The He Man Minnie Haters Club

 

Pages from The He-Man Effect: How American Toymakers Sold You Your Childhood

by Box Brown

Warning: This Post May Contain Spoilers For Thirty-Year-Old Comics

 

The Fantagraphics book Just Us Justice Ducks is a terrific collection of comics from the often-imitated, never-duplicated 1990s Disney Adventures magazine.  It's not just worthwhile as a nostalgia trip for the Millenials, though, as the collection includes new-to-me strips by Disney masters Romano Scarpa and Giorgio Cavazzano.

But for Disney Weirdness purposes, Justice Ducks is worth checking out for the ambitious and strange CROSSOVER EVENT "The Legend of the Chaos God."

Solego the Chaos God wants to return to this mortal plane, and to do it he needs to possess some of your favorite Disney Afternoon stars, such as:

Rebecca Cunningham

Parenting a toddler be like

This Guy

Whoever he is

Dale (voiced by Andy Samberg)

Fat Cat

Pete's Car

Fenton "Gizmoduck" Crackshell

Hopefully these images get you a taste of the story without spoiling too much.  I had aged out of The Disney Afternoon by the time these comics came out and completely missed them the first time.  Kudos to Fantagraphics for another great collection, one that fans of these cartoons will surely appreciate even more than I did.

Welcome Foolish Mortals to Ollie's Discount

 

I went comic shopping at Needful Things, aka Ollie's Bargain Outlet.

They had a ton of DC, Marvel, and Archie remainders, like always, but I scored big with Bernie Wrightson Frankenstein and its elementary school equivalent, Tales From The Haunted Mansion illustrated by Kelley Jones.

Your ghost host, librarian Amicus Arcane

Zombie baseball, perfect for this time of year.

Straight outta EC Comics, or at least Creepy and Eerie.

Bunnicula Returns

Lovecraft is for the children.

All in all an excellent score for $2.98.  If you are unfortunate enough to live near an Ollie's,  you owe it to yourself to hold your nose and take a look around. Is your shopping cart actually filling up? Or is it your imagination- hmmm? 

Comic Shop News

 

I went to the comic shop today.

I went into these comics completely cold; I didn't even know these titles were coming out until I got to the shop.

  I had a hard time deciding on which covers to get:

(there are a lot of variant covers these days).

None of these comics were quite up my alley, but they were all competently made and enjoyable to read.  Of the three the best was probably Maleficent, a done-in-one of the sorceress's chance encounter with a dim-witted village boy. I assume their story will continue in issue two but I don't care enough to find out. The anime-inspired art by Soo Lee is the real draw here.

Nightmare Before Christmas also had great art but the story was D-U-M- stupid.  Baby Jack Skellington and Baby Oogie Boogie are the best of friends, you see, but they are both about to compete in a contest to see who will become the next Pumpkin King and zzzzzzzzzZZZZZ.  I've read probably every Nightmare Before Christmas comic ever made, and they all suck. 

Gargoyles was good if you are a fan of the TV show- a flashback tale to the good old days when Men and Goyles battled with swords and honor.  If you've never watched the show I doubt this is a good jumping-on point to the franchise.  It's not Watchmen or anything, but it was fine.  Don't get me wrong, I don't want to sound like a Negative Nancy here, it was a pleasant surprise to go to the shop and have actual new comics to buy even if none of them really knocked me out.  Between these and Fantagraphics Disney Afternoon omnibuses it's a good time to be a 90s kid/ Disney Adult.