Prince Street News: The Honorifics

The new BACK ISSUE (#158) is dedicated to the MISTERS of the comic book world, from Freeze to X to Monster to A to Weatherbee! For this issue's comic strip, I did the first in what I plan to be a series of mock-up impossible comic book covers under the PRINCE STREET NEWS PRESENTS umbrella. THE HONORIFICS depicts every comic book & strip Mr., Mister, Miss, and Ms. I could think of (mostly good guys descending on two bad ones). Had I known that BI was going to do a follow up issue using the feminine titles, I'd have maybe made this all dudes, but probably not. 

I also had to put together a guide, of course, but see how many you can name without looking! 

PRINCE STREET NEWS: More Characters Go SUPER!

 The new BACK ISSUE is a "Super Issue," focusing on the bronze age adventures of Superboy (the first of which was my very first comic book, so I have a fondness for this topic). Other features include pieces on Frank Thorne's super-rare promotional comic book, The Far-Out Super Green, interviews with the syndicated ADVENTURES OF SUPERBOY stars Gerard Christopher and Stacy Haiduk, and articles on superhero versions of Richie Rich, Dagwood, and Goofy. Plus more! Including me! 

This installment of PSN was really fun to do, and it's hard to figure out comic book / strip characters who WEREN'T turned into a superhero at least for one story or gag (and some of these indeed have been, notably the Harvey girls). 

A few of these are "inside fanboy" gags ("Super Slam" is Slam Bradley, a detective created by Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, so he looks just like their far more famous creation). The Phantom Stranger (a character I love) bit is a nod to a brief period in the 1960s when Marvel Comics gave Doctor Strange a more superhero-ey costume. 

Next issue: A tribute to Neal Adams. This one was personal. Stay tuned. 

Prince Street News: If Monster Heroes Wore Costumes!

The latest BACK ISSUE (#124, originally scheduled for an October release, delayed because of You-Know-What) is an issue dedicated to Horrific Heroes, giving me the opportunity to revisit one of my favorite Prince Street News themes, hypothetical costumes (I'm currently working on another one of these for another upcoming issue). Following up on a part of a 2018 strip in which I put Swamp Thing in a costume (as his comic book was turned from a horror book into a superhero one in order to save his struggling first series in the 1970s), I posited what five (technically six) monster heroes might look like in superhero costumes: Gloop and Gleep from The Herculoids, The Incredible Hulk, Man-Bat, Man-Thing, and Simon Garth (Marvel's Zombie). Pictured below is the strip as printed and detail on each character. 

It's (maybe) worth noting that this installment of PSN was only one page instead of the normal two, which will be happening more in the future as circumstances have dictated that I have to pull back a bit on the frequency with which I do this thing. Prince Street News is certainly a labor of love, but as the saying goes, love don't pay the bills. Wait, is that a saying? Oh, well.

Prince Street News: Comic and Cartoon Characters' Favorite Musical Artists (complete)

The new BACK ISSUE! spotlights rock & roll comics of the Bronze Age, featuring pieces on Alice Cooper, KISS (many, many articles about KISS), Flash Gordon, Paul McCartney, and much more. Finally, with this issue's theme, I was able to bring a new installment of what might be my signature piece to PRINCE STREET NEWS.

The first installment of  “Comic Characters’ Favorite Musical Artists” appeared in Warner Bros. Records’ promotional faux-zine, DIRT in the 1990s (wherein I contributed a monthly comic strip called THE RETAIL ADVENTURES OF KALLI & REX about the joys and travails of running an independent record store… remember those?). The concept’s next appearance was in my online strip, YOU DON'T LIKE ANYTHING! (which also appeared in the music magazine, THE BIG TAKEOVER). From 1999 through the first decade of the new millennium, I added more installments of the series, which eventually went viral in 2011, aggregated by dozens of websites including CBR, Buzzfeed, and Flavorwire (to name a few). 

Ever since I started doing PRINCE STREET NEWS for BACK ISSUE! that same year, I’ve been hoping to bring the concept to these pages. Finally, with this rock & roll comics issue, the format fit.

But as I set to writing the strip, I realized something: Every other installment of CCFMA was aimed mostly at a music fan audience; the bands chosen could be obscure, but the characters expressing their affection had to be known by the general public (for the most part). This time around, I had to take the opposite tack: Since I was doing this for BACK ISSUE! readers, the characters could be more obscure, but the musical preferences needed to be (again, for the most part) more mainstream. 

Still, not everyone will get every joke. That’s inevitable. Few will recognize every single artist mentioned. And the reasons for the pairing are all over the map. Some are obvious, groan-inducing puns (e.g., Mysterio, Hawkman). Some are due to iconic songs that could relate to the character (e.g., Thor, Underdog). Some are jokes that you might need to think about—or even do some Googling—to get (e.g., The Crypt Keeper, Little Dot). And some are actually chosen because, well, they make sense (Foghorn Leghorn, Hawk & Dove). My hope is that (in true music industry form) the 35 gags herein yield more hits than misses.

For this fifth installment, all the characters are new to the series, but I had to reuse one band from an earlier strip because it fit the new character so much better than its original champion (I won’t tell you which band, but in the old strip, they were loved by Space Ghost). 

For this post, I've included the previous four installments of CCFMA, combined into two bigger pieces, with some updated jokes and a few redrawn panels. I'm not going to explain each and every joke (part of the fun is trying to figure them out), but if there's something you don't get that's driving you nuts, feel free to ask me in the comments. 

Prince Street News: What If Superheroes Wore Their Ben Cooper Costumes?

The new BACK ISSUE! is another swell Halloween-themed issue (Swamp Thing fans owe it to themselves to pick up a copy) for which I expanded a 2013 project supposing what superheroes would look like if they actually wore their Ben Cooper Halloween costumes instead of their traditional crimefighting duds. Below is the strip as it appears in the magazine and the individual pieces of art done for the piece.

I should also repost a link to a gallery I put up on Pops Gustav at the same time of just some of those great (and not-so-great) boxed costumes from the Silver and Bronze Age of not just comics, but trick-or-treating as well.

Coming up next in PSN: What's So Stinky About the Big Red Cheese?

Prince Street News: Four Color Traditions!

Jeez Louise, was I jazzed to do this installment of Prince Street News. BACK ISSUE! #85 is dedicated to Christmas comic books of the Bronze Age, a merging of passions that makes my black little heart (like that of a certain Seussian Scrooge) grow three sizes. I can still remember finding the first DC and Marvel treasuries (and the Archie digest I'm holding in the final panel) at the newsstand that gave this comic strip its name back in 1973-74, and I still pull them out and read them every year. While there have been some collections of holiday comic book stories, I still feel like the definitive anthologies have yet to be compiled. Now THAT would be a dream job.

In the meantime, as the song says, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas. See you next year.

Prince Street News: Marvel Hanna-Barbera Comics

It's PSN time again, kiddies! The new BACK ISSUE! spotlights comic book adaptations of cartoon characters and cartoon adaptations of comic book characters from the '60s (yay!) thru the '80s (boo!). I have a special fondness for the Hanna-Barbera superheroes of the 1960s, the Herculoids, Shazzan!, Frankenstein Jr. (and the Impossibles!), and especially the über-sleek Space Ghost (about whom I rhapsodized in GEEK Magazine in 2008).

Sadly, Space Ghost's comic book legacy is short and spotty (see the linked article above for more). The last incarnation, a seriously grim adaptation by writer Joe Kelly and artist Ariel Olivetti was about as ill-advised as a murderous Captain Marvel or a gun-toting Alfred. There remains a lot of untapped potential in the character. Maybe someday.

In the meantime, I speculated as to what might have happened had the H-B TV Heroes been fully integrated into the Marvel Universe of the Silver and Bronze eras, mocking up comic covers, panels, ads and merchandise. This installment is not quite as inside as the Implosion Happy Hour episode, but it's still not going to make sense to the less-geeky of you. That is, I'm afraid, the fun of doing this comic strip.

Here's the strip as it appears in BACK ISSUE!, followed by the individual elements for a closer look.

Based on the cover of CAPTAIN MARVEL #17 by Gil Kane

The Human Torch leaves the Fantastic Four for the Galaxy Trio, presumably now the Galaxy Quartet

The Wasp cheats on Ant-Man with Atom Ant

Based on the cover of IRON MAN #36 by Sal Buscema

Poor Spidey is gonna lose his chicks to rock stars. 

It's a subtle joke. 

Based on Jack Kirby's cover to FANTASTIC FOUR #82

No doubt Mego would've left Space Ghost's hands uncovered. 

Birdman = Angel. Samson = Hercules. Jana ≠ the Black Widow, but whattyagonnado.