Broken Frontier

Hello, everyone! Welcome to Guiding Lines! My name is William Gatevackes. Let’s take a look at the comics arriving in stores tomorrow, August 9, 2006.

Spider-Man Family: Amazing Friends celebrates the 25th anniversary of Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, a cartoon which ran on Saturday mornings from 1981 to 1983.
The show served as an introduction to many fans to the world of comic books and gave comic fans a chance to see a wide variety of comic characters come to life on the small screen.

The cartoon featured Spidey teaming up with Iceman and Firestar, a character created exclusively for the TV series. All the characters were attending the same college in their civilian identities, so they decided to live together in Aunt May’s house and share adventures together.

The series was quite popular; popular enough for Marvel to introduce Firestar into comic continuity. It balanced camp with drama quite well for the era, and just mentioning the show is enough to bring a smile to many people’s faces.

Hard as it is to believe, this is the first time these three characters teamed up in Marvel continuity.  According to a Newsarama interview with Spider-Man Family writer Sean McKeever, all three appeared in Web of Spider-Man #75 but they didn’t share a scene together.

If you’re like me, you hold a lot of nostalgia for this cartoon. And while it celebrating its 25th anniversary might make you feel old, you’ll probably be happy that Marvel is honoring the occasion this way.

Annihilation #1 follows after five months of one-shots and miniseries leading up to it. In publishing output alone, it stands as Marvel’s second biggest event of the summer.

While the Civil War is waging on Earth, the entire universe is facing annihilation in outer space. Fantastic Four villain Annihilus has escaped the Negative Zone and has started a wave of destruction never before seen. Planets, armies and superheroes have fallen before him, and he’s just getting started.

If you are not a person who has ever heard of the Negative Zone, Annihilus, Xandar, or Quasar before, this event might not be for you. However, fans of Marvel’s cosmic heroes and villains should be eating this up.

The status quo of Marvel’s sci-fi characters has already been shaken up quite a bit by the various prequel miniseries. It should be interesting to see what changes this title will bring. Marvel, supposedly answering fan response to the event, is planning to release series spinning off from Annihilation. Hopefully, there will be a character or two left for them to use.

Martian Manhunter #1 marks yet another miniseries to feature the character. He has already starred in two prior miniseries, one in 1988 and one in 1992, and had an ongoing series in 1998 which ran for 36 issues. Each time the character failed to successfully catch on with audiences, but perhaps this time will be different.

It is hard to understand why the character is not as popular as some of his cohorts. He is technically the first DC Silver Age character (his first appearance in Detective Comics #225, cover-dated November 1955, predates the first appearance of the Silver Age Flash by almost a year). Also, he is more powerful than Superman, has the detective skills of Batman and has been in every incarnation of the Justice League of America since its foundation. 

Still, there may also be a few reasons why customers haven’t responded to the character in years past: he’s green, speaks like Mr. Spock, and—even though there are several differences between the two—he has been written essentially like Superman in the past.

But now he’s back, with a new look, a new attitude and a new costume. Will this be enough to bring skeptics over to the character? Only time will tell.

Fans eager to pick up Soulsearchers and Company #78 tomorrow better enjoy it while it lasts. It, like most of Claypool Comics’ printed output, will soon be coming to an end. This title, along with the Elvira: Mistress of the Dark and Deadbeats series will stop publication early next year. Only Deadbeats will survive in the form of a web-only comic book. The reason for this? A change in the way Diamond Comics Distributors decides what books they will carry.

Back in September of 2005, Diamond sent an e-mail to vendors saying that any comic book would have to receive about 600 copies in orders or else the company would not be distributed. Since Diamond is basically the only distributor in town, this means that your book would essentially be cancelled. Logically, this announcement sent ripples through the comic book community, especially through the smaller comic book publishers.

Claypool Comics didn’t seem to be one of these smaller companies. After all, they have been around since 1993 and have published over 500 individual issues of their comics. But in November of 2005, the publisher released a cry for help because Diamond informed them that their Deadbeats and Soulsearchers and Company books were under their stated minimum and would be cancelled if sales didn’t increase.

Sales did rise, but not fast or far enough. So, the entire line is now coming to an end. It would be easy to paint Diamond as the bad guy, but realistically, they are a business. The 600 copy minimum they gave was the number they needed to sell to make distributing the book cost efficient. And they did make exceptions when they were warranted. Even in this case, Diamond has been allowing Claypool several extra months to wrap up the storylines in these books so fans won’t be disappointed.

Also, many have pointed at things Claypool could have done better to help their standing. There has been little in the way of advertising for the line. The most recent Soulsearchers cover I could find was the one to #76. Even the Previews catalog didn’t have the correct cover for the most recent issue. Since the cover is what new customers use to identify the book, this would have made it harder for new readers to locate the issue—ot to mention the fact that each of the series’ was well over 70 issues into their run. That kind of history makes it unappealing for new readers to pick up.

What does this mean to you, dear readers? It means that while it might be too late to save the Claypool line, if you have a favorite independent book, try to act as a cheerleader for it. Try to get new readers in and let everyone you meet know about it. 600 copies doesn’t seem like a lot, but as this case demonstrates, it is if you fail to reach that number.

Finally, Phonogram #1 seems like a Vertigo comic, if its solicitation is any clue. Yet, it is being published by Image Comics, and it shows how far the company has come from its inception.

Phonogram tells the story of David Kohl, a Phonomancer. What it is a phonomancer? Well, on David’s world, music is magic. And practitioners of magic are called phonomancers. Interesting concept, right? And one that would fit in with DC’s Vertigo line quite well.

When Image started over 10 years ago, most of their line consisted of your typical superheroes, although with a slight twist. But any company must evolve and grow, and since that time, Image has become a company where unique titles such as Fear Agent, The Walking Dead, and—up until a few years ago anyway—Powers can be published.

This is one of the best things Image does, allow creators to create, write great stories, and help them find an audience. While Phonogram would fit in with the rest of Vertigo’s offerings, it would be hard for the book’s relatively unknown creators, Keiron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie, to get a foot in with the company. Image’s make-up is such that they are willing to take a chance on unknowns if the concept is good.

Another nifty thing about Phonogram is that, if you're a music fan, you'll really dig the covers. They are take-offs on album covers from British acts of the 1990s. The one you see here resembles the image from the first album by the group Elastica. Groups such as Black Grape and Oasis get the treatment on future issues. Not only does this play into the series’ concept, but gives fans of this musical era something to relate to.

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William Gatevackes is a writer living in Mamaroneck, NY with his wife Jennifer. He would like to let everyone know that writing this column made him feel old. He remembers being glued to the TV to watch episodes of Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends when they first aired and actually bought that Elastica album when it was first released. Sigh. Anyway, he lets his “Grumpy Old Man” side come out in periodic comic reviews for PopMatters.