Comics Revue

The latest Previews catalog shows how some publishers are adapting in order to meet the new minimum orders required by Diamond. As pointed out in various places, Buenaventura Press for example is offering a "Comics Revival Previews Excluse 3-Pak", a $11.95 shrink-wrapped package containing Eric Haven's The Aviatrix, Ted May's Injury #3, and Lisa Hanawalt's I Want You (comics that if published separately probably wouldn't have met Diamond's minimums).




Other publishers are taking similar measures. When I was reaching the end of the solicitations I noticed something: Comics Revue wasn't listed. Comics Revue is a monthly 64-page anthology of classic newspaper strips that has been published since 1983. Currently in its 277th (!) issue, the magazine is something that (in its current format) could only survive in the direct market. I admit I was worried when I noticed there was no listing for the magazine in the latest Previews catalog, so I decided to ask publisher Rick Norwood about the situation. His response was:

Diamond will (knock wood) still carry Comics Revue. But to meet the Diamond minimum order on each issue, I have to publish six double issues each year instead of twelve single issues. So, no issue in September. First double issue in October. On the other hand, to comply with Diamond's demands, I had to raise the cover price to $16 for each double issue. If you subscribe, you can lock in the old price -- $45 for one year, $90 for two years.

I explain all this in the editorial in CR 278, on its way to your dealer now.

The magazine currently reprints strips such as Gasoline Alley (the Dick Moores strips), Krazy Kat dailies, Harold Gray's Little Orphan Annie, Roy Crane's Buz Sawyer, Milton Caniff's Steve Canyon, Dan Barry's Flash Gordon, and V.T. Hamlin's Alley Oop, among others. Comics Revue was an essential part of my monthly comics reading when I started buying it regularly, in the dark mid-to-late 1990's period in which few publishers were issuing book collections of newspaper strips. And even in today's current bonanza of reprint projects, Comics Revue is still worth reading for its selection of strips and its attention to detail.

Rick Norwood also adds the following:

I know there are a lot of people out there who would love Comics Revue if they knew it exists, but it is hard to get the message out. I was at the recent New York Comics Con, and people I talked to about Comics Revue would say things like -- my comics dealer said it was no longer published or -- my comics dealer says he can't order it from Diamond.

[T]he new format will have eight pages of color, including The Phantom in Return of the Sky Band. Also starting in October, the first English language reprint of the very first Mandrake story.

Personally, I think this new format might be an improvement over the current one (it reminds me in a way of how the Comics Journal has evolved during the past few years), and I'm looking forward to seeing it. Hopefully there will still be a place in today's marketplace for this magazine and the strips it contains.

You'll never guess the identity of our surprise mystery villain!

"It can't -- It can't be!"

"No! It can't be!" "But it is! I've sensed it all along! I just wouldn't let myself believe it!"

"Oh my God!"

"Why didn't I see it? WHY?!"

"Oh my, God!"



Courtesy of:

Stan Lee, John Romita, Sal Buscema, 1969:





Gary Friedrich, John Romita, 1971:


Gary Friedrich, Sal Buscema, 1972 (a reveal so cool, it had to be spread over two issues):






Steve Englehart, Frank Robbins, Joe Giella, 1975:



Jack Kirby, Mike Royer, 1977:


Roger McKenzie, Sal Buscema, Mike Esposito, John Tartaglione, 1978:




J.M. DeMatteis, Mike Zeck, 1981:


Mark Gruenwald, Larry Alexander, Bud LaRosa, 1991:




Mark Waid, Ron Garney, Scott Koblish, 1995:

Batman R.I.P. 1967

From TV Tornado 5, (Feb. 11, 1967):

Horror in the Nursery

I recently found a copy of the March 27, 1948 issue of Collier's, which includes an article written by Judith Crist on Dr. Fredric Wertham's crusade against crime comics. The complete article (along with the original accompanying photos of child models re-enacting the testimonies of children quoted in the article) is included below.

For many years comic-book fans have had a very simplistic and somewhat inaccurate version of the history behind Dr. Wertham and the creation of the Comics Code (some of the most common myths: "Dr. Wertham found that all juvenile delinquents read comics and therefore claimed that comics were the sole reason for juvenile delinquency", or "The Comics Code was created to put EC Comics out of business"). Recent scholarship has given us a more balanced view of Dr. Wertham, suggesting that his research wasn't as shoddy as most fans believe, and that there were strong reasons for regulating the horror and crime comics cranked out by opportunistic publishers.

The article below is still mildly sensationalistic at times (and that's not counting the staged photos), but it's worth reading in its entirety for the chance to read Wertham in his own words, a few years before the publication of Seduction of the Innocent.

Skizz

I recently bought a copy of DC/Rebellion's edition of Alan Moore's and Jim Baikie's SKIZZ, a minor work from the period in which the "British Invasion" at DC was just starting.

It's a competent work with some touches of the usual Moore wit. The main characters, Skizz (the alien) and Roxy (the teenager who finds him), are convincingly handled, but the remaining characters aren't very fleshed out. I had read the work some years ago, and therefore wasn't very disappointed by this re-reading, I already knew that this wasn't as good as THE BALLAD OF HALO JONES or the work Moore was doing for "Warrior" magazine at the time.

One thing I noticed this time, and which I don't know if it's a problem exclusive to this edition or if it's something carried from the previous collection published by Titan Books in the 1980's, is that the book omits a page from the original serialization in "2000 AD". I noticed that one chapter was noticeably longer than the other chapters, went to look at my library of "2000 AD" scans (kept, ahem, strictly for research purposes), and found that yes, one splash page from issue #329 of "2000 AD" was left out. This page should go between pages 88 and 89 of the DC/Rebellion edition. Page 89 in this edition also alters some of the dialog in the first panel. As a public service, the first two pages of the "Skizz" chapter in 2000 AD #329 are included here.

Marvel and DC take legal action against comics torrent site

Marvel Comics recently announced its intentions to sell their comics online. In an interview posted at CBR, Marvel publisher Dan Buckley is asked about the existence of illegal comics downloading, and he answers as follows:

One of the benefits of this launch is that it provides many of our fans with the opportunity to "legally" read our comics. We sincerely hope that this service offering will curb these "illegal" downloading activities. The music industry's reactions to the illegal downloading did help us with us the formation of our business strategy, but it was not the driving factor behind our business model.

It turns out that Marvel (along with DC) is doing more than "hoping". In the same interview, Buckley says that Marvel will be evaluating illegal download sites on a case by case basis. The following announcement was posted a couple of days ago at Z-Cult FM, a torrent site for downloading comics.

We got legal letters from both Marvel and DC Comics who have been working together to send us these legal threats. We are currently dealing with the legal issues and they have given us 3 days before they are forced to take anymore action.

Z-Cult FM website was put offline [...] after I got the email while in work and issued a code red alert (we have drills also 5 times a year). We decide [sic] putting the site offline was best course of action to analyse the situation and decide our best course of action. We have confirmed one of the legal letters is 100% from DC Comics when a phone call was made to DC Comics who confirmed the email and its contents. As of today we was unable to contact Marvel and we are trying again tomorrow just to 100% confirm it.

Today we decided it was time to bring site back online but without the torrent and download sections. One of Marvels demands was we take down Z-Cult FM for good but we will never let the main Z-Cult FM site die even if that means torrent free.

We are currently deciding our future and working on it as we speak. We will do our best to keep everyone happy but our future decissions might cause some of our users to think we have given in, but this isn't the case, we are just currently working through this situation and taking the best course of action to keep the site up and our staff safe.

Z-Cult FM is a site that has operated for a few years, with the bigger publishers being aware of its existence for some time. The site usually contained links for downloading (via bit torrent) scans of comics of all genres, publishers, and decades; including the biggest publishers' latest releases.

The scanning and pirating of comics will continue in the near future (there are still many other sites in which these comics are available for free), but Marvel and DC taking joint action against the best-known sites surely will have some effect. My guess is that new sites will pop up to fill the void left by Z-Cult FM and the also recently-shut down Demonoid, but that some of these new sites may end up having more restricted memberships (an "only by invitation" system).

More upcoming strip collections

The Scorchy Smith collection mentioned in the previous post is now available for pre-order. Meanwhile, Dean Mullaney writes over at the Comic Strip Classics yahoogroup that "my old friend Denis Kitchen is now onboard as a Contributing Editor for the Scorchy book."

Another great comic strip, Floyd Gottfredson's Mickey Mouse is apparently also being reprinted. However, unlike other recent comic strip projects, this doesn't seem to be a complete reprint of the strip, but rather a "Best of" collection, probably due in part to racial sensivity issues. For a look at a previous attempt to reprint some of the strips that probably won't be included in this new collection, see Jim Korkis' article about "The Uncensored Mouse".

Rumors have been flying for some time about an upcoming Complete Beetle Bailey collection, reprinting Mort Walker's humor strip (I first saw this mentioned in a R. C. Harvey article in The Comics Journal some months ago). Checker Publishing seems to be the likeliest candidate for the American edition, but in the meantime you can see the European edition here.

The project is apparently being done thanks to European interest in the series (where Walker's strips are quite popular). I've been coincidentally reading the Mort Walker: Conversations book recently which (while not one of the best books of the "Conversations" series) shows that Walker did Beetle Bailey all by himself for several years before it became a produced-by-committee strip. The early volumes of this new reprint series then, while not as historically important as the Peanuts or Popeye reprints, should still allow us a welcome look into a lesser-known period of this strip, in which there was still a single creative force in charge of it. (While the current Beetle Bailey strip isn't particularly noteworthy, I still have fond memories of older strips I've read in paperback collections.)

Finally, we have news of another comic strip-related project, this time the 5 issues of the Shmoo comic book, based on the character created by Al Capp in the Li'l Abner strip. Dark Horse has already done some Al Capp collections in the past (four volumes of Sundays done while Frank Frazetta worked as an assistant/ghost artist). While I've read those previous volumes (and most of the compilations published by Kitchen Sink), I know very little about these particular comic books. They're apparently credited to the "Al Capp Studio" rather than to Capp himself, probably indicating that this may be a diluted version of Capp's usual acerbic humor.