Marvel Comics blabbery

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That article is incorrect in at least one regard, as it was first used in one of the like first five issues of ASM (was just reading about that particular issue the other day).

Oh, you're right. Seems like Spider-Man uses it when he's (spoilers) sucking up the Sandman with the vacuum cleaner in issue 4.

I was flipping thru a reprint of Am Fantasy #15 the other day, and was impressed by how economical the storytelling is... Spidey's origin, from introduction to costume, takes like two pages. You're so familiar with the "beats" of the story, from seeing it told & retold so many times; and then you're reminded that originally there were only those "beats" (a panel with the spider bite; a few panels of the wrestling match; etc.).

IIRC, Action Comics #1 is even more extreme -- Supe's origin story takes up just a few panels on the intro page, and the (brief) issue contains two full adventures and a cliffhanger.

(I guess thanx to Bendis, you can now pay $5 to see a few characters argue in a room for most of an issue.)

I had this when I finally read The Hobbit a couple months ago - Battle of Five Armies, three hours on the screen, three paragraphs on the page.

Also, I got caught in a Garfield wormhole while procrastinating at work (I ran out of Nancy), and those comics may not be funny, but they are pretty incredible at concision (in a way that, say, Peanuts isn't - it's more like a rumination)

It’s interesting to read the old Sunday “Peanuts” before Schultz had figured out that the first two panels (which some papers omit to save space) should be a separate little gag, and instead was using them to “extend” the main strip... which usually really f’d up the rhythm by sticking this superfluous padding at the beginning.

*Schulz

Read a thing last night that made me feel like a toooooootal Marvel newb dunce: the name 'Giant-Man' contains Pym's prior codename in its entirety.

Wow, I've never noticed that before either!

i'd like to present both of you with an anti-no-prize for this one, smdh

Yeah, that’s cool...

Hey, for anyone who’s been following along — has Marvel revealed the deal behind that mysterious new heroine who was retconned into the Avengers’ entire history a year or so back? I would look it up, but don’t remember her name, the “event” name, or anything else...

during that "no surrender" deal? she was a plant by the grandmaster, actually his daughter. she wasn't part of their history, it was just a mind game so he could get the edge in the battle

on a "today's comics" note i've got to give jason aaron some credit for having an issue dedicated to setting up an avengers support team ("agents of wakanda" since black panther's done the recruiting) that has a very ewing-esque lineup

i'm a sucker for anything featuring gorilla-man, though

better known by his prior codename "Illa-man"

Tuomas and OL to the “things you were old when you realised” thread

... i never realized that either ;_;

picturing a version where he's wearing a karate gi now

G.I. Ant-Man

It’s interesting to read the old Sunday “Peanuts” before Schultz had figured out that the first two panels (which some papers omit to save space) should be a separate little gag, and instead was using them to “extend” the main strip... which usually really f’d up the rhythm by sticking this superfluous padding at the beginning.

Bill Watterson discusses his frustration with this practice at some length in the Calvin & Hobbes Anniversary Book. Eventually, he demanded that the strip had to be bought as is or not at all. It caused some outrage at the time but all the papers caved pretty quickly

Schulz, of course, would never rock the boat like that... he even stuck with a name he hated (“Peanuts”) for all those decades

I never thought about it before, but is Peanuts meant to signify some kind of "show about nothing" vibe, or is it just a random non-sequitur?

So who decided on the name Peanuts? The credit usually goes to a man named Bill Anderson, a production manager at United Features Syndicate, who submitted Peanuts, along with nine other alternative names to the UFS brass.

The appeal of Peanuts was obvious, since as Nat Gertler, author and webmaster of a startlingly detailed guide to Peanuts book collecting, notes: “The name Peanuts invoked the ‘peanut gallery’- the in-house audience for the then-popular Howdy Doody television series.”

Always assumed it was meant to be a loose homophonic allusion to the male organ of generation myself.

pea is stored in the nuts

Shultz thought it sounded diminutive, insulting; “like a name for something worthless, or an animal or child” (I’m making up that quote from memory, tho I think it’s pretty close).

Schulz, of course, would never rock the boat like that

Well at the time that Peanuts was given that name, Schulz was an unknown cartoonist with absolutely no leverage over his syndicate. By the time he did have that kind of clout, the name Peanuts was far too well-established for him to do anything about it. He did however "rock the boat" about plenty of other things, perhaps most notably when he introduced an African-American character into the strip in the late 1960s:

Schulz also recalled a discussion with Larry Rutman, who at the time ran King Features Syndicate (which distributed Peanuts to newspapers). Schulz said, “I remember telling Larry at the time about Franklin—he wanted me to change it, and we talked about it for a long while on the phone, and I finally sighed and said, “Well, Larry, let’s put it this way: Either you print it just the way I draw it or I quit. How’s that?”

https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2018/07/50-years-franklin-charlie-brown/

Yeah, I didn’t think about that; he did rock the boat when it counted.

(I recall he considered a title change to “Charlie Brown” at some point, but didn’t want to cause inconvenience.)

For the sundays, it carried a "peanuts" in small script with "featuring Good Ol' Charlie Brown" in bigger script for at least a decade

In Denmark 'Peanuts' is called what would be 'The Radishes' instead. It's very weird.

xp Guess that sort of solved both issues!

(One of the “issues” being those expendable first panels — wasn’t he using a big panel with the title and sort of a sight gag?)

The two "disposable" panels on the Sundays followed the large title panel.

Ah, hmm

the radishes!

If anyone was tempted by Douglas Wolk's Marvel comics Patreon but hasn't joined yet, I highly recommend it. Fun discussion of Master of Kung Fu going on right now; Nocenti's Daredevil next week. It's a dollar a month.

https://www.patreon.com/douglaswolk/posts

In the forthcoming movie "Spider-Man: Far From Home," does Parker fight Wolverine in a graveyard, and then return to his hotel room to find Ned Leeds in a Hobgoblin costume? I'm just gonna assume that's what happens...

Sometimes, when revisiting Marvel issues from the ‘80s, I Google the names of the staffers in those “Pro Files” with the little caricatures and data points (Favorite Performers, etc.). Kind of interesting to see what young Assistant Editors and the like ended up doing later in their careers.

Tonight I ran across this interesting blog entry on the subject: http://generaleclectic123.blogspot.com/2008/12/marvelous-tales-making-comic-book.html

(I’m sure there are entire books about Marvel that talk about this stuff in detail, but I’ve never read them.)

Thank you for that very cool link!

the Virgil/Matt lineup does not work at all
assuming those were just flukes if scheduling though

i dunno, the virgil/matt issues of ghost rider were underrated imo

It was a weird decision for Marvel to do an in-continuity adaptation of the Aeneid, and even weirder to hire Joe Matt for the job, but damn it...it just works.

Guys, he's talking about The House That Jack Built.

The worst Fables spin-off

I just this week learned of the existence of the Third Eye blacklight posters from the early '70s and...I don't think I've ever coveted anything more in my life.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/nickderington/sets/72157608615767554/

https://www.coolandcollected.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/marvel_third_eye_poster_blacklight_thor.jpg

I had the Amazing Spider-Man one

Omg the Hela one rules

very cool

i remember hanging at someone's house who had the silver surfer one and it lodged permanently in my brain

I've been getting irrationally cheery when it's Immortal Hulk release day