Zonker

There is of course the theory-- promoted perhaps not surprisingly by Neal Adams himself-- that fan-favorite titles, like supposedly the Adams/Thomas X-Men, were victims of affidavit fraud. Copies would fall off the truck before ever reaching the newsstand and be sold through a back door to aspiring comic book dealers. Often used as a partial explanation for the commercial failure of the original X-Men, Deadman, GL/GA, Kirby's Fourth World, and the near-cancellation of the BWS Conan run.

This is interesting. Do we think that they didn't know the end was coming as issue #17 went to the printers? Or by the "next few months" did they just mean the 2 months until the next issue was to be published?

Maybe. But what came to mind for me was another Jesus allusion- the northern Galilean ("Can anything good come out of Galilee?") starting his ministry up there, and knowing that once he travels south to Jerusalem-- the center of conventional temple-Judaism-- the endgame truly begins, one which he cannot really control. Saw it last night with my son, and it was a 10/10 for us both. It now makes me want to re-read Dune Messiah after 40+ years. I remember strongly disliking the sequel at the time because I didn't appreciate what Herbert was doing to Paul, not understanding that was the author's entire point for the character.

Carmine had some storytelling chops. I recall he was heavily involved in plotting the Deadman and Bat Lash stories (despite not drawing them). Maybe Stan Lee and Carmine Infantino would have "invented" the Marvel Method at DC?

That is an interesting premise! I'm trying to think of an example of any single creator at DC in the 1940s or 1950s being employed and credited as a full cartoonist (responsible for creating all the words + pictures). I'm drawing a blank. So I imagine Schwartz wouldn't really know what to do with a Kirby in 1961. I believe Schwartz would have been of the mindset that you need to have a full script approved by editorial before the artist starts drawing, otherwise how can editorial be sure the artist isn't drawing something the company would not buy and will not publish? On the other hand, Schwartz was a savvy guy, and looking around at the shoestring operation that was Timely Comics circa 1960, he might also have made a virtue of necessity and just let Kirby & Ditko do their thing. Stan Lee would have probably been fine at DC in 1960, being able to draw upon their much deeper bench of comics scripters. Whether he would have been sufficiently motivated to work with the likes of Bob Haney or Gardner Fox to make their dialogue sound more like how young people actually were speaking in the 1960s is an open question. I could see him doing that to try to make his books stand out from the crowd, and to establish his own identity within the DC editorial ranks. But I could also see Stan or his bosses take the opinion that extensively re-writing that amount of dialogue was more than was expected by someone being paid only as an editor.

All Zonker's Current eBay Listings Here 6 JLAs with George Perez artwork: #192-197 From 1981: a six issue run of the classic "satellite era" Justice League of America. Each comic is written by Gerry Conway while George Perez provides the art for each of the covers and contributes to the penciling of each interior story. Average condition of this lot is Fine / Very Fine. In this lot you get: Justice League of America #192 "Quest for Genesis" This is the first chapter of the two-part "True Origin" of the Red Tornado, tying the android's creation into the events of Justice League of America #17, a full 18 years earlier! Interior artwork by George Perez and John Beatty. Justice League of America #193 "Secret of Genesis," the second half of the Red Tornado origin. Perez & Beatty continue with the interior art. Plus an insert featuring the first appearance of the All-Star Squadron, prior to issue #1 of their ongoing series, as written by Roy Thomas and drawn by the team of Rich Buckler and Jerry Ordway. Justice League of America #194 “Destiny is a Stacked Deck” has artwork by Perez & Beatty. Justice League of America #195 "Target on Two Worlds" begins the annual crossover between the Justice League of America and the Justice Society of America, this time taking on the Secret Society of Super-Villains. Interior artwork by the team of George Perez and John Beatty. Also includes a great centerfold pinup by Perez of the entire memberships of the JLA & JSA. Justice League of America #196 "Countdown to Crisis!" is part 2 of the JLA/JSA team-up, and this time features interior art by George Perez and Romeo Tanghal. Justice League of America #197: "Crisis in Limbo!" completes the 3-part JLA/JSA team-up, and has interior artwork by George Perez, Keith Pollard and Romeo Tanghal. The letters column includes a letter from Todd McFarlane, several years before his first professionally-published artwork.

Not so amazing. FACT*: Reading Stan Lee comics promotes sperm production. FACT*: Reading those other comics leads to ED. * Coulda gone the other way, but this is Stan's thread, after all

9 DC Comics with Marshall Rogers artwork Primarily Mister Miracle & Batman

This has the ring of truth. Back then, it was likely no one was as hung up about who-did-what when it came to getting the funny books out the door each month. It's not like Kirby or Ditko had an employment contract saying "You will get paid $XX per page specifically to draw comics with (a specified number of panels per page) provided you are given a script with the following aspects defined: captions for each panel, dialogue balloons in each panel, camera angles to be employed, etc." Instead Kirby had a page rate for whatever-it-was-Kirby-did, and it was certainly a higher rate than that of a Heck or a Colan or someone else who needed more input from Stan before proceeding. In one of Chuck's threads here I made the analogy to Stan as the production floor supervisor. If the priority is getting the books out the door, the good supervisor can see that the Kirby and Ditko production lines are almost running themselves, they just need some QC attention and slick packaging. The supervisor then can spend his time on the other lines that might be struggling. Latter-day Stan Lee creation claims though are problematic for me, starting with his Origins of Marvel Comics. Seems to me he does start to believe his own hype after a while, and is probably motivated to burnish his legend, since it is really only his reputation that he has to trade for any financial security in his later years.

For a while, I have been wondering about the blurb at the end of issue #14. Had Jack originally planned to do another flashback story (similar the "The Pact" or "Himon"), this time filling in some more of Barda's history? But reading this issue's lettercol seems to squash that idea. If the plan had been to do such a flashback, this would have been the perfect opportunity to promote it. For whatever reason, the planned Barda-centric story for #15 was shelved in favor of introducing a new character (as we'll see here soon enough). They did keep "The Real Big Barda" as one of the interior chapter headings for #15, but it doesn't really fit the narrative at that point.

Mid '70s - 1980s Lot of 9: All Star Squadron, Teen Titans, Mister Miracle George Perez, Mike Golden, Jerry Ordway, Steve Rude & more.

Detective Comics #880

Rewind back to the beginning of the hobby: First and foremost, the reason back issues of comic books originally had any value was that readers of the current issues wanted to see what happened in the stories they missed, either because those issues came out before the readers' time, or because of inconsistent comic book distribution, a factor that existed for most of the first 50 years of what we think of as the modern comic book industry. So you had people willing to pay more for an older issue, and the more perceived importance of that older issue, the more one was willing to pay. When I first started collecting, origin issues were a much bigger deal than they are now. Because an origin can always be updated, changed, or ret-conned. But a first published appearance is always that first appearance (at least until we start to change our minds about "cameos," previews or ad appearances). Likewise, the advent of slabbing has increased the demand for the cool cover image, as opposed to the short story drawn by a legendary artist like Frank Frazetta, but buried as a back-up feature in the book.

Good catch! That is most definitely another exception to my Vertigo miniseries rant.

Vertigo did have a very high hit rate for its time, including all the ongoing series mentioned so far. But I think the vast majority of their miniseries were forgettable, at least to my taste: Sebastian O, Enigma, American Freak, Chiaroscuro, The Extremist, Nevada, Seekers into Mystery, Skin Graft. I think I sampled all of those, and found them all pretty (I'm excluding the excellent Death and Books of Magic mini-series as basically spinoffs from Gaiman's Sandman).

Is this the first instance of the Hulk transformation triggered by Banner's emotional state? Whose idea do we think that was?

DC 20-cent Cover Lot: Shadow, Kamandi, Mister Miracle, The Demon, Superman, Superboy/Legion, Sword of Sorcery, Black Orchid in Adventure Comics Mister Miracle #13 Sword of Sorcery #2 featuring Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser Demon #12 Adventure Comics #429 with the Black Orchid & Captain Fear The Shadow #1 Superman #269 Superboy #201 starring the Legion of Super-Heroes Kamandi #19 Kamandi #20

"Nominating Ken but not Barbie is literally the plot of the movie." -bradmeltzer He kind of has a point...

I was surprised to find the Ace Doubles continuing into the 1970s. And happy to see this particular edition has back-to-back PKD novels.

NOW SOLD! Detective 481 & 482 - First Dollar Comics issues, post Batman Family merge From 1978-1979: these are the first two Dollar Comic sized issues of Detective Comics, as it merges with the Batman Family magazine. Detective Comics #481 features a cover by Jim Starlin. There are 2 Batman stories in this issue, one written by Denny O'Neil with Marshall Rogers artwork, and one written & laid out by Jim Starlin, with finished art by P. Craig Russell. Also included in this issue are stories featuring Batgirl, Robin, and Man-Bat, the latter two stories featuring Don Newton artwork. Fine / Very Fine condition: both staples are intact, free from rust, and holding all pages and covers together. No water damage, no staining. There is a very slight amount of spine roll, and a production crease running horizontally across the lower third of the front cover. The upper left-hand corner of the front cover has some slight chipping. Detective Comics #482 provides the second part of the Starlin/Russell Batman story, as well as 2 stories with artwork by Michael Golden: a story featuring Jack Kirby's creation Etrigan the Demon, and another featuring Bat-Mite. Batgirl and Robin appear in solo stories as well. Cover by Rich Buckler & Dick Giordano. Fine Plus condition: both staples are intact, free from rust, and holding all pages and covers together. No water damage, no staining. The lower left-hand corner of the front cover is chipped. There is a 1/8 inch tear about 2 inches up from the lower left-hand corner of the back cover. Mild production creases run horizontally on the front cover (through the Demon's face) and the back cover (at about the same location)

"We promise-- you won't have to read any other issue to understand this one..."

I have mixed feelings about the man as publisher. On the one hand, I admire the spirit of experimentation at DC during his 1968-1974 years, as he tried to respond to Marvel's emerging success. Elevating artists like Kubert, Sekowsky, Orlando and yes Kirby to editorial positions gave the DC books a more dynamic look than they had before. Bringing over the Charlton creators (Skeates, Aparo, O'Neil, Giordano) provided a shot in the arm to previously languishing series like Aquaman & Teen Titans. And opening up the files to reprint all that classic Golden Age material made me a fan of DC's history, extending decades before my birth. But he never gave those experiments room to breathe, cancelling so many books before they could really find their audience. And he alienated some of his artist/editors like Giordano and eventually Kirby. I think it likely it was difficult for him to manage upward, that is, to keep the suits from demanding ill-advised course corrections in search of immediate results. I'd be willing to bet his successor Jenette Kahn was more successful in that regard, as she came from outside the comics world, and could credibly threaten to quit if she wasn't given room to do her job as she saw fit. The guys at the top of National Periodical Publications in those days probably saw Infantino as a comic-book-lifer with limited options outside the field, and so walked all over him.

The last appearance of the Apokolips villains until the finale in #18. Apart from cameo appearances by the Furies, Mister Miracle essentially stops being a Fourth World book after this issue. I think this tagline is significant: Likely mandated by Infantino-- Kirby can keep doing Mister Miracle, but only as a series of done-in-one single issue stories.