My Fantastic Four-Ay: Part Two.

§ March 16th, 2026 § Filed under fantastic four, galactus § No Comments

While the Thing quickly became one of my favorite Marvel superheroes, thanks in part to John Byrne’s portrayal in the (probably) first issue of Fantastic Four I purchased off the stands, I very quickly latched onto my favorite Marvel supervillain:

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If #259 was my first purchased new issue of Fantastic Four, then #257 (cover date August 1983) was likely one my earliest back issue acquisitions of the series. And what a cover that was, with Galactus’ visage split with that of Death, which I probably thought was largely symbolic when I pulled the comic out of the bins, but surprise, it’s actually a literal representation of the story inside. But more on that in a moment.

I’ve read stories with Galactus, or referencing him, before, primarily in the Fantastic Four and Silver Surfer stories reprinted in the Origins of Marvel Comics and Son of Origins of Marvel Comics 1970s paperbacks that I checked out several times from the library as a young’un. Those books were a primary source of my knowledge of Marvel characters, along with Stan Lee’s semi-apocryphal text pieces therein, which is something I somehow neglected to mention in the previous installments of this series of posts.

The Galactus I encounted in those stories, the 1960s era rendition of the character, were likely more in line with the bombastic, cosmic storytelling of Lee ‘n’ Kirby, or fitting into the more quixotic Silver Surfer stories by Lee and John Buscema. What Byrne gave me in this comic was a combination of both, starting with this issue’s splash page that I remember being quite taken with:

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I mean, what? That’s how you start a comic, throwing what may be the most powerful being in the Marvel Universe at you and having him make this quiet, tragic-seeming admission. Plus, that’s a hell of a drawing.

Then Byrne hits us with this two-page spread, that really lays into the cosmic bombast while still giving Galactus his somber soliloquy as he ponders his existence:

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I know at least a couple of you out there winced when I referred to Galactus as a “supervillain” earlier in this post. A lot of hay has been made over the fact that Galactus is not a villain, as such, as he is “beyond such concepts as good and evil.” It’s established early on that he does what he does (tools around the universe eating planets) because it’s what he must do to survive. Not out of malice, just out of necessity.

I suppose if you’re on the planet being eating, that’s a splitting of hairs you really don’t have the time for. But this issue, getting into Galactus’s head, as he goes into his motivations and his doubts, goes a long way to fleshing out a being that could have just been a giant monster that our heroes fight occasionally, and let that be that. Giving him this level of…dignity goes a long way to establishing just who and what he is, and while Byrne may not have been the first to do this with the character, this was the first time I’ve seen it done with him. And it just fascinated me.

What especially grabbed me is Byrne further indicating Galactus’s importance to the universe at large, by having him literally have a conversation with Marvel’s embodiment of Death:

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Death straight up says that she and Galactus as “two corners of the great triangle which is the universe” (the third corner being, of course, this fella). I ate all this up, buying into the mystery and the cosmic significance of Galactus, and wanting to Read More About It.

Now, later in the issue, Galactus gets his mojo back and decides to eat a planet, this time just happening to be the homeworld of some old pests of the Fantastic Four, the Skrulls:

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…and while the Big G usually sets up machinery and such to more effectly absorb the planet’s energies, sometimes you just wanna dive right into the pie and not bother with the fork, right?

And, luckily for me, this would lead into more delving into the nature of Galactus some issues later, as Reed Richards is forced into a space-trial, accused of being responsible for the destruction of the Skrulls’ planet.

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Reed’s responsible, you see, because in a previous story, he took the steps to revive a fallen and really dying Galactus, because he wasn’t just going to stand by and watch someone die. Even a someone who’s taller than buildings and likes to eat planets.

And having learned that, I of course, in my Fantastic Four back issue buying, decided to pick up that particular storyline, three issues running from #242 to #245 (May-July 1982). Here’s the middle issue, with a great cover image that, eventually, was turned into a statue or toy of some kind:

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It was also in this issue that I learned of the origin of Galactus’s new herald, Nova, who had been in the newer issues I read. It was weird, working my way backwards in time, filling in the holes in the newer stories I’d read. It’s a sensation I don’t really experience much of anymore, piecing together long runs and slowly having the full story come together, like getting chapters of a book out of order and reading them as they come. The old comics I collect now (like Popeye and TurokThor that centered around Galactus and Ego the Living Planet, and that was almost too much cosmic shenaniganery for me to handle. Eventually I would get my hands on Supervillain Classics:

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…which would fill in the holes on his backstory for me, using literal panels extracted from previously published comics and tied together with short bits of explanatory text.

Of course we’d eventually see Hatless Galactus, but maybe we’re getting a little off track here.

I still have a fondness for Galactus, particularly when creators have new and unusual takes on the character (like Mark Waid and Mike Wieringo having a depowered Galactus trying to exist as a “normal” person). I also enjoyed getting an actual Big Guy in a Wild Helmet version of Galactus in the recent Fantastic Four film.

Galactus pops up in a lot of places, but whenever he shows up in the Fantastic Four comic, I’m pleased to be seeing my old pal, the one who introduced me to the whole Cosmic-Ness of it all in the Marvel Universe.

57.

§ March 13th, 2026 § Filed under old, variant covers § 18 Comments

So Captain Gallant of the Foreign Legion, the 1955 Charlton comic book adaptation of the television show:

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…had both a regular newsstand edition and a “Heinz Foods Premium” edition, which featured the Heinz emblem on the certificate on the back cover:

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…and had a listing of the 57 varieties of Heinz products on the inside back cover:

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Heinz was a sponsor of the TV show, hence this tie-in comic, though I couldn’t find any video or images of Buster Crabbe juggling bottles of Heinz whilst espousing their fine qualities.
 
 
 
 

images from this eBay auction — also, a happy day to my birthday brother pal Andrew

Nature is healing…

§ March 11th, 2026 § Filed under collecting, retailing § 6 Comments

…as speculation on Image Comics first issues is beginning to ramp up again. A few years back, my general sense of the Image speculation then was people hoping to twig onto whatever will be the new Walking Dead, a comic that expanded into other popular media and drove back issue prices into the stratosphere.

Now the speculation appears to be leaning towards first issues that are perhaps lower ordered, or otherwise under the radar. Titles that when they’re announced, and when it comes time for me to do my ordering, I don’t hear a peep about from anyone. And then, when it’s the day before the comic goes on sale, I start to get the requests.

From what I hear on the social medias, when I noted this, was that the comics folks on the YouTubes and the TikToks started to hype up these particular comics as “investable collectibles” within the last week or two. Of course, this is well past the time I’m able to get more copies, so even if I saw any of these videos (which I wouldn’t since I avoid most comics content on those platforms) what good was that going to do.

I haven’t noted the titles of the comics in question if only because the onus is not on them; they’re by creators doing books with stories they want to tell. And while I’m sure they’re pleased with the sales (and the attendant reprints), I’m not sure how happy they’d be to know that the primary push for sales is as a commodity, not as a storytelling medium. Look, I’m sure a bushel of twenties is a healing balm, but there must be some disappointment.

It reminds me of a creator at Marvel during initial COVID times, when speculators were desperate for anything to invest in, getting excited that an issue of their book suddenly shot through the roof in demand and sales. They seemed to think it portended future success, not realizing it was a one-off fluke as that issue featured an “invesetable” first appearance, and sales went right back to normal levels with the next issue.

So we have high demand for these new first issues, but no real indication of how many of those sales are to people looking to actually read it, and no indication as to what the sales will eventually settle down to once the investment opportunity is over. I’m just sorry that it may take two or three cycles of printings before the books can find their audiences. Unless they want to go on eBay and pick up the $20 or more copies of the first printings that were listed as such even before the release dates.

Collection and investment has always been part and parcel of the comics hobby — the phrase “must-have double-bag item” obviously came from somewhere. But in these days when comic orders are hewn close to the bone as it is, the surprise last-second demand for a low-ordered book is a frustration.

My Fantastic Four-ay: Part One.

§ March 9th, 2026 § Filed under fantastic four § 11 Comments

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I am reasonably sure Fantastic Four #259 (cover date October 1983, released June 1983) was the first issue of the series I purchased off the stands. While The Thing #5 that kicked off my still-ongoing dive into the world of Marvel Comics was technically a November ’83 (relased in July) issue, it was still close enough to that Fantastic Four‘s release that I could still find copies on the stands.

This was far further along into John Byrne’s tenure on the series than I imagined. Byrne, of course, had been a hot commodity since his time on the X-Men title with Chris Claremont, which came to an end in late ’80 (#144, cover date March 1981). Picking up Fantastic Four with #232 (July 1981 cover, released circa March), Byrne took what is popularly called a “Back to Basics” approach that he favored, stripping away all the excess subplots and characters and oddball permutations of the book and the team within, scaling it all back to just the family and their adventures. In essence, trying to bring it back to the Stan Lee/Jack Kirby days of the comic’s inception.

Byrne had actually worked on the book before, in the late 1970s/very early ’80s, from 209 to 221 (with a couple of fill-ins from other creators). He worked over Marv Wolfman scripts, and was inked by Joe Sinnott, but Byrne wrote the last couple of issues himself. I feel like this short precursor to his main run on the book is often overlooked, though its adherence to the slightly more overwrought tone of the title may separate it from the aforementioned “Back to Basics” approach from the later run. However, elements from the earlier books would be brought back…

…in particular, Terrax the Tamer, the fella what the FF is squaring off against on the cover of #259 up there. Here’s a better look at him from inside the comic, going by a slightly different moniker that didn’t stick around long:

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Anyway, when I picked up this issue, I didn’t know nuthin’ about nuthin’ about any of the backstory, either given the comic’s story or what the history was with the artist behind the scenes. I mean, I knew who the FF were, I knew who Dr. Doom was, I had no idea who this Terrax, or Tyros, guy was, but he was clearly the bad guy. Look, I was 14, I’d read comics before, I knew how these things work and how to pick up what backstory I needed to catch up with what was going on.

But I think overall I was more taken with the overall…grounded (relatively speaking) tone of Marvel I was experiencing here. My superhero fandom, since I started picking up comics on the regular basis, rather than just piecemeal as I could cajole my parents into picking one up for me on an occasional basis, was mostly DC Comics. They had a lighter, more fantasy-oriented tone to most of the titles I was reading, but this Fantastic Four comic went a long way to establishing that these characters existed in a more representative world. That they had complex inner lives and relatable problems aside from whatever that issue’s particular plot contrivances inspired.

Just…just look at this panel of the Thing in the back seat of a cab. Just a dude sittin’ and thinkin’ and Byrne spent a good amount of page space giving us character:

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Not that DC wasn’t approaching storytelling in a similar way, but it just didn’t have the frisson that one panel of Ben Grimm in a cab did.

Fantastic Four #259 turned out to be my gateway into the series, and into John Byrne’s work as a whole. But before I expanded too far into his other endeavors, I had what amounted to a couple of years’ worth of back issues I had to acquire in order to catch myself up on what would quickly become one of my favorite new comics. How that went, and what new-to-me character I found there and became obsessed about, I’ll discuss in the next installment of this series.

Featuring the debut of future Conan O’Brien co-star Anima!

§ March 4th, 2026 § Filed under retailing, teen titans § 14 Comments

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Oh, just a comic from an acquired collection that not only has a price tag from my previous place of employment, but has my writing on the sticker. Which means, this copy of The New Titans Annual #9 was originally processed as a new back issue after being taken off the stands by me around 33 years ago.

I’ve been at this a long time, you guys.

My Fantastic Four-ay: Prologue.

§ March 1st, 2026 § Filed under collecting, fantastic four § 21 Comments

I’m not sure what my actual first issue of Fantastic Four was. I know I certainly encountered it as a younger child, having the vague memory of reading a 1970s-era issue at my cousin’s house. I know I definitely read (and owned) a copy of Marvel Two-in-One #18 when it was new, or close to, so that was very likely my introduction to the delicate sensibilities of a certain Mr. Grimm.

Eventually I would encounter the Origins of Marvel Comics paperback in the local library, possibly in the late-ish ’70s, which not only gave me my crash course on what the FF were about, but got me up to speed on several other Marvel characters to boot.

When I was reading comics in the ’70s, while I did get a superhero comic from time to time (like the aforementioned lightly-terrifying issue of Marvel Two-in-One), I mostly gravitated towards other topics. I read Disney comics, I enjoyed Pink Panther, I’d get the occasional sci-fi or horror comic somehow (like this comic with a worrisome sci-fi story from Denny O’Neil and Tom Sutton), that sort of thing. When I did get superhero comics, I primarily angled myself at DC’s characters.

Obviously, if you’ve been following my site for any period of time, you can guess that an early DC fave was Swamp Thing. I also got the occasional Superman or Green Lantern comic, or that one Superboy giant with the Legion of Super-Heroes. Oh, and all the digest reprints, and so on and so forth.

I would get the occasional Marvel superhero book, and even had a brief subscription to Amazing Spider-Man around issue #200, to fill out the rest of my subscription to Pizazz, which had been cancelled shortly after I started getting them in the mail. But I wasn’t a regular follower of any of them…mostly it would just be one issue here and there, if I had a particular need to read a new comic and I already had all the DCs I wanted from the latest shipments to the newsstands.

It was sometime in ’83 when I started making a more concentrated effort to follow certain Marvel titles, like Incredible Hulk, or Uncanny X-Men. But I remembered liking the Thing from those long-ago comics I read in the ’70s, and picked up a copy of this:

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Given that my first issue of Incredible Hulk also featured the title character fighting other superheroes, maybe there was a specific attraction about such an event that attracted me to those issues. Regardless, I enjoyed this comic quite a bit, having a definitely different look ‘n’ feel from the DCs I’d been buying, and kept on buying more Marvels.

It’s not like Marvel replaced DC in my comic buying habits. I still predominately bought DC superhero comics. But I made room in my budget for more Marvel titles, including, eventually, Fantastic Four.

It was also about this time I started to discover that most peculiar of retail outlets, the “comic book store.” My first visit to one was well out of town, a place called Comic Book Nook in Simi Valley, which I’d found out about via a newspaper ad with a couple for so-and-so off the price of a back issue. However, a schoolmate of mine clued me into a place by the name of “Ralph’s Comic Corner” in the much closer city of Ventura, which is where, in short order, the greater percentage of my comics custom would be applied. (And I would also get a job there a few years later, leading to where I’m at now, but that’s another story.)

It was at Ralph’s where I could not only get the new comics usually a week or two ahead of the newsstands, but I could also delve deep into the back issues and fill in holes in my reading, picking up comics I long ago missed on the newsstands, or filling in runs of newer comics I’d just started. Like, you know, a lot of those Marvel comics that I just started picking up, which, unlike many of their DC counterparts, were a little more continuity-focused with more ongoing subplots and such. Reading the past history could often enhance the experience future stories, versus a Superman story that would exist in a vacuum separate from other Superman stories, and certainly other DC comics.

So I don’t recall where I started, exactly, with John Byrne’s run on the Fantastic Four from this period, but I absolutely used my access to the comic shop’s back issue bins to work my way back to the beginning of his stint on the title. That may very well be the first time I did such a thing with a comic book series I was following…not just going back a couple of issues to get the start of the current storyline, or working my way back to an actual #1, but liking a creator’s work on a specific title enough to get all the issues that creator did.

And reading that run of Fantastic Four started me on an on-again/off-again journey of reading that title, one that continues to even now and the great work being done by Ryan North and Humberto Ramos. But before I get to there, I’m going to start back here, and talk about what it was that grabbed my attention about Byrne’s tenure on Fantastic Four. And after that, what did and did not keep me following Marvel’s First Family over the succeeding decades.

This will be an intermittent series of entries on this site, probably at least one a week. I certainly hope you follow along, and I look forward to your comments on your favorite FF stories and why you read, or maybe didn’t read, the title.

The Final ’90s Countdown, Part Eighteen.

§ February 27th, 2026 § Filed under final '90s countdown § 19 Comments

Oh, hello there! It’s been a while! I promise to get back into the swing of things re: the Final ’90s Countdown, where I discuss your picks for your favorite indie comics series that began sometime within the 1990 to 1999 time frame. Still going through the entries that received single votes…and as I always remind you, that’s no reflection of the quality of the comic, but a result of so many good comics being released that decade.

And awaaaaay we go:

Soulsearchers and Company (Claypool, 1993-2007)

ImageWell, once again I find myself in the tricky position of having to write semi-knowledgeably about a comic book series that I did not read. And embarrassingly enough, it’s a series written by the prolific and popular funnybook scribe Peter David, whose work I normally followed but somehow I managed to bounce off this particular endeavor.

I’m not sure why…I know I at least tried it for a few of its early issues, but either it just didn’t grab me or I was going through one of my not-infrequent financially-necessitated cutbacks on the books I was following. But despite my lack of readership, you can see from the header above that the comic lasted a good, long while…82 issues, to be exact, which ain’t bad for a small press black and white book. The publisher, Claypool Comics, also put out Deadbeats, which also ran 82 issues, and the licensed Elvira Mistress of the Dark comic, which ran a boggling 166 issues. And these might have all run even more issues if Diamond Comic Distributors didn’t drop the publisher from their catalog in order to make room for, I don’t know, more Sexy Anime Statues.

Anyway, the book was written by Peter David, occasionally with Richard Howell. Art was by a number of folks, including Amanda Conner, Dave Cockrum, Gordon Purcell, Joe Staton, John Heebink, Chris Marrinan, and several others. The premise itself revolves around a group of paranormal investigators…by which I mean, the investigators themselves are paranormal, including, like, a fire demon, a shapechanger, a witch, a centaur, and a once-human-now-magically-transformed prairie dog. They would go up against magical menaces and misdemeanors, all told with the David flair for mixing humor with melodrama.

There were six omnibuses reprinting the series up through issue #71. Two trade paperbacks reprinting through #12 were released earlier. The omnibuses appear readily available via Amazon.

A Claypool Comics website exists, but it’s mostly descriptions of their main two series (this one and Deadbeats) plus reviews.

So, a real blind spot in my Peter David reading, I’m afraid. And in a lot of people’s, apparently, judging by David’s comment at the end of that post.

SCIENCE!

§ February 25th, 2026 § Filed under pal plugging, publishing, superman § 12 Comments

Thanks for the response to my Fantastic Four post, which, I have to admit, was a last-minute thing that I wrote with little to no planning. I do plan on returning to the topic, probably next week, with a little more thought to what I’m doing, I hope!

But for today, since I have a very early morning doctor’s appointment, I’m going to just point out that DC Comics is releasing 1972’s Action Comics #419 in a facsimile reprint edition this week.

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Now, DC is releasing it because it’s the first appearance of the Human Target, who gets the occasional series and once had a TV show. But the big reason to pick up this comic is for its connection to the Hubble space telescope!

Bluesky pal Paul Cornish had an article in Scientific American a while back explaining the connection, and now seems like a good time to link to it!

• • •

In other news, the new Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide is out, and you may notice a slight physical difference from the previous year’edition:

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Don’t get too excited, the new Guide is actually about 100 pages shorter in length. It’s printed on thicker, and much lighter, paper, so it no longer feels like the solid brick it paper that it used to. It’s slight and airy, despite its bulky appearance.

The comic book price listings are still in the same print size, with about 40 additional pages. Also, the strips of three mini cover reproductions across the tops of pages have been reduced to just one scan in the page corners.

In this day of “Hot Comic Apps” and such, the Guide may seem archaic, but it’s still a useful base for pricing, so long as you, y’know, do your research on that small percentage of books that may be seeing current price fluctuations. But stuff like Captain Savage, you probably don’t need to worry about the Guide being too far off the mark.

It’s still frustrating that the Guide devotes pages in every volume to “Pioneer” and “Victorian” comics, while ignoring undergrounds, which are more likely to be encountered in the wild. And, are more in need of current, consistent pricing. And, frankly, every time I’ve tried to buy a “Victorian-age” comic someone brought into the shop, given that the comic in question is in worse-for-wear condition, going by Guide prices always results in a rejection of my offer. “It’s old, therefore it’s expensive,” of course. Nobody wants to know their century-old item is worth only about $20.

Also, Yummy Fur still isn’t listed. C’mon, guys.

I’m sure I’ll have more to say. Oh, should note my copy of House of Secrets #92 is now valued at about $3500.

Using the “FF” abbreviation is going to be confusing if I keep talking about these comics.

§ February 23rd, 2026 § Filed under fantastic four § 27 Comments

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I thought I’d mention the fact that I’ve been reading/rereading over the last several weeks Fantastic Four of the last few…decades, as it turns out. My project started with reading, for the first time, the Tom DeFalco/Paul Ryan run of the early ’90s.

I’d read the Byrne run, stuck around a bit during the Englehart run (but dropped the book before the “John Harkness” stuff started), came back for Simonson, then dropped it again ’til the Waid/Wieringo run and skipping to the Millar run, then I think I was off ’til Hickman came on, and I’ve been following the book ever since.

Boy, that’s confusing to figure out. Especially since, given Marvel’s recent publishing shenanigans, Fantastic Four gets relaunched over and over again with new #1s. But anyway, like I was saying, I started off by reading the DeFalco/Ryan books, which I hadn’t read but was always intrigued by the “what the hell is going on in this book?” feeling I’d get whenever processing these issues at the shop:

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It is overall a fun run of comics, just a solid superhero book that, as I saw someone observe, tried to an FF that wasn’t necessarily duplicative of the classic Stan Lee/Jack Kirby run. And overall I think it was successful, bringing in Reed’s father as bit of a potstirrer, introducing Lyja the Skrull as Johnny’s sorta love interest (that’s a long story I won’t be getting into here), plenty of parallel universe happenings, lots of warnings of impending doom (like that cover above), and so on.

And for all the different directions the stories go during this run, by the time this iteration of the Fantastic Four comes to an end in issue #416 (the “last” of the original series), all the various subplots are pretty much tied up (aside, I think, from a lead-in to a then-ongoing X-Men “Onslaught” crossover, but close enough).

After reading that run, I decided to keep going and reading FFs that I either hadn’t read yet or hadn’t read in a while. I wasn’t being a completist about it, as I did skip the “Heroes Reborn” business and then the Chris Claremont-written relaunch that followed. I also jumped over the Waid/Wieringo run since I had reread that not terribly long ago.

I don’t know that you need to hear every thought about every run on the book I either revisited or visited for the first time. I may address these in further posts, but I wanted to note a couple of things.

One, reading (most of) thirty years of Fantastic Four over a relatively short period of time makes you realize just how much is crammed into a fictional history of a book like this. As you read these one issue per month over the decades, you don’t question just how much was supposed to have happened in their lives over an in-universe span of, maybe, a decade or so. Like, how many times has the Baxter Building blown up? Every few weeks, maybe? Or when Johnny was “dead” for two years, but the kids hadn’t seemed to age two years in the meantime? This is stuff you really shouldn’t try to think about.

Two, speaking of ages, Reed and Sue’s daughter Valeria is kind of all over the map. She starts off as a toddler, gets revealed to be super-intelligent, and then once she’s running around with the team her age seems to begin to flucuate. It’s during the Hickman run, I believe, that her age is specifically pinned down as “three years old.” Though, as additional creative. teams come and go, she seems to be aged up to about…7 or 8, maybe? I think she’s older still in the current run. I know, trying to get children’s ages consistent in endless narratives like this is a quick way to madness, and besides, they’ve been going through this with their son Franklin for decades now. Just thought I’d mention that.

Three, I posted that specific Fantastic Four comic at the top of the post because I had totally forgotten that James Robinson had written the book for a time, around 2014-5. Got his own #1 and everything. And I even read it at the time. I suppose I can be excused for this, as I was opening my shop around then, but still, this book had been lost to my memory.

I’ll see if I can cook up any more observations about the FFs I’ve read in future posts. I will point out that I didn’t read the “Heroes Reborn” stuff, or the Claremont-written relaunch, so I’ll take suggestions as to whether or not I should tackle those.

Now do The World Below.

§ February 20th, 2026 § Filed under pal plugging, publishing § 10 Comments

So it seems to be a big time for BIG COMIC BOOK ANNOUNCEMENTS, with the Comicspro event going on currently at…um, wherever it’s taking place, I have no idea. But the news just keeps coming…like a comic with Jay and Silent Bob invading the Marvel Universe (scripted by Kevin Smith, natch):

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…which, frankly, I don’t know if they’re going to go “full blue” with the dialogue like that Archie Meets Jay and Silent Bob book last year. I mean, if it was just Deadpool, then yeah, I can see ’em swearin’ it up, but Jeff the Land Shark is there! You can’t say “fuck” in front of Jeff the Land Shark! Anyway, I may have more Smith tolerance than most of my fellow comics-noscenti, so I’m looking forward to it, at least.

And then there’s DC, surprise surprise, announcing more titles for their best-selling Absolute line: Absolute Catwoman and Absolute Green Arrow:

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…which, I mean, why not. I’m hoping DC doesn’t kill that goose for its golden eggs by cramming as many titles under this imprint as possible. They’re not really doing it now, they’re taking it nice and slow, but while Absolute Batman is outselling every other comic on the stands, that’s not necessarily true for the other Absolute titles. There are one or two that I honestly don’t expect to be around within a year or so, but we’ll see. In the meantime, I’m already getting in-store interest in these new additions, so that goose ain’t dead yet.

The big, big news, which…was it from Comicspro? Ah, who cares, it’s still big news. Anyway, it’s the return of Paul Chadwick’s Concrete:

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I actually had to go back to this “Final ’80s Countdown” post where I wrote about the Concrete comics to figure out where the character’s storyline left off, and it was the 2006 mini-series The Human Dilemma. Yes, that was 20 years ago, and it was almost Miracleman-esque in its leaving readers hanging on a cliffhanger for decades. (Yes, there were a few shorts collected into a 2012 one-shot, but that’s not quite the same.)

Anyway, I’ll be glad to see more Concrete, and hope it doesn’t take another 20 years for a 90-year-old Paul Chadwick to release the next one!

For the last bit of shocking news I’m going to mention here, we’re finally getting repri–er, excuse me, facsimile editions, of the Kurt Busiek/George Pérez JLA/Avengers mini-series this summer.

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As originally, Marvel and DC will be splitting the publishing chores, with Marvel putting out #1 and #3, and DC releasing #2 and #4. From Marvel’s May solicits here (get that pop-up blocker ready). Shockingly, it’s only $5.99 per issue. The last reprinting was just a few years ago in a supremely-limited edition, so it’ll be nice to have this comic around again. Honestly, it should never be out of print.

There’s just so much more going on in the comic news world right now (a Hello Kitty comic? HELLO MONEY), and I suggest you seek out your favorite Genre TV/Movie Site That Has Some Comic Book News Squirrelled Away Somewhere and catch up. I bet I’ll have a lot more to talk about on Monday. I haven’t even mentioned pal Amy‘s upcoming mystery comic yet! Lots of comics coming out that Comic Fan Mike is excited about, and Retailer Mike dreads having to figure out orders for. Ah well, I knew the job was dangerous when I took it.

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In old news, Comic Book Yeti presents a 1994 interview with Mike Mignola talking about his brand new comic book Hellboy! (That’s a silly name, it’ll never go anywhere.) It’s funny to see him talk about having John Byrne continue to be involved in the Hellboy production process (SPOILER: Byrne only worked on the one Hellboy mini, though did other unrelated comics that featured cameos from Hellboy characters).

And speaking of Comic Book Yeti, I did a podcast interview with them a while back. And hey, so did Amy, listen to hers too!

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