Prince Street News: Batmania '89

 The new BACK ISSUE! (#113) celebrates the 30th anniversary of Tim Burton's BATMAN (a movie of which I am not really a fan, even though I convinced myself at the time that it was worthy of the hype). In this installment of Prince Street News, the "real" Caped Crusader stops by Julie's Bar (that timeless tavern where comic book characters toss one back) to bask in his newfound cinematic success. This one doesn't need much explaining to the non-fanboys out there, particularly the final punchline. Ouch!

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: 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. 

Tuff Ghosts