Month: August 2018

I’m Back From Holidays

Mrs Earth-Prime and I have had a lovely break, doing next to nothing some days, visiting friends and family on others, as well as sneaking in a celebration for my birthday last weekend. I had a ton of things but the one most obviously connected to this site was a copy, from Mrs Earth-Prime, of this:

I’ve long heard about the DC Implosion of the late 70s and now there’s a book collecting interviews and recollections from most of the major players of the time, talking about it, the state of the industry before it, and what happened after.

While the emphasis is definitely on the DC Implosion and the resulting Cancelled Comic Cavalcade

there’s mention, too, of Marvel and other companies as the factors that affected DC also had an impact on the other companies.

It’s well worth a read for anyone interested in the history of this ridiculous industry we follow.

Monday Mash-Ups #8

Back on my old blog, I ran a series of related posts on Mondays and I’ve been wanting to do something along those lines here.

So, and I admit to being HUGELY influenced by the wonderful Super-Team Family blog which has been doing this for years (and a lot better) on an almost daily basis, I’ve mashed up a few comic covers.

Each week I randomly generate two years and two months and then compare the titles I own from both those dates, trying to find some covers that, with a little basic photoshopping, I can mash together, and then I force the results on you lovely people.

This was an easy one – just pop the JSA behind the window frame and voila!

Didn’t realise until years later that the Scarab series was actually meant to be a Dr Fate mini-series but John Smith’s plans were so off the wall, DC nixed the idea and made him come up with Scarab . . . who ended up getting a couple of cameos in JSA a few years later.

Admittedly he died in JSA but . . .

DC Licensing Department Doesn’t Read DC Comics

Saw a little article over at The Beat about officially licensed DC products like bottle openers and beers coolers.

While I agree with them that making Wonder Woman’s lasso the bottle opener is just genius, the one thing that struck me most was the art/packaging. There’s a couple of photos at the article but this one sums it up:

The art is very definitely late 70s/early 80s – Batman has a grey suit with the yellow oval around the bat; Superman is still in trunks; and Wonder Woman is her happy post-Lynda Carter self.

As we know, hero costumes are periodically redesigned to give them a new look/boost sales (Jim Lee, I’m looking at you) but surely this shows that it’s not really needed – people will recognise these characters even if you use art from 40 years ago.