Confessions of a Comic Book Guy is a weekly column by Steve Bennett of Super-Fly Comics and Games in Yellow Springs, Ohio. This week, Bennett starts with Strawberry Shortcake and ends with Blackest Terror via Facebook.With a title like "Strawberry Shortcake vs.Wolverine" I shouldn't have been surprised by the number of sites that referenced last week's column. I like attention but what's sweeter was having retailer Bob Schaefer second my vote for a My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic comic (see "Bob Schaefer of Dragon's Lair Comics & Fantasy on 'My Little Pony'").
But the best response is a toss-up between the regards I received from Russel Lissau, co-writer of the Strawberry Shortcake comic book and Super-fly Comics & Games getting a call from publisher Ape Entertainment saying we could expect a package of free merchandise. Validation is nice but it's pretty hard to beat swag.
I'm not what you'd call an early adopter of technology (by the time I joined Facebook all the cool kids were switching to Twitter) so I don't have to tell any of you how important it is for your store to have a presence there. Still, I don't think it will hurt to reiterate the obvious; the comic book shop experience is essentially a social one. So using social media to make your store a regular part of your customers lives only makes sense.
But it can also be an important resource. I have to confess I'm a fan of Facebook which makes it a little uncomfortable for me when I have to wade through about a yard of outraged, hate fueled posts every time the site changes it’s layouts or privacy settings. To which I'd say (after, you know, calm the hell down) I don't think some people fully appreciate that Facebook is kind of a miracle. It has its detractors; there are plenty of articles online telling you it can make you lonely, depressed, sad, etc. All I know is if a sixteen-year-old me had access to it I would have had a lot less lonely adolescence.
One of the cooler things about it is that I'm now sort of friends with people whose work I've admired for years. I suppose it says something about me that some of my favorite comic book artists are ones who don't regularly work for Marvel or DC any more. People like Rick Hoberg, Gerry Gammill, Steve Lightle and especially Will Meugniot; I always loved his work on DNAgents and have always been disappointed he didn't do more comic book art.
After befriending Meugniot I began receiving posts of his pages from a project he was doing for Bill Black's AC Comics; another publisher I'm ashamed to say I don't pay as much attention to as I should. I would have been interested in anything Meugniot was working on but given N.E.D.O.R. Agents was about new versions of Golden Age public domain superheroes, this was right in my wheelhouse.
Nedor (aka. Better aka. Standard) was the company that gave us The Black Terror and Doc Strange, among others, although in this incarnation it's an acronym that stands for New Earth Defense Organization Reserve. The series will make its full first appearance in the upcoming Femforce #157 which features 84 pages for $9.95, including 26 pages of story and art by Meugniot. It's set to ship on November 9th.
All of this information was in Previews. I read Previews and I can even honestly say I study Previews, and I completely missed all of the above. Which is exactly how Facebook can be an important resource.
Perhaps because they're almost all untapped potential the Nedor characters get revived a lot. They appeared in Jim Krueger and Alex Ross' Project Superpowers (since there has been no comic published in the series since last December's Project Superpowers X-Mas Carol should I go ahead and assume that it’s over?), and Alan Moore incorporated them into his Tom Strong series. They proved popular enough to spawn a pair of mini-series by Peter Hogan and Yanick Paquette under the title Terra Obscura. It's a shame there most likely will never be a third because Hogan brought an unpredictable working class quality to superhero team dynamics.
Undoubtedly the most popular of the Nedor characters was The Black Terror, almost entirely due to his pulp-like name and admittedly super-cool black on black costume. I say this because I’ve read most of his Golden Age appearances and he was a not particularly interesting mash-up of Superman and Batman. In Krueger and Ross' Project Superpowers they decided his skull and crossbones chess insignia screamed "pirate" so he started brandishing a cutlass and flying in a magic galleon (I wish I were kidding).
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.