Advance Warning: The Twelve Days of Classic Comics Christmas 2012

[dan bailey]

Speaking of clarifications, I'm pretty sure this sort of thing has been asked & answered more than once, but just in case ...

Am I correct in assuming that for our purposes here, Kull the Conqueror is a 10-issue series & therefore qualifies? With #11, after all, it became Kull the Destroyer.

[Cei-U!]

Forgive me if this has been asked, but is the 'Starts with a #1' rule still in place?

I ask because so many series in the 40s and 50s have odd numbering (I blame mostly Charlton!)

It is, with a single exception: your citation can begin with #0 but must then continue in consecutive numerical order (#1, #2, etc) up through #11 (as the 12-issue maximum still applies).

Cei-U!
I summon the clarity!

[Cei-U!]

Am I correct in assuming that for our purposes here, Kull the Conqueror is a 10-issue series & therefore qualifies? With #11, after all, it became Kull the Destroyer.

Yup.

Cei-U!
I summon the pithy response!

[shaxper]

I think the single biggest challenge I am seeing in this year's assignment is the following logic proof:

1. If a comic was cancelled prior to issue #12 and never later recontinued, in most cases this means it wasn't very good.
2. I have read very few of the Marvel Giant Size comics and do not have any series of annuals that I find particularly noteworthy.
3. This means the majority of my picks will be from limited series.
4. The limited series was not common until the 1980s.

= Most of my picks will be from the 1980s and 1990s.

Worse yet, I fear this will result in an overabundant and unbalanced celebration of Alan Moore and Frank Miller.

Right now, I have one pick on my list from 1977, one from 1966, and one from 1949, but the rest are all '80s and '90s. Fortunately, there are only two Moore works on my list and only one Miller (and it ISN'T DKR).

Anyone else having this struggle?

[Polar Bear]

I think the single biggest challenge I am seeing in this year's assignment is the following logic proof:

1. If a comic was cancelled prior to issue #12 and never later recontinued, in most cases this means it wasn't very good.
2. I have read very few of the Marvel Giant Size comics and do not have any series of annuals that I find particularly noteworthy.
3. This means the majority of my picks will be from limited series.
4. The limited series was not common until the 1980s.

= Most of my picks will be from the 1980s and 1990s.

Worse yet, I fear this will result in an overabundant and unbalanced celebration of Alan Moore and Frank Miller.

Right now, I have one pick on my list from 1977, one from 1966, and one from 1949, but the rest are all '80s and '90s. Fortunately, there are only two Moore works on my list and only one Miller (and it ISN'T DKR).

Anyone else having this struggle?

I suspect my list will be similar, but with several DC Implosion titles. Getting a few non-Marvel/DC titles in there is also something I want to pay attention to.

[dan bailey]

Quite the opposite. At this point, I think I'd have a hard time trimming my list down to 12 even if Cei-U! went (even more) crazy (than usual) & decreed that we limit ourselves to series from 2000-2002, with no Marvel or DC allowed.

Of course, it's highly possible that I just have really low standards. That's occurred to me before.

[shaxper]

Quite the opposite. At this point, I think I'd have a hard time trimming my list down to 12 even if Cei-U! went (even more) crazy (than usual) & decreed that we limit ourselves to series from 2000-2002, with no Marvel or DC allowed.

Oh, my list is quite long at this point; it's just unbalanced in terms of era.

Of course, it's highly possible that I just have really low standards. That's occurred to me before.

(In my best General Zod voice) Why do you say these things to us when you know we will mock you for them?

I suspect my list will be similar, but with several DC Implosion titles. Getting a few non-Marvel/DC titles in there is also something I want to pay attention to.

Hasn't been too much of a problem for me. Right now, I'm looking at 1 Dark Horse, 1 Dell, 1 Mirage, and 1 Tower (that's right; Tower).

[Scott Harris]

I think the single biggest challenge I am seeing in this year's assignment is the following logic proof:

1. If a comic was cancelled prior to issue #12 and never later recontinued, in most cases this means it wasn't very good.
2. I have read very few of the Marvel Giant Size comics and do not have any series of annuals that I find particularly noteworthy.
3. This means the majority of my picks will be from limited series.
4. The limited series was not common until the 1980s.

= Most of my picks will be from the 1980s and 1990s.

Worse yet, I fear this will result in an overabundant and unbalanced celebration of Alan Moore and Frank Miller.

Right now, I have one pick on my list from 1977, one from 1966, and one from 1949, but the rest are all '80s and '90s. Fortunately, there are only two Moore works on my list and only one Miller (and it ISN'T DKR).

Anyone else having this struggle?

I dumped Watchmen from my list even though it really should be on there, just for this reason. It seemed too boring. I'm not a Miller fan, though, so none of his stories sniffed my list (well, Batman Year One would have but it's not eligible of course).

I do still have one Moore series on my list at the moment, it's just not Watchmen. But I am still tinkering. Whatever I come up with, I am sure it will be in keeping with my tradition of creating lists that barely make any sense even to me.

[dan bailey]

(In my best General Zod voice) Why do you say these things to us when you know we will mock you for them?

Most of the time, just to see if Cei-U! is paying attention.

[Scott Harris]

I just had a flash of inspiration and came up with the cool titles for my list that I had somehow forgotten the first time around. Dang, can we start already? I'm juiced up!

[DubipR]

I need to go through my collection, box by box (cripes!) and write them all down and whittle down to 12. There's a couple of Definites but I need to run through everything of mine.

[dan bailey]

One thing I found somewhat helpful earlier this afternoon (if by "helpful" one means "expanding an already-too-long list by all sorts of other series that never should've skipped my mind to begin with, dammit") was going to Lone Star's site & using the Advanced Search function to list all titles from certain obvious indies (Image, Dark Horse, a couple of others), employing a 2002 cutoff date. That, at least, should save me a few short boxes' worth of rifling.

[shaxper]

Down to 23 possibilities. Still need to re-read 16 of them.

[Cei-U!]

I'm pretty comfortable with my list (but then I've had a year more than you guys did to think about it ). Once I reminded myself that the part about "personal favorites, not what I think is the best" applied to me too (about a week ago), the process got simpler. I could let go of series like Watchmen that I admired and respected and focus on those titles I genuinely love, the ones I consistently look forward to rereading. I've got titles from the '60s, '70s, '80s and '90s, mini-series and sales casualties, about evenly split between Marvel and DC (plus an indy--if First counts as an indy), almost all of it unapologetically super-hero. And yet just today I had to rearrange my list because until dan pointed it out I'd forgotten that Kull was eligible under my own flippin' rules!

Cei-U!
Hoist on my own petard!

[dan bailey]

plus an indy--if First counts as an indy

Dunno if it's the series you're talking about, but it looks like this exercise will inspire me to finally get around to reading a certain 4-issue series that shares its title with one of the grandest comics zines ever.