The Lyingest Marvel Cover Of All Time--Marvel Monsters: Devil Dinosaur #1!

Well, lookie what the Quarter Bin bringeth forth:

Well, that's definitely worth four bits!!

But what does that cover blurb say?

"The first appearance of the Hulk"?!?! Sure, we've all read it a million times, but the heck, right? Lay it on us, comic book!!

Slow clap.

Well played, Marvel Monsters: Devil Dinosaur #1. Well played.

Grumble grumble Xemnu the Living Titan grumble grumble demand a refund grumble grumble...

Bold Fashion Choices--The Unknown Soldier! (No, Not That One)

You know, DC's Unknown Soldier wasn't the first war hero to use that moniker.

Ace Comics had one back in 1941...

His identity was never revealed, and it was sorta kinda implied that he wasn't a real person, but somehow a manifestation of America who appeared whenever needed--sort of like Astro City's Old Soldier.

He had a pretty good logo, for a Golden Age joint:

But his costume? Uh...

Honey, keep wearing that, and you will remain unknown!

They completely revamped his outfit for his second appearance, in Ace Comics #2 (1941):

Uhhh...OK?

The full-head yellow mask (under a hat?!) with the brown uniform? The short (short SHORT) shorts with the boots? Does the spirit of America really let you go out in public like that?

Yes...

Oh, yeah, he was super-strong, and could fly, and could make tornadoes!

Question about color scheme aside, he didn't look too bad from the waist up...

...but they seemingly took every opportunity to give us hinder shots:

A couple of issues later, they made some minor tweaks. They ditched the full head yellow mask in favor a a much smaller (yay) greyish face mask (uh...). But you know what?

The shorts got even shorter.

Somehow, they got even shorter.

Oh, by the way, the Unknown Soldier was an incredible bastard of a killing machine. When the Nazis try to invade New York City (they did that a lot in his stories):

But it always came back to the shorts. Those short, tight shorts...

At some point later in his career, someone finally decided to make his mask brown. And to give him full length pants!

Although this shot sure looks like he was drawn with shorts, and the colorist just made the rest of his legs brown...

Anyway, I guess the moral is: WEAR PANTS, DAMMIT!!

The Down Side Of Immortality!

A madman is threatening Central City (the Spirit's town, not the Flash's...hmmm, there's a Convergence story for you...) with a very unusual threat:

Good question, lady! How is that a bad thing!

So--not a utopia!!

Please remember that next time you donate money to defeat some disease--we still have to die of something, or civilization goes to hell in a handbasket.

Of course, that's all according to a (very) mad scientist, so, you know, grain of salt and all that.

From The Spirit: The New Adventures #1 (1998) by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons

Manic Monday Triple Overtime--This Is How Priceline Worked A Long Time Ago In A Galaxy Far, Far Away

Maybe we could send this guy to Iran, or Syria, or Latveria...

Well...OK.

That's probably a little bit more effective than this guy:



But I'd still love to see what the Priceline Negotiator could get from Jabba!

From Star Wars #4 (2015)

Manic Monday Bonus--Balancing The Budget Through Creative Bureaucracy!!

It's time to for another of our occasional looks at the bureaucracy of Mega-City One!

Poor Mike Groober has been getting the run-around, and he wants the truth (with a little help from a little bomb he's brought along!):

The system works!!

From 2000 AD #1374 (2004)

Manic Monday--Don't Make The Boy Scouts Angry!

So, Liberty Scouts Comics #2 (1941) featured the debut of...The Liberty Scouts!!

#2 was the first issue, as there was no #1. In the Golden Age, bookkeeping was far more casual.

2 months later Liberty Scouts Comics #3 appeared...

Who are the Liberty Scouts? Here's a truncated version of their origin from #3:

There was nothing at all remarkable about the adventures of Smokey, Skipper and Strut...just three feisty, non-powered youths who fought Nazi.

Well, there was one remarkable thing, as this piece in #3 attests:

Yeah, the Boy Scouts of America sicced their lawyers on Centaur Comics, because "you might conceivably think our magazine is being published by them." Heaven forfend any publication having "Scouts" in the title!!

Well, Centaur folded quickly, as the next thing we see of these lads is:

This oddity wasn't published by Centaur, but by Chicago Mail Order, who was nebulously related to Centaur, a a freebie. Note that the cover is just the cover from Liberty Scouts Comics #2 with a redrawn logo. The contents were apparently a straight reprint of:

Oh, dear. Our friends the Liberty Scouts Guards were demoted to a back-up feature (in this issue, the very last story, even), while former back-up Man Of War got the cover and the title!

Well, Man Of War Comics didn't last any longer than Liberty Scouts Comics--just two issues--so we can't blame the Boy Scout's litigiousness for all of their problems.

The moral of the story--don't plan on publishing The Justice Scouts or X-Scouts unless your lawyers are pretty good...

Squish Thing!!

Another question people often ask:

"Hey, snell, could you show us a time when Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson doing a Simpsons story?"

Your wish is my command!

See, one day, a chance collision resulted in...

A most delicious discovery:

So Homer becomes obsessed with re-creating the perfect lime Squishee beer...

Moe, however, decided to stop Homer, both to protect his bar business, and because he wanted Marge for himself.

So...

But this is a comic book, so we know Homer survives...

And when Moe menaces Marge:

Fortunately, this story has a happier ending than the original Swamp Thing tale...

Too bad we never got to see the Alan Moore version of Squish Thing...

From Treehouse Of Horror #11 (2005)