"I just want to say, Good. I'm glad they didn't do it, because the lower strata of American society have had a free ride for too long.

If you were to give them $7.25 an hour, you know it would just go up their nose and out their hose. You know what I'm talking about. You don't want to give them walking around money.

So kudos to Congress for taking a giant dump on the poorest people in the country, because they deserve it. Good job."

Forbidden Planet's got a fever for small press

Caught another bit off the Engine. Sounds like the Brits are taking a note from Mile High Comics...

I run the Forbidden Planet International website - www.forbiddenplanet.co.uk and our daily blog - http://www.forbiddenplanet.co.uk/blog/ and we were wondering if you can help us to start a meaningful relationship with small press and self publishers.

FPI sells a lot of comics but mostly this is superheores and to a lesser extent product from the bigger alt comics houses like Fantagraphics and D&Q. I know some of our stores run locally produced comics on a one to one basis between managers and producers tho' I couldn't tell you which ones and what they carry. It occured to us that we can however carry everything online, and should, as we try to expand the range of comics product we carry.

In July we are going to have a British comics month and feature some story about British comics every day on our Blog - we would like this to range from a feature on 2000AD or Beano thru to interviews/features on smaller UK producers like Typocrat and the small press community.

To go along with this we would also like to offer to list any and all comics being produced in the UK on our site. We would run a picture of the cover and a synopsis of the story and make them available to buy. In truth we aren't looking to make a lot of money out of this - we see it as a way of just making us truly live up to the tag of UK's largest comics seller by expanding the range to feature all comics.

We can of course search through sites and find the producers and mail them directly, and we will possibly do this, but it occurred to us that if you were to list it as a bulletin point it might reach the small press community easier that way. I know you are interested in mentioning things that might help the small press get wider recognition and I think this could fit the bill.

Would it be possible for you just to tell the community we are now looking to take and carry all self published and small press - we'd have to negotiate what margin we would need - but I am probably willing to work on something that merely covers our costs - listing, packing etc so we aren't neccesarily looking for 50%+ discounts here.

Of course it isn't entirely philanthropic. We expect that down the line some of these producers will become bigger names, new customers will be attracted who buy other items also but in truth it is more a currying favour excercise and an attempt to make us a more prominent player in the 'whole' comics scene rather than our own little mostly superheroic backwater. Josh and Gosh have done a fine job of carrying the material and I feel we at FPI should be also.

If anyone is interested in getting their products listed they should contact me and we can talk it through.

I can be reached on this e-mail - MANPEN(at)aol.com- or by phone on 01708 346305.

If you have any questions or need to talk it through a bit more give me a call.

Do you think it can work? We have over 100,000 visitors to the site monthly (not all for comics of course) and it could be a place where people's work would get seen by a greater number. We also would be happy to blog any upcoming small press events if people just let us know what they have coming up.

all the best
Kenny Penman
Director Internet Services
Forbidden Planet International

"...Panel's number seven anthology is pretty lucky, because it’s pretty strong from start to finish—certainly this team’s strongest to date."

"As an exercise in the formal bounds of pure comics, Lost Girls is remarkable, as good as anything Moore has done in his career."

"A pretty solid effort overall, the robot mayhem and the "historical" piece make for a nice contrast."

"I'm gay."

"I think they're all bongs."
"Wow, really?"

"Dude, do you know how many white tents near port-a-johns there are around here? You gotta' be more specific."

"There sure are a lot of...interesting people here."

Labels: guess the artist

First, just look at that killer Mike Ploog cover: the “shambling, mindless mockery of humanity” has dug a grave for a dead clown, preparing to lower him in while shocked witnesses observe from the background. The Vertigo cover hasn’t been made that equals the creepiness of this image. Ploog could easily match Bernie Wrightson for this sort of bizarre horror illustration when the task called for it, and this particular cover is a favorite of mine.

(In case anyone doesn’t know: Wrightson was, at this same time, working on DC’s Swamp Thing, a character with an identical origin and premise. As both characters debuted on exactly the same month, it’s obvious who was ripping off whom: they were both ripping off the Hulk. Or maybe Frankenstein. I dunno, actually. While DC’s character went off on retro-gothic adventures, however, Marvel’s went on some characteristically 1970’s head-trippy storylines, so there are actually few similarities between the two.)

Anyway, this was 1974, so the story is obviously going to be some simplistic, kiddie-safe material that kept comics as a storytelling medium stagnant for the next couple decades until a more discriminating market abandoned the comics code. Let’s see, after the main character is introduced, we move to page three…

…wherein a clown wanders into the swamp, puts a gun to his head, and kills himself. Man, that’s quite a downer to begin your story with. Rather than leaping in at the nick of time to save Pagliacci, our hero (?) wanders off into the swamp with his corpse, some part of his dim brain sensing that it needs to be put in the ground.

Outside the swamp, we meet a couple of hippie kids named Richard and Ruth. Picture Shaggy and Daphne hooking up and wandering into a 70’s horror comic; these two were recurring protagonists, bumping into the erstwhile Ted Sallis on a regular basis. They witness an altercation between some carnies; a female aerialist is upset over a missing clown; the owner, a guy named Garvey, and the strongman Tragg are glad to be rid of him. A triangle between the woman, the clown, and the owner is suggested; before long she enlists the aid of Rich and Ruth to search for the little guy, as the sinister owner and strongman tail their car in the distance.

The trio thinks they’ve found their quarry when they see the clown sitting at the edge of the swamp in the center of a mysterious spotlight. He doesn’t respond to their calls, instead wandering into the bog. Fearing something is wrong with him, they follow. Meanwhile, behind them, Tragg and Garvey encounter the clown in an entirely different fashion:

Two points about this page: 1) That panel with the clown sitting in the road as the car approaches, surrounded by a circle of light? More creepy stuff. 2) Observe that car crash, which is depicted in one panel, not three pages. Pay attention, JMS and Bendis.

Everyone converges in the swamp, where the Man Thing hands Tragg his head in another of those unfair comic book fights I enjoy so much. After the creature decides how long he intends to hold the strongman’s head under the water, the fight is interrupted when the clown’s ghost rises to put a halt to the proceedings. The issue ends on a cliffhanger: the clown intends to make those present reenact the drama of his own life, portraying those who abused him and those he loved. Spectral figures will judge what his fate in the afterlife should be. Here’s the creepy clown ghost:

As a kid, I actually had the Power Records comic & LP version of this story, which was rewritten to make that last scene a happy ending. I wish I could read it again to see just how much revision had to go into that sanitized presentation.

Labels: way back machine