New England Comics Newsletter #14 - the first appearance of The Tick!

I had a stroke of luck (better than a regular stroke) recently and was able to get a copy of New England Comics Newsletter #14. Most newsletters, especially from local comic shops, aren't anything to get that excited about, but this one is different as it contains the very first appearance of The Tick! Published in the summer of 1986, this pre-dates the "special edition" of The Tick #1 by almost two years, and prints the first comic artwork of Ben Edlund, who would have been a few months short of his 18th birthday at the time.

The front cover uses the template that Marvel did for their 25th anniversary covers from '86. Instead of the barcode, The Tick shows up on the cover, too, along with characters like, um, the Thing.

The Tick's first story was only two pages, and even then NEC put them both sideways to fit on a single printed page. Let's look at each of them a little more up close:

The Tick was originally drawn with a fuzzy suit and with distinguishable toes, as opposed to the boots that he's seen with today. You'll also notice that the character's antennae are kind of droopy. This look carried over into 1988's Tick #1. You'll also probably notice the very obvious appearances by two characters who appear to be borrowed from the Muppets, Bunsen and Beaker. 

So does this mean that The Tick escaped from TWO asylums, as The Tick #1 features a similar scene with The Tick leaving a clinic just outside of The City? Or does The Tick #1 simply re-tell this short with a few edits? Since NEC has made it clear that this is in-continuity, I'd say that The Tick made his way across the country and stopped at more than a few asylums along the way. But why is The Tick punching poor Beaker? What did he ever do to him?!

Perhaps presciently, above the two pages is a note telling readers to hang onto their copies. "And it's not totally beyond the realm of possibility that the Tick may appear in his own comic book one day." Two-for-two, I guess.

That's it for The Tick in this publication, but let's take a peek a few more items to appear at the same time. On the very next page, we see an ad for Watchmen #3!

And here's a quick paragraph on the upcoming Transformers movie!

Highlighted is a short description of Fantastic Four #296, the 25th anniversary issue that featured the return of the Thing!

Here's the back cover.

My copy came with a certificate signed by Ben Edlund, George Suarez (publisher) and Bob Polio (art director). It looks like they printed these things out in 2013.

Since we're here, let's take a quick look at New England Comics Newsletter #16, which I picked up at the same time. I've never seen a copy of issue 15 - does it even exist? Keep your eyes peeled.

NEC classifies this as the third appearance of The Tick, which, I suppose, is correct, because there he is on page seven! This Christmas-themed Edlund drawing is pretty tiny, and it's the only mention of the blue guy (who I suppose wasn't even blue at this point) in the newsletter. And it'd be the last we'd see of him until 1988!

There are a few other interesting items in this issue, including a Batphone drawing by Bob Polio.

Also printed is a comics survey, which NEC hoped people would fill out and mail back to them (but then they'd ruin their copies of the Tick's third appearance!!).

Included in the survey is "What do you think about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?" (Actually, it says "What you do you", but these things happen.)

And lastly, checking out these 30-plus-year-old correspondences, we find this one from Anton Selisky of Truro, MA, who somehow worked up the gall to complain about people hiring Jack Kirby to draw for their books. 1986 was, as mentioned, the 25th anniversary of Marvel (not really, but just go with it), and at the time, some of Kirby's friends were pointing out that the co-creator of much of the Marvel Universe was being kept away from the company. This was an early example of the creator's rights struggle that many people didn't talk about at the time. It's kind of funny that this reader wrote a letter complaining about putting politics in comics, given some of today's more ridiculous positions on the matter. I guess nothing changes!

Pictures from the 2012 Comic-Con, part 9

Well, it's come to this - the ninth and final installment of this year's Comic-Con pictures.  How did I run out of pictures to show so soon?  And what in the world will I write about now?  I suppose that is a question for another day, for now...we will view and discuss the final pictures from this year's San Diego Comic-Con.

Sideshow Collectibles seems to push the envelope more and more each year. And to think that at one point I thought their $500 Thing bust was extreme!  Take a peek at this Terminator statue!  It can be yours for only...$6000!  Wow.  Where would you put this thing?  I guess anywhere you wanted.

Is this a He-Man costume?  I'll just assume that it is.

It was nice of all these scoundrels to line up for a picture like this.

These must have taken a while to make.

What th...26%?  Who is voting for the Foot Clan??

I was disappointed that this wasn't a Frankenberry thing.

It's been a while since I've seen Bartman referenced.  The Simpsons have changed quite a bit since the early years.

This is a great Batgirl costume!  It looks hand made but very well done.  The yellow is really striking.

What the heck.

There was a Frankenweenie display outside of the convention hall; movie models galore were on display.  This was one scene...it's surprising how much this looks like it's just a film grab from the movie.

Girl Punisher!

Well, Indiana Jones came out on Blu-Ray.  Perhaps it will ease our minds from Indy 4.

Harley Quinn takes a call.

The guy under the mask even looked like Rick Moranis.

Internet meme girl!

The guy did a pretty good Kermit impression as well.

Big Boy here had an extra hamburger in his bag just for Larry, which was nice.  He's very shocked by FUBAR, but I guess that happens.

How many times do you think people told him "I am the law"?  I wonder what he thought of the Stallone movie.

Here's another shot of the convention floor.  What a great, wild time Comic-Con was for all of us.  It was, as always, a lot of work and a pretty huge commitment.  There were disappointments and great, great triumphs.  In all, I had a fun time with fans of all kinds, brought together for five days of excitement and just a little bit of hero worship.  For good or ill, Comic-Con is a celebration of fandom and I enjoyed the revelry as much as most.

When I attended the 2006 Comic-Con, I couldn't imagine it growing any larger.  The 2012 version, though, was just that - bigger and more bombastic.  It spread outside of the convention halls and into the streets of downtown San Diego, to the point that people and companies were buying out office space in the surrounding area just to get in on the atmosphere.  This makes me wonder where Comic-Con will ever stop - in 10 years, will it be a city-wide event?  Will it expand past the point of containment?

I'm not sure if I'll apply to attend the 2013 version of the show.  It takes a lot of time and money to attend as an exhibitor, and I'd enjoy spending my summer doing something other than dealing with constant deadlines.  But the draw of Comic-Con is also great.  The allure is almost palpable, the shine almost tangible.  I've got a few more weeks until I decide if 2013 will be the year for me.  But I am sure that I will, some day, be back for more.

Just not on a Segway.

Thanks for the memories, Comic-Con!

Learn to draw the Thing! RIGHT NOW!

Early on in the Thing's first solo series, written (and sometimes drawn) by John Byrne, the above page of artistic instruction was published.  I always thought that it was a fun little "extra" added into a book that was initially itself a fun and worthwhile book.

Around a year into the series the Thing got involved in the Secret Wars crossover event and, suddenly able to change back to his human persona in Ben Grimm at will, he made the decision to stay on Battleworld, where the Secret Wars took place.  While this storyline was at least a curiosity, the quality of the book soon took a nosedive before a mercy cancellation at a point when the Thing decided to join both a circus and a professional wrestling troupe.  I don't like to think about that half of the book.

The first year of the book, though, was a treat.  It was classic Thing at his best, and extra material like this (and the fact that classic Fantastic Four inker Joe Sinnott worked on many of the issues) made it seem like the creators involved were having fun putting it together.  Regardless of how John Byrne's personality rubs some people the wrong way, his enthusiasm and love for the Fantastic Four has never been in question.

I've often wondered what exactly this page of instructions was really produced for.  Was it produced specifically for the issue in question?  Or were they running one page short at the time, leading Byrne to say "oh, what the hell, I'll toss a page about how to draw the Thing in there"?  In any case, I've always enjoyed his take on the Thing - he comes off a bit more stocky than you'd expect to see today, but I like that he doesn't have just an overexaggerated Mr. Universe build like the Hulk does.

If there's one aspect of Byrne's rendition that I'm not quite fond of, though, it's the arms.  It doesn't look like there are any joints in them.  How does the thing wave hello or flag down a taxi without any elbows or wrists?  Byrne always drew the Thing's arms a bit too rounded for me as a whole.

According to the notation, this guide was based on Kirby and Sinnott's iconic cover to Fantastic Four #51, and the similarity is fairly obvious.  But the arms...the arms!

I also enjoy the speech balloon stating, "Don't gimmie no lips."  This is especially funny to me because regular series penciller Ron Wilson ALWAYS drew lips on the Thing.

Larfleeze's Orange Lantern Cookies recipe (with pictures!)

One of the more pleasant surprises to come out of the Green Lantern title, specifically since there are now power rings for every color of the rainbow, has been the character Larfleeze, the solitary Orange Lantern.  For such an initially one-dimensional character, he's filled out quite nicely in the title lately, in my opinion, providing comic relief to a book that often desperately needs it as well as some pointed social commentary (though I don't get why Hal Jordan thinks he looks like Gonzo from the Muppets.  The snout?  I dunno).

A few months ago, DC published Green Lantern: Larfleeze Christmas Special, which stood out to me for two reasons.  First, I was surprised that the company actually used the word "Christmas" in the title of a book.  Even when they publish books containing stories pertaining to Christmas, DC usually goes the safe route and calls it a Holiday Special or something of the sort in the name of inclusiveness, which I understand.  Why they decided to buck that trend for this issue I don't know, especially when they missed an even better opportunity when a few years ago they changed the title of a book from DCU: Infinite Christmas Special to DCU: Infinite Holiday Special.  "Infinite Christmas" worked SO much better when you consider it was a take-off on "Infinite Crisis", but such is the inner workings of a big company like DC.

Second, the creative team on the book actually managed to tell a good story while mixing in random activities like the one you see at the top of this post: a recipe for Orange Lantern cookies.  I thought that the concept was novel enough that I decided to give it a try (as opposed to the Spider-Man wheatcake recipe I found a while ago), and, well, I took a lot of pictures in the process.  So let's give it a go, shall we?

The recipe first calls for the following ingredients to make the cookies:

- 1/4 cup butter softened
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1/2 cup brown sugar
- 2 tablespoons of orange juice concentrate, thawed
- 1 teaspoon of orange zest
- 1 egg
- 2 teaspoons vanilla
- 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- a dash of salt
- 1/2 cup white chocolate chunks


I left out the salt in this recipe, because...well, I'm not a fan and it's usually for taste, anyway.

After I got the ingredients ready, my first task was to make the orange zest, which is, of course, just the peel shredded.  There's a kitchen tool made specifically for this (called a zester, naturally), but I said, "who needs to buy an extra tool when a cheese grater works just fine?"  If I ever make these again, I might just spring for the zester, because while the grater worked eventually, it was hell to clean.  Pure hell, I say!  So if you're going to use a grater, be warned.

The directions continue:

1) Preheat your Earth-oven to 350 degrees fahrenheit ("Earth-oven"...clever)
2) In a big bowl beat butter, sugar, brown sugar, orange juice concentrate and orange zest.  Then add an egg and vanilla until it looks delicious

3) In a small bowl, stir the flour, baking powder, baking soda and a dash of salt together (again, I left out the salt in my batch)
4) Add the small bowl to the big bowl and stir until smooth.  Mix in the white chocolate chunks
- I also had to add another 1/4 cup of flour at this stage as the dough was a bit sticky for me.

5) Drop small balls of dough across a greased cookie sheet
- I greased the cookie sheets with butter, and also had to slather my hands a few times with it, as the dough was still a little sticky, and I didn't want to just keep adding flour for fear of messing up the recipe.

The batter made 24 cookies, which is exactly how much the recipe calls for, interestingly enough.  And this after I ate a few, uh, spoonfuls of the dough.  If I had to do this again, I'd use three cookie sheets instead of two, as more than a few cookies expanded into a neighbor while baking.  The cookies ended up pretty large.

6) Bake 12-14 minutes or until golden brown
- I had the cookies in for 12 minutes and that was enough for me.

7) Let the cookies cool as you mix the frosting
- As you can see, some of the cookies blobbed right into the one next to them.  Bah!  But overall, they came out well and looked good.

I moved the cookies to cooling racks and moved on to the frosting.  The recipe calls for the following ingredients:

- 2 tablespoons orange concentrate, thawed
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1/4 cup butter, softened
- 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar

The frosting directions continue:

1) Mix all the above until it looks like frosting!
- This may seem like a facetious remark, but it's true.  Just keep mixing (with a spoon, not an electric mixer as with the cookie ingredients) until it looks right.

2) Spread the frosting across cooled cookies (it will melt otherwise!)


I had just enough frosting to cover all 24 cookies (I'm a bit of an overindulger, though, so this doesn't necessarily have to be the case for everyone).  The instructions, unfortunately, end here without any mention of the Orange Lantern symbol that frankly make the cookie worth baking.  It wasn't difficult to figure that part out, though, as the solution consisted of simply making more icing and adding some food coloring.

I cut the frosting ingredients to a third of what the original recipe called for (because I wouldn't need all that icing just for the decoration) and added food coloring in the following quantities: nine drops yellow, three drops red.

Oh, and then I just went ahead and used the remaining orange concentrate to make orange juice.  "Waste not, want not"...I guess.

Once the new frosting was mixed, I took a small Ziploc bag (or perhaps the generic equivalent) and cut off one of the bottom corners.  The actual cut was very small.  Then I filled the bag with the icing and twisted it, forcing the icing down into the corner with the cut.  It worked pretty well!  While drawing the design on the cookies, I realized how much the Orange Lantern symbol just looks like an angry Larfleeze.

And here's the end result!  Oh, and also a picture of my Mac.  The cookies turned out pretty well, aesthetically, but there was only one test I was concerned with...the taste test:

And the verdict...well, they're okay.  Honestly, my expectations were pretty low to begin with, as I'm not a huge fan of orange flavoring in things other than, uh, oranges.  But the white chocolate is a big hit in my book, so they have something going for them.  I don't know that I'd make these all the time, but I'd be willing to try them again.  Plus the look is really the key, here - getting an excuse to make comic book related cookies is enough of a reason to take the time to fire up the oven and get to work.

I do think that these will be my new convention cookies for this coming season.  Really, regardless of how they taste (like I said, they're okay), it's sure to catch attention...so if you wander past the Wagon Wheel Comics booth in 2011, come get a cookie.  They're made with love and oranges.