Hangin' Tough with the Right Stuff.....

 I recently made an incredibly odd eBay purchase...which is pretty par for course for me, but I digress...

I bought a complete run of every New Kids on the Block book published by Harvey Comics in 1990/91.  Originally, I was only interested in obtaining the two Harvey Toon crossover miniseries for novelty's sake, but lucked into an incredibly cheap deal for the whole lot.

 During the summer of 1990, Harvey Comics (they of Casper the Friendly Ghost, Richie Rich, and Sad Sack fame) ponied up for the New Kids on the Block license and began releasing an onslaught of product.

The initial three NKOTB one shots

Disclaimer:  I'm going with cover dates and not actual release dates because it's been nearly 40 years, my memory might be failing me, and I wasn't a boy band fan.  I was more of a thrash/speed metal scene kinda guy at 16...listening to way too much Anthrax, Metallica, Megadeth....and coming to the realization after seeing Glenn Danzig live for the first time, that,...that dude is short.  Like The Artist Formerly Known As Prince kinda short. And, freaky jacked...like, not looking natural.  Kinda steroidy.  

Anyways....In September 1990, Harvey releases three one shot specials:  STEP BY STEP, MAGIC SUMMER TOUR, and VALENTINE GIRL.  There's a concert exclusive variant of MAGIC SUMMER TOUR that for some odd reason has retained some secondary collectors market value.

The concert exclusive variant

Then, in November of 1990, Harvey releases the first of two Harvey Toon three issue crossover miniseries, RICHIE RICH MEET NKOTB...

And, then....it gets nutty...

In December of 1990, Harvey launches four ongoing monthly books (or, rather, they had that goofy every six weeks publishing schedule): NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK, CHILLIN', BACKSTAGE PASS, and COMIC TOUR '90

All four ongoings last no more than 8 issues each...basically about a year.  Then, in February and March 1991 (respectively), we saw the second crossover miniseries released, WENDY THE GOOD LITTLE WITCH MEETS NKOTB and a fifth (!?!?!) ongoing, HANGIN' TOUGH.  The New Kids trend must have been losing steam at this point because the fifth ongoing only lasted one issue...

I've always kind of been a little uncomfortable with the cover of the first issue of WENDY/NKOTB, what with the New Kids all leering at a "dressed up' Wendy, and the cover blurb ("Introducing a NEW CHAPTER in WENDY's LIFE") that might be implying that maybe Wendy's hit puberty and had her first menstrual cycle, or something.  Maybe my weird sarcastic sense of humor is reading way too much into this, I don't know.

 And, to make matters worse, at some point during all this nonsense, Harvey published five issues of a digest reprinting stories from the five ongoings, 3 one shots, and two miniseries.  They accomplished all of this within the span of around 18 months.  And, craziest of all, for about six months of it the first issue of the NEW KIDS ongoing ("Yo, Collectors! First Hot Issue!") was a 30 dollar wall book in most LCSs .  These books bring up two memories from high school- a fellow comic book nerd friend went out and bought every copy of the first issue of NKOTB he could get his hands on when it hit shelves, amounting to around 25 copies, then turned around and sold every copy for ten bucks apiece to teenage fans in our hometown. The previous summer, same guy asked me if he could jump in on a New England Comics mail order I was placing, and ordered ten copies of Revolutionary's ROCK N ROLL COMICS #1 featuring GnR (1st print) and sold the lot of them for around 400 bucks.