I'm running a little tight on deadlines this week, so I'm going to re-present an interesting (to me, at least) piece that ran in Comics Feature #44 (May 1986), published just as John Byrne announced that he was leaving the Fantasic Four. While other articles in the same issue mention John's departure, it's clear that this was written before that decision had been made. This helps to put some context around Fantastic Four #296, the final issues of The Thing, Johnny's wedding, and the introduction of 4 Freedoms Plaza.

The 25th anniversary issue of the Fantastic Four will be issue 296 which at 64 pages is not just a double-issue, such as they did with FF 236, the 20th anniverary story, but a triple-issue! Writer/artist John Byrne describes FF 236 as being comparable to doing Fantastic Four: The Movie while 296, the triple-issue, will be the ultimate comic book version of the FF. It will tie into so many things which relate to the earlier years of the title.

Of his appraoch to these stories, Byrne says, "The whole thrust of FF 236, the 20th anniversary story, was to do a story that was more or less completely divorced from the regular book so that it could sort of stand on its own as a 'movie.'" By this he means that anyone who'd just stepped off the moon and had never heard of the FF could read issue 236 and understand everything that was going on.

"In the 25th anniversary issue I'm going to be doing essentially the same thing in that you'll be able to pick up on these guys even if you've never seen them before. But I also want to fill it up with all kinds of little, almost subliminal, fanish type styff that people will recognize as being references to earlier stories."

The title of FF 296 is "Return to Monster Island," a reference which will mean something if you're at all familiar with Fantastic Four number one.

"The basic premise," Byrne reveals, "is that Reed, Sue, Johnny and She-Hulk are out in California and they go out to the old rocket base in Central City. It's all grown over with weeds and looking pretty scraggy, the way Cape Canaveral is these days. The first part of the issue, as it now stands, will be a retelling of Fanastic Four number one, as they tell their origin to She-Hulk -- their first battle with the Mole Man and all that." But things start happening as the world is assaulted by wide-ranging earthquakes, which Reed Richards pinpoints as having their source at Monster Island. But Monster Island blew up at the end of FF 1 -- or did it?

"So they go tripping off to Monster Island," Byrne continues, "or where it used to be, and discover that what is now there is basically a very large hole -- into which sea water has been pouring for years. It's been gushing down into the tunnels that the Mole Man appropriated from the Deviants and has managed, in many cases, to work its wat quite a ways down into the vicinities of the center of the Earth. As a result, it's coming back as super-heated steam which is causing vast pressures to build up underneath the crust of the Earth -- which is what's causing all of these giant earthquakes, globally.

"They are about to do what they can to undeo this damage when... the Mole Man turns up. He's still there, still lurking around, and he's got all kinds of things happening involving that group of outcasts he put together." One important facet of this story involves a sequence from Fantastic Four number one in which the Mole Man revealed his mammoth Valley of Diamonds, a concept which has not been dealt with since. But Byrne has managed to work it into the story in a surprising way.

"The Mole Man has discovered that the Valley of the Diamonds is not in fact a natural phenomenon. The diamonds are mystical, and he's discovered that if he melts down the diamonds he gets this glib which, if you immersed yourself in it, you are transformed into whatever you are in your heart of hearts."

What follows is a story in which the FF try to avert final disaster for the world while the Mole Man is convinced that they're just there to make trouble for him again. But if that's not enough (remember this is a triple-issue filled with triple-threats and triple-promises), an important former member of the FF turns up there -- the Thing. Certain changes planned for the Thing, which have not yet been revealed but will have come to pass by late summer, will have driven him to Monster Island, convinced that it is the only place for a monster such as himself. There, the Thing comes face to face with what he is in his heart of hearts.

The Thing is reunited with the FF in this adventure, and at the end, "We get back to New York for an anniversary party!" Byrne explains. "It's kind of a separate story at the end of the issue which unveils the FF's new headquarters and has virtually the entire Marvel Universe guest-starring, including folks from Marvel."

Beyond FF 296 will be the aftermath of the return of the Thing. For instance, what will happen to the She-Hulk, a character John Byrne happens to have a certain fondness for? "We will have to address the very serious questions of whether they will be the Fantastic Four or the Fantastic Five," Byrne reveals.

Other stories in the FF's future include a possible wedding in issue 300 and the finale to "The Last Galactus Story" continued from the pages of the now-defunct Epic Illustrated. It looks as though 1986 will be a landmark year for the Fantastic Four in numerous ways.

When it comes to creative folks discussing the increasing use of AI, a lot of the discussion centers around the legality and ethics of these various AI comapnies 'training' their respective models using creators' legally protected works. It's gotten to the point now -- and I'm honestly surprised it's taken this long -- that Disney and Universal are suing Midjourney for copyright infringement. But over the past couple days, I've seen a more existential thread crop up when it comes to creators discussing AI. Why bother being an artist if every person who might pay for your art has the option to have a computer program spit something out for free?

The image at the right is taken from Ellen Woodbury's PizzaCake comic late last week. In the comic, she goes on to note that being a "successful" artist isn't worth much if the effort that went into creation is merely typing a prompt. And while her skills as an artist are the result of years of training and pracitce, any yahoo with a computer can type a few words and get a similar result in seconds. It will be souless and passionless, of course, but for many people, it would still fall under the qualification of "good enough." So what's the point of her continuing to make art?

It's not a new question. Douglas Adams, in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, brought up this issue from an explicitly philosophical standpoint, having two philosophers-by-trade demand they pull the plug on the universe's most powerful -- and sentient -- computer...

Majikthise: I mean, what's the use of our sitting around half the night arguing whether there may...

Vroomfondel: Or may not.

Majikthise: ...be a God, if this machine only goes and gives you his phone number in the morning?

The passage is written humorously, of course, but it's a notion that is worth bringing up for any/all the humanities. At what point do the functions of being human -- of thinking and creating -- become redundant when they can be automated?

Rhymes with Orange creator Rina Piccolo coincidentally addressed the question in her newsletter over the weekend as well. In trying to make an ambient music video, she used some inexpensive royalty-free music tracks and began combining them with AI-generated art for the imagery. And it was only after she had been working on that that she remembered, "I can draw! Duh! I thought, Why do I need these cheap fabricated robo-arts?" So she switched gears and made the video using custom-drawn artwork.

But the interesting thing about her relaying the story is that she prefaced that with the notion of how a lot of her creative efforts over the years have been "pretty useless."

I often create things that have zero possibility of fitting into any viable market, or paying the mortgage...

... My career as a cartoonist and writer started out as just playing and daydreaming. At the time, my projects were just creative obsessions, and a lot of the things I made were “pretty useless.” Some of these “projects” branched out, evolved, adapted and were molded, and a lot of them (most of them!) died pitifully, and some — a tiny few — flourished.

Piccolo notes that her ambient music video has "room for improvement" but she very clearly seems to have enjoyed the process of creating "an almost useless thing, but at least a nice useless thing. A digital knick-knack!" It's the process of creation that is worthwhile, regardless if your 'content' makes money or gains you likes and follows.

Remember: passion projects and creative obsessions often fuel the creation of other “real work” projects — there’s more to it than just play and exploration. There’s learning, and the nurturing of new skills.

Woodbury ends her comic with much the same conclusion...

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

Kleefeld on Comics: The Red Badge of Courage Review
https://ift.tt/XRbHKsa

Kleefeld on Comics: Mafalda Review
https://ift.tt/6o5swP4

Kleefeld on Comics: My Textbook-iversary
https://ift.tt/HGUvaVE

Kleefeld on Comics: Death of the Funny Pages!
https://ift.tt/fCx2haj

Kleefeld on Comics: Mighty Crusaders Action Figures
https://ift.tt/eYEFq53

I don't remember seeing these back in the day but in 1984, apparently to compete with Kenner's Super Powers and Mattel's Secret Wars action figure lines, Remco obtained the license for and produced a small run of figures based on Archie Comics' Mighty Crusaders!

I was never a big Crusaders fan, but they were apparently sold primarily at Kmart, which was a store my family frequented a fair amount back in the '70s and early '80s. (They were cheap, very close, and frankly there weren't many other options we could reasonably get to back then.) So even though I didn't read any Crusaders comics, I was in the Kmart toy aisle pretty regularly in 1984-85. It's possible I did see them and dismissed them out of hand as cheap knock-offs because the production on these is, by all accounts, inferior.

You can clearly see the figure proportions are awkward. Like they were aiming for mimicking the broad/squat He-Man figures, but those figures, while not realistically proportioned, were proportioned well unto themselves. Here, the heads are too big, while the legs are far too short and narrow, and connect at the hip uncomfortably. Not to mention just being crudely sculpted with sloppy paint jobs. Not that Remco was ever known for producing high-quality toys! And when they were competing directly agaist better quality figures from Kenner and Mattel, who had more popular licenses, it's no real surprise these figures found their way to the discount bins really quickly.

(As an aside, Remco was no stranger to comic book licenses. They had produced the "Energized Spider-Man" in 1978, "instant" Hulk muscles in 1979, Sgt. Rock and Warlord action figure lines in 1982, and Crystar action figures in 1983. The Warlord figures more closely resemble the He-Man proportions, so I can't imagine how/why they missed so badly on the Crusaders. They literally could have re-purposed the Warlord bodies mold and been miles ahead, both in terms of sculpting quality and cost savings!)

While the Mighty Crusaders as a group didn't appear until late 1965, some of the individual characters date back to the early 1940s. Interestingly, the original characters were largely born out of the desire to ride the coattails of the success of Superman and Batman. When they were brought together as a team in 1965, it was done because of the success of The Justice League of America and The Avengers. That 1960s title lasted a scant seven issues (with a few appearances in other comics) before it was cancelled. The title was brought back in 1983, apparently designed specifically to promote the upcoming toy line, much the way Secret Wars was developed. That version lasted thirteen issues. A 1992 series lasted eight issues.

It would seem that the Mighty Crusaders, always trying to follow trends and seemingly never trying anything that isn't derivative, is always behind the curve enough that they're never very successful. Both in comics and in action figures.

There is one interesting thing of note to comic fans about these otherwise pedestrian and generally unremarkable action figures. The illustrations on the back of the card showcasing the entire figure line were by none other than Steve Ditko! I daresay this is the best these heroes ever looked!

Way back in John Byrne's run on The Fantastic Four, he had Mr. Fantastic and the Invisible Woman adopt secret identities to try to raise their child Franklin in a "normal" household. They bought a place in Belle Porte, Connecticut and created the identities of Reed and Sue Benjamin, and eventually had a house warming to invite all their new neighbors over in FF #276. And, if you weren't aware, their neighbors are largely residents of the newspaper funny pages...

That's Hi and Lois at the door (as you can see, they're specifically identified by name). Going clockwise from there, we have Joe and Ann Palooka (from Joe Palooka), Dick Tracy (from Dick Tracy), Henry Mitchell (from Dennis the Menace), Herb Woodley and Dagwood & Blondie Bumsted (from Blondie), and Loretta & Leroy Lockhorn (from The Lockhorns). In the center are Skeezix (from Gasoline Alley) and Jiggs (from Bringing Up Father). Although Skeezix does look a bit more like Uncle Walt to me, Byrne himself has identified the character as Skeezix.

In any event, the party goes off without a hitch and as Reed and Sue are cleaning up, they're attacked by Elspeth Cromwell, a witch-hunter who mistakenly believes them to be witches. Things go south from there and, by the end of the issue, the neighborhood is being overrun the Knights of Hades, multiple houses are shown on fire, and finally Mephisto himself pops up!

In the next issue, Dr. Strange shows up, Franklin uses some mysterious powers to banish Mephisto again, and the good guys win the day. However...

When Dr. Strange first arrives, Reed, Sue, Franklin, and Elspeth appear dead. Their bodies have been recovered by the police, who are apparently still waiting for an ambulance. The officer also notes the neighbors mentioned the house warming party. Most of the rest of the story takes place in Mephisto's realm and when the villain is vanquished, Reed, Sue and Franklin wake up from where their bodies were lying on the street while Elspeth remains motionless. Dr. Strange confirms that she is not only dead but that her soul has been claimed by whichever demon she had actually bargained with.

The initial implication is that Elspeth is the only one who perished. But when local busybody Alma Chalmers begs Dr. Strange to recover her, he says he can't and adds, "Remember the terrible price these people paid for your acts!"

THESE PEOPLE. Plural. Not one person. Not just Elspeth. THESE PEOPLE. Multiple people died during this event and we've already identified all the main characters and their respective statuses, so who snuffed it?

There was only one person shown dead, but we had clearly seen multiple houses on fire and destroyed. So the further implication is that SOME OF THE CLASSIC COMIC STRIP CHARACTERS DIED!

We can pretty safely say Jiggs wasn't killed -- he (and his wife Maggie) show up in Power Pack #47 a few years later. Hi and Lois probably survived, too; they're identified as living in "the second house on the next block" and while there was a lot of damage in the area immediately surrounding Reed and Sue's house, it doesn't seem to have spread too far. But what about everybody else? You might think, "Well, I can read all these characters in the newspaper every day! Just because they don't appear in Marvel comics any more doesn't mean they died! Byrne was just having a little fun!"

Here's the thing, though: you CAN'T read these characters in the newspaper every day! Not all of them! Blondie? Sure. The Lockhorns? Yes. Dick Tracy? Yup. Somehow, even Gasoline Alley is still going strong! But you know what comic isn't still around? Joe Palooka. It ended in November 1984, just a few months before FF #276! In the final Joe Palooka strips, Joe announces he's retiring from boxing, going to spend a little time with Ann and his parents, and "then... who knows?" He's last seen in the strip driving off into the sunset waving goodbye. The newspaper funnies have never seen Joe Palooka since.

So I maintain that when Dr. Strange said "the terrible price these people paid" he was talking about Elspeth Cromwell and Joe & Ann Palooka (possibly their kids as well). Obviously the situation was still in flux when the police officer first pointed Dr. Strange to the four apparently dead bodies; Joe and Ann must have been found after that, during the extended sequence in Mephisto's realm. Were they actually slain by the Knights of Hades, or were they simply caught in a house that had caught fire and/or collapsed? That we don't know. But we do know that they are not seen again, in either a Marvel comic, or in the newspapers where they originated!

There you have it! Joe Palooka, the famous comic strip character dating back to 1930, actually died in the pages of a Marvel comic only months after his own comic strip ended!

On this day five years ago, my Webcomics textbook was officially published. It was supposed to formally debut at that year's ALA conference, but that was cancelled due to COVID. As was pretty much every other conference in 2020. I think that kind of screwed up my publisher's promotional plans, and the book never got the level of coverage that I think they typically give their books. But it still garnered some attention, the majority of which was very positive.

I haven't seen many reviews of the book, but the ones I have seen were, by and large, positive like I said. I think the two biggest criticisms I saw were 1) it doesn't reference enough other academic material, but they immediately added that that was a broader problem with academia because there was so little about webcomics to reference in the first place, and 2) none of my "key texts" featured any Black/brown creators. That last one is a reasonable criticism; I did include one creator of Japanese descent but the other six webcomics I highlighted were all by white people. I did reference various creators of color throughout the book at large, but their absence in the Key Texts portion was very much an oversight on my part. Although not commented on, none of the Key Texts were by any LGBTQIA+ folks either. Again, they're brought up throughout the rest of the book but not as one of the more in-depth highlights.

Interestingly, the book has not gotten as out of date as rapidly as I feared it might. I believe a couple of the webcomics I briefly referenced in the book have since gone offline, but none of the primary examples. In fact, the most out of date portions are that multiple creators I talk about transitioned since I first submitted my manuscript, and are referenced in the book by their deadnames. I was able to get in a last minute footnote about one of them, but I believe there are three others that are incorrectly named and gendered in my book now. I have to admit that that is very much NOT how I anticipated my book would start to go out of date!

The book ended up offering me some unique opportunities that I never would've even considered in my lifetime. I know that a copy got purchased for and now sits in the Library of Congress. In 2021, the book was nominated for a frickin' Eisner Award! And while there was no in-person ceremony that year and the book ultimately didn't win, I can still call up the YouTube video of Phil LaMarr reading off my name next to the book's cover as one of the nominees. But almost just as amazing, I was asked to be a judge for the 2023 Eisners! It's kind of even more impressive than the Award itself -- after all, they give out around 30 trophies every year, but there are only six judges! I'm sure I would never have been asked to judge if my book hadn't come to the Eisner committee's attention previously. And now, as an academic textbook, Webcomics is starting to get cited in other books and papers and articles.

When I was a teenager, I got my first fan letter published in the pages of Fantastic Four #318. I thought that was incredible because my name could now be linked to comics in perpituity. Admittedly, in an absurdly insignificant way but I was still happy with that because I figured that was probably the most I could ever hope to achieve in the medium. But getting a 300-page book about Webcomics written and published? Well, that's up there with running a marathon -- something I never thought I had the tenacity to accomplish. But then to have it recognized by the industry at large as a work significant enough for one of its biggest awards? Never ever ever ever in my wildest dreams could I have imagined that!

Webcomics is an academic textbook, so sales aren't exactly eye-popping. But that's not why I wrote it. Writing for me is a means to an end, not the end itself. But in the five years since Webcomics was published, that end has given me some absolutely amazing opportunities and even if nothing more ever comes of it, it's already been an incredible journey!

Mafalda has finally arrived in the United States!

I suspect like many of you, I'd heard of Mafalda years ago as THE best comic to come out of Argentina, often being favorably compared to Peanuts. Joaquín Salvador Lavado Tejón -- better known by his pen name Quino -- began the strip in 1964 (having created the character the year before) and continued on it until 1973. The strip's humor was allegedly incredibly witty and satricial, but despite the strips being collected in book form and translated/published around the world, it's only been in the last two weeks that we finally get an English-language version here in the States.

Mafalda collects the firsst 240 strips and the comparisons to Peanuts are almost immediately obvious. The characters bear little resemblance to one another and Quino's drawing style is nothing like Charles Schulz's, but the biting commentary on adults and adulthood coming from children hits in much the same way that the very best Peanuts strips do. The strips tend to focus on a single theme for 4-5 days in a row, frequently with Mafalda trying to learn more about a subject by discussing it with her friends, asking her parents, or by simply observing things around her. She comes to the topics with a child-like naivete but manages to pose extremely pointed questions like, "Papa? Can you explain why humanity is a disaster?"

While I think Quino was often writing the strips in reaction to current events, most of the strips don't require much historical context. There were a few references to the Vietnam War and a couple of news-worthy folks that have since fallen into relative obscurity, but even those references don't need much context to understand. I think the cultural touchstones might be a little harder for Americans to connect with -- while strikes are not unheard of here, certainly, we haven't seen the spate of them that would've been taking place (and are therefore referenced) in Argentina back in the '60s. Also, Mafalda has an absolute aversion to soup, going so far as to use "soup" as a curse word; I think I must be missing something with that bit.

But by and large, the humor holds up exceptionally well and it really is as good as I'd been led to believe. More amazingly, too, it starts right out of the gate with some good gags and the really biting stuff starts coming within a few pages. I've rarely seen comics start that well-crafted and well-defined that early on. Quino really knew what he was doing.

As far as I can tell, this version is -- aside from being an English translation -- basically just a reprint of the original Argentinian edition from 1966. It's a high-quality reprint, certainly, on a very nice paper stock with better-than-I-expected reproduction quality. (I half-wonder if they were able to use the original printing materials; all the linework is incredibly clean!) So it's a very nice presentation. But that also means there's no context for American audiences -- no introduction, no foreword, not even a note about when these originally were published. Granted, we are in 2025 so that's all easily found online and the majority of people likely to buy this book are already familiar with Mafalda's reputation, so it's probably not really critical to include, but it does come as something of a departure from what I think we're used to seeing in comic strip collections these days.

Like I said, this is the first time Mafalda has made it to the US. That's why you're interested. My review, nor anyone else's, is really going to sway you one way or another. You heard Mafalda was getting published and that was all you needed to hear. It's out now, and the hardcover retails for $18 US. It really does live up to its reputation, so go get it if you've got any interest at all.