Microcollections 1.1: More Superhero Ephemera

A few years back I posted a short write-up of some of the weird things that accumulate around a superhero-heavy comics collection. These were mostly toys from fast-food restaurants or Kinder Eggs, little tiny avatars of the bigger ideas represented by superheroes. A chunk of my dissertation would have looked at this ephemera, considering it in the same way that we might the various religious trinkets that people never tire of making, selling, or buying.

Aside from the toys, there are other bits and pieces that have accumulated. Every so often, when a big event is happening, publishers will release promotional items. Or, back in the old days, many of the comics magazines (Wizard primary amongst them) included special giveaways. That's what some of this is.

I honestly have no idea where I got these stickers. I think they're from a Wizard magazine.

This bookmark, as I noted above, was a promotional item when the Marvel Knights line started up. I enjoyed all of these series, though the Black Panther one by Priest and Texeira stands out. So good.

Go on. Guess which crossover this was a promotional piece for.

     

I've had these stickers for a long time. Again, no idea where they came from. They're copyrighted 2001, so I probably found them at a garage sale.

And finally, some commemorative Superman stamps from a couple of years ago. We Canadians like to lay some claim to Superman, as creator and artist Joe Shuster was born in Toronto, though he moved to Cleveland quite early. But that's okay. We'll accept a bit of credit, quietly and politely, and we know that all the good bits of the character - they're the Canadian bits ;P.

Comics' Ephemera 1 - Swimsuit / Lingerie Issues

Beginning a new month, I'm hoping to get back to occasionally writing things other than the 40 Years project. I'm aiming for once a month right now.

Within my collection are a number of items that can really only be tangentially called "comics." They look like comics, certainly, and they often feature comics artists and writers, and well-known comics characters. But they're lacking in a particular part of comics, and that is narrative. But not solely narrative, because we have abstract comics that simply perform the art, rather than tell a story. Still sequential, not narrative. So not solely narrative, but without intent of narrative.

The swimsuit and lingerie issues, for example.

I've looked at one other, the Lady Death entry into the genre. I treated it like a comic, but it wasn't really one. So let's have a look at the rest of them, shall we?

Though it's often said that many Liefeld books are simply exercises in skimpy clothing for women, there's at least the veneer of story to deflect some attention. Not so here. One of 3 covers featuring model Cathy Christian as Liefeld's avenging angel (I think - I actually don't know much about Avengelyne). Within are numerous photos of Ms. Christian in bathing suits, as well as artist's renditions of characters from the series in various states of undress. Mostly, needless to say, women. There's no continuity, no tale being told, between the pages, which seems to me a lost opportunity. Imagine a story that was a series of splash pages featuring swimsuit-clad characters - shenanigans could indeed ensue.

One thing that I do think is important to note is that Ms. Christian appeared at cons as this character, and this is back in the 90s, so she's actually probably fairly important in the history of cosplay. As might this particular publication, too.

These publications, though, I don't think I'd ever call comics. They're art books, more correctly. There are a number of similar cases, where comics-like ephemera accumulates in the collection. We'll have a look at them over time. But first, more swimsuits and lingerie!

Babes of Broadway (get the double entendre, there?) is just awful. I don't know what Broadway Comics was, only that Jim Shooter was involved, as were some super top-level artists, and there's testimonials inside this comic from women who work for the company talking about how not offensive they find the whole idea of a lingerie/babe publication. I don't know, but I can't help but read them with a very large grain of salt.
















The Razor Swimsuit Special is a bit off-putting for the fact that the main character, in her usual romps, is bloodthirsty and violent in a way that only London Night Studios tends to pull off. And Faust, of course.

So seeing many of these characters in "come hither" positions, sometimes while engaged in other, more visceral pursuits, is weird. I've never really understood that aesthetic that links sexuality with brutal, brutal violence. A bit of consensual S&M is one thing, but horrifically mangling corpses while mostly nude - who is this appealing to, and how do I avoid them?

















I will add a caveat - there are actually some really lovely pieces of art in these books. Free of the constraints of continuity or audience expectation, there are occasionally cool interpretations of characters. But such interpretation could easily be subsumed into an art book - why go for the lingerie?

Well, the answer's obvious, unfortunately. Because Men.

Some more recognizable characters in the next couple of issues. The Wildstorm one is okay, I guess. Lots of bikinis, but varied art at least. There is one strange one that's Rose Tattoo from Warren Ellis's Stormwatch, who is literally death (I think) in that series, posing like a porn star on a weird alien planet. It's not just that the comics most definitely objectify women, but that they're completely unfaithful to the source material. I think it does a lot of dis-service to the characters.

The Top Cow entry into this genre does pretty much the same thing as the Wildstorm one, but with another Image imprint. The irony that strikes me is that I mentioned back when I reviewed the first Fathom collection that I understood the Top Cow aesthetic much more in the context of a water-based story, but Top Cow doesn't do a swimsuit issue - they do a lingerie issue.

*sigh*




















One last one for your perusal. A small enough publisher that they have no comics listed in the GCD.

Though the artwork within is very good, it's exactly what you think it is.

Microcollections 1: Superhero Ephemera

(Crosspost from Speaking of Collecting...)

As I consider my collections, the ways I go about organizing them, adding to them, and appreciating them, I also realize that the large collections (primarily my comics, Bionicle, and Lovecraft) are accompanied by smaller collections, some intentional and some completely arbitrary. I thought it would be fun to have a few brief looks at some of the smaller collections in my collection of collections.

(*sigh*)

First up, superhero stuff.

 While clearing up our storage room the other day, I opened up a box I had labeled "Superhero Ephemera." Inside were these little treasures. I used to have some of them in the spaces between my comic boxes, but having rearranged those shelves to optimize space, the ephemera was relegated to a box. However, a few weeks back we visited the very strange and awesome Miracle of America Museum in Montana, a place where knick knacks and stuff were just spread over a warehouse-sized space to celebrate the innovation of the American nation. I have a few more thoughts about that, but I'll save it for another post. Inspired by this, I made a little bit of space to display some of my knick knacks, superhero style. The accumulation of this little collection is a random process. Many of the little figures, mostly fast-food toys, are things that came in bags of Bionicle that I get from thrift shops. There's toys that come from Kinder Egg-style candies, inserts from Wizard magazine, lantern rings that were given away during the "Blackest Night" event. The black Spider-Man toy in the bottom left corner has been the subject of one of my Horror from the Dollar Bin posts, a naughty little toy if ever I've seen one. There's a couple in there, the Wolverine at the front and the similar Captain America at the back, that are actually pens. And then there's the Fleischer Superman cartoons, on video cassette. There's a belt buckle, little tiny reproductions of comics, bracelets, zipper pulls, little figurines. The day after I took this picture, I got a Super Grover figure in a bag of Bionicle parts. He graces the shelf now too.

A fairly important part of my dissertation is going to be looking at exactly this sort of intrusion into the material realm of these kinds of fictional characters. Toys and knick knacks like these make up a sort of mythic background radiation. We see them at flea markets, garage sales, McDonald's, and pay them little attention. But they are important manifestations of fiction into reality, and I think that's something that's worth thinking about.