On The Shelves Today in 1988

The CBG I highlighted a few days ago included a Comics In Your Future section which listed the comic books that are expected to ship within the next month or so, along with the expected ship date.  Note the nice logo designed by Joe Staton.

Comics Buyer's Guide #738 (January 8, 1988) pg 20

Using that list, here are the comic books that probably were on the shelf at your local comic book shop this week.  Which ones did/would you pick up? (as usual, click on each for larger images)

Comico

DC

Eclipse

First

Harvey

Hero

Marvel

And a sampling of some more that I'm not sure if they were out this week, but were scheduled this month.

Comics Buyer's Guide Jan. 8, 1988

Comics Buyer's Guide #738,  Jan. 8, 1988

Dated today, in 1988, is a pretty standard issue of CBG except for things that didn't happen.  The first is this cover item for a new weekly or bi-weekly comic book series by Marvel Comics, titled Marvel Universe.   Now the comic book promoted in this article did come out, just not under that name.  It became Marvel Comics Presents.  The vote came down on the side of bi-weekly and the series lasted for 175 issues until March 1995.  Pretty good for an anthology title in the 1990s.

As you would expect, most of the stories were pretty forgettable, Except for the classic Wolverine origin Weapon X storyline that started with #72.

Marvel Comics Presents #72 (March 1991) [Marvel Comics]

There were other good series, like Coldblood from Paul Gulacy, and a lot of good artists contributed to stories.

The other item in CBG #738 that didn't happen was on page 1, the Marvel history book.

Well, it kind of did happen.  The 400 page book by Brad Elliott and Stan Lee titled The Story of Marvel Comics never came out, but a Marvel history book did come out.  There were some messy disagreements and even legal action (more here).  But eventually, the Les Daniels' book Marvel: Five Fabulous Decades of the World's Greatest Comics came out in Sept. 1991.  Its too bad.  I think the original concept would have been better.

The highlighted comic book of the issue was Dinosaurs For Hire which came out in March 1988.

This was a fun concept and lasted through 1994 with 2 series and a few specials from Eternity/Malibu.  The second series had some really nice Mitch Byrd art.  An underrated artist in my mind.

This issue also had a great full page ad by underground comix publisher Rip Off Press.  An advertisement in the advertisement was a nice touch.

Rounding out the issue was an ad for the Watchmen role playing game from Mayfair Games.  The Watchmen series hadn't ended that long before, so its full impact had not yet been felt.

Marvel Zombie Society

One of the best things about the Golden Age of comic book fandom (1960s) was the fanzines.  They now fetch hundreds of dollars on EBay because of their low print runs and nostalgia factor.

But print fanzines didn't end with the 1960s.  In fact, there were probably more printed in the 1970s than in the 60s and there were of a much higher quality than those ditto zines.  Even with the Internet, there are still printed fanzines.  Ditkomania is one I still get.

In that era just before the World Wide Web, I belonged to one which was one of the better ones, The Marvel Zombie Society.

 Marvel Zombie Monthly #18 (December 1989) [Marvel Zombie Society]

The monthly newsletter was a little different than most as it was a cross between a typical fanzine and an (Amateur Press Association) APA.  It had an extensive feedback (or comment) section.

The more than 6 pages of comments on previous articles, reviews, and previous comments was almost half this 15 page issue.  That was pretty typical.  If you added Readers Replies to the monthly poll, this was a chatty group.

 There wasn't much art in the issues, as this issue only had a graph I included in an article I wrote for the issue.

But that chattiness is what made this group of fans special.  It became a tight group that even went to the San Diego Comicon together a few years latter.  Not surprisingly, there were several well known letterhacks and a few others who became industry professionals like myself and Charles Novinskie.

By this time a year later, it had become the MZS-APA and that is when it really became a tight group.  That's when we went to San Diego Comicon and had a lot of fun.  The membership remained at 30 people even though members came and went.  We even had some artists who went on to do some work for Marvel & DC.

Doing a little Internet search, I discovered it is still hanging on, but there was something about a farewell issue.  So it may be on its last legs.  Something like 270 issues or so.  Has a Facebook page if you are interested.  Not bad for a zine that started in 1988.   No DC Deviants need apply.

Advance Comics #14

Advance Comics V2 #14 (Feb. 1990) [Capital City Distribution]

Customer orders to the retailer were due today in 1989 for Capital City stores.  As you can see by the cover, one of the highlights was the Batman: Digital Justice hardcover solicitation.  The entire book was created on a Mac computer.  Not the first comic book done entirely on the computer, as Shatter from First Comics came out in 1985.

I like to compare the solicitations to what actually is published to see what changes there are during the time between solicitation and shipping.  Here it says that it will be 110 pages, while the GCD has it at 120 pages.  It also says there will be a trade paperback edition six months after the hardcover ships.  It don't think this ever came out.   Must not have sold as well as expected.  The cover has a few minor differences as the Registration and Trademarks are in different places and the back ground color of "Computer Generated" is white.

One of the best thing about Advance Comics is that it prints the top 100 comics shipping that month from Capital City.  There are no actual circulation numbers, but you can compare how titles are doing against each other.

Here is a sample page of listings:

 

Here is an ad for the Disney Kyle Baker Dick Tracy mini-series, and the first issue cover.   Baker is much better in color though they should have made the background bricks a lighter color to bring out Flattop's shadow better.

Will Eisner's The Spirit #32

Will Eisner's The Spirit #32 (December 1981) [Kitchen Sink Comix]

At your local comic shop today in 1981 you might have found this magazine on the shelf, if you had good retailer.  From information in side this issue, Kitchen Sink was selling about 16,500 copies of each issue.  About 500 were mail subscriptions.  There were about 700 comic shops and another 2,000 stores that carried a full line of comics in 1981 (Comic Scene #7). You wouldn't have found this magazine on too many newsstands.

If you have any interest in the craft and art of comics, you can never go wrong picking up an issue of this series.  This issue has four Spirit stories:

4 pages from Eisner's Essays On Comic Art (which would eventually become part of his books):

 12 pages from Eisner's New York: The Big City GN:

and Adolf Hitler.  What more could you ask for?

Comics' Buyer's Guide #733

Today we have the December 4, 1987 issue of the Comics' Buyer's Guide, #733.  The lead story is about Don Martin's acrimonious exit from Mad Magazine.  The other cover story is about 3 Marvel titles (Uncanny X-Men, Amazing Spider-Man, and G.I. Joe) going bi-weekly for the summer months of June thru August.   These stories are concluded on page three which I've included below so you can read the whole story.

This issue is only dated today, but really came out a couple of weeks earlier.  They are just following the lead set by comic books themselves. 

The actual first page of the newspaper has a story about the 1988 Marvel Annuals being part of a larger connected storyline.  This turned out to be the Evolutionary War crossover.  And the first of 5 years of similar crossover events in Marvel Annuals.

Also there is story about a 3,500 Golden Age comic book collection on page 1.  They were supposed to be in very nice condition, but I don't remember it ever getting a name like some famous collections discovered before.  But I could be wrong as I'm not a Golden Age collector.

Page three concludes the articles from the cover and previews MICRA #6 from Comics Interview.  MICRA only lasted one more issue (#7) that came out in the spring of 1988.  Though there was a graphic novel which I think reprinted #1-3.

One other interesting article in the issue was about the Playboy Channel showing a feature on Japanese manga on the May edition of Sexcetera: The News According To Playboy.  It of course focused on erotic comics, but also discussed the differences between our two societies.

Advance Comics #1

Since the new Diamond Comics Distributors' December Previews catalog arrives in comic shops this week, I thought I'd highlight the first monthly catalog for Capital City Distribution.

Though dated January, Advance Comics #1 actually came out in November 1988.  The cover date was intended to indicate when the comic books in this catalog would arrive at the comic shop.  And though it says #1 on the cover, it is actually v2 #1.  The previous month actually was the first issue, v1 #1.

This catalog was intended for consumers; customers of comic shops.  For a long time, there were 2 versions of this catalog, one for the retailer and one for the fan.  Before this, readers could find out what was going to come out in the future from The Comic Reader, The Comics Buyers Guide, The Comics Journal, Amazing Heroes and other similar publications.  This issue had 64 pages and over "800 new releases".  Compare that to November 2011 Previews with its 426 pages and over 1900 item listings.

Advance Comics was the first coming comic book catalog/order form for fans and lasted 94 issues, until Diamond bought "selected assets" of Capital City in 1996.  It listed comic books by publisher, with color comics first, then games, black & white comics, zines, books and the rest.  No real editorial material except the Top 100 Comics list on the inside front cover.  More on these in the future.

It wasn't the first advance order catalog for retailers as Glenwood had one in 1982.  Its catalog was a quick and dirty paste up job of promotional pieces supplied by publishers.  If anyone has copies of the Glenwood catalogs, I'd love to get my hands on them.  Previews started in Jan. 1989.

Founded by Milton Griepp and John Davis in 1980, Capital City was the more innovative of the two big distributors of the 1990s as they had imports and computerized ordering first.  They were also more open to erotic material than Diamond who has ghettoized adult material now that they are a monopoly.  Milton Griepp now runs the excellent comic industry news and information site ICv2 (http://icv2.com).