The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1105: Top Cow Convention Preview: European Edition, 2000

One of the cool things about my collection is that it's liberally seeded with what are commonly known as "premium" comics. These will be low print run special editions of other series offered for sale to the public through specialty services. Dynamic Forces, the purveyor of today's short comic, is one of the most successful that I know of. Each special edition is accompanied by a lovely certificate stating the print run and this particular issue's individual number.

I've only ordered from DF once or twice, and it was generally to get special comics that actually contained new story material from series I was following. I always thought it was a bit of a scam to withhold story from those who couldn't afford the premium, but I got sucked in anyway. But I think most of their business comes from selling variant covers of pre-existing comics. For instance, today's Top Cow sampler comes in two different covers - one where the characters are in vertical strips and one where they're more horizontally aligned. The interiors are literally the same. It's just the covers that are different. Variants like this are part of the hobby of collecting that I never really did get. I like having a choice of regularly-priced covers (Marvel are killing it with this practice these days), but I never really understood paying a premium for a cardstock or holofoil cover. As I've noted before, I gave up comics basically through the speculator boom of the late 80s and early 90s. I often wonder if I'd have been sucked into it had I still been a collector.

As for today's comic, it's some rough previews of three series. I'll admit, with my new respect for Top Cow's properties and their aesthetic, I was somewhat intrigued by all three. I kind of wonder why this particular preview was a premium comic. Perhaps it's simply that it's a European preview, different somehow from the North American one? But I have two copies of it, one with each cover, so I'm sure I'll pontificate about its premium-ness at least one more time during this project.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - The Weekly Graphic Novel: Week 52 - Peter Parker: Spider-Man - One Small Break, 2002

I really love the Paul Jenkins/Mark Buckingham Spider-Man stories. They were well into their run on Peter Parker when I had my comic store, and I was always happy to read the next adventure of the wall-crawler. I haven't always been a big Spider-Man fan. He's not one of those superheroes who really spoke to me, though as a geeky, unpopular kid in high school, you'd think he would have. I occasionally see Peter Parker as a bit of a whiner, though. I got a lot of flack in high school for how I looked and who I was, but I never really wanted to read about someone else complaining about it. I wanted to see someone dealing with it and moving on. Add to that the fact that Peter was no longer in high school when I was, and it ends up being a case of wrong place, wrong time.

But Paul Jenkins and Mark Buckingham made me care about the character again, likely because he was dealing with personal and professional issues in his comic at the same time I was struggling through the same things as a result of opening my own business. Issues 35 and 37 (neither of which are actually in today's collection) are some of my favourite Spider-Man stories ever, with #37 being a particular favourite. Peter has a bad cold and is challenged, during a snowstorm, by the Vulture to a duel. Shenanigans ensue.

Today's graphic novel collects a couple of stories, and, in my not-so-humble opinion, they're not quite as good as the other issues I've mentioned. The characterization is still there (and I really think there's an excellent case to be made for Peter Parker suffering from clinical depression, but that's another post), as is the action and of course the art. But the heart of what I love about this creative team's tenure on the book is the way they portray Spider-Man as being someone that all of us could potentially be. He really is the everyMAN (in capitals because the sexism is right there in the name) superhero. Issue #35 tells of a young African-American child who envisions Spider-Man as a Black person, just like him. It raises interesting questions about the superheroes who wear full cover and those whose skin you can actually see. By covering as many marks of physicality as possible, does a superhero become more mythically representative of the culture they embody?

Onward.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 123: The Agency Preview, 2001

I feel a little bad offering this as my comic for the day, as it has, I think 8 pages of story and the rest is sketchbook material. But these have to be read and appreciated too. I've always enjoyed Paul Jenkins' work. I think what really did it for me with him was his work on The Sentry, which I still maintain is one of the best Marvel comics to have been published. At least, the first series. His work on Spider-Man was pretty fantastic too. This preview comic for The Agency doesn't really give us too much to go on. Lots of black and white art and explosions. It really makes the case for the colourist, as much of the comic is difficult to make out clearly. One of the characters calls another "Agent Funbags," and as you can see from that cover, those certainly are something that are prominent and distinguishable from the rest of the action of the comic. If the sketches and previews of the next 5 issues' covers is anything to go by, said agent's breasts are a focal point of the story. Or focal points, I suppose.

The preview gives us very little to go on for background or story. The characters seem to be part of a private security firm, and also seem to be either cybernetically or psychically enhanced. That's about all I can tell you. Oh, and "Agent Funbags," whose actual name I'm  not totally sure of, has a cybernetic eye.

I suppose the mark of a good preview issue is that it makes either a reader or a retailer decide to pursue the series. I can say that this one did not do any such thing for me, either as retailer or reader. I received the preview while running my store, and, if my collection is anything to go by, I ordered issue 2, but strangely not issue 1. It being an Image/Top Cow title, that might have been all that was published in the 10 months my store existed.

Okay, a bit of a cop-out today. I know I said I'd get back to some of the series we were looking at, but I'm tired and the sun is very hot here in Calgary. Preview issues, I've decided, are good for days on this project where I feel lazy. Hopefully I'll be back to fighting strength tomorrow. See you then!