I know I’ve talked about this before, but bear with me for a moment. I will hear modern day criticisms of Crisis on Infinite Earths, DC’s continuity-changing mini-series from 1985, where it is essentially summed up as being “a bad story.” Beautifully drawn, there’s no argument about that. But the actual plot and script itself are held up as flawed. And, I mean, fair enough. I once posted on Bluesky “thou shalt not read Crisis for its prose,” as just reading it for the story is only part of the experience. And the part of the experience that is arguably most significant is one that simply can ..read more

So y’all had some good comments about Cerebus and the troubles thereof, with a small side conversation about a 1957 Mighty Mouse I originally talked about on this site 18 years ago (Patrick, if you’re reading this, I replied in the comments with the info you need!) I also got a comment (that went straight into moderation) from a particular troller who loves nothing more than being rude and insulting. This time he didn’t like me saying, in essence (and in admittedly too many words), “Dave’s worldview was troubling, and it negatively impacted Cerebus.” Which is, I think, about as objective and f ..read more

I’ve talked about this in various places before, and Tom Ewing even points out it out in one of his essays, but Cerebus reaching issue #100 in mid-1987 was a special event. Even the cover, pictured above, looked out of place from the Cerebus covers before or since, reprinting segments of covers of previous issues (specifically #1, #25, #50, and #75) relegated what would have been the standard cover, reflecting the actual contents, to the back. Let me give you a little lead-up here. (And just to remind you, the title of this post will indeed spoil something major, so if you haven’t read Cerebu ..read more

So I’ve had a mostly-working eye out for one of these for a while. One had been on the eBays with torn and missing pages, so I kept waiting for a copy that didn’t suck to show up on there for a halfway-reasonable price. And lo, my patience did pay off, as a complete copy of the Nancy Better Little Book from 1946 finally made an appearance: This volume measures around 4 by 4 inches (maybe a little taller than it is wide). Whitman, the publisher, put out several books in this format, mostly under the name “Big Little Books” which may be more familiar to most of you. Here’s a look at the spine ..read more

So Thom H. and Chris V brought up the X-Files comics in my movie adaptation post from a week or so ago. Okay, X-Files comics are technically a TV show adaptation, though it would get a couple of movies eventually. I’ve written about the X-Files comic before, a whole ten years ago (and it’s weird to read about me processing a collection of old comics for the previous place of employment and not my own store). Anyway, way back then I wrote about how when that first issue (picured above) originally came out in the mid-1990s, the crash still affecting the market, we were caught off-guard by how m ..read more

A couple more follow-ups on the movie adaptations post: Cassandra Miller mentions the adaptations for Dark Crystal and Raiders of the Lost Ark, of which I’d only ever read the former. I remember being very impressed by the detailed art in that comic, though I can’t remember who did it at the moment. Hang on a sec. [TEMPUS FUGIT] Ah, ’twas Bret Blevins that did the deed, with inking by Vince Colletta, Rick Bryant and Richard Howell. It was an appealingly done adaptation as I recall, fitting the story into about 50 pages over two standard comic books (or in one Marvel Super Special magazine. Ala ..read more

EVERYONE, HOLD EVERYTHING: I’ll get back to movie comics next time, but first I must address this inquiry from Matthew Murray: “…Ignoring condition, what is the ‘least valuable’ comic? Or, since that question is more or less unanswerable, what would the criteria be that you could use to narrow down this search?” It’s very hard to point to a specific comic as being “least valuable,” because as Thom H. says further down in the comments “…Someone somewhere will pay money for any first issue.” And if I may amend that, someone out there could pay money for any comic so long as there’s someone ..read more

More movie comic talk! Here comes JohnJ with “Plus comic adaptations of movies also bear the occasional mistake by the artist. Kirby putting a helmet on Bowman in ‘2001’ before the explosive bolts scene still rankles me. Not as much because he did it but for the fact that God knows how many people saw the art before publication and nobody caught it? I have to believe Kirby would have appreciated the opportunity to fix that but if nobody told him, how could he?” Ah, yes, the famous Jack Kirby adaptation of Kubrick’s film: If you haven’t had a chance to check out this treasury edition, do you ..read more

So I spotted on the back of the newest Marvel Previews an add for the forthcoming Star Wars comic book Ahsoka, starring the character who came to prominence in animation and recently jumped into live action portrayed by Rosario Dawson. A “fan-favorite” in the classic sense, as folks do seem to genuinely like the character, and at least at my shop toys and comics based on her usually do quite well. The text of the ad reads “Ahsoka Tano gets her her own miniseries adaptation” and I groaned a little bit, as I realized it’s not new stories, but comic book retellings of the story from the recent D ..read more

So last time I was talking about Carmine Infantino’s alleged list of “things what you put onna cover to make a funnybook sell.” It’s just one of those things that’s generally common shared knowledge in the comics world. But like many things that are common shared knowledge, there’s more to the story, and to the rescue is Comics Worth Reading‘s Johanna, who drops a link to a Bluesky interaction between Mark Waid (editor of that Secret Origins comic I presented last time) and Kurt Busiek, a couple of comics fellas who obviously know more about what’s going on here than I do. In short, publisher ..read more