At the right is a copy of Fantastic Four #306. It's a fairly unremarkable issue in the grand scheme of the title. It's the FF versus Diablo and some elemental creatures he's cooked up; you can get the gist of the story from the cover pretty easily. Written by Steve Englehart with art by John Buscema and Joe Sinnott. It's not a bad story at all, but it doesn't hold any particular significance. All the creators had been working on the title for at least a few issues already, and there are no new characters introduced here. No big story revelations or anything. A decent story, but it doesn't especially stand out.

Except!

If you've looked at the cover a little more closely, you might notice that it's actually NOT from the regular Fantastic Four title. It's titled "Fantastic Four Classic and there's a note where the UPC symbol would go that says "Distributed by: So Much Fun! Inc." You might be prone to thinking, "Fantastic Four Classic?!? I've never heard of that title before! I know Marvel's done some FF reprint books but that doesn't sound familiar at all! What gives?"

Well, that's what I thought when I saw it at any rate!

To set your mind at ease, there is no Fantastic Four Classic title that you somehow missed. The "Classic" only appears on the cover, and the official indicia inside just says it's a second printing of Fantastic Four #306. So what's with the "Classic" and who is "So Much Fun! Inc."?

There's actually a bit of a mystery around this. There are, in fact, twelve different comics that seem to have a So Much Fun! distribution notice on them, and they all also have the word "classic" attached to the title on the cover. But the list of issues might surprise you. They are...

• Amazing Spider-Man #292
• Archie #282
• Batman #401
• Betty and Veronica #289
• Fantastic Four #306
• G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero #63
• Incredible Hulk #335
• Justice League of America #217
• The Man of Steel #1
• Star Trek #6
• Superman # 161
• Uncanny X-Men #221

Now you may notice that there are three different publishers at play here: Marvel, DC, and Archie. The Marvel issues all reprint stories from late 1987, the two Archie issues come from 1979 and 1980, and the DC issues range from 1963 to 1986. What gives?

Nobody seems to know a whole lot unfortunately. I'll relay what I've been to find and put out a few ideas afterwards.

So Much Fun! Inc. operated out of Massachusettes for a brief period in the late 1980s. They apparently had connections with non-comic shops that sold paper products (think: stationery and greeting cards -- like Hallmark stores but small, independently owned shops) and thought that maybe comics might sell in those venues as well. Perhaps to kids who were dragged into the store by their parents. Rather that trying to set themselves up as a regular distributor of new comics like one might for a newsstand, they instead opted for selling a bagged collection of three different comics. This is very much like those bagged sets of three issues that you might've found in drug stores in the 1970s and 1980s.

I've seen people claim the initial print run for these was 5,000 for each issue. I've seen no citations for where that number comes from though. I've also seen no details on which comics may/may not have been packed together; given that there are only two Archie books, you must've gotten at least two publishers in some bags, but I don't know if there was any rhyme or reason to how they were bagged together or if it was just random.

In doing some digging, I found So Much Fun! also produced sticker packs that were clearly aimed at kids. Rainbows and unicorns with a prism reflective effect, that kind of thing. Given that they seemed to put some degree of effort into the promotion and packaging of these stickers, my guess is that was closer to their main business venture.

If you love these stickers --
And they are the best,
We offer many others,
Collect all the rest!

(It's not good, but it required effort!)

My guess is that stickers were their primary business. Sticker collecting was definitely a big thing in the late '70s and early '80s. As the '80s wore on, though, and stickers weren't as popular, they looked for other ways to make some money that would be adjacent to sticker production. Someone almost certainly recalled those 3-comic bags from earlier and felt there was a decent overlap. They would've been in stationery stores already with a product that was aimed at a kid market. They managed to contact the "big 3" comic publishers and arranged to have small runs of existing comics printed up, presumably to be bagged (and distributed) by themselves.

For the publishers, it would've been a fairly easy request. Just run a few thousand copies of something they had already set up, and send them to a different address. What's interesting is how they interpretted the reuqest. If you look at the Marvel books, they're all virtually identical except for dropping the "Classic" and "So Much Fun" text on there. They just grabbed five of the most recent issues and they barely seemed to care beyond that; the "Classic" on the Hulk cover is just the black text over top of a heavily shadowed part of the art, so much so that you can barely even see it, much less read it! Archie put in a modicum more work by removing the "Archie Comics Group" banner and neatly replacing it with "Achie Classic Comics." Presumably they went back a few years for their issues so it wouldn't compete with what was on the stands at the time? Whether Marvel didn't think there was enough audience overlap or recognized that the small print run wouldn't impact their regular sales at all, they didn't seem to have that concern at all; they went with what was going to print at that time anyway, presumably so they didn't have to do any additional logistical work.

DC put in the most effort, reworking their cover art to update logos and remove cross-promotional banners and such. The Man of Steel issue loses it's mini-series and "comics event of the century" tag lines, the Justice League issue has the logo replaced with the then-current version, and the Superman issue updates the DC logo and re-sizes the Superman title for examples. They seem to have taken the approach that every place they appear, it should reflect on them as pristinely as possible. Presumably, given the range of issues selected for reprinting here, they put some effort into those selections as well. Digging out that 25-year-old production art for Superman was no small task, I'm almost certain.

Given the range of effort in the companies' response, I suspect no one at So Much Fun! had much knowledge about the comic book market of the late 1980s. They seem to have left many of the decisions up to the publishers and were okay with whatever the result was as long as they got some comics they could turn around and sell to stationery shops. Of course, that's almost certainly why the project failed. Well, I'm assuming it failed since there appears to have only been the one "run" of issues, and they're not that hard to come by despite the low print quantities. By 1987, comics were well into the days of the direct market and the semi-"blind bag" drug store approach was effectively dead. To my recollection, it was even starting to get difficult to find comics just on a newsstand or spinner rack by that point.

(As I think on it, I seem to recall Marvel trying the 3-comic-bag approach with their original Secret Wars comic in 1984. They had the main title available in 3-issue runs, and another two or three sets of all the other issues that directly led up it -- the ones where the different heroes find that weird structure in Central Park, wander into it, and then vanish. If those sold poorly, that might explain why Marvel put so little effort into the So Much Fun! issues -- they knew first-hand that they wouldn't sell very well.)

Anyway, as I said, those last few paragraphs are mostly speculation on my part. The books are an interesting curiosity, but probably not relevant unless you have some kind of completist mindset for them. (No judgement on my part, by the way! Whatever floats your boat is cool! They're just not for me.) But now you know what you're looking at if you happen across one of thesse "Classic" titles as you're scanning through a back issue bin and find yourself wondering what the heck you're looking at!

Here are this week's links to what I've had published recently...

Kleefeld on Comics: MLK Cartoons of Yesteryear
https://ift.tt/Zf7XKEb

Kleefeld on Comics: This Slavery Review
https://ift.tt/qsEIyKG

Kleefeld on Comics: Cleveland Scene Comics
https://ift.tt/DSL4OsU

Kleefeld on Comics: Buster Brown
https://ift.tt/F2HroC1

Kleefeld on Comics: Do You Own Your Media?
https://ift.tt/IngqRav

Back in December, I got an email notice from Amazon that said they were temporarily suspending my account because of some unspecified payment irregularities, and that I needed to prove I was who I said I was. I thought it was odd because I hadn't actually purchased anything from them that would require a payment of any sort for something like 10-12 months prior. And my account had otherwise been in good standing for at least a quarter century before that! When I tried submitting a question about what payment they were talking about, I got a generic form letter response and when I tried asking for clarification since they provided no actual details, I got a different form letter that said they weren't going answer anything because they had already addressed it in the previous email. After a week or so of trying to go through their automated hoops without gaining a single shred of additional information and submitting all the information they were requesting of me, I got another email saying that because I didn't provide the information they were asking for, they closed my account permanently with an additional note saying there is no appeals process so don't even bother trying.

As I said, I hadn't purchased anything from them for a year prior. I'd also canceled my Prime account early in 2025. Both part of a decidedly conscious effort on my part to separate myself from their influence. So I'm not mad or upset about losing the account. I'm a little annoyed that they flatly lied to me about why they were canceling my account, but clearly they found something about me and/or my account they didn't like and they actively no longer want me as a customer anyway.

That was the last week or two of 2025. However, it only just dawned on me that I will have also lost my Comixology account in the process as well. Obviously, since it took me a few weeks to even realize that, it's not a big concern either. Once Amazon purchased Comixology and tried incorporating it into their Kindle format, the user interface was so awful that I only used it when I absolutely had to. (I think the last time I'd looked at it was in early 2023 when I was an Eisner Awards judge and spent every free moment for the first part of that year reading comics.) But back before Amazon got their hands on that platform, I'd amassed a good number of comics on that account. At a rough guess, maybe 1000? 1500?

Despite Comixology originally launching in 2007, I don't think most people started really paying attention until 2010 or so when A) they launched a stand-alone app that came pre-loaded on Apple's then-brand-spanking-new iPad and B) that happened to coincide with Marvel and DC having their titles released digitally through Comixology. That's probably about when I signed up as well.

However, it was quite a while longer -- years, I think -- before I bought my first comic digitally. I snagged plenty of free ones though! A lot of titles had one or two issues for free. Marvel had a couple of massive promotions where they'd give away 500 free comics or something, in addition to for-a-while-weekly releases of some newish issues from both Marvel and DC. And there was a weird incident when they were in some agreement with Amazon, but before they were bought out, where someone at Amazon accidentally mis-maked a slew of Marvel Masterworks with a cost of zero; that only lasted for, like, a half hour before someone corrected it, but I was able to grab digital copies of something like the first fifteen years of Fantastic Four stories!

The reasons I wasn't actually buying anything, though, came out of a business model arguement people were having right at the start. Namely, that when you bought a digital comic on Comixology, you didn't own it. There was very clear language early on that you were essentially just renting the comic until such time as either A) you closed your account, or B) Comixology decided they didn't want you to have it any more for some reason. You couldn't download the issue at all, not even a DRM'd version.

In the fifteen-ish years I had a Comixology account, I think I paid for only three issues. All of which were expressly for the purpose of doing research for some articles -- two were issues that were too expensive to buy for real and hadn't been reprinted in any capacity, and one was a issue I already had, but I needed to do some research while I was travelling and didn't have access to my collection. So from a stric cost perspective, losing my Amazon account -- and those digital comics I paid for 8 or 10 years ago -- cost me only a few bucks.

I definitely have a much larger collection of digital comics that I've downloaded from other places (legally!) sitting on my hard drive. Definitely a lot more independent work there, of course, and some of them are older as I'd been looking at digital comics for more than a couple years before Comixology. Many of them are still avaiable online in various place, so I could download them again if I needed to (I seem to recall a good number of them are, in fact, public domain comics pulled from Digitial Comic Museum, now celebrating their fifteenth anniversary!) but it's not necessary. They're on my hard drive, which is backed up nightly. They're my copies, and I don't have to worry about losing them just because some nameless entity decided I wasn't an account worth having any more.

I also recently set up my own media server. I'd done a somewhat makeshift version of that with my music some time ago, just "hosting" MP3s ripped from my CD collection 15-20 years ago. But using a refurbished old laptop dedicated to hosting up files, and a relatively cheap ($150 US) 8 TB hard drive, I can throw movies and TV shows on as well. (Mostly streaming captures through legitimate sources, though there's a number of public domain works downloaded from the Internet Archive and YouTube as well.)

What's been interesting with video files is that, even in the few weeks I've been loading my system with them, I've seen several that I captured from legal sources, only to see them disappear a week or two later. Obviously due to a contract expiration, but it's another way emphasize the same point from before: that unless you have a copy of some media in your home, you don't own it. I was particularly annoyed a year and change ago when I was watching Marvel's Runaways on Disney+ when they pulled the whole series just as I finishing season 1. I checked Amazon Prime and they had only seasons 1 and 3 -- no clue why season 2 wasn't available. I did find just this past week a notice that Tubi will allegedly begin streaming it in February, but I don't know if that's necessarily the whole series or just certain seasons. If I had downloaded all of those back when I was watching it, it would've been a non-issue.

Again, my point is that we're living in an era when many of the things you've bought and paid for can be pulled out from under you with little-to-no notice. People have been warning for YEARS that any of these platforms -- for comics or music or movies -- are only as permanent as the company hosting them feels like. Maybe that is indefinitely. More than likely, probably not though. But we're fortunately at a point where you can get a good sized hard drive relatively inexpensively, so it might be worth considering hooking one up to an old laptop or something and figure out how to host all your media locally. (As long as your machine still works, it's honestly pretty easy. It took only took me several months to set mine up because I had to get an old laptop in working order in the first place. Once I got things basically working again, getting it set up to host media wasn't much more difficult than installing an app.)

I think things will only get more chaotic and unpredictable in the near future, so if you're able, I'd strongly recommend trying to get your media house in order before you lose all your music or movies or comics!

If you're at all like me, you're probably more familiar with Buster Brown via the shoes than anything else. Though certainly not as popular as they once were, I distinctly recall a time when "Buster Browns" were the 7-year-old's equivalent of Air Jordans or Crocs. However, Buster Brown was actually a comic strip character BEFORE become a shoe mascot.

Buster Brown debuted as a comic strip in the New York Herald in 1902. It was created by Richard Outcault, who is perhaps better known as the creator of the Yellow Kid from almost a decade earlier. The character was then bought by the Brown Shoe Company in 1904 and debuted as the company mascot at the World's Fair in St. Louis. Outcault continued drawing the character in the comics until 1921.

But the character continued on. Beginning in 1925, a series of live-action comedy shorts were produced featuring Arthur Trimble in the titular role. Tige the dog was played by Pal (at some point renamed Pete), who would later go on to become the iconic Petey in Our Gang shorts. Here's "Buster's Mix-Up"...

There were, I believe, 49 Buster Brown shorts in all. "Buster's Mix-Up" was #9 (I think) and was first released on May 26, 1926. Buster Brown didn't receive any notable media exposure again until a radio show in 1943, and then a television program in 1951. The Buster Brown comic book ran from 1945 until 1956, with a handful of additional one-off issues throughout the 1950s.

After that, the only new Buster Brown material I'm aware of are commercials. There were a few reprint books in the 1970s, but nothing new that I can find. Which would probably explain why many folks my age or younger aren't aware of Buster Brown's history as a bona fide comic character!

I had started playing drums when I was ten in school and, when I showed that it was something that I was legitimately interested in, my folks had me start taking formal lessons at the (sort of) local music store. It was a small place and it was a retail store first and foremost, so they didn't really have a place to sit or hang out while I was waiting for the previous kid's lesson to finish up. The first few times I inspected the various instruments on display while I waited, but it's not like they rotated stock on a weekly basis or anything so that got old real quick. What I did come across, though, was that they had a stack of Cleveland Scene on one of the counters which I would regularly pick up.

Cleveland Scene -- or, rather, just Scene as I knew it back then -- started in 1970 and is a free alternative weekly paper. It relies heavily on classified ads, which I would regularly scan for local drum equipment, but also had a lot of original articles on Cleveland-area arts and entertainment. At the time I was reading it weekly, there was a heavy focus on music, particularly big name bands whose tours came through the area, but they also had pieces on the local food scene and movies and such. After I stopped taking drum lessons (though I continued to play!) I didn't pick up Scene regularly, although I would grab a copy if I happened across one somewhere. After I graduated high school, I moved away from the area and haven't seen an issue "in the wild" since.

They're still around, though. My buddy Matt was kind enough to send me their Comics Issue until he passed away a couple years ago. I believe they started in 2013 dedeciating one issue in January to local area indie comics creators. Their in-issue descriptions have been a little light the past few years, but in 2018, they introduced the section with this...

It's a celebration of the talented working comic artists in Cleveland, those who are carrying on the city's long and storied tradition in panels and pushing it in new directions.

I think the idea was started by John Greiner, an area creator himself, whose The Lake Erie Monster comics were how I first came across him. I don't know how he came to work with Scene though. In any event, despite his parting with the magazine in 2018, they've continued on with the annual Comics Issue, with the latest one coming out about a week ago. It was curated -- as it has been for the past several years -- by Sequoia Bostick and Amaia DeGirolamo of Vagabond Comics, and features some original one page comics by Tom Waitzman, Zach Nelson, Quill Kolat, Sara Calhoun, Lindsey Bryan and Deni Lance. The cover art is by the Justin Michael Will.

The issue is still mostly dedicated to local stuff other than comics, but that they're willing to highlight several local creators every year and expose readers to their work is incredibly laudible. They do miss on including anything about "here's where you can find more of their work" so unless the creator includes their website or Facebook page or whatever, they're relying on readers doing a bit of digging on their own. But I believe the creators are paid for their work and I'm sure there's at least a handful of folks who become fans based on it, so I hope Scene continues this idea for years to come.

I believe, technically, the most recent Comics Issue is still on the "stands" (wherever it's distributed) for another week but if you're reading this post later, you can still access it -- and all the other comics issues -- digitally via their website.

One of the challenges I face when reviewing graphic novel adaptations of other books stem from not always having read the original. Something I might see as a flaw in the adaptation might have been in the original; the message(s) and theme(s) of the original are inherently filtered -- and therefore potentially distorted or corrupted -- through the adapters; many of the visual elements have to be invented wholecloth because the original author didn't feel it necessary to detail what everything looked like... Ultimately, how much credit/blame goes to the original author and how much goes to the adapters? Is it the adaption itself that's good, or was the original so good that even a poor adaption comes across as powerful?

In some cases, I'm able to at least guess that based on what I've heard about the book. In the case of This Slavery, however, I had never even heard of Ethel Carnie Holdsworth's book until getting my hands on the graphic novel adaptation by Scarleet and Sophie Rickard. The original was written in 1925 and details the lives of two sisters when the textile mill they work at burns down and leaves them -- and many other area residents -- without income. That it's not more well-known than it might be is largely intentional because, well... let me talk specifically to the Rickard sisters' adapation for a bit first.

The book takes place in Lancashire, England in some unspecified time before World War I. The Martin family -- sisters Rachel and Hester, along with their mother and grandmother -- are living in poverty, to the point of reading and darning socks in the dark to save money by not burning an oil lamp. Many of their neighbors are in similar situations, so when the local textile mill burns down, many find themselves out of work. The lack of income begins impacting the Martin's health as they can't eat properly or stay warm during colder days. Hester develops a nasty and persistent cough, and her grandmother passes away.

A new mill by another businessman opens. He takes a liking to Hester, and courts her despite her blatant disinterest. She does eventually relent, though, for the sake of escaping her family's perptual poverty. Meanwhile, though, Rachel learns that her birth father was none other than the owner of the other mill that burned down, a fact intentionally hidden from her by her mother. When he offers to buy their silence, Rachel becomes incensed and starts becoming much more active in advocating for workers' rights. The two sisters' lives diverge pretty notably; but Rachel observes that while she is sometimes arrested and thrown in prison for her "agitation" her sister Hester is living in a prison of her own as well.

As the years wear on, though, the two both work for the benefit of the common man. Rachel becomes a powerful speaker on behalf of unions and workers' rights, helping to organize strikes and the like. While Hester largely plays the "good housewife" despite her husband's increasingly abusive treatment of her, she secretly relays notes about his business plans to the workers so they can counter them more efficiently. This all comes to a head after several years, and he physically throws Hester to the curb in anger and frustration shortly before caving to the workers' demands. Although Hester is killed while police are ostentisbly "protecting" the crowd, Rachel continues her efforts and even expands toward the then-just-starting Labour Party.

I am absolutely not doing this story justice in my summary. Despite the surface story really only focusing on the lives of two women, there are so many layers of socio-political commentary and cultural observations, I can't begin to summarize everything. And even more impressive is how this was written a century ago, it still speaks very directly to our collective situation today. There are a handful of wealthy elite living in their fortified mansions largely oblivious to life outside their walls while everyday folks are stuggling to pay for food and shelter and health care.

Capitalism depends on uncertainty. It's part of the system that we are liable to be flung out of work to starve and rot at any moment. And if we object, Capitalism provides for a police force and an army to quell us using lad of our own class to shoot us down... We must accept Capitlism thrives not only on the selfish courage of Capitalists, but the cowardly apathy of workers like ourselves. Just a week's grub is enough to cotnent us to go on in the same old way.

There were several bits of dialogue like that that just rang out like a shot; I could easily fill a page with similar quotes that get right to the crux of issues like that. Barbed and succinct. You are being used and discarded like an old tissue. How much of that is Holdsworth's and how much of is Sophie's, I can't say. Or how much of is basically Holdsworth's, but Sophie tweaked it slightly or gave the dialogue to another character or in a different situation. Regardless, the phrase "spitting bars" comes to mind.

As to Scarlett's artwork, she does an incredible job setting the mood for every scene. The opening, for example, I initially thought was dark and muddy, but we soon learn that was a very deliberate choice to show how they literally are living in a muddied darkness with the lights off. And while there's nothing that gets particularly bright and cheery, the level of color and light sends a clear message to the reader what any given character's situation is. And somehow she always just uses "local color," i.e. the colors she depicts are what they actually would be in real life, not using any kind of emotional color filtering or anything. And the scenes where things get particularly bleak -- when the grandmother passes away, for example -- it's downright haunting.

Surprising to me, too, is that Sophie's linework is pretty thin and delicate, but neither does it get lost in the coloring nor does it seem to rely on the coloring for distinguishing between objects and shapes. I've seen other artists who are excellent illustrators and colorists, but their weak inking skills hinders the story. I suspect if I just saw a page of Sophie's black and white linework, I would assume the same, but her coloring works exceptionally well with her inking style, I am quite impressed.

The book clocks in at over 350 pages, and some of the elements are pretty heavy, so it's not something you can breeze through quickly. But it's absolutely excellent and has a really strong message that I think more people need to hear today in 2026. The book came out back in October from SelfMadeHero, so it should be readily available through your favorite bookstore right now. It retails for $23.99 US. Go pick up a copy, and be prepared to make a side run to the hardware store because, despite Rachel's ongoing message of non-violence, there's a good chance you're going to want some torches and pitchforks when you're done.

These days, cartoonists often take a moment on Martin Luther King Day to honor the Civil Rights activist instead of skewering whatever the topic du jour is. This generally takes the form of a drawing of Dr. King with a quote from him, frequently from his "I Have a Dream" speech. Which is nice, if unoriginal, but I was thinking that it must mark for a noticeable contrast from how King would've been depicted by cartoonists in the 1960s.

You might recall that King, while lauded as almost a saint these days, was considered a very controversial figure back in the day. That's why J. Edgar Hoover worked for years to use every FBI resource available to discredit him at every opportunity, and why he was eventually assassinated.

So how was King depicted by cartoonists back then? What did they say about his activism, his speeches, his death? I did a little searching and came up with the following cartoons, mostly from 1966-1968. Most of those I found weren't particularly kind, but the three that appeared shortly after his death were respectful at least. (The one with the hand-writing was sent to King himself, and remains in his archives.)