§ It would be easy to mock this Jen Teasdale-style column in the Norfolk Daily News where a woman goes to find some comics in her local bookstore but finds only superheroes and not Little Lulu, but I think there is a lesson in it. The tone is not the anger you sometimes find —”That’s not MY Aquaman!”—but rather curiosity.

My own collection of comics is now quite old, and it only contains a few superhero stories. When I was young, I wasn’t interested in those types of comics, and I admit that I’m not interested in them now.

In fact, I went searching to see if I could find newer editions of the comics I’d read as a child — Bugs Bunny, Donald Duck, Little Lulu, Richie Rich, Yosemite Sam, Rocky and Bullwinkle, the Roadrunner, the Pink Panther, Tweety and Sylvester, and my favorite, Uncle Scrooge. Sadly, I couldn’t find any of those in the drawer after drawer full of action comics I encountered.

The closest I came to finding comics like those I loved as a kid was a small selection of Archie comics. I bought a “Betty and Veronica” double digest book for a whopping 99 cents! Believe me, that’s a major deal when you compare it to the average price of $5.99 I saw on most of the comics.


This woman actually really likes comics. While manga isn’t to her taste, she remembers the pleasure she found in picking up what sounds like The Smithsonian Collection of Comic Strips—who wouldn’t?—and vows top hold on to her very old collection of comics and says “If anything, I’ll add to the collection whenever I can.” It is perhaps too much to expect that she might enjoy Powerpuff Girls or Adventure Time…or maybe Operation Margarine. The point is she is a comics fan, but when there were no comics for her tastes, she moved on. One of the benefits of having a strong and varied world of kids comics now is that as these readers age they will find a lot of material to choose from. Comics are for everyone.

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§ Speaking of Operation Margarine, the enjoyable girls on bikes romp by Katie Skelly, she’s done a pin-up for the collection of the apes on bikes romp The Humans.

§ 18 drawing tips from Moebius! BOOKMARK

§ Moebius’s collaborator on a Silver Surfer novel, Stan Lee is schooling us on superheroes at the Smithsonian. And it’s online and its free. Gather and learn, children.

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§ Olivier Schrauwen’s Mowgli book is out from Retrofit and it’s large and magnificent.

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§ Here’s a collection of Gold Key Star Trek comics covers that are pleasant to look at. According to the database the stories were written by a youthful Len Wein and the covers are by George Wilson, not a very familiar name to contemporary comics fans, but he was pretty boss. (Via Boing Boing)

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§ And speaking of Star Trek, apparently as a tribute to the late, great Leonard Nimoy, Canadian Trekkies are marking up their $5 bill to resembles Spock, a practice wich the government wishes to discourage.

Bank of Canada spokeswoman, Josianne Menard, has confirmed the stunt is not illegal, but she urges Spock fans to stop. She says in a statement, “It is not illegal to write or make other markings on bank notes… However, there are important reasons why it should not be done. Writing on a bank note may interfere with the security features and reduces its lifespan. Markings on a note may also prevent it from being accepted in a transaction. Furthermore, the Bank of Canada feels that writing and markings on bank notes are inappropriate as they are a symbol of our country and a source of national pride.”


The Spock-lie personage on the bill is Canada’s seventh prime minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier. Somehow I think we need Kate Beaton to make sense of this all.

§ I know you have probably fired up Evernote and made you own exhaustive analysis of the new Avengers trailer, but just in case you got stuck, here’s the Comicbook.com one.

§ Finally, by stock photos needs have been met at last.

4 COMMENTS

  1. The closest I came to finding comics like those I loved as a kid was a small selection of Archie comics.

    This is a woman who desperately needed to find a bookseller who could have helped her out, there are reprints of a lot of her childhood favorites available and a lot of great all-ages content currently being produced. Somebody who doesn’t have a passing familiarity with comics and graphic novels isn’t going to get very far on their own by heading into a bookstore to rummage through drawers inexplicably filled with $5.99 superhero comic books.

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