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So regular commenter on the site, Roel Torres, and his drawin’ pal Scott Arnold have just unleashed their first comic book onto the world, Lightning Girl Loves Rocket Boy, an essentially done-in-one graphic novel featuring the romantic travails between two young college students who are also, it just happens, superheroes.

Roel was nice enough to pass along a copy to me, and I quite enjoyed it. I liked how the superheroics were pretty much just in the story for the purposes of how it affected the romance, and not the be-all, end-all of the story with a romantic subplot squeezed in. The dialogue is light and humorous when it needs to be, and services the romantic melodrama without being overly melodramatic and goofy.

Though it took me a page or three to get used to it, Arnold does a good job on the art, handling both the character interaction and the superheroics with his particularly stylized cartooning. All the characters are distinct and consistently portrayed and instantly recognizable, which is a plus considering the emphasis is on what happens to the leads when they’re NOT out in their superhero work uniforms.

The story itself is 50 pages long, but there’s a lot packed into it. There’s no wasted space on the pages, and no wasted time moving the plot along. No decompressed storytelling here. Yes, it’s a “boy meets girl, boy loses girl, does boy get girl back, I ain’t tellin'” plot, only with superheroes, and even with that twist, I’m sure we’re all familiar with the tropes of the genre. Even so, it still moves along at a quick and entertaining clip, and the basic story thread is given enough unique embellishment to go down easy.

If I were to bust the guys’ chops about a thing or two on the comic…having “The Beginning” at the end of the story? Oh, Roel ‘n’ Scott, say it ain’t so. You know the Mystery Science Theater 3000 guys would totally rake you over the coals for that. Also, the computer lettering used in the book was…well, not terrible, but just slightly distracting, but I got used to it. And there’s a panel or two in the comic where the characters felt like they weren’t really integrated into their backgrounds, such as when they’re standing on a rooftop but it looks more like they’re hovering over it or pasted into the panel. But that’s just getting nitpicky, and any rough edges the comic may have is the sort of thing experience takes care of. (Plus, I like comics with a rough edge or two…I’d rather read a comic produced by amateur creators just starting out in the field, like this one, than a fifteenth Avengers ongoing.)

But, overall, a good first effort, and I’d like to see more from these fellas. Maybe not more of this specific story, as, even though there’s a “#1” on the cover (and, ahem, “The Beginning”), it feels like we reached a definitive ending with this story and it’d be a shame to undo that. It stands on its own as an enjoyable addition to the relatively-sparse “Superhero Romance” genre.

If you go to the official blog, you can read an extensive preview of the comic, and you can order your very own copy right here.

• • •
In other news:

• I received my package of Neil the Horse comics yesterday, and they’re all in good shape, with only the first issue having a crease or two on the covers. Can’t really complain for a 99-cent bid, though I have to admit I’m not thrilled about paying a certain amount for shipping, and then seeing that the actual shipping cost was only about a third of that. But…full run of Neil the Horse, under nine bucks total, stop complaining, Mike.
• Hey, Superman: Secret Origin #6 is coming out today. Finally. Took ’em so long, it’s almost time to revise Superman’s origin again.
• Bully, America’s Greatest Little Stuffed Bull, presents to you Archie Comics Versus Kids’ Fads. It’s a battle Archie only rarely won, if ever. (Ignore the first reader comment, where someone proclaims Archie late to the party for featuring a Wii-type game on a cover. Um, the Wii is still selling, last I heard. DO NOT TEMPT THE BULL’S WRATH, COMMENTER.)

So Marvel and DC (well, mostly Marvel) regularly sends out packs of advertising postcards for shops to give away, usually listing all the tie-ins for a crossover series, or pushing some new title or storyline or what have you. They make for nice promotional items, and I’ve seen more than a few customers marking off titles they’ve picked up on the card’s checklists. And I’m sure a lot of them end up on display back at home somewhere…like, I’m not coming right out and saying that I have the “Planet Hulk” postcard on my fridge door, but I might.

That one I scanned above has received more reaction from our customers than any other card released so far. Okay, mostly it’s “they’re getting rid of a member of the Fantastic Four? Again?” but nearly everyone who’s seen the stack of these cards on the counter has commented on it. And really, this is about as perfectly pure and simple a targeted advertisement as I’ve ever seen. Okay, your average non-fan off the street may not get it, but every comic fan 1) recognizes this as the FF logo, and 2) knows that, hey, that should be a “4” in there, not a “3,” therefore something’s happening to one of the characters. The information on the back of the card is almost redundant…everything you need to know is pretty much right there on the front. (But if you need to know…it’s a storyline starting in next month’s FF. And you should be reading FF right now anyway, because writer Jonathan Hickman has been doing a good job on it.)

Anyhoo, just wanted to give some appreciation to this promo item. Well done, Marvel’s marketing department…well done.

• • •
In other news:

If one were to listen to the one year anniversary installment of War Rocket Ajax, featuring those Clown Princes of Podcasting Chris Sims and Eugene Ahn, you may hear them answering a Listener Question from a certain M. Sterling, at about the 1:27:30 mark.

EDIT 8-29-10: Had to shut off comments, as this particular post was attracting a lot of comment spam, for some reason.

This is The Flintstones Double Vision (September 1994), a comic book adaptation of the live action feature film starring John Goodman as Fred:

The “Double Vision” in the title refers, not to the Foreigner song, but to this comic’s particular format…while at first glance, it appears to be a 3D comic:

…in fact, it’s two different adaptations of the same story! Looking only through the blue lens, you’d see the story as drawn with the characters resembling their live action counterparts (scans grayscaled for clarity):

Looking through the red lens, you’d see the story with the characters in their traditional animated form:

And if you were to look through both lenses:

OH GOODNESS DON’T DO THAT

Anyway, you don’t see anything in 3D, despite having to use 3D glasses for this particular gimmick. You do get to read a comic with one eye squeezed shut, and boy doesn’t that sound like fun.

An interesting thing on the cover:

They use “you know who” to make it rhyme, sure, but John Goodman’s name appears nowhere in or on the book, which I thought was odd since so much attention was paid to delineating the man’s features on the cover. But then, it’s not like actors get ballyhooed on comic book adaptations all the time as it is…you’re not getting the actor, anyway. You’re getting drawings of the actor. And there’s probably some additional licensing hoohar involved if you actually use the actor’s name, maybe…I really don’t know.

On the other hand, comic book adaptations of movies are kind of a moot point when you can own the actual movie about four or five months after seeing it in theatres, like I’ve written about before.

So, The Flintstones Double Vision…bit of an oddity, and a latter day example of a comic book genre that’s very nearly gone* nowadays. Also, it doesn’t appear to be in the Overstreet Price Guide, so I’m totally pricing this at $3000, and none of you can stop me.

* Yes, I know there’s a currently running adaptation of the Star Trek movie. That’s why I said “nearly gone.”

And now, a brief excerpt from

from Peter Porkchops #41 (Dec. 1955)

Not sure who did it…my name is spelled correctly, so that rules Employee Aaron out.

Also, minor correction to my headline here…this is actually the space to the left of my normal parking space, and you can see part of my truck on the right hand side of the picture, there.

…Yes, this is really what I’m posting today. Sorry, been a bit occupied with some some other things I need to deal with. Normal service should resume tomorrow, with any luck.

Neil the Horse is one of those series I’d been meaning to acquire for a while now, having somehow missed it during its original 1980s run. However, we never had more than a few issues at the shop, and didn’t feel like trying to track down the missing ones because I’m old and tired and back issue hunting is a young man’s game. But when a full run of Neil popped up on the eBay (and pictured above with the image from the actual auction) for an opening bid of ninety-nine cents…well, that was hard to resist. And I ended up winning the lot with that opening bid.

True, the shipping cost is seven and a half bucks, apparently for parcel post, which is…well, I’ll let this old post of mine explain, but even so that’s still a full run of Neil the Horse for under ten bucks, and therefore I won’t gripe too much.

There are other indie series from the early-to-mid ’80s that I missed that the store doesn’t have and I’m seriously thinking about picking up for cheap via the eBay, because clearly I don’t have enough comics already. And I’m still looking for the elusive Yummy Fur #9, which (if I recall correctly) was one of the issues of the series not carried by Diamond, making it a bit of a rare item. Well, sure, I at least have the lead story reprinted in one of the Ed the Happy Clown trade paperbacks, but the knowledge that I have issues #1 through #8 and #10 through #32 weighs upon me in a way that only fellow obsessive-compulsive funnybook readers can understand.

And by the way, I didn’t say anything about it at the time…but as only vaguely implied in that how to ship comics post, I’d bought a run of Minx on eBay, which is an eight issue series, and the seller wanted to charge me twelve bucks to ship ’em. Twelve. Dollars. That’s crazy talk, and I told him so. He eventually saw reason, but I guess that was my fault for not nailing down shipping ahead of my bidding.

“Hi! I’m Puck, from Alpha Flight! I’m really angry! GRRRR!”

“Hi, gang! It’s me, Hellcat! I’m way back here! Hello!”

“…”

“I’m Gladiator, from the Imperial Guard. I don’t know about this longhair in the goggles standing
in my way, here. Why he can’t have a nice, respectable space-mohawk, I have no idea.”

…after going to the County Fair last night, and boy, are my arms tired…or, er, something like that. Anyway, pretty wiped out, and Mike no think good, so I’m taking a pass today.

But I did want to mention that one of things at our fair is a building filled with displayed collections. Disneyana, model railroad stuff, toy cars, even a Twilight display, and here’s half of the Doctor Who display:

My “favorite,” he said with a couple of sarcasti-quotes, is probably the collection that consisted entirely of about ten Mad magazines dating from the 1970s, kinda stacked up, kinda spread haphazardly across one shelf in a glass case. Best part: got a third place ribbon.

“Porn is for people who can’t get non.”

— a commenter on this story about a 3D adult film being made in Hong Kong

Okay, he probably meant “none,” and not “Non,” the mute Kryptonian bad guy from Superman II, but it remains no less true regardless.

And why was I looking at an article about a 3D adult film being made in Hong Kong in the first place, you may ask? Well, 1) wouldn’t you? — and 2) because I was seeking out some choice material for a new side project: Estate 4.1, where I pick out some charming and witty samples of the sorts of comments you’ve come to expect from any online news source allowing The People to affix responses to their stories.

…We laugh so we don’t cry, friends.

Keeping it as short ‘n’ sweet today as I can manage, since I’ve been under the weather…but I’ve recently been rewatching some early episodes of Lois and Clark, the mid-’90s Superman TV show starring Dean Cain and Teri Hatcher, spurred on a bit by some recent discussion of the show on the Twitter, due mostly, I think, to the show’s entire run being available via streaming Netflix.

And I have to tell you, seeing the pilot episode for the first time since it aired in 1993…boy, they sure got a whole lot right. Clark’s inherent niceness and caring for humanity, the most perfect Perry White ever (“Great Shades of Elvis” and all…which, let’s face it, isn’t any more ridiculous than exclaiming “Great Caesar’s Ghost”), a great Jimmy Olsen (actor replaced after the first season, of course), the wonderful relationship between Clark and his Earth parents, a sufficiently bastardly Lex Luthor, and so on. And I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned this before on the site, but this is the one instance of the live action transformation of Clark into Superman and honestly thinking “hey, maybe the glasses thing actually would work.”

Now, I watched the show through about the third season, when I just sort of lost interest, I guess. But after watching a handful of the early episodes…well, there was enough good stuff going on that I think I will continue revisiting the series via Netflix for the time being. I may just stick to the more interesting-sounding episodes, though I did spot one episode which had a Netflix-written description that included the words “guest-starring Sonny Bono,” and baby, that’s next in the queue.

A couple of memories of the show:

• At home watching the episode starring The Jeffersons‘ Sherman Hemsley as the Toyman (and guest-starring Hemsley’s Jeffersons co-star Isabel Sanford), when the phone rings. It’s old pal (and former coworker) Rob, who called to tell me he was also watching Lois and Clark…for the first time, in fact…and that it was terrible.
• At the time, one of our customers was either head of, or a higher-up in, a nationwide Lois and Clark fan club, and she arranged for the club members to buy all their boxes of the newly-released Lois and Clark trading card boxes through our store. We sold…well, I believe the exact number was one trillion boxes of these things. I may be rounding up slightly. We also ordered extra boxes and broke them up into sets, which also sold like gangbusters. …To this day, I still find the multicolored Superman “S” stickers from those packs floating around here and there in the shop. And, less often, the metal pins featuring a photo of Hatcher and Cain that were packed one per box. Boy, those pins didn’t age well…the pictures on them are awfully faded.

ADDITIONAL READING:

• Here’s a posting from one of Lois and Clark‘s writers and producers, discussing his time working there, and what he’d suggest future Superman producers should do about the whole dual identity thing.
• The Comic Book Urban Legends column discusses the relationship between Lois and Clark’s marriage in the comics versus the one in the TV show, and how one may or may not have affected the other.