Yeah. Especially in IKEA.

For example, here we have Harry Potter’s favorite instructor in Defense Against the Dark Arts at Hogwarts, magically transformed into a set of venetian blinds.

And here’s the thief who ends up as one of Blake’s 7 on the Liberator…as a set of sheets. (Nine of them, no doubt, to the wind.)

And it’s not just IKEA. Robin of the Teen Titans has his criminal counterpart in this bottle of wine:

Or the older daughter of Eddard Stark, playing music instead of the Game of Thrones.

So, what good crossover names have you seen?

How I searched for back issues of comics in…

1988:

1. Look at the local comic store.
2. Wait for a convention that my parents were going to.

1998:

1. Look at the local comic store.
2. Drive around to other stores.
3. Save up for San Diego Comic-Con.
4. Look on this new site called eBay.

2008:

1. Look at a couple of local comic stores.
2. Look on eBay and Mile High Comics (singles)
3. Look on eBay and Amazon (for trades & hardcovers)
4. Look at a convention.
5. Look for other sources on the net.

Two main things have changed: mobility (I couldn’t drive when I was 12) and the web.

Limited Range

Back when I was a kid, my main options were two local stores: The one my parents visited regularly, and one that subsequently opened close enough for me to walk to. It was at that first store that I picked up my first comic book, Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew #19. The series was canceled after #20, so I started looking for back issues very quickly!

I also had some access to conventions. My parents went to sci-fi cons, and would bring me and my brother along. I remember running around to all the comics dealers at the 1984 WorldCon (a.k.a. L.A.con II) looking for back-issues of The New Teen Titans, trying to figure out who this Terra person was and why she wasn’t in any of the current issues.

Silver-Age

Cons became a more important source when I started looking for the Silver-Age Teen Titans books. Fortunately, this was around the time that we started going to San Diego Comic-Con (starting in 1990), so the percentage of dealers who actually sold comics was much higher!

Later, when I started looking for pre-Crisis Flash books, this became my main source. I tapped out the local stores’ supplies of Bronze-Age Flash, and even though I could drive elsewhere, no one around seemed to have much in the way of Silver-Age Flash. So it was back to Comic-Con with a new list, and I’d pick up a handful of books each year. Though I do recall spotting a comic store while on a road trip with Katie, one of our friends, and her family (in another car), and convincing the others to stop for a few minutes so I could look. I think that might have been where I finally filled in the last missing issue of the Trial of the Flash.

The Web Arrives

Then I discovered eBay. Suddenly, I didn’t have to wait until the next convention. (I don’t remember why I didn’t just look for other conventions. I suppose my brain was just too focused on other stuff back in college.) So many issues, right there. All I had to do was sort through for the ones I wanted and find something in my price range.

After I filled in the last of Barry Allen’s series, I dropped out of the hunt for a few years. For almost two decades, I’d had one series or another that I was trying to complete, and now they were all done. Around the same time, I lost interest in Comic-Con. The hunt had been one of the main reasons I’d enjoyed going. I found a new way to enjoy the convention by finding the time to go more than one day, re-focusing on the panels and events instead of looking for old comics.

Going for the Gold

Then I bid on a few Golden-Age Flash auctions for the heck of it, fully expecting to be outbid on all of them, and won two. I realized I could find 1940s books within my budget, and rejoined the hunt.

At first I tried stores and conventions. The local stores didn’t really have anything older than the 1980s. I called some other stores within driving distance, with no luck. One day I had several free hours in Pomona, and tried some stores in that area, which sent me to a collectibles fair, where I actually found a few books…way outside of my price range. I drove up to the not-quite-monthly “convention” at the Shrine in LA, and found the same (though I did find some interesting small-press gems including Discworld, Hawkmoon and Elric adaptations). All the while, I thought, “Comic-Con is coming up, I’ll find some stuff there!” And of course I didn’t.

The problem is not just that Golden-Age comics are scarce. It’s a matter of supply meeting demand. As near as I can tell, most people buying Golden-Age comics are serious collectors, and they want the book so they can have a piece of comic book history in their collection. So dealers focus on the best copies they can find, the ones that will sell for $300, $700, $1500 or more. But I didn’t want good copies of a few issues, I wanted readable copies of as many issues as I could find. I was looking for the beat-up copies that would run $10–50, and dealers just don’t seem to carry those. In 2 years, every single Golden-Age Flash issue I’ve bought has been bought through the internet, most of them on eBay.

Trades

These days, when I look for specific comics from 1980 onward—say, an issue of Justice League with a character I’m researching—I’ll usually try the local stores first. It’s faster, for one thing, and I like having those stores around. If they don’t have them, I’ll go to the web. And if it’s pre-1980, I’ll go straight to eBay and Mile High.

With more recent back issues, I tend to go for the trade paperbacks. Sometimes I’ll pick them up at the local store, sometimes I’ll wait for a good deal on Amazon, sometimes if I have a gift certificate at Barnes & Noble or Borders, I’ll pick one up at a bookstore (I like encouraging bookstores to keep carrying graphic novels). And sometimes I’ll look through boxes at conventions.

And I’m always open for actual trading. I’ve got a list of comics I want to sell. Take a look, and if anything looks interesting, let me know.

Covers courtesy of the Grand Comics Database. Which reminds me, I really ought to dig out that mini-series I was going to index for them. *oops*

Notes:

1. The second Terra’s origins have been left ambiguous. One story says she was surgically altered to look like the original. Another says she was the original, brought back to life with amnesia
2. Kole reappeared mysteriously in Team Titans. The book was canceled before her presence could be explained.
3. Hawk became the villain Monarch in Armageddon 2001, then Extant for Zero Hour, and was eventually killed in JSA.
4. Zero Hour erased all the Team Titans from the future except for Mirage, Terra, and Deathwing. (Yes, Deathwing. An evil Nightwing from the future.)
5. In addition to the Titans killed in Infinite Crisis, three were maimed: Risk, Bumblebee, and Herald/Vox. Flash (Wally West) disappeared, and Supergirl (Linda Danvers) has been more-or-less erased from continuity—though a remarkably similar character found her way into the recent Fallen Angel story, “Predecessor.”
6. Changeling (Beast Boy) was clinically dead (no heartbeat) at the end of New Teen Titans #10, but was revived by Amazon science before his brain activity stopped.

The Titans Tower Meeting Room was a big help in finding Titans I’d forgotten.

Update: Added a few more (thanks to the Newsarama forums)

Update (July 1): I think by now anyone likely to be reading this knows what happened in Flash: The Fastest Man Alive #13, so here’s a Flash update. blankety-blank DC

Update (April 2008): Now that The Titans #1 has confirmed which characters actually died in the Titans East Special, I’ve updated this entry with Power Boy.

Apparently Aquaman showed up earlier this year, and there’ve been rumors about the Teen Titans’ Cyborg. The Pulse reports that Lee Thompson Young will play Vic Stone in the February 19th episode.

Looks like I’m gonna be watching another episode of Smallville.

While grim-and-gritty doesn’t seem to go with Captain Carrot, parody does. And to think, I was this close to dropping Teen Titans. It looks like I’ll be staying on a few more issues.

(via Cognitive Dissonance)

*OK, long-awaited by some. Let’s just say it was Captain Carrot that got me into comics at the age of seven, so there’s a serious nostalgia factor at work.

Yes, Robin once uttered the words, “Holy ozone!” And, like the “holey rusted metal,” the words proved accurate in an entirely different way. This was Teen Titans #7 (1967), the issue which introduced the Mad Mod. (Think of him as Austin Powers as a villain.)

Who knew comics could be so prophetic?

First, Teen Titans #27, first half of a two parter by fill-in team of Gail Simone and Rob Liefeld. I’d planned on writing a more thorough review, but Comics Should Be Good beat me to it. And yeah, reviewing Liefeld’s art feels like a cheap shot, but sometimes ya just gotta go for it. Simone’s story isn’t bad, but it’s hard to follow. In particular, there are too many places where the art isn’t about story or action, it’s about showing the heroes or villains in dramatic poses. And yeah, you want the occasional dramatic pose, because you want to show off the costumes. That’s part of the genre. But you need to convey what’s actually happening. As dramatic as the last two pages were, I couldn’t figure out just what Kestrel was doing without looking at the “Next issue” blurb!

And then there are the places Liefeld left out dramatic poses that should have been there. The issue introduces a quartet of teen villains, but only one of them gets a full-body dramatic view, two get only action shots, and one—well, let me put it this way. I had to flip back to the beginning to be sure that there really were four of them and not just three. He’s in two panels with only his head and shoulders visible in the entire book. He’s not named, there’s no sign of powers or special skills, and he’s wearing a shirt and tie. I have to wonder whether Liefeld just didn’t get around to designing a costume since the character gets eliminated halfway through the book.

Anyway, onto The Nightmare Before Christmas. I’m a big fan of the movie, which may have been part of my problem reading this, but it seemed to me that the manga was more interested in drawing still images from the movie than, again, telling the story. Don’t get me wrong—it looks great—but it doesn’t read well. Jack’s transformative experience in Christmas Town, for instance, feels rushed and vague. Moments like the guy who takes off his hat to reveal miniature version of himself, who takes off his hat to reveal yet another, etc. are present, but make no impact.

To make matters worse, whoever handled the English translation seems to have done a rush job. They seem to have used the movie script for most of the dialogue, which is actually a good idea, since the Japanese text was likely translated from the movie. But the dialogue used in place of the songs is just… well… lame. They didn’t even bother to translate the sound effects. All in all, a disappointing adaptation.

Tamaran’s story unfolded during the 1980s in The New Teen Titans and The Omega Men (which featured Kory’s brother). Koriand’r returned home to help stop a civil war, but then her sister wrested the throne from their father. Komand’r (a.k.a. Blackfire) surprised everyone by becoming a much better—and fairer—ruler than anyone expected. Eventually Kory returned home to stay.

As The New Titans wound its way to a close in 1996, the story returned to Tamaran, now embroiled in a new war—one which ultimately destroyed the planet. The survivors settled on an uninhabited world to rebuild, dubbing it New Tamaran. (New Teen Titans #126-230, 1996)

Then things got nasty.

Just a few months after the final issue of The New Titans, DC published a prologue to the year’s big crossover, The Final Night. The sun-eater, before setting its sights on Earth, destroyed New Tamaran utterly, with no time for an evacuation. Starfire, exiled just hours before by her suddenly-evil-again sister, was believed the only survivor.

Fast forward a few years. Starfire talked the Titans into helping repel an invasion by the Gordanians, but it quickly became clear that it was the Tamaraneans who were invading the homeworld of their former conquerors. The Titans’ Tempest (formerly Aqualad) found a diplomatic solution and convinced the Gordanians to share the world of Karna with the displaced Tamaraneans—as long as Koriand’r took her place as ruler. (The Titans #16-18, 2000)

So of course, the following year’s big crossover event, Our Worlds At War, starts off with what? Karna being destroyed by Imperiex. (Our Worlds At War Secret Files, 2001). Starfire returned to Earth, a queen without a people.

The Tamaraneans have had three worlds destroyed out from under them in the last ten years (closer to two or three in story time). The rag-tag survivors may number as low as the hundreds or thousands by now.

I’ve seriously come to the conclusion that, if DC needs to destroy a recognizable planet in order to establish a threat that’s headed toward Earth, they’ll pick the latest planet the Tamaraneans have settled on.

(Maybe they should hook up with Pariah.)

So now we’ve got two “event” series taking place in space: The Rann-Thanagar War and The Return of Donna Troy. There appear to be two groups of Tamaranean survivors involved. One has fallen under the thrall of the original Titans of Greek mythology. (Troia’s origin established that they had been exiled into space when Zeus took over.) They’re off conquering planets for the Titans under the belief that they’re protecting the universe from Rann and Thanagar. The other, led by an inexplicably-resurrected Blackfire, has allied themselves with Thanagar with the intent to betray them at the last minute and take Rann for themselves.

If they succeed, you can bet on Rann getting destroyed a few months later in Infinite Crisis.

Let’s face it: like killing Superman, Troia’s death was never intended to stick. It was an admitted gimmick: what would shake up the Titans and Young Justice so badly that you could break up both teams and create new takes on the Teen Titans and Outsiders? Throw in the backstory with multiple lifetimes and the sequences in Graduation Day itself that showed her in another life, and you’ve got more than a back door to bring her back: she just lingered a bit longer than usual near the revolving door.

I’m of mixed feelings on this. On one hand, I think comics should take death a bit more seriously. If you can bring back Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Arrow, Green Lantern, and a dozen other heroes, why should any of the Titans have expected Donna’s death to be permanent? Why should anyone have expected Sue Dibny’s death in Identity Crisis to be permanent? Then add in the fact that I’d generally rather see comics follow through on changes (Wally replacing Barry as Flash, Kyle replacing Hal as GL, etc.) than reversing them.

On the other hand, Graduation Day was a lousy story. It was basically “How can we dismantle two teams in three issues?” And Donna’s death was clearly intended to be temporary. And unless you count Cassie, the new Wonder Girl, no one really replaced her, so bringing her back doesn’t push anyone else out of the spotlight.

Heck, it’s got George Perez and Phil Jimenez working together. How can I not read it?

My first thought was that there was no way Deathstroke would kill Wintergreen (his best friend and partner in the assassination “business”). But the more I thought about it, I realized he would do it if he thought it was necessary – just as he bit the figurative bullet and killed his own son when that was necessary (way back in Titans Hunt).

But he would not mount his head on the wall with his hunting trophies!

The revelation at the end of this week’s issue goes a little way towards explaining it, but it still doesn’t quite make sense, even if we’re looking at a Wildebeest connection.