"I'd Buy That For A Dollar!"

 

I was a little bored this morning, so I decided to create a little bit of work for myself sitting at the desktop PC.

While was working at it, I formulated this crazy fan theory.  A combination of my artistic process, cognitive reasoning,...and possibly lack of sleep...does this to me all the time.  I have epiphanies about trivial nonsense, or as the late George Carlin once put it: "This is the shit I think about when the power goes out."

I also like to blame my college education and choice of minor study.  I chased a minor course in study in existential philosophy all the way an Associate in "Social Sciences" while picking up my Masters in Humanities because, 1.) I had nothing better to do with my time as an Art major, and 2.) I read way too much Ayn Rand in high school.  All I know is that I spent 60 grand of someone's money via grants and endowments over the course of four years.  Thankfully, I avoided student loans like the plague because of the horror stories I'd heard in my youth about them and I literally have friends who attended college with me that are still paying that shit off.  Someone once asked how I pulled that grift off, and my reply was:  "I'm a hustla, baby.  Respect the game." Truthfully, at that time in the area I was in, they considered the residents of poverty level rural Appalachian communities an impoverished "minority" and if you knew where to look, the National Endowment of the Arts offered lots of financial options to further your education.  Basically, if you acted like a stupid hillbilly they would just throw money at you for book learnin'.  I did have to explain my educational endeavor to my friends and family...

"Whut's a minor in Existential Philosophy good fer?"

"Y'know....like Dalton in "ROADHOUSE"."

"Hell's Bells, cuz....you should be able to whoop some ass wit' that."

Ironically, it has given me a leg up on discerning the objective reality of my environment...so, I guess I have that going for me.  Bonus. 

Anyways....like I said before, I was bored and decided to do something crafty to occupy my brain.  I had a DVD copy of 1988's ROBOCOP The Animated Series laying around whose cover artwork was torn and water damaged. So, I decided to remedy the situation and just create some custom cover art to replace the damaged stuff.  So, I dug through my collection for some items to scan for clip art (an old VHS, some comic books I had laying around, and some trading cards I'd forgotten I'd owned) and went to work using a simple ancient Windows Paint application piecing together a collage of found art.  And while I was doing this, I began to think about the ROBOCOP franchise, of which I've always been a big fan of.

I began thinking that the alternate corporate run future presented in ROBOCOP (1987) is a pretty brilliant social commentary on the excesses in American culture of the 1980s....and how crazy it was that they tried to merchandise it for children.  A hyper-violent pop culture in-joke is perfect fodder for children's programming, right?  That's when I started formulating what I call "the OCP Doubleblind Metatextual Paradox" fan theory...

It goes like this:  In the real world, the ROBOCOP film franchise exists, and they have made multiple attempts at licensing and merchandising the property, with each attempt varying in tone from the source material. If one considers the core three films of the franchise as the main canon: ROBOCOP, ROBOCOP 2, and ROBOCOP 3, then one might give some thought to this idea-

The ROBOCOP films that are canon are exactly that in the universe in which OCP resides: popular film depiction of the events transpiring there.  Robocop is the reanimated tissue of Alex Murphy in a cyborg body, and Peter Weller plays Robocop on the big screen.  The corporate entity known as OCP would take every opportunity to merchandise and promote the ROBOCOP Program, and all of the merchandising and licensing that exists here in the "real world" exists there, too, including the films.  All the comic books, animated projects, TV shows, toys, video games are at the same time canon and non-canonical...because they exist as they are: licensed product within the canon.  Everything's canon....because everything's non-canon.  Everything exists because it does.  This explains the vast tonal difference between, say, the original 1987 film and the 1988 animated series.  Merchandising, merchandising, merchandising!!!  A doubleblind metatextual paradox...just like SPACEBALLS...

And if you think that was a lot of overthinking about trivial nonsense, you should hear my theories about how the TV show HAPPY DAYS exists in an alternate past where Kennedy was never assassinated, nor were we a military presence in Southeast Asia...

Modern Mystery....

 I'm a massive longtime fan of the defunct comics publisher Charlton Comics of Derby, Connecticut...I've always loved the publisher due to a couple of aesthetics I find personally amusing-  low budget knock-off product and exploitation driven media.  I've joked for years that Charlton and it's product were the comic book industry's equivalent of "grindhouse" or "B-Movie" cinema, maintaining that the "Big Two" mainstream publishers (Marvel and DC) felt like Disney and Warner Bros., while Charlton was more akin to AIP or Roger Corman's New World Pictures, low budget independent exploitation producers...

Peacemaker #1 (Charlton, March 1967)

The history of the company is fascinating, with a mixture of elements including copyright infringement, prison time, distribution of adult magazines considered obscenity...not to mention the fact that the press that they published millions of copies of comic books and magazines on wasn't really designed for that task:  The company used a second-hand press originally used for printing cereal boxes. These large presses were very costly to both stop and start, which only happened twice a year when they had to be cleaned; as such, they started publishing comics as a means to keep the presses going.

A 1971 picture of one of Charlton's printing presses

Below:  a selection of some of the stuff that rolled off the cereal box press at Charlton's facility

HIT PARADER and SONG HITS Magazine- That's how the company was founded...here's the jailtime and copyright infringement part:  In 1931, Italian immigrant John Santangelo Sr., a bricklayer who had started a construction business in White Plains, New York, five years earlier, began what became a highly successful business publishing song-lyric magazines out of nearby Yonkers, New York. Operating in violation of copyright laws, however, he was sentenced in 1934 to a year and a day at New Haven County Jail in New Haven, Connecticut, near Derby, where his wife and he by then lived. In jail, he met Waterbury, Connecticut attorney Ed Levy, with whom he began legitimate publishing in 1935, acquiring permissions to reproduce lyrics in such magazines as Hit Parade and Big Song Magazine.

The part involving "obscene" material: Historical accounts vary, some saying that Charlton Publications did not print the first issue of Larry Flynt's HUSTLER Magazine, while some former employees of the company claim to have witnessed a small press run of the first issue rolling off the cereal box press. However, it is documented that they did serve as its original national distributor. Some sources mention that other printers were reluctant to handle the explicit content of the magazine early on, yet Charlton would print and distribute anything if the money was right... 

Charlton Comics published a wide variety of genres, including crime, science fiction, Western, horror, war, and romance comics, as well as talking animal and superhero titles. The company was known for its low-budget practices, often using unpublished material acquired from defunct companies and paying comics creators among the lowest rates in the industry.  It was unique among comic-book companies in that it controlled all areas of publishing – from editorial to printing to distribution – rather than working with outside printers and distributors, as did most other publishers. It did so under one roof at its Derby headquarters.

In 1977, Charlton initiated the Modern Comics imprint.  The official byline for the imprint was that it was established as a way to liquidate a surplus backstock of material, which doesn't really much sense because all the of the Modern issues were newly published reprints with updated pricing and (then) contemporary advertising.  In actuality, Charlton Comics used the Modern Comics imprint primarily as a vehicle for reprinting their older, back-catalog material.  So, I guess I'm arguing semantics and it's a really fancy way of saying, "Let's milk a little bit more cash outta these old printing plates and photostats." 

Key reasons for using this imprint included:

Repackaging Returns: These comics were often sold in plastic-bagged "3-packs" or "4-packs," containing assorted older issues.

Preventing Returns for Credit: By branding unsold, returned inventory with the "Modern" logo, Charlton could re-release them as a new product, preventing stores from returning the copies to distributors for credit.

Targeting Non-Traditional Outlets: The Modern imprint was designed to sell repackaged, reprinted comics in department stores, supermarkets, and similar outlets (such as Woolworths) rather than through traditional newsstands.

Product Differentiation: It allowed Charlton to distinguish between their new, regular-priced publications and their repackaged, lower-cost, or bulk-sold items.

What fascinates me about the Modern imprint was it's later use and repackaging in 1985, during the final death throes of the company's comic book publishing days.

The new 1985 trade dress

In '85, Charlton picked up the license for the popular Japanese import anime, VOLTRON, and published a three issue miniseries of new material based upon the property.

Now, my question has always been (the "Modern Mystery" I'm alluding to in the title for this post):  Knowing Charlton's position at the time...in 1985 and '86 the company was going through what fans have come to refer to as "Charlton's Last Gasp", throwing dozens of reprint titles onto the newsstands hoping that something would sell just prior to ending their comics publishing efforts. I'm curious about the Voltron book , with it's new material and redesigned Modern trade dress.  Was this a last minute attempt by Charlton to rebrand their comics publishing division, with hopes of potentially saving it?  New material under a new banner sort of thing?  It just seems odd that the publisher would do this rebranding of product, considering that (if memory serves) the VOLTRON book was the last piece of original first run material Charlton ever printed.

Grapplers Delight

 I'm what one would probably refer to as a casual fan of professional wrestling these days.  I was a massive fan as a child, what with Vince McMahon's national expansion of the WWF hitting at just the right time during my childhood (I was 10 in 1984), but by that time I was already watching whatever NWA/AWA syndication package was being broadcast to the Cincinnati market pretty religiously due to my grandparents' (Dad's parents) interest in it during weekend  Saturday morning visits to their house.  That, and my mother's stepfather's (who would be my....Step- Grandpa?  Mom's family has always been confusing) interest in attending local indie wrestling promotions' events every weekend in the Lucasville, Ohio area, in which I would tag along with.  We also attended a lot of co-ed roller derby that was put on there, too....in a dancehall/bar/roller rink located next to a double screen drive-in movie theater.  The establishment was basically two metal Tecumseh pole barns merged together at the sides with a bar located dead center in the middle where the barns met, with one barn serving as a dancehall and the other a roller rink.  On Friday nights, they'd run wrestling in the dancehall, and on Saturdays it was roller derby in the rink.  Step-Grandpa was a bar band guitarist who played every drinking establishment on the Ohio side of the River from Higginsport east to Portsmouth and Ironton, which is how he was aware of the events being held.   Step-Grandpa was a pretty fun guy to hang out with.

An amusing 1970s marquee from the  Scioto Breeze Drive-In

I couldn't find any contemporary photos of the dancehall/roller rink, because I believe it may have been torn down at some point in the 1990s, which also would've been around the last times I would've watched a movie at the neighboring Scioto Breeze Auto Theater.  It was double feature of Robert Rodriguez's DESPERADO and Clive Barker's LORD OF ILLUSIONS.

As for why I took an interest in pro wrasslin', it's kind of a no brainer...I was a young comic book nerd, and the mixture of kayfabe soap opera melodrama, theatrical personalities, and colorful ring attire translated to my brain as "real life superheroes".

I was definitely more of a fan of Jim Crockett Promotions syndication package when it finally hit the above-mentioned Cincinnati television market around the same time as McMahon's expansion.  Through it I discovered and became a huge fan of Dusty Rhodes, Magnum TA, the Road Warriors, the antics of Ric Flair and the Four Horsemen....and the Midnight Express and their manager, Jim Cornette.  It was my love for it that later contributed to my decision to swear allegiance to Ted Turner's WCW, of which I was a HUGE fan.   I joke all the time that I'm a veteran of the Monday Night Wars, and our side lost....

The reason why I consider myself a "casual fan" of the sport these days is due to the outcome and aftermath of the Monday Night Wars.  I haven't actively followed the WWE or any other national promotion that's cropped up since, due to simple lack of interest in the product.  It's sad that one of the few moments the WWE has held any interest for me was the "SOUTHPAW WRESTLING" parody segments they produced about a decade and a half ago...I kinda wish they would've ran with that a little bit longer.  I tried TNA/IMPACT/whatever they called themselves really early in their game, back when they were running it as a weekly satellite cable pay per view, and admittedly I was getting it for free due to "burnt" dish box access cards.  AEW sounds like a trainwreck from the start that I thankfully avoided.   Recently, though, I have gotten back into the swing of things by watching Billy Corrigan's NWA after they secured their Roku Channel deal and watching it regularly....and I'm enjoying it immensely.  Not all the angles and gimmicks work, but it reminds me of the product I enjoyed in my youth, only with slightly better production values.  I also love watching local live indie shows...the cheaper the promotion, the better.  The goofier the angles and gimmicks, the better....and NWA POWER reminds me of that,,,,again, only with slightly better production values.

I have, however, remained nostalgic for the sport as it was presented during my youth even if my interest in the contemporary product has waned.  One of my personal wrasslin' sweet spots was Cornette's Smoky Mountain Wrestling (produced from 1992 to 1995).  I spent way too much time and effort creating homemade DVD-Rs of the entire show (taken from YouTube rips) just so I could revisit it any time I wanted to.  I've bought a ton of WWE documentaries featuring promotions and stars of my youth.  I watch a lot of DARK SIDE OF THE RING.  I buy a lot of vintage merchandise (action figures, promotional items, comics books) I find amusing.

I took an interest in Jim Cornette as a kid due to that old rule of thumb:  He's a guy that I loved to hate.  I applied the same philosophy my paternal grandfather did with people he inexplicably liked:  "There's something wrong with that sonuvabitch, but goddammit, I like him."  Later in life, I came to discover we shared some mutual interests:  comic books and superheroes.  Part of my nostalgia driven interest in the sport involves listening to about a half dozen podcasts produced by former wrestling icons, and the best of which IMO are Jim Cornette's two entries in the category:  The Jim Cornette Experience and Jim Cornette's Drive-Thru.  I find him to be a genuinely funny guy who just happens to be very passionate about professional wrestling.  And, I get a kick out of listening to him wax nostalgic about comics...

Rawhide Kid #114 (Marvel, August 1973)

I recently acquired a copy of Marvel's RAWHIDE KID #114 because I had learned that, like me, a young Jim Cornette had some letters published in comic book letter columns.  I had about a half a dozen letters printed in my youth...for those below the age of 30 who might be reading this: the letters column of a comic book was pretty much a combination of social media and message board forums for comic book fandom prior to the existence of the internet.  The one thing Jim received out of the deal was something I coveted as kid and was never awarded:  the infamous Marvel No Prize, basically an empty envelope, potentially autographed by creators, which was awarded to readers for being...well...really obsessive fans of Marvel Comics.  As silly as it sounds, these were very much in demand amongst fans...and some graded autographed examples of them have commanded some ridiculous prices on the secondary collectors market.

This thing is selling for around $8,000.

Edit:  Submitted for the reader's pleasure:  The Jim Cornette action figure I recently ordered directly from JIMCORNETTE.com that Jim personalized for me.

Be sure to check out Jim's website by clicking the banner at the bottom of this page for all kinds of fun Cornette-centric stuff (my good deed for the day: free advertising).

The Math Ain't Mathing...

 

Examples of the first version Marvel's iconic Silver Age "Corner Box" trade dress

Admittedly, my comic book collecting tastes have always been a bit...eccentric.  They've always been dictated by my own...quirky...sense of personal aesthetic, simply put: I just dig what I dig because it amuses me on some level or I find it creatively stimulating.  Sometimes I just like something because of how weird or odd I find it, fully aware that I'm probably the only person in existence that sees the absurdity.  Case in point:  That little corner of the early Marvel Age where a unique Silver Age blend of humor, romance, and teen soap opera comics inhabited:  PATSY WALKER, it's spin off PATSY & HEDY, MILLIE THE MODEL, and it's sister publication MODELING WITH MILLIE.  Oh, and let's not forget the (short-lived) forgotten KATHY THE TEENAGE TORNADO.

Patsy Walker #106 (Marvel, April 1963)

Kathy #23 (Marvel, June 1963)

I've always had a soft spot for these Marvel Oddities, books that had been in publication since (in some cases) the end of the 1940s and the Golden Age of Comics, that just happened to be in the room when the Marvel Age of Comics was just dawning after the 1961 publication of FANTASTIC FOUR #1.  I particularly enjoy Stan and the gang's efforts in the next coming years attempting to "reformat" these titles so that they would emulate the superhero books in hopes of achieving the same profitable success in other genres.  This reformatting consisted of basically taking storytelling and visual elements from the superhero books and applying them: slightly more..."realistic" art styles, serialized soap opera melodrama, and hyperbole filled prose.

A couple examples of the reformatting that I was speaking of

And, here's a couple more

In 1957 Marvel (Atlas) lost its distributor, so they cut a deal with distributor Independent News, which owned and distributed DC (National Periodical Publications). That deal supposedly significantly limited the number of titles Marvel could publish. In 1968, Marvel changed distributors to Cadence Distribution and started publishing many more titles.  I've heard a couple different stories concerning the details of this deal:  All the sources I've found say that limit was 8 titles a month, though occasionally they note that it was 16 bi-monthly titles.  But....the math doesn't add up if you do a headcount...

Marvel 1963 in-house ad announcing their "Corner Box" branding

Let's count, shall we?  Well, there's the superhero titles, which serve as the foundation for the House of Ideas:

Fantastic Four, The Amazing Spider-Man,...hell, let's even include The Incredible Hulk Volume One, even though it only lasted six issues before cancellation and the Hulk moving to Tales to Astonish....and speaking of that book, there's the four reformatted horror/sci fi anthology books: Tales to Astonish (Ant-Man and the Hulk), Strange Tales (Dr. Strange and Agent of SHIELD), Tales of Suspense (Iron Man and Captain America), and Journey Into Mystery (starring the Mighty Thor).  And, to round things up, there was X-MEN, The AVENGERS and DAREDEVIL.  Total books: 10

Let's not forget the war comic, SGT. FURY and HIS HOWLING COMMANDOS and the three ongoing Western titles that survived into the Marvel Age:  KID COLT: OUTLAW, THE TWO GUN KID, and the RAWHIDE KID.  We'll even throw in GUNSMOKE WESTERN, a title that only lasted about a year into the Marvel Age, cancelled after 77 issues in July of 1963...  Total books: 15

...then there's the three ongoing titles of reprinted material:  MARVEL TALES, FANTASY MASTERPIECES, and MARVEL COLLECTORS ITEM CLASSICS.  Total books: 18

Finally, there's the above mentioned books: KATHY, MILLIE THE MODEL, PATSY WALKER, MODELING WITH MILLIE, PATSY & HEDY,...and we'll acknowledge the parody/satire book NOT BRAND ECCH!, simply due to the fact it launched in 1967, a year prior to Marvel's 1968 change in distribution.  Total books published by Marvel on a regular basis between the years of 1957 and 1968: 24

No matter how hard I try, I can't get the math to work.  The number of actual titles won't allow for either the limited "8 monthly titles" or "16 bi-monthly titles in constant rotation" part of the equation to be possible.  The only way for this to be possible is if a portion of the titles were on a monthly schedule, another portion were on a bi-monthly schedule, and YET ANOTHER portion of the titles to be on that weird "nine times a year" (roughly every six weeks) "semi-monthly" schedule that Archie Comics seemed to be in love with for decades.  And then it would have to happen SEEMLESSLY with no margin for error or delay.  And, just by looking at the cover dates on a range of Marvel books across the decade of the 1960s...this can't be the case.  Everything appears to have been like this:  the majority of the titles appear to have been monthly for the majority of the timeframe, with a about a half dozen that were bi-monthlies.  If the "everything was on a different rotating schedule" notion I mapped out above were true, then editorial deadlines and printing schedules would have been a logistics nightmare.  Especially if Stan Lee is "Marvel Methoding" all of this in collaboration with his artists.  No wonder Stan was depicted as being something akin to a hyper-dramatic cokehead most of the time in the comics, because that's what it would have taken to even come up with as much of clusterfuck of a working schedule as this would have been.

I've always felt that this was a pretty accurate depiction of how Stan Lee's Marvel Method worked

I have a couple weird conspiracy theories brewing.....

Let's say that Marvel was bound by this deal.  It makes sense on one hand and illogical in the other.  DC seeking to basically control their competitor's market share by controlling the amount of product they can sell kinda makes sense, even if it tempts some sorta anti-trust regulations.  It insures that the guys across the street ain't ever gonna outsell you...and you make money in the deal, too.  They have to pay you to get their product to market.  But,...limiting the amount of product limits the amount of money you can charge them, cutting your own throat profit-wise.  So, it's my opinion that if the deal was in place, either Marvel wasn't abiding by the terms and/or DC wasn't enforcing them.  Everyone was still making money in the end.

Or,....this may be a gentle bit of ribbing/ propaganda towards the "Distinct Competitors", aka DC Comics.  Stan Lee made the whole thing up.  "Well, True Believers, we'd love to give you more of the Marvel Comics you all love, but the Man keeps tryin' to keep us down.  Excelsior!"

If so, it just makes Stan Lee look that much more clever.  An absolutely brilliant master at the art of self-promotion, always building a cult of personality around himself....and I mean that in the best way possible, because I absolutely adore Stan (the reasons why I'll probably get into in a future post).

The Times They Are A'Changin'...

 Here's a critical theory for you:  The most imaginative attempt at capturing the American youth counterculture demographic that the comic book industry made was also a spectacular failure at doing so....

Forever People #1 (DC Comics, March 1971)

I've always been of the opinion that Jack Kirby's THE FOREVER PEOPLE was not only Kirby's attempt to reach out to the counterculture demographic, but was also his attempt at doing a little bit of speculative social commentary.

House Ad for a 1988 revival of The Forever People

How it succeeded: Even though the Forever People of Supertown were oppressed and pursued by "the Man" (translation: Darkseid), they were depicted as a multicultural god-like evolutionary end result of youth stereotypes that resided in a world where the hippies won the Generation Gap. 

How it failed:  Kirby was in his fifties when he created the Fourth World and was just a little beyond the age range to seem relevant....I mean, he kinda understood, but couldn't quite identify with the audience.

Harvey #1 (Marvel, 1970)

Another spectacular failure at trying to do this is Marvel's short-lived Archie clone, HARVEY.

Archie #214 (Dec. 1971)

I love Archie clones...especially the weird, goofy, and more imaginative ones.  ARCHIE Comics itself had an odd take on the counterculture during it's heyday...it's main product was teen humor, attempting to sell to a roughly 13 to 21 demographic, but just couldn't figure it out.  Any depictions of youth counterculture were mostly exaggerated stereotypes used as comic relief.  The presentation reminds me somehow of how hippies were depicted on DRAGNET, flamboyant caricatures of laziness and ignorance.  It's like the editorial gang over at Archie were like, "We don't get these kids today, but it seems ridiculous enough to make fun of."  Humor driven by ridicule at their expense, so to speak.

Marvel's approach with HARVEY came from a different angle.  It worked because it appears that they decided to embrace the movement and create satire from within.  Marvel wasn't laughing at the hippies, they were laughing with them.  Harvey Hooper and his gang of friends live in a world where they'd won the revolution, brother....now let's make fun of how ridiculous it all seems.  This approach can be credited to none other than Stan Lee, who's credited for scripts and Stan Goldburg on art.

 Goldburg would soon join the ranks of the aforementioned Archie Comics and continue to work there in the Dan DeCarlo-influenced Archie "house style" that had become the norm there starting in the late 1960s.

One of the reasons why I think it failed as much as it succeeded, like Kirby's FOREVER PEOPLE, lays with the fact that Stan Lee, just like Jack, was a man in his fifties.  Unlike Jack, Stan couldn't make the connection due to not being able to identify with the target demographic, but because he thought he still was the demographic.  It comes across like an elderly man attempting to talk jive and sound hip and relevant to the youth.

It's an interesting and valid attempt, though.  It's just in my opinion Stan, the master of promoting and personalizing his relationship with his readership, which made him more identifiable creator (and the leader of a cult of personality), was just a little pretentious, a little delusion, and a little bit full of himself.  I find it hilariously ironic that a guy that had a very admirable mastery of hyperbole would fall victim to such character quirks.

HARVEY lasted six issues and was gone by late 1972 and now collects dust in comic shop bins.  I keep hoping that Disney or Marvel will somehow find a way to utilize the character.  We need characters like Harvey Hooper these days, satirically showing us how ridiculous we can be.