Reprint This! 21. Tippy Teen

Reprint This! is a periodic feature where I talk about some out-of-print comic book gems that are not available in collected form for readers to enjoy. This is hoping to let rights owners know that, yes, readers are out here, and we'd like to buy the things we can't get at this time!

Despite such an enormous variety of books available these days, and genuine efforts to present the material in reasonably-priced, archival volumes, there are still countless fabulous series from the US, Britain and Japan which are overdue for new editions. I've selected two dozen titles which should be on bookshelves, but at this time are not.

I batted a couple of titles and ideas back and forth when nailing down my final list of 24. One, Marshal Law, was removed when a new collection was announced before I could feature it here. So for a couple of days, its slot was taken by THE COMPLETE DAN DeCARLO JOSIE & THE PUSSYCATS. But then I thought, "Hellfire, you're already asking for Marvelman, would you like the Fountain of Youth while you're at it?" Besides, when I was doing the scanning, I didn't actually have any DeCarlo Josie, though I do now, so it got moved to the epilogue feature which'll follow this up.

So she may be a third-stringer in my lineup, but that's okay, because Samm Schwartz's TIPPY TEEN was kind of a third-stringer in real life. Quite plainly an Archie cash-in, her short lived series is nevertheless incredibly charming, goofy, mod and with-it, daddy-o! I think some of the early Archie Comics credits are still disputed, but Schwartz generally gets the accolades for turning Jughead into one of the most popular characters there, and was in charge of some of the secondary titles in the late 1950s and early '60s. Then he moved to Tower Comics and created this delightful little universe.



You probably haven't heard of Tippy Teen before. I hadn't, until our buddies at Mister Kitty did a writeup about her on their Stupid Comics site last year. I was immediately taken by the character names and the swingin' 60s stylin'. You know, Archie reprints are a dollar a dozen, but odds are, since there's just so damn much of the stuff, you're usually going to run into lots of rotten 1980s work by drones copying old house styles and briefly hooking random characters into much uglier fashions and fads. Since Tippy Teen only lasted a few years in the late sixties, you're guaranteed that every issue contains thematically similar mod, groovy jargon and sensibilities.

Tippy inverts the Archie formula by having one lead girl juggling a pair of dueling boyfriends, neither of whom is really developed all that much. Her best friend is called Go-Go, and her spinoff book Go-Go and Animal sports one of the greatest names for a comic book in history. There was also a comic-sized tabloid magazine called Teen-In which featured Tippy strips along with amazing facts and trivia about period pop acts like the Cowsills and Sonny & Cher.

But there's more to Tippy Teen than just some cute period slang and with-it clothes. I'm not sure how much of Tippy Teen is Schwartz's work and how much his various collaborators working in a standard style (Toonopedia suggests that Dan DeCarlo and Bob White were also involved, among others), but this is just some wonderful cartooning here. A few scans here don't do it justice, but I have two issues and I passed another two on to Mister Kitty for their archives and they're all incredibly entertaining on several levels. The casual, fun style is just gorgeous, and feels natural, rather than a "house style."

Anyway, the Tippy Teen world was about one-half of the output of a short-lived company called Tower Comics, which hired Schwartz away from the Archie company, MLJ. Tower Comics was an imprint of Tower Books formed in 1965 to grab some of the growing market, and is best known for a superhero series called THUNDER Agents, which was sort of a cross between the Fantastic Four and the Man from UNCLE, if you can imagine such a thing. Tower had their superhero books, all part of the THUNDER Agents' world, and their teen books, all part of Tippy's world, but neither were very successful and the imprint was folded in 1969. Tower's books were twice as expensive as Marvel and DC's, and MLJ's for that matter, for twice the content. But value for money isn't relevant in a world where purchasing decisions were often made by parents at drugstore spinner racks, where the cheaper product was going to win out every time. Took DC another decade to figure that one out.

Anyway, there were 46 issues in total of Tippy Teen and her spin-off titles. The entirety of them could be reprinted in three thick editions. I have no idea who'd consider reprinting them. In the 1970s, an outfit called Atlas Comics tried to cash-in on Marvel's newsstand success and they reprinted some Tippy stories under the name Vicki, but otherwise she's not been seen in close to forty years. But I tend to think that if a couple of books, marketed to young girls but comprehensive enough to satisfy collectors, were available, they could certainly do well. The fact that my own daughter is a voracious reader of all things Betty & Veronica is proof that a market still exists, and any good publisher could make a strong pitch towards tweenagers while equally targetting completists by including all the strips, with as much source credit as is possible. The material is quite honestly good enough to make it worth a try.



(Originally posted December 26, 2007, 11:48 at hipsterdad's livejournal.)

Reprint This! - oh, wait, you have... ummm... anyway, this is the 20th installment...

Reprint This! is a periodic feature where I talk about some out-of-print comic book gems that are not available in collected form for readers to enjoy. This is hoping to let rights owners know that, yes, readers are out here, and we'd like to buy the things we can't get at this time!

Y'all get a break from things this week, because I went to all the trouble of drafting an article about how the late 1960s Thunderbirds strips from TV21 need to be collected again, especially because mine are in these stupidly pricy 48-page collections. Europeans have been overpaying for this format since the early 1960s, and what's needed is a proper old hardback with nice binding. Then I found out that such a thing actually exists already. It's 160 pages and it was released in 2002.



Well, let my poor research be a lesson to you all. Here, enjoy a couple of scans of this glorious Frank Bellamy artwork. Things will be back to normal in nine days. And now, the next time my pal chetbakerfan rings and asks if I want to go in with the shipping on an amazon.co.uk order, I know what I want!





(Originally posted December 18, 2007, 04:40 at hipsterdad's livejournal.)

Reprint This! 19. Steed & Mrs. Peel

Reprint This! is a periodic feature where I talk about some out-of-print comic book gems that are not available in collected form for readers to enjoy. This is hoping to let rights owners know that, yes, readers are out here, and we'd like to buy the things we can't get at this time!

Despite such an enormous variety of books available these days, and genuine efforts to present the material in reasonably-priced, archival volumes, there are still countless fabulous series from the US, Britain and Japan which are overdue for new editions. I've selected two dozen titles which should be on bookshelves, but at this time are not.

Normally, I take a slightly objective, reasoned approach to recommending titles in Reprint This! This time, I'm not.



Ian Gibson is my very favorite comic artist.

Despite an occasional stumble or two, Grant Morrison remains my favorite comic writer.

The Avengers is second only to Route 66 as my favorite television series of the 1960s.



So here's the deal: around 1989, Acme Books and Eclipse Comics got the rights to a six-issue comic series of The Avengers. They couldn't call the comic that, because Marvel already had a comic book by that name, so they called it Steed & Mrs. Peel. Then the "prestige format" craze hit, and Eclipse's fortunes took a dive. (They closed down in 1993.) The series was eventually published as three 48-page squarebound issues between late 1990 and mid-1992, with Morrison's four scripts spread throughout, and a two-parter written by Anne Caulfield (presumably intended for #5-6 of the original plan) used as one half of the second and third issues. Months passed between each issue's release.

Today, it's among the rarest of Morrison's US-published material, and back issue prices are artificially inflated by book dealers who shop it along with other "sixties teevee memorabilia."

And it's completely brilliant. Nothing more needs to be said.

I don't know who owns the rights. Since Eclipse Comics was involved, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Todd MacFarlane lost them to Tony Twist in a back alley game of mubbledy-peg.

But somebody, man, somebody needs to clear these rights, because it's a license to print money. Well, mine, anyway.

The usual long-winded detail-full Reprint This! will be back later this month.



(Originally posted December 09, 2007, 21:43 at hipsterdad's livejournal.)

Reprint This! 18. Shade the Changing Man

Reprint This! is a periodic feature where I talk about some out-of-print comic book gems that are not available in collected form for readers to enjoy. This is hoping to let rights owners know that, yes, readers are out here, and we'd like to buy the things we can't get at this time!

Despite such an enormous variety of books available these days, and genuine efforts to present the material in reasonably-priced, archival volumes, there are still countless fabulous series from the US, Britain and Japan which are overdue for new editions. I've selected two dozen titles which should be on bookshelves, but at this time are not.

One title that's been missing in action for years is Steve Ditko's SHADE THE CHANGING MAN, an eight-issue series from Ditko's mid-70s return to DC Comics. While the publisher would later find new uses for the character and incorporate him into their mainstream superhero universe, the original run was a stand-alone science fiction epic, the action split between Earth and the other-dimensional planet of Meta, populated by characters in angular, colorful clothing with bizarre weaponry and armor. Easily one of the strangest series from a major publisher at the time, Shade is fondly remembered by readers with an eye for the odd.



Rac Shade was an agent in Meta's secret service, and Mellu his fiance. While investigating a political scheme at the behest of Meta's president, Shade was framed for the attempted murder of Mellu's parents, who are left crippled by the explosion. Sentenced to death, Shade escapes and finds a special vest, meant for miners in another dimension, which uses a powerful force field to protect its wearer.

That little summary simplifies matters greatly, and doesn't hint at how very weird this series is. The treasonous plot against Meta's government is controlled by something called "Sude," the Supreme Decider, which is a huge sphere with a face painted on it and big robotic arms. None of the insurgents stop to wonder who might be in the sphere, they just take their orders from a great big tinkertoy. After defeating a criminal called Khaos, Shade falls into a "color coma." People wear purple and yellow robes with big, bushy red beards and are thought to be inconspicuous. When Mellu cracks and leads a team of agents to bring Shade to justice, she loses it so spectacularly, you wonder whether she could even make it washing dishes, never mind be a trusted government agent. And frankly, the hallucination-generating vest is incredibly weird. No wonder the Metan authorities banned the thing.

Steve Ditko is, of course, best known as the creator or co-creator of such characters as Spider-Man and Dr. Strange for Marvel, and the Creeper and Hawk & Dove for DC, along with several superheroes at a now-defucnt rival publisher, Charlton, such as Captain Atom and the Question. Ditko is also well-remembered for the self-published series Mr. A. One of the finest draftsmen in the field, and an inspiration to so many other artists, it's not surprising that Shade the Changing Man is visually compelling on every page. However, it was a very difficult series to follow, albeit quite rewarding. Ditko's use of flashbacks throughout the issues to explain the backstory makes it tough to assemble the chronology, particularly if you missed an issue. The comic was assembled "Marvel-style," with Ditko creating the art based on his plot and then giving it to writer Michael Fleisher (best known for his mid-70s work on The Spectre) to dialogue, and the scripting occasionally feels stilted and unnatural.

Shade's refusal to give a quarter to its audience resulted in low sales, and after eight issues (published every other month), the title was abruptly cancelled during a major contraction of the publisher's line. (This was the "DC Implosion" which has proven an irresistable topic of gossip and speculation for fans over the last three decades.) A ninth issue was completed and on the printer's door before the axe fell. It was only ever published in a low-print run house anthology book to protect the trademarks.

Shade wasn't appreciated at the time, but as interest in Ditko's work and career grows, it is a huge shame that DC has not brought more of his work into print. Admittedly, Shade is a fairly obscure character with none of the superhero universe appeal of the Creeper or the Question, who will probably be collected before Shade gets a shot, but I'm holding out for a neat little 160-page color collection of this neat little title. Heck, make it 176 pages and you can add not only the covers and a short essay by one of Ditko's fans, but also the eight-page Odd Man backup story that was intended for the ninth issue and later appeared, truncated, in an issue of Detective Comics that took me forever to track down. So how about it, DC?



(Originally posted November 27, 2007, 12:14 at hipsterdad's livejournal.)

Reprint This! 17. Missionary Man

Reprint This! is a periodic feature where I talk about some out-of-print comic book gems that are not available in collected form for readers to enjoy. This is hoping to let rights owners know that, yes, readers are out here, and we'd like to buy the things we can't get at this time!

Despite such an enormous variety of books available these days, and genuine efforts to present the material in reasonably-priced, archival volumes, there are still countless fabulous series from the US, Britain and Japan which are overdue for new editions. I've selected two dozen titles which should be on bookshelves, but at this time are not.

One title that's been missing in action for years is MISSIONARY MAN, a spinoff from Judge Dredd set in the violent, radioactive, mutant-filled desert that used to be the center of North America before the bombs started falling. The series was created by Gordon Rennie and Frank Quitely, but many other artists, including Garry Marshall, Trevor Hairsine, Simon Davis, Henry Flint and John Ridgway, contributed to this excellent strip about an angry former judge from Texas City who found God and went out into the badlands to spread the word...



To the judges of Texas City, Cain was always a little odd, but when he found religion, he became intolerable. Turning his back on the city's corrupt government, Cain took the Long Walk to give law unto the lawless, with a little gospel learning as well. It's basically a Dreddworld version of many classic Western films, with the strange man with a violent past riding into frontier towns and cleaning up the bad guys.

Missionary Man's artists gave the strip a distinct look, with plenty of decrepit desert landscapes and hideous mutant raiders and criminals to match wits with Preacher Cain. Rennie comes up with some very clever storylines which take their cue from the classics and evoke Western mythology's particular aura. The Marshall-illustrated "Legend of the Unholy Drinker" is a particular favorite, concerning a zombie who wanders the desert looking for watering holes. It isn't - perhaps surprisingly - played for laughs, but instead takes a sorrowful tone.

After a few years as one of the best things in the Judge Dredd Megazine, Missionary Man was moved to 2000 AD to finish up some ongoing storylines and then begin an epic road trip called "The Promised Land." In this adventure, Cain agrees to help a party of "Helltrekking" Mega-City refugees who have lost their guide. While not the most unique of storylines - it feels like it's following in the footsteps of at least two Judge Dredd epics - the tale winds its way through several memorable episodes before an unforgettable conclusion.

There has only been one Missionary Man collection thus far. In the early 2000s, Titan released a single collection of the first eleven episodes, shooting for the audience who might want Frank Quitely's nine installments. This was nice, but it's really not the way it needs to be compiled. Rebellion's proven themselves able to collect classic thrills in nice, satsisfying chunks. Missionary Man's 70-odd episodes would work great in two editions, one with the 1993-96 episodes and one with the 1997-2002 stories. Call the first one "Bad Moon Rising" and the second one "The Promised Land" and you've definitely got a hit on your hands. So how about it, Rebellion?



(Originally posted November 19, 2007, 09:43 at hipsterdad's livejournal.)

UPDATE (3/15/10): A collected edition of the series is scheduled for April 2011.

Reprint This! 16. Rat Pack

UPDATE: Titan has released a hardcover collection of the first 25 episodes.

Reprint This! is a periodic feature where I talk about some out-of-print comic book gems that are not available in collected form for readers to enjoy. This is hoping to let rights owners know that, yes, readers are out here, and we'd like to buy the things we can't get at this time!

Despite such an enormous variety of books available these days, and genuine efforts to present the material in reasonably-priced, archival volumes, there are still countless fabulous series from the US, Britain and Japan which are overdue for new editions. I've selected two dozen titles which should be on bookshelves, but at this time are not.

Sadly still missing in action are the adventures of RAT PACK, the most bloodthirsty and dangerous men to ever tangle behind Nazi lines in the pages of a comic book. The series was devised by Pat Mills and John Wagner, and it was written and illustrated by dozens of the top talents of the 1970s over its six year run.



Like Johnny Red and Major Eazy, two of the earlier Reprint This! features, Rat Pack first appeared in the pages of Battle Picture Weekly. This was one of the original seven strips from the 1975 debut issue, and very much the centerpiece. Prior to IPC's Battle, most weekly comics had two-page episodes for their features. Battle had a standard of three pages per strip, with Rat Pack given a comparatively expansive six pages a week.

Very little in Rat Pack changed over the course of its run. Inspired by The Dirty Dozen, it was the tale of four soldiers who'd broken regulations and were serving time in a military prison when they were given a second chance by Major Taggart, who needed four expendable, yet talented, men for impossible missions behind enemy lines. They are: a big tough guy, a knife-thrower, a superb athlete and a safecracker. It's broadly reminiscent of DC's mid-70s war titles like Sgt. Rock or The Unknown Soldier, with inspiring, larger-than-life heroes having improbably successful suicide missions, except the Rat Pack is made up of such a bunch of dirty, back-stabbing thugs, you just hope nobody you care about gets inspired by them! It's very addictive stuff for young readers.

Creatively, Rat Pack had a very high turnover, as no artist could commit to the demanding schedule for more than a month or two at a time. Carlos Ezquerra handled the art for the first two-part story before it passed down through a who's who of British comic greats, including Eric Bradbury, John Cooper, Cam Kennedy, Colin Page and Mike White. The late Italian artist Massimo Belardinelli did some of his first British work for Rat Pack. The strip's writers included Mills, Wagner, Gerry Finley-Day, Eric Hebden and his son Alan, and Terry Magee.

Rat Pack's turnover may be a strike against any publisher considering a reprint line, since you can't promote it on the backs of any particular names. Then you have the usual issues with old Fleetway stuff, like a loss of the original art. But the fabulously entertaining stories are really worth seeing again, and Titan's done such a good job with Charley's War that I can't believe they wouldn't do Rat Pack proud as well. They'd look great on shelves in annual hardback collections... so how about it, Titan?

(As always, the stalwart lads over at Captain Hurricane's Best of Battle were very helpful in providing background and scans for this article. Give 'em a visit!)



(Originally posted November 09, 2007, 09:19 at hipsterdad's livejournal.)

---

Edited to add: (3/1/08) Titan has announced that they have acquired reprint rights to more of the Battle material, specifically noting Johnny Red, Major Eazy and Rat Pack as among the strips which will be reappearing soon. The major new reprint series will begin with the long-running soccer strip Roy of the Rovers as the spearhead, and also incorporate material from the comics Action, Buster, Tammy and, possibly most excitingly, Misty! Here's the announcement, from Down the Tubes. More details as they become available!

Reprint This Update on Black Jack

Tezuka's Black Jack Returns

By Kai-Ming Cha -- Publishers Weekly, 10/29/2007 1:54:00 PM

Japanese pulp fiction and classic manga publisher Vertical Inc. announced plans to publish Black Jack, legendary mangaka Osamu Tezuka’s popular series about a genius surgeon, in its entirety beginning in fall 2008.

Black Jack originally ran in Japanese publisher Akita Shoten’s magazine, Weekly Shonen Champion,from 1973 to 1978. The series is approximately 12 volumes. According to Ada Palmer, founder of the Web site Tezuka in English, which is devoted to introducing Tezuka to an English speaking audience, Viz Media published the first two volumes before licensing conflicts with Tezuka Productions forced Viz to cancel the series. A new Black Jack anime—which included the collaboration of Tezuka’s son—recently finished airing on Japanese television after a two-year run. An older version of the Black Jack anime, originally created in the 1980s, was made available unofficially by fans over the Internet and is now available on iTunes.



The series stars title character Black Jack, an unlicensed but gifted surgeon who saves peoples lives, often against all odds. The series is a childhood favorite of Vertical editorial director Ioannis Mentzas. "[Black Jack] is probably the most influential book of my early years,” explained Mentzas, “and I've heard that sentiment from many Japanese." Mentzas added that the character’s appeal lies in its psychology. "Black Jack reflects the glory and squalor of early adulthood,” he said. Mentzas believes that the series will draw an audience in the late teens to early 20s. "I think any high school or 20-something person of the slightest intellectual bent will identify with BJ."

According to Palmer, founder of the Web site Tezuka in English, which is devoted to introducing Tezuka to an English speaking audience, Black Jack is the second most popular character in Japan. "Black Jack is Tezuka's most exciting adult character,” Palmer said, citing the Japanese medical and technology company Hitachi, which recently licensed the Black Jack character to be the spokesman for its medical equipment.

Palmer, whose site attracts an international crowd, said that most English-speaking anime and manga fans don't read Tezuka and aren't usually familiar with works like Buddha, which were formerly marketed to the Japanese literature-reading audience. Because of Viz’s earlier release of the Black Jack manga and the circulation of the anime series, Palmer said that Black Jack is better known among American manga and anime fans and has the potential to broaden his appeal.

"Black Jack is clearly the one that will sell the best in the U.S.,” Palmer said. "This is the title that will make or break his reputation in the U.S."

I first wrote about Black Jack in July. Good work, publishers! What is next?

(Originally posted October 31, 2007, 13:11 at hipsterdad's livejournal.)

The Black Jack entry

Reprint This! 15. Oh, Wicked Wanda!

Reprint This! is a periodic feature where I talk about some out-of-print comic book gems that are not available in collected form for readers to enjoy. This is hoping to let rights owners know that, yes, readers are out here, and we'd like to buy the things we can't get at this time!

Despite such an enormous variety of books available these days, and genuine efforts to present the material in reasonably-priced, archival volumes, there are still countless fabulous series from the US, Britain and Japan which are overdue for new editions. I've selected two dozen titles which should be on bookshelves, but at this time are not.

One of the most memorable comic strips I've ever run across was Frederick Mullally and the late Ron Embleton's OH, WICKED WANDA!, which detailed the machinations of a domineering, super-rich European heiress and her schemes of global domination. It's a strip most of you might have seen glimpses of once or twice, but very few people actually read, what with all the glorious amounts of sex and nudity to distract you from the storyline...



Around 1982 or 1983, I was in middle school and discreetly reading my dad's quarter-century run of Playboy when a formidable stack of new material made its way into the house. Dad had taken on a co-worker's collection of 1970s Penthouse mags when his new bride demanded that he dump them. Well, it didn't take long at all to determine that Penthouse was not in any way appealing, in pictures or in words, except for this remarkable, mind-blowing eight-page comic in the back of most of the issues.

Oh, Wicked Wanda! debuted in 1973 and spent the next eight years engaging in a savage satire of seventies politics and sexual conquests. Our heroine, Wanda von Kreesus, a brunette Amazon who was most often seen in a leather outfit with red thigh-highs and a riding crop, had inherited a Swiss bank in which most of the world's governments had deposited vital secrets. The series involved her various manipulations and schemes to take over the world, assisted by her young lover Candyfloss and a small military strike force made up of lesbians from many nations.

Wanda's adventures put her up against various world politicians, along with media celebrities, who were depicted in savage caricature and odd pseudonyms. Most commonly and mercilessly mocked was Ted Kennedy, who seemed to pop up every month standing in a swimming pool or a pond or a puddle and holding a steering wheel. After OPEC's actions triggered international inflation during the 1973 oil crisis, Wanda was often at work playing Ford and Brehznev against each other before the backdrop of Middle East politics.



Little of this, of course, made much sense to a thirteen year-old whose eye was first caught by Ron Embleton's artwork, and the gorgeous naked women on display. But I was curious enough to start learning what the hell was going on in the 1970s to make everybody act so crazy, and if you're familar enough with the news and events of that decade, then Oh, Wicked Wanda! genuinely shines as a brilliant piece of satire, easily on par with such period gems as Howard the Duck and the Doonesbury of the day. The typical panel composition, with little sidebar conversations among bystanders or Hollywood celebs or the writer and the artist, also evokes Jack Davis or Mort Drucker's work for Mad.

The strange thing is that Wanda is probably so easily dismissed as a sex strip that the remarkable humor, in equal parts bawdy, political and subtle, is completely overlooked. But the sex probably works against any possible reprint value the strip might have, even among publishers who specialize in adult material. Wanda and Candyfloss were probably the first lesbian couple that thousands of people ever read about, and it was arguably just as many people's first exposure to a BDSM lifestyle, but by modern standards, the series is far too tame to have any mileage as a "top-shelf book." Sure, there is full frontal nudity, but nothing explicit, and characters are always seen just before or after they've done the dirty, so a publisher like Eros Comix wouldn't see any value in it. On the other hand, there's more nudity and adult content in Wanda than any non-porn series outside of Playboy's Little Annie Fanny (the success of which certainly inspired Penthouse to commission an ongoing strip of some kind), and it's impossible to claim that the content is incidental to any reader's enjoyment of the comedy and the politics. There's also the problem that the original artwork is long since gone, and from what I understand, Penthouse's archives are in nowhere near the good shape that Playboy's are.

Looking back, it really did feel like an awkward fit in Penthouse even when it was running. Even from today's perspective, the magazine, in the 70s, just felt sleazy, dark, intense and secretive and totally lacking the joie de vivre that a healthy sex life brings. Oh, Wicked Wanda! was vibrant and silly and playful; the adult overtones are masked by the same veil of fun that you see in Bettie Page's smile. That suggests to me that Dark Horse, who have published a few collections of Page photographs by Jim Silke and her other fans, might be the right publisher for the series. Dark Horse also compiled the complete Little Annie Fanny in two volumes, though I expect they did so because of the sales potential of Annie's celebrated creators and artists (Kurtzman, Elder, Jaffee, Davis, etc) as much as the desire to have Annie back in print. It's certainly worth looking into again, and I hope somebody does!



(Originally posted October 26, 2007, 11:01 at hipsterdad's livejournal.)

Reprint This! 14. Marvelman

UPDATE: Marvel Comics have obtained the rights and are reissuing the series, with new coloring, as both periodicals and collected hardback editions.

Reprint This! is a periodic feature where I talk about some out-of-print comic book gems that are not available in collected form for readers to enjoy. This is hoping to let rights owners know that, yes, readers are out here, and we'd like to buy the things we can't get at this time!

Despite such an enormous variety of books available these days, and genuine efforts to present the material in reasonably-priced, archival volumes, there are still countless fabulous series from the US, Britain and Japan which are overdue for new editions. I've selected two dozen titles which should be on bookshelves, but at this time are not.

One title that is near the top of everybody's reprint wish list is the lawsuit-laden, litigation-heavy story of MARVELMAN. This series, originated by Alan Moore and Garry Leach, originally appeared in the black and white British anthology title Warrior before evolving into a color American comic. But it was based on a much older property, and the companies that published Marvelman in the 1980s have all had their assets and intellectual property rights divided among so many squabbling parties that this, of the 25 series I propose in the Reprint This! feature, may be the least likely of them all to ever reappear, despite the public desire to see it again...



The character of Marvelman was created in late 1953 by Mick Anglo, a writer for a British publishing company called L. Miller & Son. They had been repackaging American comic stories of Captain Marvel - the superhero who shouts "Shazam!" - for the British market, but found themselves in a fix when Captain Marvel's original publisher, Fawcett, shut down. Anglo devised Marvelman and some associates as quick replacement characters for the popular feature, and their new adventures, in a variety of comic titles, continued through the 1950s, with reprints continuing the titles until their cancellation in 1963.

Twenty years later, a revamped, modernized Marvelman was included among the offerings in the first issue of Warrior. Written by Alan Moore and with art by Garry Leach and Alan Davis, the new series appeared in the comic's first 21 issues. This is the series that everybody wants to read again. Placing larger-than-life characters into something like the real world and considering the ramifications of their superpowered struggles has since become almost old hat in superhero fiction, but Marvelman did it first and arguably did it better than anybody since.

Detailing the left turns and road blocks in this series would take too long, and it is all laid out in other sites like Wikipedia. Suffice it to say that, for a number of reasons, Marvelman ceased appearing in Warrior after its 21st issue. At the same time, the rights for an American reprint book, retitled Miracleman to avoid even more litigation from a certain US publisher, were purchased by Eclipse Comics. They reprinted - if I understand correctly - 20 of the Warrior episodes, colorized and shrunk to fit the smaller US page size. When they completed the available episodes, Alan Moore, with new artists Chuck Austen and John Totleben, resumed the series for their new American publisher. Miracleman was a huge hit for Eclipse, and reached a natural end with its sixteenth issue. It was revived in the early 1990s by Neil Gaiman - to whom Moore transferred his share of the rights - and Mark Buckingham, but the closure of Eclipse Comics in 1993 left the story incomplete, and a flurry of lawsuits from contesting parties making claims on the property has meant that the celebrated series can only be found in back issue boxes.

So on the face of it, a Marvelman/Miracleman reprint would be the simplest thing ever: one book containing all of the episodes from Warrior in their original black and white, a second book containing Miracleman # 7-16, and a third containing Neil Gaiman's run. With back issue prices just this side of ridiculous, there's clearly demand. But the lawsuits to which I keep referring have shut this series down. There isn't anybody who wouldn't like to see Marvelman again and read what all the fuss is about, and enjoy rare work by Moore and Gaiman, two of modern comics' most celebrated writers, but many of those anybodies suggest that they have a claim towards sharing in the profits of such an enterprise.

Just to further complicate matters, the original series briefly included an appearance by a British super-agent called Big Ben, created by Warrior's publisher, Dez Skinn with the intention of debuting in Marvelman before being spun off into his own series...



Just this month, a promotional image for a proposed Big Ben television cartoon made the rounds of the comic blogs. If that takes off, how's that going to affect any Marvelman volume that features the character, I wonder?

(Originally posted October 17, 2007, 11:43 at hipsterdad's livejournal.)

Reprint This! 13. Major Eazy

UPDATE: Titan released a hardcover collection of the first 30 episodes in 2012.

Reprint This! is a periodic feature where I talk about some out-of-print comic book gems that are not available in collected form for readers to enjoy. This is hoping to let rights owners know that, yes, readers are out here, and we'd like to buy the things we can't get at this time!

Despite such an enormous variety of books available these days, and genuine efforts to present the material in reasonably-priced, archival volumes, there are still countless fabulous series from the US, Britain and Japan which are overdue for new editions. I've selected two dozen titles which should be on bookshelves, but at this time are not.

Carlos Ezquerra's excellent artwork was first noticed as one of the anonymous contributors to DC Thomson's Warlord in the early 1970s. Recognizing him as a talent worth tracking down, the editors of IPC's Battle Picture Weekly found his English agent and gave him some work. Ezquerra's commitments to DCT kept him from taking on a long-term series for a few more months, but when he was free, Battle had the perfect strip for him: the battlefield exploits of a rule-breaking iconoclast called MAJOR EAZY.



Major Eazy was a laid-back, longhaired, scruffy tactical genius and crack shot who drove his Bentley around Italy in 1944, in charge of a small platoon and constantly rubbing his commanding officers and various American sergeants the wrong way, yet always getting the better of everybody by way of his refusal to do anything "by the book." Eazy had a very strong sense of morality, honor and justice, and treated his enemies with more respect than his comrades would.

After 35 episodes, the story flashed back to North Africa in 1941 and presented tales of Eazy's earlier days. There was also a celebrated thirteen-week crossover with another Battle series, Rat Pack, in which Eazy took over that unit while their commanding officer was recuperating. Eazy's laconic approach to the war was a huge hit with many readers, but his popularity was not unanimous. The editors of Battle occasionally printed grouchy letters from uptight point-missing kids who complained that an unshaven, rule-breaking fellow like Eazy wouldn't really have got very far in the British army, and his behavior was sometimes jolly disgraceful!

Objectively, Charley's War was the best of all the strips to appear in Battle, and Johnny Red might have been the most popular, but Major Eazy is certainly my favorite. Certainly, there's an element of repetition - Alan Barnes, editor of Judge Dredd Megazine, is said to have ruled out reprinting Eazy in that comic because "if you've read one Major Eazy, you've read them all." I certainly don't agree with that, although the early days of the strip certainly would have benefitted from longer, multi-part stories instead of one-offs. But even when the plot feels familiar, there's always an exciting, witty payoff to Eazy's latest idea. Plus, the artwork is just fantastic. I could look at these pages for days.

A reprint of Major Eazy would be complicated by its format. The first twelve episodes were told in three-page episodes, starting with a color double-page centerspread. There's no way to compile this in print without using a pin-up or cover on every fourth page, which certainly won't please any graphics novel editor . But Titan has certainly proven itself able to handle odd formats and color images with their Charley's War editions. Including the 13 episode crossover with Rat Pack, there are 91 episodes of the series, so call it no more than 364 pages. That could certainly be done in three of their nice hardcover volumes with room for background and creator interviews. So how about it, Titan?



For more information on Battle and Major Eazy, including some story scans (from which a couple of these images were cropped), be sure to visit Captain Hurricane's Best of Battle.



(Originally posted October 09, 2007, 06:07 at hipsterdad's livejournal.)

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Edited to add: (3/1/08) Titan has announced that they have acquired reprint rights to more of the Battle material, specifically noting Johnny Red, Major Eazy and Rat Pack as among the strips which will be reappearing soon. The major new reprint series will begin with the long-running soccer strip Roy of the Rovers as the spearhead, and also incorporate material from the comics Action, Buster, Tammy and, possibly most excitingly, Misty! Here's the announcement, from Down the Tubes. More details as they become available!

Edited to add: (8/2/10) Titan has solicited the first Major Eazy hardback in the August 2010 edition of Previews for release in October.

Reprint This! 12. The Stainless Steel Rat

UPDATE: Rebellion has released a complete collection of this series in a single-volume paperback.

Reprint This! is a periodic feature where I talk about some out-of-print comic book gems that are not available in collected form for readers to enjoy. This is hoping to let rights owners know that, yes, readers are out here, and we'd like to buy the things we can't get at this time!

Despite such an enormous variety of books available these days, and genuine efforts to present the material in reasonably-priced, archival volumes, there are still countless fabulous series from the US, Britain and Japan which are overdue for new editions. I've selected two dozen titles which should be on bookshelves, but at this time are not.

Since Carlos Ezquerra is among my favorite artists, he's pretty high on the list of creators whose work I'd like to see collected. The editors of 2000 AD had given one of his best-known strips, Strontium Dog, a short rest in 1980 and found a fabulous new project for him to tackle, a comic adaptation of Harry Harrison's novels about the galactic conman called THE STAINLESS STEEL RAT.



The Stainless Steel Rat is the nickname given to "Slippery" Jim diGriz, a ne'er-do-well who started his criminal career with a lengthy prison sentence. Jim figured that getting in the slammer would get him access to all the great criminal masterminds and from them he could learn the tricks of the trade, forgetting, as a novice might, that the best bad guys don't actually get caught. Things improved for Slippery Jim after that and he began a legendary career in safecracking, burglary and confidence tricks, attracting the attention of the galactic police. Much to Jim's surprise, they didn't want to arrest him; they wanted to conscript him...

The comic adaptation of The Stainless Steel Rat was a big hit for 2000 AD in the early 1980s. Three of the novels were adapted, each in twelve parts of about six pages each, by Kelvin Gosnell and Ezquerra. The first two are each incredibly entertaining, but the third, The Stainless Steel Rat for President, is utterly wonderful. Harrison wrote the book as a savage satire on Central American politics, and sees Slippery Jim and his growing family deciding to take on an aging, despotic, president-for-life in a delightful game of dirty politics.

The Stainless Steel Rat was only reprinted once, in a six-issue miniseries for the US market, with the pages resized and colorized. The copyright on the scripts and artwork belong to Rebellion, the company that now owns 2000 AD, but the speculaton is that it can't be reprinted without the permission of Harry Harrison, who owns the characters and the storylines. Still, he seemed taken with the adaptations when it originally ran, and a collection, which would run to just over 200 pages, would be a treat for both Harrison's fans and 2000 AD readers. It wouldn't hurt to ask Harrison, so how about it, Rebellion?



This has got me in an Ezquerra frame of mind. I wonder what I can come up with for the next installment...



(Originally posted September 28, 2007, 10:26 at hipsterdad's livejournal.)

Update Dec. 6 2009: An Amazon listing for a collected edition is revealed.

Reprint This! 11. Jungle Emperor

Reprint This! is a periodic feature where I talk about some out-of-print comic book gems that are not available in collected form for readers to enjoy. This is hoping to let rights owners know that, yes, readers are out here, and we'd like to buy the things we can't get at this time!

Despite such an enormous variety of books available these days, and genuine efforts to present the material in reasonably-priced, archival volumes, there are still countless fabulous series from the US, Britain and Japan which are overdue for new editions. I've selected two dozen titles which should be on bookshelves, but at this time are not.

One title that's probably more overdue than any other is JUNGLE EMPEROR, one of Osamu Tezuka's earliest comics. It ran in the pages of Manga Shonen from 1950-54. A decade later, Tezuka's company produced a television adaptation, Japan's first color animated series. The show, distributed in America by Fred Ladd's company and retitled Kimba the White Lion, was a worldwide success and has prompted several sequel series, films and remakes, but, bizarrely, the original comic has never been collected in English.



Jungle Emperor is the story of a lion named Leo, who is briefly raised by humans and whose father created a safe haven for all animals in the jungle. The cub Leo wants to expand the territory to embrace human culture as well, and wishes for peace for all creatures. Naturally, he finds opposition, both from other animals who challenge his claim to the region, and from humans who bring their squabbles into his kingdom.

I certainly know less about Jungle Emperor than anything else on the Reprint This! list, since I've only flipped through copies of Japanese editions of the comics. I'm more familiar with the TV series, both the original but more so the second series, which was shown on the old CBN network in the 1980s under the name Leo the Lion. It's a truly excellent series, full of heart and optimism. The action and the comedy bits also work very well, but Tezuka's hope for a peaceful world shines in every reflective moment.

Anyway, in Japan, Jungle Emperor was a massive success and has been reprinted many times over the last fifty years, but no American company has licensed the rights to the comics. This is uninformed speculation, but I think that an American publisher like Viz would like to cross-promote any comic series that did appear with the cartoon series, which is already available via a small video company called The Right Stuf. Anyway, while we're holding out for Viz to give Tezuka's Black Jack another try, perhaps Dark Horse, who have published several volumes of Astro Boy, might like to give this one another look. Alternately, Vertical has published several other Tezuka volumes in the US, including Buddha, Apollo's Song and Ode to Kirihito. I think it's a winner in the right hands, so I hope somebody takes a chance on it.

(And while I'm thinking about it, I'd also like to see English editions of Ambassador Magma and Wonder 3, now, please.)



Special thanks to Dave Merrill for sending me these wonderful scans. Most appreciated!



(Originally posted September 18, 2007, 06:00 at hipsterdad's livejournal.)

(edited to add: Publisher's Weekly had already interviewed Ioannis Mentzas of Vertical about Tezuka's work, and this series was mentioned, before this article appeared. Click to visit.)

Reprint This! 10. Johnny Red

UPDATE: The first 75 or so episodes of Johnny Red have been reprinted in 3 hardcover volumes by Titan, released in 2011-13. Go, buy 'em all!

Reprint This! is a periodic feature where I talk about some out-of-print comic book gems that are not available in collected form for readers to enjoy. This is hoping to let rights owners know that, yes, readers are out here, and we'd like to buy the things we can't get at this time!

Despite such an enormous variety of books available these days, and genuine efforts to present the material in reasonably-priced, archival volumes, there are still countless fabulous series from the US, Britain and Japan which are overdue for new editions. I've selected two dozen titles which should be on bookshelves, but at this time are not.

One title that's been missing in action for years is JOHNNY RED, a World War Two thriller created by Tom Tully and the late Joe Colquhoun. It ran in the pages of Battle Picture Weekly from 1977-87, with other artists including John Cooper and Carlos Pino. This was one of Battle's best-loved series, an exciting rollercoaster of a comic that's as unpredictable as it is inventive and fun to read.



Johnny Red has a great premise. It's about a pilot who's been busted out of the service for striking an officer and, lacking any other prospects during the war, is scrubbing decks on a merchant ship in the Barents Sea. He steals the ship's Hurricane after the pilot bites it in a German attack and fights off the Nazi airmen, but feels he doesn't have any option but to land the plane in Russia after his ship goes down.

In Siberia, he joins a squadron of bedraggled, demoralized frontliners who are barely surviving after the Germans have cut most of their supply lines. But Johnny faces awkward questions from the Russian intelligence who want to know exactly what it is that he's doing there at all...

Johnny Red was an immediate hit with Battle's readers, and it racked up something like 500 three-page episodes over the course of its run, appearing in almost every issue for a decade and finally ending when an ailing Battle merged with Eagle and it was decided to save money by running reprints. The first two years were drawn by the great Joe Colquhoun. After 96 episodes, Colquhoun was moved to a new feature, Charley's War, and John Cooper took over. Cooper was better known for several earlier strips about lone wolf, tough-guy spies, but really raised his game to follow in Colquhoun's shoes. This was a pretty shrewd move on Battle's part, splitting the successful team the way they did, but it was to both series' benefit.

Incidentally, the images you see here were cropped from the quite nice scans available at Falcon Squadron, a Johnny Red fan site where readers can enjoy the first four years of the strip. This is the next best thing to a bookshelf reprint, although no real substitute. It's been speculated that the fans at Spitfire Comics have considered licensing the rights, and other people have held out hope that Titan, who've brought us the excellent series of Charley's War books, among others, might try out a nice hardcover collection one day. I think it's a winner in the right hands, so how about it, Titan?



(Originally posted September 07, 2007, 08:01 at hipsterdad's livejournal.)

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Edited to add: (3/1/08) Titan has announced that they have acquired reprint rights to more of the Battle material, specifically noting Johnny Red, Major Eazy and Rat Pack as among the strips which will be reappearing soon. The major new reprint series will begin with the long-running soccer strip Roy of the Rovers as the spearhead, and also incorporate material from the comics Action, Buster, Tammy and, possibly most excitingly, Misty! Here's the announcement, from Down the Tubes. More details as they become available!

Reprint This! 9. The Inferior Five

Reprint This! is a periodic feature where I talk about some out-of-print comic book gems that are not available in collected form for readers to enjoy. This is hoping to let rights owners know that, yes, readers are out here, and we'd like to buy the things we can't get at this time!

Despite such an enormous variety of books available these days, and genuine efforts to present the material in reasonably-priced, archival volumes, there are still countless fabulous series from the US, Britain and Japan which are overdue for new editions. I've selected two dozen titles which should be on bookshelves, but at this time are not.

One title that's been missing in action for years is a 1960s DC comedy book called INFERIOR FIVE, created by E. Nelson Bridwell and the late Joe Orlando, with additional art by Mike Esposito. It may be a little dated, and the more humorless members of the continuity crowd may not appreciate it, but it's a clever and very witty title that deserves to be seen again.



Inferior Five is basically a superhero parody strip, one of the first that DC tried. This came as the publisher was getting its market share hammered by the upstarts at Marvel Comics, who quickly labelled DC as "Brand Echh Comics," stuck in the past and writing books for little kids, as opposed to their own "Pop Art Productions" ostensibly geared towards teens. True enough, DC really did look like a bloated dinosaur. Lots of books were selling well, but it was apparent that some new blood was needed.

Bridwell and Orlando came to DC from Mad magazine and were among several new creators put to work on developing new ideas and a fresher, more contemporary style. As would be the case for years to come, the concept of "a fresh outlook" would crash into "protect viability of trademarks," and so Bridwell and Orlando, along with many other fresh faces like Bob Oskner or Nick Cardy or the recently-poached-from-Marvel Steve Ditko, weren't given assignments on the top-selling superhero trademark books, but they still created some fun and dynamic comics in the late 1960s.

The Inferior Five are ostensibly the bungling children of some mighty superheroes who were active in the 1940s, and who are so inept that they must work as a team as none of them can effectively fight crime on their own. I think you've heard that joke before, but that's just the setup. The parodies of DC's competitors are really silly, and done with the same sort of flair you'd expect from MAD veterans. Inferior Five was very well-received by the fan press of its day, and beat out the regular "best humor title" winner Herbie the Fat Fury at the old Alter-Ego Alley Awards in 1966.

So, how to handle a reprint? Since Inferior Five only lasted for three years, there is not a great deal of material to restore. It debuted in the anthology Showcase in 1966 and ran for three issues before earning its own title. That ran for ten bi-monthly issues before DC cancelled the book. That's maybe about 220 pages. A little color restoration and a short introduction by somebody familiar with the material, and I think you've got an excellent package spotlighting something many readers might enjoy. So how about it, DC?



(Originally posted August 27, 2007, 06:04 at hipsterdad's livejournal.)

Reprint This! 8. Doonesbury

Reprint This! is a periodic feature where I talk about some out-of-print comic book gems that are not available in collected form for readers to enjoy. This is hoping to let rights owners know that, yes, readers are out here, and we'd like to buy the things we can't get at this time!

Despite such an enormous variety of books available these days, and genuine efforts to present the material in reasonably-priced, archival volumes, there are still countless fabulous series from the US, Britain and Japan which are overdue for new editions. I've selected two dozen titles which should be on bookshelves, but at this time are not.

One gem which isn't actually missing but is very poorly served in bookshelf format is DOONESBURY by Garry Trudeau. Almost all of the strips have been reprinted at one time or another, and are available on CD-ROMs and in the archives of the website, but much of the material is no longer available in print editions. That which can be tracked down is in a variety of formats and sizes, begging for a consistent design and approach.



Doonesbury began its run as a syndicated strip in October, 1970. Within four years, it had won a Pulitzer Prize and introduced a gigantic cast of fascinating and funny characters. Well, mostly; Doonesbury may be second only to Peanuts as my all-time favorite comic strip, but my eyes certainly glaze over whenever Zeke and Mike's damnable ex-wife show up.

I think that Doonesbury is one of those strips that you either love absolutely or you just don't get it. At the time of this writing, Uncle Duke is the central character in a story about "Berzerkistan," and it's the first thing I look at when I get to my desk at work. I've been totally taken in by the characters and their world since I discovered The Doonesbury Chronicles collection when I was in middle school. It was through Trudeau's eyes that I first started paying attention to news and politics. Frankly, I don't know how anybody can make any sense of our government in the 1970s without Doonesbury to help them out. (And more on making sense of the 70s in a forthcoming feature...)

The problem, apart from simply getting the material back in print in a good, consistent format, is that so much of Doonesbury's current events focus is hardwired to its time that future readers could use some annotations and commentary along with the old strips. Heck, even current readers looking back at the books of the 1980s may not remember what the fuss was with USA Today's graphics-heavy content, or why some of the principals stand around a desolate tree for a week waiting for Mario Cuomo to show up. Twenty years from now, will Dick Cheney's bizarre notion of government having more than three branches be as lost to time?

I don't believe that Doonesbury is nearly as impenetrable as some of its critics make out, and the incredibly reader-friendly website is full of helpful FAQs and example strips to refresh readers' memories about the continuity of the strip itself. All that's needed is a fresh approach to the bookshelf format, consistent design and annotations. Previous Doonesbury editions have been handled by Holt, Rinehart & Wilson, but these mass-market efforts have been done with such a slipshod approach that maybe somebody different should take over. Fantagraphics has done such an amazing job repackaging Peanuts, Dennis the Menace and Love & Rockets recently that everybody is confident their forthcoming collection of Pogo will be unmissable, sight unseen. If anybody should be in charge of restoring Doonesbury to bookshelves, it's Fantagraphics. Or possibly Drawn & Quarterly. Either way, thirty-five years of brilliant strip cartooning needs to be given much better treatment than it has, and there are far better options out there than the one that's been in place. So how about it, Trudeau?



(Originally posted August 17, 2007, 05:55 at hipsterdad's livejournal.)

Reprint This! 7. Doctor Who Adventures

Reprint This! is a periodic feature where I talk about some out-of-print comic book gems that are not available in collected form for readers to enjoy. This is hoping to let rights owners know that, yes, readers are out here, and we'd like to buy the things we can't get at this time!

Despite such an enormous variety of books available these days, and genuine efforts to present the material in reasonably-priced, archival volumes, there are still countless fabulous series from the US, Britain and Japan which are overdue for new editions. I've selected two dozen titles which should be on bookshelves, but at this time are not.

One missing gem is DOCTOR WHO ADVENTURES by writers including Alan Barnes, with art principally by John Ross. Well, I suppose "missing" is not the right word. This is a very new comic, and the editors may well have plans for collected editions, but for now it's disagreeably difficult and expensive to get in the US, and I'm selfish and impatient.



Doctor Who has a long history in comics. He had a strip running in the pages of TV Comic in 1964, and the Daleks were popular enough to have their own back-page series with art by Ron Turner. In the 1970s, the feature moved to Countdown for a time, and eventually the Doctor got his own Marvel magazine. Doctor Who Weekly was aimed at kids, with contests, games and pinups, and featured two or three serialized comics in each issue. The main feature was initially written by Pat Mills and John Wagner, and illustrated by Dave Gibbons. Backup stories featured tales of the monsters and aliens, with early work by everyone from Steve Dillon to Alan Moore.

Many of these Doctor Who comics are available in some amazing collected editions by Panini, the current publisher of the magazine, which has long since lost its remit as a children's purchase. It's now aimed at adult readers, in part a nostalgic and very intricate study of how television shows are created and in part a celebration of the current show. The still-popular comic is the only holdover from the old days.

Seeing a gap in the market, the BBC launched Doctor Who Adventures for young readers. This biweekly magazine features larger font size for easier reading, pinups, free gifts, Moxx of Balhoun masks, Daleks and Cybermen posters, "secret facts about the Slitheen" articles, and a really, really fun comic, told in serialized six-page episodes. That's not to dismiss the comic in the Panini magazine, which is still pretty entertaining, but the one in the BBC comic is a lot more manic, in keeping with David Tennant's Doctor, and I just love John Ross's expressive, imaginative artwork, vividly colored by veteran Adrian Salmon.

The problem is that Doctor Who Adventures is practically impossible to find in the US, and the price tag when it does show up is pretty steep for a kids' magazine. It's a lot to pay for six pages of comics, which is why the BBC needs to follow Panini's lead and start collecting them on nice paper with a big, thick page count. The 35th issue of the magazine is out now, which, assuming it's appeared in each issue (The Hipster Kids and I only have five of them) totals up to 210 pages of comics. If the BBC's editorial team gets working on it now, they could have a very nice package of these great stories out in time for Christmas, and what a nice present that would make... so how about it, BBC?



(Originally posted August 09, 2007, 07:24 at hipsterdad's livejournal.)