The Bum’s Rush #55

Free Comic Book Day

I was fully prepared for Dana to kill me.

Friday night (or perhaps it was Saturday morning) was the end of a very long week at the end of a very long month for both of us. We had just finished folding and stapling all 200 copied of the Free Comic Book Day Edition of the Mars 1938 comic book. Now came the arduous task of divvying up the Mars 1938 comics, plus our usual stock of Stumblebum Anthologies, Cultural Void/Der Wundervolle Bean flipbooks, Twilight Tales, flyers, mailing list and exotic drugs.

Normally we kept all of this stuff together in one or two boxes, but on this particular Saturday the Stumblebum Crew would be dividing their forces. Dana (Stumblebum Grand Poobah, a.k.a. “The Man”) and Dave (webcomic guru and inker on Mars 1938, a.k.a. “The Talented One”) were going to appear at Zeus Comics for the 2nd annual Comics and Pop Culture Expo (a.k.a. CAPE 2), arguably one of the biggest events to take place on Free Comic Book Day. I, on the other hand, would appear at the best comic book store in the world, Titan Comics (). While we certainly couldn’t pass up the opportunity to debut
Mars 1938 at such a huge event as CAPE I was equally as determined not to snub Titan on the biggest day in the comic book industry. The folks at Titan Comics have been nothing but supportive of the Stumblebum Crew and our efforts with the website and our comics. For that support I shall be eternally grateful. Plus, the festivities at Titan started a whole two hours later than at Zeus, which meant that I could sleep in while Dana and Dave were setting up and splashing hot coffee in their faces to keep their eyes open. Haha… suckers.

Where was I… oh yes, my brush with death. As I said, it was the end of a very long month spent toiling on the comic, which had just been finished, mere hours before the book was set to debut. It’s our way. If a Stumblebum comic is ever finished with more that two or three days to spare then something has gone dreadfully wrong. Dana and I were dividing the “Stumblebum Burden” and both of us were becoming increasingly frustrated with the other. The lack of sleep had severely diminished our capacity to perform simple tasks like counting, explaining ourselves coherently and getting up to go to the bathroom.

We counted the books over and over but somehow kept coming up short. We were missing at least 50 books. Where could we have lost them, from the kitchen to the living room? My cries of “I made you comic book and I can unmake you!” were answered with silence. Obviously I had made them too well. So awesome was the power of Mars 1938 that a quarter of the books had decided they were much too cool to just sit around waiting to be read. They had to go out and FIND people to read them. Dana did not buy this theory. I could tell because he kept asking me how much blood I thought a person could lose and still be able to make it to Titan on Saturday. I think he was talking about me. With the threat of bloodletting looming over my head I searched frantically for the missing copies. I was seconds away from flinging myself through the window and the relative safety of the concrete three floors below when I finally found them. Behind the couch where I had left them. Stupid comics. Make me look dumb will you!?

I tried to laugh it off but something in Dana’s eyes told me that it was too little too late. His lack of sleep coupled with my stupidity left me with only two options. Die horribly. Or offer him a glass of sedative-laden milk. Thank God he never watched the A-Team as a kid. Once he was sound asleep B.A. Baracus style, I rolled him into his room. As an added precaution I jammed a chair underneath the door handle. I quickly finished sorting through and assembling the two boxes of supplies and rushed up to my bedroom, carefully locking the door behind me before sprinkling tacks on the floor. I wasn’t going to make it easy for him to kill me, that’s for sure.

I woke around 10:00 AM to find myself not at all murdered. Phew. A quick shower and a brief check of the inventory and I was out the door, lickety-split. I checked my car for bombs and other booby traps. When I was sure that turning the key in the ignition would not cause me to perform a very convincing, albeit brief, impression of the Human Torch I headed out. Titan Comics, here I come!

Did I survive the rest of the day? Well… uh… yeah, I mean… obviously. But how do you know I wasn’t terribly disfigured in some sort of trick yo-yo performance? You don’t! Unless you tune in next week for part two of my Free Comic Book Day report.

Quick Bits

Warning! Nothing you read here in Quick Bits should be considered FACT until it actually happens. Which it might not. How do you know I’m not just making all this crap up? I could, you know. You’ve been warned!

1. In August the 1950’s Avengers return to the Marvel Universe in their own 6-issue mini-series, Agents of Atlas. You’ve never heard of the 1950’s Avengers? Well, here’s a little history. The team, made up of Golden Age Marvel characters Gorilla Man, Venus, Marvel Boy, The Human Robot and Jimmy Woo, originally appeared in an issue of What If…? but weren’t seen again until they made a brief appearance in the Avengers Forever series in the late 90’s. This new series, written by Jeff Parker and drawn by Leonard Kirk, will meld the characters’ histories into the current Marvel Universe before examining their exploits in the present day.
2. On his weblog, Neil Gaiman posted this incredible pic by John Romita Jr., a first look at pages two and three of their upcoming Marvel mini-series, The Eternals.
3. Actor/director Jon Favreau, recently announced as the director of an Iron Man feature film, has started an Iron Man Movie MySpace group where he hopes to get input from fans of the character. Topics range from who should be cast to whether Tony Stark should be sporting a mustache or a goatee. I say goatee, but I’m biased.
4. A Skrull Kill Krew trade came out this week. Waitasec… Skrull Kill Krew!? Why didn’t somebody tell me!? This book, released in 1995, was Grant Morrison’s first work with Marvel Comics and has never been collected in trade until now. I’ve been searching for the full five-issue run for years and now my search is over! God bless Marvel for putting EVERYTHING in trades these days. Now someone at DC better get crackin’ on a Flex Mentallo trade!

NEXT WEEK: Free Comics, sketchy goodness and the dangers of getting in the way of a particularly involved yo-yo stunt. Plus - Crisis of Infinite Crossovers. Taking a look at the end of Infinite Crisis, the beginning of the Civil War and why I’m not as jazzed about these books as I was.


Send me hate mail at thesuperleezard@yahoo.com

Read more stupid crap I write at www.livejournal.com/users/superleezard

Check out my (semi) daily comic, Der Wundervolle Bean, at www.livejournal.com/users/der_magic_bean

End of Line