Rob O'Bonobo

Love this run! Read it in singles far after it was published (got them in a random box of comics). By age, my Spider-Man should have been McFarlane's, but Sal's my favorite Spidey artist. And, of course, the writing was great as well.

Indeed. It would be quite fun if they would explore this difference, but Guy is usually just a punching bag (as in this famous page).

Same thing around here. It won't last, but it was great to see! I'm tempted to buy them all so they will restock.

[August 3rd, 1985] Alan Moore received the Jack Kirby Award for Best Writer for his work on "Swamp Thing" from Jack Kirby himself at the San Diego Comic-Con, held at the San Diego Convention Center

Everyone is stupid but me is, like free will, a lie that you can't help but believe in order to function.

Netflix Is Hungry to Turn 'KPop Demon Hunters' Into Its Next Everything Franchise Sony and Netflix are striking while the golden honmoon is still hot with plans for a trilogy, live-action project, and series on the brain.

gizmodo.com/kpop-demon-h...
They are trying. It is nice to have a moment where kids have something to love that is pretty good and isn't merchandised to death. They can make their own fanart, sequels, backstory, etc. to be part of the art in a way that the audience used to be before merchandising.

The first book I read to my Children's Literature class each semester.

I understand that studios care about movies making money. I get that completely. I just wish fandom in general didn't care so much about box office returns, as if that necessarily says anything about the quality of the film.

Thoughts:

Guy Gardner was abused as a child and put himself through college to become a social worker, special education teacher and public servant in both his civilian and superhero identities.

Batman's a billionaire.

Somehow, I thought I'd be famous by now.

5. Profit!
6. Raise price to borrow (after all, we have good stuff now)
7. Keep profit for myself.

Guess where the value came from?

In unrelated news, one of my streaming services announced a price increase of more than a third.

My new business plan.

1. Pile Junk
2. Charge people to borrow junk (cheaply)
3. People would rather have tons of junk for cheap than a little good stuff for the same price (loss aversion)
4. Force people with good stuff to give it to me lest they be left out, thereby suppressing value of all stuff

Hate is the most obvious weakness.

Fraggle Rock 1 (6271)

SUPER POWERS Once upon a time, toys weren't as much fun. Oh, we had Captain Action in the 1960s with a couple of superhero suits, and then in the 1970s the rather awkwardly-dressed Mego line, but the actual play value of them was largely dependent on the imagination of their owner. [For the record, I made my own Legionnaires out of the Creepy Crawlers Tarzan mold and a high tolerance for imperfection.]. But in the 1980s, it was all going to change. The connection between media and toys was increasingly important, and the technology to make miniature figures with details and features had evolved. The success of Kenner's Star Wars action figures and vehicles, Hasbro's G.I. Joe relaunch at a similar size, and Mattel's Masters of the Universe opened opportunities for other "boys' lines." With the bankruptcy of Mego in 1982, DC and Marvel were both looking for new partners in this space. Jenette Kahn led the DC team in this quest, working with me, Joe Orlando (our legendary creative force), Mary Moebus (later Yedlin, and our then-new licensing director], and the team from our agency, Licensing Corporation of America. We reached out to the major players, making presentations about the deep catalog of DC characters. As we built our presentations, it became clear that the then-DC lineup was weak on large-scale villains compared to our competition or the emphasis on evil-doers like Darth Vader or Skeletor in the successful lines. The most interesting DC villains were Batman's foes, or the Flash's...not of a scale to face off against the whole heroic team. The creative solution we came to was engaging Jack Kirby, the most fertile comics mind of his generation, to adjust his incredible Fourth World creations to better fit the needs of toys and the animation that would support a toy program. This had the pleasant byproduct of enabling us to give Jack a financial stake in those characters' success, which would provide him with a stream of royalties unlike anything he had receive…

KENNER & KIRBY: A MATCH MADE IN NEW GENESIS As the 1980s began, long-running DC licensee Mego went under, and the rights to make DC Comics toys were up for grabs. So, in 1982, DC Comics invited multiple toy manufacturers to pitch for the master license to make action figures based on such iconic heroes as Superman, Batman, and the rest of the DC universe. The Superman movies were performing well at the box office, a Batman film was in pre-production (although its long journey to the big screen would ultimately take another 7 years) and the long-running Super Friends Saturday morning cartoon showed no signs of losing steam. Bowled over by a presentation that relied strongly on actual art from the comics, DC awarded the license of their characters to Kenner Toys (who needed a hit to replace the soon-ending Star Wars franchise]. At the time, Mattel's action-driven Masters of the Universe toys were the big sellers with kids and parents alike, so Kenner followed their lead and devised hidden mechanisms within the figures that would trigger an action when the figure's legs or arms were squeezed. This emphasis on each figure's "super power" led to the naming of the line, "The Super Powers Collection." (Ironically, Kenner originally wanted visible levers to control each action feature. This plan was wisely nixed by the management at DC, who didn't want anything to mar the features of their well-loved characters.) The Super Friends cartoon would form the backbone of the resulting toy line, with two dedicated seasons that would directly tie into the toy line: Super Friends: The Legendary Super Powers Show and The Super Powers Team: Galactic Guardians. Once the line was in full production, a merchandising frenzy took place. DC and Kenner slapped a Super Powers logo on whatever they possibly could (although the "Collection" suffix was reserved solely for the action figures and accessories). Ultimately, three waves of figures, vehicles, and playsets were released in 1984; 1985, …

at the end of the first wave's run to tease wave two, Mantis, DeSaad, and, of course, Darkseid himself, tricked out with a regal cape! Kenner was surprisingly faithful to Kirby's redesigns. Even so, many of his fanciful ideas for action features were a bit too complicated for Kenner to produce (even though Mantis' spring loaded legs would have been many a kid's favorite toy), and they developed their own vehicles to go with these bad guys: Kalibak's Boulder Bomber and the • massive Darkseid Destroyer. A proposed "Darkseid's Bunker Silo" (concept by David Winslow) was actually taken directly from Kirby's toy designs but dropped in favor of a much more faithful playset for later in the line. Wave Three would continue the New Gods love, this time introducing some Fourth World heroes in the form of Mister Miracle (who faithfully broke free of his shackles) and Orion (with a head-changing feature that showcased both his "good" and "bad" faces.) But there was a twist: Kenner also released figures for brand-new characters they designed themselves! Why did they do this? According to lead designer Michael Underhill, since the line was driven by having a unique mechanism for each figure, when the engineers came up with a "super power" that didn't fit existing DC characters, they would create a new one to take advantage of it. "My assignment was to let the mechanical actions I would come up with either drive the design or be matched to an exciting existing character. For example, Insecta Six was created based on the two sets of aris swinging in opposite directions. Rocketman, Cyclotron.is the same thing, I matched a two-arm throwing action to [an] existing Kirby character [that became Cyclotron]" said Underbill. What makes these new characters especially unique is that once Kenner sent the concepts to DC, DC then sent them on to Jack Kirby to polish and tweak to better integrate with his own characters! "Insecta Six" would become "Quadrex' for the proposed fourth wave, and thi…

big enough to justify the costs. So Kenner pulled the plug on the line, ended production on Wave Three at much lower quantities than the previous waves, dropped the mini-comics, and removed their "Space Darkseid" variant that had yet to start manufacturing. Even worse, an amazing playset ["the Tower of Darkness" that was directly based on Darkseid's Fortress from Kirby's last New Gods story was also removed from production before it was started, even though its picture was featured in advance ads and even on the back of every figure card! Wave Four wouldn't even finish sculpting, with its very existence remaining a rumor for two decades. Concurrently, the Super Friends show was finally canceled after over a decade of continuous airing on Saturday mornings. And with that, DC Comics-based toys would be gone from the shelves for the first time in years, leaving kids and fans without their favorite heroes to battle their rogues on playgrounds and in display cases alike. - JASON GEYER, September 2023 Jason Geyer is a toy historian and longtime toy designer who first brought many of the Super Powers unseen concepts to light through his pioneering websites in the 1990s and 2000s. He currently owns his own toy company, ToyOtter Toys LLC., which produces the Longbox Heroes action figure line in homage to Kenner's Super Powers Collection.

Essays by Paul Levitz and Jason Geyer on DC and Kenner's Super Powers toy line, from the Fourth World Omnibus Vol. 2. I guess the line wasn't the success I assumed it was.

Almost everything stated to be for adults is for teenagers. Adult Swim, The Boys, etc. Teenagers need to push back against society, but also need to believe that that is what being an adult is. Marketers can't reach teens by saying it's for teens. They have to say it's for adults. Adults don't care.

The term is "All Ages" it's useful if misunderstood. Adolescents (and some adults who never got over it) don't want to be caught watching kid material. But basically every major cultural story is All Ages

And died in 2005. Kill by a drunken YouTube, age 24. R.I.P.

Because in real life, there are no villains (or at least vanishingly few) and getting to know someone and getting to like them are essentially the same thing. We all have friends that are in some ways toxic. We forgive them because of familiarity, not worthiness.

The Duality of Desire

In every alien there are two renters.

Attention is power. The only way to truly destroy something is to ignore it.

Have y’all ever seen the art in the German guide book for the gameboy’s Link’s Awakening from 1994? It’s stunning. It’s funny because this is the kind of stuff my child brain would imagine while looking at that vague Gameboy pixel art, but the modern remake is nothing like this.

Probably a bad idea, but what else can you do? open.substack.com/pub/theplays...

Just reread JACK STAFF vol 1 — do you all know about how JACK STAFF is genuinely, no fooling one of the best comics of all time???

Paul Grist is one of our greatest living cartoonists and it is super fucked up that we don’t get new comics from him on a regular basis. Especially new JACK STAFF

Just a vampire guy.

#marshallee #adventuretime #art #drawing #cartoon

Face off:

You can create a universe with a pencil.
✍️✏️🔥😁🖋️ #comicart #comicbook #art #draw

This is the way.

Diamond did create a market for indie creators for 2 decades, but that market has been collapsing for 20 years now. When profit is the prime motivation, it's not helpful to pay creators, since they'll do it anyway.