TO BOLDLY SPLIT WHERE NO INFINITIVE HAS GONE BEFORE!

ITEM! Don’tcha just love it when the good guys win one every once in awhile? It was just back this past November when the bone-headed brainiacs at Marvel Management yanked GIT Corps’ license to keep producing their dazzling and delightful DVD collections featuring 40+ years of Marvel’s best and brightest — all scanned from original issues I might add, unlike a certain series of Masterworks reprints that I could mention...

But it looks like you can’t keep a good startup down! Hot on the heels of their successful releases of the Absolutely Mad Magazine Collection, the Archie Bronze Age Collection, and the National Lampoon Complete Collection, comes their next critically-acclaimed collection, Star Trek: The Complete Comic Book Collection!

Featuring every single Star Trek comic ever published (with the exception of the current Trek comic licensees, IDW), this collection spans the Gold Key comics of the 60s, through the entire Marvel Comics comics (featuring some awesome art by the late-great Dave Cockrum), all the way to the recent Wildstorm books! Holy Skrull-cow! That’s everything from Captain Kirk to Captain Janeway. That’s more Klingons, Romulans and Tribbles than you can shake a dilithium crystal at! That’s light-years of reading all for the low-low-low price of $49.99 (or 5 slips of gold-pressed latinum, for those societies without legal tender).

This titanic Trek tribute will be released this September, though I expect my gratis review copy to show up well before then. Didja hear that GIT Corp? Gratis Review copy? The Smilin’ One’s not rich, yah know. Well, actually I am, but I’ll still take a free copy anyway! Your commanding officer will thank you!

Excelsior!

Smiley

THE INCREDIBLE BULK OMNIBUS VS. DIGITAL COMIC DATABUS

ITEM! My reader copy of The Incredible Hulk Ominbus arrived in the mail today, and I have to say that I really love these enormous door-stop editions that would kill a small child if dropped on their head. For a measly 9,900 cents, you get 752 gamma-irradiated pages of Ol’ Greenskin’s adventures from The Incredible Hulk #1-6, Tales to Astonish #59-101, and Incredible Hulk #102! Plus letter cols, pinups, and a few assorted other goodies — like intros from me! Although Yours Truly already has many of these back issues leather-bound in the crypt underneath Maison de Lee, parts of the collection suffered some water damage when our basement flooded years ago back in New York., so it’s nice to have another bound reader copy!

That being said, I still say you can’t beat the modest modern-day convenience of GIT Corp’s sadly discontinued Hulk DVD-ROM Collection! For starters, the $50 price tag of the DVD collection includes 43 years of Hulk comics from 1962-2006. In other words about six times the comic reading goodness versus the $100 Ominbus! And of course the GIT digital scans show the entire comic book including those 60s Marvelicious House Ads and all the other stories included in each ish (a lot of Prince Namor the Submariner in this case). Though out of digital print, Frantic Ones can still grab the few remaining copies here at amazon.com!

To this day the Smilin’ One cannot believe that those short-sighted, greed-impaired MBA dropout bean-counters at Marvel Management yanked GIT Corp’s license to produce these daring digitally-scanned DVD collections. What can Merry Marvel Marchers like you and I do about this? I’m glad you asked, Tigers and Tigrettes. To quote Bill Murray in Stripes, “Do what I do, and say what I say, and go out there and make me proud!” In other words, raise as much fuss about renewing GIT’s license as possible on every Marvel forum board that you can click your Spider-Mouse on. And whatever you do, for the love of Mike, DO NOT buy one of Marvel’s ill-considered online digital comic subscriptions. Your Uncle Stanley will forgive you, but the karma hit could haunt you for years to come!

Excelsior!

Smiley

WHEN CAPTAIN AMERICA THROWS HIS MIGHTY SHIELD...

ITEM! Yes, it’s true, Tiger. That is Captain America’s shield sitting on Tony Stark’s lab bench in that boffo box-office bonanza, Iron Man. Frantic Ones everywhere have discovered one of Jonny Favreau’s earnest easter eggs serendipitously slipped into the scenery (see pic above). An easter egg that was digitally painted out of the trailers and previews, I might add. Read the whole story here and here.

Fan speculation and Intraweb chatter is running at fever pitch. What does it mean? It’s not really that hard to figure out, pilgrims. Card-carrying Marvelites will remember that Tony Stark actually did make a high-tech shield for Cap all the way back in Avengers #6 (June 1964 — Studious Stan). If you haven’t read these or other Avenging classics, then shame on you, sunshine! You can either turn in your MMMS membership card or go straight to your local comic book shop and get your copious copy of Essential Avengers Vol. 1, Marvel Masterworks: Avengers Vol. 1, or even the out-of-print but still-to-be-had GIT Corp 40 Years of the Avengers DVD-ROM collection! These titanic tomes may not be as intellectually stimulating as the Complete Works of Shakespeare, but they're a heckuva lot easier to tote around!

Even though your Uncle Stanley hasn’t seen a Captain America movie script yet, it’s pretty obvious where this is going. The Cap movie will no doubt cover his WWII days to introduce both Cap and the Red Skull’s origins, then zip forward to the present day with Cap being thawed-out and outfitted with a Stark-tech shield so he can go he can kick Nazi sleeper agent gluteus maximus and even go Avenging — just like in the comics! Say it with me, Merry Marvel Marchers... “just like in the comics!” Ah, that magic phrase that guarantees both high-fidelity sound and concept, and as often as not, high box office returns. Now that Mighty Marvel is running these mega movie franchises, expect that to be the rule rather than the exception! You read it here first, pussycat. ‘Nuff Said!

Excelsior!

Smiley

A PLACE WHERE EVERYONE DARES TO GO... THEY CALL IT ZANADU!

ITEM! This being the week of the big Emerald City Comic Con in Seattle, Yours Truly figures it’s time to hand out another Excelsior Award for Comic Shop Excellence! This one goes to two of the best comic shops serving the West Coast since 1975 — Zanadu Comics!

Zanadu has been supplying the Greater Seattle area with not only a monstrous melange of mainstream Marvel comics, but one of the most scintillating selections of alternative and underground books since Robert Crumb was knee-high to a Yippie. They even sell Brand Echh comics, if you’re in to that sort of thing... While your Uncle Stanley has never been there, I recently had the occasion to send Irving Forbush on a mission there while we were in town. I was on the road myself and without my leather-bound copies of Tales of Suspense, and the boy-chiks at Zanadu Comics (at the hipster University of Washington location, natch) hooked Honest Irv right up with a copy of GIT’s out-of-print Iron Man DVD-ROM collection! 

Irv also brought me back an unsolicited copy of the Jesus Hates Zombies trade paperback ‘cause he thought I would dig the Amazing Fantasy #15 tribute cover (and what can I say... I’m a sucker for the sincerest form of flattery every single time). Did I mention that Irv also brought me back a few choice 1960s Playboys too? Yup, they got those too! Zanadu’s is one of those ever-rare old-school kind of comics shop that has it all, pilgrims.

So congratulations to Perry “Livin’ the Life” Plush and his crew on winning a well-deserved Exy! It’s a virtual award to be sure, but that doesn’t mean it won’t make you the envy of all your fawning fans and frantic friends! Just remember to keep shelving the Marvel and Virgin comics up front where the True Believers can find ‘em! 

Excelsior!

Smiley