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.

The most memorable comics to me remain the ones I read a few decades ago as a kid. The images etched into my brain and the dialogue still ringing in my head. Some of those books were indeed note-worthy. The O'Neil/Adams Green Lantern/Green Arrow for example. Others I kind of wish I could forget. There was a particularly bad 1976 issue of Archie that still haunts me -- especially that splash page of Archie racing down the stairs crying about his broken platform clog. But both of those types of comics, as well as all the not-great-but-not-bad ones in between, stick out more strongly in my memory than some more recent works that are particularly well-done. Why should I have better recollection of a mediocre comic I read decades ago than a stellar one I read last month?

I suppose nostalgia plays into that at some level, but a lot of the bits I remember don't hold any emotional weight with me. I can remember the stories and the art, but not that they really spoke to me in any significant way. There are some books I certainly do feel nostalgia for, but not most of them.

When I was in my early 20s, I was at a comic convention and came across a copy of Fantastic Four #76, which had been on my "want list" along with a host of other old issues from that title. I don't recall what I paid for it, but I'm assuming it must have been reasonably priced. When I got the issue home, though, I discovered that I had already bought a copy sometime previously. TWICE! I bought one, read it, forgot it, bought another copy, kicked myself for buying a second copy, forgot that, and bought a third copy! That was when I realized that I was no longer able to keep track of what I did or didn't have with an easy mental checklist. My want list had grown too large and too varied to remember.

When I was I kid, before I was really a deep fan of comics, I would only read a new comic once every few months on average. I couldn't really afford any on my own, so I basically had to rely on gifts at that point. When I first started getting into them, I got exactly one new comic a month. A year or two later, that got upped to three comics a month. It was six by the time I graduated high school.

But that one new comic a month bit? Twenty-two pages of story. I re-read books, of course, but new material (for me) was coming at a rate of less than a page a day. These days, I regularly read a minimum of 40-50 pages of new material every day (via webcomics) not to mention various manga and graphic novels when I can. In fact, I've only been able to read one 168-page graphic novel and half of a 142-page one this week on top of those regular 40-50 pages because it's been an especially busy week. I'm not saying that to try to brag -- I have no clue how that compares to others' reading habits -- but to just to point out that it's a phenomenally huge increase compared to what I was reading as a kid. In the past five days alone I've read 20 times the volume of new material that I used to read in a whole month!

So it should come as no surprise that I don't recall stuff from last week as well as from last century. I had more time to commit individual comics to memory because they weren't competing with each other. Any given issue of Superman or Action Comics that I might've gotten needed to tide me over for a couple of months, not a couple of minutes. So I'm certain I spent much more time with each book back then. The relative isolation in which each comic was read back then made them stand out more. I read through so many now that they wind up blurring together a bit more, and it's harder to remember them.

Just like it was easier to remember which Fantastic Four issues I was looking for when I was ONLY looking for Fantastic Four back issues. And how I started re-buying issues because I was also trying to look for their appearances in other titles, back issues of Avengers and the first appearances of Moon Knight and Punisher.

I do enjoy the comics I read today. I'm a little disappointed that I can't retain the memories of them more vividly, relative to those books I read as a kid, but only inasmuch as it's a failing on the part of my memory. I don't care to dwell on what's already happened, and I'd rather spend my time looking forward to new cool things. I'll enjoy the new books as they come out and move forward.

Say, how soon until the next volume of The Moon on a Rainy Night comes out anyway?

I'm somehow running behind this week already so here's a re-run of a piece I wrote back in 2014 about a Lois Lane comic strip...

---

Back in late 1943, newspapers debuted the rarely discussed comic strip, Lois Lane, Girl Reporter. It was a direct spin-off of the Superman strip running at the time.

Evidently, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, who were working on the Superman strip in addition to their comic book work, were having difficulty keeping up with the ongoing syndicate deadlines. This was probably partially exacerbated by them working through DC instead of with the syndicate itself. Regardless, the McClure Newspaper Syndicate started growing increasingly concerned that newspapers were going to cancel the popular character's strip if it couldn't appear regularly and on time. Since McClure had already, for all intents and purposes, farmed out the strip's editing to DC instead of keeping it in house as they normally would, they went back to DC to demand a way to get a more reliable source of content.

Where the exact idea came from seems to be unclear, but DC basically went behind Siegel's and Shuster's backs to create a "topper" comic strip spin-off. It was essentially filler material, not directly related to the main Superman storyline but still somewhat tied to the Superman universe. So when Siegel and Shuster were running behind, a topper strip could be dropped in to cut some of the slack. These were done at no additional cost to the newspapers, of course, but I'm certain they were a pain point for both McClure and DC.

The strips originally ran sporadically between October 24, 1943 to February 27, 1944. As far as I can tell, only twelve were produced and the only paper I've been able to confirm ran all of them was Cleveland's Plain Dealer. Despite the credits, the art appears to be (at least primarily) by Wayne Boring.

Back in the late '90s, I had this idea to write the definitive article about Skrulls. Everything from their basic history to their psychology to an appendix of all the known Skrulls. Basically, it would be a Wikipedia article about them several years before Wikipedia was even a thing. So I dug out all my comics with Skrulls in them, and bought any issues that I knew had significant Skrull-related stories. I read through everything, and I spent weeks writing something up. I recall having keep all the relevant comics stacked on the floor next to an old drafting table that I was using as a computer desk. And as I learned about or remembered more appearances, I'd have to go to the other room where my comics collection was, dig out the relevant issues and head back to the desk. That was something of a chore since I had my long boxes just stacked on one another, so I often had to shift several of them around just to get to the right box.

It was then that I started form the idea of setting up a comics library of some kind. Where I had my comics readily accessible and didn't have to move six boxes just to get the one I needed. Where I had everything I needed to read and write about comics without having to keep moving to different rooms just because I forgot to grab that one issue. That wasn't really feasible at the time, though, since we were renting , and space was something of a premium -- I had to work with what we had.

After I got my first house in 1999, though, I was able to eventually able to set up a space for exactly that. Once I determined that the basement wasn't actually very damp even before I put a dehumidifier down there, I set up a corner of the large unfinished area for my comics. I jerry-built some shelves using old hollow-core doors and some concrete blocks I picked up from a contruction site. It was cheap and relatively unattractive, but it got the job done.

I did notice a problem after a bit, though. Namely that if I was working on something like that Skrulls article, it still required me to grab the comics I need and carry them up two flights of stairs to my office where my computer was. I spent a fair amount of time trying to set up a computer down there. This would've been before wi-fi was commercially viable, so I was literally running cat-5 all over the house to make sure it had internet access. Once I did get that all sorted, though, the physical set-up of the computer itself wasn't comfortable to write on. I could do quick things like log new comics into my database, but writing extended articles about anything? Forget it!

When I sold that house and moved to the Chicago area, I made a point of ensuring I put effort into making a good comics library for myself. That meant nice, clean-looking shelving. A solid and stable work space where I could comfortably write, while still having access to my whole collection. A second area set aside just for leisure reading. My wife was very supportive of the whole endeavor and encouraged me to do what I needed to do in order to get everything set up properly. And once I did, I immediately began using it like I'd hoped -- working on comics related writing, and just rolling my chair a foot or two to the side to grab something else to use as reference.

I ran into another issue in 2019, however, when Chris Siefert sold ComicBookDB.com which I had been using to catalog my collection. Back when I set up a spare computer in the basement, I used a program called ComicBase. It was, at the time, the only real comics database software of its kind. It did work well, but it ran off your local drive, which meant that you couldn't access it anywhere else. Which was a bit of a challenge when you're rummaging around the back issue bins on a convention floor! So around 2006-07, I switched to ComicBookDB because it was online. And for a little over a decade, I was able to reference it from my library to catalog and/or look up individual issues, and continue to refer to on my phone while I was at conventions. After ComicBookDB.com, I tried a number of other solutions but nothing really checked off all the criteria I needed (which now included having control over the database itself if/when the next guy decides he wants to sell his set-up too).

And so I'm back to ComicBase. I've got it running off my home media server, so it's housed alongside my collection of music and TV and movies. And not only is it just running the database, but I'm able to connect it to all the digital copies of comics I have been saving for years as well. So I can search through the database looking for an issue and, once I find it, can just click a link to pop a digital version right up if I've got that one on hand. (I currently have about 70 gigs worth on my hard drive, and I've got a collection of about 50 older CDs with additional comics on them! Including most of Tintin, nearly all the Marvel superhero books from 1961-'67, and a complete run of Amazing Spider-Man up through 2003!) And since it's on a central, networked systemm I can access from any computer in the house and I can partially cloud-share it, so I can look things up on the go. Not to mention that ComicBase is -- still somehow in 2026 -- NOT a subscription service and I can (theoretically) keep running this same software until my computers all freeze; even if they sell the company off or shut it down, I can continue using the database.

Now, while this looks like a series of incremental upgrades to my setup over the past 30-ish years -- and from a functional perspective, it is -- where I'm at now (well, where I will be once I get my collection fully cataloged!) is what I've been aiming for this whole time. I'm just executing now on an idea that I simply could not bring to full fruitition until decades of progress caught up with me. Some of the limitations were technical, some financial, some just based on my meager skills and knowledge. But this was always the end goal. I couldn't have articulated that in any great detail back in 1997, but that's what I ultimately wanted -- a place where I could read and write about comics, regardless of what form those comics took (print, digital, microfiche...), and have ready access to both the broad information available from the world as well as the specific details of my personal collection. All of it in one place that's both comfortable and functional.

Could it be made better? Sure! I'd love if I could use a single database for music, TV, movies, AND comics. I'd love if there were a way to incorporate my original art into the same catalog, linking high quality scans directly to the issue they're from. I'd love to have even faster, more robust computers running the whole backend instead of leftovers not good enough to use in my day-to-day work. And I'd love more physical space so it feels a bit more open. But that's really just nitpicking. I liked my setup before I had a networked database helping me to keep track of everything; this would make 1997-me plotz!

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

Kleefeld on Comics: Comics to Radio
https://ift.tt/faYtJKL

Kleefeld on Comics: John of the Night Review
https://ift.tt/vYpEQ0T

Kleefeld on Comics: Sean's Swap Challenge, Take 4
https://ift.tt/hkxmzRn

Kleefeld on Comics: Removing Some Rights Barriers?
https://ift.tt/ug5vfiY

Kleefeld on Comics: Environmental Origins?
https://ift.tt/vqRExFQ

A lot of what we experience as kids impacts us as adults. I sometimes find myself wondering why I like or dislike a particular thing, or why I grew up to think a certain way -- what did I experience as a child that impacted me in a way that would cause me to think/feel as I do today? When I stumbled across my old copy of Justice League of America #90 the other day, I realized that probably was the first major encounter I had with environmentalism. I probably haven't cracked it open in thirty, maybe thirty-five years, so I decided to re-read it to see what exactly may have struck a chord with me.

As it turns out, I must have totally mis-read the issue as a kid. It wasn't really an environmental story at all, despite my recollection of it being one. Probably due in large part to the cover. The gist of the actual story is the military (it's never specified which branch) dumped a bunch of "obsolete" poisonous gas into the ocean just to get rid of it. The dumping happens to crush the sacred "Proof Rock" of the underwater Pale People, and one of them takes that as a sign to use the gas to conquer Aquaman's Atlantis. They quickly take over, but the death of an Atlantean found on the shore alerts Batman, Superman, Hawkman, Green Lantern, and Atom to a potential problem. The heroes go save Aquaman and take back Atlantis. Hawkman then instructs the Pale People how they might use the broken Proof Rock in a different manner than before.

There are a number of problems with the story. The two beach-goers who find the dead Atlantean immediately recognize her as such, with no indication of how since she looks exactly like a human. How the Pale People go from having a boulder crushing their Proof Rock to using the gas weapons (which they'd never actually seen) to conquer Atlantis isn't really explained. How a gas weapon even works underwater is pretty murky as well. And somehow the Proof Rock becomes a Proof Rock Plant at the end of the story, and Hawkman seems to think that eating it is a sign of the faith they must have in their own souls. How do Hawkman's wings work underwater anyway? Batman is actually absent for most of the story because he's off searching for Flash, whose "special services" he suspects "will be needed on this case" -- um, since when does Flash have any powers that are unusually useful underwater? Not to mention a number of other smaller assumptions and leaps of logic writer Mike Friedrich seems to make.

But, hey, it was 1971. Comics were still considered kids stuff and not given a lot of thought. On the plus side, there's a moment of gravity and emotional realism towards the end. After the Pale People are defeated, Green Lantern notes, "Looks like everything's okay now!" to which Aquaman goes off about how 43 people died...

The next page shows Aquaman and much of Atlantis attending a mass funeral. So big props for including that sequence showing actual consequences.

But the various storytelling problems, I think, led to my thinking it was more actively an environmental story. I thought the Proof Rock had been destroyed by the gas itself after it had been dumped, not some boulders that had been knocked loose by the gas canisters. The couple panels later of the Pale People letting loose the gas were drawn in such a way that I didn't really make the connection that they had fully harnessed the gas as a weapon; I think I must have thought they were only redirecting the already exposed gas.

I suppose I must have read more into the cover, and made some assumptions about the story itself based on that. And I wonder if that's why I'm not more of an environmentalist. I got the basic message I think cover artist Carmine Infantino was trying to convey, but since it wasn't well reinforced by the contents, it only left me with a base level concern as opposed to being more activist about it.

Or else it had no impact at all, and I got whatever concerns I have from other sources entirely. Regardless, I do find these types of inquires interesting to explore, even if they don't turn up any conclusive proofs.