After reading Jennifer DeRoss's biography of Gardner Fox a few years ago, I was inspired to pick up The Golden Age Doctor Fate Archives. I was first introduced to the character in a reprint from Wanted: The World's Most Dangerous Villains #3, and I've read a few contemporary (well, they were contemporary in the 1980s and '90s) stories but I'd never dove deep into the character's background.

Doctor Fate debuted in More Fun Comics # 55 in the middle of 1940. Right out of the gate, he's described as a "student of ancient mysteries that were partially destroyed when Caesar burned Alexandria's library, delver in the unknown science of the occult and the weird, alchemist and physicist extraordinary..." Although he doesn't hesitate to use a right cross on his opponent, he's clearly a character more grounded in magic and mysticism. In his second appearance, he crosses the River Styx and speaks with the "Ruler of the Dead." In his third issue, he starts dropping Lovecraft-type incantations like "Nyeth thryalla" and "Fyorneth dignalleth." While the art by Howard Sherman doesn't hold a candle to the surreal landscapes that Steve Ditko would later use for Marvel's Dr. Strange stories, his style is better suited to a character like Doctor Fate than a more physical hero like Superman or Green Arrow.

But there's a couple pretty sudden shifts in the character. At the end of More Fun Comics #66, Doctor Fate -- who thus far had been a pretty mysterious figure -- surprisingly removes his helmet to reveal his secret identity to his lady friend, Inza. The following issue then provides a pretty vanilla origin story for the character. Then, in #72, Doctor Fate has, without explanation, begun wearing a helmet that does not cover his entire face. The character seems decidedly more mortal, succumbing to a simple gas attack, no longer uses any real mystical powers, preferring to smash through walls and wallop bad guys with his fists. In other words, where the original was a unique and clever approach to a superhero, this new iteration was largely indistinguishable from just about every other superhero around at the time. The change made no sense to me as it was the original creative team of Gardner Fox and Howard Sherman working on this the entire time... until I realized that Mort Weisinger took over from Whitney Ellsworth as editor with More Fun #71. Since there were no other changes to the team working on the stories and Weisinger has a reputation for being a somewhat dictatorial editor, it seems clear that Weisinger was the one who mandated the change, apparently not liking or approving of the mystical elements. (Although I'm unaware of any specific concerns or issues he may have had.) When Doctor Fate was brought back decades later, they fortunately returned to his mystical roots and largely ignored the later bland superheroics.

One curious thing that strikes me in the early issues is the lettering. While the initial stories have a fairly "normal" approach to lettering, some of the letterforms become hyperstylized by the fourth installment. Of particular interest are the "E"s and "F"s. Take a look at this splash page from More Fun #69. The center crossbar for each extends much further than either the upper or lower ones, making for a visually unbalanced letterform. It's almost distractingly hard to read in places.You really have to study Inza's dialogue in the lower left to understand what she's saying... even though it's only three words! Interestingly, The Comics Journal published a piece on Sherman a few years ago which includes scans of a handwritten letter to Jerry DeFuccio in 1984, and the "E" forms appear perfectly normal, suggesting the hyperstylized ones in the Doctor Fate stories were a deliberate affectation. Although I can't imagine why; typically, the middle bar is the shortest in font designs. Notably, this extended "E" practice effectively stops as soon as Weisinger takes over as editor.



I found a lot to like in the earliest Doctor Fate stories, and I'm disappointed almost all of the best elements were dropped so quickly. Before Weisinger turned him into yet another generic hero, the stories had some really clever and original ideas, and I would've preferred seeing more of that in the back two-thirds of that Archives volume. I can guarantee if that World's Most Dangerous Villains issue I first encountered included a reprint of a later Doctor Fate story, I would've dismissed it almost out of hand and promptly forgot about it.

Like many folks, I received an email yesterday announcing the closure of Things from Another World's online store. It looks like most of the comics news sites have run an article of some kind talking about it already, and most people I've seen/heard from have expressed some surprise at the announcement. A few people pointed to their ending their affiliate program in January as an early-sign-in-hindsight indicator of potential problems with the venue. But it should be emphasized that the three physical locations will remain open and continue to operate as before.

That was the part that stood out to me. But I'll get to that in a minute. First, let's put some context on everything.

Mike Richardson originally opened his first comic shop, called Pegasus Fantasy Books, in 1980. He renamed the store Things from Another World in 1993 after expanding to include several locations across multiple states. (This expansion was partially buoyed by the success of Richardson's other noteable venture, Dark Horse Comics, started in 1986.) The TFAW website launched in 1997, making it one of the earliest places you could order comics and comic products online. (I can't confirm if they were the very first, but they took payments online before most other shops. If you ordered from, for example, Mile High Comics you would put in your order online but then had to call or fax them your credit card number for payment. Online payment processing was a rarity back then.) Because they were an early adopter of what would eventually become standard online business practices, they became a go-to site for a lot of people looking to buy anything in the monthly Diamond catalog. And having possibly the best collection of Dark Horse back issues didn't hurt either!

This setup served the store well, I think, in 2020 when the pandemic hit. Many physical comic shops were forced to remain closed in the early days of the pandemic, severely limiting their income, but TFAW had an infrastructure already built up for delivery comics by mail. Not that in-store customers switching to online -- even if only temporarily -- was easy, of course, but they didn't have to build up an alternative from the ground up. But this is why I think many people are surprised by this announcment. Why would they close a venue that almost certainly single-handedly kept the overall business afloat as recently as five years ago?

Some people have pointed to the 2021 purchase of Dark Horse Media (the legal entity that owns TFAW) by Embracer Group as the instigator here. That they spent the past few years buying up too many different companies too quickly, and not being able to manage juggling the operations of all of them. However, given that Richardson remained CEO of Dark Horse, I don't think that's a sufficient explanation. Certainly, the Embracer board of directors could pressure Richardson into making bad decisions that ultimately led to financial challenges here, but I don't think that could explain shutting down this entire venue.

One of the other notions that's come up is the recent problems with Diamond. As I noted earlier, TFAW was one of the first online shops where you could basically order anything from the Diamond catalog. Not just new comics, but t-shirts and toys and games and statues and whatever else. With Diamond going into bankruptcy, that could potentially impact TFAW sales. But, at first blush, wouldn't that also impact their physical locations, too? They're all making orders from the same place, after all. And the physical locations need to maintain their storefronts, too, so wouldn't that have additional expenses tied to it that a simple warehouse model an online store offers be more cost-effective?

I've checked all the outlets I can get to that are discussing this, and the only formal word from anyone actually at TFAW is some generic "significant market changes" boilerplate. So anything I -- or anyone else -- can offer is speculation. But I have a few ideas.

First, because of TFAW early online adopter status and their significant relationship with Diamond -- who until very recently maintained an effective monopoly on comics distribution -- I'm betting TFAW's back end database system that processed new orders is/was largely dependent on Diamond's database systems. That is, Diamond loaded all their catalog items into a database and then offered an export file of that once a month that TFAW.com used to populate its own site quickly. They'd certainly have some options for manual entries and editing, but my guess is that the bulk of the work was automated years ago.

... which would mean that, in lieu of Diamond's issues, that much of the TFAW.com database would need to be loaded manually. Where this would've been something that could be handled on a decidedly part-time basis a few years ago, it would be a much larger endeavor now, bringing in data from Lunar and Penguin Random House and whoever else. Is that an additional salary? Maybe two? Depending on how lean things were running before, it might not be possible.

If that were indeed an issue, they could theoretically also automate data entry from Lunar, PRH, etc. but that would necessarily require a developer -- or, more likely, a developer team -- to come in to build out that functionality. That's almost certainly not talent that TFAW has on-hand. And while that would be a one-time expense, it wouldn't be cheap.

The second possible issue was something I saw somebody bring up on Mastodon -- namely, that sales tax structures are becoming increasingly complex when dealing with interstate commerce. At a physical location, you'll have state and municiple taxes tacked on, but they're going to be the same for every customer who walks in the door. They're all in the same physical location, so local taxes apply. But if you have to apply taxes based on whether the transaction takes place -- and that can occur anywhere an internet connection is available -- well, then you'd need to set up a database of every set of state and municiple taxes, and keep that up to date based on hundreds of thosuands of constantly changing laws. You pretty much need a third party firm to manage that on an ongoing basis. That would also be an additional expense a physical retail location would not have.

The final issue I'd like to bring up stems from a response I got when I first posted the news on Mastodon. The person, who is a comics/sci-fi fan, had never heard of them. Now, you obviously can't expect every potential customer to know every online shop or retail location, but it does make me consider TFAW's business model. They were, as I said, one of the earliest adopter's of what have become standard online business practices. They were one of the earliest online stores to offer pretty much everything in Diamond's catalog. But that was a quarter century ago. There is literally an entire generation of fans who have never known online shops to not do this. Is there much that differentiates TFAW's online presence from any other retailer? With a physical location, you've got some measure of geographic exclusion -- if there's not a competitor physically close by, you become literally the only game in town. But online, you're effectively neighbors with every other retailer. Maybe we're just looking at TFAW.com no longer having a sustainable business model?

As I said, this is all just speculation. Probably very few people outside of Richardson himself and Embracer's board know the real reason(s) for the closure. But there are some hints out there on possible reasons.

From time to time on this blog, I stop for a moment and list out a number of comics and newspaper strips that I would like to see reprinted/collected. I know I'm an audience of one, and my tastes often do not line up with the masses but I look at it as an exercise in trying to determine what is worthy of being republished and reflecting why that hasn't happened yet. Admittedly, it also reflects a decidedly personal bias in that they're generally all things I'm looking for myself for my own edification. But still, these are all comics that someone thought was worthwhile to publish in the first place, so there must be some fans out there. Plus, there is an eight volume "epic" hardcover collections of Hagar the Horrible that reprint every strip up through 1984 -- you're going to tell me those are more worthy of publication than what I'm listing below?!?

In any event, here's some titles I would love to see reprinted/collected. I know some of these had some reprintings back in the 1970s, but I don't believe any of them were complete. And I also know there are some rights issues which will keep at least one of these titles from EVER being reprinted! But that said, here's what I want to see, in no particular order...

• Quincy (Ted Shearer's newspaper strip did get some paperback collections in the '70s, but this needs a big, retrospective reprinting.)
  
• Speed Jaxon (We got Jay Jackson's Bungleton Green in late 2022 and he was inducted in the Comics Hall of Fame in 2023, so maybe there's a chance here?)
  
• The Rose & Thorn backup stories from the early 1970s Lois Lane comics
  
• Gordo
  
• Alice (Two issue series from 1951, mostly by Dave Berg. Yes, the same one who did those "Lighter Side of..." comics in Mad. A couple of the short Alice stories were included in other collections, but the majority of them remain unreprinted.)
  
• Ron Cobb's editorial cartoons (Many of these were collected back in the '70s, but they remain timeless and warrant a nice, hardbound collected edition.)
  
• Willie Lumpkin (Stan Lee's & Dan DeCarlo's newspaper strip)
  
• Air Pirates Funnies (I know this is so legally impossible that no one is ever going to attempt it, but I can dream...)
  
• John Tenniel's editorial cartoons
  
• John Severin's work for Cracked magazine
  

So, whoever owns the rights to these? Get on that!

I stumbled across this clip from season 7 of Sesame Street... It originally aired in January 1976, so it would've been around the time I was regularly watching, although I don't recall this specific scene at all. But what struck me today was that as Harry walks up to Luis, he passes the normally-open door of Mr. Hooper's Store; however, since it is closed, there are several comic books visible attached to the inside of the door window. You wouldn't normally see these on the show since the door is almost always left open; I don't know why they would've had it closed here. In any event, none of the comics are shown very clearly, but I was curious to try to see if I could identify any of them.

It was a bit tricky, but I was able to figure out five out of the six...

Sad Sack #237 (middle left)

Richie Rich Millions #74 (bottom right)

Richie Rich and Jackie Jokers #12 (top right)

Archie #248 (middle right)

Our Fighting Forces #161 (bottom left)

All of these are cover-dated November 1975, so they were probably about as current as you could get when they filmed this. Most of the titles make sense for a kids show in 1975, but I have to admit I'm at a loss about the inclusion of Our Fighting Forces. I mean, it's a DC comic from 1975 so it's not super graphic or anything, but it is expressly a war title, so it seems a little odd that they would include it on Sesame Street. Even just as a background prop.

Here's the description of You Must Take Part in Revolution from the inside flap...

It's 2035. The US and China are at war. America is a proto-fascist state. Taiwan is divided into two. As conflict escalates between nuclear powers, three idealistic youths who first met in Hong Kong develop diverging beliefs about how best to navigate this techno-authoritarian landscape. Andy, Maggie, and Olivia travel different paths toward transformative change, each confronting to what extent they will fight for freedom, and who they will become in doing so.

The war itself is very much not the focus. Rather, it's primarily on Andy, a Chinese-American veterinarian who moved to Hong Kong in 2021. It's at his first protest that he meets Maggie and Olivia. The wind up attended several protests together, but Maggie gets increasingly agitated and eventually starts resorting to using car bombs on police vehicles. She's eventually caught and imprisoned for life. It's at that point when Olivia disappears and Andy drops out of any protesting at all.

Andy continues on with his vet work but almost incidentally starts helping out by providing some medical care off the record for some activists. He's slowly pulled back into the fold, and starts to see some of the more active elements of the resistance groups. He himself is drawn deeper and deeper, and becomes more and more active. He seemingly randomly bumps into Olivia again; she apologizes for disappearing years earlier, blaming it on fear, but Andy invites her in to help. And then... well, I've leave the ending open to avoid spoilers.

The story takes place over a period of a little over a decade. But, as I said, the war itself isn't so much the focus as three characters and their positions about both war in general and this war in particular. None of them end up in the same place they start, all of them shaped by their individual experiences. Both from before and during the story. All of it tracks and all of it makes sense. Everybody's decisions here, even when they contradict each, have solid rationales behind them. And the people whose decisions are based on belief? Even when those decisions change and even their whole belief system changes, they continue to make choices that reflect who they are.

Towards the end, Maggie says, "Nothing we do happens independently. Everyone and everything is connected." The actions she took that put her in prison affected Andy and Olivia. And their actions at the end of the book -- again, over a decade after the start -- are the result, albeit indirectly, of Maggie blowing up a police vehicle. But there's no real judgement by or from any of the characters. Their actions are their actions, and they all seem to take responsibilty for them. But there's no commentary on who is right or wrong, who is more or less justified.

Badiucao and Melissa Chan put together an excellent story here. It's uncomfortable given the insanely petty and authoritarian whims of the asshole in the White House right now, but it offers a lot to think about and worth the read. The book came out earlier this month from Street Noise Books and retails for $23.99 US; it should be available from your favorite book seller.

Here are this week's links to what I've had published recently...

Kleefeld on Comics: Telecomics
https://ift.tt/TqDIlB6

Kleefeld on Comics: Comics Business Turbulence
https://ift.tt/1T4LOvU

Kleefeld on Comics: What Will Alliance Bring to Comics
https://ift.tt/67IyabD

Kleefeld on Comics: Sturgeon's Law and the Quest for Maintaining Relevance
https://ift.tt/Zvw1WHK

Kleefeld on Comics: Old as Stone Hard as Rock Review
https://ift.tt/XlaVOux

The simplistic summary of Alessandro Sanna's Old as Stone, Hard as Rock is that it's the history of war and warfare. From the first rock some proto human picked up and smashed onto someone's head to intercontinental missiles that destroy entire cities from an ocean away. All told only through pictures.

That's the simplistic description.

But largely owing to the fact that the story is wordless, the reader is forced to consider each image more. And while they're not overly complex -- most of the humans shown are barely more than stick figures -- the sequences play out in a way that offers more reflection. You're thinking, "Hey, they've taken that rock and are doing something with it? It looks like they're breaking it up, making it into something. They're... forging something? They're making... swords. Because of course!" Now a writer could certainly craft a paragraph together to not only relay the same basic information, but without that critical revelation about what they're making, but I think it hits more powerfully when the reader has to sort through and process it themself.

(Hmm. That I used the word "hits" just now was just a natural flow of my writing here. But particularly in light of this book's content, I'll take a moment to reflect that "hit" is an act of violence. Our very language is built up around war, even when we're talking about non-violent acts of processing thought. That seems to play very much into the drum beat of Sanna's work here, that human kind just keeps waging war after war after war, long after we've theoretically understood that it's nothing but senseless killing.)

At the close of the book, though, Sanna does leave readers with an open ending. The Earth is presented in an entirely different setting, one big rock among many with a hand reaching to examine it. I'm sure many will read it as a divine selection of some kind, a message of hope. Given that we just went through nearly two hundred pages of violence, I'm more inclined to think that it's more premonitional. We've just seen how man keeps making bigger and bigger, and more and more powerful weapons -- eventually the planet itself will become another weapon in man's hands. A planet is just another rock like all of the others after all.

Sanna's paintings are sublime. In most cases, not an abudance of detailed linework but the images are nonetheless very engaging, using a lot of broad shapes and colors to draw people in. The images are more symbolic than representational, which tracks against the history itself -- it's not a strictly linear timeline we follow but more a symbolic one. Which makes all the more sense that this had to be done in a graphic novel format. That the pages are scanned from the full art, too, including smudges of paint towards the edges and bits of tape that remained from masking off borders gives the reader a more direct sense of the art that went into everything. The story isn't "clean" -- it hasn't been sanitized in any way. Humans are a violent race, and trying to suggest otherwise is a form of white-washing. Sanna is clear that he is not doing that here.

Because the book is wordless, it can be read fairly quickly. But I do recommend taking at least some occasions to pause and reflect on individual pages and panels as you're going through it. Again, there's not detailed linework to study, but loads of meaning to absorb. After a 2019 debut in Italy, it was just published in the United States last month, and the hardcover retails for $34.95 US.