Todd McFarlane drew Watchmen art

Yup. It's true. Todd McFarlane drew some Watchmen art.

Back in the 1987 update of DC's Who's Who series - which was a glossary of all the DC characters post-Crisis on Infinite Earths - McFarlane did a wraparound cover for issue #4. He was on Infinity Inc. at the time, if I'm not mistaken. You can see the front section of that cover here:


Inside the issue was a write-up for The Minutemen, the Golden Age super-team seen in Watchmen. Here's that write-up:

Note at the end how they made a point to say the Watchmen Universe
was NOT a part of the DCU in the above scan

In the new movie, the above image looks like this:


The purpose of the series' wraparound covers was to fit all the characters indexed within on one image. The Minutemen landed on the back cover section of the wraparound, which you can see below with call-out notes for each member. Click to enlarge.

And there you have it. Todd McFarlane of Spawn and Spider-Man fame officially drew Watchmen art for DC.

Hey, dude, sweet DJ Machine!

I would have ignored this as a kid, but I want it today.

Found while recently flipping through a DESTROYED copy of DC Comics Presents #87 my parents bought me when I was about 4 years old. I'd love to "hold dance parties for my friends."

The Dawn of Watchmen

Back in 1985, Neil Gaiman, a young journalist at the time, wrote a profile of Alan Moore a few months before the release of the first issue of Watchmen. Back in last week, Gaiman posted a scan of that article to his blog. Sharing that same spirit of mining the past for fun reading, I've decided to tackle some of my old comic press magazines for content, too. I'm kicking off with a bit about Watchmen.

What I have here is the 1985 Preview issue of Amazing Heroes, a spectacular mag that's been discontinued for some time now. Amazing Heroes was published by Fantagraphics (go now and buy stuff from them) and covered "mainstream" comics as passionately as, say, The Comics Journal (which is also published by Fantagraphics) covers graphic storytelling in all its forms.

dig that Jaime Hernadez cover...sigh...

I could write a whole post on Amazing Heroes alone. A few years ago, I switched collector gears from buying stuff like single issues of random comics to buying stuff like single issues of random comics AND comics magazines. Especially stuff from 1985-1987, the comics era I'm most obsessed with in terms of wondering how BAD ASS it must have been to be a fan at the time. So, in my quest to recreate the feeling of being able to snag issues such as Dark Knight Returns #4, Watchmen #5 or, I dunno, Raw #8 off the new comics rack, I buy comics magazines from the era. And oh, how the treasure flows.

For instance, in this 1985 Preview, we get the following bit on Watchmen. This is the first that Amazing Heroes ever covered the book. Just try to wrap your head around that. Imagine you work at Amazing Heroes - a magazine whose staff included Heidi MacDonald, Mark Waid, Peter Sanderson and many other names you may recognize nowadays - and you speak to people at DC Comics and they say, "Oh, we have this book called Watchmen coming out from Alan Moore, the Swamp Thing writer, and Dave Gibbons. Maybe you should cover that in your Preview issue. We think it may be big" Guh. Here's what writer Frank Plowright had to say

Click to enlarge

I thought it'd be nice to also add a scan of another article by Frank Plowright about a mystery project "coming in 1985" from Fantagraphics. Anybody know what this was/became/if it came out?

Click to enlarge

Hope you enjoy! And all due respect to the former writing staff, editors and publishers of Amazing Heroes. I hope I'm not angering anybody by posting these. I'm just posting because I want to share with fans whom I'm sure would like to read this stuff, but may not be able to get their hands on it. I'm not sure the legalities of posting portions of content from magazines that no longer exist, so I apologize in advance if I'm doing anything wrong here. Please contact me if you know otherwise.

AIM Adventures: Saunas & Sinners

It's Monday afternoon...

Ben: I went to church on Saturday afternoon
Rickey: did you catch on fire when you entered?
Ben: No, I avoided the holy water, which is usually the most flammable substance
Rickey: why'd you go?
Ben: I decided that's what I'm gonna do for Lent* rather than give something up is go to church once a week
Rickey: how did it go?
Ben: It was kinda nice, actually
Ben: Relaxing
Ben: Like a sauna, but without the naked old dudes
Rickey: I've never been to whatever pervert saunas you've been too
Rickey: but I'm glad to hear it went well

*=Ben is not Catholic

Where in the World Is...

Far too many great comic book writers and artists have gone M.I.A. over the past several years. As a public service to the industry we love, we at the CKT have decided to bring to bear our tens of readers to locate these talented men and women in a segment we shall call...

Where in the World Is...

...Will Pfeifer?

It wasn't too long ago that Will Pfeifer was being hailed as the future of the comics industry, and rightfully so. His H-E-R-O series, a clever and edgy updating of the Silver Age "Dial 'H' for Hero" concept, in addition to being one of Rickey's favorite books, put Pfeifer on the map as a guy who could breath life into old properties and create something exciting and new. He demonstrated that again not long after, pioneering the all-too-short "Sub Diego" era in a brief run on Aquaman. Personally, I dug Will's fun work on Catwoman. However, following Amazons Attack, the 2007 event that was supposed to put Pfeifer on the map but failed to deliver (something most agree is at least in some part the fault of factors beyond Will's control), he seems to have quietly faded out of the public eye (Catwoman, Pfeifer's last regular gig, got cancelled last summer). A guy as talented as Will Pfeifer should certainly get more than one strike and in the eyes of those of us here at the CKT could still be a major player.

...Christopher Priest?

Under his birth name of Jim Owsley, the dude who would become Christopher Priest started in comics the year I was born, 1982, and within three years he was the first African-American editor on a major comic, heading up the Spider-Man books. Over the next decade-plus, he racked up a plethora of impressive achievements, including getting to write icons like Superman, Spider-Man, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman and more, co-creating The Ray as well as Quantum & Woody, helping to found Milestone Media and dozens of stints on a wide array of other characters for just about every major company. However, after changing his name, Priest unquestionably took his game to a whole new level helping to re-launch Black Panther for Marvel Knights in 1998 and then spent the next five years carving out a definitive 60-issue run many consider one of the overlooked modern classics (myself included). After that wound down, he had quickies on The Crew and Captain America & The Falcon, but has been pretty much inactive for the past four years or so. Somewhere along the way, I think Priest got wrongly pigeonholed as only being able to write black characters, but he can do that and a whole lot more.

...Darryl Banks?

When Green Lantern was overhauled in 1994 with Kyle Rayner as the newbie GL, Darryl Banks was responsible for giving the rookie his distinctive and memorable look. For the next 92 issues off and on, Banks continued to help chronicle Kyle's adventures, creating a new visual world for him to inhabit, complete with colorful friends and foes. Banks was one of the best when it came to imaginitive applications of the power ring and dreaming up exotic environments on Earth and beyond. It's no stretch at all to say that the guys who have been drawing Green Lantern since the franchise's big Rebirth have taken major visual cues from the playbook Banks created, yet we haven't seen much of him lately, which is too bad.

...Renato Arlem?

In 2006, Marvel rocked their cosmos with Annihilation, featuring a quartet of limited series, one of which starred the Silver Surfer with art provided by Renato Arlem. I was particularly taken aback by Arlem's work on that series as the Surfer is a classic character with a distinctive look who has been immortalized by some of the biggest names in the business, but this dude had a style more like Alex Maleev or Steve Epting than Jack Kirby or John Buscema; drawing noir in a cosmic setting, my eye was most definitely caught. Arlem had a cup of coffee on X-Factor, which fit him like a glove, and then latched onto Hawkgirl during its dying days, where he drew some dope giant robots. That's the last I remember of the guy, but he's always the wildcard I'll throw out when me and my buddies are playing the "who should draw what" game as I really dig his stuff.

...Angel Unzueta?

When Geoff Johns kicked off his now legendary Flash run with Wonderland, which was finally collected just recently, the artist was one Angel Unzueta. He had a dynamic and energetic style that gave Johns' story the kick it needed to hit the ground running. A few issues later though, Unzueta was gone, Scott Kolins was onboard, and the rest is history. I've got no complaints when it comes to the awesome work Kolins and his successors did on Flash, but I've always wondered why Unzueta got the hook and we never saw more of him, because he definitely had some great potential and it would have been interesting to watch him grow as an artist.

If you have seen or heard about any of this missing pros, please file a report with the Cool Kids Table immediately!

Thanks to T.J. Dietsch for suggesting Christopher Priest and Darryl Banks.

Developing a Brocabulary: Stylinguistics

The following pearls of wisdom from Brocabulary: The New Man-i-festo of Dude Talk are dedicated to one of the smoothest, most stylish fellas I know, Mr. David Paggi, because today we're talking about Stylinguistics or Language that pertains to the elements of style.

Or in other words, "Who cares whether it's the clothes that makes the man or it's the man that makes the clothes--what matters is that the clothes make a woman want to..." and we'll stop short there.

brawndescension - The condescension a brawny individual shows towards a less well-developed specimen: "My trainer said I was developing a nice three-pack, but I think he was being brawndescending."

cloutfit - An outfit that shows how much clout you have via French cuffs with twenty-four-karat links, a diamond-encrusted Brolex watch, a bespoke suit, polished wingtips, etc.

credlocks - Dreadlocks sported by a white dude to try to establish cred in the black community.

darecut - A haircut you get on a dare: "Dude! There's a penis shaved into your head!" "Yeah, it was a darecut. I get to use Tim's Lotus for a night if I go into work wearing this."

doucheshave - A shave befitting a douchebag.

flaircut - A haircut with flair.

Watchmen stuff I found on eBay

Watchmen-mania is kicking wild balls right now thanks to the movie opening next weekend, and that means we've all started seeing that black and yellow logo everywhere. The merchandising for the movie already popped off, too, with Halloween costumes and books and coffee and so on.

So I looked on eBay for fun (cause that's what I do for fun) to see what kind of Watchmen crap people were selling and I was surprised to see a lot of older merchandise I'd never seen before. Here's some of the stuff I found:

DC COMICS SPOTLIGHT #1

The DC SPOTLIGHT series was a freebie DC sent to retailers back in the '80s and they acted as previews to the coming year's new titles. This first issue was released in 1985 and features a page on a new series called Watchmen. Yep, this is the first appearance of Watchmen. It's currently going for over $150 on eBay, but before you hardcore fans drop that cash on a copy, here's a secret: The "first appearance" is only one page. And it can be seen below:



No, I know it's a tiny version, and you can't really read it. I have another picture somewhere on my computer, so if I ever find it, I'll post it here. But there you have it.It's just a quick write-up on the book, and it features the art used on the new hardcover edition of the collected series.

WATCHMEN WATCH

Yay! Alliteration! This timepiece was released around the same time the book was in the '80s. I saw one for sale at a comic shop in Texas around 2000, and even then I thought it was ugly.

WATCHMEN RPG 1

Yeah, there was a role-playing game in the '80s tied into the Watchmen universe. I actually saw this at a dollar store in Muskogee, Oklahoma when I was growing up around the early '90s and passed it by. I'd heard of Watchmen, but didn't care at the time. I believe I was busy reading about Superman dying or some other very important comic book event.

WATCHMEN RPG 2

How boss does this look? Looks like a Nintendo cartridge package or something. Anyways, this is another role-playing game booklet. Note the blood platter-free smiley face button on the right shoulder of the Comedian.

WATCHMEN RPG 3

This is the one I think I;d like to have. Something to do with Rorschach's journal. I believe they used content in this one, which was over-seen by Gibbons and Moore, to help build that video game they're making.

WATCHMEN RPG FIGURE SET

These were little metal figures tied to the role-playing game. There was the box and inside were the little metal guys you could paint and play with. I have no RPG experience beyond trying to play Dungeons & Dragons with a couple friends in high school at a sleepover for about 20 minutes before the guy who was our dungeon master got SUPER pissed at us for giggling and had his mom come and pick him up early. Even still, I wonder if this RPG was any good by regular players' standards. Seems to me this woulda been rad to play in someone's basement in 1986. Here's a closer view of the pieces:


I almost snagged this at a Wizard World Philadelphia show a couple years ago from this really old - but totally nice - retailer guy for $10 before I decided it was a stupid idea and went right on living my life. What the hell was I gonna do with metal figures of the Watchmen characters? And that all brings us to this baby:

WATCHMEN RPG POSTER

This was a poster for the role-playing game. I like comic posters a lot, and there wasn't one other than this (that I know of) for Watchmen that was also all in color.

Up next, I plan on posting all the '80s comics fan press stuff I have on Watchmen. Keep your eyes peeled!