Talk: Comics

Sesame Street via Ape Comics

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2010/08/24/ape-entertainment-to-launch-care-bears-and-sesame-street-comics/

Parking this old story, it turns out Care Bears was actually Strawberry Shortcake, and Sesame Street was actually Richie Rich, but this might be of interest as a short note, should someone write a full-out history of Henson/Muppets in the comics, beyond these standalone articles. -- Zanimum 01:21, February 23, 2011 (UTC)

Since it's an incorrect rumor (the writer even says "I understand..."), I don't think we could really use it, unless we had proof that Ape actually had planned to license Sesame (which, with two wrong predictions in the same article, seems unlikely as can be). -- Andrew Leal (talk) 02:14, February 23, 2011 (UTC)

It's at least a quarter accurate, the rumor. Care Bears and Strawberry Shortcake are both American Greetings properties, so they got the licensor right. -- Zanimum 02:34, February 23, 2011 (UTC)

But since it didn't happen and they said "I understand" (no idea from who they understood it, but that phrase itself is usually a guarded qualification) and got a no comment reaction when they asked the publisher, what really does it signify? Nothing. That they heard a rumor about two children's comics, and they turned out to be two completely different children's comics (that Care Bears and Strawberry are American Greetings seems coincidental). -- Andrew Leal (talk) 03:10, February 23, 2011 (UTC)

Disambiguating series with multiple issues

We have Several pages in here that cover various series of comic books -- Fraggle Rock (comic book), Farscape (comic book), Muppet Babies (comic book), Dinosaurs (comic book), The Muppet Show (comic book). However when we disambiguate the articles from the series they were based on we've used the singular "(comic book)" to disambiguate even though the articles in question cover more than one book - they cover a series of books.

I think the page titles of the comic book series should reflect the pluralization of multiple books - just as we put pluraization in the page titles for series of articles including multiple PVC figures, lunchboxes, T-Shirts, or posters. I think that, for example, Fraggle Rock (comic book) should either be Fraggle Rock (comic books) or Fraggle Rock (comic book series) or just Fraggle Rock (comics). But just saying "comic book" seems weird to me, as the article is covering multiple books.

I brought this up on talk:The Muppet Show (comic book), but since it applys to mutiple comic book series, Danny suggested that I bring it up here. So what are others thoughts on the issue? -- Brad D. (talk) 01:28, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

The thing is, in the world of comics, "comic book" is often used to refer to a specific *title*. Thus even histories and overstreet guides routinely use the phrase "This comic book." Individual installments are issues. To the passive collector, or when merely referring to a pile of assorted titles, one uses "comic books" (or comics). It may sound a little odd, but that's how it works and has been used for some time, to the extent that "a high quality book" could be used when one's referring to the series. Look at it this way, also. Time is a magazine, not magazines, even if one can have multiple Time magazines lying around. The New York Times is a newspaper, not newspapers. So the same would apply to comics (in the 1940s, one can easily find references to "the comic magazine" as an entity). So to my mind, the only need for pluralization would be if we're covering different series from different publishers.

That said, if it's easier, I wouldn't mind "Fraggle Rock (comics)" but "Fraggle Rock (comic books)" would actually make things worse (implying that the article is about more than one published Fraggle Rock *line*, not a run of multipler issues, and the "comic book series" just isn't needed. But I think it helps the most, as I said, if you think of it in the way one does newspapers and magazines and the like, since the same rule applies and it's really a specialized facet of the larger periodical publishing world. -- Andrew Leal (talk) 03:47, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

I understand what you are saying - that it's like "magazine" or "newspaper" (it can refer to an individual issue or the title as a whole). And I actually talked with a friend who runs a comic book store about this issue and he gave me some better insight on it too.

So Muppet Robin Hood is a single comic book, even though it is going to be published in four separate "books" (or issues). In fact with these upcoming Muppet comics, BOOM! is planning on publishing each "book" into an actual single book at the end of each series' run. So, for example, The Muppet Show (comic book) and The Muppets Take Manhattan (comic book) each cover a single comic book (even if that comic book was published in more than one tangible "book").

However our Farscape (comic book) article does cover three separate comic books each based on the Farscape franchise (the four-issue "The Beginning of the End of the Beginning" comic, the upcoming four-issue "Strange Detractors", and the upcoming prequel series "Dargos Lament"). So that article does cover multiple titles -- multiple books. (Plus the first issue has also been published digitally via iTunes and the iPhone, so I'm not even sure if that's still technically a "book" or something else...but that's not important).

I'm not total convinced about the Muppet Babies, Dinosaurs and Fraggle Rock comic book series – although each issue was published by the same company and released as part of regular a series, they didn't have an ongoing continuity or storylines. Arguably the collected body of Fraggle Rock comics doesn’t add up to a single book, but rather just a bunch of stand along comics. But they were released as issues in a series (even if each was a stand alone story and their wasn't an ongoing plot), so...

However I think just going with "(comics)" to disambiguate these, rather than "(comic book)", would be fine. It would allow everything in the category (except for the two "comic strips") to be disambiguated the same way (regardless of being a single book, a multiple-issue book series, a magazine comic feature, a comic adaptation, or some kind of mix of release formats). For example, the "Dinosaurs (comic book)" article covers the comics that were published in Disney Adventures plus those larger stories released as issues in the comic book series. And it’s not like there are other ‘‘Fraggle’’ comics we need to differentiate these from by adding the word "book". -- Brad D. (talk) 07:31, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Lack of ongoing storylines makes no difference. Again, it's like magazine or newspaper. If one talks about Little Audrey comic *books*, one's referring either to multiple titles or just random issues. Little Audrey's TV Funtime however is a single book, and #46 would be a single issue (with stories therein). Same goes for literary magazines (a forgotten breed these days) like Ellery Queen, which contained assorted unrelated stories by different authors. That still doesn't mean one would call it "Ellery Queen (magazines)" since it was always just the one magazine. So you can't really make an argument based on that.

You have a possible stronger point on Farscape, though they're all by the same publisher and tying in and basically subtitles, but it's not far removed from concurrently having Amazing Spider-Man and The Web of Spider-Man and so on, which would all count as different books, so renaming that category makes sense. I don't think we need to worry about each one looking exactly the same as long as the phrase in parentheses is accurate.

As for Dinosaurs, it was cross-promotion. Disney Adventures was an outlet they used to plug everything (the TV shows, in fact it began as the "official magazine of the Disney Afternoon," the movies, the parks, and their Disney Comics titles). They aren't different comics, but at least one ("Nana Ethyl's Dinosaur Tails: Baby and the Beanstalk ") appeared in Disney Adventures with a "Buy Dinosaurs comics!" plug at the beginning and end. There may have been another one (we're really not sure on that point), but it's not a reason for disambiguation since it's the exact same material, just some of it released ahead as a promotion (just like a "Making of" special or those ABC Saturday Morning specials they had in the late 80s and 90s with clips or even entire episodes of their new lineup).

So moving to comics would work for me, but right now only one item poses a problem anyway, so I'd prefer just handling it on an individual basis to moving everything yet again (and fixing double redirects and so on), not to mention the strips vs. book issue which exists in at least one confirmed instance (Muppet Show) and could if any Sesame Street comic books were to surface, and so on. Maybe we can get Scott to weigh in on this. -- Andrew Leal (talk) 08:12, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I think Brad is mixing up "comic book" with "issue". Each issue of a comic isn't considered a separate "comic book".

It's the same as "TV show", "season" and "episode" -- Farscape had 88 episodes over 4 seasons. You could describe any given episode as a "show", but you wouldn't say that there are 88 Farscape shows. There's 88 episodes, and one show. It's the same with magazines and comics -- there were 20 issues of MuppetZine, but it's just one magazine; there were 8 issues of Fraggle Rock, but it's one comic book.

Typically, a publisher starts a comic book with the intention of running it indefinitely, like The Amazing Spider-Man. That series has been running for 580+ issues so far. There have been lots of multi-issue story arcs, but the title stays the same, and the numbering has been consistent, from issue 1 to issue 580.

BOOM! is doing something that's a little different. Instead of making one long-running Farscape series, they're publishing each story as a separate miniseries, with separate numbers. So instead of Farscape issues 1-12, there's going to be Farscape #1-4, Farscape: Strange Detractors #1-4, and Farscape: D'Argo's Lament #1-4. They're probably doing that because it's easier for them to sell an issue #1 than an issue #9. By splitting the series into parts and starting the numbers over again, they end up with three issue #1's.

So this is my recommendation for how to handle BOOM!'s comics: Have a separate page for each miniseries, and then a collective page about the whole series.

For the Muppet comics, that would be The Muppet Show (comic book) and Muppet Robin Hood -- there isn't anything else called "Muppet Robin Hood", so it doesn't need a disambig. Assuming they do more miniseries, then there would be articles for Muppet Sleeping Beauty, etc. Then there's also a page that discusses the series as a whole -- maybe The Muppet Show (BOOM! Studios), unless it turns out they have some official collective name for it.

For Farscape, it would be Farscape (comic book), Farscape: Strange Detractors, Farscape: D'Argo's Lament, and then Farscape (BOOM! Studios) for the collective page.

For the Dinosaurs comics -- there was an actual two-issue miniseries published; I think I have both issues somewhere. They were probably reprints of stories that had previously appeared in Disney Adventures, or it may have been the other way around. Either way, the Dinosaurs (comic book) page is specifically about the comic book series, and the comics that appeared in Disney Adventures should be on the Disney Adventures page. The pages should link to each other, and the fact that one was reprinting material from the other should be discussed on both pages.

In other news... I don't think (comics) works. Muppet Show comics have appeared in lots of different forms. Besides the new series and the comic strip, there are also Muppet comics in Muppet Magazine and in the Muppet annuals, and there's also Muppets at Sea and The Comic Muppet Book. I would expect an article called "The Muppet Show (comics)" to cover all of those things. That's why "The Muppet Show (comic book)" is a good disambiguation -- this is the only time that anything called The Muppet Show has appeared in comic book form. -- Danny (talk) 01:21, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

That all makes sense to me, especially individual pages for individual series/miniseries and so on. And right, only two issues of Dinosaurs (not a miniseries so much as a canceled series, not helped by the show's moving timeslots and hiatus, plus the whole "Hollywood Comics" idea, with comic versions of Touchstone movies and Indiana Jones and the like, was a flop), with any Disney Adventures stuff being the same material merely used to promote the comics. Right now, I can only confirm one story, and not which Adventures issue, so the vague statements on both pages will have to suffice for now (the same stuff, since Disney was a great recycler, later appeared in the Colossal Comics collection, which if I can find a relevant issue or promo for that issue [Disney was also good at listing the contents of their titles at that time], I'll work that in as a mention as well). -- Andrew Leal (talk) 02:04, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

My guess about the Dinosaurs comics goes like this: They made some comics for Disney Adventures. After a while, they had enough inventory, so they reprinted them as comic books. Then Dinosaurs / Hollywood Comics ran out of steam, so they stopped. So the DA stuff wasn't necessarily a promo; the comic book was a reprint series. Does that make sense? -- Danny (talk) 16:00, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Not really, not since the actual Disney Adventures issue I had featured a "Read more in Dinosaurs #1!" (or to that effect) banner (I wish I could lay my hands on the actual issue to scan, but I can't, thus why I can't pinpoint which volume it appeared in, but the editorial text very clearly labeled it as a promo; they did the same for their Aladdin movie adaptation comic, including the first several pages, and so on, only in this case it made more sense to use one of the shorter stories whole). That's also how it went in the promos for Hollywood comics, which weren't reprints. Really, we only know for sure that the one story appeared in Disney Adventures, and it also had that full page ad (the one scanned on the Wiki page) for the Dinosaurs comic book elsewhere in the issue, though I have a vague notion there may have been a delay (which could only be confirmed by comparing that date with the first issue date). Colossal Comics was the Disney reprint label, a mix of Disney Adventures stuff, stuff from limited series (like the two or three issue Darkwing Duck adapting the pilot special), and sometimes a random one page from Mickey Mouse Adventures and so on. I know I still have a few of those lying around, and they always had a "Reprinted from" note in the editorial/masthead/artist credits page, which identified the Dinosaurs stuff as coming from those comics first (whereas the Disney Adventures stuff, even if it also made its way into other comics by then, was always credited to that, and so on). Disney was definitely keen on recycling, but they didn't take a back inventory approach to a single character/line; more often, they just cobbled together random stories with a theme and put it out as a summer special, or utterly unrelated comics (ranging from Gottfredson to Disney Adventures Roger Rabbit stuff) put out in 3D form. I still have that one, though I lost those cardboard glasses long ago. -- Andrew Leal (talk) 16:48, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Aha, I just looked on the page and saw there was a note on other stories which appeared in both places, but which doesn't seem to apply to the whole contents. Actually, if you can find your issues, Danny, that would be much easier than trying to track down Disney Adventures. If they appeared there first (for whatever reason), there would be a note to that effect. Unlike Archie or the 90s Harvey reprints of Muppet Babies and the like, Disney's comics arm (during that fairly brief period as its own publishing entity) was scrupulous about noting "originally presented in" for everything. -- Andrew Leal (talk) 17:05, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Oh, okay -- that makes sense. I'll see if I can find my Dino comics... -- Danny (talk) 20:54, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Magazine comics

I remember I had two issues of a (Japanese)kids' magazine that always came with some other magazine, which featured Sesame Street comics. The only two I remember are:

• Cookie Monster sleeping in bed. His alarm clock goes off and I think you know what he does with it. He goes into the kitchen, where Betty Lou is holding a frying pan, making breakfast for the two of them. Cookie asks something and Betty Lou is confused.

• Another one set in a park and involving Big Bird, Prairie Dawn and a tree. All I can pretty much remembers is that Big Bird tries to shake(or push)the tree and worms start to crawl inside Prairie's hair(!)Big Bird is standing there with an embarrased look on his face.

The kids' magazine had sections devoted to Sesame Street as well(basically Sesame characters looking at photos of animals at a zoo. Cookie, Oscar, and Big Bird I knew were there).

If only I still had them...would help a lot. I was looking through auctions yahoo.jp and I saw a Sesame Street magazine(from early 90s)with a comic strip of Oscar surprising Forgetful Jones.

MasterYoshi 14:29, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Would we also add Muppet Magazine in this listing, since it featured a comic in every issue? --Nate Radionate 05:38, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Sure, that's a good idea. I think it would be nice to make a page that just lists the comics stories from Muppet Magazine. -- Danny Toughpigs 11:01, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Swedish comic

Hi! New guy here. I got a comic for christmas that had been found at a garage sale and given to me since they knew I love the muppets (though I mostly only collect muppet puzzles). I've been trying to find out more about it but the publisher was "dismantled" in 97 and this is my foremost source of muppet info on the web so when I couldn't find anything here I sort of hit a dead end. If anyone's got more info about this comic I'd really appreciate hearing it!

The comic was published by Semic Press (Swedish publishers of The Phantom) in 79 and is named "Full rulle med Mupparna" (approximates to "Full speed with the Muppets"). The kinda loose story involves Kermit trying to explain to the reader what exactly goes into putting on a show at the muppet theater while, and at the same time, being interrupted by the rest of the cast; including Sam requiring Kermit's signature on a waiver claiming they're all fictional, a freedom fighter movement of cabbages that turned out very poorly translated, Gonzo demonstrating an act,Miss Piggy getting all in a bind over a zit on her nose and J.P. Grosse demanding a publicity photograph. It all ends with the cast taking the photograph with Crazy Harry handling the flash.

The comic is apparently part 1 in a series and there is seemingly at least a part 2 named "Mupparna går i däck" (Very approximately "The Muppets hit the deck") involving a boat, though I havn't gotten a hold of that.

Are there more parts in this series? What books were they based on?Are they rare? Well.. Thanks for reading that wall of text, if nothing else. :D -- Swedish Puzzler 10:00, December 26, 2011 (UTC)

It sounds like you're talking about this which was followed by this. —Scott (message me) 10:12, December 26, 2011 (UTC)

Well, doi.. I was staring myself blind at the *Comic* Books category.. >_> Thanks a ton! Swedish Puzzler 10:17, December 26, 2011 (UTC)

There's a third comic in that series called "Det milda gänget", I still have not figured out where that comic originally appeared. Henrik (talk) 10:24, December 26, 2011 (UTC)