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

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Next up in the countdown, another two-voter:

Johnny the Homicidal Maniac (Slave Labor Graphics, 1995 – 1997)

So let me tell you about this comic, and how it did for us at my former place of employment. Jhonen Vasquez’s JTHM series ran for only seven issues (plus some spin-offs, more on those in a moment), but the individual issues were kept in print for years and years. It’s kind of like the Absolute Batman of its day!

But we kept all seven issues (and spin-offs…gettin’ to ’em, hold your horses) on a special rack devoted only to titles like these, the alternative indie comics with perennial interest such as Milk ‘n’ Cheese and Lenore and other goth-y type titles. (Yes, I know Milk ‘n’ Cheese isn’t goth…mostly.) And we sold a lot of them, primarily to teenagers, and mostly young women. Given we were on the main drag in town, and having a high school on the next corner over, we had heavy traffic for the target audience for this comic, coming through day after day.

Eventually, the consistent rush on these slowed down and stopped, and the reorders ended, and I’m not even sure the individual issues are in print any more…wait, hold on, let me check. [TEMPUS FUGIT] Well. some of them are, anyway, direct from Slave Labor Graphics, along with other merch. However, I don’t know if it was direct availability that slowed down sales of the comic with us, or declining interest from customers, but eventually the Goth Rack And Also with Milk ‘n’ Cheese went away. Until the ride did end, we sure made our money on those comics.

As you can see on that order page, there is a trade paperback collecting JTHM (“The Director’s Cut”), while some of the other non-Johnny strips from the comics find themselves included in the Squee paperback. The JTHM book also includes a great deal of supplementary material, such as Johnny strips from Vasquez’s high school days.

Okay, so what is Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, anyhow? Well, the title supplies the answer, in that Johnny is a killer who’s not shy about offing those who need offing, while “befriending” (more or less) his neighbor “Squee” (a small and nervous kid so nicknamed after the sounds he makes).

I’m going to cheat a little by “borrowing” this synopsis of the first issue from here to give you a sense of what this series is like:

“The series begins when Squee wakes in the middle of the night to find Johnny in the bathroom of his family’s new house. After a confrontation with Squee’s teddy bear, Shmee, Johnny leaves, informing Squee that they are neighbors. Later, a survey-taker tries to collect Johnny’s opinion on a recent rash of murders around the city. When the man asks about a possible case of vampirism, Johnny explains that he has to keep a wall in his house wet with the blood of his victims or else a monster imprisoned there will break free, then pushes the surveyor forcefully through a boarded window, scaring Squee in the process. Johnny goes on a rampage with a spork in a ‘Taco Hell’ restaurant, incited by an elderly patron referring to him as ‘wacky’. Following the slaughter, Johnny watches its coverage on the news. Johnny debates Psychodoughboy and Nail Bunny on whether or not he should commit suicide, but the group gets distracted by a commercial for diarrhea medicine.”

There you go, it was seven issues of that, accompanied by Vasquez’s expressive cartooning. Aside from the Johnny stories, there are also several short strips on other subjects, mostly all grotesque and dark-humored.

Outside of JTHM, Vasquez was also responsible for the spin-off mini series Squee, a digest-sized Filler Bunny one-shot, and other equally-morbid but funny comics. Most famously, Vasquez was the creator of the Invader Zim cartoon, which ran on Nickelodeon for a little over a couple of dozen episodes. It’s become something of a cult favorite, maintaining Vasquez’s edgy humor while making it accessible for a wider, TV-friendly audience. (If I may…”The Moose…THE MOOSE” is a bit of dialogue that remains stuck in my head to this day.) There have also been a number of comics from Oni Press in which Vasquez has been involved.

Today, in the Year of Our Lord 2026, I do still have demand for JTHM. The trades of both this series and Squee sell regularly, and I still have some demand for the individual issues of these and Vasquez’s other comics. I recently sold a copy of the first printing of the first issue for a not-insignificant amount of money, in fact. Plus, I get asked for Invader Zim comics all the time. So while it’s not the heyday of the “goth rack” at my old shop, Johnny and his friends are still a mainstay at my current one.

Asked and answered.

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Michael Grabowski asked after a possible comic book adaptation of the 1980s Dune movie, which had featured Sir Patrick Stewart’s portrayal of Gurney Halleck.

And yes indeed there was! Marvel published Marvel Super Special #36:


…which was also reprinted in a three-issue mini-series:


In case you were wondering, that is indeed Bill Sienkiewicz art on the covers, and his art is on the inside as well (with script by Ralph Macchio).

To wit — this page with Stewart’s character on display:


Here are a couple of close-ups of Sienkieqwicz’s caricatures of Stewart:


Pretty good likenesses, right? Probably some photo reference there, but still, nicely done.

My Fantastic Four-ay: Part Fourteen.

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[NOTE: this entry involves the last two panels of Fantastic Four #18, the 2026 series, which came out just last week as I write this.]


So when we last left our intrepid team, they were about to be face-to-merged-faces with this alien warlord fella, an amalgam of two powerful and warring alien brothers who somehow combined as a result of one of Reed’s devices.

And most of the first half of #298 was dedicated to that confrontation, as the being reaches Earth and immediately falls into conflict with the FF, including this fiery battle with the Human Torch:


Now, this aside doesn’t really tie into the point of today’s entry, really, but it felt like for a time we were always seeing Johnny’s Nova Flame power, his one shot all-powerful burst that uses up all his available energy. Seemed like that was a last resort option that got used in a whole lotta “last resorts,” and it felt a little diminished every time. But hey, that’s just me.

Anyway, it’s about this time, after the Thing enters the fray and gets some licks in, that the team sees what’s going on, as the two alien brothers each attempt to assert themselves in their shared body:


There’s more punchy-punchy, including a real pasting by Aunt Petunia’s favorite nephew that takes them out:


…and so subdued, Reed offers to separate them. An offer that meets some skepticism:


In the lab, as the separation process begins, the brothers can’t help but resume the war:


The Human Torch flies in, intending to break up the fight:


…but finds out very quickly what Reed was trying to warn him about:


Ben looks on briefly:


…before moving into action:


With Johnny out of the way, the brothers’ conflict continues, to fatal results:


Yup, they done blew themselves up real good, leaving our heroes to ponder the meaning of it all:


And…curtain.

Okay, I realize that’s a lot of “plot summary” there, but I felt like I had to give you at lease the basic rundown of what was happening first, for some context.

First off, I remember thinking at the time that maybe this was an attempt by the creative team (Roger Stern, John Buscema, and Sal Buscema, since I hadn’t brought it up here yet) to expand the Fantastic Four rogues gallery a bit beyond the usual recycling of Doctor Doom, Galactus, Annihilus, the Wizard, etc. etc. I remember this being a minor interest of John Byrne’s (there’s that name again), particularly in his creation of the world scavenger Terminus (essentially “Galactus but with an attitude problem”).

I don’t know if that was in fact an ongoing concern with the folks in charge of the FF books, given that the Puppet Master turns up during this creative team’s run. But the idea had been stuck in my mind, regardless, and I remained acutely aware of when new antagonists showed up in this series. (Hold on for one showing up during Steve Englehart’s run shortly that, um, does not go so well.)

In this particular case, it would not be unreasonable to assume that, given their explosive demise, Umbra and Jaagar were one-shot villains. However, given it’s superhero comics, and Marvel Comics specifically, straight-up on-panel death is not necessarily the final word, as super-characters come back from the dead all the time. For example, right now, as I write this, Doctor Doom is dead, and we have seen him in Marvel Hell fighting Marvel’s Satan, Mephisto. Y’all know he’ll be back to life and up to his old tricks sooner rather than later, right? So it would seem safe to assume that Umbra and Jaagar could make their way back into the land of the living without any trouble.

On the other hand, it’s been 40 years, and we’ve not seen either of them. That’s pretty much as dead as dead can get in the Marvel Universe, until some future writer decides to dig deep and bring ’em back. They’re only an editorial decision away from revival!

The other point about this story is this. I’ve been talking a lot about how, in the wake of Byrne’s run, the Thing’s alienation from the team, and the world as a whole, has been a recurring motif. In a panel earlier in this issue, which I didn’t scan and post because I’m already this close to just pasting all 20-something pages up on the site here, Ben overhears Johnny’s proposal to Alicia, the Thing’s former and Johnny’s current girlfriend. Would you be surprised to know that this only adds to Ben’s feelings of depression and loneliness?

Which brings us to the Current State of Things (so to speak) as of 1986. As we saw in the panels above, with everything that had been going on, at least on a personal level, Ben has been at best ambivalent in regards to the other members of the team, especially Reed and Johnny. It’s even to the point where he momentarily pauses before rushing in to save Johnny.

The last couple panels lay on the theme pretty thick, Yoda-in-the-middle-of-Last-Jedi style, asking the question “what can make brothers hate each other so much?” It’s not really a one-to-one with Ben and Johnny’s situation, since Johnny isn’t mad at Ben. But you can tell from the look on Ben’s face in the story’s final panel that he’s been thinking about their comparative situations. And that his concluding words, about not letting hate “get the best of them,” may show a slight change in tack in regards to working out his feelings.

This seems to me an effectively subtle bit of characterization for the Thing. Not the “I’m a monster in a world of men,” not “I’m the blue-eyed idol of millions,” but something a little more real and relatable. Yes, this is Melodrama in the Mighty Marvel Manner, which thrives on broad strokes and vivid dialogue. But there’s room for more delicate shifts of awareness, the understanding that “maybe lashing out at my friends isn’t the best way to cope,” without necessarily spelling it out explicitly.

Which isn’t to say we won’t have a punch-out or two and some shouting coming in the next few issues as this storyline works its way out. It is appreciated, however, that they make an effort at this level of character development at all.

As an addendum, I thought it was interesting how the “brothers” theme in this issue dovetails almost perfectly into the conclusion of the most recent issue of Fantastic Four, #18 (legacy numbering, #744), by Ryan North and Vincenzo Carratu. We had a two-issue story with Ben and Johnny, without their memories, still bonding together, and at the end, with everyone back home and back to (relative) normal, we had this exchange between them:


Maybe a bit of a spoiler for how stuff turns out for you readers back in 1986.

Sir Patrick Stewart (1940 – 2026).

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So a long time ago, in my college days, not too terribly long after Star Trek: The Next Generation came on the air, I shared a Shakespeare class at UC Santa Barbara with a couple of good fellows. One, named Ray, actually worked just down the street from the comic shop where I was employed, at a stationery store if I recall correctly. The other person was a friend of Ray’s, named Jebediah. Now, Jebediah was a very handsome gentleman, appearing at first glance to be straight-laced and all-business. However, he was prone to saying wild and usually hilarious things, usually at the wrong, or perhaps entirely right, time.

Now I realize even as I’m typing this that what I’m about to mention is the very definition of a “you had to be there” moment, but I promise you, at least Ray and I, who knew Jeb, thought this was amusing. We were in the aforementioned class, watching a perhaps 1970s-ish video of Shakespearean actors demonstrating their performances of many of the Bard’s classic characters. Amongst these actors was a certain Patrick Stewart, as I’m sure you’ve probably already guessed.

When he first appeared onscreen, you could hear a reaction from the class as recognition set in. I’m sure not everyone in the class was necessarily a Star Trek fan, but enough were, and their subdued but still slightly audible reaction was still noticeable.

And it was at this point Jeb shouted out “IT’S CAPTAIN PICARD!” — giving a loud voice to what many in the class were obviously thinking. Which is why he did it, Mike said, explaining the joke. It was a way of loudly poking fun at the class’s shared suppressed impulse. Anyway, Ray and I sure laughed at that, and that memory has stuck with me for nearly 40 years. I wonder where those guys are now?

But there’s no wondering where Sir Patrick Stewart went…I mean, look, he’s got a “Sir” in front of his name, he obviously got up to something ever since making that Shakespeare video we saw in class. The first thing I’m pretty sure I ever saw him in was John Boorman’s Excalibur (1981), a pay-cable favorite back in the early ’80s. In the film, Stewart played King Leodegrance, seen here kicking ass and taking names:


Now, when I was watching it on HBO back then, I didn’t clock his performance or anything, thinking “I’d better keep an eye on this…Pat Steward person, he’s something else.” He was just part of the wonderful melange of folks who comprised this still-a-favorite-of-mine flick. But I’d certainly recognize him when I’d return to the film after seeing his next project.


When I watched Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s premiere in 1987, I’m sure I didn’t realize I’d seen the actor playing Captain Picard before. I had seen some…worries, here and there, in the fan press when the show was first announced, wondering if this guy would be a good captain, but that felt like it was more about the general worry about there being a new Star Trek at all, more than anything specifically aimed at Stewart.

Once the first story of this new show aired…well, okay, maybe overall there were still some bugs to work out, but there was no denying that Captain Picard was given a definite commanding presence by Stewart’s performance. As the series progressed, and a little more nuance was baked into the character, it became clear that this new captain was a new breed of leader apart from Captain Kirk, who had come before. The arguments of who would “win in a fight” would pop up now and again, with fans clearly identifying the differences between these two captains. While Picard was perhaps more cerebral a leader than the action-oriented Kirk, despite how this cover portrays him:


…it was clearly understood that he’d be a significant challenge for ol’ James. T. (Also, Picard would totally win.)

Since then I’ve of course encountered Stewart’s excellent work in many other places, most notably in the 1970s BBC mini-series I, Claudius (and you can hear an interview with him about that show on this episode of John Hodgman and Elliot Kalan’s I, Podius). He made for an excellent (or dare I say…”X-cellent”) Professor X in the X-Men films, and in the amazing Logan, with one more turn at the character coming in Avengers: Doomsday. I even have a soft spot for his filmed version of A Christmas Carol, where, at the end of the movie, when Scrooge lets out his laughter, it’s one of the most visceral things ever put to film. (This was inspired by Stewart’s acclaimed solo stage performances of the Charles Dickens story.)

If you have the Nightmare Before Christmas soundtrack album, you have the introductory and closing segments narrated by Stewart, not used in the actual movie much to its detriment.

If you look here on TikTok, you’ll see the man doing enjoyable readings.

Plus, if you want to see him just being absolutely overjoyed to be doing something naughty on television, please enjoy this Saturday Night Live skit.

Frankly, you don’t have to look far to find something wonderful Stewart got up to. I mean, just his relationship with his best pal Sir Ian McKellen is a delight.

We definitely lost one of the greats with his passing. I know Star Trek isn’t the only thing he did, but boy, can you imagine a world without his Captain Picard in it? A character who embodied thoughtful, compassionate leadership while still being strong as steel. It takes a certain type of person to inhabit that role, and did Sir Patrick Stewart ever. He gave us a literal icon who not just entertained, but inspired, and brought comfort, hope and an impetus to action for countless people, in character and out. That feels like a pretty good legacy to me.

Rest well, Sir Patrick.

Okay, so I’m eleven years late on this.

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So I was searching through my emails, trying to track down something or ‘nother, when I came across a promotional message sent to the ProgRuin mailboxes back in 2015. Now, I did read it at the time, but of course had no recollection of doing as such over a decade later. And frankly, I’m surprised I didn’t bring it up on the site here, because boy, this sounds interesting.

The item promoted? Why, it’s Diagram for Delinquents, a DVD documentary about Dr. Fredric Wertham:


Seems unlikely that anyone reading this doesn’t know who he is, but Dr. Wertham was a psychiatrist who worked with poor Black patients, and was influential on the overturning of several segregation laws. Oh, and also he wrote Seduction of the Innocent, a 1954 book that just full-on trashed the comic book industry, attacking the content supposedly being fed to young, impressionable children.

The DVD includes lots of period footage and new interviews with comic experts (like Mark Evanier), as well as a bonus feature of an hour-long interview with Al Feldstein. You know, Al, formerly of EC Comics, the 1950s publisher that sort of became the face of the very comics with which Wertham had problems. I’m guessing that interview is a real barn burner.

Yes, I said “guessing,” because I haven’t watched the movie yet. You can download it through the Sequart Patreon page for minimal cost, but I went to eBay and bought a physical copy there for good ‘n’ cheap.

I mean, it looks interesting:


…and for the cost, it’s nice to have this collection of material on the topic. I hope it brings up the World of Fanzines book he wrote decades later, supporting the idea of young people producing their own magazines. Hard to imagine that came from the same person who wrote this longstanding comics industry boogeyman.

Given how far behind I am on everything, I’m hoping I can get to this disc at least relatively soon. As I say in the title, I’m already 11 years behind on this, what’s another few months. What I will note is the Ain’t It Cool News quote on the cover, an interesting choice given that site was already well in its decline as a media influencer at this point. (Shockingly, the site still occasionally puts up a new article even now.)

That old email I received includes a few more pull quotes plugging this film, which includes, um, Gerard Jones. And there’s a mention of working on a documentary about Neil Gaimain. Aged well, those items have not.

Anyway, looking forward to carving out some viewing time to take this in. I think it’s also on some of the streaming sites, so you can catch it there. And maybe next time I won’t take over a decade to look, really look, at my emails.

Walter Koenig (1936 – 2026).

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Walter Koenig was more than just Chekov on Star Trek…he was a screenwriter and a playwright, and acted on stage and in many other TV shows and movies. Did you know he wrote the Land of the Lost episode with the first appearance of Enik, the intelligent Sleestak? He certainly did! (In fact, “Enik” had originally been named by Koenig as “Eneg,” a backwards tribute to Trek creator Gene Roddenberry.)

While Chekov is of course a beloved character, I think Koenig’s role as the antagonistic telepathic Psi Cop Alfred Bester:


Clearly Koenig was having a blast playing him, chewing scenery and being evil and sometimes even being somewhat sympathetic. A real tour de force of acting which made you forget he ever played a nice Russian kid on a starship.

Be seeing you, Walter.

Nothing I love more than something I wrote inspiring art.

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So your pal Mike sells comics for a living, or at least attempts to (this past Sunday was bit of a wash, ugh), and as part of that living, he…or, rather, I price a lot of back issues. Boy, I do love back issues. If I could just price and sell ’em all day, I would, but I have to do other things, like “break down the new comic shipments” and “help customers” — you know, distractions like that.

But blessed are the days when I can just park at the counter with a big ol’ stack of old comics on one side of me, an Overstreet Price Guide on the other, and I’m able to just go to town, a’gradin’ and a’pricin’. And when I do, I often come across a comic that’ll get me thinking about it, and those thoughts have to go somewhere, and thus, a blog is born.

Like right now, as I want to talk about this particular cover for a moment:


That’s Alpha Flight #3 from 1983, cover by John Byrne, featuring our hero Aurora trapped in a room with crisscrossing rods, in a high-contrast black and white. It’s quite the striking image.

Every time I see that cover, however, I think the same thing: that must have been a huge pain to draw. The problem is, of course, I don’t really know that. I’m not a comic book artist, and my long-ago dabbling in cartooning was nowhere near this level of skill. It just seemed like a lot of work.

I’ve seen this cover plenty of times, but this time, I also remembered “wait, I have social media,” and I put the question to the masses:


And lo, I did get many a response. You can see ’em all just by clicking this little link here, but you’ll need to scroll down a bit just to get past the general Alpha Flight discussion. Consensus on the art seems to be “not as hard as it looks, just takes time,” which, of course, makes sense. Get those perspective lines down and you’re good to go! Anyway, take a peek at that thread to see the wide variety of answers I received.

I did get one or two replies along the lines of “gives me anxiety just looking at it,” so at least I know I’m not alone here.

Now let’s go back to how I worded my question. I asked if an artist would say “ugh, give me cars or horses to draw instead.” I made that specific joking reference because I’ve noticed comic artists saying that drawing cars or horses (or stairs, as someone added in that Bluesky thread) can be quite the drag. That generated a response from André, who said “I will draw all the ponies at any opportunity, good sir.”

And to prove that he means business, he created this beautiful piece of art to show you all how it’s done:


And be sure to visit that link for a larger version of that pic, plus a work-in-progress image! Thanks, André!

Oh, and in case you were wondering, Byrne did this for a couple of interior panels as well:


Still looks like magic to me.

The most difficult decision in all of history, human or otherwise.

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So I got an email from the publisher Act 4, who is, in conjunction with Skybound and DC Comics, releasing the Bissette and Totleben’s Swamp Thing Artist’s Edition hardcover next year. Measuring 12 by 17 inches, and “collecting over 170 pieces of art,” this book will be available in either the standard edition cover:


…or the Direct Market straight-to-funnybook-shops edition:


Which leaves your pal Mike with the most difficult of choices: which version do I get for myself? Or do I get both? Do I get two of both, one set to read and another to keep sealed? How far into decadence can I fall?

Anyhoo, if you’re familiar with artist edition hardcovers like these, you know the drill. Full-color, highly detailed scans of original art are featured, blown up to large sizes for easy inspection. Included are pages spanning issues #16 through #64 of the Swamp Thing series, such as, it says in the press release, several samples from “The Anatomy Lesson” (where we learn Swampy’s true origin) and the “American Gothic” storyline (with new takes on classic horror). Also inside is the full ten-page story “Jack in the Green,” Steve and John’s final work together at the company. (Yes, unfortunately that was written by Neil Gaiman, which is too bad, but we’ll be looking at the pretty drawings, not the words.)

Other than that one minor qualm, this looks like an amazing collection of artwork, and I can’t wait to get a good look at whatever squiggling details may have been obscured by the images’ reduction and reproduction over the years.

I hope there are lots of drawings of this guy:


I love that guy, he’s my favorite monster from this series. Well, aside from Swamp Thing himself, of course.

The book is due out next July, so start saving those pennies! At least 15,000 of them (or 30,000 or 60,000, in my case, maybe).

The sort of thing you’ll get a pass on once.

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So here is what Young Hellboy: Thrilling Sky Adventures (fourth and final issue out today!):


…has been reminding me of, just a little bit:


Yes, Limited Collectors’ Edition #C-47 from 1976, the infamous treasury-format release entitled “Superman Salutes the Bicentennial.” Why is it infamous, you ask? Because, despite having a big ol’ drawing of Superman on the cover, making one expect to see Superman adventures within, we get historically-themed comics like Tomahawk inserted, with very brief introductions from an inset Superman head pasted over the first panel of each story. Look, I’m no Tomahawk hater, I like the character just fine, but does it say “Tomahawk” anywhere on that cover? No sir, it does not.

Granted, it does say “6 Tales of Heroic History Celebrating the Spirit of ’76!” but one would not be blamed for thinking that would mean, like, Superman time-traveling around and helping out George Washington and Paul Revere and so on. I mean, when you see the cover of Captain America’s Bicentennial Battles #1:


…are you expecting reprints of Casey Crime Photographer with little Cap heads grafted onto the first panel of each story, prepping you for another all-American “Flashgun” Casey adventure? No, you’re expecting 80 pages of pure Jack Kirby madness, and boy does Jack deliver. (Honestly, read this comic, it is wild.)

You would not be blamed if you picked up Young Hellboy: Thrilling Sky Adventures #1 and thought “oh boy, Young Hellboy is going to get into some scrapes with Scarlett Santiago, the Sky Devil on an exciting pulpy expedition. Instead, what you got was…a page or two of Young Hellboy reading a Golden Age comic book, and the “Sky Devil” story being the contents of said comic. No crossover, no “Young Hellboy is magically pulled into the comic and thus joins the journey” — it’s literally “here’s a couple of panels of Hellboy waving the comic around, and then here’s the story Hellboy is reading.”

Hold on, though. I’ve come to praise Young Hellboy: Thrilling Sky Adventures, not to bury it. Yes, it’s not really a Hellboy story, but it is very Hellboy-coded. You have mysterious artifacts and secret civilizations and monsters and all kinds of weirdo stuff going on in this story, which falls very well into the usual milieu of the Hellboy world. And it’s all on the cover…it’s not hiding the contents of the book, as you are indeed getting “Thrilling Sky Adventures with the Sky Devil.” But it’s got that little “featuring” word there on the cover. It’s “Young Hellboy featuring Scarlett Santiago,” not “Young Hellboy and…” or “Young Hellboy in ‘The Devil’s Plateau with Scarlett Santiago.'” Thus, the cover remains technically correct, which, as we all learned from Futurama, is the best kind of correct.

Sadly, had this just been released as a Thrilling Sky Adventures comic on its own, it probably wouldn’t have sold as well, even with Mike Mignola’s credit on the cover. Slapping the “Hellboy” brand on there got you to pick it up and read it, introducing you to a couple of fun new characters you otherwise may have overlooked. And the story is a fun read, and the introductory Young Hellboy bits are charming, so while as a whole it’s a little misleading, you don’t mind the bait-and-switch so much because the comic does deliver a good time. Thus, my final verdict — I’ll let you get away with it this time, Mignola!

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

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Behold, our second two-vote-receiver in the favorite indie comics of the ’90s poll…and it’s a title I’m pretty sure you’re all familiar with:

Gen 13 (Image Comics, 1994)

Even as the comics industry was starting to collapse all around us at the time, there were still the Hot Items that would hit the shelves and excite the comic readers who remained and toughed things out. Sure, shops were beginning to rely on POGs and Magic The Gathering cards to help shore up the sales that slipped far away from the Milk ‘n’ Honey times of the then very recent past, but there was still the occasional glimmer of hope on the stands yet.

Wizard Magazine, the comics industry hype man for all things new, popular, and investible, was at the height of its powers then, putting a price guide into the hands of The Common Man, versus that comparatively stodgy annual Overstreet Price Guide. And it would get the word out about all the Hot New #1s coming from your favorite publishers!

This was the world into which Gen 13 was unleashed. Nominally a super-team book, the initial mini-series introduced* to us Grunge, Free-Fall, Rainmaker, Fairchild, and Burnout, all superpowered teens. They are accompanied by the older, militarily-trained John Lynch. The initial five-issue mini-series was a hit, necessitating a second printing of the first issue. The youthful team, written by Jim Lee and Brandon Choi, featured the major selling point of J. Scott Campbell’s dynamic art. The exaggeratedly-legged and improbably-torsoed caricatures of the ladies read as “sexy” to potential readers, giving also-youthful comic fans an energetic and mildly-sensual alternative to boring ol’ comics aimed at their grandfathers, like Avengers and Justice League. This was a book for today’s mid-1990s young adult fans!

Given the mini’s popularity, an ongoing series was launched in 1995, with the relatively infamous thirteen variants for the first issue (discussed here). Trust me, for folks reading this who are newer to comics, at one time in the industry’s history “thirteen variants” actually seemed like a lot. But beyond everything else, those variants presented a cheeky sense of humor and a willingness to do some wild stuff with their comics. Of note in the second series is the three-part issue #13 (released as #13A, #13B, and #13C) in which Gen 13 crossed over with other companies’ characters, such as Jeff Smith’s Bone and, kinda surprisingly, the Archie Comics gang.

The second series continued on for 77 issues (plus a #0 mixed in there somewhere), wrapping up in 2002. With #37 the book became part of the Wildstorm imprint at DC Comics, and by this point the original creative team had left, leaving a variety of characters to carry on the book. Most notably, Adam Warren, of Empowered and Eclipse’s Dirty Pair fame, took over writing and cover art chores on the series, with interiors by Rick Mays, Ed Benes, and others, with the book concluding under his watch.

Along the way there were a number of tie-ins and spin-offs, most notably the anthology title Gen 13 Bootleg (which includes a story or two written and drawn by Warren, probably the best sellers from this run, at least at our shop). I mean, there were tons of them, and I’m just going to point you to the lists here and here instead of trying to transcribe every title into this post. I would like to note the Gen 13/Spider-Man intercompany crossover, as well as the Gen 13/Monkeyman and O’Brien mini, illustrated by Art Adams! Oh, and their crossover with the Maxx, and, and…well, you get the idea.

And speaking of Wizard, as we were earlier, here’s the cover to #44 from 1995, with the ladies of the team:


A brief aside: for all its failings, Wizard did succeed in, as I noted at the beginning of this post, hyping up comic titles to a certain core audience of readers, many of whom were new to the hobby, and more importantly, many of whom were young. Teenagers/young adults getting excited about comics that were aimed at them is something this business hasn’t seen in a while, at least until Absolute Batman caught on. I know Wizard could be juvenile, and that its taste could entirely be in its mouth, but boy, I preferred folks getting turned onto new books via a magazine they read versus them hunting books they see in the Hot Comics Apps like they do now.

And you know, that’s not really an aside. There have been attempts at revivals of the Gen 13 franchise, like reintroducing the team in a New 52-era issue of Supergirl, but Gen 13 may really have been Of An Age. As in, of that period in the ’90s when comics had been hot, but were on their way back out, but there was Wizard still pushing material to the kids who were still sticking around. But those kids are gone, the specific demographic that had been ready and willing to snap up a title like this, that was directly targeted at them, are gone. Or have moved on to, as I said, Absolute Batman. The niche is filled.

Look, I’m sorry to the two folks who voted for this title, and for any other fans reading this. I’m not trying to slag the comic. But it sort of feels like it was in a very small window of potential and opportunity, and those exact circumstances have yet to repeat themselves.

Or…have they? I’ve noted an uptick in back issue sales of the Gen 13 comics, so there may yet still be an audience. Maybe it’s nostalgia, maybe it’s new readers. But ol’ Gen 13 is still hanging in there.

Collected editions were wildly available during its heyday, but the most recent thing available is a Gen 13 Starting Over deluxe hardcover from a couple of years ago. It reprints the original mini, the first five issues of the second series, and some other material. Can’t tell if it’s in print or not…Lunar’s search engine tells me it exists, but won’t let me place an order on it, which maybe isn’t a good sign. Feels like this is one of those titles that would benefit from one of those super-thick paperback omnibuses, containing dozens of issues.

Anyway, Gen 13…a star that shined brightly for a little while, and maybe could reignite once again, someday. In the meantime, while you wait, you can watch this Gen 13 animation from 2000.
 
 
 
* Technically, they first appeared in Deathmate: Black, but no matter how hard people try on, like, eBay, literally nobody cares.