The Twelfth Day of Classic Comics Christmas 2012

[dan bailey]

What does Wilbur Mills have to do with Classic Comics?

Well, Argentine Firecracker would be a neat name for a superheroine (or -villain) ...

Also, taking the Wilbur Mills Freeway (I-630) in Little Rock can eventually get you to Mike Tierney's Collector's Edition in NLR (housed in what was Arkansas' first McDonald's, oddly enough) & Comic Book Store in LR. I've never been to the latter but dropped by the former, which was fairly close to where I lived, a few times back before I started getting back into comics.

So there's that.

[Paulie]

I've been travelling so I almost missed the opportunity to list my favorite stunted series! And the winner is... Omega The Unknown.

While it might not be the best barometer of greatness my own personal measure is whether I want to read the next issue or not. Sadly, I'll never get to read Omega the Unknown #11 or the one that Steve Gerber had in mind anyway. No, we only have these 10 lonely issues to toss and turn and try to puzzle out what would have, what could have, happened next. (The wrapup in Defenders DOES NOT COUNT!)

Each issue adds a little detail, a little mystery, and I'll never understand how a series with this much suspense didn't catch on. Perhaps it was the plain Jim Mooney art? Perhaps it was because the hero got his ass kicked each issue? Perhaps because the details weren't revealed quickly enough? We'll never know but man... I can read those 10 issues every couple of months and my mind starts swimming with ideas and woulda-shoulda-couldas.

Omega the Unknown is one of the series I think about the most and therefore it ends up on the top of my list.

[T GUy]

Oh, no, Kurt doesn't mind. It's just his puppet D. Bailey who likes to step on people's dreams with his hobnail boots.

Fanne Fox

I know Kurt doesn't mind - it was a self-imposed rule. Apart from anything else, it cut down he number of series eligible.

[T GUy]

What does Wilbur Mills have to do with Classic Comics?

When I first read ROK's post, I thought it said Fannie Flagg.

Isn't that the Savings and Loan owned by Rupert Murdoch?

[icctrombone]

1. OMAC
(8 issues, 1974-1975)

People rightly praise the Fourth World books for their epic mythology, and Kamandi for being a cracking good adventure yarn. But for my money, OMAC is the most potent, and relevant, piece of Kirby's 1970s output. OMAC's "World That's Coming" looks more and more like "The World That's Already Here": Technology run amok. Weapons of mass destruction. Genetic engineering and body-swapping. Warlords with private armies who threaten the world. An elite class of "super-rich" who can buy entire towns on a whim. And at the other end of the spectrum, a working class that's so alienated and dehumanized that they can barely function (my favorite detail of issue #1 is the corporation that has a special room set aside where their workers can go to have a good cry). In the middle of this brave new world is OMAC, grabbed seemingly at random (and certainly without consent) by the shadowy Global Peace Agency, transformed into a killing machine, and sent out to try and bring some order to this chaos. Those 8 issues are jam-packed, and yet it felt like the story had barely begun...my mind boggles at the thought of what Kirby might have done with another 50, 100 issues. Alas, we'll never know.

A few months back I picked up the Byrne Omac mini series. You would be surprised what a good read it was.

[Cherokee Jack]

SONIC DISRUPTORS. DC. 12 issue maxiseries, cancelled after issue seven, by Mike Baron and Barry Craig.

I know this is an odd pick since the story was never finished, but it was the first one that came to mind when this year's 12 Days was announced. I was p.o.ed when it was cancelled, and am still annoyed that I never got to read the ending. There was an industry joke that it would be cheaper to fly the people actually reading the book to a comic convention and have Baron tell the ending, then actually print the final issues.

But that might not have worked. Baron has been quoted as saying, "I didn't know what I was doing. I had no end to the series in mind." However, I'm sure he would've tied it up somehow.

The story involves an America ruled by a theocratic military dictatorship. The only source of resistance to this government is a pirate rock and roll radio station, broadcasting from space. All the usual suspects are involved-----television evangelists, drugs, religion, rock & roll, censorship-----as can be expected. This book came out in the era of the Senate hearings into obscenity in music.

This was the first book that (in my mind) got rock and roll right. No more middle aged men writing rock comics. Baron grew up with 60s/70s rock.

Crain's art is all over the place, drawing in many different styles (which fits the rock music theme.)

One online review called the book " a hyper-kinetic hallucination born of dissatisfaction with Ronald Reagan's America, ringing with the influences of college radio, post-punk underground rock, and late-night cable tv." I can't argue with that.

http://www.comics.org/series/3383/covers/

[Reptisaurus!]

1. Blue Monday Absolute Beginners 1-4. Chynna Clugston (Major, at least at the time) (w) & (a). Oni Press, 2001.



Man, I don't even like New Order... But I like A LOT of things about this series. This is the second of three (so far!) mini-series in the Blue Monday series - It's about a buncha nerdy California High School kids - our titular heroine is shown above - drawn in a manga-ish style (complete with miniature "superdeformed" versions of the characters running around the panel borders, ala Sergio in Mad.) It's sweet and funny and innocently dirty in the way that nerdy high school kids are and very, VERY '80s, (Except when it features the lead characters transposed into a Buster Keaton movie.)

And it's got my favorite letter pages ever. The snarky exchanges between Chynna and her editor are alone worth the price of admission. (And why you gotta buy the originals - The trades are shrunk down to digest size and don't feature the letter pages! Awful! I'm 90% a trade guy, but sometimes you gotta get go to the primary documents, y'know? )

Issue # 3, in particular, where Bleu skips school in a fit of depression and meets a farting fairy in the form of a talking otter is one of my favorite comics ever... Alternating between honestly capturing pensive teenage angst and being really, REALLY freaking funny.

And it was also my most successful comic conversion. I was workin' out in the woods of Minnesotta at a resort job, all of us employees jammed into three rickety wooden cabins. One of my co-workers, a really sweet girl named Megan who I haven't talked to since, accidentally died her hair blue. Since I DO try to spread the gospel and give comic out, I said "Hey, here's a comic 'bout a girl with blue hair. I really liked it."

And the next day she came up to me "I... I have to read the rest of this. That was the coolest thing I've ever read."

I got her issues 1 and 2 on my next trip to the comic store. I hope she found # 4 and the rest of the comics that followed. (The series is still, technically, ongoing but the last mini-series stalled out after issue one 3-4 years ago.) And I hope she eventually got the blue crap outta her hair.

[hondobrode]

...and Day Twelve's stuff I wanna buy :

Steven # 1-8 (MWGallaher)
Scare Tactics # 1 – 12 (foxley)
Sonic Disruptors # 1-7 (Cherokee Jack)
Blue Monday Absolute Beginners # 1-4 (Reptisaurus!)

[berk]

Day 12: Penny Century

Like Gilbert's New Love (see Day 11), this is Jaime Hernandez's solo continuation of his Love and Rockets work.

[hondobrode]

Love and Rockets

I'd heard about in college, when it was still fairly new. Got the trade of the first two issues and was blown away.

[dan bailey]

1. Blue Monday Absolute Beginners 1-4.

Cool! Gotta say, when you said that one of my disqualifed-by-me-because-I-decided-against-mini-series would be showing up from you, I didn't think it would be this.

You're almost forgiven for the Reptilicus/Reptisaurus debacle.

Almost.

Oh, what the heck ... it's the holidays, & I'm off today. You are forgiven.

(Though, y'know, you are on probation.)

[berk]

1. Barry Windsor-Smith’s Storyteller # 1-9.

I don<t know why on earth I didn<t gobble these up when they were originally on the stands, but I have one of the two collections (Young Gods) and mean to get the other (Freebooters).

[foxley]

I don<t know why on earth I didn<t gobble these up when they were originally on the stands, but I have one of the two collections (Young Gods) and mean to get the other (Freebooters).

I have all of these (bought cheap after the run had finished. The larger format made it hard for retailers to store). I loved Freebooters, and enjoyed Young Gods, but Paradoxman did nothing for me, which is why this title did not earn a spot on my list.

[foxley]

...and Day Twelve's stuff I wanna buy :

Steven # 1-8 (MWGallaher)
Scare Tactics # 1 – 12 (foxley)
Sonic Disruptors # 1-7 (Cherokee Jack)
Blue Monday Absolute Beginners # 1-4 (Reptisaurus!)

For those of planning on buying Scare Tactics (and I urge everyone to do so), you should be aware that there are an additional four specials that tie-in with the series. In an attempt to bolster sales of the title, DC published four Plus issues that teamed the members of ST with popular DC characters.

These are:
Impulse Plus Gross-Out
Superboy Plus Slither
Catwoman Plus Screamqueen
Robin Plus Fang

These take place between issues 9 and 10 of Scare Tactics and tell the story of what happened to the individual members of ST after they were forced to split up and separately make their way to Gotham City.

If you do enjoy the series, you will want these.

[hondobrode]

Oh yes. Almost forgot about those.

As is wont with most DC quirky characters, they do show up now and again. I just read an article a while back about them popping up in Superboy and the Ravers # 16, Young Justice # 34 and Showcase '96 # 11.