handful of releases from Fireside Books/Simon and Schuster that included Origins of Marvel Comics.

Way back when, at onne of the local bargain stores, there were stacks of the softcover available at next-to-nothing prices. (Also available for deep discounts at the same store: DC’s Famous First Edition treasuries in piles and piles.) I never bought one then, which I of course regret, but not as much as I regret not buying all of them to now sell in my comic shop.

It’s probably because of that long-ago stock dump that I keep seeing copies of the softcover version turn up in collections. As I said above, however, this is the first time the hardcover edition has made its way into my funnybook-worn hands. The dust jacket has seen better days, but otherwise the book looks good.

Here’s the back cover:


The inner flaps of the dust jacket:


Unfortunately, there’s no design on the book’s covers themselves:


…but at least you get some inlaid silver lettering on the spine:


It’s a neat book, and believe it or not, for all the times I’ve come across it at both of the shops I’ve worked at, either in the original softcover or via Marvel’s later reprintings, I’ve never read it. I am seriously considering keeping this for myself. I know, I know, how am I going to make any money and stay in business if I keep all the cool stuff for myself (like all the Popeye comics and fanzines that come my way), but this is a neat time and I’m really tempted. I mean, I’ll at least give it a read before putting it out for sale.

• • •

My ol’ Pal of the Internet Kevin Church has written a nice piece in celebration of Star Trek‘s 60th anniversary, and I heartily recommend that you go read it.

I’m a little jealous of Kevin in that he remembers exactly when, and with which episode, he became a fan. I was one of those folks who picked up on Trek when it was in syndication in the early ’70s, that period when a lot of new fans discovered the series. I remember watching it on TV, both the original series and that cartoon, I had several of the toys (the Mego figures, the bridge set, even communicators and the tricorder), but I was perhaps too young to remember which episode to which I was first exposed.

And then Star Wars hit in 1977, and that began to occupy a large segment of my forming fandom brain…but I never forgot Star Trek, which has continued to this very day, finally achieving perfection with the greatest Trek series of all time:


“Search your feelings, you know it to be true,” as someone from a famous sci-fi franchise once said. I think it was Captain Janeway.

Seriously, Fred is all over the place.

filed under Categories pal plugging, retailing, this week's comics 2 Comments

On the comic shelves this week, a couple of comics by Close Personal Friends that I wish to point out to you, the potential readers of such:

First off is Fixation #1, part of the new line of crime comics from IDW:


This is written by Amy Chase, one of my regular customers and a Special Guest at the last couple of Free Comic Book Day events at the shop (here’s a nice photo of her at one, in her swell shirt), with some great art by Savanna Mayer (whose work you saw in Return to Sleepy Hollow, amongst other books). There’s moider at a convention celebrating the anniversary of a popular vampire film, but is it more than just an unstable fan? Read the comic and find out!

Also, listen to Amy chat about the series on the Cryptid Creator Corner podcast.

Also out this week is the Major Taylor hardcover from Drawn and Quarterly, about the first Black world champion cyclist:


…written and drawn by my old, old pal Fred Noland. I’ve known Fred since he was but a young’un, probably at least since the late ’80s. He was also part of the Full Frontal Harvey crew, our mini-comics concern from the mid-1990s-ish, which I’ve written about a bit. He’s had plenty of comics output since then, and you can see and read plenty of examples right here. And here. And if you’re in Berkeley, CA in a couple of weeks, you can see him in person!

Look, I just Googled Fred to see what I can link to here, and hoo boy there is A LOT. I mean, check it out, he’s everywhere. And good on him, Fred is a good guy and deserves all the success he gets.

• • • 

In response to my post about Marvel’s Midnight shenanigans, Dallas asks

“Your shoppe didn’t get the pdfs from a couple weeks ago for each of the #1 issues?”

Well, here’s the thing. My comic shop email box gets an enormous amount of messages. I mean, it’s so much, you guys. Personal emails from customers and other Real People get priority, then messages that look like they may directly impact my business (like sale notifications from eBay, or bank stuff), then emails from distributors and creators and publishers, then all the business loan/V1Agr4 come-ons, then messages from pal Ian.

I’m sure I’m missing a category, but the point is I get a lot to sort through over the course of my day, on top of already doing stuff just in-store to run my business, so there’s only so much time I can devote to the ol’ inbox. Like, the Real People Messages I obviously spend time on, but the distributor etc. emails I sometimes just look at briefly, or not at all. Maybe it’s just a brief glance to see if there’s anything that immediately needs my attention (like “Hi Mike, this is Distributor X, we’re dropping your discount to 2% unless we hear from you in the next four hours”), or if it’s a sales pitch (“Don’t forget to up your orders on Unicycle Tragedy #182 because something big we’re not explaining is going to happen in it!”).

In short, there’s a lot to go through, and, yes, sometimes something slips through the cracks. Like that email with the downloadable Midnight PDFs, which I tried to download right now but they’re already removed from the server. Ah, well. I mean, honestly, if I barely have time to get through emails, how much time am I going to spend reading full issue PDFs? …Okay, again, I really do try to at least give even the PDFs a once-over, but the number of times that sort of thing has influenced my order numbers is exactly zero. Whether or not I think something is great doesn’t matter, it’s what the customers want that matters, and my tastes don’t necessarily jibe with theirs. Otherwise that Santos Sisters issue with Flaming Carrot would have been my best-selling book of the month.

Yes, I suppose one could glean from a PDF the possible quality of a comic, and how that might impact comic sales, but that’s still a nebulous thing upon which to base one’s orders. The only real gauge for comic orders is comic sales, and sometimes, like with a new thing such as these Midnight books, we won’t know how well they’ll do until we see how well they do. I could have perused that Midnight: Fantastic Four #1, thought it was the greatest comic I’ve ever read, ordered a royal buttload of copies, and then see it wither on the rack as all the customers turned up their noses at having to start yet another event.

I actually think it’s going to sell fine, though we’ll see where things go with #2.

I do appreciate the advance PDFs…I know publishers are hesitant, they don’t want spoilers turning up on theresreallyasiteforcomicsgossipreadbylikeadults.lu weeks ahead of release, and I really should make more of an effort. However, to be completely honest, their impact on my ordering decisions is minimal, particularly in these days when orders are pretty close to the bone on most titles, both regular ongoings and new debuts. Like I said in that post, it feels like Marvel wants to get something comparable to Absolute Batman‘s seemingly-undying shelf life.

As hard as it may be to believe now, even that new Bat-title got relatively conservative orders from me. I ordered higher because 1) it’s a new imprint from DC that 2) is kicking off with a Batman book. And while I did sell through that order, it didn’t happen immediately. Over time I learned what the regular order numbers should be. Would an advance PDF (or in this particular case, the “ashcans” I received) have affected my ordering? No, not really.

I’m not saying advanced PDFs are not useful to others in deciding their order numbers. I just don’t put a lot of emphasis on them myself. Maybe that’ll change, maybe I’ll incorporate that information on a case-by-case basis. But reading a comic book that’s actually in my hand does more for my appreciation and experience than looking at a file on a screen…and if it’s a good one, I’ll definitely let my customers know about it. And if sales go up, so do my orders. It’s a more evidence-based method of ordering, and one that’s worked well for me over the years.

Not to be confused with the Heinlein story.

filed under Categories Uncategorized 15 Comments

Jeff asks

“Have you read Byrne’s new X-Men Fanfic book? It seems like you at least used to be a Byrne fan, even if I don’t think you’re an X-Men fan.”

The book Jeff is talking about is X-Men: Elsewhen volume 1, written and drawn by John Byrne, and released a few months ago:


Byrne was, of course, famously the artist for the X-Men title, along with writer Chris Claremont, in the late 1970s/early 1980s, leaving the book with issue #141. However, in recent years Byrne had written and penciled his own continuation of his X-Men run, picking up from where he left off, and posting the pages to his online fan forum. This book is the first of three volumes collecting these pages, newly inked and colored.

The amount of demand I had for these caught me by surprise a little, and apparently everyone else as well, as it seemed to take a while to get a new printing restocked after initial orders sold through right away. A handful of my customers seemed really excited about this release, and more power to ’em.

Part of me does wonder if it maybe could’ve sold as a standard comic book series, just reprinting each of Byrne’s posted “issues” one at a time, but I suspect the book release was a smarter move. Yet Another X-Men Series on the rack would have easily been lost in the shuffle, even one by Byrne. The hardcover, I think, gives this effort the status and attention it requires for success, making the Special Event-ness of the proceedings even more pronounced.

But Jeff asked “if I read it?” and the answer is “nope.” He’s right saying that I’d been a Byrne fan, and there was a time when I just picked up anything the man drew. I even picked up a lot of his later mini-series work at IDW (though I passed on this weird Star Trek Photoshop comics). If he came back today and started writing and drawing, say, a new solo series starring Alpha Flight‘s Puck, buddy, I’d at least give it a flip-through.

His X-Men run, though, remains bit of a blind spot for me. I mean, I’m familiar with it, I know mostly what happens in which issue, just from having handled them in-shop and read about them for decades. Sitting down and reading them all panel-by-panel is an effort I’ve not yet made.

I intended to! Marvel’s online digital library makes it easy to catch up on stuff I’ve either missed or haven’t read in a while. This is how I’m rereading so much material for the “My Fantastic Four-ay” entries, even when I have a lot of those books sitting out in the Vast Mikester Comic Archives’ boxes. I began with Giant-Size X-Men #1, the comic that started the Modern X-Men as We Know Them, a comic that, despite its importance, I’d never read. It was…certainly something, with lots of characters shouting at each other for a whole lot of pages, and it wasn’t the greatest thing I’d ever read, but I wanted to continue.

That project fell on the back-burner, though, and I hadn’t returned. Yet. Those early new X-Men comics weren’t by Claremont and Byrne, of course, so I hadn’t even reached the point where they took over. I do still want to read these, if only to fill this hole in my comic-booking experience.

As Jeff says, I was never really an X-Men fan. I read it in the mid-ish ’80s, after picking up the extra-sized Uncanny X-Men #175, because I liked reading the longer anniversary issues of titles, and then following the book for several years after that. It just seemed like if you were a comic book fan, you just naturally picked up the X-Men as required by Nerd Law. I did bail out around issue 220 or so, not returning until Grant Morrison wrote the book, where I read every issue they did and then went back to a mostly X-free lifestyle.

Thus, the Elsewhen book is mostly lost on me, picking up plotlines and story beats from decades ago that I hadn’t read…I clearly wasn’t the target audience. I did, of course, at least page though a copy and cast my peepers within. It all looks fine, with Byrne’s art appearing to be as strong as ever. I can’t attest to the writing, but it all seems reasonably professional enough.

I did spot a guest appearance by the Fantastic Four, a team that Byrne also famously guided for many years, and look, I wavered just a tiny bit. Had this been the first of three volumes picking up where he left off on the Fantastic Four title, I’d be on this in a heartbeat.

So, no, Jeff, I didn’t read this, but once maybe I finally finished reading that original Claremont/Byrne run, maybe I’ll finally get around to this, too!

Letting it all hang out.

filed under Categories dc comics, marvel, publishing, retailing 8 Comments

So Marvel unleashed its “Ultimate” Universe in 2000/2001, starting with Ultimate Spider-Man and Ultimate X-Men, partially out of a need to have some “new reader friendly” material on the stands free of the deep continuity in the regular Marvel Universe. Also, a collapsed comics market and Marvel being on the verge of “going away” for good probably helped push along any desperate ideas to keep them afloat. Whatever the reason, the Ultimate books came out, giving fresh starts to their properties separate from the still-ongoing Marvel Universe proper…until they became just as convoluted as the mainline universe and purpose successfully defeated.

But it ran a long time, and made lots of money and had a strong readership, and “the sweet taste of success attracts many tongues,” as no one but me says, and DC was trying to figure out how to get some of that Ultimate scratch.

First they tried with their “All-Star” line in the mid-2000s, with All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder and All-Star Superman…both sold amazingly well, though one got a little more critical acclaim than the other. All-Star Superman was a mini and wrapped up after 12 issues, while the Batman title stopped mid-story with #10, and planned Batgirl and Wonder Woman titles for the line never appeared.

Then DC tried out the “Earth One” line of graphic novels, starting in 2009, again giving fresh starts to their major properties and hoping to catch a new bookstore audience with them. The Superman and Batman series for this imprint put out multiple volumes, but never really seemed to catch any traction. The Wonder Woman run of three books was generally well received, as was the Green Lantern run. But it looks like this effort was finally abandoned a few years ago (though a collection of the Wonder Woman books as part of DC’s Compact Line has done well for me!).

And then, finally, The Third Time’s the Charm, as they say, as just a couple years ago DC launched their Absolute line. Similar to the Ultimate Universe, the Absolute Universe gave fresh starts to their heavy hitters (Supes, Bats, and Wondy) in continuities separate from the mainstream DCU. Interestingly, the milieu spins out of one of DC’s Big Event titles, positing a reality centered around the Omega Energy of the seemingly fallen Darkseid. Sorry if that sounds a little inside-baseball for anyone coming onto this out of context, but the general idea is that this is not just a darker universe, but an existence where the heroes we know lack the advantages their regular counterparts have.

At any rate, this line (which quickly added a handful of new titles) is pretty much DC just printing money at this point. Absolute Batman is far and away the biggest hit. DC just keeps issuing reprint after reprint of the entire run of individual comics, and I keep putting them on my shelves, and they keep selling. They’re up to, like, a 12th printing on #1. This is almost unheard of for just a regular monthly title at DC, especially after the trade paperback collections started getting released.

And it’s not to speculators…it’s new readers, it’s teenagers, it’s adults who’d heard about this thing online somewhere. It’s the Holy Grail of what DC and Marvel have been looking for, A Title That Gets New Readers into Comic Shops Specifically for Their Thing.

The other Absolute titles also do well, if not at quite the extreme Absolute Batman does, but they’ve found their levels and move off the shelves.

Anyway, now that DC has found its Ultimate line, Marvel seems like it’s going to try to find its Absolute line, with this new Midnight publishing initiative they’re about to launch. I was going to say “I don’t know that this is directly a response to DC’s Absolute line,” but the headline of this article, “Marvel’s new Midnight universe makes DC’s Absolute comics look ‘pretty polite,’ says Spider-Man writer Phillip Kennedy Johnson,” seems to clear up any confusion.

The “Midnight” line is horror-centric, apparently, separate from the regular Marvel Universe, with darker versions of Marvel’s mainstays, which feels like a misread of the Absolute line, but, well, we’ll see what they do with it. The solicit for the first issue of Midnight: Fantastic Four #1 reads

“FIRST STEPS INTO DARKNESS! An obsessive scientist delves into the secrets of the universe perhaps best left unknown to humankind, leaving himself and three others warped in strange and horrifying ways. What horrible secrets lie in the new dimensions they have discovered? And can humanity survive the discovery? From the twisted minds of Benjamin Percy (WOLVERINE, PUNISHER) and Kev Walker (INFERNAL HULK, DOCTOR STRANGE) comes a tale of existential dread and secrets best kept…”

I can do without the “from the twisted minds of…” business, I mean c’mon, but I don’t know, Fantastic Four as a cosmic horror comic? Or even, dare I say, Lovecraftian? Yeah, I’d be all for that.

Just so we’re clear, I’m not criticizing anything they’re doing here. I obviously haven’t read any of these yet. They could be great! They have solid creative teams. But the question is, will these capture the same attention and sales as DC’s Absolute line?

This is something I had to ask myself when I was finalizing orders on the initial releases from this line. And while I tend to order conservatively on new titles, I did bump orders up quite a bit for these books. I think they will do very well, at least at first, as everyone tries to get in on the ground floor of what they think will be the Next Big Thing. And maybe they’ll be right, and it will be the Next Big Thing.

But I honestly think it will be at best a good selling new Marvel line to already established comic fans, and not the constantly-selling, new customer-attracting, phenomenon that Absolute has been. That niche is already filled, you see, and lightning striking again seems highly unlikely.

Again, just my feeling. I could be wrong, and maybe I’ll still be selling the 12th printing of Midnight: X-Men #1 off my shelves two years from now. And I’ll be cursing myself for not having ordered ten times the amount I did for the first printing of that issue.

We’ll all see soon enough how the Midnight line does. And whether I was on target with my orders. I’ve had strong interest from my regular clientele regarding these books, and I’ll be interested to see if there’s any demand beyond that.

And by the way, this month marks my 38th year in comics retail.

filed under Categories archie, doom patrol, legion of super-heroes, this week's comics 13 Comments


Well, we’re trying this again. Legion really should be one of those titles that’s always there, like Superman or Green Lantern, a significant corner of DC Comics’ fictional universe that remains always out there as part of the gestalt. However, due to reboot after revival after relaunch, the franchise has been on the ropes for years, never quite getting traction. It kinda came close the last time, a few years back with the highly-promoted Brian Michael Bendis series, but that ended after only about a year for reasons I don’t really know. It seemed to be selling well enough.

But here we are, seventh or eighth time is the charm, and…look, it’s a perfectly fine comic. Well written, certainly well drawn, and for us old Legion nerds, the Interlac alphabet is still intact and readable (with a nice Interlac-written nod to Paul Levitz and Keith Giffen right there in the beginning). The idea this time is that superheroes are outlawed in this version of the future, reminiscent of the Threeboot Legion‘s premise, and the familiar central characters of the team (Lightning Lad, Saturn Girl, Cosmic Boy, Brainiac 5, along with Matter-Eater Lad) find themselves bumping up against that societal ban. It’s all told nicely with interesting page layouts, looking not quite like anything else on the stands.

What made the Legion “The Legion” for so many years were the longstanding subplots and characterizations and soap opera aspects and such. It’s a hard thing to build from scratch, as a Legion without all that doesn’t feel right, but jumping right into a Legion with those aspects already in place feels overwhelming. It’s a real tough needle to thread, and I’m not sure this new series is going to manage it, but I’m willing to give it a try and see how it does.


So we’re getting a series of one-shots for this comic book revival of Clive Barker’s horror franchise. Not sure if it’s in continuity with the previous series Boom! published, or how Barker’s novel The Scarlet Gospels fits in (since that pretty much put the kibosh on the whole “Cenobites” thing). And don’t even get me started on where that Sherlock Holmes/Hellraiser crossover novel fits in.

This is the first in a series of one-shots (and I’ve already read the second one, due to my evil retailer powers) setting up the current status quo for the Cenobites while also following the stories of those individuals who happen to get their hands on one of those Puzzle Boxes. It’s all gross and bloody and folks getting what’s coming to them, as you’d expect, but I am curious as to what the overall story is going to shape up into being.


So I hemmed and I hawed about picking up this latest revamping of the Archie franchise…I really liked the one they did a few years ago, with Waid and North an’ all them, and was a little sorry to see that effort wrap up. I think I finally convinced myself to give this one a try because, well, I’m a longtime Archie fan and my curiosity won out. Plus, I couldn’t resist that specific variant cover that’s pictured above.

It’s perfectly fine…unlike that previous reboot, which was a little more “soap opera (there’s that term again!) with jokes,” this new Archie #1 is more like a typical Archie comic, with several gag-filled stories. Not every joke lands, and I feel like the characters’ likenesses could be tightened up a bit…Archie and Jughead are recognizable, but others, like Reggie, Betty and Veronica don’t have distinctive enough portrayals to really grab you. Overall, it’s still enjoyable, with a Jughead story having a surprising amount of emotional depth to it that makes me want to see where it goes in the next issue. So, yeah, I guess Archie has got its hooks in me yet again.

I did almost pick up the Local Comic Shop Day variant, because c’mon, just look at it:


Anyway, this new Archie went really overboard on the variant covers, and I didn’t even order all of them for the shop. There were literally more variants than the number of issues I expect to sell of this thing. I mean, guys, you gotta settle down with these. Yes, I’m aware of the irony that it was one of those variants that factored into my decision to try out this new series.


I don’t know why we have to kinda relaunch the Doom Patrol again, when that previous Doom Patrol mini wasn’t that long ago and was perfectly fine. A continuation of that would’ve been fine. But this new attempt is good, too….Robotman, Negative Man, Elasti-Girl, the Chief, hail hail the gang’s all here and they’re doing what you want and being weird about it. Kinda the Platonic idea of what this comic should be.


It’s silly nonsense, but it’s good silly nonsense, and if it were anything else, you’d be disappointed. Which isn’t to say there’s not an affecting message central to the book. Anyway, it’ll put a smile on your face, which is Weird Al’s purpose in this fallen world.

My Fantastic Four-ay: Part Twelve.

filed under Categories fantastic four 11 Comments

We’ve reached a point in the Fantastic Four run, following the big anniversary issue, where it feels like…well, I can’t say exactly that it’s “killing time,” or “filling pages,” or “keeping a monthly Fantastic Four title on the stands while we wait for a new direction and strong creative team to capture readers and sales like it did during John Byrne’s heyday,” because, well, these are actually pretty good.

Issues #297 through #302 (cover dates December 1986 through June 1987) came out as I was in the home stretch of my high school years, with #302 being on the stands sometime in February. I missed Byrne on the title (particularly after that underwhelming #296), and while I think I kept picking the comics up out of habit, I was still a high school senior working at the local library and not exactly rolling in disposable income to be wasting on comics I didn’t like. Therefore, there must have been something to the title that compelled me to keep reading, despite the loss of the artist/writer that had hooked me in initially.

I’ve mentioned before, somewhere in the past twenty-two years plus of writing this here website that I read all of Fury of Firestorm, staring with the first issue in 1982 and buying it each succeeding issue, and the annuals, new off the rack, until it wrapped up with #100 in 1990. And whenever I bring this up, I tend to note that while the first twenty issues (give or take) of the series are excellent, and the last twenty issues (giving and taking again) are also great, there’s a 60-issue kinda saggy middle that’s just sort of “okay,” usually. Not bad, but not outstanding. Just one of those comics you bought because you liked the character(s) and wanted to see what they were up to, not a comic you picked up because it was breaking new ground in the comics medium, excelling at the art form and influencing future generations.

Do I regret reading all those Firestorm comics? No, of course not. While not necessarily “great,” they were perfectly fine serialized superhero adventure comics. When it came time for me to scour the Vast Mikester Comic Archives for material to stock the shelves at my then about-to-open store Sterling Silver Comics (located in Camarillo, CA — ask for it by name! Um, the store, not the city), the box of Firestorm remained mostly untouched. I did sell my copies of the original short-run 1970s series in the shop, since I had that swell trade paperback. Despite that, Firestorm was just one of those characters I really liked, and my affinity for the character was, in a sense, detached from the actual quality of the stories.

Well, this series of posts isn’t “My Fur-ay of Firestorm,” so let me aim this back at Marvel’s First Family. I think the ultimate result Byrne’s FF run had with me was making me invested in the characters. I wanted to know what happened next with Reed, Sue, Johnny, and especially the Thing. I adored their adversaries, like Dr. Doom and Galactus, and wanted to see more of the FF clashing with them. Byrne’s run wasn’t perfect, but as a whole it was, and remains still, a high-watermark in this superteam’s history. Anyone else who works on the book is inevitably compared to him. And Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, too, natch, but that’s pretty much a given as they’re the creators of the whole darned thing. But you get what I mean here. You’re gonna get compared to Byrne, especially if you’re there right after Byrne.

However, Byrne created a lot of goodwill, I believe, for the comic following his run. People loved his FF, and I have to imagine the entire readership didn’t just drop the series the second Byrne was gone. I imagine many were like me, hanging on because 1) they loved the characters, 2) they wanted to see what was next, and 3) wanted to see what new direction with what new creative team was going to happen. This was me, at this point of time. I was willing to follow along, even after that anniversary issue which, under normal circumstances, may have caused me to drop the book entirely. However, I was still willing to gamble a portion of my high school senior and about to enter college income on the series, because I liked what I had read in the past, and still wanted to see where it would go in the future.

And these six issues, just who was going to work on them? We have Roger Stern as writer, still soldiering on after taking over the scripting chores following Byrne’s departure. And for the last couple of issues, Tom DeFalco comes on to help with the writing chores, presaging his long (and I think, unappreciated) run on the title a few years later. Stern himself is, of course, one of Marvel’s most solidly dependable scribes. For art, we have the Buscema Brothers, John on pencils, Sal on finishes (more or less…Sal does a little pencling as well). An interesting combination, and the name “Buscema” is one that is integral to the history of Marvel as a whole, lending a lot of weight to the title in its time of need. For all my talk of “following a property despite dips in quality,” it seems like my worry was for naught, given the pedigree of talent about to take over the book.

Am I right? Not to leave you all in suspense…well, I used the word “solid” to describe Stern, and I think it’s an overall good description of this short-lived permutation of the Fantastic Four creative team. We get a couple of hte classic villains, like the Wizard and Puppet Master, we get that wedding in issue #300 (promised by Byrne when he was still on the book), we get the superhero melodrama one would expect, including more follow-up on the Thing’s mental state vis-a-vis the team. Each issue is, as my pals over on War Rocket Ajax would say, exactly One Unit of Marvel Comics — competently done, not too much, not too little. It may not reach heights, but it’s not scraping bottom, either.

We’ll be taking a closer look at the individual issues in the next installment, hopefully with a special focus on #300, which I think is the standout. And for a later installment…for all my talk of sticking with the title through thick and thin, when did I eventually drop the book? Hit those Like and Subscribe buttons and you’ll eventually find out!

CoMike Attractions.

filed under Categories blogging about blogging is a sin 7 Comments

Hi pals…I haven’t had the blogging time I’ve needed for my longer-form posts lately. I still owe you all a follow-up spoiler-riffic post about the recent Swamp Thing 1989 mini-series, which I discussed in a more-or-less spoiler-free entry way back when. And another entry in the Fantastic Four-ay posts, as we’re moving firmly into the post-Byrne era. And of course the continuing entries in the Final ’90s Countdown of your favorite indie books of that decade.

I don’t know if it’s a case of biting off more than I can chew, but rather a “the body is willing, the clock is weak.” So, I’m sorry for the absolute onslaught of “Blogging About Blogging Is A Sin” posts lately, and I’m going to do my best to keep September free of then.

Also upcoming I have posts about some Kickstartered books I’ve received and one that appears to have dropped off the face of the Earth. I also may have another piece of original art on its way to my greedy clutches, so expect a post on that soon, too. I mean, I have a nice, shiny new website now, I should at least be using it.

Is there anything I haven’t covered lately, or at all, that you’d like me to discuss? Feel free to drop a request in the comments…no guarantee I’ll answer ’em all, but…yeah, c’mon, I usually do.

So there we go…adding yet another series of posts to my already three or four pre-existing ones. Making more work for myself…that’s the Progressive Ruin Promise!

Thanks for reading, pals, and I’ll try to get my act together for Monday.

If Marvel should ever start publishing Simpsons comics, just imagine the crossovers we’d have then.

filed under Categories flaming carrot, this week's comics 4 Comments


Just sinking into a new issue of Concrete after so many years of doing without remains as satisfying and, I guess, “cozy” is the word of the day in regards to referring to certain types of literature. Even with this issue ramping up the states with threats and cliffhangers galore (well, a couple, anyway), it still reads as if you’re hanging out with an old friend and enjoying a yarn. A deeply introspective yarn, but one nonetheless.

It seems impossible to think that Paul Chadwick is considering this his last comic with the character, moving the narrative over to prose novels (as he says in this interview — SPOILER for a detail revealed about a certain character therein). His art and storytelling are as strong as ever, and leaving comics behind would be such a loss to the medium. (Plus, there’s a reference in here that may imply Concrete believes his old friend Michael, also put into one of these rocky bodies but seemingly killed during the “origin story,” may still be alive! I want to see the story of his return, not just read it in a novel!) (Then again, Concrete is addled in this storyline, so he may be remembering incorrectly.)


It’s really weird to think that a major part of the Grendel milieu over the decades is that fact that there are just straight up vampires in this world. I remember when this was first revealed way back in the initial color series from Comico, during the storyline with Christine Spar, and what a surprise that was. I mean, I guess it shouldn’t have, given that the “hero” of the early Grendel comics, was Argent the Wolf, cursed into his canine-esque form.

It’s only fitting that the vampires are back. in full force, with a revised Christine Spar joining the other Grendels in overthrowing the vampire rulers in this devastated future. I suppose the vampires represent a chaotic, wildly destructive form of Evil and Aggression, a contrast to Grendel’s usage of those characteristics.

Regardless, it’s nice to have new Grendels back on the stands again, and written and drawn by the character’s creator, Matt Wagner, to boot.


I appreciate that there’s a willingness to pair up Plane of the Apes with multiple other franchises, like with Green Lantern, or with Star Trek, or whatever (the apex remoining this classic). And these crossovers just seem inherently ridiculous given the Apes’ involvement, in a way that, say, Batman/The Shadow, or even Batman/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, does not.

But by and large, the Apes interacting with other franchises have been very good (including the recent Planet of the Apes/Fantastic Four mini), in thanks to the creative teams just leaning hard into the concept and making things as wild as necessary. And this Apes Vs. Predator series ain’t no exception. Continuity-wise, it’s placed right between the first and second of the original POTA films, and by golly it’s pretty much the Platonic ideal of what you’d hope such a comic should be. This issue ends on a note that has me wanting to see the next issue immediately, so ridiculous or not, I’m now invested in the story.


Speaking of ridiculous team-ups (complimentary)…I’m a very recent convert to the Santos Sisters, a fun and humorous adventure comic drawn in a pseudo-Archie Comics style but definitely not for the young’uns. I’ve been trying to track down various back issues here and there, with some success…and that was before discovering that the Sisters would be teaming up with one of the greatest comic book creations of all time, Flaming Carrot! Bob Burden is involved, even drawing one of the covers (the one pictured above) and providing a text afterword talking about both the Sisters and the Carrot. It’s an entertainingly surreal time, just as expected, and simply pure comics. More of this on my new arrivals racks, please.