By Scott Tipton
April 9, 2003
OFFICE HOURS ARE OPEN
In the words of the immortal Paul Shaffer: “Letters, we get letters, we get stacks and stacks of letters.” This week, we’re going to open up the mailbag and take a look at some very good questions that just weren’t big enough to take on in a full column. Let’s begin, shall we?
Hey, great column. I've never been an avid comic reader, but I have from time to time picked up a few and kept up on some of the bigger titles. My dilemma is this: A few years ago I bought a large box full of books off a friend of a friend for $40. I picked up a WIZARD and went through it to see if my money was well spent. The majority of them were crap, but a handful of 20 or so were worth $10 -- $40. I've put them up on eBay, comics message boards and toted them to a dozen or so comic shops in my area , but none of them will buy anything post-Silver Age. Any ideas on what I should do?
--Nic Franklin
You should read 'em.
The sad fact is, Nic, investing in modern comics with the expectation of making a profit is a sucker's game. It just doesn't happen any more. Sure, you can make some minor profits here and there if you buy multiples of a book that winds up being hot and is hard to find in a few months, but the returns are always minimal.
People found this out the hard way a few years ago when everybody was coming in off the street to buy multiple copies of the "Death of Superman," thinking it'd be worth something in 20 years like comics from the 1940s and ’60s. These guys didn't seem to grasp the simple fact that ’40s and ’60s comics are expensive because they're a rare commodity: there's just not a whole lot to be found. Everybody and his uncle had a copy of "Death of Superman," so there's never going to be any demand to meet that massive supply.
In your case, if you really want to sell those comics, your best bet is still eBay. Selling to comics shops is always a loss, since they need to double what they paid for it to make a profit. If you leave it on eBay, you'll eventually find a collector who wants those specific issues, and may be willing to pay somewhat closer to Guide price.
Hello. In a recent 101, you made a mention that Stan Lee was editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics when he, Ditko and Kirby all worked together and started the Marvel Invasion. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Stan Lee just a writer during that time? He said so several times in the STAN LEE: MUTANTS, MONSTERS, AND MARVELS DVD that he was a writer that was about to leave the industry when he created Spider-Man. I know later on that Stan Lee was named editor-in-chief by Marvel, but he only did that for about a year when he decided to leave the position due to his lack of creative input. Check into this and see if I might have errored.
--Tony Randazzo
Sorry. Countless sources state that Lee was definitely the editor of Marvel at the time, not the least of which is Stan’s own account in the 1970s edition of ORIGINS OF MARVEL COMICS. Stan acted as sole editor and de facto art director until 1972, when he turned the editor’s chair over to Roy Thomas. Lee answered to Martin Goodman, who was the publisher of Marvel, but all editing and art assignments were made by him. You don't see it listed as "editor-in-chief" in the old Marvels because a) there was only one editor -- Stan; and b) editors didn't get listed credit until Stan started listing full creative staffs (with wacky nicknames) for each book, forcing DC to follow suit eventually.
Got another question, Prof.:
OK, the Wonder Woman television series with Lynda Carter. I was 4 at the time but I vaguely remember two versions of Diana Prince: one where she's in the Army and another when she's in some CIA-type agency. Can you explain this?
Additionally, how exactly is WW's alter-ego addressed in comics? Thanks.
--JNZ
Sure. The WONDER WOMAN TV show ran from 1975 to 1979. In its initial run on ABC from 1975 to 1977, it was a period piece, with Wonder Woman in WWII fighting Nazis and the like. In ’77, the series moved to CBS, and producers felt the WWII setting was hurting the ratings and decided to modernize it, so they had the immortal Diana return to Paradise Island for 30 years, until she met Steve Trevor Jr., who happened to look exactly like his father (Lyle Waggoner in both roles), and decided to return to Man's World and work with Steve Jr. at the IADC (a typical spy-type agency).
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As for the comics, from 1940 to 1985, it was pretty much like you see in the show. Princess Diana comes to Man's World, and assumes the identity of Diana Prince to facilitate her mission of peace (which ironically, she accomplishes by beating people up). When DC started their comics over from scratch in ’85, it was decided that Wonder Woman would have no secret identity, and therefore she has always been publicly known as Princess Diana of Themyscira, or Paradise Island. There have been storylines in the last few years in which she's assumed a civilian ID as Diana Prince, in a sort of tip of the hat to the old stories, but it's never been made permanent.
First of all, great column. Really nice to see questions like these being answered.
My question would be what you would recommend as a good source online to find trade paperbacks of different titles. Are there any sites that specialize in them?
--Shawn Brown
Amazon actually has a fairly good selection of Marvel and DC trades. I always go through them if I'm buying books online. Mile High Comics also has a huge retail Web site, and they've been around for decades, so I'd imagine they're pretty reliable.
The best option, of course, is to support your local comic-book shop and order trades through them, but I realize it's a sad fact that many communities no longer have a shop in their area.
Why is it that in the early issues of UNCANNY X-MEN Cyclops' real name is Slim Summers, but we all know and love (or hate) him as Scott Summers?
--Matt
Early on, X-MEN writer Stan Lee had dubbed him "Slim," but changed it to "Scott" not long after. You’ve gotta remember these things were works in progress, and Stan was writing pretty much every book Marvel was putting out in those days. Also, Stan occasionally flubbed his own character names back then -- in the pages of HULK he mistakenly called Bruce Banner "Bob" for about six months, which is why his full name was later revealed as Robert Bruce Banner
Anyway, just think of "Slim" as a passing high-school nickname that was quickly abandoned.
I like the new article! Here's a question for you - what's the difference between a TPB and a graphic novel? The usual consensus is that a TPB is a collection of previously published materials and a GN is something that's only been published in that format. Right? That's what I've usually told other librarians about GNs. Some creators disagree and consider their works as GNs even though they've been previously published in a single-issue format. Even seminal works that are considered GNs such as "Maus" technically aren't GNs, since Maus first appeared in RAW. So what's the difference?
--Mike Pauwk
There really isn't any consensus on what is or isn't a graphic novel. If you were to use the definition you gave, then WATCHMEN isn't a graphic novel since it was published monthly. Considering it's a single work that was designed to be read as a single work, and meets all the literary criteria of a novel, I'm not going to refuse to call it that. The same applies to Spiegelman's MAUS, Sim's CEREBUS novels and countless others. If you were to apply that standard to works of prose, than many of Charles Dickens' works aren't novels because they were originally published by the chapter in newspapers. I'm certainly not going to say that HARD TIMES or DAVID COPPERFIELD aren't really novels, and the same goes for the Pulitzer-Prize-winning MAUS.
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WATCHMEN, for example, is published both in hardcover and trade paperback. Is the hardcover more worthy of the term novel than the TPB? If not, then what do you call it? You can't call it a TPB any more, since it's not a paperback. This kind of thing is why I've always considered TPB to be only a publishing term, not a literary one.
To my mind, trade paperback only refers to the kind of physical book it is, and has no bearing on the content. The term "graphic novel" came into favor in the '80s as more mainstream publications like ROLLING STONE and NEWSWEEK began to cover comics as literature, and bookstore chains, libraries and scholars latched on to the phrase as a way to distance themselves from what they felt was a childish genre: "Oh, no, it's not a comic book. It's a graphic novel." Phooey. Comics is comics, if you ask me, and the only things that should qualify something as a novel should be the same standards as prose: the author's intent and the size of the work.
Didn't Clark Kent disguise himself with his trademark glasses? You would think that when the time comes for SMALLVILLE to have him in the super-suit, people will still recognize his face. Was it like that in the comics?
--Malone
I don't think SMALLVILLE ever intends to deal with Clark in costume, so they're choosing not to deal with it. If you ever see Tom Welling in the Superman outfit, it will probably be in the final shot from the final episode. I think the producer said his motto for the series was "no tights, no flights" (although they're starting to bend the no-fly rule already).
Clark from the comics definitely wore glasses. In fact, the lenses were pieces of the window from the ship that brought him to Earth, which allowed him to focus his heat vision through them without melting them.
Can you give me the skinny on the “Heroes Reborn” event around 1996? Did the Image guys all come back to Marvel in order to reset the FF4, Captain America, etc (I forgot the others) storylines kind of like what the Ultimate line does now? Why did they even come back? Wouldn’t it be looked at as selling out? I take it that it wasn’t well received. How do those events fit in with present continuity? Thanks for all the info.
Ah, Heroes Reborn. Not one of Marvel’s proudest moments, if you ask me.
In a nutshell: the year was 1996. Wanting to spike up sales on some of their core books, Marvel agreed to subcontract out four of their longest-running and oldest titles to two former Marvel talents who had quit the company to found competitor Image Comics: Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld. In the agreement, the books would be entirely produced outside of Marvel by Lee’s and Liefeld’s studios. Jim Lee would take the Fantastic Four and Iron Man, while Liefeld would handle Captain America and the Avengers. While the FANTASTIC FOUR, IRON MAN, and THE AVENGERS had been in a creative slump for years, CAPTAIN AMERICA was in the middle of an award-winning run by Mark Waid and Ron Garney, the best the book had seen in quite some time.
Why did Liefeld and Lee come back? A big fat contract is why. It was viewed as selling out by some, I suppose, but work is work, and at the time neither artists’ books were tearing up the sales chart.
Anyway, the decision was made to remove the characters from the Marvel Universe for that year of publishing, and start the characters over from scratch in the LiefeldLeeverse. In the MU, the world thought the Avengers and Fantastic Four had died saving the world from the menace of Onslaught, an uber-villain created by the muddied-up consciousnesses of Magneto and Professor X. Don’t even ask. In the process of defeating him, the FF, The Avengers, Dr. Doom and, for reasons I still don’t quite get, the Bruce Banner persona of the Hulk, were all shunted into a parallel “pocket universe,” where the Liefeld/Lee stories took place.
The stories were not at all well received, including reportedly, within Marvel, where it was rumored that the existing editorial staff had not wanted or approved the Liefeld/ Lee decision, were not happy with what Liefeld and Lee were doing, and were not happy with having to deal with a Marvel Universe with so many pivotal characters unavailable.
For reasons which differ depending on who you ask, Rob Liefeld didn’t complete his run on AVENGERS and CAPTAIN AMERICA (Marvel alleged that the sales were low, while Liefeld claimed it was all politics with Marvel editorial, who never wanted him there in the first place), and Jim Lee’s studio picked up the slack, finishing up the 12-month run on all four series.
Did anything good come out of Heroes Reborn? Actually, yes. Not the comics themselves. God, no. They were horrible. (Well, that’s not fair. FANTASTIC FOUR was only mediocre. IRON MAN, THE AVENGERS and especially CAPTAIN AMERICA were horrible.) But the incident did bring a renewed focus to Marvel’s core titles, which had long been overshadowed and overlooked in the company’s increasing reliance on squeezing every last drop out of the popularity of the X-Men.
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As a result of an Avengers-less Marvel Universe, a new team book was created: THE THUNDERBOLTS. THUNDERBOLTS scored what had to be the surprise ending of all time when on the last page of the first issue by Kurt Busiek and Mark Bagley, the new superhero team that had just won us over was revealed as Baron Zemo and his Masters of Evil, who were posing as superheroes in a plot for world domination. Busiek’s run on the series was first-rate, and is well worth tracking down in back issues. I think only the first eight issues are available in a collection.
The other benefits came after the characters returned to the Marvel Universe in the HEROES RETURN miniseries. Marvel realized that if they were doing yet another #1 issue on these series after just a year, they had to pull out all the stops. Mark Waid and Ron Garney made a triumphant return to CAPTAIN AMERICA, although truth be told, they seemed to have lost the momentum they had in their previous run, and while the stories were good, they didn’t quite measure up to their first try. (Still a huge improvement over Liefeld’s awful stuff). FANTASTIC FOUR was relaunched by Scott Lobdell and Alan Davis, while IRON MAN began again in the hands of Kurt Busiek and Sean Chen. The best of the relaunches, though, was THE AVENGERS, written by Kurt Busiek and penciled by the legendary George Perez. Busiek and Perez returned the book to creative heights it hadn’t seen in decades. If nothing else, the Busiek/ Perez Avengers run made all of the Heroes Reborn nonsense worthwhile.
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