You know....there was a wonderful parody of this kind of Mr T story in National Lampoon once. It was drawn by one of the Kuberts, I think it was Adam. And it was about T beating the carp out of some drug dealers, and to set one of them straight, he started doing drugs just to show them how easy it was to quit. He got addicted and his life hit a downward spiral.
The thing that gets me about about Mr T and T Force is Neal Adams had to back out a proposed crossover between Neal's Valeria the She-Bat and Spawn to draw it. A crossover with Spawn at the height of his popularity could have really changed Continuity Comics (Neal's company) trajectory. You do what you have to do to pay the bills
chris beck I wasn't aware of this. I was looking through some Continuity comics a while back, saw ads for that proposed crossover and wondered why it never happened.
I picked up some issues of Valeria when they came out. The art was beautiful, as expected, but it wasn’t a very good story. Too bad he didn’t team up with a great writer.
Shut up foo! Mr T didn't fail, quit yo crazy jibba jabba! T Force was the greatest comic of all time. The flame that burns twice as bright burns half as long
The best licensed comic is Conan, Roy Thomas is an awesome dude and is centrally important to the marvel comics and later dark horse comics iteration of Howard's original mythos.
Around the same time they brought out Rampaging Hulk in the same black and white style, also non-Comics Code and with mature themes, like Conan. I enjoyed it a lot, although it was nowhere near as popular, and a bit strange. Like Banner nearly getting ass-raped in the YMCA bathroom.
@Sean Darbe\ Can't dispute that too much but Roy Thomas is on record for saying it wasn't Conan but Marvel's STAR WARS adaptation that pulled the company out of financial trouble before Shooter took over!
When I was a child one of my favourite comics was the Micronauts. It really sparked my imagination at the time. I loved the storyline where they had to hunt down a series of cosmic keys. Unfortunately my local newsagent only stocked random issues of the comic so i had massive gaps in the stories where i had to make up what had happened in the missing issues. Micronauts #35 might of been one of my favourite and most read issues as a small kid.
I'm happy to see your channel grow, you deserve great success, you seem like a very humble and straightforward person. You seem like you are very honest and you're basically they type of person that I would have allot of respect for, you also seem to put allot of work into your videos, I'm glad I subscribed to you, your work keeps the depression at bay, keep doing what you're doing, because you're good at it.
ROM and Micronauts were definitely licensed characters done really well, so much so I wish they still had those licenses. Bill Mantlo was the key to their success, what a tragedy his story is.
You also have things like Transformers which the comics, the toys and the cartoon all piggy back on eachother to the finish line. And were not only well marketed they had a quality to them that spoke volumes and is why they will be remembered for generations to come
Your channel found me a couple of weeks ago. It's so much fun. These Trope videos are really well researched and thoughtfully crafted. And one particular part of the 'Superman was a Super-Jerk' video, involving Spider-man and the X-Men, still has me laughing at the most inappropriate random times. Thanks Chris for the high-quality content.
Another awesome vid, Chris. These licensed comics were a huge part of my childhood. My brother collected Transformers and GI Joe so those comics were always laying around. I collected Star Wars, Godzilla, and ROM. Some titles like Star Trek, I read off and on but didn't particularly like them because they often had lame stories and really bad art. I never felt the writers fully understood the personalities of KIrk, Spock, McCOy, etc. Anyways, thanks for the trip down memory lane!
As always a great show. I always learn more about comics watching your show. As far as licensed comics go, I've been watching Star Trek since I was 6 years old. I love that 50 years later I can still watch new Star trek, there seems to be no end to the franchise. And it's the same in the comic book world, From Gold key to Marvel, DC, Malibu and now IDW. I don't think more than a year has gone by since 1967 without a Star Trek comic book or newspaper strip series. As far as licensed products that I don't like, hmmm, probably the Gold Key Hot Wheels series was really weak for me.
If I remember correctly ROM lasted almost 75 issues and was actually kinda herald as a good comic overall. It even outlasted the run of the toy it was based one.
@Chris: In response to you saying low-paid talent may not be passionate about the books on which they're working: Having briefly come up through the indy comics field before being able to land work with Image, Marvel, DC, & Dark Horse; I can tell you that I was extremely motivated to showcase my talents to the best of my ability & worked long, passionate hours on making those low paying books look as great as possible.
Just started watching the channel recently, you have such a great way of putting things that makes me interested in topics I've never even considered. Can't wait for more videos!
Congratulations on your channels growth Chris. I've only been a recent subscriber but Comic Tropes is a show that is real fun to watch. Keep up the good work!
Best are the ones from Marvel in the 70's and 80's. Micronauts, Rom, Shogun Warriors, and of coarse Star Wars. The Dark Horse Star Wars book also were amazing. Especially when they got away from the main characters and told their own stories in the Star Wars universe.
I loved the Gold Key Star Trek comics as a kid, although even then I knew that it was hilariously non-canon to the extent that they couldn't even get the _names_ right. In particular, I remember one comic which had "Spock VS Slott" on the cover.
Marvel's Star Comics line had a ton of licensed books. Some were well known, like Masters of the Universe and ThunderCats, while others were more obscure and short lived. Wish the Inhumanoids and SilverHawks lasted longer.
I once owned a number of Alf comics that were made by Marvel, which I liked. But that wasn't half as weird as the Care Bears, Muppet Babies or Madballs that were also made by Marvel at the time.
I remember reading a Cerebus issue from the early 90's and, in the editorial, Dave Sim was urging aspiring comic creators to go do easy licenced comics to pay the rent while working on their own comics. It was not only that the talent was on the cheap, it was the fact that licence comics were considered a hackjob by the talent
I always felt what made licensed books like Star Wars and Micronauts amazing directly connected to the artistic talents on the page. Chaykin and Golden were truly incredible on those books. In fact, to this day, my favorite Star Wars issue is the stand alone the Golden guested as artist. Issue 34? 39? Something like that... Micronauts were a bastardized Japanese toy line that marvel turned into an interesting a great world of its own. Sometimes i wonder if the MCU multiverse might lead us into the micro Verse?
Star Wars #38. I loved that issue! Of course, I loved Michael Golden's artwork, but 38 had a decent storyline to go with it. And with 39, they started the adaptation of The Empire Strikes Back. But I also thought the earlier Star Wars comics written by Archie Goodwin and drawn by Carmine Infantino were quite enjoyable, as well. But what really made the artwork work were the inkers they had on Infantino, people like Terry Austin, Bob Wiacek, and Gene Day.
As a kid that Gameboy comic definitely worked on me! I used to redraw the characters in it and cut them out of paper and make new adventures with them in "real life". Used carry it and the cutouts around with me everywhere. It'd be a few years until my parents could get me a Gameboy. All of those Nintendo Comics were part of my first wave of comic collecting (used to get them in bins at Kmart on sale). Weird story in that comic on retrospect.
I remember Marvels "Toxic Crusaders" comic which was a truly bizarre licensed children's comic/cartoon considering its origin at Troma is anything but child-friendly. I lost the copies I had when I was a kid so I rebought them a few years back and to be honest, I still kinda liked it.
I definitely remember seeing ads for Combo Man back in the day. I don't recall if it was a comic series but it was based on Combos snacks and the hero was a mishmash of popular Comic heroes like Spiderman, Cyclops, Punisher and many others. The 90s were weird.
What about trades for licensed comics? I mean I don't think a Green Hornet graphic novel will move the needle much but it adds to that sub 20k issues number.
Anyone remember Atari Force from DC comics? I came across a comic book that I believe had all the adventures of the second team. It was a bit like Guardians of the Galaxy and as I recall it was actually quite good. At least I enjoyed it as a kid. Reading on Wiki there was an original team 25 years earlier but I was not aware of that at the time.
I finally saw this episode, and I enjoyed it, but there was a point brought up early on that if Marvel or DC's parent company owned a studio then it was a lot easier and cheaper to have a licensed comic. Not always. Back in the late 1980s/start of the 90s, I was the Managing Editor of COMICS SCENE magazine, and we ran an interview with Marv Wolfman, who was still working at DC. During the conversation, he revealed that there was a licensed project that he wanted to do, LETHAL WEAPON. (Oddly, he saw it as a chance to do a police procedural, which made me wonder if he hadn't gotten the Mel Gibson/Danny Glover action-adventures mixed up with something else.) Everyone thought it would be a slam dunk as they were owned by the same parent company as Warner Brothers, the studio behind the films. Nope. Warners treated DC like they were some unknown, outside entity and it became so difficult to reach any kind of deal that DC dropped the project altogether.
Micronauts was my favorite licensed comic as a kid. It took chances, did some really good world-building, and even went to a more mature style bypassing the CCA in the second half of its first run. Unfortunately the relaunched second volume was very watered down and the writing suffered. I dropped the title before its cancellation, but the first volume hit some nice peaks.
Rom might be an interesting license to discuss. I think if Marvel owned the license, we’d be seeing him in he movies. The book actually had good runs. Micronauts and Rom might have been more successful than either GI Joe or Transformers as comics, in my opinion.
"You ain't nuthin' but a fool!" LOL I loved Marvel's Rom: it sucks that they lost the rights to it and can't reprint those issues. Currently, the only licensed comics I buy are Titan Comics' Doctor Who books.
Probably Conan, I know Howard's and Lovecraft's work was in the public domain but Especially the Dark Horse run in the 2000's was absolutely fantastic as far as the art.
By the early 90s, I had left being a comics consumer for at least 15 years. Feeling nostalgic (as well as NEVER having been inside a real comics store before, only buying off the grocery store racks in the 70s), I wandered into Mavericks Comic Store in Fairfield Ohio just to browse. Did I buy a Spider-Man or Avengers or Batman comic, as would have been my tastes 15 years before? No. I ended up buying "Beavis & Butthead" issues (published by Marvel at the time). So it was licensed comics that re-ignited my love for the medium. They were pretty much just like the television show, except instead of B&B commentary on music videos, they commented on single page stories of Marvel characters battling each other (one that comes to mind is Black Cat and Silver Sable going at it to hilarious results). I don't know how long the series actually ran (I would doubt even a year), but the comraderie of hanging out in the comics shop as well as rediscovering early 90s Marvel & DC characters have kept me a fan (and a consumer) for 30 years now.
I remember having this old GI Joe comic where they talk about being able to drink antifreeze if it's not green, and it was actually pretty good by standards of the time. I kinda wish I'd tried to collect more, but back then we were dirt ass poor, and there weren't any comic stores in any town I lived in. Just what you could grab off the rack at a gas station or Walmart, mostly. So I wound up with all kinds of just straight trash. Like Superpro and all that.
Micronauts and ROM were incredible. I mean the Marvel ones - not the ...whatever...being excreted now. I saw it as mainly an experiment in storytelling only a big company could pull off and an example of sometimes it's good to leave things be. Consider - Marvel bought (probably for a LOT) the rights to do comics based on two toy lines that seemed like they'd at least overtake Star Wars but fizzled out in a few years. (use RUclips to see how cool toys used to be, especially Micronauts) but kept publishing it because either they'd lose the licence/or the thing was pulling in $ at least and good proving grounds for newbies. However - the thing was staffed by "Newbies" to the industry - but they were excellent storytellers and artists... Just look up the early episodes. And they didn't take their positions for granted. There's an old thing, I think I remember it from a Muppets show - "The Show must go on!" - by now Gonzo and Crazy Harry have blown the stage up so the curtains are down, etc. "Why...? " says Kermit weakly - "Well, if it doesn't we don't get paid..." - "The Show MUST go on!!!" So - even with no new toys and not knowing if Marvel would cancel it and realizing every line of dialogue, every brush stroke and pencil mark is their Resume on if they just get moved around to other books or thrown out the door and then ask the other - count on one hand - comic companies if they need an artist... Well they did excellent work on both, nothing less. Micronauts was a Toy Commercial that Marvel filled in by making it kind of like Star Wars, but set in a microscopic universe that sometimes collided with our own... They took that and ran making an epic world I wish could have been animated or turned into a movie. Rom was a Toy Commercial for some kind of scifi action figure... Nothing else. Marvel turned him into a SpaceKnight for some wonderful world across the galaxy fighting evil creatures. And, it being the 70s, 80s the Vietnam war was a fresh, gaping, festering wound on the American Psyche. Was war ever justified, even if the we'd now call "Starship Troopers" straw man trope of mankind versus alien bugs...? The Dire Wraiths of Rom were far more dangerous and intelligent and essentially all evil - as Rom pointed out some cruel balance the creator forced that for the beauty and love of his homeworld to be contrasted by their evil and aggression. After he was victorious they had a good year of him roaming the galaxy to find lost SpaceKnights to tell them the war was over and they needed to come home. Some had gone insane or criminal, some were captures. He also encountered lots of lone adventure scenarios, my favorite where he encountered a human population fighting the machines they had created to explore space but had decided to try to kill them and had taken their homeworld. So, just one man's opinion, Marvel just letting a vacant toy commercial liscence - twice - languish in the hands of some good creators/artists for years but leaving them alone was one of their best moves and made some of their best work.
I think it was Micronauts, Rom and then Star Wars. Conan should also count but it was adaptations then extreme extrapolations of an existing classical literature character. Micronauts, and ROM IMO were the best. Marvel bought the liscence for an extended time. Then the toy company tanked... So some good artist/writers were sitting on a book with no toys made for it... Uh. "The Show must go on!" "Why?" "Well, if it doesn't we ain't gettin' paid. Way too many Art majors in the 70s/80s thanks to the 60s..." "The Show MUST go ON!!!!" And they did. They took it and ran. Marvel was big and doing well so it only cared if a book wasn't selling. No company anymore, no upcoming sets or deals so no annoying "Investor Reps" to micromanage. And they made these fantastic little scifi stories worthy of Star Wars. On to Star Wars... IMO the Marvel series helped keep Star Wars alive so the movies could be made. Not just the Sequels - that was Dark Horse but the original Trilogy. It took way too long for Lucas to work up the money to make them but the comics kept the story going.
I can show you some of my artwork. My own intellectual properties, my Beast Wars/Transformers Generation 2.0 fanfic designs(actually Hasbro/IDW submissions), as well as some Dr. Who ink wash renderings. www.Lovemymink.com
For best I'd agree with you that GI Joe was one of the first comics that I regularly read. And still find rather interesting today. With the Misadventures of Adam West being a close runner-up because, Adam West. As for worst, there's been so many over the years that they're hard to remember (which is why they're the worst). Would we consider SuperPro a licensed comic? I'm assuming Marvel had to pay to use the NFL's name. And possibly for intellectual property damages after the fact.
Had a comic version of Star Wars Attack of the Clones, one of Total Recall. Both rushed through the story really fast. I heard about an Emenim Punisher comic.
When I was a kid, I really enjoyed the Captain Action comic book, licensed from Ideal Toys, I believe. It lasted only five issues, with Wally Wood kicking it off, and Gil Kane doing the script and art for the last four issues. Each issue was better than the one before, so it went out on a high note.
Barbie had a very good licensed comic in the early 90’s. They had a special part of every issue where they had the comic arts draw Barbie in fashion designs that children had mailed in. I still think this is one of the coolest ideas for fan art, and I wonder how many kids where inspired to pursue art & fashion because of it.
Growing up in the 1970s, I liked the Gold Key Star Trek, Marvel's early Star Wars, Micronauts, Shogun Warriors (which had a surprisingly decent storyline), Battlestar Galactica, The Scooby Doo comic, which bounced around from various publishers in the 1970s, but had a fairly consistent team of Mark Evanier and Dan Spiegle. DC's adaptations of Edgar Rice Burroughs material like Tarzan, John Carter of Mars, and especially Carson Napier of Venus (Mike Kaluta artwork!) were pretty good. Marvel's Tarzan and John Carter of Mars were both consistently good, even if they didn't last too long. And of course, Marvel's Conan comic and magazine introduced me to Robert E. Howard's characters, and got me to reading the Conan books and other REH material. There were others I kind of knew about but couldn't find or keep up with, like Charlton's Space 1999, The Six Million Dollar Man, or Emergency! (based on the early 70s show of the same name). I also had a very few issues of Dell/Gold Key's Zorro, Secret Agent, and the Time Tunnel comics. I know there were plenty of others, but I didn't know or care about them when I was younger, and only discovered them in retrospect. The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Get Smart, and Maverick, for example. DC's short-lived Hot Wheels comic (6 issues!) or The Shadow. Or Marvel's adaptation of Doc Savage, or the Godzilla comic. And that's not counting the comics that came after I grew up, like The Simpsons, or Futurama. When done well, a licensed-based comic can really enhance the source material and increase the fan base for the property. I'm thinking of the surprising success of Marvel's Tomb of Dracula or Shang Chi, Master of Kung Fu (loosely based on Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu books). But of course, many aren't done very well, or veer significantly from the source material.
One of the best episodes ever! I remember seeing some of these licensed books in value bins or grab bags and just completely ignoring them. Usually one crept its way into my home, they were used as coasters. The only ones that held my attention and care were Transformers, G.I. Joe and Thundercats.
i worked an event at geoffreys comics in gatdena ca, and the mr T comic had come out and T was due to show up. and he did. He bareley grunted at people and he got really mad when anyone would ask about the art in the comic! "Neal Adams is a really fantastic and famous artist,..how'd you get him to do your comic?" and it sent him into a rage! How dare antone ask about things not directing to Mr.T?!
I think the best "Team America" story was when team member "Cowboy" had a solo adventure featuring an ex- girlfriend, a group of motorcycle-riding Texas Rangers ( dressed for some reason as State Troopers), a man in a Roman toga, and a nuclear missile. You got a lot for .60 cents.
I’m a huge fan of Dynamite Comics. Even though most of their comics are licensed properties, they have the writing and artistic talent that makes these comics special. They also have Alex Ross! With that being said, my two favorite licensed comics from my childhood were the Power Lords by DC Comics and Captain Power and the Soldiers Of the Future by Continuity Comics. As a young child I absolutely loved both of those toy lines and I was super excited knowing that they had there own brief comic-line.
The greatest problem with licensed comic books is, you have only a short while, a brief window to get people to buy a comic based on a non-comics property, and odds are, by the time you actually produce it, the fires will have at least cooled. The creators are a lot better off with a revival. Boom! is doing great things with MMPR because it has all the history of PR to play with, and the freedom to do one of those 'flashback series that seems to have more and deeper adventures than the actual original ever did' story arcs. But the MMPR/Zeo back in the day? They could only show adventures that were more or less just like the TV show, only with no action, no sound effects, and no lasting impact. GI Joe and Star Wars ran through and past the entirety of their original hot runs. 'The Further Adventures Of Indiana Jones' ran for almost 50 issues, and was helped by new movies and Walt Simonson. But how many forgotten and frankly forgettable licenses came and went just while those three were big. 'V' had a decent comic, but what the hell could they do? The show itself didn't know where it was going, because it was still brand new after the two miniseries, and had to rely heavily on 'Oh, no, that wasn't really resolved, it just seemed like it'. In the Sunday Newspaper strips, Disney used to serialize some of their classic and recent movies in strip format, and even those were a little deeper than many comic book adaptations (Though Matt Dillon's 'Tex' really suffered), because they had a start and an end in mind, and they ran for months. Since I'm verging on or just past TLDR, I'll just add that when it comes to these licenses, most companies would be better off playing scratch-offs.
cool video, but I wouldn't go with "they don't pay well the talent." I have met artists who worked on Licensed work and most of the time it's a combination of "first time working on a comic" or "work while they are in between jobs as a storyboard artist on a show." It's a lot like finding work for struggling artists to keep them busy. One of those Valiant Nintendo comics was drawn by Joe Quesada and Jimmy Palmiotti.
My best friend and I agree that the Craftsman Bolt On Tool Man Saves The Justice League is really something special. It stars a character called The Mechanic or some such and his superpower is just owning this Craftsman belt tool system, and he fixes stuff around the watchtower and indeed rescues the entire damn team, who did nothing. The framing of action and the narration and all of it lacks any shred of self awareness and it is the most shameless ad based tie in comic ever. I know that's not quite the subject of the video, but I don't know if you have one on those yet.
One line of licensed comics that I'm quite fond of (that I will admit weren't objectively very good) are the Mortal Kombat comics from Malibu, from the 1990s. A lot of the artwork in those comics was really good, and the plots themselves weren't bad either, at least for some of them. Of course, it faltered in execution, with lackluster writing and characters constantly talking about themselves in third person. But it's good fun.
If there is one licensed comic book that I liked back in the day was Masters of The Universe from Marvel's Star Comics. In fact issues 12 and 13 had a strong storyline and the theme itself was too dark and matured for a Star Comics line.
Holy beans that Terminator comic has OJ Simpson on the cover. I knew he was originally cast as Terminator with Arnold as hero but I didn't know about the comic. Too cool.
I really liked the second Atari Force series. Unfortunately, the Swedish anthology comic book it was published in got cancelled after only publishing the first six issues. :( Bongo Comics Simpsons universe comics were good too, especially the Radioactive Man comics, aswell as the licensed comics from Dark Horse.
I grew up almost exclusively with Disney comics but I gotta admit I was such a huge Buffy fan that I even bought the comics! Still got most of them (and a few Angel comics) in a shelf for nostalgic reasons. Also occasionally read the X-Files comic back then. It wasn’t even that bad, although the stories had probably been fished out of the waste basket of the TV show.
![Kodak Black - Versatile 4 [Official Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/VcP_1Ua__vY/mqdefault.jpg)
I'm going to start a comic book company licensing the characters from those popular Marvel movies.
I thunk marvel done pity the fool on that one
That's funny, this vid also inspired me to make a liscensed comic! Gotchapawn! (that's what it sounds like he's saying)
Why not Nicky Minaj instead?
Could never happen, they wouldn't adapt well to comics
I think DC already did that.
You know....there was a wonderful parody of this kind of Mr T story in National Lampoon once. It was drawn by one of the Kuberts, I think it was Adam. And it was about T beating the carp out of some drug dealers, and to set one of them straight, he started doing drugs just to show them how easy it was to quit. He got addicted and his life hit a downward spiral.
That sounds like the greatest thing in human history.
He beat a fish out of someone?
@@heelturnsface what are you deaf? That’s what he said
Which issue of National Lampoon was this?
I’d buy *that* comic!❤
The thing that gets me about about Mr T and T Force is Neal Adams had to back out a proposed crossover between Neal's Valeria the She-Bat and Spawn to draw it. A crossover with Spawn at the height of his popularity could have really changed Continuity Comics (Neal's company) trajectory. You do what you have to do to pay the bills
chris beck I wasn't aware of this. I was looking through some Continuity comics a while back, saw ads for that proposed crossover and wondered why it never happened.
i didn't know Continuity was Neal Adams. I still have some Samuree comucs
I picked up some issues of Valeria when they came out. The art was beautiful, as expected, but it wasn’t a very good story. Too bad he didn’t team up with a great writer.
Shut up foo! Mr T didn't fail, quit yo crazy jibba jabba! T Force was the greatest comic of all time. The flame that burns twice as bright burns half as long
Rods toy box I pity the fool that call T's comic a failure!
Mr T didn't fail us. We failed Mr T.
Linkara.knows the truth
Mr. T Vs Everything, now those were great
Linkara loves these comics!
The best licensed comic is Conan, Roy Thomas is an awesome dude and is centrally important to the marvel comics and later dark horse comics iteration of Howard's original mythos.
Around the same time they brought out Rampaging Hulk in the same black and white style, also non-Comics Code and with mature themes, like Conan. I enjoyed it a lot, although it was nowhere near as popular, and a bit strange. Like Banner nearly getting ass-raped in the YMCA bathroom.
I actually found it online, assuming I can post URLs in the comments: hornet.com/stories/time-incredible-hulk-almost-raped-gay-men-ymca/
My brother had some old conan comics when i was looking through his basement. Never knew conan had a comic before that
It probably wasn't licensed. Conan, and the rest of Robert E. Howard's work is in the public domain.
@Sean Darbe\ Can't dispute that too much but Roy Thomas is on record for saying it wasn't Conan but Marvel's STAR WARS adaptation that pulled the company out of financial trouble before Shooter took over!
When I was a child one of my favourite comics was the Micronauts. It really sparked my imagination at the time. I loved the storyline where they had to hunt down a series of cosmic keys. Unfortunately my local newsagent only stocked random issues of the comic so i had massive gaps in the stories where i had to make up what had happened in the missing issues. Micronauts #35 might of been one of my favourite and most read issues as a small kid.
Micronauts ruled...especially the first 13 issues done by Bill Mantlo and Michael Golden.
Great stuff.
"It's a crack baby, fool!" has got to be one of the greatest comic panels of all time.
So, for that "New Kids on the Block" comic, if they're emerging from a manhole cover, they're not even ON the block, they're UNDER it.
And they were shittier than sewage
I'm happy to see your channel grow, you deserve great success, you seem like a very humble and straightforward person. You seem like you are very honest and you're basically they type of person that I would have allot of respect for, you also seem to put allot of work into your videos, I'm glad I subscribed to you, your work keeps the depression at bay, keep doing what you're doing, because you're good at it.
The Darkhorse Star Wars comics were awesome!
So was Aliens series
I actually still have one that I look at all the time when I want inspiration, drawn by Cam Kennedy!
ROM and Micronauts were definitely licensed characters done really well, so much so I wish they still had those licenses. Bill Mantlo was the key to their success, what a tragedy his story is.
You also have things like Transformers which the comics, the toys and the cartoon all piggy back on eachother to the finish line. And were not only well marketed they had a quality to them that spoke volumes and is why they will be remembered for generations to come
Your channel found me a couple of weeks ago. It's so much fun. These Trope videos are really well researched and thoughtfully crafted. And one particular part of the 'Superman was a Super-Jerk' video, involving Spider-man and the X-Men, still has me laughing at the most inappropriate random times. Thanks Chris for the high-quality content.
Another awesome vid, Chris. These licensed comics were a huge part of my childhood. My brother collected Transformers and GI Joe so those comics were always laying around. I collected Star Wars, Godzilla, and ROM. Some titles like Star Trek, I read off and on but didn't particularly like them because they often had lame stories and really bad art. I never felt the writers fully understood the personalities of KIrk, Spock, McCOy, etc. Anyways, thanks for the trip down memory lane!
As always a great show. I always learn more about comics watching your show. As far as licensed comics go, I've been watching Star Trek since I was 6 years old. I love that 50 years later I can still watch new Star trek, there seems to be no end to the franchise. And it's the same in the comic book world, From Gold key to Marvel, DC, Malibu and now IDW. I don't think more than a year has gone by since 1967 without a Star Trek comic book or newspaper strip series. As far as licensed products that I don't like, hmmm, probably the Gold Key Hot Wheels series was really weak for me.
If I remember correctly ROM lasted almost 75 issues and was actually kinda herald as a good comic overall. It even outlasted the run of the toy it was based one.
@Chris: In response to you saying low-paid talent may not be passionate about the books on which they're working:
Having briefly come up through the indy comics field before being able to land work with Image, Marvel, DC, & Dark Horse; I can tell you that I was extremely motivated to showcase my talents to the best of my ability & worked long, passionate hours on making those low paying books look as great as possible.
Just started watching the channel recently, you have such a great way of putting things that makes me interested in topics I've never even considered. Can't wait for more videos!
Never get tired of your channel
For some reason I brought some Alf comic books and like it.
I collected the Alf comic. I remember Marvel including him in...Evolutionary War crossover? I just remember High Evolutionary showing up in an Annual.
Congratulations on your channels growth Chris. I've only been a recent subscriber but Comic Tropes is a show that is real fun to watch. Keep up the good work!
Enjoying the content bud, looking forward to the documentary stuff and will also continue to enjoy your one-issue episodes!
Best are the ones from Marvel in the 70's and 80's. Micronauts, Rom, Shogun Warriors, and of coarse Star Wars. The Dark Horse Star Wars book also were amazing. Especially when they got away from the main characters and told their own stories in the Star Wars universe.
I loved the Gold Key Star Trek comics as a kid, although even then I knew that it was hilariously non-canon to the extent that they couldn't even get the _names_ right. In particular, I remember one comic which had "Spock VS Slott" on the cover.
Marvel's Star Comics line had a ton of licensed books. Some were well known, like Masters of the Universe and ThunderCats, while others were more obscure and short lived. Wish the Inhumanoids and SilverHawks lasted longer.
or Starriors
"You can tell he's a stud because of his POPPED COLLAR and SUNGLASSES" lmao
“Hey kids, buy one-monsters might come out of it and try to kill you.” Still a better marketing job than Sony did with the PS Vita.
That was a good example of what you SHOULDN'T do
"Playing a game for hours and hours..." Chris has never played Super Mario Land.
Jim Shooter-that name still gives me pain and chills. But i used to really like The Simpsons comics as a kid; do those count as licensed?
In your review of Mr. T and t-force, Mr. T is blackmailing a black male. Lol
I once owned a number of Alf comics that were made by Marvel, which I liked. But that wasn't half as weird as the Care Bears, Muppet Babies or Madballs that were also made by Marvel at the time.
I remember reading a Cerebus issue from the early 90's and, in the editorial, Dave Sim was urging aspiring comic creators to go do easy licenced comics to pay the rent while working on their own comics. It was not only that the talent was on the cheap, it was the fact that licence comics were considered a hackjob by the talent
I always felt what made licensed books like Star Wars and Micronauts amazing directly connected to the artistic talents on the page. Chaykin and Golden were truly incredible on those books. In fact, to this day, my favorite Star Wars issue is the stand alone the Golden guested as artist. Issue 34? 39? Something like that...
Micronauts were a bastardized Japanese toy line that marvel turned into an interesting a great world of its own. Sometimes i wonder if the MCU multiverse might lead us into the micro Verse?
Star Wars #38. I loved that issue! Of course, I loved Michael Golden's artwork, but 38 had a decent storyline to go with it. And with 39, they started the adaptation of The Empire Strikes Back. But I also thought the earlier Star Wars comics written by Archie Goodwin and drawn by Carmine Infantino were quite enjoyable, as well. But what really made the artwork work were the inkers they had on Infantino, people like Terry Austin, Bob Wiacek, and Gene Day.
As a kid that Gameboy comic definitely worked on me! I used to redraw the characters in it and cut them out of paper and make new adventures with them in "real life". Used carry it and the cutouts around with me everywhere. It'd be a few years until my parents could get me a Gameboy. All of those Nintendo Comics were part of my first wave of comic collecting (used to get them in bins at Kmart on sale). Weird story in that comic on retrospect.
The art on that licensed Nintendo/Mario Brothers book was surprisingly good. Always fascinating, these takes of yours, on this crazy industry.
the more underground comicbooks are, more delicious the reading experience is...
I remember Marvels "Toxic Crusaders" comic which was a truly bizarre licensed children's comic/cartoon considering its origin at Troma is anything but child-friendly. I lost the copies I had when I was a kid so I rebought them a few years back and to be honest, I still kinda liked it.
They also made a film adaption of the Toxic Avenger and turned it into a series before Toxic Crusaders into comic book form
@@mnightshade107 the film was made by Troma. that was the origin of the property as far as I'm aware.
Great job man. I really enjoyed your videos.
Wish you the best.
Dude you got a great channel, i appreciate it!
When my girls where littler we read a lot of the IDW “My Little Pony” and it was really good; I liked it as much as they did.
They've been around forever. Bob Hope, Jerry Lewis, and John Wayne all had comics dedicated to their adventures.
I bought that Gold Key Star Trek comic off the spinner rack.
I grew up on the Archie's Sonic the Hedgehog comics
I definitely remember seeing ads for Combo Man back in the day. I don't recall if it was a comic series but it was based on Combos snacks and the hero was a mishmash of popular Comic heroes like Spiderman, Cyclops, Punisher and many others. The 90s were weird.
You should do a video on Jeff Smith's Bone
dude you are my favorite you tuber man
Im surprised you didn't mention IDW in the beginning of the video. Most of their comics are licensed titles.
What about trades for licensed comics?
I mean I don't think a Green Hornet graphic novel will move the needle much but it adds to that sub 20k issues number.
Anyone remember Atari Force from DC comics? I came across a comic book that I believe had all the adventures of the second team. It was a bit like Guardians of the Galaxy and as I recall it was actually quite good. At least I enjoyed it as a kid. Reading on Wiki there was an original team 25 years earlier but I was not aware of that at the time.
The Transformers license has been with Marvel, Dreamwave, and IDW (for a few more months, at least). Some of those are great--some not so great.
Gijoe had one thing, Larry Hamma! thank you for sharing, keep going dear Sir, PEACE.
I finally saw this episode, and I enjoyed it, but there was a point brought up early on that if Marvel or DC's parent company owned a studio then it was a lot easier and cheaper to have a licensed comic. Not always. Back in the late 1980s/start of the 90s, I was the Managing Editor of COMICS SCENE magazine, and we ran an interview with Marv Wolfman, who was still working at DC. During the conversation, he revealed that there was a licensed project that he wanted to do, LETHAL WEAPON. (Oddly, he saw it as a chance to do a police procedural, which made me wonder if he hadn't gotten the Mel Gibson/Danny Glover action-adventures mixed up with something else.) Everyone thought it would be a slam dunk as they were owned by the same parent company as Warner Brothers, the studio behind the films. Nope. Warners treated DC like they were some unknown, outside entity and it became so difficult to reach any kind of deal that DC dropped the project altogether.
Micronauts was my favorite licensed comic as a kid. It took chances, did some really good world-building, and even went to a more mature style bypassing the CCA in the second half of its first run. Unfortunately the relaunched second volume was very watered down and the writing suffered. I dropped the title before its cancellation, but the first volume hit some nice peaks.
Love your show. It has been growing on me.
Rom might be an interesting license to discuss. I think if Marvel owned the license, we’d be seeing him in he movies. The book actually had good runs. Micronauts and Rom might have been more successful than either GI Joe or Transformers as comics, in my opinion.
Blackthorn Publishing did a Michael Jackson comic that literally ruined the company.
GI joe was my first also. Actually the one where the Baroness shot Storm Shadow dead after he and snake eyes fought sharks.
Dude you’re freaking hilarious!!!! Keep up the good work
That fucking thumbnail is amazing! I never knew I needed to see Mr.T yelling "it's a crack baby fool! ".Im glad I saw it.
"You ain't nuthin' but a fool!" LOL
I loved Marvel's Rom: it sucks that they lost the rights to it and can't reprint those issues. Currently, the only licensed comics I buy are Titan Comics' Doctor Who books.
Probably Conan, I know Howard's and Lovecraft's work was in the public domain but Especially the Dark Horse run in the 2000's was absolutely fantastic as far as the art.
Hey Chris--Great as usual... But I'm not getting notifications when you upload new episodes! It's driving me crazy!!
Oh geez I remember my 8 year old self reading old Mr. T comics. I owned the first issue of the T. Force. I wish I still had it
By the early 90s, I had left being a comics consumer for at least 15 years. Feeling nostalgic (as well as NEVER having been inside a real comics store before, only buying off the grocery store racks in the 70s), I wandered into Mavericks Comic Store in Fairfield Ohio just to browse. Did I buy a Spider-Man or Avengers or Batman comic, as would have been my tastes 15 years before? No. I ended up buying "Beavis & Butthead" issues (published by Marvel at the time). So it was licensed comics that re-ignited my love for the medium. They were pretty much just like the television show, except instead of B&B commentary on music videos, they commented on single page stories of Marvel characters battling each other (one that comes to mind is Black Cat and Silver Sable going at it to hilarious results). I don't know how long the series actually ran (I would doubt even a year), but the comraderie of hanging out in the comics shop as well as rediscovering early 90s Marvel & DC characters have kept me a fan (and a consumer) for 30 years now.
No mention of Dark Horse Comics, which had a lot of really good licensed comics?
I remember having this old GI Joe comic where they talk about being able to drink antifreeze if it's not green, and it was actually pretty good by standards of the time. I kinda wish I'd tried to collect more, but back then we were dirt ass poor, and there weren't any comic stores in any town I lived in. Just what you could grab off the rack at a gas station or Walmart, mostly. So I wound up with all kinds of just straight trash. Like Superpro and all that.
Micronauts and ROM were incredible. I mean the Marvel ones - not the ...whatever...being excreted now.
I saw it as mainly an experiment in storytelling only a big company could pull off and an example of sometimes it's good to leave things be.
Consider - Marvel bought (probably for a LOT) the rights to do comics based on two toy lines that seemed like they'd at least overtake Star Wars but fizzled out in a few years. (use RUclips to see how cool toys used to be, especially Micronauts) but kept publishing it because either they'd lose the licence/or the thing was pulling in $ at least and good proving grounds for newbies.
However - the thing was staffed by "Newbies" to the industry - but they were excellent storytellers and artists... Just look up the early episodes. And they didn't take their positions for granted.
There's an old thing, I think I remember it from a Muppets show - "The Show must go on!" - by now Gonzo and Crazy Harry have blown the stage up so the curtains are down, etc. "Why...? " says Kermit weakly - "Well, if it doesn't we don't get paid..." - "The Show MUST go on!!!"
So - even with no new toys and not knowing if Marvel would cancel it and realizing every line of dialogue, every brush stroke and pencil mark is their Resume on if they just get moved around to other books or thrown out the door and then ask the other - count on one hand - comic companies if they need an artist... Well they did excellent work on both, nothing less.
Micronauts was a Toy Commercial that Marvel filled in by making it kind of like Star Wars, but set in a microscopic universe that sometimes collided with our own... They took that and ran making an epic world I wish could have been animated or turned into a movie.
Rom was a Toy Commercial for some kind of scifi action figure... Nothing else. Marvel turned him into a SpaceKnight for some wonderful world across the galaxy fighting evil creatures. And, it being the 70s, 80s the Vietnam war was a fresh, gaping, festering wound on the American Psyche. Was war ever justified, even if the we'd now call "Starship Troopers" straw man trope of mankind versus alien bugs...? The Dire Wraiths of Rom were far more dangerous and intelligent and essentially all evil - as Rom pointed out some cruel balance the creator forced that for the beauty and love of his homeworld to be contrasted by their evil and aggression. After he was victorious they had a good year of him roaming the galaxy to find lost SpaceKnights to tell them the war was over and they needed to come home. Some had gone insane or criminal, some were captures. He also encountered lots of lone adventure scenarios, my favorite where he encountered a human population fighting the machines they had created to explore space but had decided to try to kill them and had taken their homeworld.
So, just one man's opinion, Marvel just letting a vacant toy commercial liscence - twice - languish in the hands of some good creators/artists for years but leaving them alone was one of their best moves and made some of their best work.
Best thumb nail ever!
I think it was Micronauts, Rom and then Star Wars.
Conan should also count but it was adaptations then extreme extrapolations of an existing classical literature character.
Micronauts, and ROM IMO were the best.
Marvel bought the liscence for an extended time.
Then the toy company tanked...
So some good artist/writers were sitting on a book with no toys made for it...
Uh.
"The Show must go on!"
"Why?"
"Well, if it doesn't we ain't gettin' paid. Way too many Art majors in the 70s/80s thanks to the 60s..."
"The Show MUST go ON!!!!"
And they did. They took it and ran. Marvel was big and doing well so it only cared if a book wasn't selling. No company anymore, no upcoming sets or deals so no annoying "Investor Reps" to micromanage. And they made these fantastic little scifi stories worthy of Star Wars.
On to Star Wars... IMO the Marvel series helped keep Star Wars alive so the movies could be made. Not just the Sequels - that was Dark Horse but the original Trilogy. It took way too long for Lucas to work up the money to make them but the comics kept the story going.
So many great art submissions!! When will we see Infotron agaaaaaain?
Qrissy The next time I do something really obscure I can ask him if he wants to visit.
I can show you some of my artwork. My own intellectual properties, my Beast Wars/Transformers Generation 2.0 fanfic designs(actually Hasbro/IDW submissions), as well as some Dr. Who ink wash renderings.
www.Lovemymink.com
Desk Dumpers The 20 Year Challenge was an underrated Gameboy classic!
For best I'd agree with you that GI Joe was one of the first comics that I regularly read. And still find rather interesting today. With the Misadventures of Adam West being a close runner-up because, Adam West.
As for worst, there's been so many over the years that they're hard to remember (which is why they're the worst). Would we consider SuperPro a licensed comic? I'm assuming Marvel had to pay to use the NFL's name. And possibly for intellectual property damages after the fact.
When I was a kid in the 80s/90s, I learned that licensed comics were almost always bad, and avoided them. Now I have a soft spot for them.
Had a comic version of Star Wars Attack of the Clones, one of Total Recall. Both rushed through the story really fast. I heard about an Emenim Punisher comic.
When I was a kid, I really enjoyed the Captain Action comic book, licensed from Ideal Toys, I believe. It lasted only five issues, with Wally Wood kicking it off, and Gil Kane doing the script and art for the last four issues. Each issue was better than the one before, so it went out on a high note.
Hey I live in Lakewood Wa, where in Tacoma is the store you feature in this video??
Barbie had a very good licensed comic in the early 90’s. They had a special part of every issue where they had the comic arts draw Barbie in fashion designs that children had mailed in. I still think this is one of the coolest ideas for fan art, and I wonder how many kids where inspired to pursue art & fashion because of it.
Growing up in the 1970s, I liked the Gold Key Star Trek, Marvel's early Star Wars, Micronauts, Shogun Warriors (which had a surprisingly decent storyline), Battlestar Galactica, The Scooby Doo comic, which bounced around from various publishers in the 1970s, but had a fairly consistent team of Mark Evanier and Dan Spiegle. DC's adaptations of Edgar Rice Burroughs material like Tarzan, John Carter of Mars, and especially Carson Napier of Venus (Mike Kaluta artwork!) were pretty good. Marvel's Tarzan and John Carter of Mars were both consistently good, even if they didn't last too long. And of course, Marvel's Conan comic and magazine introduced me to Robert E. Howard's characters, and got me to reading the Conan books and other REH material.
There were others I kind of knew about but couldn't find or keep up with, like Charlton's Space 1999, The Six Million Dollar Man, or Emergency! (based on the early 70s show of the same name). I also had a very few issues of Dell/Gold Key's Zorro, Secret Agent, and the Time Tunnel comics. I know there were plenty of others, but I didn't know or care about them when I was younger, and only discovered them in retrospect. The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Get Smart, and Maverick, for example. DC's short-lived Hot Wheels comic (6 issues!) or The Shadow. Or Marvel's adaptation of Doc Savage, or the Godzilla comic.
And that's not counting the comics that came after I grew up, like The Simpsons, or Futurama.
When done well, a licensed-based comic can really enhance the source material and increase the fan base for the property. I'm thinking of the surprising success of Marvel's Tomb of Dracula or Shang Chi, Master of Kung Fu (loosely based on Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu books). But of course, many aren't done very well, or veer significantly from the source material.
One of the best episodes ever!
I remember seeing some of these licensed books in value bins or grab bags and just completely ignoring them. Usually one crept its way into my home, they were used as coasters. The only ones that held my attention and care were Transformers, G.I. Joe and Thundercats.
i worked an event at geoffreys comics in gatdena ca, and the mr T comic had come out and T was due to show up. and he did. He bareley grunted at people and he got really mad when anyone would ask about the art in the comic! "Neal Adams is a really fantastic and famous artist,..how'd you get him to do your comic?" and it sent him into a rage! How dare antone ask about things not directing to Mr.T?!
I think the best "Team America" story was when team member "Cowboy" had a solo adventure featuring an ex- girlfriend, a group of motorcycle-riding Texas Rangers ( dressed for some reason as State Troopers), a man in a Roman toga, and a nuclear missile. You got a lot for .60 cents.
Ian Flynn's run of archie's soinc was fantastic
I remember clearly that Mr T comic, I loved A-Team as a kid but reading about "crack babies" kind of weirded me out :D
I’m a huge fan of Dynamite Comics. Even though most of their comics are licensed properties, they have the writing and artistic talent that makes these comics special. They also have Alex Ross! With that being said, my two favorite licensed comics from my childhood were the Power Lords by DC Comics and Captain Power and the Soldiers Of the Future by Continuity Comics. As a young child I absolutely loved both of those toy lines and I was super excited knowing that they had there own brief comic-line.
The greatest problem with licensed comic books is, you have only a short while, a brief window to get people to buy a comic based on a non-comics property, and odds are, by the time you actually produce it, the fires will have at least cooled. The creators are a lot better off with a revival. Boom! is doing great things with MMPR because it has all the history of PR to play with, and the freedom to do one of those 'flashback series that seems to have more and deeper adventures than the actual original ever did' story arcs. But the MMPR/Zeo back in the day? They could only show adventures that were more or less just like the TV show, only with no action, no sound effects, and no lasting impact. GI Joe and Star Wars ran through and past the entirety of their original hot runs. 'The Further Adventures Of Indiana Jones' ran for almost 50 issues, and was helped by new movies and Walt Simonson. But how many forgotten and frankly forgettable licenses came and went just while those three were big. 'V' had a decent comic, but what the hell could they do? The show itself didn't know where it was going, because it was still brand new after the two miniseries, and had to rely heavily on 'Oh, no, that wasn't really resolved, it just seemed like it'.
In the Sunday Newspaper strips, Disney used to serialize some of their classic and recent movies in strip format, and even those were a little deeper than many comic book adaptations (Though Matt Dillon's 'Tex' really suffered), because they had a start and an end in mind, and they ran for months. Since I'm verging on or just past TLDR, I'll just add that when it comes to these licenses, most companies would be better off playing scratch-offs.
Some of Rom was actually really good. It’s too bad Marvel doesn’t have the rights or they could have him in the Guardians wing of the MCU.
I love the interesting topic. AWESOME shoutout to Stargazer! That is my LCS they are so helpful and knowledgeable
cool video, but I wouldn't go with "they don't pay well the talent." I have met artists who worked on Licensed work and most of the time it's a combination of "first time working on a comic" or "work while they are in between jobs as a storyboard artist on a show." It's a lot like finding work for struggling artists to keep them busy.
One of those Valiant Nintendo comics was drawn by Joe Quesada and Jimmy Palmiotti.
Larry Hama ended up writing G.I Joe because nobody else wanted to do it.
My best friend and I agree that the Craftsman Bolt On Tool Man Saves The Justice League is really something special. It stars a character called The Mechanic or some such and his superpower is just owning this Craftsman belt tool system, and he fixes stuff around the watchtower and indeed rescues the entire damn team, who did nothing. The framing of action and the narration and all of it lacks any shred of self awareness and it is the most shameless ad based tie in comic ever. I know that's not quite the subject of the video, but I don't know if you have one on those yet.
From Mr.T's strength levels in the comic I wonder who would win, comic Mr.T or Kazama Kiryu?
Wasn't Godzilla Marvel's first integrated licensed property.
That comic shop looks like it's a semi trailer, what with the narrow space and the metallic ceiling.
The Simpsons Comics was one of my first exposures to American comic book series and still holds a special place in my hear to this day
One line of licensed comics that I'm quite fond of (that I will admit weren't objectively very good) are the Mortal Kombat comics from Malibu, from the 1990s. A lot of the artwork in those comics was really good, and the plots themselves weren't bad either, at least for some of them. Of course, it faltered in execution, with lackluster writing and characters constantly talking about themselves in third person. But it's good fun.
If there is one licensed comic book that I liked back in the day was Masters of The Universe from Marvel's Star Comics. In fact issues 12 and 13 had a strong storyline and the theme itself was too dark and matured for a Star Comics line.
Holy beans that Terminator comic has OJ Simpson on the cover. I knew he was originally cast as Terminator with Arnold as hero but I didn't know about the comic. Too cool.
The humor in this episode is fantastic
Thanks for the video!
actually that Game Boy comic seems to be awesome xD
I really liked the second Atari Force series. Unfortunately, the Swedish anthology comic book it was published in got cancelled after only publishing the first six issues. :(
Bongo Comics Simpsons universe comics were good too, especially the Radioactive Man comics, aswell as the licensed comics from Dark Horse.
I grew up almost exclusively with Disney comics but I gotta admit I was such a huge Buffy fan that I even bought the comics! Still got most of them (and a few Angel comics) in a shelf for nostalgic reasons. Also occasionally read the X-Files comic back then. It wasn’t even that bad, although the stories had probably been fished out of the waste basket of the TV show.