You are currently browsing the archives for February, 2014
So I totally forgot that last month’s End of Civilization entry was the ninth anniversary of what I consider to be the very first EoC post, about the Buffy replica stake.
Nine years. Nine years of near-naked Japanese girly statues. Nine years of crazy prop replicas. Nine years of Monopoly jokes. Nine years of Marvel’s publishing shenanigans. Why, it only feels like I’ve been doing this for about 108 months.
And apparently I haven’t learned my lesson, because I’m doing it for another month. Get your March 2014 edition of Diamond Previews and follow along, as I hypocritically make fun of things I’m probably ordering for the store, and, in at least one case, myself:
p. 48 – Star Wars Rebel Heist #2 (of 4):
So, get ready to see this comic, and its eventual trade/hardcover collection, going for stupidly high prices on eBay shortly after Marvel takes over the franchise and the book’s printing lifespan of a couple of months or so is put down right quick.
Nice cover, though.
p. 89 – Marvel Classic Character X-Men 94 #3 – Cyclops:
“Ooooh, I’ve got such the headache, and massaging your own temple just doesn’t do it!”
p. 96 – Superman: Doomed #1:
1992: Line wrapped around the block, everyone waiting to get their “last issue” of Superman.
2014: Occasionally a customer will glance at this cover. “Huh, I thought Superman was dead. They’re still making his comics?”
p. 161 – DC Comics Icons Superman 1:6 Scale Statue:
“Clark? Clark, what’s taking you so long in the bathroom?”
“I’m…uh, I’m oiling my costume, Mom!”
“(sigh) I don’t know about that boy.”
p. 227 – The Walking Dead #127:
“In the aftermath of ‘ALL OUT WAR’ we discover…A NEW BEGINNING.”
Well, off to the next community of survivors who aren’t all that they seem!
p. 271 – Carpool T-Shirt:
So the difference between this “parody” shirt and what could actually be a Deadpool shirt is…what, exactly?
p. 275 – Sonic Super-Sized Digest #7:
I haven’t seen so many wieners in a piece of Sonic the Hedgehog art since the last time I looked at Tumblr.
p. 315 – Iznogoud Volume 9: The Grand Vizier Iznogoud GN:
Mike, circa 1989, helping a customer with back issues: “Here’s the
Ms. Tree box…oh, ‘Ms. Tree!’ ‘Mystery!’ I get it!”
Mike, about a month ago, helping a customer look for humorous European graphic novels: “Here’s Iznogoud…oh, ‘Iznogoud!’ ‘Is No Good!’ 25 years later, I’m still stupid!”
p. 415 – The Quotable Doctor Who Wise Words Across Space and Time HC:
Simulate being in a crowd of Doctor Who fans by reading this book out loud to yourself!
p. 417 – Planet of the Apes Miniature Book Kit with Sound:
Okay, forget the sound bit (not Charlton Heston growling “write me out of most of the sequel, damn you,” but it should be), but let’s focus that this comes with a
bag of actual sand that you can spread out on, I don’t know, your mantle next to Great-Aunt Gail’s urn as a base for your Taylor and Horse versus Lady Liberty diorama.
Here’s hoping the eventual The Shining Elevator Scene Kit comes with a pouch of fake blood.
p. 442 – Spider Pog T-Shirt:
Sometimes I mock
Previews, sometimes it mocks
me back.
p. 457 – Sin City Monopoly:
“Go to the electric chair. Go directly to the electric chair. Do not cross Senator Roark.”
p. 459 – Darth Vader Tinned Mints:
“
haaaaaa PURRRRR haaaaaa PURRRRR”
“Why, Lord Vader, may I compliment you on how fresh your breath smells today!”
“ARE YOU SAYING MY BREATH DOES NOT NORMALLY SMELL FRESH?”
“N-n-no, Lord Vader, I, uh, I’m just….GACK! (choke!)”
“FEEL THE POWER OF THE DARK SIDE. AND ALSO THESE TASTY, FRESHENING MINTS.”
p. 459 – Space Dog Tin Toy:
Man, this early version of K-9 is pretty rough.
p. 498 – DC Hero Swamp Thing Sofubi:
The upside of Swamp Thing comics not being published: much easier to keep up on buying appearances and merchandise.
The downside of Swamp Thing comics currently being published: “$119 for a Japanese import Swamp Thing toy! SON OF A BITCH”
p. 503 – The Beatles Yellow Submarine Titans Mini Figures:
“We are all
Tiny plastic things
Tiny plastic things
Tiny plastic things”
p. 527 – The Walking Dead Daryl Crossbow Mug:
I didn’t
get this before, and I don’t get it now. Is “If Daryl Dies We Riot” really that strong of an iconic quote from
The Walking Dead? Some kind of rallying cry, a mission-statement-y kind of thing? I mean, I’ve watched the whole series so far, and I don’t even remember anyone saying this. Not saying they didn’t, just that it apparently wasn’t all that memorable.
Now, if at some point Rick looks at the screen and declares “we ARE the walking dead,” put that on a mug.
So I recently acquired a few of these Whitman comic book three-packs (still sealed!), and this particular one has something I’ve never seen before:
…two copies of the same comic! That’s
Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids #25 (from June 1978) on the front there, there’s a copy of
Woody Woodpecker #168 on the other, and, in the middle, another copy of
Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids #25, espied by me by carefully separating the comics while still inside the polybag. Well, I don’t know about you, but if I shilled out my 99 cents and got two of the same funnybook for my troubles, I would have been a tad miffed.
I don’t know how common an error this was, as at the time these were in stores, I wasn’t going around from toy store to department store carefully examining each three-pack and doing a little amateur quality control. It was more like “MOM! Can I have this pack of Star Wars comics?” and the depth of my examination was mostly restricted to “do I already own the outer two comics visible in this package?”
Anyway, none of the comics in any of these pre-packed bags are in particularly high demand…I mean, there’s some demand for cartoon comics like Fat Albert, but the packs themselves as is will sell more quickly for us as novelty items than waiting for collectors to request the specific issues therein.
Of course, that’s not always the case. There are a handful of issues from various series that were only distributed via the Whitman three-packs and not as a racked single issue, most famously (and expensively) Uncle Scrooge #179. A copy we had about — oh, ten years ago, maybe? — sold in the $300 range on eBay, and it was around a Very Good to Fine copy, if I remember correctly.
Speaking of collectability and also awkward transitions, I’ve started to have some inquiries into the first issue of Preacher, a comic that long ago stopped having any back issue demand since the primary way anyone wants this series now is via the trade paperback/hardcover editions. Which is fine, I sell plenty of Preacher books, which has more than made up for any dead Preacher backstock we’ve had sittin’ around, but now that people are getting wind of a television adaptation, I’d better dust off that section of the back issue bins for the brief period of time that they’ll be sought after again.
Plus, the return of Doomsday is resulting in multiple requests for Superman: The Man of Steel #17 (Doomsday’s first appearance) and #18 (the start of the “Death of Superman” story). I assume that’s what’s causing it, and not some spontaneous uprising of Doomsday nostalgia. Or maybe he’s in that Batman/Superman movie and I haven’t heard about it? I mean, everyone else is, so why not.
I’m also looking forward to the eventual revival of interest in Heroes comics and merchandise. I mean, all you folks loved Heroes, right?
So at the shop the other day, we were briefly talking about Action Comics Weekly, that late ’80s run of Action from issue #601 through #642 where it was an anthology title featuring DC characters both famous and not-so-much. Mostly, we were discussing the fact that, as far I can remember, almost none of the material from these comics has been reprinted. We’ve had the Nightwing: Old Friends, New Enemies trade paperback reprinting the two serials from this series, but that’s about it.
Some of the material is past its sell date: that Captain Marvel serial spinning off from the Shazam! The New Beginning mini will probably never be seen again, unless someone actually decides to make a trade of that mini which includes the serial as “bonus material.” And, you know, never say never.
But there’s a lot of Green Lantern material in those issues, stories written by Christopher Priest (as “James Owsley”) and Peter David, and at least one storyline drawn by legendary GL artist Gil Kane. DC hasn’t been shy about dipping into their GL comics backlog to reprint for their trade paperback line, so it’s a little surprising that these stories haven’t made it into some book or another.
With the character popping up occasionally on the TV show Arrow, now might be a good time for that Black Canary ACW series to see print again.
Speaking of Arrow, I’ve had requests for solo Speedy comics lately, which are purt’near impossible to come by. There was that Speedy team-up with Nightwing that’s reprinted in the trade paperback mentioned at the beginning of this post, but there’s another solo Speedy serial in this series as well. (Say that five times fast.)
There are a handful of Phantom Stranger stories, including at least one drawn by Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez. Okay, it’s not likely a reprint of these is particularly viable, even with a Phantom Stranger series currently on the racks, but I like the Phantom Stranger so let me dream my little dream here. (Same with all that Deadman material in ACW.)
And then there’s the “Sunday Pages” segment in each issue…the two-page centerspread starring Superman and drawn by Curt Swan and Murphy Anderson. That’s about 80 pages or so of unreprinted Swanderson artwork hiding in this run of weekly comics, not reprinted on nice paper with one full strip per page to avoid losing artwork in the gutter of a trade paperback.
A lot of this work would fit nicely (with room left over for related reprints) into those DC Comics Presents mini-trades, the 100-page prestige format comics priced at $7.99. They’d mostly vanished of late, though that Harley Quinn volume just came out a week or so ago.
I’m sure there are many marketing and editorial reasons why Action Comics Weekly‘s content has remained mostly untouched for republication. And I know DC has plenty of worthwhile material that also hasn’t been reprinted yet, so why should I think ACW is so special? (Again, I’m working on my memory that most of it hasn’t been reprinted…if I’m wrong, let me know!) It just seems odd that in the 25 years since its release, the majority of this material remains languishing, forgotten and ignored, in back issue bins. Like all anthologies, it contained its share of duds, but there was plenty of good, enjoyable work in those comics by solid creative teams.
Plus, there’s probably still at least some potential audience for ACW’s Wild Dog serial.
EDIT 1/22/23: The Oxnard reference in Action Comics Weekly, noted in the title of this post, is actually from the Secret Six story in #621. Details here.
Señor Editor (who will always be “Professor Booty” in my heart of hearts) asks:
“Mike, how do Conan comics sell at your shop? That might be a weird thing to wonder about but I’ve been re-purchasing old Marvel Conan’s I used to own, as well as getting the new Dark Horse stuff. I like a lot of it, and I liked the recent ‘…and the People of the Dark Circle’ Conan miniseries a lot. Seems like Conan will be one of the more popular franchises Dark Horse has the rights to, once Star Wars is out of their hands. Do Conan comics sell well?”
Conan has always done fairly well at our shop, even during that weird period in the ’90s after Marvel ended their long-running Conan the Barbarian series and had like a dozen Conan minis and short-run series. They weren’t top sellers by any means, but they were solid sellers off the racks.
The Dark Horse Conan comics have also been regular, if not spectacular, sellers, with a dependable sales record that hasn’t seemed to fluctuate much over the years. That sounds like I’m damning with faint praise, but believe you me, in the current comics market I’ll take “consistent low-to-mid-range seller” over “spiraling into nothingness” (cough) iron man (cough).
As for taking over as Dark Horse’s Premiere Franchise after Star Wars is in the grips of Marvel/Disney’s tender mercies, well…maybe. I’m not certain. Star Wars has had its success at Dark Horse mostly because, despite the large number of SW books, not every fan felt obligated to buy every series. The franchise was wide enough to include a variety of titles with different settings and characters and timelines and so on, appealing to different levels of SW commitment. The people who are buying the current Darth Vader mini aren’t necessarily the same people who are buying the Legacy series set a century or so later after Return of the Jedi. Even the folks that have “ALL STAR WARS” on their comic saver lists at our shop usually have a list of exceptions after that notation.
Conan, on the other hand, doesn’t quite have that wide a range of readership that I’ve noticed. Whereas you can publish a bunch of SW books at once and not burn out their followers, since they’re not going to buy every series anyway, pretty much every Conan series will be bought and read by the same people. Conan doesn’t appear to have the same range of settings and characters that the SW comics do…I mean, by definition, they all star Conan. Sometimes Young-ish Barbarian Conan, sometimes older King Conan, maybe other Conans I don’t know about. But the readership mostly overlaps on all the Conan titles…you put out one Conan a month, they all buy it. Two Conans, they’ll buy both. Three Conans, they’ll probably buy all three.
And that’s probably pushing the limit right there. If you keep pulling more and more money out of the fans’ pockets every month by basically making them dish out to keep up with their franchise of choice, they’re either just going to cut back to just the main “flagship” title or just give up altogether out of frustration and economic necessity (Cf. The Avengers). There is a ceiling on Conan franchise expansion that is much lower than on the Star Wars franchise, so unless there’s suddenly an upswing in Conan popularity in culture at large (and there have been a handful of mostly failed attempts at it over the last few years), that ceiling isn’t going up any time soon.
This is all based on our local market conditions, of course, Maybe Conan is the biggest thing ever in, I don’t know, Fairfax, VA, and their incredibly high demand for Conan product is balancing out our mostly moribund demand.
Of course, new comic sales aren’t the extent of it. I do good business in Dark Horse’s trade paperbacks, primarily the books that reprint Marvel’s old material (the Chronicles of Conan volumes, and those big ol’ Savage Sword phone books reprinting the magazines). The actual original Marvel comics do well, too…not just the early Barry Windsor-Smith issues, which are sought out not just by Conan fans but by “Bronze Age” comic collectors seeking “keys,” but the later ’70s/early ’80s runs as well. Savage Sword of Conan mags move regularly, even the Conan Sagas reprinting old SSoC sell. This isn’t so much from new readers to Conan (though there are some!) but from older nostalgic fans buying up old Conans to enjoy again (or read for the first time, if they missed an issue or three back in the old days).
There doesn’t seem to be much overlap between the two audiences…the Venn diagram of “folks what are buying the new Dark Horse stuff” and “folks buying the Marvel stuff, via either back issues or reprints” would be a slim area connecting the two circles (and would include Señor Editor, whose question kicked off all this yakkity-yakking of mine). But at least there is still a market for our barbarian friend, even after all these years.
So for some reason, instead of wanting to write new content for this here site, I spent an awful lot of my allotted late Sunday evening comics blogging time looking at some old posts of mine, and old posts from a friend’s site from a number of years back, the heyday of “let’s everyone get in on this comics-blogging thing” activity. Don’t know why I was feeling this weird sort of nostalgia for that particular era, where folks (including me!) were a little more earnest and angry and some of us bumped heads over things for no real good reason (and I don’t even remember who or what this was about at this late date).
I posted a links to a couple of old things I wrote on my Twitter account last night as I found them, and even reblogged some old Photoshopped thing of mine onto my hardly-used Tumblr, but…yeah, sorry, I just don’t have real content today. Just had an evening of thinking back to the way things used to be, the interactions I used to have with the other comics bloggers, and so on. This isn’t a “COMICS BLOGGING IS DEAD” post…it’s “COMICS BLOGGING IS DIFFERENT” what with your Tumblrs and Twitterers and I’m just feeling old, don’t mind me.
I really need to get back into regularly looking at the ol’ Comics Weblog Update-A-Tron (and it’s nice that the person running that site remembers that I was the one who came up with that name for the original comics weblog update lister) and see what new names are out there. I’ve been fairly insular, just doing my own thing here and not doing a whole lot of looking around beyond friends’ sites and whatever linking trackbacks I happen to spot in my referrals.
Plus, we had an enormously busy weekend at the shop, so I’m a little fried from that. The only unusual comic-related thing I did this weekend was that I finally got around to straightening up our poster racks, since apparently someone took all the rolled posters out of their proper slots and just shoved them back in there randomly and that was terrible. And I got it all rearranged just in time for our friendly Traveling Poster Salesman to pop on by the shop and offer his wares, and I was totally prepared for him. See, how exciting is that story?
Thus, no post today. Well, aside from all that you just read. Or skimmed, which I wouldn’t blame you for.
• • •
REMINDER: As noted a couple of days ago, pal Mark (cocreator of Fake AP Stylebook) and his wife can use a little financial help due to health issues and loss of work. Thanks to your generosity, they are way past their goal, but the fund drive continues for a few more days and getting that much more of a cash buffer would be of great help to them. If you have a couple of spare bucks, please consider donating. Thank you very much.
(Some minor SPOILERS for Arrow ahead.)
So I’ve sort of binge-watched Arrow over the last month…well, it’s a lazy example of binge-watching, in that I watched the premiere episode on Netflix a couple of months back, and then got cracking on the rest of the series a few weeks later. I streamed the rest of the first season, and I’m nearly caught up on Season Two via iTunes.
My initial impression of the Arrow series was based on a brief viewing of an episode sometime during the first season’s initial broadcast, and that fifteen minutes or thereabouts felt to me like it was a narrative assembled on a framework of comic book in-jokes, and I made my Supreme Nerd Judgement based on that exposure. “BAH, THIS IS JUST COMIC BOOK IN-JOKES,” said I, and I went about my business, using that time not watching Arrow to, oh, I don’t know, cure all disease and create world peace or something.
Eventually I decided to give it another go, and once I started actually watching the series, I began to appreciate it for the fun action/adventure/melodramatic serial that it is. Yeah, there are comic book in-jokes (a character says she’ll be back in Central City “in a flash” because in the comics the Flash lives in Central City don’cha know), but there is plenty of straight-up DC Universe stuff going on in this series, too. Back stories, abilities and relationships are all altered a tad, but I still got to see live action Green Arrow fighting side-by-side with live action Black Canary, and that’s okay with me.
During the first season, with Green Arrow…excuse me, the Hood or the Vigilante…offing dudes left and right, I was reminded of a G.A. comic I read long ago, where Ollie accidentally killed a guy who was about to shoot him. Yeah, it was probably justifiable self defense an’ all, but Green Arrow is a Superhero, and not supposed to kill the bad guys, and he ends up, I don’t remember exactly, hiding out in a monastery or something to pay penance for his deeds. I suppose I could Google it (or, if I were a character on Arrow and absolutely nobody else, I could Bing it) and find out the correct story details, but that’s the general gist of it. He killed a guy, felt terrible about it, had to come to terms with it.
In a way, the show is taking the long-term view of that particular character development, by having Ollie eventually realize that he can’t keep killing the bad guys, and trying, in the current season, to transition to less lethal outcomes in his conflicts. He does slip once or twice…his killing a villain who was threatening Felicity is shown as weighing upon him; the apparent deaths of multiple Russian prison guards a couple of episodes earlier, not so much. But still, it’s nice to see a heroic character attempting not to take lives, rather than stabbing them or blowing them up and following it up with a clever quip.
Another slow transition is the introduction of superpowers into the series. Characters that traditionally have superpowers in the comics have had less paranormal replacements for those abilities in the TV show (Black Canary has a device that emits a sonic screech, Count Vertigo deals drugs that cause severe disorientation), but now there’s a serum in the series that gives people super-strength. Special guest star character Barry Allen has, in an episode I haven’t seen yet but know about already, his Flash origin (if not yet demonstrating any Flash powers, which is presumably being saved for that spinoff Flash TV show if it’s picked up). Allen even gives his backstory (in an episode I have seen) his encounter with a being that, if not specifically described as such, obviously has super-speed powers. I suspect with the popularity of superheroes in mass media now (you know, TV shows and movies), Arrow suddenly dealing with super-powered guys ‘n’ gals probably won’t be a traumatic experience for the general non-comic reading audience. A Flash guest-appearance will be the test of that, I suppose.
But I’m all for that, filling the series with more super-characters from the funnybooks. Funny that Arrow is becoming the go-to TV show for superhero action, with Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., spinning off from the most successful series of superhero movies of all time, being generally a disappointment to fans expecting more of what they saw on the big screen. It’s more of the “street-level” superheroing, not so much the “flights ‘n’ tights” eschewed by Smallville, but Good Lord there’s live-action Deathstroke in this TV show. There’s the League of Assassins. There’s the Bronze Tiger. There’s Deadshot. There are mentions of Nanda Parbat, which plays heavily in the backstory of the Deadman comics, though I’ll eat my hat if Deadman shows up in this series. (I mean, actual dead-spirit-possessing-live-people Deadman…I’ll eat a hat for no less.)
In short, I like the show, and I expect to keep liking it so long as it doesn’t become the meandering-yet-running-in-place exercise in futility that Smallville became during its forty (or thereabouts) season run. That the lead character is already in costume, and that the thrust of the series is fine-tuning that character’s purpose in that costume, is already a vast improvement on the “is he Superman yet?” predecessor.
§ February 12th, 2014 § Filed under pal plugging Comments Off on Please help a friend of mine.
My pal Mark Hale, cocreator of Fake AP Stylebook, is in need of some financial assistance to help him and his wife through some difficult times. If you can donate a few bucks to help them out, I am sure they would really appreciate it.
As I write this, they are pretty close to their original funding goal, but this drive is active another week still, so any extra donations above and beyond that goal would be swell.
Thanks, friends.
So this is Top Shelf’s new collection of all the Bojeffries stories by Alan Moore and Steve Parkhouse, including 24 new pages appearing here for the first time. The work is reproduced in its original black and white format, save for one short story printed in black and various shades of red. If you’ve never read these darkly-humored tales of this monstrously peculiar family, I would highly recommend picking up this book.
If you happen to own the previous Bojefferies collection, published by Tundra in 1992:
…take note that the new Top Shelf volume doesn’t entirely supplant it. The Tundra edition of course doesn’t have the 24 extra pages in the newer collection, but this older book
is in full color, which is nice but, as noted above, not how the stories originally appeared. However, there are a handful of pages created for the Tundra collection that do not appear in the Top Shelf book. Mostly they are one (and in one case, two) page gags (a dress-up doll of Ginda, a cut-out model of the garden, a Festus mask), but it
is new Bojeffries material and it’s a shame none of it made it to the new volume. And then there’s that illustration of Ginda putting the moves on Lenny Henry, who provides the introduction. But the Top Shelf book does contain all the narrative material, so if you can stand the knowledge that a couple of gags didn’t make the transition, here you go.
Plus, the original book is 22 years old and seems to sell for anywhere from $27 to $120 on Amazon, so you may want to do without it anyway.
The odd cognitive dissonance of reading about John Constantine stuck in the middle of a big ol’ superhero crossover continues in this oddball tie-in to the “Forever Evil” storyline currently running in the Justice League books. In a strange way it sort of mirrors what was going on the last time Constantine was so closely tied to a Big Event Series, with John running around in
Swamp Thing dealing with the more mystical side of
Crisis on Infinite Earths. In that instance, the stories were definitely in the “this superhero stuff sure is weird” mode, with Alan Moore, Steve Bissette, John Totleben and the rest of the gang doing their
off-kilter, somewhat creepy takes on the DC Universe.
This time around, John and his magical pals are in full-on superhero mode, shooting eldritch energy beams from their hands instead of science-y energy, on a team that actually refers to itself, in-story, as “Justice League Dark,” a name that should have just remained a groaner of a comic book title. John is no longer really functioning as any kind of commentary on the DCU at large beyond his most basic “man, these guys” reactions. Despite that, Constantine and the other titles that are crossing over in their parallel “Forever Evil” event (like Pandora, Phantom Stranger, and the previously-cited Justice League Dark) have been a lot of fun, possibly more so that the parent Justice League series, even if the storyline has been dragging on maybe just a bit too long. Not “Rotworld” long, but I’m probably ready for this to wrap up Any Day Now.
If you like the current
Hawkeye series, then you should pick up this new
She-Hulk comic. It’s very much in the same vein, with strong dialogue and good humor and crystal-clear art. I just read it again for a second time, between typing that last sentence and this one, and I haven’t done that with a brand new comic on the same day I picked it up in long time.
So apparently Stan Lee is doing another signing in the Los Angeles area in a week or two, and every time that happens, we get a lot of people looking for anything he’s written for autographing purposes. And by “anything” I mean “pretty much just Spider-Man,” since 98% of the time that’s what folks want.
The problem is those early Spider-Man comics are in high demand…I get requests every day for them and our turnover rate on those particular issues is insane. They come in, they get priced, and they sell almost before we have a chance to file them into a box or put them in the case. For the stock I am able to maintain in our bins for more than a couple of days, the copies we have are either 1) in reasonably nice condition, and therefore a bit pricey for those folks just looking for something for Mr. The Man to sign, or 2) in “well-loved” condition, heavily read and affordable, but not with a lot of eye-appeal.
And then I remembered this:
…
Amazing Spider-Man Annual #18 from 1984, featuring a script by Stan Lee (over a Tom DeFalco plot). It’s Spider-Man, it’s from the flagship Spider-Man series
Amazing Spider-Man, it has a Stan Lee writing credit, and it’s inexpensive. (If I remember correctly, the copy I sold to a customer on Sunday was only about $3 for a nice copy, and there was a $2 copy still in the box.) Plus, we’ve got a good stock of them to sell. A good compromise, sez I, in case that several-hundred-dollar copy of the first appearance of the Green Goblin is too dear to deliver to Stan to sign.
It feels odd to me that Fantastic Four is rarely considered by folks, at least in these parts, for Stan Lee signing purposes. Let me emphasize that “to me” part, since I’m fully aware that Spider-Man is the more popular of the properties, if not the single most popular and identifiable character published by Marvel, period. Of course that’s the comic everyone wants Stan to sign. I personally just happen to prefer the Fantastic Four comics of this period, and if I were going to get a comic signed by Stan, I’d go with this FF issue, because it features the Thing (kinda sorta) and also it is awesome. Maybe if the FF movies were as popular and well-regarded as Spidey’s, we’d have more people dragging their boxes of those comics to Stan’s signings.
This is all anecdotal data, of course. I’ve never been in the presence of a Stan Lee signing since I’m already prone to headaches, why encourage them, and plus I’m not sure I could afford the ticket price to have Stan put pen to decades-old paper. Thus, I have no idea what people are actually shoving in front of him for his signature. That Rock Reflections of a Superhero record? Probably. Stripperella DVDs? Almost certainly. Copies of this? Well…okay, maybe not.
But around here, it looks like Stan fans want Spider-Man. At least until I can convince them they want this.
§ February 8th, 2014 § Filed under freak out, star trek Comments Off on Slash fiction is somehow to blame.
IN POSITION
AND PREPARED
CAPTAIN
from Peter Pan Book & Record Set #PR-45 (1979)
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