“There’s a universe inside, you must have one, too. A world inside no one ever knew. I wish I noticed, but I never took the time to look beyond the surface and finally see the universe inside you.” From The Universe Inside written by Ben Lee & Michael Wells.

There was a time when the best source for information about individual comics was the Overstreet Price Guide. It started in 1970, at a time when such informative books covering the medium were few and far between.

Back in those early days of the Overstreet Guide, I discovered that the fifth issue of Mad comics (later Mad magazine), published in 1953, was considered somewhat rare because of its “violent” cover. Evidently, it was so upsetting that a lot of copies were returned from the individual distributors’ warehouses without ever making it to the newsstand racks. Its publisher, EC Comics, would soon face far worse pushback on their horror and crime titles.

Amusingly and almost miraculously, earlier this month this cover was parodied by one of our most entertaining and intuitive cartoonists, Dan Parent. He replaced the characters drawn by the great Bill Elder with the best-known characters from Archie Comics, each acting in Elder’s characters and design. This is Dan’s custom and, while I firmly believe he is one of the top creative talents in Archie’s eighty years, these convention sketches, commissions and variant covers go well above his more widely-circulated output. He posts his work on these pieces on Facebook and on his own website, making Dan Parent one of the best reasons to plug our computers into the ether. Continue reading “Brainiac On Banjo: Archie’s Wacky Parent” →