This beauty was purchased on eBay and scanned by reader Demeted Derek, who kindly agreed to let me share some pages with you. Derek first contacted Mars Will Send No Moreback in 2018 nearly six years after I shared the original four issues of the Walt Disney Black Hole comic published by Whitman. Issue four is extremely rare because, as far as I can tell, it was recalled.
Issues five and six were printed by a German company as part of the series Das Schwarze Loch. From what little information I can find, it seems the original art was hand-lettered in English, but the German edition replaced that with typed German. Below is an example page of the original art, followed by the full-color German version.
Shout out to user bellerules on the CGCComics board for posting, in 2010, the two original pages he purchased, one of which is featured above. Shout out to user HugoDeVries for starting that forum thread in 2009 with information about the German issues.
As Hugo explained, all the issues of the German series were double-length, combining pairs of the English issues into one. That’s why you see “Heft 3” on the cover shown above: “Issue 3”.
Heft 1 combined issues 1 and 2—the full movie adaptation that was also printed as the single-volume trade paperback I read a million times as a kid. Heft 2 combined issues 3 and 4, and Heft 3 combines the two unreleased and final issues (5 and 6). You can tell the final issue is intended as a true conclusion to the series—even if, like me, you don’t speak German.
Let’s have a look.
The first story is called Retter des Universums, or Savior of the Universe. (Thank you, Google Translate.) I have no idea what is happening most of the time. But after a tour to see an alien sloth, a glowing crystal, and a gnarly old woman who is really intense about her scroll collection, we go for a ride on space unicorns!
Suddenly, a robot battle breaks out—and what a time to be wearing a toga and sandals.
Then things get really sinister. An elderly dude explains what horrible mischief our old enemy Reinhardt is up to. Reinhardt was the evil space captain who died in the movie, but here he is again, causing trouble. He excels at looking like a raging psycho while his robots do bad things to people.
The next story is Reinhardts Rückkehr, or Reinhardt’s Return. It opens with a ton of discussion, but then we get another unicorn ride.
The equestrian journey ends with Kate meeting a random robot in a space coffin. Why is he the world’s saddest robot? I assume it has something to with Reinhardt being a jerk to him. Who knows?
Our heroes do what anyone would do in that situation. They visit Reinhardt to give him a scroll.
It seems like a nice gift to me, but Reinhardt is livid about the scroll. There’s just no pleasing some people! He captures our heroes and makes them watch while he verbally abuses old people in the middle of their Shakespeare performance.
Alright, I admit it. I am just making up what I think the plot might be. I warned you I don’t speak German! The following panel from one of the original English pages suggests that our heroes were not captured by Reinhardt but invited him to the alien toga party. Close enough.
Here’s the coolest part. Max, the big red robot, freaks out and destroys Reinhardt—who also turns out to be a robot!
Off with his head! Another robot battle breaks out, and things get pretty intense.
In the end, our heroes bust up all the evil robots, get on their old ship, and peacefully sail through another black hole. Their intended destination is their original home planet — but wouldn’t it be fun if they ended up someplace even weirder?
And there you have it! If you want physical copies of this German edition, you probably need to go to eBay for them. I have never seen them listed anywhere else. A big Thank You to Derek for sharing this rare treasure and completing a quest that began so many years ago. You are truly Das Retter des Universums!
Continuing our tribute to The Black Hole comic books, here is another complete issue for you to enjoy: Issue #4, often touted as one of the rarest of the rare Whitmans!
Collector’s Guide: From Black Hole #4; Whitman/Walt Disney, 1980. Note: Issues #1-2 contain the same material as the 1979 Golden Press Black Hole which is superior in color and paper quality!
Click to sample the Jack Kirby version of Black Hole.
Continuing our tribute to The Black Hole comic books, here is another complete issue for you to enjoy! Issue #3 departs from the adaptation of the movie and begins new, serialized adventures.
Collector’s Guide: From Black Hole #3; Whitman/Walt Disney, 1980. Note: Issues #1-2 contain the material from the 1979 Golden Press Black Hole which is superior in color and paper quality!
Click to sample the Jack Kirby version of Black Hole.
Continuing our tribute to The Black Hole comic books, here is another complete issue for you to enjoy!
Collector’s Guide: From Black Hole #2; Whitman/Walt Disney, 1980. Note: Issues #1-2 adapt the movie. They contain the same material as the 1979 Golden Press magazine-sized paperback The Black Hole which is superior in color and paper quality!
Click to sample the Jack Kirby version of Black Hole.
Continuing our tribute to The Black Hole comic books, here is the complete first issue for you to enjoy!
Collector’s Guide: From Black Hole #1; Whitman/Walt Disney, 1980. Note: Issues #1-2 adapt the movie. They contain the same material as the 1979 Golden Press magazine-sized paperback The Black Hole which is superior in color and paper quality!
Click to sample the Jack Kirby version of Black Hole.
When Jack Kirby worked on a comic book adaptation of Disney’s Black Hole, he probably never dreamed Disney would one day buy his old employer, Marvel Comics. But such strange reality warps are just another day beyond the event horizon of the Black Hole!
We found these scans of Kirby’s work on Black Hole quite by accident, looking for issues #11 and #12 of the Charles Burns series by the same name. Some of them are in French and the pages we’ve collected are incomplete. But, it’s an interesting footnote in Kirby history nonetheless.
What struck us about this adaptation is that we grew up with an oversized paperback version of this same story, by a completely different art team. That was the Black Hole as published by Golden Press in 1979. It was a trade paperback before trade paperbacks were all the rage! We read it a million times or two — always an amazing adventure. We bought a copy of it last year. Turns out, it’s still awesome!
In the next few days, we’ll have a look at the four-issue Black Hole series by Whitman. The first two issues contain the same material as the Golden Press paperback we mentioned above: a straight adaptation of the movie, with some of these same scenes Jack Kirby depicted. But #3 and #4 demonstrate intent to serialize the concept, along the lines of Lost in Space or Star Trek. Come back and check them out!
We’re not the first to blog about Kirby’s Black Hole adapatation. ComicMix has a scan from a Comic Zone reprint of the first part of Kirby’s Black Hole. Two more of these panels appear in Booksteve’s Black Hole post. You’ll see the Disney Adventures subsidiary completely re-colored one of the pages in our gallery. Space:1970 has a piece of original uncolored Black Hole artwork by Kirby.
Finally, you will find a reproduction of only the pencils from one of these pages in issue #54 of the Jack Kirby Collector, available for free download in PDF. Their article deals with the Jack Kirby family and the Disney purchase of Marvel.
The six-issue Avengers story Red Zone shows the Earth’s mightiest heroes confronting a creepy red mist that is killing a whole hell of a lot of American citizens. It ran from issues 65 to 70 in the Avengers series that started in 1998 under the critically acclaimed team of Kurt Busiek and George Pérez, and it was collected in a long out-of-print hardcover edition in 2010. I don’t think it’s complete without issue 64 starring Falcon.
But I just like Falcon. He flies around being awesome and has a hawk for a best friend. Animal friends aretight.
Geoff Johns’ script, with pencils by Oliver Coipel, begins at Mount Rushmore: a quintessentially American icon of national pride and a tragically misguided monument to obliterating indigenous peoples and cultures. Some evil force has chosen to maintain that tradition of murder by releasing a villianous virus in the area, and the Avengers are called in to help. Even super-soldiers need to suit up to confront the crimson contagion.
Hats off to any creative team who takes on the task of crafting a compelling story involving the Jack of Hearts character. But somehow, this tale works by delivering dramatic moments that even make a synthezoid cry as the scarlet sickness leaves a trail of innocent bodies in its wake.
The Avengers pierce the heart of the mysterious viral source, but that turns out to be just one of the pieces of the puzzle some arch-fiend has planned for them, and they inadvertently release more bad guys.
And who is behind this mysterious wave of red death? Did the word “red” give you a clue? Yes, it’s everyone’s second least-favorite Nazi scumbag who has disguised himself as the U.S. Secretary of Defense under a clever anagram of his name.
Captain America is not amused by the Skull’s newfound love for the Über-Capitalist American Way any more than Dr. Doom liked it when the Red Skull tried to take over Latveria. You know you are an especially evil scumbag when both Captain America and Dr. Doom agree you need to get your ass kicked.
Although Cap kickstarted his career by punching Hitler in the face, the Red Skull has some truly evil plans that require Avengers-style teamwork to overcome — teamwork, and a whole lot of punching. So much punching, in fact, that Black Panther ends up smashing the Skull’s stupid bony face and shattering his jaw.
Frickin’ Nazis, dude. Always trying to kill people and be mean to everyone and take over governments with their racist agendas. It’s a good thing that couldneverreallyhappen in America, right? Right? Oh shit.
These seven seven-line poems go with the short story The Singing Spell. The subjects relate to the story, and the first letters of each line spell out the poem’s title. It’s not a form I usually work in, but I thought it would be fun to try something different. These poems now appear inMeteor Mags: The Second Omnibus.
PATCHES
Pressed close to the ground, a solitary huntress hungers to taste what scurries and forages unaware.
Calico colors—brown, black, and white— hide her in the sun-dappled forest floor.
Everything comes down to survival.
BILLION
Before history, I knew you like a light or a lyric or the iridescence of a hummingbird.
Only now, nothing separates us.
NEBULAE
Nurseries of infant stars, expectant giants and black holes hungering for birth, ushered into a theater of light and violent gravity where all who ever lived await eternity’s epilogue.
MINERAL
Maybe next time, I come back a stone. Nowhere to go or escape, just rock.
Alabaster. Limestone.
SERPENT
Sometimes you need to shed everything to find the right skin.
Pent-up explosions emerge as something new.
No one ever mourned the cell she escaped.
FORTUNE
Fate remains silent, only speaking in unsolved mysteries.
Road signs vanish, and travelers lose their way until that unexpected night, when everything at last makes sense.
HIGHWAY
How we got here is less important than why.
Go as far as your heart can take you, and when you reach the arid edge of time, you will find me.
Some of Mags’ adventures began as basic plot ideas, some grew out of an idea for a scene or a piece of dialogue, and some started as a concept about an object or situation I thought it would be fun to write about. The Crystal Core is an example of all three of these possibilities combined.
The plot inspiration goes back to The Battle of Vesta 4, where I realized I had given my pirate crew a too-powerful object: the multidimensional “triglyph”. If I had included the triglyph in that story, the conflict would have been far too easy for the crew to overcome. Rather than address the situation, I decided to ignore it for a while and come back to it later—hopefully with a plausible explanation. Along the way, I wrote 1,000 words of notes on possible narrative paths to take with the triglyph.
While writing Small Flowers, I planted the seeds for the triglyph’s return. Plutonian questioned Mags about why she didn’t use it, and she revealed she had forgotten about it. The epilogue ended on a minor cliffhanger. Mags discovered the triglyph was missing from her armory where she placed it at the end of The Lost Crew of the Volya IX. By then, I’d reworked my original notes into an idea to use the triglyph to terraform Titan.
But as I mentioned in my reflections about Small Flowers, I watched a ton of documentaries that influenced that story and the shorter pieces published with it. I’ve been reading about space, stars, and black holes since I was in third or fourth grade, but I don’t recall learning about the diamond cores of white dwarf stars until early 2020. My mind was blown by the idea that these huge diamonds are burning in outer space, but I didn’t know what to do with that concept. So, I asked a friend what she would do with a huge crystal from space.
She said, “Build a radio.”
That was the moment my plot ideas and my “high concept” intersected, and I knew I needed to write that story. I started cranking out more notes and scenes around the concept, but I was confused by some aspects of crystal radios.
Fortunately, a member of my writers’ workshop (the illustrious Jeff Duntemann) is a ham-radio enthusiast, so I called him. He cleared up my misconceptions, enlightened me about a few missing pieces of the puzzle, and showed me where I needed to patch up the science to achieve some minimum standard of plausibility.
This is one of the best things about having writers, artists, and musicians as friends. I can call them unexpectedly and, without much preamble or small talk, say crazy things such as, “Can you help me build a giant crystal radio from a star core?” That’s how I end up having intriguing and educational conversations for an hour or more about things most people never think about.
The Crystal Core became a unique episode in Mags’ adventures. It has long passages of narration about terraforming Titan and building the giant space radio, scenes where I flexed my prose muscles to see if I could write about science but keep it poetic, beautiful, and interesting. Those scenes alternate with discussions that focus on dialogue and character interaction.
But I wanted to do something even weirder with the story: use multiple narrators. I wanted to get inside the characters’ streams of consciousness when they encountered the new rulers of Titan and got their minds messed with, telepathically.
I’ve read a ton of science-fiction prose and comic books that did similar things, but I sometimes find them difficult to follow. I like challenging narrative techniques in prose and film and comics, but I don’t like it when I feel the author is wanking instead of clearly telling a story in the most effective way possible. As I’ve written before in essays on narrators and points of view, the choice to get creative with narrators or structure needs to be more than a demonstration of how clever the author is. I’m not impressed by being incomprehensible. I’m impressed when the choice of a narrator or structure is perfect because any other choice would not tell the story as effectively.
You can judge for yourself how well I lived up to my own standard. Sometimes my reach exceeds my grasp, and that’s a normal part of growing and improving as a writer. Much of my writing in Mags’ adventures is a journey toward being able to live up to my own expectations about what makes a good story, or what makes beautiful prose, or what is entertaining to read. I feel I get closer to my ideals as the series progresses and, like most writers, I’m sometimes frustrated that I didn’t quite have the “chops” to do justice to some of my earliest stories. But with each story, I work on improving everything from descriptive language to comedic timing, from plotting to character development, and the myriad other things that make up a great story.
The Crystal Core continues a trend that began in the opening scene of Blind Alley Blues, which is a diary entry from Mags. In Small Flowers, I incorporated the idea that Mags writes letters to her somewhat-deceased great-gramma, which gives Mags more opportunities to narrate events in her unique voice. These letters have often been “behind the scenes” projects that never saw print. I wrote a good letter for Voyage of the Calico Tigress, but it didn’t quite fit the overall structure, so I cut it from the final version. With Small Flowers, I tried to weave the letters into the story in integral ways, and The Last Patches Story completely hands over the narrative reins to Mags so she can tell an imaginary bedtime tale about Patches. (One of my original ideas for that story involved using Patches as a first-person narrator, but I didn’t care for how that played out.)
With The Crystal Core, I wanted to extend the boundaries of what was possible with using other members of the pirate crew as narrators, too. Other than Hang My Body on the Pier, which featured excerpts from Great-Gramma’s memoirs, Crystal Core is the first story where anyone but Mags gets a shot at narrating. Dr. Plutonian narrates a scene and, like the scene of Mags’ narration that follows it, it takes place while the telepathic octopuses are disassembling his mind. I set myself the challenge of showing this confusing state of mind while making it absolutely clear to the reader who was talking, what was happening, and why.
I feel like it worked, and initial feedback told me it worked, so I considered why it worked. The text contains details that help, such as Mags’ straight-up telling the readers exactly what she thinks is happening to her mind. But in terms of remaining true to a character’s unique voice when slipping into first-person internal monologue, I think the key to success was the amount of time I have spent living in these characters’ heads for more than half a decade now.
They might have started out as comic-book caricatures, but over the years these characters have become more complex and real people to me. I suspect any writer who spends a serious amount of time on long-form stories will tell you the same thing. When you, as an author, share and invest so much of your life and your thoughts and your feelings with your characters, they undergo what I think of as the Pinocchio Effect. At some magical point or phase in the journey, the characters stop being puppets on your strings and become real to you. They take on a life of their own. They place demands on you. They help you understand yourself in relation to them. You know they are mere fictions, but like the golem of Jewish mythology or the monster of Dr. Frankenstein, they become imbued with their own lifeforce, their own desires, their own path in this world.
I’m lucky, compared to some novelists. Many novelists go through the pain of creating and bringing to life a set of characters that will never be seen again after the novel’s final page. But because I am writing an open-ended, ongoing series with roots that stretch for hundreds of millions of years into the past, and branches that extend beyond the end of our universe, I don’t feel any need to finish working with my characters or close the final page on them. I have all the time in the world to get to know them—or at least, all the time I have remaining on this planet.
By the time I got around to giving Plutonian a scene to narrate, I had spent so many years with him that I felt confident I could write in his voice. He delivered an extended monologue in The Lost Crew of the Volya IX where he told Mags about an event in his past. That was the first scene I ever workshopped, about four years ago now. I love a good monologue, but that’s different from being inside the character’s head, which is what happens in The Crystal Core.
I didn’t know for sure how The Crystal Core would end when I started drafting scenes, but my workshoppers will attest to the fact that I am a big believer in writing the ending before the story is finished. As a writer, I’m not interested in taking a mysterious journey into the unknown by simply starting with the first page of a story and writing until it feels finished. The mysterious journey is the reader’s experience, not the writer’s.
People who write by the seat of their pants often encounter the same problems over and over again: not knowing where they are headed when they are in the middle of the story, and therefore not knowing what scenes or moments of character development matter, or how to advance their plot. They often arrive at unsatisfactory endings, assuming they don’t give up in frustration halfway through—something that’s happened to many writers I know.
My advice? Once you are clear on the characters and their motivations and central conflicts, write an ending! Know where you are going! Writing without knowing how your story ends is like trying to play a game of darts while wearing a blindfold. You might hit the bullseye out of pure chance or luck, but it’s doubtful. If, instead, you draft the ending earlier in the process, then you know what you are aiming for, and you can construct a story that inevitably leads to that conclusion. Yes, the ending might need to be revised by the time you finish the rest of the story, so don’t sweat too many of the little details. A draft of the ending is only there to give yourself the gift of direction and purpose.
For The Crystal Core, I had about half of it drafted before I tackled the ending, but I knew I needed a firm finish to guide me through the middle. I asked myself, “What would be the most logical and consistent ending for a quasi-intelligent and supremely powerful object, especially after it encountered my octopuses?”
The ending is influenced by my love of science-fiction comic books where the fate of the entire universe (or even the multi-verse) is at stake on a daily basis, and it’s a logical development of my push to constantly expand the scope of possibilities within Mags’ adventures. The Crystal Core, like The Last Patches Story, is an attempt to connect the lives of the pirate crew to huge, cosmic-level events.
It was a fun story to write. I enjoyed expanding the boundaries of what I could do with these characters and their universe, connecting the cosmic experience to the personal stories, and seeing how big I could go in fewer than 8,000 words.
Mars Will Send No More is approaching the end of its eighth year, so I’ve been doing maintenance on it, clearing out dead wood and tidying up a bit. With more than 1500 posts, this garden of artistic obsessions requires pruning now and then. But I don’t mind. It’s fun to take a trip down memory lane and re-experience the ramshackle madness and mayhem upon which this blog was founded.
It’s a strange time for comic book blogs. Lloyd Wright at Diversions of the Groovy Kind is celebrating ten years of bronze-age comics blogging with nearly 3000 posts, and he’s musing on how life has changed since he started. He’s returned to writing comic books after stoking the fires of his nostalgia, and he’s a grandfather now, so he plans to post less frequently. Lloyd was a big influence on Mars in its formative days, so visit Diversions to wish him well and check out his latest original creations.
Paul O’Connor at Longbox Graveyard was an early supporter of my blogging endeavors when Mars was getting off the ground, and he’s been through changes, too. His “graveyard” has long since been been pruned and organized into a collection of his bronze-age favorites. He’s survived Californian fires, moved to Canada and returned, and is doubtlessly pondering his next conquest in the wake of leaving Twitter and putting his blog on indefinite hiatus. Drop by the Longbox to explore his entertaining collection of personal musings and generous guest blogs by fellow comic-book fans, and let him know we’d love to see him back.
Here on the distant frontiers of my Martian outpost, I’ve got no plans to abandon these virtual fortifications any time soon. We can always find something to rap about, whether it’s poetry,writing, art, food, or cats. But in honor of Lloyd and Paul and all the comic book bloggers out there, I’ll share an update about the comic book posts that have been the most popular here. Some of them overlap with my twenty-two all-time favorite comics, which you can find on the Archives Page. Some of them are from the earliest days of this blog, and others have recently rocketed to the top.
Here they are, in descending order starting from the currently most-viewed. Thank you for indulging and sharing my obsessions and joys, and stay creative.
Mars Will Send No More began in 2010 and migrated to WordPress in 2011 as a way to document and discuss my favorite non-musical art form: comic books. Discover the wonders of sequential art in the sprawling archive of more than 1600 posts! Here are a few lists to get you started:
In addition to having an awesome superhero lair, or even a heroic house, superheroes usually get a car. It’s the American way. Nexus has one, too. What? That’s not a car pictured above? Sure it is — and we don’t mean the little one shown for scale, either! Like a dream image, it represents our fantasies about our noisy, four-wheeled invention. Nexus has a complete living quarters in his ship, making it more like an RV that can travel through black holes. Pretty handy when you are dispensing justice and cruising for adventure all over the known universe.
These pages come from Nexus #6, published by Capital Comics originally. Dark Horse recently reprinted the issue in the Nexus Omnibus.
Below, long-time Nexus colorist and eventual cover artist Les Dorscheid appears in a rare profile page from the same issue.
Les was an integral part of the visual appeal of Nexus. And if you don’t have an appreciation for his skills yet, just dig this single page of Jil and Sundra’s first journey in their new spaceship.
The issue also featured an order form for these sweet mini-posters. The Nexus poster was totally worth the $4.
Finally, this issue of Nexus is where Nexus and Judah meet, for the first time, Mike Baron’s other creation from the Capital days: Badger. While many comics writers of the day deconstructed superheroes to the point of questioning their sanity, Badger had no questions about it at all. He was simply insane. Stark raving mad.
Enjoy this scene where Nexus and Judah, struggling for survival on a strange planet full of wonders and terrors, have an unexpected dinner guest. This three-part story, The Trialogue Trilogy, remains a favorite Nexus story of ours.
This postcard came from Chris Sand, who recorded and performed music for many years under the name Sandman, and later expanded that moniker to Sandman the Rapping Cowboy.
I first met Chris in 1994 in Olympia, WA, where he performed at the same musical open mics as me and my sister. Accompanied solely by his acoustic guitar, he rapped classics like the Sugar Hill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” — which, for you non-musicologists in the crowd, is often considered the first rap or hip-hop song. He mixed in some folk tunes and a song composed for his gramma which, if I recall correctly, was modeled after a letter he wrote to her.
And of course, who could forget “Talkin’ Hormel Chili Blues” in which he recounted the story of putting a can of chili in the microwave. DO NOT TRY IT. It’s dangerous! It made sense for him to pay tribute to the form of “talking blues” as a rapper. Despite Sugar Hill Gang’s claim to producing the first rap, talking over music was common much earlier in the twentieth century among folk singers like Woody Guthrie.
Chris later moved away and became a truck driver, but continued to perform at local festivals, events, and house shows. A couple years ago, he even had a documentary made about him! Recently he got married and had a baby, and music performance has taken a back seat to life’s other great creative endeavor — raising a human being.
A couple years before that happened, we found him again on Facebook and corresponded. He sent us this postcard along with a really wonderful and well-produced album The Black Hole from Outer Space. You can find it — and much more by Sandman — easily on Amazon or iTunes, and at Loner Records.
The Black Hole from Outer Space was produced by Timezone LaFontaine, and independent hip-hop artist whose work we also love.
The definition of “science fiction” has often been discussed and debated but never convincingly achieved, and my current opinion is that we can’t precisely define it because it doesn’t really exist. Maybe that sounds odd coming from a guy who’s been devouring sci-fi books, comics, and films for more than four decades, blogging about them since 2010, and writing an ostensibly SF series for ten years. I love science fiction, so how can I also believe it doesn’t exist?
The label “science fiction” is a lot like the label “vegetables”. What is a vegetable, really? It isn’t a scientific term for any actual taxonomical category of plants. Many things we call vegetables are really something else. A tomato is a fruit—or, more precisely, an edible berry of a plant that botanists group with nightshades. Botanists also consider a banana to be a berry, and the plant it grows on is categorized as an herb. A potato is a tuber, commonly considered a “root vegetable”. That label simply means we humans eat the underground part of the plant. A carrot is also called a root vegetable, though the orange part we eat is not a tuber but a taproot. Broccoli is considered part of the cabbage family, but that family (brassicaceae) includes both herbaceous plants (herbs) and shrubs (perennial woody plants that can be either evergreen or deciduous). Then we have spinach (a leafy green flowering plant), corn (a flowering plant often considered a “grain crop”), and squash (a specific type of fruit called a gourd that grows on a vine).
We haven’t even touched on the confusing categories of beans, legumes, seeds, and nuts. Is a bean a vegetable? Is a peanut? Is a pea? Is a walnut? Exactly what is a vegetable?
The truth is that “vegetable” is a term of convenience, not a precise definition. “Vegetable” is a section in the grocery store where you know you can find plants or parts of plants you can eat. Would your shopping experience be improved if all berries were grouped together, then you could proceed to the tuber aisle, and then the taproot bins? Not really. You’ve been trained to expect that plants with a sweeter taste are in the fruit section, and everything else is in the vegetable section, except for nuts that might be shelved with the snacks, and dry beans that might be shelved with grains. And if you want to find them all in the same aisle, you can head over to the canned-goods section where canned pineapple (a bromeliad) is just a few steps away from the pinto beans (a legume) and some tasty crushed nightshades (tomatoes).
To me, science fiction is like the canned goods aisle. The science-fiction shelves at the public library are where I can find, all in one place, stories about time travel, space travel, aliens, mutants, and robots. The SF aisle has evil scientists who want to destroy the world right next to rugged adventure junkies who use fantastical pseudo-science powers to explore new realms and rescue people. The styles and flavors of these tales vary wildly from one to the next, just like turnips and kale have very little in common but are adjacent in the store. But the people selling these things know that if you buy one, then you are likely to buy another—so they all get grouped together.
The caveat is that if these stories are told in the illustrated form of sequential narration, then you’ll need to go to the graphic novels and comic bookshelves where stories are grouped not by content but by form. I don’t imagine that anyone’s perusal of the comics and manga shelves would be improved by sub-dividing them according to genre.
In this sense, science fiction is purely a marketing term. Leaving behind the vegetable comparison, the most obviously comparable marketing term is one I came to loathe in my twenties in the 1990s: “grunge”. It’s an absolutely garbage term created for the sole purpose of selling stuff. None of the pioneers of so-called grunge rock would have used that label to define themselves. Nirvana, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Mudhoney, Screaming Trees, and Melvins were in no way grunge bands—until somebody in a marketing department decided they were, because that could help the record labels sell a bunch of other bands.
The film 1991: The Year Punk Broke is probably the best place to start for those of you who didn’t live through those years and might also love those bands. The result of the marketing mania is that now, if kids want to get into “grunge music” of the 90s, they will encounter all kinds of bands that have about as much in common stylistically as pineapples and kidney beans. Or Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein and the indie time-travel film Primer. Grunge, like vegetables and science fiction, has never existed—except in a marketing plan.
So despite my lifelong love for science fiction, I don’t think it really exists. Like vegetables and grunge, it’s inconsistent and impossible to define. By brute force—like the questionable label “jazz” before it—”science fiction” groups together too many things that are vastly different in meaningful ways and which deserve their own categories if we want to really understand them.
But when we deepen our understanding beyond a superficial level, we learn that all categories are inherently artificial and simply convenient shortcuts. Is the egg-laying platypus a mammal? Or does it defy our longing to categorize it?
In the disciplines of biology, genetics, and evolutionary research, we see an increasing understanding of complexity that defies our old categories of the so-called “kingdoms” of living beings I learned in the 1980s. When I was in elementary school, there were five kingdoms. Now, thanks to more detailed genetic analysis, we are realizing that our earlier classification system was too simple.
Maybe you don’t care about all this, but it’s a meaningful question for me because when I make my books available for sale, one of the first things I need to do is choose categories. Like it or not, I need to label and categorize my books for marketing and sales purposes.
I’m totally fine with my biographical, alternate history of the universe of Meteor Mags and Patches being labeled as science fiction. But the number-two category I prefer is Action and Adventure. My felonious felines are action junkies who embrace the tropes of both the action girl and the dark action girl while being ready to subvert those tropes at a moment’s notice.
But as a writer (as opposed to a seller), I’ve never had any interest in limiting myself to the expectations of a genre, any more than I ever did as a musician exploring every possible form of the art. Some of my supposed sci-fi stories incorporate historical fiction while exploring Mags’ life and the lives of her ancestors. And despite presenting the series as interconnected short stories, I love using novelistic techniques such as multiple points of view and multiple narrators, epistolary writing in the form of letters and articles and essays, non-linear storytelling, and plenty of satire.
Despite writing an ostensibly science-fiction series replete with all the tropes of the ill-defined genre, including giant insects, I’m way more focused on telling interesting stories about characters I’ve increasingly come to care about over the years. Genre be damned. Character is everything. Full speed ahead.
One of the traditions here on Mars is sharing the weird and wonderful postcards that arrive in my mailbox, but it’s a tradition that hasn’t got nearly enough love in the past two years. Friends, family, and clients have sent me a joyous pile of fun, thoughtful postcards since I relocated to Tucson in early 2021. They are always a bright spot in my day, and they get displayed in the Martian HQ for months before being filed in my archives. Maybe before I blow out of this hellhole in Tucson forever in three weeks to start the next chapter of my life, we’ll enjoy a postcard retrospective.
Before we get to all that, I want to share one that arrived this week, because you might have some insight into the question it poses. This postcard is the very first to arrive completely unsigned since the hilarious call to begin the intergalactic invasion in 2013. Sending random unsigned postcards to make someone’s day a little more surreal is exactly the kind of frivolity this blog was founded on more than a decade ago.
I still don’t know for sure who sent the invasion postcard, but I am pretty sure I know who sent the following robot riddle for me to solve. I thought you might like to take a shot at solving this riddle, too. Post your answers in the comments, and maybe you will help the mysterious sender get some ideas for her robot novel.
What is the sound of an inert robot when he’s laughing?
I came up with one solution to this riddle based on a post at https://www.livescience.com/electricity-humming-noise, but you might have ideas of your own. And if you have never received a postcard from me personally, then that’s on you! Email me your address and get on my list for mailings that go out at irregular intervals once or twice a year.
In case you missed my post from last month, I was invited by Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) to participate in the beta version of their new program for producing print-on-demand hardcover books. I promised you an update when the first, physical proof arrived. Guess what came in the mail today!
All I can say is that the book looks and feels amazing. It’s sturdy and way more substantial than I expected for a smallish 150-page book. The print options I chose were for white paper and a gloss finish on the cover.
Some folks believe you should use cream paper for fiction, but I have produced books in both cream and white, and the white paper looks and feels better to me. I also find the high contrast with black text makes white paper easier to read. I’ve produced books with both matte and glossy covers, and I tend to prefer the shiny gloss that really makes the colors vibrant. But matte finish is also nice, and I’ve gone with that several times when it felt right.
The binding is beautiful inside and out, and I love the way that about a quarter-inch of the cover color and design is visible inside the book when opened, where the cover wraps around the edges.
I think authors will be pleased when this hardcover option is available to everyone. I already feel the urge to make hardcover editions of about half a dozen of my books. I’d love to release the first Meteor Mags Omnibus in hardcover, but at more than 580 pages, it exceeds the maximum page count of 550 for a KDP hardcover.
Besides page count, authors will want to consider price points and profit margins. My paperback edition of The Singing Spell has a wholesale printing cost to me of less than USD $3. But the printing cost for the hardcover is $7.28. (Again, this is for a 150-page book. Longer books will cost more.) To sell the hardcover and make a reasonable per-unit profit on Amazon, I needed to price it at $14.95, as opposed to the $6.95 price for the paperback and the $2.99 bargain price for the Kindle ebook edition.
This doesn’t make much of a financial difference to me, since I design my own books, but authors who need to pay a designer to format the cover for a hardcover edition will want to consider whether they can recoup the additional expense with hardcover sales at a higher price than the other editions. Will their target market be willing to spend the extra bucks for a hardcover? It’s a question I can’t really answer for anyone without market research.
Either way, I expect my fellow authors and readers will be impressed with the quality of these hardcover editions, and I’m looking forward to the day when this program is no longer in beta testing but available to all self-publishers using the KDP platform.
July 2021 Update: The hardcover edition of The Singing Spell is now available on Amazon, and I’m working on making more hardcovers for some of the older books in my fiction series. More and more authors are seeing this option available as the program successfully moves out of the beta-testing phase.
October 2022 Update: I’ve designed and published a total of nine hardcover editions since this option became available to all KDP authors. They look and feel great. As you might be able to tell from the comments on this post, the hardcover option was gradually rolled out over a few months to all KDP authors and should now be accessible to you from your “Bookshelf” in your KDP account.
Every now and then, I read a tragic story that breaks my heart, but no comic-book adventure has ever broken me so relentlessly as We3. A friend who isn’t really into comic books got into Grant Morrison thanks to the live-action show Happy—based on the four-issue series of the same name published by Image—so I’ve been digging into the Morrison archives. Along the way, I realized I’d never read what many people consider to be one of Morrison’s best works, if not the best. We3 is an action-packed story brought to life by Morrison’s long-time artistic collaborator Frank Quitely, and though I’ve enjoyed Quitely’s artwork for years, he outdid his own genius on We3. Before we delve into the book, let me just say that this story features one of my all-time favorite things: a cat who absolutely kicks ass.
The cat’s given name is Tinker, but she is only referred to in the story as “2”. Tinker is part of a team of three normal animals who have been surgically altered and had their brains messed with so they can become killing machines encased in high-tech armor to perform military missions and assassinations instead of having human soldiers do the job. Joining Tinker in this horrifying experiment are the dog Bandit—referred to as “1”, and the only one of the three to re-discover his real name in the story—and a rabbit named Pirate (“3”) because of a black spot over one eye.
Each of these animals was someone’s beloved pet before the story began. Instead of telling the reader this fact through flashbacks or exposition, the creative team shows it much more powerfully with “lost pet” flyers on the covers of each issue. When you realize what has been done to these hapless animals, the covers hit like a punch to the gut.
When the higher-ups decide that these lost and kidnapped animals need to be killed—decommissioned, per orders—the three of them escape their containment facility and run away. Their combat modifications and training make them dangerous to society, so the military pursues them. One of the many tragic aspects of this story is that the trio doesn’t mean to be dangerous murder machines. These animals were forced against their will to become horrors in the service of the same humans who want to put them down.
Nowhere is this more strongly portrayed than through Bandit’s canine emotional crises. Bandit truly wants to be a good dog. He wants to protect his beloved animal allies in We3 and also help humans, but he is forced into situations where his combat programming takes over and he kills humans. In the aftermath of the killings, his simple, mournful repetition of “Bad dog” hits home more powerfully than pages of dialogue or narrative captions could ever do.
Tinker does not share the dog’s remorse. She thinks the whole thing stinks. When Bandit tries to save a human body to convince himself he is a good dog, Tinker bluntly tells him the man is dead. As the two animals fade into the horizon while arguing, the panels reveal the human is annihilated from the waist down. In a combination of graphic images and minimal, broken dialogue, Morrison and Quitely set up the tension between the cat’s no-nonsense and apparently correct assessment of the situation with the dog’s potentially delusional idealism.
Each animal’s cybernetically enhanced speech pattern says volumes about them. On the first read, I had trouble understanding their speech, but it all became clear to me upon the second reading. Bandit the dog is haunted by regret over what he has been made to do, and he struggles to lead his “pack” in a volatile and untenable situation. Pirate the rabbit is the most simple-minded of the trio, only speaking in one-word sentences, but that doesn’t stop him from delivering a heart-wrenching reminder to his comrades that they are friends and are all in this together. Sadly, Pirate’s speech degrades into mere electronic noise after he suffers an injury.
Cat-lover that I am, I especially enjoyed Tinker’s dialogue. Her feline disdain for just about everything is expressed through the word “Stink”, rendered as “ST!NK” or, when she is really angry, “!SSST!!!NKK!” Compared to the peaceful rabbit and optimistic dog, Tinker appears to be the least bothered by all the killing. She seems at times to revel in it. Tinker is also the group’s cynic who doesn’t believe the trio will ever find a home, because “home” no longer exists for any of them—a point of contention that leads to an argument with Bandit.
And what is home? What does “home” mean to Bandit after all the awful things the team has endured? To the dog, home is a simple concept. “Home is run no more.” Home is a place where these involuntary machines of war can find peace and rest, and that is Bandit’s hope for We3. But as the story progresses, it’s impossible to escape the feeling that Tinker is right, that home and peace will be forever denied these unfortunate animals because of what’s been done to them—and what of their lives and identities have been stolen from them.
Quitely employs many innovative and dramatic approaches to action. A video by Strip Panel Naked does a good job of analyzing the groundbreaking visuals in this story, so check that out. Regarding the page where Tinker hacks and slashes her way through a series of panels filled with her enemies, I am reminded of what Scott McCloud taught in his book Understanding Comics, where he asserts that part of the magic of comics is what happens—but is not shown—between the panels, allowing the reader to fill in the blanks. Quitely gives us two-dimensional panels rendered in 3-D with Tinker in action, demonstrating how the cat is a fast-moving agent of destruction. While Tinker’s opponents exist entirely within the panels, she flashes like lightning through the spaces between them.
Go, Tinker! As Bandit says in a dramatic moment, “Gud 2! 1 Protect!”
Quitely also does amazing things with panels-within-panels to show a sequence of fast-paced actions in a slow-motion strobe effect, and he often employs elements of the scene’s environment to create panel-like divisions, such as rendering trees in all black to create dividing lines, or using the metal structure of a bridge to divide a series of movements across that bridge.
For a few pages, Quitely captures the narrative in an insane number of more than one hundred tiny panels to show footage from multiple security cameras in the containment facility—only to present a spectacular release from all that claustrophobic tension by finishing with a two-page double splash where our heroes burst into the night.
We3 has been collected in paperback, hardcover, and a second hardcover “deluxe” edition with ten new pages of story. But I recommend you read We3 either in digital format or in the original stapled comic-book format so you can see all the amazing two-page spreads without any part of them disappearing into the gutter of a bound book. Like I said in my recent review of the Bendis/Maleev run on Daredevil, it is a rare and beautiful thing to see a comic book story where script, art, and overall design are perfectly married for maximum narrative and emotional effect. We3 is one of those perfect unions.
Collector’s Guide: It’s hard to find the original three-issue printing, but you can easily find a reasonably priced collected paperback on Amazon. Current prices on the deluxe hardcover are ridiculous. Instead, I suggest getting the $10 digital edition so you can fully appreciate the two-page spreads.
The Big Box of Comics series celebrates the treasures I collect thanks to this blog’s readers using my affiliate links to find the books they want, for which I earn a bit of store credit. In January 2021, I put that credit towards reuniting with my all-time favorite Iron Fist books.
The first Iron Fist story I read as a child was the two-part Marvel Team-Up with Spider-man and the “Daughters of the Dragon”, meaning the sword-wielding Colleen Wing and the bionic-armed, butt-kicking Misty Knight. With an opening scene featuring Iron Fist on the brink of death, and Spider-man telling the story through flashbacks, the tale was one of the most literary I had read at that age and—with John Byrne’s dramatic artwork—the best illustrated. Though the magic has worn off a bit now that I’m forty-eight, it’s only because I’ve read the story so many times I practically have it memorized.
I treated myself to some well-worn copies of the originals, though I have nicer copies of the slightly more recentreprints. Who knows? Maybe my VG+ copies are the same ones I had as a kid! You can also find this story in black-and-white in the Essential Iron Fist TPBs.
In the late 1970s and early 80s, I also had a few issues of the original Iron Fist series by Claremont and Byrne, and even an issue of Marvel Premier where Iron Fist first appeared. My favorites were when he went up against the Scimitar and Chaka. So, I got those again in a Fine grade that was about the same as the ones I had when I was a kid.
Thanks to the Essential Iron Fist TPBs, I’ve read all the Claremont/Byrne issues, and some were less than thrilling. But I couldn’t resist picking up two inexpensive color reprints: one with the classic cover of issue #8, and one with the first appearance of the now-legendary X-men villain Sabretooth.
Honestly, the Sabretooth issue isn’t that great. He feels like a villain Claremont introduced with minimal character development to see if reader response merited keeping him around. He isn’t the bestial nemesis to Wolverine he later became. Still, it’s a historic issue, and the reprint costs far less than the original.
In the mid-80s, I had some of the Jim Owsley/Mark Bright run near the end of the Powerman and Iron Fist title, issues I bought off the local news stand just as the series was ending. I’ve since read the issues I didn’t have. I loved them as a kid, but they don’t do it for me these days. You might recall that the run ended in issue #125 with the senseless death of Iron Fist.
John Byrne later brought Fist back to life in the pages of Namor the Sub-Mariner, but that story doesn’t hold up very well either, despite a guest appearance from our favorite feral Canadian mutant with huge frickin’ claws. But it set the stage for Iron Fist’s return, and nowhere was that return more fully realized than in the pages of the Brubaker/Fraction/Aja series, The Immortal Iron Fist.
I first read Fraction’s run as two TPBs from the public library, and it blew my mind. It took a 1970s attempt to exploit the popularity of kung-fu movies, then expanded the mythos into a rich history of amazing people who had earned the power of the Fist over centuries. Daniel Rand, who up until that point had been the only Iron Fist we knew about, met Orson Randall, a man who knew Danny’s father and was also the Iron Fist in WWI—and rejected the role due to the horrors he witnessed. Along the way, Orson reveals there are more uses for the Fist power than Danny ever dreamed, and an untold history that forever changes Danny’s life.
The storyline starts off with “The Last Iron Fist Story”, and it ends with the revelation that every Iron Fist except Orson died on their thirty-third birthday—a birthday that arrives for Daniel Rand on the final page of the story arc. Everything about this arc screams impending doom. For some of the characters, that doom comes true. Some of those characters are Iron Fists.
The interruptions in the main narrative to tell the tales of ancient Iron Fists take this series to a whole other level. From page one, you know this story is unlike any Iron Fist story you’ve read before. In another post, I’ve shared a few pages from issue #7, a standalone story about the first female Iron Fist. She suffers, she loves, and she shoots magical dragon-energy arrows from her bow to conquer a fleet of pirates. She’s far and away my favorite Iron Fist, and I’d happily read a thousand pages of her adventures.
Orson Randall also comes off as especially awesome. His role as a “pulp” version of Iron Fist pays homage to vintage heroes such as Doc Savage and the Shadow, with David Aja specifically mentioning in his design notes that the costume should invoke those characters. Orson opened up so much storytelling potential that it couldn’t even be contained in the main series. He appeared in a couple of one-shots which are fun but not indispensable. Orson’s potential remains largely untapped. I would love to see an Orson Randall series by Ellis and Cassaday with the pulp flair they brought to so many issues of Planetary.
All good things come to an end, but I like the next two story arcs after this creative team leaves. Duane Swierczynski picks up the scripting and imprisons Iron Fist in a horrifying hell from which escape seems impossible. Travel Foreman, who did many of the flashback scenes to Iron Fists of yesteryear during Fraction’s run, becomes the primary artist. This continuation of The Immortal Iron Fist is an enjoyable read that capitalizes on the expanded mythos opened by the previous run—and it looks amazing.
Having read these runs of Immortal Iron Fist both in TPBs and single issues—and having sold them both—I opted for the single issues and snagged a few variant covers such as the Marvel Zombies variant (which had nothing to do with the storyline) and the “Director’s Cut” of #1. As far as I can tell, all the material in the Director’s Cut appeared in the TPB. It has some great design-process pages of David Aja explaining how he developed an Iron Fist costume that didn’t suck, no matter how awesome John Byrne made booties and spiky spandex collars look in the 1970s. Aja’s notes on his sketches make it clear he hated the booties.
Anyway, I totally geeked out on Iron Fist for a few weeks in January, and no matter how many people tell me they didn’t like the TV series, my fondness for Fraction’s Immortal Iron Fist and most of the vintage Claremont/Byrne stories remains undiminished. It has become like unto a thing of iron! Thanks to this blog’s readers who made this reunion possible.
For a few months in 2013, I had a complete collection of all the individual issues of Jack Kirby’s Mister Miracle series. When I sold it as a set on Ebay, I knew I would miss it. But thanks to this blog’s readers, I was reunited this summer with this classic series in the form of a full-color, collected edition. Many other reviewers have focused on the dynamic art and the high-energy storytelling that characterize this and other “Fourth World” Kirby stories, so I’d like to discuss a few things that don’t get talked about very much.
But first, this collection is a great way to own all eighteen of the original Kirby issues. It’s complete, compact without reducing the page size, and “remastered” so that the art, ink, and colors are crisp and perfect. It includes all the original covers, which are brilliant works of art on their own, and all the back-up stories about the title character’s childhood. Kirby did amazing double-splash panels for this series that unfortunately get their centers lost in the gutter in a paperback-bound book, but I scanned some of the originals for you way back when.
If there’s one thing that bugs me about owning the series in this format, it’s that same perfection. When I collected the single issues, I settled for many low-cost VG+ and Fine gradings where the paper was severely yellowed (which affected the colors), and the covers had a worn, tattered look with folds and even bits missing around the corners and spines.
Only a complete maniac would claim that as a plus. But I enjoyed it. Having Mister Miracle in its original but degraded printings felt like I was unearthing some prehistoric fossil of primordial comic book awesomeness. In pristine form, it feels more like a current book that should be judged by current standards.
But current standards aren’t quite the right lens to look through for this book. In terms of the garish colors, modern mainstream comics now employ far more sophisticated coloring techniques in even the most run-of-the-mill titles. But in the 1970s, due to the pulp-quality paper, using super-bright primary colors made a whole lot of sense. Many online reviewers praise the bright colors of this collection, but sometimes they seem a bit too bright for the darker, more sinister aspects of life under Darkseid’s fascist reign explored in this series.
Also by current standards, Kirby’s treatment of “hip” slang, female characters, and “ethnic” characters might seem clunky and awkward to modern, younger readers. But it’s important to consider the standards of the day and realize Kirby was making a serious effort to be inclusive and progressive in the mainstream. When Mister Miracle began in 1971, it was three years before women in the United States could have credit cards in their own name without a husband co-signing for them. It was four years before the TV show The Jeffersons broke media stereotypes to portray a financially successful black family and their interracially married friends.
In the pages of the Fantastic Four, Kirby had already created Marvel’s first black superhero: the Black Panther. And from his editorial columns in his comics—including his 70s work at Marvel on Devil Dinosaur, the Eternals, and 2001—we know he was genuinely interested in scientific and social trends and in creating stories that reflected not just the current culture but its progress and potential.
For me, the standout character of Mister Miracle isn’t the lead, but Big Barda. She is lightyears apart from the Sue Storm character in the early Lee/Kirby issues of Fantastic Four, who was constantly talked down to for being female. Sue was a weakling whose biggest power was to go away, at least until John Byrne wrote the series in the 1980s and changed the Invisible “Girl” into the Invisible Woman whose power became formidable.
In contrast, Big Barda totally owns her scenes through force of character. Where Sue Storm was originally a shrinking violet to be protected by the males in her group, Barda is never less than a total bad-ass. She might have a soft spot for the title character, but she never hesitates for one second to beat some ass or carve a path of destruction through her enemies, and she has zero qualms about assuming leadership and telling other characters exactly how shit will go down on her watch.
Barda also has a somewhat evil all-woman crew of warriors — the Female Furie Battalion — with hilarious names like Bernadeth, Gilotina, Lashina, and Stompa. They deal damage in ways you can guess from their names. They’ve got sweet costumes and boss weapons, and they read less like villains and more like your favorite all-girl roller-derby team starring in a modern movie.
Barda is so awesome that I even forgive Uncle Jack for giving her a gratuitous bathtub scene. You know your writer is male when he puts a female character into a naked bathing scene for absolutely zero plot-related reasons. As a male reader who thinks Barda is the greatest thing ever and would bet money that she could even kick Conan’s naked ass, I vote that we give a pass to Kirby for this one. And a pass to me for enjoying it.
It’s that kind of tension between “great female lead” and “gratuitous female bath scene” that marks this run. Kirby was both a product of his time and way ahead of his time. Mister Miracle stands on the cusp of American history in the 1970s where society was in the midst of a massive and progressive cultural shift, one that even today we have not yet fully realized. I like the direction Kirby was trying to push that shift.
Kirby was a soldier in Europe during World War II, and his portrayal of the oppressive, fascist society on planet Apokolips might be read as a simple indictment of the Third Reich. But Kirby was no stranger to discrimination in the States, having changed his name from the Jewish “Kurtzberg” to “Kirby” to improve his chances of being accepted and making a living.
He was the son of two Austrian-Jewish immigrants in New York in a time when anti-immigrant sentiment, racism, and anti-semitism abounded in America. While the Third Reich turned those ideas into a massive extermination program, the Nazis did not invent those ideas, and they had many adherents in the States. Sadly, that is still true today. When I read Kirby’s 1970s works, I sense a subtext that he saw fascism and discrimination not as merely “foreign” problems but ones that troubled many nations, including his own.
It’s easy to read Mister Miracle as a series of simple adventure stories full of gadgets and gimmicky escapes, and Kirby clearly wants us to be entertained, first and foremost. But we would do him a disservice if we didn’t acknowledge the socially progressive ideas he wrapped in that cloak of entertainment. Kirby didn’t finalize his ideas about humans and our place in the universe when he was a young man. He continued to explore new ideas and grow. He saw our knowledge of science, humanity, society, and ourselves as an ever-expanding field that had no lack of new horizons to explore.
And where there’s an unexplored horizon, there’s a kick-ass story waiting to be told.
It’s no secret that one of my favorite pieces of fiction is Frank Miller’s Sin City series. I discovered it at the Las Vegas public library about eighteen years ago when I checked out the A Dame to Kill For TPB. It was the most awesome thing I’d ever read, with over-the-top brutality and an atmosphere that was darker than the blackest noir. It was so intense about being intense that it was funny and morbidly serious at the same time, and the first thing I did after reading it was read it again. Then I tracked down the other stories! One had dinosaurs.
For a while I had the complete series in an awesome collected edition, but those books were smaller than the full-sized TPBs, and there’s just something about this series that suits being as big as possible. The original TPB collections also appear to include more pages than were printed in the original serialized formats, such as extra splash pages for multiple perspectives of Dwight holding a dude’s head underwater in a toilet in The Big Fat Kill. The one missing ingredient in the earliest TPBs is color, the use of just one primary color as an accent to individual stories, such as the yellow highlights in the TPB for That Yellow Bastard. Still, I’m okay without the color if I get a bigger page size!
The black and white art is insanely melodramatic, as shown in a couple pages of Marv walking in the rain from the first Sin City TPB, later titled The Hard Goodbye. The text is like a hard-boiled detective novel with the volume turned up to eleven. I not only love this scene, I love that it goes on for ten whole pages — eleven in the TPB!
While writing last week’s post about Next Men, I looked into some other John Byrne works I hadn’t seen yet, including his stint on The Sensational She-Hulk. That run is best known for relentlessly breaking the fourth wall and having the characters be aware they were in a comic book. Byrne based the fiftieth issue on a gag that he had been killed, and the cast needed to find a new writer and artist. So, he showed how some of his friends in the industry would do a She-Hulk story. That’s how we got a couple pages of a Sin City She-Hulk.
This post was made possible by this blog’s readers who use my affiliate links to buy comics. Recent store credit made it possible to reconnect with the Sin City TPBs that first hooked me on the series. Thank you!
This week’s pick from the short-box of indie and small-press comics deals once again with Unnatural Selection, much like the Elephantmen issues we looked at by Casey & Ladronn. But this pick comes from CrossGen Comics and deals with evolutionary developments in the course of a war between humans and reptilians.
From the reptiles’ perspective, they’re the good guys. One of them discovers that by eating the humans, the reptiles get smarter and more adaptable like humans. This change allows them to kick our butts in intergalactic warfare. But the politics and religion of the Saurians make things more complex, as does interpersonal rivalry that can only be solved through sword fights and ass kicking!
Hell, yes! It’s like Mark Waid wrote this one just for us, and the artwork is so much fun though this whole story, from the creative panel layouts to the glorious colors.
Saurians: Unnatural Selection is a two-issue limited series telling the tale of the reptile that first made the discovery that eating people is the smart thing to do for an evil space dinosaur. Even if you never followed CrossGen’s main titles, this is a damn good story!
Tune in to the hardest rockin’ station in the solar system: The PBN. Eight years of beauty and brutality for your listening pleasure.
Puma Broadcasting Network
PBN 145: Tygers January 2024. Listen or Download the MP3. 61 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the playlist.
PBN 143: Workforce January 2024. Listen or Download the MP3. 119 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the playlist.
PBN 142: Worth Repeating January 2024. Listen or Download the MP3. 60 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the playlist.
PBN 141: Sunrise January 2024. Listen or Download the MP3. 90 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the playlist.
PBN 140: Surf’s Up December 2023. Listen or Download the MP3. 60 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the playlist.
PBN 139: Oceanic December 2023. Listen or Download the MP3. 89 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the playlist.
PBN 138: Missile Toe 24 December 2023. Listen or Download the MP3. 90 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the playlist.
PBN 137: Cathedral of Darkness December 2023. Listen or Download the MP3. 119 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the playlist.
PBN 136: Temple of the Moon December 2023. Listen or Download the MP3. 88 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the playlist.
PBN 135: Heaven and Hell December 2023. Listen or Download the MP3. 60 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the playlist.
PBN 134: Flood and Fog December 2023. Listen or Download the MP3. 60 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the playlist.
PBN 133: Killers November 2023. Listen or Download the MP3. 60 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the playlist.
PBN 132: Destruction July 2023. Listen or Download the MP3. 91 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the playlist.
PBN 131: Mindpower June 2023. Listen or Download the MP3. 63 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the playlist.
PBN 130: Hatefuck June 2023. Listen or Download the MP3. 61 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the playlist.
PBN 129: Murder May 2023. Listen or Download the MP3. 61 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the playlist.
PBN 128: Never Again April 2023. Listen or Download the MP3. 61 minutes. 128 Kbps View or Download the playlist.
PBN 127: Forest March 2023. Listen or Download the MP3. 93 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the playlist.
PBN 126: Bulletproof March 2023. Listen or Download the MP3. 62 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the playlist.
PBN 125: Graviton February 2023. Listen or Download the MP3. 56 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the playlist.
PBN 124: Headhunters February 2023. Listen or Download the MP3. 58 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the playlist.
PBN 123: Equinox February 2023. Listen or Download the MP3. 61 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the playlist.
PBN 122: Mammoth January 2023. Listen or Download the MP3. 61 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the playlist.
PBN 121: Monster Number Fifty 22 January 2023. Listen or Download the MP3. 61 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the playlist.
PBN 120: Sisters January 2023. Listen or Download the MP3. 116 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the playlist.
PBN 119: Sonata January 2023. Listen or Download the MP3. 89 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the playlist.
PBN 118: Paper and Fire January 2023. Listen or Download the MP3. 56 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the playlist.
PBN 117: Annual 31 December 2022. Listen or Download the MP3. 119 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the playlist.
PBN 116: Action December 2022. Listen or Download the MP3. 60 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the playlist.
PBN 115: Cover Me Two December 2022.A follow-up to #112, Cover Me. Listen or Download the MP3. 60 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the playlist.
PBN 114: Awakening December 2022. Listen or Download the MP3. 59 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the playlist.
PBN 113: Volcanoes December 2022. Listen or Download the MP3. 119 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the playlist.
PBN 112: Cover Me December 2022. Listen or Download the MP3. 60 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the playlist.
PBN 111: Holiday Cheer December 2022. Listen or Download the MP3. 60 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the playlist.
PBN 110: Shimmer November 2022. Listen or Download the MP3. 90 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the playlist.
PBN 109: In Love and War August 2022. Listen or Download the MP3. 61 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the playlist.
PBN 108 August 2022.Let’s Rock. Listen or Download the MP3. 92 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the playlist.
PBN 107:Cracking Up July 2022. Listen or Download the MP3. 71 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the playlist.
PBN 106:Chicken Dinner July 2022. Listen or Download the MP3. 87 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the playlist.
PBN 104:Solana (Sunshine) June 2022. Listen or Download the MP3. 118 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the playlist.
PBN 103: Blue Whales June 2022. Listen or Download the MP3. 145 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the playlist.
PBN 102: Bloody Eagles June 2022. Listen or Download the MP3. 118 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the playlist.
PBN 101: Criminals June 2022. Listen or Download the MP3. 116 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the playlist.
PBN 100: Fifths and Octaves June 2022. Listen or Download the MP3. 222 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the playlist.
PBN 99: Metallic Sheen June 2022. Listen or Download the MP3. 191 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the playlist.
PBN 98: Hell and Highwater July 2021. Listen or Download the MP3. 119 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the playlist.
PBN 95: Nomadic Murder Wasps July 2021. Listen or Download the MP3. 129 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the playlist.
PBN 94: Cosmic Chrysalis June 2021. Listen or Download the MP3. 120 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the playlist.
PBN 93: Atomic Science June 2021. Listen or Download the MP3. 60 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the playlist.
PBN 92: Any Last Words June 2021. Listen or Download the MP3. 120 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the playlist.
PBN 91 June 2021. Let’s rock. Listen or Download the MP3. 176 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the playlist.
PBN 90: Urine Big Trouble May 2021. Listen or Download the MP3. 60 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the playlist.
PBN 89: Joker April 2021. Listen or Download the MP3. 116 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the Playlist.
PBN 87: Remember Sweet Fortune April 2021. Listen or Download the MP3. 119 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the Playlist.
PBN 86: Solar Requiem April 2021. Listen or Download the MP3. 117 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the Playlist.
PBN 85 March 2021. A spicy stew of punk, ska, metal, and more. Listen or Download the MP3. 121 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the Playlist.
PBN 84: Queen of the Red Coast March 2021. Listen or Download the MP3. 116 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the Playlist.
PBN 83: Sunday Morning in Andromeda March 2021. A multi-genre extravaganza with heavy riffs, aggressive jazz piano, and deep space. Listen or Download the MP3. 118 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the Playlist.
PBN 82: The Dark Devouring Goddess (An Easter Set) March 2021. Super heavy and trippy with a witchy theme. Listen or Download the MP3. 180 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the Playlist.
PBN 81: Solar Tide March 2021. Hard rock with assorted seasonings and spacy jams. Listen or Download the MP3. 146 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the Playlist.
PBN 80 October 2020. Hard rock with a few side quests into jazz and psychedelia. Listen or Download the MP3. 120 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the Playlist.
PBN 79: Cursed Revolution October 2020. Heavy, trippy rock with assorted seasonings. Listen or Download the MP3. 119 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the Playlist.
PBN 78 August 2020. Let’s rock. Listen or Download the MP3. 124 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the Playlist.
PBN 77 June 2020. Let’s rock. Listen or Download the MP3. 101 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the Playlist.
PBN 76 June 2020.Heavy rock with assorted seasonings. Listen or Download the MP3. 145 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the Playlist.
PBN 75: Mountains at Midnight May 2020. Listen or Download the MP3. 118 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the Playlist.
PBN 74 May 2020. Let’s rock. Listen or Download the MP3. 121 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the Playlist.
PBN 73 April 2020. An impromptu “best of” set showcasing tunes from earlier sets numbered in the 60s. Listen or Download the MP3. 112 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the Playlist.
PBN 72 April 2020. Impromptu heaviness. Listen or Download the MP3. 88 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the Playlist.
PBN 71 29 April 2020.Let’s rock. Listen or Download the MP3. 152 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the Playlist.
PBN 70 April 2020. Let’s rock. Listen or Download the MP3. 131 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the Playlist.
PBN 69 March 2020. Let’s rock. Listen or Download the MP3. 118 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the Playlist.
PBN 68 March 2020. Let’s rock. Listen or Download the MP3. 119 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the Playlist.
PBN 67 March 2020. Heavy rock and hip-hop. Listen or Download the MP3. 120 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the Playlist.
PBN 66 January 2020.Let’s rock. Listen or Download the MP3. 163 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the Playlist.
PBN 65 January 2020.Let’s rock. Listen or Download the MP3. 121 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the Playlist.
PBN 64 January 2020. Let’s rock. Listen or Download the MP3. 124 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the Playlist.
PBN 62: Velvet Edition November 2019. Two hours of heavy riffs, psychedelic jams, punk attitude, and pure rock fury to melt your mind! Listen or Download the MP3. 119 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the Playlist.
PBN 61: Heavier October 2019. Some old favorites. Listen or Download the MP3. 142 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the Playlist.
PBN 60: Africa October 2019. Two hours of music from, and inspired by, Africa: funk, ska, hip-hop, trippy guitar jams, women’s choirs, jazz, and more! Listen or Download the MP3. 119 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the Playlist.
PBN 59: Hard Raga October 2019. Hard rock, Carnatic raga, Indian/jazz fusions, funky hippie jams, acoustic guitars, and pianos. Listen or Download the MP3. 126 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the Playlist.
PBN 58: Softly September 2019. Not so soft at all. Listen or Download the MP3. 142 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the Playlist.
PBN 57: Dolls August 2019. Three hours of hard rock fury. Listen or Download the MP3. 182 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the Playlist.
PBN 56: Simmer July 2019.Simmer down with a zesty blend of ska, jazz, latin, rock, and reggae. Listen or Download the MP3. 115 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the Playlist.
PBN 55: Collision July 2019.Rockabilly and heavy rock colliding in a spray of blues and country. Listen or Download the MP3. 151 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the Playlist.
PBN 54: Epilogue June 2019.A heavy psychedelic blues metal garage rock blend for everything that comes after the end. Listen or Download the MP3. 113 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the Playlist.
PBN 53: Glue11 June 2019. Heavy retro psychedelic garage and more, for broadcast at Glue House. Listen or Download the MP3. 110 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the Playlist.
PBN 52: Glue10 June 2019. Heavy retro psychedelic garage with a mellow, trippy finish. Listen or Download the MP3. 95 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the Playlist.
PBN 51: Singsong May 2019. A singalong that begins with blues and ends with whales on pianos, and rocks the hell out in the middle. Listen or Download the MP3. 88 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the Playlist.
PBN 50: Glue9 May 2019. Scandinavian bluegrass rock party at the end of the universe. Listen or Download the MP3. 95 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the Playlist.
PBN 49: The Wheel May 2019. The wheel begins gently but will soon crush you beneath its relentless rock onslaught. Listen or Download the MP3 file. 162 minutes. 128 Kbps. View or Download the Playlist.
PBN 48: GhostNippleKitty May 2019. A set for people who like kitties, titties, and affectionate specters. Lots of rock and hip-hop. Listen or download the mp3 file. 114 minutes. 128 Kbps. The playlist is available as a text file.
PBN 47: My Window May 2019. A mellow, soulful, funny set for days when you can’t stand the rain against your window. “You’re not even close to baseline.” Listen or download the mp3 file. 84 minutes. 128 Kbps. The playlist is available as a text file.
PBN 46: Hip-Hop April 2019. Bass, beats, and bombastic bards. Listen or download the mp3 file. 124 minutes. 128 Kbps. The playlist is available as a text file.
PBN 45: Numbers April 2019. Crushing broadcast from the numbers station at the end of the universe. Listen or download the mp3 file. 123 minutes. 128 Kbps. The playlist is available as a text file.
PBN 44: iHateGrunge April 2019. Ironically titled mix featuring some of my favorite bands whose categorization I object to. Listen or download the mp3 file. 116 minutes. 128 Kbps. The playlist is available as a text file.
PBN 43: Glue8 March 2019. Kicking the dust off the record bins of history. Listen or download the mp3 file. 169 minutes. 128 Kbps. The playlist is available as a text file.
PBN 42: Glue7 March 2019. Burn it to the ground. Listen or download the mp3 file. 113 minutes. 128 Kbps. The playlist is available as a text file.
PBN 41: Glue6 March 2019. Dance amid the flaming wreckage of the last half-century. Listen or download the mp3 file. 143 minutes. 128 Kbps. The playlist is available as a text file.
PBN 39: Glue5 March 2019. Defenestrating several decades of rock-and-roll depravity. Listen or download the mp3 file. 141 minutes. 128 Kbps. The playlist is available as a text file.
PBN 38: Glue4 February 2019. Heavy retro psychedelic garage and more, for broadcast at Glue House. Listen or download the mp3 file. 124 minutes. 128 Kbps. The playlist is available as a text file.
PBN 37: Glue3 February 2019. Might interfere with your prescription. Listen or download the mp3 file. 152 minutes. 128 Kbps. The playlist is available as a text file.
PBN 36: Glue2 February 2019. Heavy retro psychedelic garage and more, for broadcast at Glue House. Listen or download the mp3 file. 177 minutes. 128 Kbps. The playlist is available as a text file.
PBN 35: Power February 2019. Don’t let the piano introduction fool you; this mix is full rock power with flavors of Black Sabbath, Detroit rock, metal, and more. Listen or download the mp3 file. 129 minutes. 128 Kbps. The playlist is available as a text file.
PBN 34: Seagulls February 2019. “And here’s a song that might help you cope with some of those feelings, mm-kay? It’s called Lesbian Seagull.” Listen or download the mp3 file. 77 minutes. 128 Kbps. The playlist is available as a text file.
PBN 33: Temptation February 2019. Get naked and light a few candles; jazz, blues, ska, reggae, rock, hip-hop, and more. Listen or download the mp3 file. 172 minutes. 128 Kbps. The playlist is available as a text file.
PBN 32: Heavy 6 December 2018. Listen or download the mp3 file. 140 minutes. 128 Kbps. The playlist is available as a text file.
PBN 31: Overcoats December 2018. A sprawling rock epic with multi-genre subplots. Listen or download the mp3 file. 184 minutes. 128 Kbps. The playlist is available as a text file.
PBN 30: May This Be Love November 2018. Hendrix-flavored heaviness and more. Listen or download the mp3 file. 104 minutes. 128 Kbps. The playlist is available as a text file.
PBN 29: You, Baby November 2018. Hard rock with a soft spot or two. Listen or download the mp3 file. 110 minutes. 128 Kbps. The playlist is available as a text file.
PBN 28: Heavy 5 November 2018. Listen or download the mp3 file. 174 minutes. 128 Kbps. The playlistset list is available as a text file.
PBN 27: Heavy 4 October 2018. Listen or download the mp3 file. 126 minutes. 128 Kbps. The playlist is available as a text file.
PBN 26: When You Were Gone October 2018. Listen or download the mp3 file. 123 minutes. 128 Kbps. The playlist is available as a text file.
PBN 24: Irish March 2018. Listen or download the mp3 file. 139 minutes. 128 Kbps. The playlist is available as a text file..
PBN 23: Blues March 2018. Listen or download the mp3 file. 170 minutes. 128 Kbps. The playlist is available as a text file.
PBN 22: Space Modulator March 2018. Listen or download the mp3 file. 103 minutes. 128 Kbps. The playlist is available as a text file.
PBN 20: Love October 2017. Listen or download the mp3 file. 53 minutes. 128 Kbps. The playlist is available as a text file.
PBN 19: Drone August 2017. Listen or download the mp3 file. 143 minutes. 128 Kbps. The playlist is available as a text file.
PBN 18: Subwoofer August 2017. A hearty blend of heavy riff-rock and hip-hop seasoned with electronic dance music and punk. Listen or download the MP3 file. 110 minutes. 128 Kbps. The playlist is available as a text file.
PBN 15: Silence July 2017. Listen or download the mp3 file. 102 minutes. 128 Kbps. The playlist is available as a text file.
PBN 14: Romance July 2017. Listen or download the mp3 file. 116 minutes. 128 Kbps. The playlist is available as a text file.
PBN 13: Asshole June 2017. Listen or download the mp3 file. 81 minutes. 128 Kbps. The playlist is available as a text file.
PBN 12: Blue Day May 2017. Genre-defying mix that will bring sunshine into any rainy day. Listen or download the mp3 file. 204 minutes. 128 Kbps. The playlist is available as a text file.
PBN 7: Blues for Chris Cornell May 2017. Listen or download the mp3 file. 84 minutes. 128 Kbps. The playlist is available as a text file.
PBN 6: Rock2 December 2016. Listen or download the mp3 file. 204 minutes. 128 Kbps. The playlist is available as a text file.
PBN 5: Rock1 December 2016. Listen or download the mp3 file. 157 minutes. 128 Kbps. The playlist is available as a text file.
Just when I’d wrapped up a series of posts about the big box of free comics I got thanks to readers who used my affiliate links to find books at MyComicShop.com, another note from the retailer arrived to say I’d earned an additional $80 in store credit. That same week, I’d found a good deal on eBay to replace one of my favorite (and previously sold) action/crime series, DC/Vertigo’s The Losers, so I was left with very few holes in my collection. The Dark Horse Conan stories I’d like to read again were either too pricey or currently out of stock, so I dug around in my short boxes until it hit me: I still don’t have the complete original Miracleman series!
Over the years, I’d tracked down affordable copies in respectable condition of issues #1–20, and this quest was aided near the end by Marvel’s reprints of the original series. As Marvel made new, high-quality reprints available, the ridiculous prices for the original books decreased. Issue #15, the one gem I have yet to add to my collection, used to go for several hundred bucks.
I didn’t worry too much about collecting issues #21–24 because Marvel reprinted #21 and 22 in their repackaging of Neil Gaiman’s Golden Age storyline, and it seemed that Gaiman was slated to finish the Silver Age story that ended with a cliffhanger and was never completed due to Eclipse Comics’ demise. But here we are, years later, and we still haven’t seen the end of that story. I’m glad for Gaiman’s recent success with American Gods, but it isn’t a project that interests me. The gods I want to read about have “Miracle” in their names!
So, armed with some store credit, I picked up issues #21-23 of the original series. (Update: I’ve since added #24 to my collection.) I’ve read them all before, thanks to scans posted online, but it’s just a different and more satisfying experience to read the physical copies.
Those three books ate up most of my store credit, but I had just enough left over to pick up another story I’ve read before but was partially incomplete in my collection: The Price by Jim Starlin. Sure, I have the color “remastered” version that was the Dreadstar Annual, but I have never seen nor owned the original magazine-sized black-and-white edition, and I just love the black-and-white painted art of the original Metamorphosis Odyssey that appeared in Epic Illustrated and started the whole Dreadstar saga.
The original art reveals just how much the coloring/painting process enhanced the artwork’s mood and the story’s vibrancy. The original feels cold compared to the color version. It lacks the brilliant reds of the robes worn by members of the Church of the Instrumentality, the eye-popping colors that bring various cosmic and mystical energies to life on the page, and the powerful emotions suggested by the reprint’s color artwork.
However, the front and back-cover paintings are rendered in their original full-color and full-size glory, unlike in the reprint where they are shrunk and surrounded by additional cover elements that distract from their beauty—a complaint that at least one reader expressed in the original letters column of Dreadstar when the Annual was discussed.
I’m pleased to now have both versions of The Price in my Dreadstar collection, and the original was the one piece I’ve felt was missing over the years. How I assembled, lost, and re-assembled the entire original series fourtimes is a saga of collector triumph and tragedy, but I’m happy to now have every issue I ever wanted from one of my all-time favorite stories in any medium.
Now if we could just see the end of Miracleman, all would be right with the universe.
Thank you, readers and fans of sequential art for visiting this site and using it to find the books you want!
This post is part of a series about what was inside this month’s big box of free comics.
The Return to New York story in the original TMNT series #19–21 is even better than I remember. I think I was in turtle overload when I read it years ago, and I’d forgotten much of it. Visually, it’s one of the greatest TMNT stories of all time, with stunningly detailed artwork, creative layouts, extensively choreographed fight scenes, and incredible double-splash pages.
The black & white artwork creatively uses both black and white ink in addition to detailed screentone shading (sometimes called by the brand name Zip-A-Tone). The result is some of my favorite artwork in any TMNT story, and it’s a joy to watch the Turtles hack and slash their way through sewers full of enemies while their new Triceraton friend destroys everything in sight with his blaster.
But I was in for a shock when I read issue #6. It wasn’t just the wraparound cover that’s even more awesome than I remember. It wasn’t just the visual splendor of Turtles and Triceratons in combat. No, the shock was the discovery of just how many ideas I apparently stole from this single issue for my fiction series, The Adventures of Meteor Mags and Patches.
Issue #6 has asteroids, dinosaur-type aliens in a combat ring fighting to the death, a ruling body referred to only as the High Council, silly satire, aliens who dislike mammals (“Shut your face, you puny piece of mammal droppings!”), heroes who insult the dino-aliens (“Where I come from, bozos like you know their place — in museums, displayed as skeletons of long-dead ancient freaks!”), fight scenes that last for several pages with scant dialogue, and a shoot-out while attempting to board a spaceship. Somehow, this mid-1980s masterpiece burrowed so deeply into my brain that I was unconsciously drawing on it for inspiration decades later.
I wasn’t planning on picking up the original ten issues of the series, but after reading #6, I want to read the whole storyline again!
In the first five months of 2019, Mars Will Send No More earned just over $200 in store credit thanks to readers who followed links to find and buy comics at MyComicShop.com. That store credit means a big bonus box of comics for me this month, and it does more than justify the endless hours I spent finding various issues and series in the store so readers can get right to what they want with a single click. It means hours of happily reading old favorites and exploring new books! So, let’s open the big box of virtually free comics and see what awesomeness awaits!
Note: Although this post celebrates the results of affiliate links, every hyperlink below leads to a previous post here on MWSNM where the books are discussed in more detail.
First up: Armadillo #2 by Jim Franklin. This off-beat 1970s underground publication by Rip Off Press cost 50 cents when it came out, and I sold my copy in VF+ condition for $50. The book is on my list of 20 All-Time Favorite Comics, and I have sorely missed it. This time around, I got a VG+ copy that was selling for about $9, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that other than some creases along the spine and a few dings on the back cover, the book is in outstanding shape. For some surrealist art featuring armadillos, see my post with images from the interior.
Next up: Wolverine #75 and Wolverine #100. Both of these feature Wolverine holograms, and #100 has Wolverine switching back and forth between his costume and his skeleton. Yes! I don’t even care much for the interiors of these books, but of all the books I sold with holograms in 2013, these are the two I regret not having on hand. I’ve posted about both these books and scanned the hologram covers, so see my posts about Wolverine #100 and about the Fatal Attractions event that features a slew of holographic X-Men covers.
Next, something I’ve wanted for a long time: replacement issues for the complete Concrete collection I used to have! I didn’t covet every issue, just the ones I loved most. Last year, thanks to another dose of store credit, I started to put the series back together. I am still missing #9 of the first 10-issue series, and Volume 2 of the Complete Short Stories, but I am looking forward to re-reading the six-issue series Think Like a Mountain, and The Human Dilemma, plus the gorgeous covers and interior art from the original series. You can view the glorious back covers and more in my post about Concrete.
The fun doesn’t end there. I have never stopped missing my complete collection of Planetary, so this time around I got the Planetary Omnibus. It’s a giant beast, with more than 850 pages, and beautifully done. Even though I know the whole story, the artwork in Planetary is just incredible to look at. This is the one I am most looking forward to devouring, and you can take a look at my posts about Planetary to see what madness and mayhem fill its pages.
Speaking of mayhem: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Once upon a time, I had a lovely reprint collection consisting of the four full-color Mirage “Graphic Novel” editions, plus 3 or 4 of the black & white “Collected Book TPB” editions, and about a dozen other single issues of the original Mirage series by creators I liked. They were fun to read and fun to own, but I was only sad about selling a few of my favorites. This time around, I got the three Michael Zulli issues that are super weird and dark, the three issues of the Return to New York story that feature a Triceraton from the earliest stories, and issue #6 of the original series, which features a fun drawing of Turtle vs. Triceraton on the cover. There are still a few Turtle goodies on my wish list, such as issue #10, but this batch will keep me in Turtle heaven for a good long while.