In this episode of Origin Story, Bumblebee and Blaster head to Arizona and wind up victims of The Scraplets. Plus, I manage to make an Office Space joke at the expense of the Decepticons! It’s all in Transformers #29. Plus, I ramble about Top Gun even more, complete with Diet Pepsi commercial!
You can listen here:
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In the seventh episode of Origin Story, I delve into my first of several regular series Transformers comics from 1987, starting with issue #27, where in the recently departed Optimus Prime’s absence, Grimlock seizes command of the Autobots. Plus, I talk a little about my kind of sort of discovering music on the radio in January 1987, which means Bruce Hornsby and the Range.
Please dont forget to leave feedback at the Pop Culture Affidavit Facebook page and check out Pop Culture Affidavit for the show notes.
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In the sixth episode of Origin Story, I wrap up my coverage of the ultimate Hasbro crossover by taking a look at G.I. Joe and the Transformers #4. Do the Joes and Cobras save the world with the help of the Autobots? Will Hawk and Barbara get back together? Does anyone care about the Anthony storyline? Plus, Bumblebee becomes Goldbug! And I ponder the nature of nostalgia.
Please dont forget to leave feedback at the Pop Culture Affidavit Facebook page and check out Pop Culture Affidavit for the show notes.
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Thirty years ago, I begn collecting comics for the first time. Now, Im taking you back to those days with “Origin Story,” a comics podcasting miniseries where I will look at all of the comics I bought in 1986-1987 in “real time.”
With this episode, I return to the series I started with, G.I. Joe and the Transformers. I take a look at issue #2 and see how the Decepticons make an alliance with Cobra and possibly plan to double cross them. Are we working toward a big conclusion or are things just dragging along? Listen to find out! Plus, I reminisce about October/November 1986.
Pop Culture Affidavit podcast page
Thirty years ago, I begn collecting comics for the first time. Now, I’m taking you back to those days with “Origin Story,” a comics podcasting miniseries where I will look at all of the comics I bought in 1986-1987 in “real time.”
This time, I step away from Marvel and head over to DC for The Adventures of Superman #424, which marks the beginning of that title in the post-Crisis era. Does it still hold up after 30 years? Will I be able to say anything that Michael Bailey and Jeffrey Taylor haven’t already said? Will I fill out the postcard in the middle of the comic and attempt to win a copy of the Man of Steel special edition hardcover 30 years after the contest expired? Well, you’ll just have to listen!
Please don’t forget to leave feedback at the Pop Culture Affidavit Facebook page and check out Pop Culture Affidavit for the show notes.
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Here are a couple of extras:
The iconic cover of the comic:
And the trailer for the Stallone movie Cobra:
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Thirty years ago, I began collecting comics for the first time. Now, I’m taking you back to those days with “Origin Story,” a comics podcasting miniseries where I will look at all of the comics I bought in 1986-1987 in “real time.”
For episode two, it’s time to dive into one of my favorite series of that era, which is G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero #55, “Unmaskings.” I give a summary and review of the issue as well as take a look back at some mid-1980s television in my second segment.
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And for a bonus, here are some extras …
My copy of G.I. Joe #55, signed by Larry Hama and Mike Zeck:
The 20/20 Marvel 25th Anniversary segment mentioned in Jim Shooter’s column:
A promo for A Current Affair:
Part of an episode of A Current Affair:
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Thirty years ago, I began collecting comics for the first time. Now, I’m taking you back to those days with “Origin Story,” a comics podcasting miniseries where I will look at all of the comics I bought in 1986-1987 in “real time.”
In this first episode, I take a look at the book that started all of this, which is a crossover that every kid would have loved to see play out because they had already been playing the crossover in their basements and bedrooms with their toys. I’m talking about Marvel Comics’ miniseries G.I. Joe and The Transformers. This time around, I will summarize and review issue #1 of the series.
In writing this series of blog posts about the comics I picked up before the period I’ll be covering in the “Origin Story” podcast miniseries later this year, I’ve been deliberately writing about them in publication order because with the exception of a few books, I barely, if ever, remember the exact circumstances of their purchase. So that means while I’m covering things in order chronologically, I’m out of order autobiographically. I have very little reason as to why I’m clarifying that except to be anal retentive or something. Oh, and to say that while Star Wars #81 is to be read after Return of the Jedi, I’m fairly certain I got my copy before the Return of the Jedi adaptation miniseries I covered in the last entry.
While I’m not sure of the date, I vividly remember standing in Unique stationery, which would later become Sayville Card and Gift and looking through the magazine and comic book rack, probably on a night where we had ordered Chinese food and were killing time while the cooks at the Wai Wah Kitchen a few doors down cooked it. Unique had the kids magazines and comics on the bottom racks where we could all reach them and the more adult (and truly adult) magazines were on shelves for much taller people. Anyway, I flipped through all of the comics on the rack and when I saw the cover for Star Wars #81, immediately stopped and grabbed it, then asked for it. The comic was 60 cents, so as was usually the case it didn’t take much convincing.
Besides, looking at the cover, how could you not want to buy it? I’d seen Star Wars comics before, but for the most part was never interested in them, probably because at six years old, I was still too young to start being a full-fledged comics reader. Plus, while I saw Return of the Jedi in the theater that summer and Star Wars #81 came out in December, I hadn’t seen The Empire Strikes Back yet, so the pre-Jedi adventures didn’t necessarily pique my interest. But seeing this cover by Tom Palmer, where Han Solo and Princess Leia look exactly like they did on the screen, I thought to myself, “Wow, it’s really Star Wars!“ and once we had purchased it, I tore into it.
Chewbacca snuggles with some Ewoks.
Like other comics of the time, this one would be lost among all of the other ephemera of my youth–coloring books, comic books, and magazines that would be thrown in my desk and then thrown away as part of a spring cleaning purge. Also, like other comics of the time, I wouldn’t remember much about the story and would focus on the art–I could read very well at six years old, but there’s being able to understand the words and reading comprehension and my reading comprehension skills were not as fully developed as they would be down the line–and I remember moments like Chewbacca snuggling with some Ewoks and Han finding the dice he used to win the Falcon from Lando in a long-ago, still-untold story. And it wasn’t until 30 years later, when I bought a copy of the “A Long Time Ago …” Volume 4 omnibus from Dark Horse that I was able to reread and fully appreciate “Jawas of Doom.”
Written by Jo Duffy, who would write the series all the way to its end (save for a few fill-in issues) and illustrated by Ron Frenz, Tom Palmer, and Tom Mandrake, the story is the first in the Star Wars series that takes place after the Battle of Endor. The rebels are still on the planet, although it’s implied that this takes place just after Return of the Jedi, perhaps even the day after the big “Yub Nub” party. Han needs money and he tries to borrow some from a rebel pilot, who not only refuses him but insults him in the process. Leia suggests that she can loan him some money because she does come from a wealthy family, and that angers him even more, causing Han to stomp off with his pride hurt. The rest of the main characters are wondering what’s wrong and Leia explains that everything has happened so quickly since they freed him from the carbonite that Han really hasn’t had the chance to process everything and probably needs time to adjust.
Chewie gives Han a comforting hug aboard the Millennium Falcon.
Aboard the Millennium Falcon, which is shown having the radar dish that Lando knocked off while racing through the Death Star (something that I found awesome because my Millennium Falcon toy had lost its radar dish at one point, so I could just pretend it was post-Return of the Jedi), Han thinks about what his life is now life, especially since he spent so many years being a loner. He finds the dice that he used to win the ship from Lando and then Chewie comes in to give him a comforting hug.
Han then takes off with Leia and Chewie to Tattooine where he had stashed money years before, and on Tattooine, we see Boba Fett escape the sarlaac pit and get picked up by Jawas who mistake him for a droid. Han lands at Mos Eisley, Han has problems landing and then can’t get his money out of the bank because according to the bank the assets are frozen due to the customer being frozen. We also hear that the death of Jabba the Hutt has thrown the planet into a bit of chaos with various factions vying for the power left behind by the former gangster. Leia remembers that Artoo can probably talk with the bank computers to change the glitch in the system. They return to the Falcon to find Artoo gone and figure out that he’s been snatched by some jawas. Han and Leia borrow a couple of landspeeders and head after the sandcrawler, which has both Boba Fett and Artoo on board.
The Jawas begin attacking the landspeeders and we have a fight where our heroes attempt to get into the sandcrawler while Artoo tries to escape. At one point, Han comes face to face with Boba Fett and Fett has no idea who Han Solo is. Fett helps Han out of the sandcrawler with Artoo and Han decides that he is going to help the bounty hunter as well. It’s only when Leia yells for Han that Fett gets his memory back and starts to shoot at Han, only to be foiled when Han and Artoo jump off of the sandcrawler just as it crashes into the sarlaac.
Now, my judgment and memory here may be off, but I think this is one of the more well-known, and perhaps one of the more well-regarded issues of Star Wars from the Return of the Jedi era. I’d say that its proximity to the film as well as its cover definitely have something to do with that; however, this isn’t a case where it’s just that because this is a great single-issue story. Han Solo was woefully underused in Return of the Jedi and while there is an end to the story overall at the end of that film, something that could be a sort of question regarding Han would be what he is going to do with his old life. Yes, the debt to Jabba has been “paid” (in that Jabba is dead so there’s probably no debt), but does that mean he settles down and doesn’t have adventures anymore or stays in the military? Or does he return to his old life as a smuggler?
After a big fight, Boba Fett and the sandcrawler head into the mouth of the sarlaac.
The Force Awakens has shown that both actually happen and examines how they are wrapped up in particular consequences of the post-Jedi galaxy. “Jawas of Doom” is more of a hangover story–what happens when the party is over and you have to go back to work on Monday morning, in a manner of speaking. And it’s a good character piece that manages to be both fun and serious while furthering those involved without needing to shout THIS HAS IMPORTANT RAMIFICATIONS FOR THE FUTURE. And I know that one of the other notable features of the issue is the “return” of Boba Fett, or at least having Boba Fett “come back” and then be put right back where we found him, but to me that’s secondary to having Han go back to the exact place where he left off, which is Tattooine–the world he was on when he decided to take Ben Kenobi and Luke Skywalker to Alderaan.
There are a number of Star Wars stories that I go back to whenever I want to flip through the old Marvel series and this is one of them. Not, mind you, because of the personal nostalgia of remembering how I picked this one out, but because it’s actually a great read.
Coming Next Month: The Transformers #1.
In my previous post, I wrote about the first comic I technically owned, although I only remember finding it years after I actually had “bought” it as a kid and it wound up feeling way more important later on, especially when I became an avid Batman collector and a fan of DC continuity, especially the continuity that centered around or was associated with Crisis on Infinite Earths. Here, looking at the second set of comics, is something that was purchased because it was associated with the most important thing in my life when I was six years old and that was Star Wars.
To this day, Return of the Jedi remains the Star Wars film I saw the most in theaters and is the only film from the original trilogy that I saw upon its original release. My father took me and my friend Chris to see the film at the Patchogue Indoor/Outdoor drive-in theater (the one that eventually became the UA Patchogue 13, which I wrote about in 2010: “Let’s Go to the Movies”) in 1983, would take me again to see it at the Sayville triplex when it was rereleased in 1985, and Amanda and I would go and see the special edition during spring break in 1997. I will always have a soft spot in my heart for the film because of it being the one I saw in the theater (as opposed to Star Wars, which was on television and video and I had watched numerous times before seeing Jedi; or The Empire Strikes Back, which I saw via bootleg copy before it finally came out on video in 1984), and also because of how its merchandising shaped that part of my childhood.
You could not escape Return of the Jedi in 1983 and 1984. You may have not gone and seen the film (although I don’t know that many people my age who hadn’t seen it), but that didn’t matter because no matter what store you walked into, it seemed that there was something with a return of the Jedi logo on it. Lucasfilm licensed Jedi to the hilt and when I was a the height of my kid fandom, I had a ton of merchandise that went beyond the toys: sheets; cookies; Dixie cups; a calendar; and my most prized non-toy possessions, which were the records, tapes and books that told the story of the film. For myself and a number of other kids my age, owning these pieces of merchandise allowed me to relive the movie for at least a few years before I saw it again or owned my own copy on VHS (a copy I still actually have).
A two-page spread of Star Wars merchandise, most of it from Jedi, as featured in “George Lucas: The Creative Impulse” by Charles Champlin
The comics, however, I have to admit, were not really a part of that. My comic book buying as a little kid was incredibly sporadic–if I saw something I liked and my dad had enough pocket change, I would buy it, but there were rarely return trips to the store to get the next issue or anything like that. But I did own the entire Marvel Comics film adaptation and that is because of something that is an integral part of the 1980s childhood nostalgia, which is the comic book multipack.
If you’re unfamiliar with comic book multipacks, these were polybagged packs of three or four comic books that were stocked on the shelves of K-Mart, Toys R Us, and similar stores (for those local to Long Island, you’ll recognize the name TSS). Sometimes they were entire collections of limited series, such as this, but other times they were three comics featuring the same character or characters. I remember a number of times where I would pick one of the multipacks off the shelf and try to see what the middle book was because you only could see the full covers of two of them. Most of the comics multipacks were from Marvel, although DC produced them as well, and at some point in late 1983 or early 1984, the company bagged the entire four-issue series and put it on the shelves for the low, low price of $2.29, which was an 11-cent discount.
I really don’t need to get that much into the plot of the series because if you’re reading this, you’re probably familiar with the events of Return of the Jedi, and unlike, say, Marvel’s adaptation of Star Wars back in 1977, there aren’t major discrepancies between the comic and the movie such as deleted scenes left in or lines of dialogue significantly changed. In fact, the thing that does make the Return of the Jedi adaptation unique is that it’s a separate miniseries from the then-ongoing Star Wars title that Marvel was publishing and it is only four issues long instead of the six that were given to tell the stories of Star Wars and Empire. The creative team was the same as Empire‘s six-issue story arc, with Archie Goodwin handling the writing and Al Williamson and Carlos Garzon doing the art (the team on Star Wars back in 1977 had been Roy Thomas and Howard Chaykin).
In trying to remember how I got these comics, I seem to recall getting them from Toys R Us in Bay Shore, and it was one of those rare times when my parents took Nancy and I to the store and allowed us to pick something out because we didn’t get toys or anything like that at random very often–they were usually saved for Christmas or our birthdays. Why we were at Toys R Us to begin with is beyond me, but I’m going to assume that either one of us was there to spend Christmas or birthday money or we were there to buy a gift for someone else, perhaps someone whose birthday party we were attending. The comics and coloring books were all located on a newsstand rack that was at the end of the board games aisle at the back of the store (and honestly, the old-school Toys R Us layout is probably worth its own blog post, especially if I can find pictures), and what probably happened is that I saw the comics multipack, asked my parents to buy it for me, and since it was roughly the same price as an action figure (my usual go-to “can you buy me this” item because it was cheap and they knew it wouldn’t go to waste), they said yes.
I’d like to say that I read the covers off of the series, but quite honestly, I only remember one time where I read it in the car on the way to my grandmother’s house and what probably happened after that was that I shoved the comics in the desk where I kept all of my coloring books. The storybook, which had bonafide photographs from the film was more important to me anyway. And what that means was that I had vague memories of it beyond the covers–which, to be honest, are different characters striking simple poses in a way that can best be described as “serviceable” and nowhere near as dynamic as the adaptations of the other two films–so when I read the adaptation as part of the “A Long Time Ago …” Volume 4 omnibus that Dark Horse Comics released, I didn’t have any serious emotional attachment.
Still, I have to say that it is quite a disappointment. Having to condense the entire movie into four issues means that Goodwin and Williamson are almost doing a retread of the photographic storybook, as it’s heavy on narration boxes and the panels look more like stills than dynamic depictions of action. Granted, I know the story and knew the story when I first read it, so I didn’t and don’t need that feeling of “What’s going to happen next,” but this during an era of the Marvel Star Wars comics where David Micheline and Jo Duffy were writing some excellent stories and the work by artists such as Walt Simonson, Ron Frenz, and Tom Palmer was top-notch. That’s not saying that Goodwin and Williamson were bad at their jobs, but reading Jedi as part of that omnibus package had me wondering what the series would have been like if those creators had taken on the task of adapting the film.
Instead, what we have is probably the very definition of a “disposable” comic book. I mean, there are quite a number of comics out there that are ephemeral, but for something that had such a big impact on popular culture and the comics industry (especially Marvel) as Star Wars, the adaptation of Jedi reads as if it were to be consumed in the moment and then tossed aside to be put on a pile of coloring books, storybooks, and other things that would eventually make their way into a trash can at some point during a huge spring cleaning a few years later.
Coming next month: Star Wars #81
I suppose it’s kind of funny to say that comic #1 in your collection (read: the first comic you purchased and still have) is only #1 on a technicality. I own a copy of The Brave and the Bold #182 and have owned this comic since 1981; however, I honestly do not remember buying it.
My hometown’s local comic shop, Amazing Comics, opened in 1984 and the first comic book I ever bought there was an issue of Superman: The Secret Years. But a few years later, probably around 1988 or 1989, my parents were cleaning out the attic and my friend Tom and I were helping them clean off some old stuff that they were going to give to a local church. Most of these items were pretty typical–clothes and old toys, for instance. In fact, several of the old toys were Fisher-Price Little People sets that nowadays would fetch about $40-$50 on eBay if my parents had the foresight to put those back in the attic.
Anyway, among those old toys was an American Tourister luggage set that my parents probably had owned since they were married in 1971, a pea-green hard-cased set that was actually pretty cumbersome to store and had been replaced with the type of suitcases that can be placed inside one another. Tom and I were asked to open each of them up, dust them, vacuum them, and leave them on the back deck to air out before we put them in the car. We did so, taking a break from actually playing with the Little People (because even though we were 11 or 12, it was toys we hadn’t seen and that’s what you do whenever you see toys), and when I opened up what used to be the toiletries and cosmetics suitcase, which is what I used to pack when I was very little and would spend nights at my grandmother’s, I found The Brave and the Bold #182.
In the splash page, Batman gets a frightening surprise and Jim Aparo gives us some great cape.
It was obviously my comic book and I had obviously brought it with me when staying at my grandmother’s one night, but I cannot say when I actually bought it. The cover date was January 1982 and the publication date, according to Mike’s Amazing World of Comics, was October 22, 1981, so the comic predated the opening of the comic book store and that meant that my father probably bought it for me when he took me to Greaves Stationary on Main Street because he was buying cigarettes and while he chatted up the people behind the counter, I perused the comics and picked this one out. The fact that I hadn’t lost it–I remember owning at least one issue of The New Adventures of Superboy as well as one or two issues of The Amazing Spider-Man but what issues they were and when I got them is lost to time–is only by the grace of my forgetting it in a suitcase.
Robin reminds Batman that he’s all grown up.
The Brave and the Bold, most comics fans will remember, started as an adventure anthology book and then became a superhero team-up book, eventually evolving into a Batman team-up book that ended with issue #200 and was “replaced” by Batman and the Outsiders. The team-up in this issue is with “Robin, The Ex-Boy Wonder” and is called “Interlude on Earth-Two.” Written by Alan Brennert with art by Jim Aparo, the story begins on Earth-2 with the adult Dick Grayson, aka Robin, teaming up with Starman Ted Kord to figure out how Hugo Strange, a man long thought to be dead, is creating crazy storms around Gotham City. Meanwhile, back on Earth-1, Batman finds himself in a graveyard in a similar storm and after dodging a lighting strike sees is own grave. Only it’s not his own grave; it’s the grave of the Batman of Earth-2, who had died a few years earlier in an issue of Adventure Comics.
Batman, after scaring a random couple who think they’re seeing a ghost, heads to the headquarters of the JSA where he’s accosted by Robin, who thinks he’s breaking in before he realizes who he’s looking at. The two recap who Hugo Strange is and then find themselves being attacked by relics from the Batcave: Catwoman’s Pantherjet, and an old Batmobile, for instance. Someone else joins their team as the old Batmobile attacks them and that is Kathy Kane, aka Batwoman, who Bruce remembers died years ago on his earth but is semi-retired on Earth-2.
Realizing that the artifacts that are attacking them are real, the Bat-team deduces that the only possible place that Hugo Strange could be attacking them from is the Batcave and they head there, which is where they have to fight the T-Rex that’s so famous as well as a Batman android. Eventually an old and decrepit Hugo Strange shows himself, holding Starman’s cosmic rod (it had disappeared at the beginning of the issue), which he’d been using to control everything he’d been throwing at the heroes. He tells Batman, Robin, and Batwoman how he had survived the fall that everyone thought had killed him back in Detective Comics #46 (and thanks to The Original Encyclopedia of Comic Book Heroes Vol 1 for that info) and then Batman attacks him, telling Strange that it’s not that he wants to destroy Gotham, it’s that he wants to die. Batman tells him that he doesn’t have the guts to kill himself and eventually Strange admits it and uses the cosmic rod to turn himself to ash. The story ends with Starman, who is nursing a broken arm, using the cosmic rod to send Batman back to his earth.
Hugo Strange sends a Batman robot after our heroes and Robin has to “kill” his mentor.
By the way, there’s a Nemesis story in this comic but: a) I never read that as a kid, and b) I covered it back on episode 3 of 80 Years of DC Comics: Action-Adventure, so you can learn all about it there.
Alan Brennert is one of Rob Kelly’s favorite comic book writers and it wasn’t until recently that I realized that he wrote three of my all-time favorite Batman stories, including this one. I’ve heard this covered on a couple of podcasts before and the two things that always come up are that the version of the Earth-2 Robin costume with the yellow pants and the green mask that covers most of his face are not everyone’s favorite and that through most of the story, Robin is resentful that the Earth-1 Batman is there and acts like kind of a prick.
At the end of the story, Hugo Strange meets his end. Batman is kind of responsible, but we’re going to gloss over that.
When I was a kid reading this story, Robin’s resentment didn’t necessarily register with me and re-reading it now, I actually like the resentment. Batman of Earth-2 died in Adventure Comics #462, which only came out three years prior to this, so in comic book time it’s very possible that not much time had passed between the death of the Earth-2 Batman and this particular adventure, although there were two JLA/JSA crossovers between now and then, so this is not the first time that the Dick Grayson of Earth-2 is encountering the Bruce Wayne of Earth-1. However, while I don’t know if I’m being entirely accurate, this is probably the first time in a long time that the Robin of Earth-2 has been part of a Batman and Robin team. Furthermore, Batman does boss him around quite a bit like a junior partner, and it actually is a nice bit of foretelling of how the Dynamic Duo of Earth-1 will have their tension boil over in the pages of The New Teen Titans and Batman of the Outsiders just prior to Dick becoming Nightwing. Plus, I’ve always liked this version of the Earth-2 Robin’s costume. I can’t explain why, because it would never really work if it were used in a movie or anything. Maybe it’s the way it’s drawn by Jim Aparo because his artwork is amazing throughout the story and a reminder of why for years his Batman was “my” Batman.
As for the story, I love it because Brennert’s writing is really tight and he makes several callbacks to storylines way in the past (as evidenced by my having to use a comic book encyclopedia for reference) but doesn’t overwhelm things with contrivance or continuity. In fact, he gives what could be a very heavy story about dealing with one’s grief, or having to unexpectedly confront feelings that you thought you’d worked through. Plus, he plays the angle of the old, decrepit villain trying for one last victory very well, even if Batman kind of goads Hugo Strange into offing himself (it’s kind of “suicide by cop” if you break it down.
I would spend much of the early part of my comic collecting career loving alternate earths stories like Crisis on Infinite Earths. and I think this comic book is responsible. I’m also happy at how well it holds up, especially when I’m pretty sure that a number of comics I’ll be reviewing for this series won’t.
Coming Next Month: The Marvel Comics adaptation of Return of the Jedi
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