Crinkly Headers: Secret Origins (Or, "Secret Rogerins")

Corin Depper is here. With his patented passive-aggressiveness.
Never comes out and has a row –– but he foments trouble everywhere he goes, as if by magic.
I said to him, "Have you ever said 'Boo' to a goose, Corin?"
He goes, "Boo."

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I was walking down through Union Square West heading north, thinking, "Apropos of boring comics, all stories involving the Shi'Ar and the Imperial Guard are boring. Also any stories containing or involving Alpha Flight. Likewise anything set in the Savage Land."

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The scene: The Time Machine

The time: What is time, after all, in a time machine?

The circumstances: I was trading my Deadpools for numbers of Cable and (pre-Max, MU) Punisher War Journal. Slipped in a Silver Age Doctor Doom special "under the rose". Roger was generous & allowed the trade.

Sifting through some Spider-Man copies and frowning, I coughed and straightened my tie and went to Roger, "May I approach the bar and ask a question?"

Like a slip of a lad hesitantly asking one of his parents where exactly babies come from --- and why.

Roger assenting in his nebulous way, I approached the "bar" bearing a copy of an early-Nineties Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man which was warped and rippled in bumps along the tops and bottoms of the pages.

Nigh every copy I have seen of this title, between #159 and #188, is so corrugated. Also issues of GI Joe and Web of Spider-Man from the same benighted period.

I went to the bar, and showed them to Roger. "Do you mark these bumps along the header?" I asked.

Roger squinted a spell, and looked perplexed. Finally he realised that I was not complaining about the art. (Far from it - Sal Buscema was drawing this title for a long and excellent run at the time.)

When he had ascertained the source of my complaint, he remarked, "You need to see a psychiatrist."

It's going badly with you when your comics guy is remarking that you are in need of therapy. That said, Roger's proffered solution did not satisfy me. He reckoned that the comics were warped and crinkled by sitting in damp. He goes, sheepishly, "Did you get your wrinkled comics from us? Cause we used to keep our longboxes in a damp basement..."

Nice to know that my esteemed comics guy keeps his valuable back stock in a balmy subterranean mangrove swamp - a real winning recommendation there, Rodge. It isn't that though. I think it is a problem with Marvel Comics across the board (or at least certain titles) from that period, irrespective of where they come from. They aren't all from Roger's soggy basement. I just got some numbers of Punisher from Lone Star Comics in Texas and they have the same "crinkly header" problem.

Roger said, "There would have been some comment on this phenomenon among the comics community in the last thirty years. I don't think you have just discovered something that has eluded the greatest minds of the comic-collecting nation . The comics collecting fraternity is traditionally, shall we say, vigilant , ah, exacting indeed, on such minutiae concerning, ah, condition."

I kind of bridled at this, "slightually". Like I wasn't able to out-think the paltry comics buff community with my excellent eye for detail? Like I, with my larger knowledge of the universe, couldn't see beyond the petty purview of the fanboy?
"Or perhaps it's just that I'm a pioneer, and you men gathered this day in this room have not the 'eyes to see'" I yelped faintly, to dull chuckling from the room.

The fact remains that I keep finding crinkled comics from that period in select Marvel titles from a variety of sources. Should "they" ever come to notice this phenomenon, say in the pages of Overstreet or even Wizard, I hope that some honest soul will rightly attribute its original recognition to me.

[In the voice of Crispin Glover, in River's Edge:] I feel like... Cotton Mather!

Apocalypse Gulcher (Open Letter to Laurence Remila)

Laurence - - - - -
I went to the Book Expo at the Javits Centre - you know, scrabbling around for free comics - THAT IS I MEAN I went picking up copies of the university press catalogues - - - to see what is forthcoming in my field - -

any-way you wudda laughed, because there was Adam Parfrey in the Feral House booth. The funny thing is he looked uncannily like Roger Cardinal. Has anyone spotted this before? Probably not. It's like my theory that whutzizname - Frodo Baggins - looks like Tatsuya Nakadai. Nobody cares except me.
Who shall attest to it, and I die?

Anyway I goe to Adam Parfrey, "SSSSSSOOOO... you still see Boyd Rice about town ever?" (This is my greeting to strangers everywhere, actually: Do you run into old BOYD?)
He says, Yesss... I goe, What whenddyou last see him? Like I'm in the CIA or something. Whuttzis last known address? Is he still shaving his head or has he acquired a toupee? As if to say, This man is wanted in four states for impersonating Nick Cave.

This man has brought Satanism into disrepute.

Heh... no... but... Parfrey's freebie giveaways were packets of poppy seeds, and he goes, Have a poppy seed on me.
I said, feh - I don't have a garden.

I beg your pardon...
I never promised you a rose garden...

I don't know if the grow-your-own-poppies thing is an allusion to heroin or not or if it is straight up and rather sweet horticulturalism. P____ says to him here, were these grown in Afghanistan? and laughed. He squinted and leaned forward and said, What? Were these grown in Afghanistan?
No...
I thought they only grew them in Afghanistan...
I was counselling her, no, they grow poppies in Cromer too.

I feel like last time I was at the expo (LA) Feral House was giving out seeds then too.
Tomato seeds I believe.

Back to the matter at hand, I then goe - in my now standard and familiar way of imposing on strangers - Meh. Uh, did you ever read Lisa Carver's book?
He goes Lisa...?... oh Lisa CARVER. No, I heard about it I didn't read it.
I said, Boyd Rice doesn't come out so well in that...
He reflected on that one and said, Well Lisa knew what she was getting into. She dated G.G. Allin...
Here the woman on the booth with Parfrey goes, Who dated G.G. Allin?!
I, being a scholarly pedant go, Well I don't know if you can strictly call it dating what they did...
Parfrey was saying, in essence, As ye sow so shall ye reap and I can't really fault that at this stage of my life. It's in the Bible. "Words to Live By." What G.G. - or Napoleon Hill indeed - probably would have called "The Golden Rule."

Speaking of whom, Parfrey says he has a bunch of letters from G.G. from when he was in jail that he is going to publish sensationally in his new autobiography; and he hands me a postcard. I said, "I used to e-mail Mykel Board for a while. Wanna trade?"
Would you like to exclusively publish my e-mail correspondence with Mykel Board, yes or no?
That was in 1994. Imagine; I've been e-mailing for fifteen miserable years.

I said, summing up, "Anyway: G.G, Boyd and Lisa they gave us lotsa great records that we listen to oftentimes to this day didn't they all of them?"

I could have stuck around and rapped some more...
("So... how's Crispin Glover?")
("Wanna buy a pristine unplayed Tards ten inch on Sympathy?")
...But amazingly I knew my cue - for once - and beat it, with postcards but sans poppy seeds. .
Anyway buddy I thought thisd MAKE YOU LAUGH.
I think we all need to laugh now and then and you more than most.
All right - speak to you in another year I guess - - -

FABIAN