Sunday, March 18, 2018

TEX'S BACK-ISSUE QUEST EPISODE 65 (Herbie Popnecker)

Hello, Fellow Questers!!

    Have I got something GREAT for you today!!

    Who's the most offbeat hero ever created? Who's the most powerful adventurer that you've never heard of? Who makes the ladies swoon and sends the bad guys to their ignominious doom? Why, it's none other than...



(My copy of Herbie #1, printed by ACG in April of 1964)

HERBIE POPNECKER!!!!

   ...And you're thinking, "What's a Herbie Popnecker?"

    Herbie Popnecker is the universe's greatest, weirdest, and coolest hero. Below, you see my copy of his very first appearance in the now-defunct American Comics Group's (ACG) fun title, Forbidden Worlds, in issue #73 printed in December of 1958. Herbie Popnecker was created by Richard E. Hughes (using the pseudonym, Shane O'Shea), and comics genius, Ogden Whitney, an amazing creator, equally as cool, tragic, and forgotten and his creation, Herbie.






    Herbie Popnecker is a FAR cry from your average hero. He is short, bespectacled, fat, and dead-faced, and unlike many superheroes of the early Silver Age, Herbie was quite young. From what I can tell, he derived his superpowers from his deliciously dangerous lollipops, which gave him magnificent powers and abilities, such as superhuman strength and speed, flight-walking (Herbie is the ORIGINAL sky-walker), hypnosis, the ability to communicate in all languages (even with animals), time-travel, invisibility, and invulnerability. In this, his first adventure in Forbidden Worlds #73, Herbie catches a lot of grief from his dad for his lack of motivation and abnormality, not knowing that the son he looks down upon so much is a super-powered being who just saved the planet from an alien invasion, and found an important U.S. Senator who was thought dead but merely lost at sea.

   Herbie's coolness and relevance resonate down through the decades, especially with the marginalized, disenfranchised, and the social outcasts. Ahead of its time, Herbie's stories in Forbidden Worlds tackle difficult themes like masculinity, productivity, bullying, and self-image in a time when these issues were rarely up for any discussion. Herbie's father, Pincus, thinks of him as a "fat little nothing." Herbie is bullied and teased by his peers, and most people ignore him, denigrate him, or ignore his presence altogether. He's got all the makings of a grand super-villain, but never once does Herbie complain, or strike back at those whose minds are just too small to comprehend him. He just keeps walking through the world unnoticed, and unloved (except for by his sweet mother), all the while stopping disaster after disaster, saving lives, the planet and the universe. He is both tragic and triumphant - a character with all the trappings of an anti-hero, who, to me, is probably one of the purest forms of a superhero ever published in comics. Herbie gains nothing at all from his powers. Nothing. He is entirely and completely altruistic. And if you think about it, it makes perfect sense: what would a godlike creature, confident in its abilities and powers, actually need from humans? What would it benefit by ruling or saving them? So, then, it would have to have only its own internal source of motivation which we know only in our binary terms of good and evil. Lucky for the Herbie-verse, Herbie is truly good for absolutely no reason at all but his own...Which absolutely makes him one of my most beloved comic book characters. People can learn a lot from Herbie: words cannot hurt you unless you give them the power to do so - the power that only resides deep within the universe of your very own soul. We are all Herbie.

  Can you dig it, man?

 On to the fun facts!!

FUN FACT 1 - Herbie Popnecker's powers come from his deliciously dangerous lollipops, given to him by the enigmatic Unknown. He could often defeat his enemies by smacking them with one of his strangely strong sweets. He often leveled this hilarious, yet very serious threat at villains: "...gonna bop you with this here lollipop...".

FUN FACT 2: The most powerful of Herbie's lollipops (and the most difficult to find) was the cinnamon-flavored kind.

FUN FACT 3: Herbie's co-creator, Ogden Whitney, was a tragic character in his own right. He was an alcoholic that after passing his Golden Age and Silver Age heydays, worked less and less, depending on his wife as the primary bread-winner of the household. He tried to break into advertising when his comics career dried up, but sadly he ended up dying alone in a nursing home suffering from a mental breakdown after the death of his beloved wife. However, in 2007, he was finally inducted into The Will Eisner Award Hall Of Fame.

FUN FACT: Would you believe it? Herbie Popnecker is Alan Moore's, favorite superhero! In an interview with TwoMorrows Publishing, the legendary comics writer once stated that Herbie was, "one of his all-time passions."

FUN FACT 5: Herbie received the Alley Award for "Best Humorous Comic Book" award in 1964 and 1965.

FUN FACT 6: Herbie got his own comic in 1964 (see my copy of Herbie #1 above), and as was the custom of the Silver Age (even with Archie, Reggie, and Jughead), Herbie got into the cape-and-tights game in issue #8, becoming the Fat Fury!!


Herbie #8 (I don't own one of these...Yet). 

    I agree with Alan Moore: Herbie is awesome. The world could benefit from a bit of Herbie, nowadays. Thanks for reading! Feel free to let me know how you feel about Herbie in the comments. And as a gift from me to you (actually from comicbookplus.com to all of us), you can read Herbie's earliest adventure here! Comicbookplus.com is so AMAZING!! And, if you're so inclined, check out this wild, cool video by Robert Martens:



Thanks for reading!

If you like these articles, PLEASE HIT THE +1 BUTTON below. We are on Google+, follow us and we'll follow you back.  We're also on Facebook and Twitter (Tex's Comic Quest). Like our page, and share us with your friends! Help me win one million readers over to the awesome world of comics!

Friday, March 2, 2018

TEX'S Variants, Autographs and Oddities Episode 7 (Spawn 150)




Hello fellow Questers!!!


    Welcome back to another episode of...TEX'S Variants, Autographs, and Oddities!! I hope that your weekend is looking swell! Mine is looking to be really busy - but you know what they say: " Better busy than broke." LOL!

    Now, I know that you can dig that.

    Today, I hit you with a bit of that much beloved Todd McFarlane creation...SPAWN!!!



Spawn #150 (sketch variant) front cover 


Spawn #150 (sketch variant) back cover


   Isn't she lovely? It's my copy of the sketch variant of Spawn #150! It's one of the rarer covers, all done up by Jim Lee. But besides the cool cover, it's also the third part of an insanely cool story called "Random Patterns," penned by Brian Holguin and Todd McFarlane, in which we see Spawn defeated by Heaven's champion, The Disciple, and from a piece of his shredded carcass arises a child-Spawn. This new Spawn is taken under the wing of an enigmatic, universally powerful being who wishes to use him for his own plans.

  All that's nice, but why do I REALLY love this book? Simple. It's the first full appearance of...The Man of Miracles!! YEAH!!!

   Man of Miracles (M.o.M.) is basically the Mother of Existence. Bear with me here. You see, M.o.M. is the genderless, omniscient, omnipotent parent of both god and the devil, both of whom were given the Earth and wrestle for kingship over the planet. It seems the god created man (with M.o.M.'s energies), but the devil gave man free will, so they both believe they have the right to claim man as their own. Their plans were thwarted, however, when M.o.M. fell in love with mankind, seeing it as a new, unique thing in the universe. To save mankind, M.o.M. banished both god and the devil to the far reaches of the unknown universe, and then took a human form (let's just call this form, J.C.) to come down to mankind and preach a gospel of love and peace...Which mankind, of course, corrupted, leading M.o.M. train this new Spawn for his role in the coming Armageddon. The souls of M.o.M.'s 12 earthy followers became Heaven's mightiest warriors, The Disciples (the most powerful of these is the one who defeated Spawn).

   Does that name sound familiar? Man of Miracles? It should because Man of Miracles = Miracleman/Marvelman!! At least, it was supposed to anyway. You see, when Todd McFarlane purchased Eclipse Comics' creative assets back in 1996, he thought he bought the rights to Miracleman, which the previous writer and (owner of the rights), Neil Gaiman, disputed. McFarlane went ahead and introduced Mike Moran, the alter-ego of Miracleman/Marvelman, into Spawn's universe, and eventually even finished a Miracleman statue and M.o.M. action figures - some of which I own (of course):


Coolness, right?

   The action figures are sweet, and the story is a nutty, wild, fascinating thrill-ride of an adventure. You should check it out! 

On to the FUN FACTS!

FUN FACT 1 - Man of Miracles' appearance changes according to who is perceiving her.

FUN FACT 2 - Since Alan Moore first penned the first true superhero deconstruction story starring Miracleman in the pages of Warrior, Marvelman/Miracleman has garnered a hardcore fanbase, Yours truly being one of them.

FUN FACT 3 - In 2009, it was revealed that Mick Anglo, the creator of Marvelman, still owned the rights to the character...And Marvel Comics promptly bought the rights to the character from him. Sadly, Mick passed away in 2011. 

I hope you all enjoy reading these articles as much as I do writing them! I'm not a professional writer, just a guy who really loves comics. You are always welcome to let me know what you think in the comments, positive or negative. I appreciate your readership! 

If you like these articles, PLEASE HIT THE +1 BUTTON below. We are on Google+, follow us and we'll follow you back.  We're also on Facebook and Twitter (Tex's Comic Quest). Like our page, and share us with your friends! Help me win one million readers over to the awesome world of comics!