You ever read Walden by Henry David Thoreau?

Don't bother; it's a crock of shit. I forced myself to wade through it when I was in my 30s and, despite how lauded it often is in literary circles, I found myself almost immediately disliking it. Thoreau struck me as a hypocritical slouch who wouldn't know what self-reliance or responsibility were if they spit in his face, made fun of his mother's army boots, gave him a wedgie and then beat him up and took his lunch money. You ever see that episode of Friends where the woman claims Dead Poets Society was a life-affirming film because she thought it was the worst piece of trash she ever wasted two hours on and she was going to spend the rest of her life trying to make up for that? That's my feeling about Walden.

Now, if you're interested in something philosophical in nature, I'll point to one line from William Shakespeare:

This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.

Act I, Scene III, Hamlet

Most of the speech from which those lines come from is advice a father gives his son, and most of that is rather generic. But what Shakespeare hits towards the end with these lines, I think, does get to the crux of living a life well-lived. If you follow your own path -- a path you actively choose, not one laid down by someone else -- and stay true to it regardless of obstacles or opposition, then your honesty with yourself will give rise to an honest life without regret or remorse.

I don't know that I'd go so far as to claim that I use those words as a credo of any kind, but I have spent a lot of time in my own head over the years and I have a pretty good grasp on who I am and what I believe. I live my life in a way that I can lie in bed every night, and go to sleep secure in the knowledge that I did nothing that day worth losing sleep over. I did my best, learned from my mistakes and, tomorrow, I'm going to do that again.

For the past several years, I've had an idea for a book rolling around in my head. I've done most of my research, and have a pretty good grasp on the subject. I don't know that it'd sell -- in all honesty, it probably wouldn't, given the subject matter: a largely forgotten comic book from the 1940s -- but it's something I'd like to do because... well, no one else is. I haven't yet sat down and written Word One, though, because I haven't really developed a good hook for it. A unifying theme(s) that tie the whole thing together. The best I've come up with is a straight chronological approach. It would work, I suppose, but... meh. I think I need a good hook for the whole thing and that's why I haven't started writing it yet.

BUT...

I'm not sitting here complaining that I haven't done anything. I'm not making excuses to myself for not getting anything done. I've gotten compliments about this blog a number of times in how I'm not one to follow whatever the current comic topic du jour is, and how I speak to things that aren't necessarily popular within the comic community. And you know what that comes from? "To thine own self be true." I know who I am and what I like and where my interests lie. I don't especially care how expertly (or not) the Watchmen movie was made; I don't especially care what DC's next company-wide crossover is; I don't especially care who the next creative team on Uncanny X-Men is.

So I just write about comics' topics that interest me. If you'd like to come along for the ride, that's great! Welcome! If not, so be it. But, if you do get something out of what I have to say, I encourage you to think and talk about it more. I encourage you to get into your own head for a while and roll around the subjects I touch on here. Am I right? Am I wrong? Am I just spouting my own brand of blinkered, philistine pig-ignorance?

I've heard that Jack Kirby didn't want people to imitate him. He took it as a much greater compliment if his work inspired people to go off and tell their own story. Similarly, I hope my work gets you to think your own thoughts. I don't care if you agree with me or not, or respond or not, but take the time to reflect and make up your own mind. Just make sure it's your own mind.

"To thine own self be true."

I was just trolling through the Library of Congress website (as one does) and found a few photos of possible interest to comics folks...

Winsor McCay sketching for the Actors Benefit for Crippled Children, 1908...

From a school for refugee children, 1942. Photo by Marjory Collins...

Wanda Newman and Teresa Phillips at Do Dah Day in Birmingham, AL, 2010. Photo by Carol Highsmith...

Maybe it's just me, but I find this kind of stuff fascinating. How they show the cultural and social impact of comics over the course of American history.

If you're bummed that you can't attend Comic Con in person this year (it formally kicks off tomorrow, but there are some unofficial parties starting this afternoon) I might suggest looking back at this Foxtrot strip Bill Amend did back in 2009. Jason and Marcus* had the Comic-Con@Home experience figured out a decade-and-a-half ago!
* There's a coloring error here -- Marcus is supposed to be Black. I believe this was corrected in the books, but they've never gone back and adjusted the version online.

I mentioned back in June that I had recently returned to using ComicBase as a way to catalog my collection. It's had some substantial improvements since I'd last used it in the early 2000s. (I just double-checked; I still have the physical manual to ComicBase 5, which was released in 2000.) Partially because of that and partially because of what I do differently, I'm setting this database up to be a more functional research tool.

The basic use of such a comic book database like this is pretty simple and straight-forward: to track which comics I have and, as a secondary consideration, which comics I want to look for. Theoretically, a basic list or Excel file would be sufficient in many cases, but that does get a bit tricky when you're considering alternate versions of the same issue or multiple series with the same title. Differentiating those can be done in a variety of different ways, but those could vary quite a bit depending on the publisher and the time period. Do the covers use different artwork, are the cover prices different, did they come out on different dates, do they have different publishers... So to account for all those variations, you need to expand the amount of data you need to track for each issue, and those Excel files can start getting unwieldly and downright ineffecient pretty quickly.

I don't think I need to get any extended explanations on all of that. So let's get to the research angle.

As I'm working on something, I might want to reference a story point I nominally recall, but couldn't pinpoint off the top of my head. But I can use the database to hunt down the issue in question. "I think it was the first story to introduce [character X]." "I'm pretty sure it was drawn by [specific artist]." "I know it occurred right after [some other storyline]." Instead of having to rifle through long boxes trying to track down a specific issue and relying on a half-faded memory, I can do the tracking work digitally and only go to the long boxes (or bookshelves) once I've figured out what precisely I'm looking for. That's almost inevitably going to be a faster process, and I'm less likely to cause additional wear and tear on (particularly) older issues. And in many cases, I might be able to find that the story I need was reprinted elsewhere and I don't have to touch my original issues at all.

As ComicBase also allows for digital comics to be added, there will be many cases where I do not need to even get up from my computer. I have years worth of digital comics on my hard drive already. Some are public domain pieces that have been uploaded for free online, some are review copies I've been sent. I even found a decent stash of more independent comics on my hard drive dating back to 2006-2008 and had Wowio advertisements embedded in them! (For you youngsters, Wowio was an early attempt to act as an ad-supported digital comics hub, but it really started to stall by 2008 and was all but defunct by 2009.) Which means that, as I'm doing those searches that I mentioned above, I can immediately access the digital versions right from that database entry whether I have a physical copy or not.

As a real-world practical example, as I was cataloging my collection, I came across a couple issues of Radio Shack's History of Electronics comics. I have three copies, each from a different year, but the database points out all the other versions I'm missing. Mine were ones I'd picked up from Radio Shack first-hand back in the day, so they're all pretty close content-wise. But seeing that they ranged from 1972 up through 1990, there must have been some pretty radical changes in the story to account for actual technological changes. Having digital copies of a wide range of them, I can directly compare the full range of them to one another and determine what changes needed to happen and how the 1972 version evolved into the 1990 version. Yes, I could theoretically track down physical copies of all of them and make comparisons that way, but this is MUCH faster and more efficient!

And, furthermore, because I've got all this on a database running locally on my home network, that means that I can continue working on things if there are problems with an internet hub or my ISP or something. Or if the digital copies of those books that are currently available online get removed. You hear about it more with movies and TV shows, but the services hosting online media are increasingly juggling licensing agreements all over the place, so what may have been readily accessible one day is gone the next.

(My personal example -- which still annoys me -- I was watching the Marvel show Runaways on Disney+ when they abruptly removed it from their platform just as I was about to begin season 2. The show remained available on Amazon Prime, but only seasons 1 and 3 for some inexplicable reason. After over a year of that being the status quo, all three seasons only recently popped up on Tubi. Who knows how long it will remain there? I mean, it's a show produced by Disney -- you'd think they wouldn't pull down TV shows they actually own!)

My point being that the few years I spent without having a working comics database was more than just an annoyance in not knowing all the comics I had in my collection. It was limiting the amount and type of research I could do, and making much of what I did do more tedious than it needed to be. If all you need is something to keep track of what issues you have or want, that's great -- you might not anything more complicated than a notepad. But in doing the type of work that I do, a robust database can be invaluable in getting quicker and more ready access to the sources I need to do the research I'm trying to do.

We're in the back half of July, which means that we'll inevitably start seeing some people making note of the anniversary of the Fantastic Four (and therefore Marvel Comics in general) on August 8th. Supposedly, this is because many people claim August 8, 1961 as THE day that Fantastic Four #1 first hit the stands. The problem is: that's not the correct date of the FF's anniversary.

That date seems to originate from Greg Theakston, who mentioned it in Pure Images #2 circa 1991. In his essay on the earliest days of the Fantastic Four, he mentioned that that August 8th date. That is, I believe, the first time anyone put a specific date to the issue's release. Previously, the FF's anniversary was always tied to the November issue of any given year, regardless of when the November issue actually came out. After Theakston published that, however, the conversation started to shift from "November cover-dated issue" to "August 8th release date." My guess is that Theakston got the date by finding the earliest records he could of a newsstand receiving their copies.

But he wasn't comprehensive in his search.

See, back in 1961, there wasn't a single distributor system for comics. It was a comparitively very loose network off regional distributors. Not to mention what was available worked much slower. So different newsstands and drug stores got their shipments on different days. Generally kind of close to one another, just not on the same day. One shop might get their books on a Tuesday, the guy in the next city might get his on Wednesday, and the guy in the city after that might be on Thursday.

There was also poor communication to the retailers. They didn't necessarily know what they would get on any given delivery, or when the next shipment of a particular title might come in. Since all the comics (and magazines) were returnable, this wasn't a big deal. But retailers did need to know when it might be okay to send old books back, so they would often write or stamp the date they received them on the cover. (Collectiblity was obviously not a concern.) Then, as they were surveying their stock, they could easily determine that it had only been three weeks since they got this issue, but maybe ten weeks since they got this other one. But, here and now, decades later, we can use those same markings to determine when certain issues hit the stands!

Which leads us to Fantastic Four #1. If the copies of the version Theakston saw in the late '80s and early '90s had nothing earlier than an August 8th date, it's reasonable to conclude that that was the earliest anyone got it. However, since then -- thanks in large part to the internet -- we've uncovered examples of other copies with other dates, such as August 1st, 3rd, 8th, 9th, and as late as the 21st. I've even found one marked as early as June 30th! Which means, if the title hit some of the newsstands on June 30, then claiming the FF's anniversary is August 8 means you're off by at least a full month. Check out these examples...



Most of the images here are pulled from the Heritage Auction site. There are plenty more examples to sort through there if you're interested, but you can check eBay too as there are usually a few copies available there as well. But the dates just in this small sampling range from June 30 to August 21!

It's a minor point, to be sure, but if you're going to go around celebrating the exact day the issue hit the stands, let's at least try to be accurate about it, huh?

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

Kleefeld on Comics: What's Up with Comix Wellsping?
https://ift.tt/Ek0OrUx

Kleefeld on Comics: Both Prophetic and Not
https://ift.tt/bLZyah9

Kleefeld on Comics: Marvel's Very First Cover Variant
https://ift.tt/r4Z0k5z

Kleefeld on Comics: Marble Comics Group's Slimeboy
https://ift.tt/jwPm4gv

Kleefeld on Comics: Thoughts on This Week's Marvel News
https://ift.tt/Fjg6hDN

So a bit of news from Marvel yesterday, right? Stephen Wacker will be taking over as editor-in-chief, C.B. Cebulski will begin overseeing a new division of "APAC-originated graphic fiction and manga, based in Japan," and the Marvel Comics headquarters is being moved from New York City to Burbank, California. Of those three (pretty significant) changes, most of the material coming out of Marvel (both officially released and leaked) focused on Wacker. To be fair, a new editor-in-chief is worth talking about and I've only ever heard good things about Wacker, so that's clearly the positive angle Marvel wants to lead with. Particularly when the other two significant elements have problematic aspects to them.

Cebulski has, of course, been Marvel's editor-in-chief since 2017 and prior to that, he served as their Vice President of International Business Development & Brand Management based out of Shanghai. So his new role makes sense inasmuch as that he's served in similar capacities before. What is not mentioned in most reporting is that he posed as an overtly Japanese writer “Akira Yoshida” in the early 2000s, working for multiple publishers and conducting interviews in that persona. He -- and any other professionals who may have known about this -- kept it hidden for a full decade, going as far as to expressly deny rumors the two who were one and the same. It only came out into the open after Marvel named him editor-in-chief. (Kudos to The Beat for being the only news source I can find highlighting this.) Only then did Cebulski apologize and claimed that it "has been dealt with" but I've never seen/heard anything resembling negative repercussions. Outwardly, it has always looked like -- and continues to look like -- he was awarded Marvel Comics' highest position of storytelling authority for overtly lying about his identity and appropriating Japanese culture in an almost stereotypical manner. That Cebulski remained in that position for a decade with no apparent consequences at all strikes me as an insult in the first place, and that he's now being sent to Japan to lead an Asian-focused arm of the business seems doubly insulting.

The other thing to bring up in all this is Marvel's move across the country. It's not unheard of, certainly -- DC did almost exactly the same thing in 2015, ostensibly for the same reasons of getting both the publishing and film/TV arms in the same place. While there are indeed some long-term possible benefits to this, they're mostly around consolidating physical resources. That is, they would have (theoretically) fewer rental offices to deal with and perhaps draw down the head count of some of the "generic" departments like HR and accounting.

(Two side notes on that. First, it's possible Marvel's done that already as a subsidiary of Disney, in which cases there wouldn't be too much more they could do. Second, when I say "draw down the head count" I am using corporate speak for laying off employees. I only use the phrase to highlight that, if Marvel says anything about it, it will likely be in those terms, so be aware of what they're actually saying if/when they elaborate any more on that point.)

Speaking of getting rid of staff, that is 100% a consideration in their move. We don't have details about it yet, but typically in a move of this type, the company will extend some kind of package offer to pay for moving expenses and such to any affected employees. But -- and this is what's worth noting -- there is an inherent expectation that a significant number of people will choose NOT to move. The numbers, of course, vary by industry but I believe on average, only about half of employees agree to move along with a company. Again, that is an expectation -- Marvel is absolutely aware of this and likely counting on it so they can cut staff without resorting to layoffs, which are always bad PR. Most people are likely to think in terms of editorial roles since those people get their names in the credits of Marvel's comics every month, but this also applies to all sorts of behind-the-scenes admin workers as well. No doubt including the HR and accounting folks that I mentioned earlier.

The notion of being able to consolidate the different creative arms is bogus. I was just reading a couple weeks ago about a study that found very clear evidence that in-person work absolutely does NOT improve productivity. They were talking more specifically about return-to-office policies after work-from-home became so prevelant thanks to COVID, but the same concept applies here...

We surveyed thousands of executives, middle managers and frontline supervisors on a host of personality traits. When we later asked them about their stances on hybrid and remote work, their answers didn’t correlate with how much they trusted their employees or how much they loved being around people. The only trait that consistently predicted objections to remote work was narcissism — the tendency to be self-centered and entitled. The higher the opinions of themselves leaders expressed, the more they coveted power and status — and the more they favored return-to-office mandates.

The move to California isn't about making sure the comics people are coordinating with the film people. It's about some executive at Disney being able to say, "Look at all the stuff I control right here in Burbank."

Keep in mind, too, that Marvel has been increasingly outsourcing their comics publishing anyway. Their long-term gameplan -- in my estimation -- is to get out of actual publishing entirely. Disney bought Marvel in the first place because they were making great movies and getting a ton of licensing revenue from it as well. The comics are an afterthought. If they set things up so that half the comics folks leave, forcing them to outsource even more -- which, I might add, completely negates the notion of bringing the different creative departments closer together -- that's just all part of their long-term strategy.

Obviously, a series of moves like this aren't done on a whim. There's a lot going on here. I don't have any insider information; just an MBA and enough practical experience in the corporate sector to know that none of this is being done without ulterior motives that no one is going to say publicly.

With a bit of renewed interest in Thundarr the Barbarian thanks to the new comic (which I reviewed here) I thought I'd bring up this absurdly small, but amusing, detail from the original cartoon. The series as a whole, for those who don't know, was set in a post-natural-disaster Earth and there were frequently references to late 20th century culture, as the protagonists walked amid the rubble. In one episode, entitled "Last Train to Doomsday", the character Ookla stumbles across the remains of a comic book shop...
... where he picks up a comic and falls to the ground laughing hysterically...

The comic in question is one from Marble Comics Group called Slimeboy...
... an obvious parody of the "Marvel Comics Group" banner that ran across those titles at the time.

Another issue, later in the show, provides the idea for how the characters might escape the villain's trap...
Interesting to note the fifty cent price tag on that one, as comics were (generally) only priced there for a little over a year around 1981. Also curious about that second issue is that the title appears incomplete. It's presented as "Slimeboy in" presumably not unlike "Superman in Action Comics" but there's no room for an actual title here. Also curious is that both covers sport giant, walking robots that appear to be inspired by War of the Worlds and seem to have little obvious correlation with a character called "Slimeboy."

Anyway, just an interesting little aside that's wholly unrelated to the primary storyline of even that episode, much less the series as a whole.

The cover image here is the first variant cover from The Fantastic Four and I think it might be the first variant cover from Marvel. Although it wasn't an intentional one!

The story, from 1971, is fairly unremarkable relative to other issues for a good stretch both before and after it. Stan Lee had been writing the series for a full decade at that point, and John Buscema had several issues under his belt after Jack Kirby left* and would continue on for a few years afterwards. There are no new charaters introduced, nor are any storylines started or wrapped up. It's not a bad story, by any means, but it's largely unremarkable relative to any other given post-Kirby FF.

Except for the cover.

Fantastic Four #110 was produced in exactly the same way every other issue was produced. Lee provided a general outline to Buscema. Buscema created the story and drew the art. Lee came back and added dialogue. It went to Joe Sinnott to ink, and one of the "house" letterers to letter. (In this case, Mike Stevens.) Then the whole ball of wax got shipped off to the printers to do a print run of 250,000 or so.

Quick lesson in printing. You know how your ink jet printer has four cartridges of ink, right? Black, yellow, blue (cyan) and pink (magenta). Those four colors are used because when they're mixed in the right quantities, you can produce an incredibly wide range of colors. Professional printers who print comics use the same colors. The difference is that back in 1971, instead of being controlled by a computer, the colors were controlled by hand. There would be a person who had to take a copy of the artwork, and physically cut out all the bits that required each color. They would end up with four pieces of art: one containing just the black parts, one containing just the yellow parts, one containing just the cyan parts, and one containing just the magenta parts.

Then, a printer would create a metal plate based on each piece of art. These plates are kind of like rubber stamps, but just made out of (usually) aluminum. The image is reversed, then coated with ink and pressed onto a piece of paper. So when you coat the four images with four different inks, and press them onto the same piece of paper, you get a colored image!

Now, what happened to FF #110 is that the cyan and magenta plates got mixed up for the cover. So everything that was supposed be blue was printed using magenta ink, and everything pink was printed with cyan ink. Consequently, we see the FF in pink uniforms, and the orange of the Thing (remember your old color wheel? yellow + red = orange) now looks green (the "red" of that equation was replaced with "blue").

The issues were shipped out before the problem was noticed. Which means there were over 200,000 of these floating around at one point. Marvel issued a recall, and had corrected issues shipped out (I'm sure at the printer's cost, since it was their fault) but not before a good number of the error version had sold. And while we weren't really into the direct market system quite yet, there were no doubt people who had begun speculating on the market, and deliberately held onto their copies without sending them back to get pulped. So these days, they're not exactly common, but not terribly hard to find either.

So the next time someone talks about some exclusive variant cover they picked up at a convention, you can pull this bad boy out and tell them you've got the original variant cover!
* Yes, I know John Romita did a few issues between Kirby and Buscema, despite the implication my phrasing above implies. There just wasn't a smooth way to add in Romita's contribution there, and it wasn't really relevant to my point anyway.

The image you see attached to this post is a full-page house ad for First Comics that ran in late 1984/early 1985. Obviously, there's some amount of hyperbole involved, but I suspect that even setting that aside, most comics fans would point to 1986 as the year where everything you know about comics changed completely. After all, 1986 saw the publication of Watchmen, The Dark Knight Returns, and the first collection of Maus. The difference between those books and what's being touted by First is in the type of change they're instigating, which is why this Feburary 28, 1985 is mostly forgotten.

See, the changes brought about in 1986 were in the storytelling. Functionally, those books were produced in pretty much exactly the same manner as any other comics at that time. The differences were all about the content -- the part of comics that readers engage with most directly and viscerally. What changed with First was a technological change, one that was evident on the printed page, but becasue was such a different approach, many readers couldn't really grasp the implications.

The book the First ad is talking about was Mike Saenz's Shatter, "the first computerized comic." There were a lot of technical limitations at the time. Drawing programs didn't go higher than 72 dpi, hence the very pixelated look. Only a dozen or so fonts were available AT ALL, so all the text looks blocky and utilitarian. I've talked about the book more extensively before, so I won't go into things again here. But what I find interesting here in particular is how First could see where things were headed... but they were just way too early in their prediction of how/when it would change.

It would be almost another decade before computerized lettering started to become adopted as an industry standard. And those efforts originally consisted of doing up the word balloons digitially... and then printing them out to physically paste onto the art boards. There were a couple graphic novels with digital art, but the next regular comic I saw that used it was in the back half of the '90s when they could finally use vector art. (Oddjob was by Ian Smith and Tyson Smith, and came out from Slave Labor Graphics starting in 1999.) It would be another decade or so of artists scanning their pencil art before digital tablets started to become sophisticated enough to adopt as regular production tools.

What I find interesting, then, is that this ad from 1984 was indeed right... they were only off on their timing by a couple decades. Which is enough time for most people to have forgotten about it.

One of the news items over the weekend was that Comix Wellspring -- a popular printer among independent creators and publishers for several years -- has suddenly shut down. Temporarily. Maybe. A message on the company's home page says, "We sincerely apologize, but due to unforeseen operational challenges, Comix Wellspring, owned and operated by Carta Finishing, must temporarily suspend accepting new orders and halt production at this time." They don't offer any further explanation, only to go on to suggest alternative options for customers. So what's going on? Do they offer any clues?

Well, the first thing they say after that opening statement is that any currently incomplete orders will be fully refunded. Which means that they're not having money problems, because they've got the cash on-hand to offer that. If there were debt issues or somethng, any incoming money from the past several months would've gone immediately to pay off whatever debts had already accumulated and they wouldn't be able to make refunds immediately and unconditionally.

They also suggest another printer, Greko Printing, for any future projects. While suggesting an alternative route seems straight-forward enough, Greko Printing was founded by one of the founders of Comix Wellspring and when he left to do so, he signed a non-compete agreement saying he would not print comic books. Non-competes are a fairly standard (if somewhat dubious) practice in those types of situations and that Comix Wellspring went out of their way to negate the existing agreement for the sake of its customers says that this shut down is not going to be short-lived. I'd go so far as to say that it suggests they don't expect to be back in operation ever.

The "unforeseen" part of their "unforeseen operational challenges" seems significant. The company launched a completely overhaulded version of their site for placing orders and such just two months ago; that's not a change they'd undertake if they knew they'd be shutting down soon. Indeed, they had been touting the upgrade for months and just before launching it, they posted a message that said, "THIS is the next era of Comix Wellspring." They were very much planning for the future, and trying to offer more capabilities and services to their customers.

I'm wondering if there's something higher up the chain. The announcement refers to being owned by Carta Finishing. Carta is a relatively new company, coming together in late 2023 when Gatherall Bindery and Allied Bindery merged. Comix Wellspring was wrapped in around the same time. Dan Hills (pictured at right) was promoted up to the CEO role from CMO in March 2024; however, interestingly, his LinkedIn profile includes an end date as CEO -- and with Comix Wellspring entirely -- of June 2026.

So is Hills' departure the cause of this shut-down? Nominally, yes, it would seem so. But I think there's more to it than, "we can't run our day-to-day operations without a CEO." Hills attended the ComicsPRO meeting back about four months ago, and his posts seemed excited about it. The last full interview I can find with him dates to November, and he seemed pretty excited about comics and the company then as well. So it doesn't seem to me like he was feeling burnt out -- although that could indeed be hidden relativey easily online. And besides, if that were the extent of the issue (although, to be clear, burn-out is not a small issue for the individual; I'm talking about this relative to Comix Wellspring as a whole shutting down) Carta Finishing could appoint an interim CEO either from within Comix Wellspring itself or from Carta just to make sure things keep rolling. Because a full shut-down, even if it is only temporary, is an extremely drastic step for a company, and not one that would be undertaken casually. Indeed, as Chief Operating Officer, Brian Thomas could keep the presses running in the short term with no problem; even though he was only promoted to that position in February, he's got a decades long professional history in leadership roles just like that.

This, to me, points to a larger issue. I don't have any evidence of what went on here, but frequently when a CEO steps away like that, it's because of a significant conflict with the parent company. That the larger company made some decision(s) the CEO fundamentally disagreed with, fought against, and ultimately got over-ruled on. Leading to the CEO resigning (or being forced out) in protest. In the past, I've most often seen this when the larger company tries to fully absorb the smaller one causing it to shut down or when they plan to make some significant layoffs to reduce "redundant" operations. (Think along the lines of, "Why do we need two HR departments?") So the sudden shut-down of Comix Wellspring could be a response to Hills' departure where Carta might say, "Well, if there's no CEO anyway, let's just accelerate our schedule to absorb the whole company rather than try to waste time to put a new CEO in place just for a few months or a year."

Like I said, I don't have any hard evidence of what went/is going on. But Hills' sudden -- and quiet -- departure almost immediately before this current shut-down took place strongly suggests to me something like the above. (The notion of Carta absorbing the company fully is 100% speculative, just based on what I've seen historically. It could also be something like Carta trying to force Comix Wellspring to print pro-Nazi comics that Hills personally objected to on ethical grounds. That type of thing does happen, but it's pretty rare in my experience.) The only other thing I can think of would be if there were some massive legal problems with Hills personally (like, at a felony level) but I suspect that we would've heard news of that already separately, and that wouldn't so significantly impact Comix Wellspring's day-to-day operations. With the company having halted all operations already, and the CEO already departed, I suspect we won't hear much else formally though. Maybe Hills or Thomas will drop a tell-all blog post about it a couple years from now, but I think most people will have forgotten all about it by then.

In the meantime, my best wishes to whoever's left at Comix Wellspring. I don't doubt things feel extremly unstable and chaotic for you, and I hope you're able to land on your feet.

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

Kleefeld on Comics: Tom Hanks Is an OG FF Fan
https://ift.tt/NsZJgB2

Kleefeld on Comics: The Fantastic Four's Chest Emblem
https://ift.tt/K5wmqv3

Kleefeld on Comics: Nap Time
https://ift.tt/mOGk7Jn

Kleefeld on Comics: Political Speech Now Illegal
https://ift.tt/RAjGYtC

Kleefeld on Comics: Steranko Histories
https://ift.tt/cbtCFwm

Even if you haven't read them, you've probably at least heard of Jim Steranko's History of Comics. It was one of the first serious attempts to write down the entire history of the medium, and certainly the first from someone already in the business. Steranko's position as a respected professional allowed him access to a number of creators who had worked during the Golden Age of comics. The covers of the two completed issues are rather famous in and of themselves for depicting a fairly wide range of characters from several publishers.

Less well known is that there are actually four different covers between the two issues... As you can see, two of the covers feature no text at all, while the others sport the title prominently across the top. The interiors are unchanged, so you might call these variant covers. (Though they certainly weren't called that at the time.)

Although I've seen the titled versions labeled as "1A" and "2A", I believe that to be incorrect. "Misleading" might be a better word. When I had Steranko sign my (logo-less) copies, he noted that the wordless versions were a little more rare because he initially had underestimated demand. The implication being that they came out first, with the titled version being done as a later iteration. I've seen notes from others who got them when they were first published also say that the wordless versions came out first with the titled copies being, in effect, second printings. This is further backed up by the logo-less versions frequently commanding a higher price. (Although, to be fair, a higher price doesn't necessarily mean greater rarity, just greater demand relative to supply. It's possible that fans just like the wordless version better because there's nothing disrupting the illustrations.)

Further, if you look at the layouts, the illustrations are lowered on the page to accomodate the title. In doing so, several of the characters are uncomfortably cut off -- most notably Joker on #1; and Thing, Hulk, and Hawkman on #2. Not only does it seem unlikely that Steranko would add all of the extra figure work on the logo-less copies, but if he drew the illustration with a title in mind, why would he have placed those figures so low on the page that they might be chopped in half? From a design perspective, it makes more sense that the titled versions came later.

If you are trying to track down copies of these, you should be buying them for the content. I found them surprisingly dryly written, though they are incredibly informative. Even today, with literally hundreds of history books written about comics, they still have a great deal to offer. But if, in tracking these down, you find yourself wondering why there are some copies with a title and some without and what the difference is, it boils down to whether you're looking at a first or second printing, although it won't say that on the interior anywhere.

Go read this news piece that The Beat posted yesterday...

Zines used as evidence to convict in Prairieland case

I mostly just want bring more attention to this matter, so I don't have a lot to add. The first thing I'll note, though, is that there is by definition no such thing as an "antifa cell." Anitfa is not a group of any sort; it's just anyone who is against facism. That's it. Literally by definition. Anti-Facism. Anti-Fa. And I will also say: the article concludes with the quote, “The slippery slope from anarchist zines to conventional journalism isn’t hypothetical, and we’re already sliding fast.” I would argue that we've already slid.

Today's Andy Capp...

A more or less standard type of gag for the strip. Very much into character with Andy being lazy on the couch, and Flo offerring snide commentary. What occurs to me, though, is that Andy always sleeps on the couch that way. Kind of curled up a bit, with his head facing into the couch. He doesn't sleep on his back or facing out away from the couch.

That's actually pretty much par for the course with comic strip characters. Here's Blondie from Saturday...

La Cucaracha from a week ago...

The "classic" depiction of comic strip napping is: kind of curled up a bit, facing into the couch.

You ever try to actually nap that way? Personally, I find it one of the least comfortable ways to sleep on a couch. I'm sure some people find it more comfortable than others, and the level of comfort surely depends a great deal on the specific couch you're talking about too. But why that pose? Why not any of the dozens of other ways you can nap on a couch?

Well, for starters, not every time someone is depicted napping is shown in this way. Sometimes they're sitting upright with their head tilted forward. Sometimes, they're just kind of sprawled over the entire couch. It depends on the situation and, more to the point, to showcase WHY the character is napping.

If you're sitting upright on the couch with your head tilted forward while you sleep, you got that way because you sat down to read or watch TV or something and just nodded off. Perhaps a bit of exhaustion, perhaps a bit of your body forcing itself to relax. But generally, it's not your intention to fall asleep. And that sprawled out pose? That is just pure exhaustion. You collapsed on the couch, and your entire body shut down without regard to how comfortable you are.

But curled up, facing the couch? That's intentional. That's a pose that says, "I am deliberately trying to shut out the world." The Blondie strip above specifically speaks to that idea; Dagwood is NOT asleep, but he's actively trying to ignore the children. He's literally turned his back to them, and even if he opens his eyes, his field of vision would entirely consist of the back of the couch. He's curled up to make himself as physically inaccessible as possible. Andy and Ernesto above are also both not entirely asleep as Andy is talking with Flo and Ernesto is consciously considering what is going on in his subconscious. In none of these strips are the characters successful in shutting out the world, but that IS their intent.

I can't point to exactly when this became the default pose for comic strip naps. Doing a fairly quick search, I've managed to find a Blondie strip dating back to 1944 showing Dagwood on exactly that same couch, though...

I think it's a safe bet that this isn't the first time Chic Young used that visual structure; he's very clearly already comfortable drawing it here. So I'm sure there are earlier Blondie examples if nowhere else. Regardless of who started that trope, though, there is a solid reason for it. And there's a solid reason it continues to get used a century later. That single pose immediately tells the reader not only that a character is napping, but also WHY they're napping.

Speaking, as I was yesterday, about the 1960s Fantastic Four, there has been, for many years, a big debate on how much Stan Lee contributed to the early Marvel output versus Jack Kirby. Some say Lee did the bulk of the work and Jack was just a hired hand to illustrate Lee's vision; others think Kirby did everything and Lee was nothing more than a glorified proofreader. The truth likely lies in between somewhere, although it is pretty readily accepted by everyone that Kirby did all the artwork and design.

Except when he didn't.

One of the pages of original art that has survived is page 16 from Fantastic Four #3. The Thing and the Human Torch get into a fight, and the Torch leaves. More interestingly, though, we have on the back of the art board several sketches for a chest emblem. The was the issue where the FF debuted their team uniform and it would appear that there was some discussion about what the chest emblem should be. And what we can see with this page in particular was that Kirby was not the only one making illustrative contributions to the book.

The logo sketches were most likely Lee's work. Some of the other earlier FF pages indeed have rough (i.e. really bad stick figures) "layouts" that are Lee scribbled to help describe what he was envisioning to Kirby. It's possible that someone besides Lee could have done these emblem sketches, but A) it almost certainly wasn't Kirby -- those bear no resemblance to his style of sketching -- and B) not many other people would've had access to the original art.

Now, the other possibility for the logos could be Sol Brodsky. He appears to have done some elaborate re-work on the Human Torch figures throughout that issue, including on that page (at right, circled in red) to bring him more in line with the original Carl Burgos design. So Brodsky would have had access to the art boards, and he did create the "Fantastic Four" logo that shows up on the cover. That said, I'm inclined to say it was still Lee as Brodsky had a fair degree of artisic skill and most of the designs seem to have been drawn by someone with an unsure hand.

But then there's the question of the sketches showing up on page 16 instead of 7, when the costume first appears. That doesn't strike me as particularly odd. Kirby wouldn't have only turned in one or two pages at a time, he turned the art for an entire story at once. So when Lee (or Brodsky) opted to doodle some new logo ideas, he could've grabbed any page from the story at random. Brodsky, already going through the pages to re-work the Torch, would have also been able make other adjustments to the characters' costumes as the same time.

In Pure Images #2, Greg Theakston goes back to the original art and inked some of the pages onto new boards using some of Jack's original pencil lines. Jack's original FF logo was an interlocking "FF" similar to one of the middle ones on the far right of that page. (Circled in red at the left. The final is circled in blue.) Further, the costumes included masks for everyone, hence that really weird close-up on Sue's face when she first steps out in the new costume. (See below.) All that would have been "fixed" by Brodsky along with those Human Torch figures.
The extruded "4" design was eventually simplified to a more flat figure -- probably because Kirby simply forgot about the drop shadow effect somewhere around issue #16. He never rendered it consistently anyway. Had Joe Sinnott been on the book by this point, he may have added it back in for consistency, but the book still had a more-or-less rotating cast of inkers; Chic Stone is the first person to ink more than three consecutive issues starting with #29. The 3D effect on the "4" doesn't return consistently until John Byrne picked up the title many years later.

Tom Hanks first drew a lot of attention in the sitcom Bosom Buddies back in 1980 before making a very successful transition to movies with Ron Howard's directorial debut of Splash. Hanks has since had an incredible career with everything from the Academy Award winning Forest Gump to the now-three-decades-running franchise Toy Story. Some of his work has been more successful than others, of course, but even in something like Mazes and Monsters -- a made-for-TV movie which had an awful premise born out of the Satanic panic of the early 1980s -- Hanks turned in an excellent performance. But because of his long successful career, you don't need me to tell you who he is.

Not surprisingly, too, because he's been acting in such a high-profile capacity for so long, he's done more than a few interviews over the years promoting his various works. I certainly can't claim to have seen/heard all of them but, like I expect many of you, you've seen him on talk shows and heard him on podcasts and maybe even caught him speaking at a graduation ceremony or two. But in the decades of hearing him, I've never heard him mention comic books. Even when he was doing the circuits for Road to Perdition in 2002 and Here in 2024 both of which were based on graphic novels, I never heard him mention comics in any capacity.

Until I caught this interview from about a year ago, in which he describes the a-ha moment he had about how to handle his career in the wake of A League of their Own... It's only a three-minute clip in total but the comic reference goes by fast so I'll call it out. He says of this a-ha moment he had...

If you could go back now and shoot a movie about that, lightning would've flashed, the walls would've shook, and it sort of would've been like 'Black Bolt speaks!'

That's not a reference to the current Marvel Cinematic Universe. There's no great revelation about Black Bolt speaking in the shows or movies. That's a throwback to the original 1960s storyline when Black Bolt was a complete enigma. The character debuted in Fantastic Four #45 circa 1965 and little was offerred about him, other than the other Inhumans gave great deference to his power. However, a few issues later in #48, Black Bolt's brother Maximus traps the entire Inhuman civilaztion behind a Negative Barrier that no one cane break through. It became on ongoing subplot for the next year and change, and it was only destroyed in FF #59 when Black Bolt finally speaks. His voice is so powerful, it obliterates the barrier. Jack Kirby spent a page and a half showcasing all the destruction it caused, and Stan Lee used whatever space remained on the art board to fill with descriptions of how we were witnessing something "of such incalcuable power that it cannot possibly be described in merely human terms!"

This was a profound moment for fans. Dean Hill of Warrior, AL wrote in to say...

Words haven't been printed to describe F.F. #59! IThe story was like Shakespeare had written it! The artwork was like Michaelangelo had drawn it! Even the lettering was like Guttenburg had lettered it! In other words, this was a rather good mag! By the way, a certain question has been haunting me. When Black Bolt spoke (as so wonderfully shown on page 11, panel 5), what did he say?? Did he say "Sooie!"? Did he say "Four score and seven years ago..."? Or did Honest Irving slip him a few nickles (wooden, of course) to let the Inhumans hear Black Bolt say, "Make mine Marvel!"???

Doing some quick math, Hanks would've been about 11 when the issue came out. That is, the prime target demographic for those stories back in the day. That he would recall that story beat as such a pivotal and powerful moment -- casually and decades after the fact -- strongly suggests he was an avid reader at the time and was heavily invested in the story.

Tom Hanks, old school Fantastic Four fan. Who knew?

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

Kleefeld on Comics: An Evolution, or Just a Long Time to Get to Where I'd Always Been Trying to Go?
https://ift.tt/4FpMRil

Kleefeld on Comics: Lois Lane, Girl Reporter Redux
https://ift.tt/8n76KxF

Kleefeld on Comics: The Power of One
https://ift.tt/dsZxUA9

Kleefeld on Comics: The Fantastic Four #136 Cover Mysteries
https://ift.tt/iAZ4EJx

Kleefeld on Comics: Be Careful
https://ift.tt/giDKZbL

Tomorrow's comics are likely going to be heavily weighted towards themes of American patriotism and celebrating. Tomorrow is official 250th anniversary of the United States' independence as a nation. In theory, it should be a grand celebration that lasts most of the summer if not the entire year. At least if the 200th anniversary from 1976 is anything to go by. Because those celebrations were pervasive! And for those of you who might say, "Yeah, but things weren't as bad then" then I'll remind you that the US had been in a recession since 1973 and Nixon resigned from the White House due to pressure from the Watergate scandal in 1974. When Superman came out in 1978, the tag line was "you'll believe a man can fly" -- that was only partly a reference to the special effects; it was a much about showing Americans that there were still things to be optimistic about and hopeful for despite a decade of evidence to the contrary.

I scanned back through my Indepence Day related blog posts from the past twenty years, and they largely fall into two categories. First, they just collect all the Independence Day related newspaper strips from that day. Second, I talk about how I don't understand patriotism (at least as Americans express it) and how I don't feel there's really much worth celebrating here. This year, July 4 happens to fall on a Saturday, when I don't usually post anything, so guess which type of post you get here today?

You don't need me to tell you that things are bad. Statistically, you probably have things worse than I do. But I can tell you that I won't be celebrating. If you get a few moments of lightness setting off firecrackers or watching a big fireworks display at a nearby park, please do. I'm well past judging people on what brings them joy; there's too much awfulness in the world to even try to strip that from them. But Independence Day is not a holiday I get much out of.

The system has been increasingly stacked against "regular" folks (i.e. anyone who's not super-wealthy) since Ronald Reagan. I'm not about to simplistically say he's to blame for all of it, but there are generations (plural) of Americans now that have never not had a government working against them. Not just "not working for" them but actively working against them. When the studies that started coming out in the late 1980s that said Gen X would be the first generation of Americans that would probably not do better than their parents, that is why.

If you're still optimistic about the US, more power to you! I don't understand how that's possible, but again, if that brings you some joy or comfort, knock yourself out. Just do me a favor and be careful, and please return next week with the same number of fingers you have now.

I stumbled across a minor, but curious, mystery a little while ago and for some resaon started thinking of it again last night. Here are the covers for Fantastic Four #135, 136 and 137...

And here are the covers for some French-language Canadian reprints that came out about two months after the originals...

Most of the covers of the reprint series are lifted from the original comics, with just the English translated into French. But for some reason, the issue reprinting Fantastic Four #136 doesn't use the original cover art, but a panel of interior art.

Now it's certainly possible the original cover art was lost or destroyed. But here's the cover to a British reprint of the same story from about four years later...

It's been modified a bit to accomodate a slightly wider format, but there was clearly some form of reproducible art still around.

Or was there?

On closer study, The Complete Fantastic Four cover might in fact an entirely new piece of art, recreated based on the original. The more you look at the two, the more discrepancies to see: Medusa's left boot, the Torch's flame aura, the placement of Thing's left hand, the number of steps on that dais, the placement of the upper bike rider... There are more issues there than would be touched up for the size difference. Which leads one to think that the actual cover art for FF #136 was lost in the mail, and John Buscema recreated it based on a printed version.

But then again, most of the differences are either in placement or details near the edge. So was this then a heavy re-cut/paste job with a few touch-ups at the edges? It wouldn't be the first time Marvel put a fair amount of time and effort into heavily retouching some cover art for arguably inconsequential changes.

And, in doing some further research, The Complete Fantastic Four issue is an anomoly. Other foreign reprints -- some coming later still -- use the original art...

So if the original cover art was still around (or at least some version of it that could be used in production) there's a fair case to be made that The Complete Fantastic Four version was NOT a re-creation. But it still seems like a heck of a lot of production work just to get the art to fit a slightly different format. It probably would have been faster, and possibly cheaper, to just have Buscema draw a new one.

Getting back to the Canadian cover, it makes sense that if Marvel sent the art up to Canada for that reprint and the cover art was somehow lost or damaged, and they had to scrounge for something quickly. Depending on when in their printing process the cover are became unusable, it might make sense to just grab the nearest available art that would fill most of a cover -- the opening splash page. But, why the strange treatment? Why the odd angle? Why the red border? Why color some of the figures, but not the Human Torch? And why color the figures with the least intense color of the three chosen? Questions I do not have even speculative answers for. Nothing in my graphic design background can figure out how they arrived at any of their decisions here, aside from, "Hey, what's the biggest piece of art we have that we can use for a cover?"

There just seem to be a number of weird (and admittedly inconsequential) questions around this cover.