Do you think wedding anniversaries are big deal? Anniversaries for comics series are a big deal too!  Fans of a certain age were trained to expect a mandatory celebration when a series reached a certain numerical milestone, and usually the celebration was self-congratulatory, and promotional. And the fans would be soaked for a higher cover price too.

As a kid, I remember when my neighborhood pal George Riley proudly proclaimed he had a copy of the Batman #200 Smash Issue.  I was perplexed.  How could George, whose forte was always war comics, have this important Batman comic? And one that I didn’t have?  And just what was a Smash Issue anyways?

<Note: I still don’t know what a Smash Issue is.>

And then Marvel celebrated Fantastic Four #100 with the heroes seemingly battling all their foes in that milestone issue. Next Amazing Spider-Man #100 featured so many of his antagonists on the cover. By the time The Incredible Hulk #200 rolled around, the hero-fighting-all-his-villains bloom was off of the rose, but I still bought that issue, even though I wasn’t a regular Hulk reader. As a young fanboy, I was told it was really important issue to buy.

So with all that in mind, here’s the 100^th  Smash Column of “With Further Ado”. It’s been a fun ride both researching and writing my columns and I hope you’ve enjoyed it along the way.  I’m not quite ready to fight all my arch-villains this week…maybe I’ll save that for the 200^th Anniversary.

The Fussiness Of Logos

There are many ways for you to love comics and the industry. You can love the stories. You might love the characters. You can follow the artists and love their artwork. You can celebrate the vision of the writers.  You might even have a few favorite editors (I’m looking at you Mike Gold, Jim Salicrup and Will Dennis) who always seem to assemble and deliver the very best stuff.

You might enjoy collecting key issues and reselling them. Or you might watch every comic movie or TV show and not even read the comics.  Hey, it’s all fine and wonderful. And it’s all equally valid.

And… you might love the logos found on the cover of every comic. I always have. I have what DNA scientists call the “Todd Klein gene”. I appreciate and ruminate about comic logos way too much. And that’s driven aspects of my  professional life as well. I love creating and or updating logos for brands, companies, startups and marketing campaigns.

{And if you love logos, I hope you frequently check out Todd Klein’s page & postings. He’s brilliantly insightful, and such a nice guy too.}

And with this focus on logos comes a certain persnickety-ness. I’m fussy about logos.  Many co-workers would agree that logos and fonts are overly precious to me.  So with that in mind, I admit it’s taken me a while (about 100 weeks, in fact)  to create a logo for this column.

But the time has come. I’m so excited to unveil the new With Further Ado logo, created by the multi-talented Marc Alan Fishman.  [Marc: Take a bow. You knocked it outta the ballpark with this one.]

Let’s get ready for the next hundred columns. Or maybe we can just throw a little party for the 110^th column. That’s not too cheesy, is it?