Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to get me some ribs. Happy Canada Day.

Delivered to my inbox by virtuous elves, acting in secret: Gemstone have signed “new, hot talent,” to take over on Donald Duck and Friends with issue #375, and I am pleased to have the chance to present to you two pages from the issue. My source refused to name the new writer, but I have a definite hunch as regards his identity. It’s certainly a radical, daring shift for a Disney property, but I honestly think this new approach will bring in an as-yet untapped crossover market.

I know you think many of your favorite critically acclaimed comics are original works, but it is my sad duty to inform you that most of them are warmed-over replicas of passionately brilliant works from the Silver Age. It’s hard to accept that these creators have so callously and wholly avoided crediting their predecessors for the ideas from which they have made their careers, but these original comics deserve the acclaim of which they have been robbed.

I first discovered these titles going through a bargain bin at a garage sale, as one makes so many comics discoveries. I was shocked by what I discovered.

Be forewarned: if you value your innocence as a comics consumer, do not attempt to view these images. You will only end up being disappointed in your favorite writers.

Adventures of the Fable Folk only ran a mere seventeen issues before being cancelled, but the rampant imagination of writer Horley McLachlan is unparalleled. Bill Willingham lifted entire story arcs from plots that McLachlan resolved in eighteen pages - and satisfactorily, to boot. McLachlan subtly builds a love triangle between Bigby Wolf, Snow White and Cinderella, hinting at bisexual attraction between the respective women in a way that makes one wonder what he would have done with it had he not been forced to work within the social mores of the time. Fascinating if you can pick it up, but difficult to do, as the reason for the comic’s modern obscurity is shocking: “Fableheads” were one of the earliest organizers of dedicated-subject conventions, and all 1,245 fans of the comic were killed at the inaugural convention when the roof collapsed. DC immediately cancelled the title and now refuses to admit that it ever existed. Unsurprisingly, the writer of Yorick, The Last Man On Earth was a woman: Sally Polenti, a trailblazer in the comics field and almost totally unknown today. Her work on Yorick is more soap-opera-ish, perhaps, than Brian K. Vaughan’s - but then again, she also doesn’t have any of those Trivial Pursuit factoids Vaughan seems compelled to insert into any and all narratives he writes. And if you thought Vaughan’s depiction of the longing between 355 and Yorick was hot - well, Polenti’s positively smolders. Plus, mad scientists in just about every issue. Girls Romance Comics went out of business in 1958, and most of its writers went into television writing, explaining why it’s now a footnote in comics history. Highly recommended. An early Robert Kanigher war comic, before he really started to cut loose on the joyous weirdness that came to become a trademark of his career at DC. Kanigher’s work here is still crazy, mind you, but it’s an eerie sort of plausible craziness, especially in light of what we now know about the weirdness of the completely militarized North Korean society. The issue where Matthew Roth (who never picks up a gun throughout the series) leads his platoon through a field filled with blindfolded North Korean soldiers practicing “alertness exercises” is a highlight. I don’t think Marvel got the rights to this, but it doesn’t matter in any case, considering that the Army censored this title and seized all copies of it they could find. If you find an issue, hold onto it; they’re worth a lot. This early-70s DC horror comic lasted a mere five issues before being scrapped, ostensibly to avoid competition with Kirby’s The Sandman. Every issue featured a Hob Gadling backup story. Mervyn Pumpkinhead was a cannibal monster introduced in issue #2, and Morpheus himself was more of a dealer out of ironic punishments than an anthropomorphic personification of human beliefs. ‘ A fairly traditional war comic, but centered around the Navy rather than the Army (as most war comics of the time focused on ground-pounders). Sea-Guy is good, entertaining fun, and fairly straightforward, but never anything less than completely engaging. The “Invisibles” referred to on the cover were the book’s backup strip: a team of elite frogmen infiltrators. They also explain the book’s disappearance - DC wanted to make sure that the emerging Sea Devils property faced no competition from its other comics. Originally this comic was simply entitled The Future Reporters, but along the way one of the supporting characters became more and more popular. Two issues after this one, it was retitled Spider Jerusalem and the Future Reporters, and then five issues after that it simply became Spider Jerusalem and remained that way for another two years. The reason it faded into obscurity? A nasty lawsuit initiated by Steve Ditko combined with a weird distribution scheme meant that this title was only printed in Morocco. But it sold very well there.

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This is probably going to be the last one of these I have time to do for a while; law school is already starting to ramp back up the intensity metre.

But I’m rather happy with it, and if “One More Day” was just too static and boring to mock, at least “Brand New Day” isn’t, despite thus far having a near-total lack of Peter Parker actually being Spider-Man, and despite Steve McNiven apparent belief that Peter really, really likes running his hands through his hair. (I don’t know what it is about Steve McNiven’s art that prompts me to do these things.)

Not included: the three pages introducing Mister Negative, both because I felt they impeded the remixed narrative and because I don’t want to condemn the creation of potentially interesting new villains.

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Countdown: Arena manages to quite possibly be the silliest and most pointless tie-in to Countdown yet, which in and of itself is impressive. Given that the plot essentially boils down to “hey, remember when you were a kid and you made your action figures fight each other? It’s like that!”, parodying it was a tough assignment.

But, hey. I’m game.

EDIT TO ADD: Yes, I know the plot is stupid. Again: this is a story where different characters beat each other up for absolutely no worthwhile reason and that’s genuinely the entire story in toto. And I know I didn’t change that much, because I simply couldn’t manage it. It is quite simply the worst comic published in years. (”One More Day” at least had a little style in its execution despite being a piece of shit.) I know some of you are disappointed, but - there’s only so much I can do, because Arena is, simply, what little children think writing comics is like. “And then Batman hits Superman in the face! And then Superman punches him with a garbage truck!” Et cetera.

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People kept emailing me asking me when I was going to do another comic parody, and my answer was always the same. “When the time is right, grasshopper.”

World War Hulk? No. Firstly, it was actually good; secondly, it doesn’t have a lot of clunky expository dialogue and adding it would just be clumsy. Amazons Attack? Closer, but again, not nearly enough dialogue, and although it was profoundly stupid it wasn’t stupid in the right sort of ambitious way, but instead stupid in the way that, say, Larry The Cable Guy is stupid. Countdown? Well, it’s certainly a bad comic, but nothing really happens in any given issue; I can’t just write twenty-two pages of dicking around because DC has already done that for me. Any given issue of Wolverine: Origins? I considered it, but really. Wolverine isn’t that much fun for me to write. (It’s why I went with the “bub snikt snikt bub” joke in the first place.)

It seemed hopeless. But then DC went and did me a favour by publishing a comic both arrogantly ambitious and flagrantly ill-thought out. They published Death Of The New Gods, and I was thankful.

Thumbnails behind the cut, of course.

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In case you haven’t noticed, thanks to the help of Stefan Rivet: the remix of Teen Titans #44 is now up on the site.

To those of you who have asked me if I’m ever going to do another comics remix, the answer is: yes, and I’m about halfway done one right now actually, but my schedule is a lot busier than it used to be. I’m hoping to have it up next week, but no guarantees.

Contest of Champions, the first Marvel miniseries, celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary late last year. So I felt it only appropriate to take a look back at it, and see how it might… differ… if published today.

THEN:

NOW:

THEN:

NOW:

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NOW:

THEN:

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THEN:

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THEN:

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THEN:

NOW: