Our columnists are independent writers who choose subjects and write without editorial input from comiXology. The opinions expressed are the columnist's, and do not represent the opinion of comiXology.
They won't make any best-reprints-of-the-decade lists, but DC's Millennium Editions (MEs) function as both a useful resource for comics scholars and a good stocking stuffer.[1] From 2000-2001, DC reprinted 61 significant single issues from their back catalog, at reasonably high quality, in color, in their entirety. Although many of the stories therein have been reprinted many, many times, packed into phone-book or highly produced archive collections, it's still a pleasure to read them in single-issue form, with all of their back-up stories intact. (As far as I know, the Millennium Edition of
Detective Comics #38 is still the easiest place to find a Jerry Siegel-penned Slam Bradley comic, even though it wasn't drawn by Joe Shuster.) MEs sample a wide selection of DC's titles:
Young Romance Comics #1,
All-Star Western #10,
The Saga of the Swamp Thing #21,
Tales Calculated to Drive You Mad,
The New Gods,
House of Mystery #1,
Hellblazer #1… and
Plop! #1.
The cover to the Millennium Edition of
Plop! #1 (all MEs had a standardized cover, with the issue's original cover art at an angle, and a gold-foil logo)[2] explains that
Plop! was chosen as a ME by voters. I suspect that those voters were mostly children in '73, when this comic came out: the "liner notes" (all of the MEs have the equivalent of liner notes: the history and the context of the comic on inside front and back cover), explain that this comic was popular with children at that time.[3]
Children probably liked it because it's a combination of
Mad (it was edited by Joe Orlando, with covers by Basil Wolverton and Wally Wood, and issue #1, at least, has loads of Sergio Aragonés art) and
House of Mystery (Bernie Wrightson, Alan Toth, Steve Ditko and many others contributed): it was the result of Orlando's desire for a humor-horror anthology. Unfortunately,
Plop!'s roster of talent is much more impressive than the comic itself.
It begins promisingly enough: Sergio Aragonés' rendering of DC horror hosts Cain, Abel and Eve sets just the right tone. The comic then segues into a slightly tedious sequence in which each panel is an event that produces the onomatopoeia "plop!," presumably for branding purposes, and then leads into the first story, also by Aragonés. "The Escape," about a prisoner who trains rats, doesn't work: Aragonés seems straight-jacketed and weighed down by the obligatory EC-style twist.
One-panel gag-strips (called"Plops") are used as filler: artists George Evans and Bernie Wrightson are left high and dry by their writers (Frank Robbins and Steve Skeates, respectively). (
Plop! does, at least, have a striking Basil Wolverton cover, and the one-panel gags are backgrounded by Aragonés crowd scenes, depicting people reading the comic and laughing). Essentially, in
Plop! #1, the humor and horror fight, rather than bolster, each other, at least in this first issue.[4] There's a missing ingredient: a certain "sickness."
In general, however, MEs are "fun sized": even if, as in the case of
Plop!, they don't always leave one craving more. When many of these issues first came out, readers were uncertain if they'd be able to find the next: 21st century comics readers are not only assured of being able to find them, but are able to choose to read them in whatever format they like best.
Notes:
[1] A few of the issues are also part of the "After Watchmen, What Next?" promotion, which, at $1 a pop, is a cheaper option.
[2] Fraud became an issue with the "Famous First Editions" reprinted in the 1970s,
which apparently resembled the original comics too exactly: ME covers have a green background with white stripes, which is a bit workmanlike, but for the most part, sets off the original cover art quite nicely. I much prefer it to the way they designed the
"After Watchmen … What Next?" single issues, because the logo competes with the cover art.
[3] According to the liner notes, DC knew that
Plop! was popular with kids because one guy (Bob Rozakis), who was driving the DC comics truck ("a truck that drove through neighborhoods selling comics, kind of like the Good Humor man sells ice cream."), reported that the kids were buying it.
[4] In general the corny humor endemic to horror-comic hosts only works when it's an antidote to fevered melodrama and gore: when you have the equivalent of the Old Witch or what have you yukking it up over a mildly funny story, it's like a too-sharp elbow to the ribs, accompanied by an "Eh …. EEHHH? GET IT?!"
Image credits:
All art [©2000 DC Comics]
Cover by Basil Wolverton
Eve, Cain and Abel drawn by Sergio Aragonés
Frog panel from "The Gourmet," written by Steve Skeates and drawn by Berni Wrightson
Kristy Valenti currently works for The Comics Journal and Fantagraphics Books, Inc.
Uncharted Territory is © Kristy Valenti, 2010
