Tuesday, September 14, 2021

Remembering My 100-Page FAKES! (DC Comics Super Spectaculars That Never Were)

Well over a year after posting my last 100-Page FAKE!, it occurs to me that I probably never made any official announcement that the series was kaput. I did mention their demise here, but otherwise I never really got around to bidding a proper farewell.

The series began in May of 2018, designed as a proudly fannish attempt to concoct a bunch of 1970s DC Comics 100-Page Super Spectaculars that never were. I announced the series' transition from the original DC Comics-centric 100-Page FAKES! into the less-restricted (but ultimately still DC-centric) Spectacular Comics 100-Page Specials in April of 2020. I then concocted four monthly issues of Spectacular Comics, with the fourth and final issue posted on July 24, 2020.

At that time, I think I still intended to continue slappin' these things together. But a few factors combined to make me re-think that intent, and ultimately abandon the concept entirely. The fake books were very time-consuming to create, and they became even more time-consuming when I liquidated my digital comics stash entirely. The final efforts were constructed from a mix of public-domain comics pages available on line and scans of comic books in my collection. Even with all of that, I might have continued doing them if a format change at Blogger hadn't made the process so much clunkier to accomplish. The inconvenience was more than I was willing to bother messin' with. Sayonara, FAKES! and Spectaculars.

But I'm glad I did them. They were a cool way to connect with my inner adolescent, the 12-15 year-old kid who loved DC's 100-pagers in the '70s, and wished there had been more of them. I wrote a history of DC's (real-life) 100-pagers, and I felt I wanted to expand on the real world a little bit. Here are links to every one those fabrications:




Adventure Comics # 435
The Shadow # 6
Rima The Jungle Girl # 1
Wanted, The World's Most Dangerous Villains # 4
The Brave And The Bold # 111
Detective Comics # 446
Justice, Inc. # 1
The Sandman # 1
The Phantom # 67
All-Star Comics # 58
Metal Men # 45
DC Special # 16 (Super-Heroes Battle Super Gorillas)



*MARVEL WEEK [in memory of STAN LEE]:





From the Spectre to the Phantom, with a cast of multitudes: Batman, AquamanSpider-Man, the original Captain Marvel, the Shadow, Superman, Superboythe Justice Society of America, E-Man, Daredevil, Doc Savage, Plastic Man, Wonder Woman, the Silver Surfer, Blue Beetle, the Lone Ranger, the Seven Soldiers of Victory, the Sandman, Rima the Jungle Girl, the Six Million Dollar Man, Spy Smasher, Dial H For HERO, Metal Men, Captain America, the Bat Squad, Ka-Zar, Dick Tracy, Batgirl, Torchy, Bulletman and Bulletgirl, Dr. StrangeHawkman, Blackhawk, Black Canary, the Vigilante, the Creeper, the Defenders, Hydroman, the Elongated Man, Wildcat, the Doom Patrol, Doll Man and Doll Girl, Ibis the Invincible, the Boy Commandos, Sub-Mariner, Hot Wheels, Captain Action, Zorro, Detective Chimp, Jonny Quest, Green Arrow, the Secret Society of Super-Villains, and Astra, Girl of the Future, plus many more. It was mostly about DC, but it included properties DC licensed or acquired from Quality, Charlton, Fawcett, Mattel, Ideal, Jerry Lewis, and The Chicago Tribune, and it included Marvel, ECComico, Mighty Comics, Fox, MLJ, Lev Gleason, more from Charlton, and other purveyors of four-color fantasy. 


I regret I never got around to using
Vampirella. But I did what I could, until the time came to move on. They weren't real. But they were Spectacular.

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