As an alternative to parades or football, may we suggest, these 39 never-reprinted Kirby Monsters comics at Philip Parodayco’s Monster Blog. Hours of browsing fun.

Most of Jack Kirby’s 188 pre-superhero stories have been reprinted; here’s the 39 that have NEVER been, in chronological order. As collectors provide me with scans from their original issues, I’ll be posting these stories on Monster Blog for your eternal enjoyment and edification!

Tom Brevoort points out what we’ve been discovering as we’ve cleaned up both home and office: a lot of these reprint books can quietly be…ignored.

Now, don’t get me wrong—I love the fact that so much of this material is readily available, and every reader makes their own evaluation of the work. By the same token, for every real classic run, stories of undeniable merit, there also seems to be a compilation of journeyman quality, or even just out-and out hackwork. This is especially true on the ESSENTIAL collections (and their differently-named counterparts uptown) where entire runs are being reprinted sequentially.

I’m a sentimental for the books of a certain period as anyone you’ll find (in my case, the books of the ’70s, when i started reading this stuff), but most of that sentiment is fueled by nostalgia rather than the quality of the material. I realize that a lot of these books really aren’t all that objectively good. For example, with rare exception, most of the run of MARVEL TEAM-UP is unspectacular. It’s fun, but not especially meaningful. And don’t get me started on the misnomer of ESSENTIAL WEREWOLF BY NIGHT.

[Via Graeme.]

Ben Samuels’ Classic Golden Age Comic Book Cover Gallery is an excellent resource for old comic book covers, with informative commentary. Browsing the horror gallery sounds like a fine way to kill time until the trick or treaters show up tonight.

BTW the moral of the story shown above? “Don’t eat radium!” A point to ponder…

I went to see BLADE RUNNER: THE FINAL CUT at the last night of its Ziegfield run here in NYC. Yes, we lucky bastards in NYC and LA got to see the final restored version on the big screen and the rest of you didn’t. I’m sorry.

I purposely didn’t read about what had been tinkered with for this actual Ridley Scott endorsed version (the previous Director’s Cut was mostly put together by Warners). So I came to it fresh. I could tell a few scenes and dialog had been changed — notably they finally explain that TWO replicants were killed already, accounting for all six — but it was mostly the sound editing that stood out. There just seemed to be a lot more ambient noise and background electro-noodling. It seemed distracting in places.

But otherwise, it was perfect. While the in-depth comparisons will await the home dvd release in December, two other notable fixes were that Zhora’s death scene has been reshot — God bless Joanna Cassidy — and the actual take of the unicorn scene was used. (There’s also much more blood when Roy kills Tyrell.) The final shot of the dove has also been improved. In this version, it’s much clearer that Deckard is a replicant, but I couldn’t say exactly how or why I got that impression. It was very subtle, but it worked.
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Steven Grant’s Permanent Damage column is always good reading, for but the last two weeks he’s been running SPARKY WATTS comics by
Boody Rogers. Old timey goodness, just like Pepperidge Farm.

Fred Hembeck reveals that a gargantuan collection of his work is on its way from Image which is great news for fans of knee squiggles.

Come February, 2008, Image Publishing will be gearing up to release THE NEARLY COMPLETE ESSENTIAL HEMBECK ARCHIVES OMNIBUS, featuring over 900 (!) pages of material written and drawn by cartoonist Fred Hembeck (who, in this particular instance of shameless self-promotion, is the actual individual typing in these very words), culled from the past three decades.

[snip] That’s how this whole thing started out, y’see–my old buddy (and veteran comics embellisher) Al Gordon’s suggested I put together a collection of each and every one of those old cartoons, including all the ones that had never been reprinted in a more permanent format previously. Al then proceeded to get his pal–and Image Publisher–Erik Larsen interested in the notion, and once things got rolling along, Erik encouraged me to expand the scope of the book to include a wide variety of additional material as well, some of which had never been seen before and some of which had turned up only in the most obscure of places.

The recent story about an unearthed copy of DETECTIVE #27 has begun to draw scrutiny as it appears the copy may have been doctored to remove flaws:

“He (the seller) called on Sept. 22 before stopping in around 1:30 p.m., and I spoke with him until around 4:30 p.m.,” Kropf said. “He brought in 70 books, all of which he claimed were found in an attic and had belonged to his grandfather.”
According to Eide and Kropf, as they were sorting through the books, they noticed that several Detective Comics, including the #27 appeared to vary in size. They both said this led them to think that some of the books may have been trimmed, meaning the edges have been cut to make the book appear less worn thus increasing the value.

“Of the 70 books, I would say about half of the books had been trimmed,” Eide said.

Kropf added that he believed more had been done than just trimming of the books.

However, there were some inconsistencies with the books that led Eide and Kropf to believe the books were “not from an attic collection” but were from a pieced together collection.

So much for the magic attic theory.

Paging Wimbledon Green!Newsarama reports on the thrilling tale of some people cleaning out a hosue who found a copy of DETECTIVE #27, the first appearance of the Batman, which is valued at over $500,000 in mint condition. This copy has a bit of wear, but Todd McDevitt of New Dimension Comics, in PA still should have no problem finding a buyer:

How does a retailer find a buy for a book like this? As surprising as it may be to some, there are buyers looking for these types of book who literally have the money standing by – although there’s an element of matchmaking involved with the business transaction.

“Word about a find like this gets out very quickly,” McDevitt said. “As I mentioned, I made one phone call and had a buyer the next day, but decided to hold onto it for now. Every dealer has the ‘I know a guy who wants that book’ story. The early enthusiasm for it makes me more confident that I made the right decision, and I suspect after the word spreads that ‘right guy’ will surface. It took a while for me to sell the All-American #16, but once I found the customer who it made a fit with, it sold right away to him.”

Kind of like adopting a kitten. Except it’s a super-rare comic book.

Following tons of international controversy, PW reports that Little, Brown has canceled the US version of Tintin in the Congo:

Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, which had been planning to publish Tintin in the Congo, a book criticized for its racist, Colonial-era depictions of Africans, has quietly pulled the title from its fall list, PW has learned. The publisher also said it will not include the book in a forthcoming box set of all 24 books in the Tintin series.

Publicist Melanie Chang did not give a reason for the standalone book’s cancellation, but of its omission from the box set she said, “Given the controversy surrounding the Congo title, we felt including it in the box set would eclipse the true intention of the collection, which is to showcase Hergé’s extraordinary art and his remarkable contribution to the graphic arts.”

Although Belgian-born Herge later repudiated the views of this early work, it has long been criticized for its racist and colonialist views — repugnant today but common for the time.

Similar problems have long scotched even the concept of an English version of Tezuka’s KIMBA, THE WHITE LION, as PWCW recently reported:

PWCW: Any interest from Vertical in licensing Kimba the Lion [a classic manga and anime work by Tezuka ]?

IM: We’re interested, but the depiction of black people in Kimba is problematic. If everyone can for a moment put their sensitivity aside then we can do it. Otherwise people may be offended by the stereotypical drawing of Africans. A disclaimer might not be enough. And the author no longer being alive, it can’t be redrawn. If people promise to be understanding, we will publish it.

Of course, we would first have to talk to Tezuka Productions, too. They might have their reservations. I know for a fact that they are very careful about Kimba. They got into trouble in Japan in the early 1990s when certain groups said that it should be taken off the shelves—and it was. So they added a disclaimer and now you can buy it, but you don’t see it that much in bookstores.

Our thoughts? While all of these contemporary treatments are promlematic — like Eisner’s Ebony in THE SPIRIT — pretending they never existed doesn’t seem to be very useful, either.

Today’s comic book option is JOHNNY DYNAMITE by Max Allan Collins and Terry Beatty, a hard boiled copper whose adventures once ran in the back of MS TREE. Now, quoth Variety Law & Order producer Dick Wolf and DISTURBIA helmer DJ Caruso are aiming to bring it to the small screen using that green screen technology that makes all the comic book movies look so ginchy:

Producers are looking to capture the very unique comicbook style of the “Dynamite” universe, which couldn’t be done with traditional location shoots. Skein isn’t expected to be any less expensive than a traditional show and, in fact, could be a bit more costly.

Nonetheless, without the greenscreen technology, a show as ambitious as “Dynamite” wouldn’t be possible on a TV budget, a person familiar with smallscreen costs said.

Show involves a private dick who goes to Sin City ( that is, Vegas) in search of his lost girlfriend only to dig up more than he expected…as in SATAN.

Purge week continues here at Publishers Weekly. Yesterday, Calvin, Ada and The Beat boxed up about 1500 comics — that was two years worth of comics from a handful of major publishers. We won’t name them to avoid embarrassment, but let’s just say…it’s a lot of comics. We had already gone through the piles and picked out things we wanted for our own collections but that left….1500 comics.

How do you dispose of 1500 comics pamphlets in New York City? We tried calling a few of the local comics shops but no one wanted a collection of that size. I emphasize, we weren’t trying to make a killing on these comics, we were just trying to get rid of them without throwing them in a dumpster.

The problem of floppy disposal is especially acute here in New York. Since the folks from Marvel and DC work here, and they all get TONS of free comics there will always be a glut of people trying to liquidate these pamphlets. DC employees were at one time forbidden from doing ANYTHING with their unwanted comps, and from what we hear still are, but there are still a LOT of comics floating around the city.

We tried asking a few places that sometimes take donations if they wanted these floppies and they didn’t. No one wants to take the trouble of storing pamphlets when the graphic novels are just around the corner. After the weekly fix, it seems, the pamphlet is as useless as a phonebook-sized Japanese manga weekly. printed on rough newsprint. These are disposable, the tankubon are the permanent forms.

Still it was sad…we picked a few books unlikely to be collected out of the pile — SOLO, for instance. While there were a lot of total wastes of tress — GODDAM there are a lto of comics published every week — we couldn’t help but note all the great covers and great design and so on. Every comic was somebody’s baby at one point, a book that was put together with great hopes and pride to get out and make a lasting addition to the medium.

And now, so many are just boxed up paper.

We know many of you reading this are feeling little pity for us and our free comics, and it’s true. The Beat doesn’t blame you a bit. But we still have to get the office cleaned up…and that means something must be done with these piles and piles of comics books.

UPDATE 9/24: We decided to ship these comics to the troops. It seems like the right thing to do. Thanks to everyone for their suggestions and volunteering. Rest assured there will be more clean ups around here, and we’ll try to hit some of the other very worthy causes on the next round.

§ The LA times looks at the practice of “slabbing which despite what you think, is not a preference you can check on Suicide Girls.

“It’s changed the nature of the hobby, it’s turned comic books into a medium of exchange instead of a medium of entertainment,” groaned James Friel, who works at Comic Relief, the longtime landmark store in Berkeley. To Friel, who has been collecting comics since 1958, “it makes these books a sealed-up commodity. You can’t read them. It makes me sad. Some of these books will be sealed up forever.”

§ Neil Gaiman reviews the final issue of the WEEKLY WORLD NEWS:

So I picked up the final copy today, because I was passing a cash register and it was the last one after all. Even allowing for the probability that it was filled with articles they’d commissioned and hadn’t run because they weren’t very good, or that they were reprints, it… well, the whole tone of the thing felt wrong. The articles were just silly. It wasn’t story logic any longer. A baby gets delivered in an avocado because the sperm donation got mixed with avocado sushi… There wasn’t the feeling reading it that anyone could have believed it. Not children, not the stupid, not someone who’d been born and raised on Mars and this was the only thing they’d read. It was like the joke had become nobody could believe this stuff. And now nobody was buying it. It had a Sergio Aragones drawing though, and some comics…

§ Indian tech writer has the score on DC vs Marvelas he analyses proposed video game team-ups:

The two belong to different universes, but most comic book veterans would agree that they are both excellent leaders, strong, skilled, as well as resourceful. Playing co-op with these two would be a great experience. Captain America boasts of superhuman strength and agility; and as for Batman, he is the most skilled mortal ever. One can demolish a tank with his bare hands, and the other can form a battle strategy to defeat an army within minutes. Maybe he should have had 300 Spartans behind him, no offense to King Leonidas. I believe this would be the ultimate combination of strength and intelligence in a game.

§ The Escapist examines the myths and realities of the fanboy stereotype vis a vis gamers:

The gaming community’s perception of the stereotypical fanboy neatly mirrors the public perception of the stereotypical gamer, generally described as a male aged 13-16, whose potent mix of adolescent hormones and insecurity cause him to lash out against slights both real and imagined. Obviously not every identified fanboy conforms to this rather unflattering stereotype, and as with the exaggerated “comic book guy,” this teenage straw man is probably inaccurate more often than not. image However, if we set aside questions about the accuracy of the imagery and explore why the stereotype exists, we can identify how the unique characteristics of the game industry shaped the fanboy into who he is today.

§Speaking of video games, game designer/guru Ken Rolston points out some fundamental truths about storytelling and human nature:

He explains that linear forms like film and novels are better at telling stories than games—something that’s looking to be flat-out true at the moment—and concluded that inference (such as the ruins in Morrowin) is the best way for gamers to experience compelling narrative which can, at peak, invoke an intangible melancholy.

In the Renaissance, melancholy was a sign of genius. We don’t think he was necessarily referring to that interpretation.

“Intangible melancholy” is truly the greatest result of art. Kotaku has a longer transcript and it’s absorbing reading.

If you’ve noticed a bit of slacking here at CBM of late it’s because…well, it’s August and we’re slacking. Pretty simple. Call it the Summer Fun Blogging Hours. Not that we could have as much fun as Betty and Veronica are having in heir Summer Fun special, because that just isn’t possible, but we are attempting to wrest some fun out of this summer. Not that we’ve been to the beach yet — or will be going this summer — or been to PS 1, or done too much of anything usually deemed “summery.” But we’re trying, by God. We’re trying. Later this week we’re going on a sabbatical to Ultima Thule, but hopefully it will give us a chance to catch up and even work on a few longer pieces since based on our own observations, pretty much everyone else has Summer Fun on the mind, too.

In the spirit of the season, we will be posting more Summer Fun covers this week. Because they just don’t make them like that any more. The time when a comics anthology was a children’s companion on the long drive to the lake house are long gone. Today you’re more likely to see a grown man bringing some comics with him on the train. Such is progress.

SHE was a beautiful showgirl in the Ziegfield Follies. HE was a dashing young cartoonist/illustrator. It was the ’20s, things were roaring, and whatever went on between them they took to their graves. But the art that Wesley Morse gave to Avonne Taylor she kept for 70 years, only to have it found by her grand nephew, Kirk Taylor after her death in 1992.

If you don’t know Wesley Morse, he’s best known as the creator of BAZOOKA JOE, but is one of only two identified artists on the Tijuana Bibles, and in between he did all sorts of things, like design the Copa Girl and, more crucially, he was the illustrator for the Ziegfield Follies in the ’20s, which is how he met Taylor.

Kirk Taylor writes to say he’s started a website for the Taylor/Morse Collection, as he’s dubbed the artwork found in Avonne’s collection. Only a few things are up so far, but he’s working on getting more of it posted and has spoken to Jay Lynch and folks at Topps about Morse as well. A minor blip of history? Sure, but also a touching historical snapshot of a world long gone. But not forgotten.

Mark Evanier reports on the passing of cartoonist Roger Armstrong, a very prolific cartoonist whose work was doubtless known to anyone who read kids comics from the 40s on. He worked on numerous Dell/Western/Gold Key titles, before moving on to Hanna-Barbera strips, then Bugs Bunny and Little Lulu in the 70s. He also drew the daily Ella Cinders. It was his teaching that he will really be remembered for, Evanier recalls.

Roger Armstrong, a giant in the world of cartooning and a teacher to countless art students, passed away in his sleep on Thursday at the age of 89.

This is a very difficult obit to write because Roger did so much and meant so much to so many people. I want to underscore, so it doesn’t get lost in the career details, that while he had an amazing life as a cartoonist, he had an equally important — perhaps more important — life as an art teacher and watercolor artist. His landscapes were exhibited in every major gallery in Southern California and hundreds of accomplished artists cite him as a great tutor and source of inspiration. He encouraged so many to paint and draw, and led by example.

Mike Lynch has a bit more. You can see Armstrong’s later watercolors at his website.

©2007 Roger Arnstrong

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Via Flog.

Here’s today’s offbeat entertainment item: the filmmaking duo behind WHAT THE BLEEP DO WE KNOW has optioned the memoirs of Superman writer Alvin Schwartz:

Global Intelligence Press has optioned “An Unlikely Prophet” and its sequel, “A Gathering of Selves,” with Betsy Chasse developing, producing and directing the project. Kate Montana will also produce.

Chasse was a producer, director and writer on 2004’s “What the Bleep,” a metaphysical exploration of the impact of quantum physics on everyday life that grossed a surprising $11 million.

Schwartz began writing Batman and Superman stories during WWII, working for DC Comics until 1958. He also wrote the beat novel “Blowtop” in 1948 and, nearly 50 years later, published “An Unlikely Prophet,” in which he details the transformation of Superman into a more complex character.

Paul Karasik has set up a Fletcher Hanks website.

Can’t someone make a Fletcher hanks plug-in for the iTunes Visualizer?

[Thanks to PDF for link]

Nowadays when people think of Charlton Comics, if they do at all, it’s only because WATCHMEN started as a reinvention of Charlton’s superhero line, or or perhaps in fond remembrance of E-MAN. But they were a full service comics line that published everything from THE PARTRIDGE FAMILY to TIMMY THE TIMID GHOST to FIGHTIN’ MARINES. And as WFMU’s Beware of the Blog recalls, they were all pretty much dreadful.

Although there were plenty of comic book labels churning out poorly rendered crap while labels like Dell, EC, and National Periodical/DC received all the attention, no other peripheral comic group lasted as long as Charlton. The company was a cringe inducing comic book presence on newsstands for an incredible forty years, from nineteen forty-six to eighty-six. An impressive run for a company who’s output was often unreadable.

Much more nostalgic badness in the link.

[Thanks to DW for the link.]