My column for this month's Comics Buyer's Guide has been posted to my Columnist section of the CBGxtra Web site. It's at:
You can comment on the column there or here, whichever is easiest.
Over there, you can't post images with the comments, but I don't know that too many of those Bunny covers really need to be revisited.
They're pretty astonishingly bad if you read the dialogue, though, so maybe one could replace SPJO #141 as one of our favorites. They would have benefited from people not asking and just buying, that's for sure.
-- MSA
Replies
Another great column, as usual.
But the way the world is going right now, and CBG's magazine and website specifically, I hope the corporate powers that be (F+W Publications) behind the scenes don't decide to take CBG digital only like Wizard is doing.
Thanks Lee! It'll be interesting to see what happens now that CBG is the last magazine about current comics available. Hopefully it's a help rather than an indication that there's no market there at all.
The Web is great, but magazines haven't lost all their appeal, at least for me. Maybe they have for current-comics consumers, who get so much so fast for free (you can't beat that) and magazines will be available only for older geezers who want to read about ancient history, like the 1980s.
Kind of like how CDs are only bought by out-of-it people, which is why Susan Boyle and country CDs top the charts so often. It's still kind of odd that there wouldn't be a periodical discussing periodicals.
Before F+W takes CBG digital only, they ought to get the magazine's Forum working again! Brent tells me they're working on some new features, but it's hard to tell when any of it will be ready. I hope it's soon.
-- MSA
...OK ( made more comment 'bout...-ish Bunny back at CBG...) , one more to-day...
Granted , to each their own .
I rather liked the limited bit o' Bunny I read back in the day .
I think that , at least , she provided a DIFFERENT approach to the " teen " comic , in an era when most publishers REALLY lifted essentially everything in Archie's book , more or less .
The first-page continuation of the cover would fit into Harvey's traditional first-page gag , really !
I recall at least one other Harveyverse Giant tile , TV CASPER AND FRIENDS , having first-page shorties that reflected the cover , too .
Oh , and the Beagles ? Remember a 1960s Total Television TV Sat-AM series ? And Zongo ? Remember Matt Groening's " adult " imprint of Bongo ?
I liked " Zoovy ! " , too !
...I liked " Yvvorg " , also .
Gee whiz , MSA , aren't these crickets in here charming ?
( I could say " chirping " , but divorce or not , Paul McCartney has enough money , doesn't he ? )
The amazing thing is that Bunny wasn't really a teen-humor comic. She was a high-priced fashion model who occasionally went back to her hometown to visit her folks. It definitely had more of a Millie feel than a Betty & Veronica feel. So the notion that Harvey was going to use it to break into Archie's share of the pie just seems bizarre.
-- MSA
I read with interest your column about "Bunny". Regarding teen books, I was wondering what you think of "Ponytail"? I think it's an underrated teen book. And what do you think about John Stanley's "Thirteen (Going on 18)"?
...PONYTAIL was comic-book version of a newspaper panel ~ Drawn by someone who had been an assistant to hank Ketcham , and thus sometimes described as being about " Dennis the Menace's babysitter " (It wasn't - he just had his standard way of drawing a teenage female , and so they rather looked alike .) , wasn't it ?
And while we're speaking of post-LLulu John Stanley projects ~ O.G. WHIZ !!!!!!!!! O.G. WHIZ !!!!!!!!! O. G. Whiz , The Boy Who Owns A Toy Company !!!!!!!!! Probably first an attempt on Western's part to bite RICHIE RICH , but with that Stanley touch:-)...
I have some issues of PONYTAIL, and I tend to find they're okay but nothing special, pretty well in keeping with the comics panel. But I haven't read them in a long while by now.
Certainly, it pales in comparison to THIRTEEN, which I thought was hilarious, and I have a complete collection of it. I was a big fan of John Stanley and have a lot of his work. It covered not only the well-known LULU but also DUNC & LOO, NANCY and some others.
I wrote several times about THIRTEEN and some of his other stuff, but they aren't on-line any more, since CBG took down its archive. I mentioned the THIRTEEN collection in a column that's still up, but it's only a paragraph: http://www.cbgxtra.com/columnists/craig-shutt-ask-mr-silver-age/goo...
I've got the O.G. WHIZ comics, but I think he only did the first couple issues, and they were the last things he did, so they aren't a major contribution to his great list. They're worth having if you can find them.
-- MSA
I liked the characters of Ponytail Johnson and her boyfriend Donald Dawson. Ponytail was drawn in "stick figure" fashion, however. I thought main character Val in "Thirteen" was a wonderful portrait of a teenaged girl, and I thought the strips with the mean little fat girl Judy Junior were really funny.