Month: November 2012

S is for Sub-Mariner

I now have the two more Masterworks covering Sub-Mariner stories I once owned, a couple of the Defenders, and one of the Golden Age Sub-Mariner, naturally featuring Everett’s story and art.

When I got suckered into reading comic books when I went to college, I started with a couple of comics that were #1s, but also Sub-Mariner #50. My girlfriend at the time and later my wife, the Okie, was particularly fond of Namor, the character with ears like Mr. Spock from Star Trek. As it turned out, the Sub-Mariner long predated the Vulcan, but did have a thing or two in common.

From the Marvel Universe: Namor’s father, American seaman Leonard McKenzie, embarked on an expedition to Antarctica in 1920… McKenzie set explosive charges to break up ice floes in the ship’s path, unaware that Atlantis lay beneath the waters. The city sustained heavy damage, and Atlantean Emperor Thakorr commanded his daughter Fen to investigate the cause of the explosions… In a strange twist of fate, Fen and McKenzie quickly fell in love and were married. Thakorr, fearing his daughter had been kidnapped or killed, sent an Atlantean war party to search for her. Thinking her a captive, the Atlanteans slaughtered McKenzie’s crew and apparently McKenzie himself. Afterward, Fen returned with the War party to Atlantis. Nine months later, Namor was born the first known Homo sapien – Homo mermanus hybrid.

So Namor, like Spock, was part homo sapien. On the other hand, while Spock was cool, Namor could be a bit of a hothead. The king of Atlantis has had several alliances over the years, but he has always chafed at being ordered about.

Wikipedia notes that Namor the Sub-Mariner was created by Bill Everett and “first appeared publicly in Marvel Comics #1 (Oct. 1939) — the first comic book from Timely Comics, the 1930s-1940s predecessor of the company Marvel Comics. During… the Golden Age of Comics, the Sub-Mariner was one of Timely’s top three characters, along with Captain America and the original Human Torch. Everett said the character’s name was inspired by Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem, ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.’ Everett came up with ‘Namor’ by writing down noble-sounding names backwards and thought Roman/Namor looked the best.”

So I felt extremely lucky that the very first issue of Sub-Mariner I purchased featured the return of creator Bill Everett! Unfortunately, declining health meant that he contributed to only about a dozen stories before he died in 1973.

Still, I was hooked on this outsider with a bit of a chip on his shoulder. That particular run ended with issue 72, but I followed him when he joined the anti-group, The Defenders. But I needed more. Fortunately, I discovered the back issue market, as I described here. I also noted how I had gotten rid of my comics, but now have replaced some of them in hardcover book form. In addition to the ones mentioned, I now have the two more Masterworks covering Sub-Mariner stories I once owned, a couple of the Defenders, and one of the Golden Age Sub-Mariner, naturally featuring Everett’s story and art.

I must admit that I haven’t kept up with his development over the past couple of decades – one can read more here – but I’d still number him as one of my favorite comic book characters.

ABC Wednesday – Round 11

The thing about Stephen King is…

FantaCo sold a lot of horror film items in the mail order, as well as comic books.

I’ve seen at least five movies based on the works of author Stephen King: The Shining (1980), which I did not like; Stand by Me (1986), which I was very fond of; Misery (1991), which was quite good; The Shawshank Redemption (1994), which I LOVED; and The Green Mile (1999), which had its moments. Also saw at least parts of some miniseries.

I’ve read various comic book adaptations of his work. I devoured his articles in Entertainment Weekly magazine. But until the fourth quarter of 2012, I had NEVER read a Stephen King book, not one. Not even his nonfiction On Writing, which actually DID intrigue me. Or his book namechecking baseball pitcher Tom Gordon.

Let me tell you a story that’s only vaguely about Stephen King. I’ve told it before, but it was some years ago.

It would help if you understood that FantaCo, where I worked from 1980 to 1988, sold mostly comic books in the retail store. However, we sold a lot of horror film items in the mail order as well, including back issues of Fangoria magazine, Freddy Krueger (plastic) claws, and books and comics of the horror genre, some of which we published. It was partly from that experience that I got all “horrored out,” as it were.

There was a graphic novelization of the Stephen King’s Creepshow drawn by Berni Wrightson in the mid-1980s, published by some company. Having connections in both the comic and horror markets, we at FantaCo absolutely knew, from both comic and horror film stores we dealt with, that there was still a demand for this title, but no one seemed to be able to get any, for no explicable reason.

I went to the library and looked up the publisher’s information in Books in Print. The grapevine had it that there were still many copies of the book remaining. I wrote to the publisher and got no response.

About a month later, I called the publisher and was told the book was no longer available, which I had heard from others to be untrue. A couple of days later, I called again, and THIS time, I reached someone else, who acknowledged that they had copies but that it was not worth their time and money for them to send out the books, only to deal with a huge percentage of returns.

Now direct market comic book stores such as FantaCo were quite used to buying comic books on a non-returnable basis, but at a higher discount than the comic books sold at your local drug store. I said, “What if we bought the books on a non-returnable basis?” I thought the guy’s teeth were going to fall out. “Non-returnable?” So, we took 100 copies of Creepshow at 70% off the $6.95 cover price, put them in the store, listed them in a Fangoria ad, and blew through them.

I called the publisher again and ordered another 100. By this point other stores, seeing the book in our ad, were clamoring for this item, so we ordered an additional 500, and sold it to these horror book stores, and a few comic book stores, at 40% off, non-returnable. We kept on ordering in lots of 500 or 1000 until the publisher really WAS out of copies. The publisher made money on an item it had given up on, retail stores got to sell a book they could otherwise not get, we made a decent profit even wholesaling someone else’s book, and this kept the Wrightson/King book from just being remaindered. Talk about your win-win-win-win.

So now it’s Columbus Day 2012. I’d taken all the newspapers I hadn’t perused, which were several, and read them all. I’m in the North Albany branch of the library, with my daughter on the computer, using MY library card (so that I can’t be on the computer, too), while The Wife and my sister are finishing up at the YMCA next door, and I’m rather bored. Then I see it: a book I just had to read…

Hostess: the mostess, for a few

I boycotted Hostess from about 1970 until the Vietnam war was over in 1975.

For me, the issue of the Hostess Brands snack food line apparently going under – I can’t believe that someone won’t buy this venerable line – isn’t the loss of Ding Dongs. It’s that, apparently, the company had “manipulated” its executives’ pay–sending its former chief executive’s salary, in particular, skyrocketing- in the months leading up to its Chapter 11 filing, in an effort to dodge the Bankruptcy Code’s compensation requirements.

Yet the stories I hear on the nightly news talk about the failure of the company to come to an agreement with the unions. Implicit in that is if it weren’t for the greedy unions, we’d still have our Twinkies. Maybe, just maybe, it was the unions who were offered a bad deal, and are now getting a bad rap.

I have a peculiar history with Hostess. During the Vietnam war, the product line was owned by ITT, and ITT built stuff that helped the war machine. So I boycotted Hostess from about 1970 until the war was over in 1975. Truth is, I never much liked Wonder Bread all that much, and after I started eating whole-grain breads, Wonder Bread was inedible. I liked Twinkies, though. Finally, after a half dozen years, I tried a Twinkie again; I thought it was AWFUL, pure sugar. Had my taste buds changed, or did my previous political antipathy make it taste bad? But I still liked the fruit pies when I tried them again, though I preferred the ones by Drake, which had a fun commercial to boot.

Mark Evanier made some interesting points. “They came out with ‘100 calorie’ packs of their Twinkies and cupcakes… but the experiment caused me to swear off their products for good. The size of a Twinkie that got the calories down to that acceptable number was so small as to be unsatisfying and it made me more acutely aware of how many were in the full-sized version.” Other brands did the same thing, and I had the same reaction. As for Wonder Bread, “by the time they did offer a ‘whole grain white,’ it felt insincere on their part.” Absolutely!

I’m not planning on buying up some Hostess products. Despite the cliche, they WON’T last forever like styrofoam.

 

Presents for Mom

She was a tactful woman, but it was quite evident that she did not particularly enjoy my selection.

When my sisters and I were growing up, buying presents for my mother was not exactly easy. But for either her birthday or Christmas and occasionally both, she would receive some product from Jean Naté. It was “her” product line. I didn’t even know it was still being made until I looked it up; it’s now owned by Revlon.

When she, my father, and baby sister moved down to Charlotte, she started collecting decorative bells. There are LOTS of bells out there, so this made purchasing easy.

Still, I wanted to go off-script, and in 1981, I decided to buy her an LP, Joe Jackson’s Jumpin’ Jive, based on my understanding that she liked some of the original Louis Jordan and Cab Calloway songs. She was a tactful woman, but it was quite evident that she did not particularly enjoy my selection. I went back to the bells.

Then around 2000, she decided the bells were just dust collectors and got rid of all but a handful of them, indicating that she didn’t want any more. Suddenly, I didn’t have a gift for which to be on the lookout. I would ask my mother outright, and she’d always say something useless, such as “You don’t need to get me anything.” Yeah, Mom, but I WANT to. Ultimately, I’d just ask my baby sister, who lived with her.

For either her birthday or Christmas 2010, I found this just perfect sweater – warm, the right color purple. Plus I got her those word puzzles that she liked to do to keep her mind sharp.

Today would have been Mom’s 85th birthday. I wish I still had to struggle with what to buy her.

The Rules: Christmas Gifts

thought we had an implied contract. I hint about gifts, she buys, and if there’s something that I want – that I really, really want – that I didn’t get, I’ll buy it myself.

We’ve been married for over 13 years. You’d think The Wife would have figured out the rules about Christmas gifts by now. Maybe I’m too subtle.

Back in September, she made a passing remark about some of the things she might want for Christmas. One of them was a health book; she actually has an earlier iteration, from the 1970s, but it’s now up to the ninth edition.

In October, she comes home from the bookstore with that very book! She says, “Look at what I got!” I harrumphed; I had just ordered it on Amazon that week, and it was too late to cancel. She didn’t see this as a big deal; I did, because she’s not always the easiest person to shop for, and I don’t have an infinite amount of inspiration.

It was especially tricky because we weren’t going to the Medieval Faire this year, that event, where I often buy her a nice wool sweater that she has coveted, fell on the same day I had an extra choir rehearsal, a family birthday party, the daughter’s soccer game, and her first ballet rehearsal for the Nutcracker. Not to mention picking up our repaired vacuum cleaner and taking stuff to the shredding events – we have several bags, and it only takes place periodically.

Moreover, I thought we had an implied contract. I hint about gifts, she buys, and if there’s something that I want – that I really, really want – that I didn’t get, I’ll buy it myself. So when she broadly gives hints before Christmas, I don’t expect her to come home with the item a month later. She claims that she didn’t think I heard her; I almost ALWAYS hear her, though I may have REACTED as though I didn’t, which I attribute to my fine thespian skills.

She said, “Well, it’s no big deal; I’ll return it and get something else.” Well, no, then she’d know precisely what I got her, and there’d be less fun in that. Ultimately, I gave the book I bought to someone else, as a VERY early Christmas present, and bought The Wife ANOTHER book, which, I hope, she doesn’t go out and purchase herself. Because I’m starting to run out of ideas…

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