Buffy the Vampire Slayer Twentieth Anniversary Retrospective ~ Part 2

An early convert to Buffymania were the good folks at Dark Horse Comics. Buffy the Vampire Slayer #1 was released September 23, 1998, a week before the premiere of the third season. Written by Andi Watson, with interior art by Joe Bennett (p), Rick Ketcham (i) & Guy Major (c), the comic featured either a photo cover, or a cover with artwork by Art Adams. So anticipated was this new series that it was featured as the lead story for Comic Shop News the month before its release!

1998 also saw the launch of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer Official Fan Club! For a nominal fee, which included a subscription to Buffy the Vampire Slayer Magazine, the new member was sent a welcome package chock full of glossy ephemera. Buffy the Vampire Slayer Magazine was also published by Dark Horse Comics, with its premiere issue hitting the shelves in September 1998. For the ardent fan who signed up for the fan club, the real reward of membership was often the “special cover version” of this magazine, which was put to good use showcasing great photography of the cast.

To serve this growing fandom, 1998 also saw the release of several other items by various manufacturers. These included a bedroom doorknob hanger produced by Antioch Publishing of Ohio, t-shirts, and, of course, the first release of Buffy the Vampire Slayer VHS tapes for the home video market!

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Coming up next: graduation, action figures, and more!!

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Twentieth Anniversary Retrospective ~ Part 1

March 10, 2017, will mark the twentieth anniversary of the debut of the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer! As described by Wikipedia, the series follows Buffy Summers (played by Sarah Michelle Gellar), the latest in a line of young women known as "Vampire Slayers". Aided by a Watcher, who guides, teaches, and trains her, Buffy battles against vampires, demons, and other forces of darkness. The series received critical and popular acclaim, usually reaching between four and six million viewers on original airings, and this success led to hundreds of tie-in products, including novels, comics, and video games. Much of this merchandise has been produced in the years since the series went off the air, to capitalise on the growing popularity of Buffy as a “cult” series. To celebrate the twentieth anniversary of its television debut, however, over the next week we are going to have a look back at some of the merchandise released during the original 1997-2003 run of the series.

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The first season consisted of only 12 episodes (March 10, 1997 - June 2, 1997), and was aired as a mid-season replacement on The WB Network. Perhaps it was this short season, or perhaps the lingering memory of the 1992 movie caused many to underestimate the series, but no contemporaneous memorabilia appears to exist from the broadcast period of the first season. In fact, the first example of Buffy the Vampire Slayer merchandise seems to be the novels published by Archway Paperbacks starting in September 1997 to coincide with the start of the second season. Since the release of ‘The Harvest’ (an adaptation of the episode of the same name), there have been over eighty additional novels published, written by dozens of authors.

By the time the second season was drawing to a close, notice was starting to be paid to the Buffy phenomenon. Sarah Michelle Gellar netted her first Entertainment Weekly cover in March, 1998, in recognition of the fact Buffy had quickly climbed to the top of The WB ratings, and was destined to be one of their highest-rated shows for the remainder of its time on the network.

During this period other notable collectibles made their debut. In 1998 Inkworks released the Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 1 trading cards. With a base set of 72-cards, the set recapped all 12 episodes of the first season, had subsets for character profiles, backgrounds on different types of monsters, and one called "Slayer Speak." A title card and a checklist rounded out the set. 

One of the rarest chase cards in this set was the Coffin Card (1:108 packs), a die-cut card that flips open to explain how one might go about slaying a vampire. Another great addition to this set was the mail-order binder designed to house the cards.

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Coming up next: Dark Horse, door knob hangers, and more!!

DC Special Series #27 Batman vs. the Incredible Hulk

In 1975, DC and Marvel both attempted to gain the rights to publish a comic adaptation of the Wizard of Oz, eventually deciding to co-publish the project. The result was the tabloid-sized "MGM's Marvelous Wizard of Oz". DC and Marvel quickly agreed to another co-publishing venture, and in early 1976 "Superman vs. Spider-Man" was released as a one-shot tabloid. Five years later DC and Marvel revisited the Superman and Spider-Man team-up in Marvel Treasury Edition #28, and later that same year DC took their turn at an inter-company crossover in the final issue of DC Special Series. DC Special Series was an umbrella title for one-shots and special issues published by DC Comics since 1977. Each issue featured a different character and varied in format, published as either Dollar Comics, 48 page giants, digests, or treasury editions. 

DC Special Series #27, released September 24, 1981, is a comic book of 64 tabloid-sized pages (25 cm x 33 cm), with a cover price of $2.50. Neither the umbrella title nor the numbering system appear on the cover, the title "DC Special Series" appearing only in the indicia, with the cover banner reading “DC and Marvel Present: Batman vs. the Incredible Hulk”. DC Special Series #27 features cover and interior artwork by Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez & Dick Giordano (Inker), with a story, “The Monster and the Madman", by the legendary Len Wein. When a story features Bruce Banner working at a division of Wayne Research, assisting in the development of a gamma-gun designed to cure diseases, and the Joker is intent on stealing that selfsame gamma-gun, well, you know serious mayhem is going to follow! This epic tale was the last tabloid-sized comic published by DC for almost twenty years.

Disney’s Peter Pan Lenticular Image

1966 seems to have been a banner year for the W. C. Jones Publishing Co. out of Los Angeles, CA. This was the year they released a slew of licensed lenticular images based on Walt Disney productions. Lenticular printing is a technology in which an array of magnifying lenses are used to produce printed images with an illusion of depth, or 3D. One of the nicest of these W. C. Jones images we have come cross is this 20 cm x 25 cm example of Peter Pan flying over Captain Hook’s ship! Most of the lenticular images released by W. C. Jones were postcards, only about 13 cm x 18 cm, and did not include a plastic frame. The fact that this item has survived with its frame for more than fifty years, while showing very few signs of wear, is remarkable!

Peter Pan is a 1953 animated fantasy-adventure film produced by Walt Disney and based on the play ‘Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up’ by J. M. Barrie. It is the 14th Disney animated feature film and was originally released on February 5, 1953, by RKO Radio Pictures. Peter Pan was one of Walt Disney's favourite stories and he had intended for Peter Pan to be his second film after Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. However he could not get the rights until several years later, after he came to an arrangement with Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, to whom Barrie had given the rights to the play. Peter Pan was praised by most critics during its initial release, and Peter Pan is today considered one of Disney's animated classics.

Ronson Premier Varaflame Lighter

During the 1950's, as butane lighters gained popularity, Ronson launched its own butane-run lighter, the Premier Varaflame (short for variable flame), in 1957. A breakthrough in gas-lighter development, this lighter had it all, from a beautiful design by Seymour Rappaport, to a state-of-the-art burner-valve mechanism conceived by Conrad Zellweger. The Premier Varaflame was Ronson’s largest product launch and was an immediate success. In 1958 many previous models were re-engineered and introduced into the Ronson Varaflame collection. This example, approximately 6.5 x 3.8 cm, comes complete with the original box, case, and warranty, and has beautiful blue enamel running along both sides of the body. 

The Ronson lighter company was started as The Art Metal Works in 1886 by Louis V. Aronson, and began by designing various decorative home related objects, such as figurines, bookends, and table lamps. By 1910 Aronson had created and patented his first lighter, and in 1926 released an "automatic operation" lighter, which became a great success and led to further patents. In the 1940’s, lighters had become so popular that Ronson discontinued all other products to concentrate on their development, and by 1954 “Art Metal Works” was completely dropped from the company name. At almost sixty years old, this lighter still shines when brought into the light.

'The Curse of the Ring' Art Portfolio by P. Craig Russell

In 1980 the publishing company Schanes & Schanes released the ‘The Curse of the Ring’, a limited edition portfolio of 1200 copies by American comic book writer, artist, and illustrator, P. Craig Russell. The portfolio, signed by the artist on the first plate, consists of six black-and-white plates based on Richard Wagner’s cycle of four operas ‘The Ring of the Nibelung’. The set is housed within an illustrated folder that measures approximately 12.5" x 18" when closed. P. Craig Russell returned to the operatic themes of ‘The Ring of the Nibelung’ twenty years after this portfolio was released with the mini-series ‘The Ring of the Nibelung: Rhinegold’ through Dark Horse Comics in 2000. Central to the mythology of this operatic cycle is the curse, the fall of man and the consequence of submission to selfish desires. Russell’s elaborate artwork, evocative of Art Nouveau illustration, has won multiple Harvey and Eisner Awards.

In 1971, the Schanes brothers (Steve, age 17, and Bill, age 13) co-founded Pacific Comics, which started out as a mail-order company selling to consumers via ads in the Comics Buyer's Guide. This ultimately led to tangible retail stores, with the first Pacific Comics outlet opening in Pacific Beach, California, in 1974. In 1979, Pacific dipped its feet into publishing when they released Warriors of Shadow Realm, a John Buscema portfolio of six signed, coloured plates to accompany a three-issue Weirdworld story in Marvel Comics Super Special #11-13 (June-Oct. 1979). Schanes & Schanes was the name Pacific Comics used for their printing of art portfolios and autographed prints. In addition to work by Russell and Buscema, Schanes & Schanes also published portfolios of other popular properties such as Elfquest (1980) and Cerebus the Aardvark (1981). In August, 1981, Pacific Comics launched Captain Victory and the Galactic Rangers by Jack Kirby, the first issue of which sold 110,000 copies! However, by 1984, with the company $740,000 in debt, Pacific Comics was forced to close. 

Marx Tin Train Set

During a recent inventory an unmarked box was brought to light, and inside a Marx train set was discovered consisting of a pressed steel locomotive, six tin cars, and fourteen sections of track. The locomotive appears to be a ‘New York Central Lines’ COMMODORE VANDERBILT streamliner 0-4-0 (Marx Model 232), the key wound variety produced by Marx starting in 1934. However, this particular locomotive and cars are equipped with tongue-and-slot couplers (TSC) which Marx started using about 1936, information which helps to date these items more accurately. Although the locomotive has some superficial chips in its paint, the ‘New York Central Lines’ front name plate is still affixed, and its wind-up motor still runs beautifully. This eighty year old toy is a testament to the Marx company motto "give the customer more toy for less money"!

Louis Marx and Company was an American toy manufacturer incorporated in 1919. By early 1920's they were producing a large array of tin and wooden toys for girls and boys. Eventually their line included tinplate buildings, tin toys, toy soldiers, play-sets, toy dinosaurs, mechanical toys, toy guns, action figures, dolls, dollhouses, toy cars and trucks, and, of course, trains. Unlike Lionel and American Flyer, its main competitors in the toy train business, Marx never set out to make the fanciest toy trains, but rather to make quality toy trains at the lowest price. For Depression-era kids and their parents, a complete Marx railway could be had for the price of a single Lionel train! Sadly, too slow to jump on the electronic-toy bandwagon, in 1972 Marx was purchased by Quaker Oats. By 1975, its manufacturing facilities were closed.