0024: The Other Man Who Fell To Earth

Sure I miss David Bowie. But I can't help but worry about Mike Allred. A year ago, during the months after Bowie's death as the current "Silver Surfer" series kept getting delay after delay during the character's 50th Anniversary, I would often wonder if Allred was rocking in the fetal position somewhere. Bowie and early 70's glitter rock in general infused some of Allred's most successful work, such as "Madman" and "Red Rocket 7". Naming a regular cast member "Mott the Hoople" is not subtle. But there's always been a lot more to Allred's stories than a fruit salad of pop culture allusions. Witness: "Astroeque".

 

Dark Horse is still selling this on their website. I have no clue about its Netflix availability, but that's the perfect outlet for a movie like this. The budget is so low and so many of the cast and crew are closely ( and often literally) related that the line between "experimental film" and "home movie" blurs. According to an interview in "Modern Masters Volume 16: Mike Allred" (TwoMorrows, April 2008), Allred states that the version included as a bonus on the "G-Men From Hell" DVD is the "full screen" (meaning chopped down to the shape of a TV screen) version with sound that wasn't mixed properly. This version, released on NTSC VHS in 1998, is the version he would have preferred they use.

The movie itself, made in 1996, looks in retrospect like a rehearsal for a specific scene from Red Rocket 7, without costumes. This movie, the LP-sized comic book mini-series and the album on CD (featuring Allred's band The Gear) all feel like parts of a multimedia project, in which no one part is completely redundant to the others. Of course, that also means that no one part is complete in itself. I would recommend the film with the caveat that one should watch it both before AND after reading the collected "Red Rocket 7". The album supplements both but stands on its own as a musical work if not as a story; I would save the album for last. The comic series is the best of the three but it has a way of making parts of the movie that are ambiguous become much more specific. The movie plays on the viewers' imaginations more. Reading the comic first has the same effect as watching a music video (remember those?) before hearing a song in the context of an album as audio alone. Without the video, a piece of music can provoke different images in the imaginations of different people. After seeing it, that's the image that comes to most peoples' minds. I will say that watching the movie was much more enjoyable after reading the comic, but less thought provoking.

0023: "From The Glorious Past..."?

In the posts "The Lost Anniversary" and "The Post Anniversary" I wrote about Atlas Comics' reinvention as Marvel and the first issue of the Marvel Tales reprint series in 1964, respectively. The two aren't unrelated. Before 1960, most comics publishers (and readers) viewed reprinted stories as matters of dishonesty or ineptitude because, frankly, those were exactly the reasons behind reprints in the Golden Age. A more straightforward form of 'content recycling' was to take a few remaindered or overrun copies of comics past their cover date and bind them, three or four at a time, in a new cover and sell them for 50-75% of their original cover price. EC Comics made several of these. In fact, the first three DC annuals from 1936 to 1938 were very much like this, either rebinding existing pages or printing them from the same plates. That third one came out at about the time that the original owner went into receivership and his share was bought out by his distributors. Almost immediately, they added a fourth title, Action Comics, which introduced the character who would symbolize their company, Superman. The first two titles, already renamed More Fun Comics and New Adventure Comics, switched from a 'volume and issue' numbering system (with a new #1 each year) to a whole numbering system. The title they jointly owned with the previous publisher, Detective Comics, carried on and became the publisher name for all four series. In 1939 and 1940 they published annuals of new material, still 96 pages for 15¢ at a time when their standard format was 64 pages for 10¢. They continued every year until the mid-40's, when M.C. Gaines (editor and minority owner of the All-American imprint) left to create a new publishing company, Educational Comics. He took with him some trade dress elements and the feature he initiated, "Picture Stories From the Bible", and sold his share of the company back to DC's owners for the stake he needed. When he died a few years after that, his son took over the floundering company, renamed it Entertaining Comics (or EC) and radically overhauled its roster (imagine replacing PBS Kids or Disney, Jr. with Cartoon Network's Adult Swim). Some of the cash flow problems were addressed with the aforementioned "annuals" rebinding old comics.

By the time Gaines left, DC had
already begun publishing the quarterly "World's Finest Comics" and "Comic Cavalcade" at 96 pages, then shrunk to 80 pages. When war time paper restrictions were lifted, smaller companies put out giant issues, some over 250 pages, often rehashing past failures and in some cases stealing older stories from other publishers, gambling that no one would notice. Martin Goodman's Marvel companies didn't seem to bother with annuals. The only examples I can find are B&W 128-page reprints of "Captain America" (early 40's), Marvel Mystery Comics (mid-40's) and Kid Colt Outlaw (early 50's), all for Canada. That changed after 1957, when both their rack presence and market penetration were compromised.

On the right is my personal copy of Marvel Tales Annual #2 from 1965. The situation at the time is best summed up by the blurb, "From the glorious past, when the Incredible Hulk was featured in his own magazine...", which was a whopping three years earlier. The other headliners were only two years old. In fact, the oldest story here is a five page suspense story used as filler and originally published less than a year before the Hulk story. Let me see if I can present more of a coherent timeline.

• The popularity of super-heroes wanes in the late 1940's. Goodman's first comic book series, "Marvel Mystery Comics", is almost ten years old when it drops super-hero features, replaces them with suspense stories and changes its name to "Marvel Tales". A year later the 'Marvel' group identity begins to change into the 'Atlas' group identity.
• During the 1950's, the Superman television show (1952-1958) causes the already enormous readership for Superman to become almost as permanent a part of popular culture as the character himself. He, Batman and Wonder Woman are the only DC super-heroes left with eponymous series as well as each having the lead feature in an anthology (although WW's anthology, "Sensation Comics", spends its last year as "Sensation Mystery" during the Superman TV show's first season).
• Atlas tries unsuccessfully to revive its three biggest super-heroes, Human Torch, Sub-Mariner and Captain America, in 1953-1954. Probably due to the bad publicity of the Congressional hearings on juvenile delinquency, "Young Men In Action" and their individual titles are cancelled by the end of the summer, except Sub-Mariner which lasts an additional year.
• By the end of 1954, the Comics Code Authority is formed by a coalition of publishers to regain public trust. EC is scapegoated and when participating publishers begin using the CCA stamp starting with early 1955 cover dates, EC replaces its "New Trend" titles (1950-1954) with "New Direction" titles, futilely attempting to play by the new rules. By the end of 1955 they abandon comics and publish B&W magazines with comic art, such as "Mad".
• To find out what kind of features will sell in the new CCA climate, DC creates "Showcase" (a 'try-out' series) in 1956. The first year is a failure except for issue #4, which introduces an updated, scientifically rational version of a Golden Age super-hero, The Flash. More such reworkings of super-hero characters follow over the next five years.
• In 1957, after Goodman dismantles his own Atlas distribution system the distributor he intends to use for his own comics is put out of business by legal problems. Sitting on a large inventory he must move, he accepts a deal from Independent News which is controlled by DC's owners. It reduces the number of titles he publishes by 80% officially and was rumored to have prohibited super-hero titles unofficially.
• In 1958, Jack Kirby quits DC acrimoniously and works for editor Stan Lee at Goodman's shrunken group of publishing companies. The Superman television series ends.
• In 1959, the DC series "The Brave And The Bold", which had been a period adventure anthology (knights, vikings, musketeers, etc.) for four years suddenly adopts the "Showcase" approach of devoting each issue to a single, temporary feature. Most are super-heroes.
• After twenty years, Superman has accumulated a large recurring cast and an increasingly byzantine backstory, mostly due to retroactive elaborations about his home planet and childhood. The most frequent questions from readers are usually dealt with by running newly scripted and drawn retellings of key points of his life. In 1960, for the company's Silver Anniversary, it is decided to run an 80 page collection reprinting the most requested Superman stories. It will cost 25¢ at a time when 32 page comics cost 10¢ [2.5 times the pages, 2.5 times the price.] Although the stories cover the span of his life, they were all originally published during the previous five years. The only new material is the cover, a 2-page map of Krypton and a modicum of editorial content. It ships in June with no cover date and DC's owners control the distribution, so they are intending to let it sit on racks until it sells. They needn't have worried; it sells out rapidly. So much so that a second "annual" is released in November.
• In 1961 Marvel adds the letters "MC" to its cover, finally asserting a group identity and begins to try recurring adventure heroes in their suspense comics. DC, having successfully launched several new titles from "Showcase" and "Brave And The Bold", including "Justice League Of America", expands the concept of their now twice-a-year "annuals".

Page 24, following the X-Men story, Angel hosts a T-shirt ad.

In June, on three successive weeks, they released  a "Secret Origins" Annual, a third Superman Annual and their first Batman Annual, all in the format used in 1960. New covers, one or two pages of new features and reprints of 1950's stories translated to brisk sales. The Secret Origins volume had two "Showcase" alumni, Adam Strange who got the lead feature in "Mystery In Space" in 1959 and Challengers of the Unknown, who got their own title in 1958. Batman and Superman appear in their first "World's Finest" team-up. The rest of the reprints are Silver Age origins of Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern and Martian Manhunter, all of the original JLA except Aquaman. A text story gives the origin of Green Arrow, who joined a few months before the annual. By September Marvel introduced the Fantastic Four. Although they didn't wear costumes, they were essentially a super-powered version of the Challengers of the Unknown, created by Kirby the year before he quit DC. It's long been assumed to have been a reaction to DC's sales of the JLA comic, but that had only been out a year after debuting in "The Brave And The Bold" and the first issue of JLA came out between the first issues of "Green Lantern" and "Rip Hunter", which were both introduced in "Showcase". Since all three proved their commercial appeal in the try-out titles and DC wasn't going to hand Goodman their sales figures (and the title didn't include a Statement of Ownership in its first year), how did Marvel know which of the three sold best? Well, when your biggest rival only releases three giant specials for the summer and two of them tie into five titles they've been selling for 20 years and the third ties into a title they've recently introduced, they sort of ARE telling you their sales ranks, if not the actual quantities. Right after the first FF comic shipped, DC raised their standard comic price to 12¢, meaning that the 80 page Annuals should have gone from 25¢ to 30¢ to remain proportionate. However, in November, DC released a fourth Superman and second Batman Annual, still adhering to the same formula and still only a quarter. That decision to make the cover price a less malleable part of this new, second format was not lost on Marvel.

Page 35, following the Hulk story.

Marvel raised their own standard prices when DC's November annuals came out. Their problems distributing the Hulk followed in the spring of 1962. To fit the new Hulk title into the schedule they cancelled "Teen-Age Romance", which wasn't a huge seller, but it was at least allowed onto the stands. Rather than risk losing another mediocre seller from the racks in order to publish a potential hit that no one will see, Marvel decided to put their new super-hero features into their existing anthologies. The first three were on the stands in June when the next wave of DC annuals hit: "Superman's Girlfriend, Lois Lane", then Superman (#5) and Batman (#3). Lois had a four-page back-up feature in the "Superman" title in 1944-1946. When WWII ended, popular culture was filled with images of returning soldiers reentering the workplace and working women becoming homemakers. Lois remained a regular cast member in Superman stories, but the solo feature was cancelled. In 1957, two issues of "Showcase" were followed by her own series in 1958.

Page 44,  after the Doctor Strange story

At this point, "Showcase" had reached its 40th issue and except for four issues in its first year, every feature introduced either took over a former anthology title (Space Ranger and Adam Strange) or started its own title. What Marvel could have really used, apparently, was a try-out book of its own. However, since introducing new titles was off the table for the foreseeable future in the summer of 1962, what would be the point? Any new feature that sold well would just have to be shoehorned into an existing title anyway, which is what they were already doing. So, instead of launching a try-out title, Marvel produced its own annuals, beginning in 1962. What neither DC nor Marvel could have known at the time is that Showcase #41 would be the start of a dry spell that began with an attempt to turn the long-running back-up feature "Tommy Tomorrow" into full-length stories but wound up being the last new stories with the character until 1977. He would never have his own feature again. For the next five years most of their successes were features introduced elsewhere (Teen Titans, Enemy Ace, Spectre, etc.) with one exception: The Inferior Five. Marvel might have been painted into a corner with regards to increasing their cash flow using the modern annual format, but at least they didn't wind up believing that the try-out format is somehow magic or fool-proof.

The first two Marvel annuals were "THE BIG MILLIE THE MODEL ANNUAL" from Male Publishing Corp. and "THE BIG STRANGE TALES ANNUAL" from Atlas Magazines, Inc., both out in July with Marvel's second batch of September cover-dated comics. Both had 72 pages for 25¢. Unlike the typeset font used on their standard 32-page comics, these first annuals have "#1" and "1962" (no more specific date) hand lettered on the covers. Millie carries the blurb: "All-New Stories", which start with a retelling of Millie's 'origin' story. Some of the "All-New Stories" are pin-ups, a regular mainstay of the ongoing series at the time. The Strange Tales is all reprint, except the cover, so its blurb reads, "Triple Value!" Why triple? Marvel comics at that time were all 32 interior pages (plus glossy covers), but usually about 24 of them were comics art. In 1962, two more pages would be a text story in order to meet an arbitrary standard of the Post Office for a lower postage rate on subscription copies. The remaining six pages would be some combination of in-house ads (like the ones appearing throughout this post) and paid ads. However, the first Strange Tales annual had no ads and no text. Marvel wasn't selling subscriptions to titles that came out once a year, so they weren't mailing them anywhere. It was 72 pages of story, albeit in 4 to 7 page increments. That's three times 24, hence "Triple Value!" (at double price). All the reprints come from 1959-1960 and from the four titles that will eventually be converted to super-hero anthologies: "Journey Into Mystery", which had just debuted Thor, "Tales To Astonish", which had just debuted Ant-Man (in costume), "Strange Tales" itself, whose next issue to follow the annual will debut a new "Human Torch" solo feature and "Tales Of Suspense", which will debut Iron Man around Christmas.

After the Marvel annuals hit the stands, The US Postal Service experienced a massive internal sting operation in August involving narcotics going through the mail under false cover. Preventing that from happening again required closer scrutiny of any business using bulk mailing rates. While neither Marvel or DC was doing anything illegal involving the mail, executives at DC had Prohibition-era mob connections that might have been inadvertently discovered by Feds looking for something else. It might be a coincidence, but Marvel would no longer suffer from sabotaged distribution of super-hero comics as they had months earlier with the Hulk. It was too late to save the Hulk comic (it would be cancelled right after New Year's), but Marvel could now make plans to start new titles again.

Page 50, before the Avengers story

In November of 1962 DC published the last issue of "Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer" as an 80-page Annual. They had published the previous 12 issues annually, but in whatever the standard format of the time had been. Apparently, since this was the last issue, they had developed more trust in the form than the substance. They also released annuals for Batman (#4) and Superman (#6).

In December, "Linda Carter, Student Nurse" is cancelled to make way for "Amazing Spider-Man" and "Tales Of Suspense" takes on Iron Man as its  lead feature. In March of 1963, "Incredible Hulk" is cancelled to make way for "Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos". Then, both the standard line and the new annual format will expand.

Finally, I want to detail the contents of Marvel Tales Annual #2, published by Non-Pareil Publishing Corp. in July, 1965 while Marvel was shipping comics cover dated September and October.

• Cover: (see first scan above)
• Inside Front Cover: Ad for Famous Artists Schools Studio with Albert Dorne
• Reprint X-MEN #1 (09/63) "X-Men", 23pp
• Ad for T-shirts. (see second scan) It's not a coincidence that Angel is modelling a T-shirt in an ad following an X-Men story. This house ad was made specifically for this comic, as evidenced by the code "MT-2" in the corner of the coupon to the left of the word "T-SHIRTS".
• Reprint HULK #3 (09/62) "The Ringmaster", 10pp This is the first appearance of the villain, but there's no origin story here. It's just the third story from that issue. The Hulk's origin was in the previous issue. Eventually, the whole six issue series will be reprinted in installments like this.
• Ad for 1965 Annuals (see third scan) It says "On Sale Now!", although the Fantastic Four and Amazing Spider-Man (along with Millie the Model) probably came out a month after they were intended. Marvel published four annuals in 1963 and 1964 but eight in 1965 and had to spread them out.
• Reprint STRANGE TALES #115 (12/63) "The Origin of Doctor Strange", 8pp
• Ad for Stationery Set (see fourth scan) This ad is also specific to this issue; note the "MT-2" code on the right border of the coupon.
• Reprint AMAZING ADULT FANTASY #8 (01/62) "A Monster Among Us", 5pp
• Ad for current comics (see fifth scan)
• Reprint AVENGERS #1 (09/63) "The Coming Of The Avengers!", 22pp
• Inside Back Cover: Ad for Mike Marvel System (bodybuilding)
• Back Cover: Ads for Slimline Co. (X-Ray glasses) and Best Values Co. (coins)

It's worth noting that the three companies advertising on the back and inside back covers all have the mailing address 285 Market St., Newark, NJ.

0022: Julie Schwartz's Been Workin' For The Drug Squad

Forget Scorpio, Vera Lynn and laughter for a moment. Does anybody here remember the Protector?

When DC launched their "New Teen Titans" series in 1980 it provided them with the biggest hit they'd had in years. The characters began making guest appearances in other titles, starred with the X-Men in what turned out to be the last Marvel/DC crossover for many years, were the subject of the seventh ever DC mini-series (ahead of most of DC's most famous Silver Age characters), hosted free 16-page insert previews for three other titles, made the covers of fanzines, etc., all in less than three years. Also during that time was a two-part story called "Runaways" (#26-27) about children caught up in drug and prostitution trade. After it shipped, according to Marv Wolfman in an article by Kim Metzger (in Comics Collector #3, Spring 1984), DC was approached by Steve Jacobs. Jacobs was a special consultant for the U.S. Customs Bureau, which had been behind a successful collaboration with Marvel doing public service comics with corporate sponsorship. While the White House was hoping to use characters best known through television (Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman) for an anti-drug message, those characters were constrained by pre-existing licensing commitments. Besides, said DC, they're no longer our best sellers. Showing Jacobs the "Runaways" story, it was immediately obvious that a more kid-friendly version would be perfect. Keebler would be the sponsor. The only problem? Nabisco had already licensed images of Robin along with Batman. Also, Jason Todd was being introduced in Batman stories with plans for him to be a second, concurrent Robin. The solution? Rework Robin  into a new character called "The Protector". Change the costume and hair color (but not the actual style) and keep everything else. After the Keebler comic began circulating, collectors began snatching it up. Unlike most public service comics, this one was written and drawn by the same team making the best selling monthly title. To ensure that they reached their intended audience, DC created a commercial direct market version fans could buy at comics stores. The American Soft Drink Industry sponsored a second issue and IBM sponsored a third in early 1984.

Later in 1984, Kid Flash and Robin left the group, Robin returned as Nightwing, the series spun off a direct market only second title and the newsstand title began laying the groundwork for Crisis On Infinite Earths the following year. Flash forward to late 1989. Jason Todd has been dead for three years. Tim Drake has just been introduced and will become the third Robin in late 1990. The newsstand Titans title became a reprint series after Crisis. George H.W. Bush is in the White House and while the rhetoric of protecting children is up, any notion of proactively doing something that might actually protect a child is treated like maggoty roadkill. It's for the private sector or not at all. Thus, in steps DuPont Pharmaceuticals:

And you'll notice that it's presented by... Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman, the very characters whose prior commitments steered the previous project towards the Titans. Forget that Tim Burton version that was ubiquitous everywhere else in 1989, this kid-friendly Batman even wrote the introduction.

You'll also notice that there's no mention of government involvement in the indicia. The contents are 16 B&W pulp pages of mazes, word searches and other simple puzzles which, if they were used in conjunction with prepared instruction, would be a good way to reinforce lessons about the importance of treating prescription drugs cautiously. Unfortunately, there is no indication anywhere that prepared lesson plans or outlines are available to interested parents or educators. Inside, you'll not only see the heroes on the front, but the Flash (in Barry Allen's costume, not the similar one worn by Wally West at the time), as well as these two guys:

That's right; both Robin and the Protector. Why? These comics were prepared for elementary school children. The Protector hadn't been used for over five years. While the children reading this might have been born then, they couldn't have been old enough to be reading anti-drug comics aimed at pre-teens. Or reading at all. Nobody would know who this character is. Even I had to look up his name and I flipped through those three Titans comics less than a year ago. So, congratulations, you've just seen his only appearance besides those three comics and a Secret Files in the year 2000.

On the bright side, you can feel free to enlarge these, print them out and color them to your heart's content. I'll be using scans of the other pages should things get slow. That might be a while. I keep tripping over oddball stuff around here.

0021: Morris Dances While Charles Burns?

No, it doesn't stand for "Eerie Type of Adaptation".
Officially it's Ernst Theodor Wilhelm, but it's enough if you don't confuse him with Heinrich. Heinrich was the 19th Century psychiatrist whose stories inspired the Scissormen from Grant Morrison's tenure writing "Doom Patrol". E.T.A. Hoffman was the supernatural fantasist famous for writing "The Sandman", which in no way resembles the Neil Gaiman series. He's even more famous for two other works adapted for other media. One, "Tales of Hoffman", was a collection of stories that inspired an opera by Offenbach. The other, "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King", inspired a ballet by Tchaikovsky.

Earlier in this blog I mentioned Richard Sala's greatly increased visibility due to MTV's "Liquid Television" animation anthology series. Charles Burns also had segments on the show, but he had already been a known quantity in alternative comics for nearly a decade when it first aired. He was a contributor to the original RAW series and created two of the books on its tiny imprint. In retrospect, if the Mark Morris Dance Group wanted to relocate Hoffmann's creepy mix of the supernatural and social anxiety to a 20th Century suburb, Burns would be the perfect choice. But with the 1986 stage version (based on illustrations by Maurice Sendak) circulating on cable and VHS, getting people to watch this would be an uphill climb, although this would benefit from the contrast. It's not my favorite production. (Rotten Tomatoes has no score for it whatsoever; the 1986 version gets a 72%, which is about right. In both cases, the design is the strongest asset.) Filmed in 1992 as "The Hard Nut" and broadcast on PBS' "Great Performances" on December 16th of that year, Elektra/Nonesuch released it on VHS the following year and on DVD in October 2007. It does still occasionally get rebroadcast. I thought I saw it on one of the more adventurous commercial cable channels, but that might have been a feverish dream. Anyway, it does get nearly the love that the Nureyev version gets. Still, get a load of that Pee-Wee's-Playhouse-meets-Kafka version of the Nutcracker doll being held by Drosselmeyer on the production still:

If anybody sees one of those on Etsy, let me know. And that's actually the 2005 cast, not the cast on the video. I wonder if it's the same prop, or else... they might have produced multiple copies for road productions! Aw, man, now I want one. I don't know why, though. It's for the Mark Morris Dance Group, which means a hundred guys have already put their Mouse King in it. You know what? I'm good.

Now, being a comics oriented blog, I suppose I should make more of the whole Nutcracker/Pinocchio/AstroBoy lineage, but that would involve dragging in a lot more research material (and becoming more fluent in German, Italian and Japanese beyond ordering a meal and finding a hotel), so I'll just weasel out of it by saying that I want to stick as closely as possible to whatever is already in my collection. and there'll be another bit of it later this week.

0020: Or more appropriately, "00XX"...

On May 31st, 2017 the long-awaited paperback edition for MISTER X volume 1 finally arrived in stores. Before going on to my regular comics dealer for a reserved copy, I stopped by a bookstore across the street from (and named after) a famous Ivy League university. They sell used books in the basement and the local international clientele occasionally sell things that haven't been in the area for a while. While in the stacks I overheard a young woman asking the staff for help finding specific titles which I recognized as the sort of things you'd expect to read in a college level course on communication or mass media. The last on the list was the nearly inevitable "Understanding Media" by Marshall McLuhan. Just as there are millions of schmucks in the world who recognize the phrase "To be, or not to be, that is the question..." but couldn't tell you that it comes from "Hamlet", so it is that just as many have heard the phrase "The medium is the message" and don't know that it comes from "Understanding Media". Even though communications technology and human habits have changed considerably in the 50+ years since it was published, the book still has a lot to offer about making sense of how media work, how we use them and how our use impacts both the sender and receiver of information. The first MISTER X comics series began 20 years after it was published (or more appropriately, "XX years after it was published"). But the character had been haunting the comics community for about a year prior to that. It was very much attuned to the retrofuturist zeitgeist of the 1980's, at a time when audiences were watching remakes of "Breathless" and "A Man And A Woman", MISTER X was a combination of "Alphaville" and "Metropolis" (which itself had just been restored with a modern soundtrack and playing in theaters again). Stylistically, it was more in line with "Diva"(1981) and "Subway"(1985), actual French films rather than remakes. Like "Understanding Media", it had the feeling of being the real deal amidst a miasma of others just going through the motions. Both, ironically, argued that ultimately content is irrelevant; McLuhan did so explicitly, MISTER X did so implicitly as most of its stories became about the events orbiting the attempts of competing parties to get answers to mysteries that never get completely solved or else lead to other mysteries.

Every week this month I hope to include a little something about Mister X as I try to research to sources of every scrap of ephemera connected to him and see how much of it has found its way into my collection. Most people's favorite bit of trivia about him is that he debuted on an album cover (spoiler: I don't have it). I just found my own new favorite bit. It's not the gag panel above, although that is kind of funny. That was the cover art for "Comics Interview" #39 from 1986, which contained an interview by Marty Herzog with Dean Motter, creator of Mister X and artist of the panel above. in the interview, Motter says that he initially studied fine arts in college (in London, Ontario) but gravitated to commercial art and design. Two beneficial things came from this: an animation house in Toronto drew talent from candidates in that degree program and one of his instructors was Eric McLuhan-- son of Marshall.

This would have been in the early 1970's (Motter was born in 1953, according to the article), and Motter mentions that over the next few years, Eric kept his father's work organized and helped him prepare it for publication, going as far as describing it as "ghostwriting", which is where the interview continues in the scan on the left (taken from p.64).

Marshall died in 1980, but "Laws Of Media" was eventually published in 1988. Motter even references it in the afterword to the trade collection of "MISTER X: RAZED" many years later. That tells me that throwing together some abstract doo-dads for the dust jacket wasn't just a resumé building commission for him. He was paying attention at the time, enough that it stuck and remained stuck after decades.

I picked up the trade and the good news is that it corrects the missing and out of order pages that plagued the two-trade set published by iBooks last decade. The bad news (for me, not you) is that I now have to go through all the ancillary artwork and text and find out if there's anything unique in the old trades before I trade/sell/donate/recycle/make-post-modernist-snowflakes-from them. If I find anything, I'll let you know here.

As I said in an earlier post, I may pick something other than music for my next post on 'comics in other media', since I devoted so many posts recently to one musical group and I do in fact have a DVD lined up. I'll also be writing more about Marvel's extra-length and reprint Silver Age books and Mister X, so I'll want to balance all of that with some DC and American independents.  One source of inspiration came when Paul Simon performed recently on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. He played live with Bill Frisell, who is not only a national treasure as a musician, but if he picks out his own album sleeve art (instead of delegating design choices as many artists, perhaps wisely, choose to do) then he has excellent taste in art. He has collaborated with one of my favorite comics artists on more than one occasion, so you may see him mentioned here again before the fall.

ADMIN01: Here Comes Summer

Sorry, no scans this time. This is the first time I've done an administrative post because, with summer coming I thought I'd add a little green to the background. Then, while I was at it I widened the main text area. Then I added a few gadgets and removed things that were redundant. I was almost feeling like a responsible adult until I realized that many more people are probably reading the posts on mobile devices now than when I worked on different blogs years ago. Since I don't use a mobile/smart phone, I have no idea if the changes have had a negative effect on the experience of readers who do.

So, are you a mobile device user who can't get the gadgets to work? Has your loading/response time worsened? Does the text cut off in the middle of words? Are you a PC user who doesn't have any of those problems, but the green color makes you nauseous? Any feedback in the comments below or on G+ will be seen.

Siiiiggggghhhh.... Ok, I know I said no scans and then asked for help with something, and now I feel guilty.
Since you've been accommodating enough to read this far, how about something that wouldn't have justified an entire post on its own? No need for it to go to waste. This is a chase card from a set of ALF trading cards (Topps, 1987).

You're welcome. I think.

0019: Suitable Ending

In 2006 the Action suits reconvened and recorded enough tracks to fill an album. The seven songs recorded in March 1996 (and released on the first four singles) were shuffled into the play order with the new songs. The cardboard sleeve (with new Peter Bagge art) lists all the songs in the CD's program order:

The fifth single, which didn't have Bagge and was illustrated by Al Columbia, isn't included on the compilation. At about forty minutes, it wasn't a matter of time constraints. The liner notes mention a fire in 1998, but not what, if anything besides the house, was lost. I don't know who would have the master tapes if they haven't been burned or melted. Of course, when everything you release comes out on different labels there are always licensing issues, too. I do know that Steve Fisk produced both the 1996 and 2006 sessions, but not the fifth single, so it could just be a matter of using what he could immediately access.

I should mention that the logo on the CD surface is not gold-colored. It's really reflective silver, but appears gold in the scan as a side effect of the equipment I used. Oh, and please pardon the shrink-wrap glare on the front and back cover scans. I found that by opening only the seam on the shrink-wrap that I could easily slide the CD in and out of the jacket while keeping the easier-to-clean plastic sheath. The white background on the front could otherwise get really dingy really quickly.

Unlike the singles, the CD booklet contains full, typeset credits. Rather than the trail-off grooves found on vinyl, the CD has an inner groove around the non-encoded plastic center ring that reads, "THE ACTION SUITS CD W181 IFPI LL61". The plastic center ring itself is embossed with "IFPI J763". The catalog number was PressPop Music PPM-004. There's no indication of where either the disc or booklet were manufactured, but PressPop is a Japanese company and this CD is still available on their website for ¥2,000. They also have a Buddy Bradley doll for ¥3,200. The vitals are here:

Also in the booklet are three pages of photos and this comic format advertisement by Jaime Hernandez that ran int Bagge's comic book Hate #24 (08/96). It not only has far-fetched future versions of the band and Fisk but also representatives of the four labels that released the first four singles.

And that's it for the band, as far as I know. I think my next 'other media' post might be a DVD. I have several examples of 12" records that tie into comics, but no way to scan them. I'm going to have to somehow invest in a digital camera. In the meantime, there's still plenty of comics to organize and tons of related paraphernalia I keep tripping over. I hope you find them pause-worthy.