It’s great to have the comics on ComicMix now. I knew they were always planned to be part of the site, and so the site seemed to me to be a bit empty without them. Now the place seems to be filling in nicely, like a garden in mid-May.

Besides enjoying free comics from the comfort of my home, able to get them without even putting on pants, I find this format is great for my calling as a leading comics’ missionary.

Ever since I grew out of being a kid who loved comics, I’ve tried to encourage people to join my in my love of the medium. It wasn’t easy. When I was a teen at boarding school, there were a few other girls who like to read romance comics, and we would amuse our dorm-mates by reading them aloud. Unfortunately, it was the romance part that was most appealing to my peers (which was demonstrated when they also read True Confessions magazines out loud), and no one really wanted to read anything else.

In college, underground comix were cool, so I found people who shared my interest. These were heady days (in more ways than one), with all kinds of new stories from Robert Crumb, S. Clay Wilson, Trina Robbins, Skip Williamson, Jay Lynch, Spain and many many more. The National Lampoon had comics pages in every issue, and people like Neal Adams did spot illustrations. My Superman habit was still considered kind of weird, but no weirder than anything else – certainly much less weird than Spiro Agnew.

And then, I moved to New York, and the world opened up. The direct market was a newborn, and there were six comic book stores within a mile of my apartment. Some specialized in undergrounds, some in superheroes, and some mixed it up. It was great. I could find anything I wanted.

Everything except people that I knew. My then-boyfriend (now husband) would come with me to Forbidden Planet, then the largest store near by. He didn’t like comics as much as I did, but he would look at the books about film and animation.

Competition and market forces closed down most of the direct market accounts in the Village. Forbidden Planet shrank. The stores that were left, quite naturally, sold the merchandise that was available. Since a lot of such product was T & A, the stores started to seem seedy and creepy. People who might be interested in comics didn’t want to go into a lot of these stores. Women, especially, were skeeved out by the impossible physiques of the women on the covers and in figurines. If I could talk them inside, they would want to get out as quickly as possible.

(more…)

Here’s a comic book so big it makes those old tabloid editions (Superman Vs. Muhammad Ali, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer) look like a Jughead Digest. It measures 16" by 21.25", but even if it’s not the biggest comic book ever published, it certainly is one of the best.

On November 24, 1918, a new newspaper comic strip debuted named Gasoline Alley.  It’s still around today, making it the longest continuously published continuity strip – an incredible achievement, as continuity strips have been anathema in the newspaper world for decades. Revolving around the adventures of nonagenarian Walt Wallet and his family and their friends, Gasoline Alley actually didn’t become a continuity strip until Valentine’s Day 1921, when Walt discovered baby Skeezix abandoned at his doorstep. The child wasn’t from Krypton.

(more…)