The End of Comics Buyer’s Guide

by John | Jan 10, 2013 | Blog

A black and white version of this appeared in CBG in 2002.

Last Kiss was born in the pages of Comics Buyer’s Guide way back in 1996.

A few months before at the San Diego Comic Con, I’d showed CBG Editor Maggie Thompson a handful of black and white photocopies of old romance covers. At the bottom of each page, I’d typed a gag.

They were not incredibly funny gags, but Maggie saw enough potential to give me a green light. After that all I had to do was figure out how to remove the old dialog and replace it with my own.

I literally had no idea how to do it. I didn’t know anything about lettering or scanning. And Photoshop? What’s that?

I fumbled through a couple of years of doing Last Kiss. Then I came back and relaunched the series in 2000—with the encouragement of Maggie and fellow CBG editors John Jackson Miller and Brent Frankenhoff.

Last Kiss has appeared in every issue since then right up through the final one—#1699

It was probably inevitable that Comics Buyer’s Guide wouldn’t survive.

I first started reading it in the 1970’s when it was known as The Buyer’s Guide and was a weekly black-and-white adzine with a handful of articles.

It went on to become a fan favorite as well as a vital news pipeline  for the comics industry.

The rise of the Internet made that news function obsolete. The switch to a color monthly magazine format gave CBG a few more years. But not enough.

Two days ago, the magazine folded.

Thank you, Maggie, Brent and John. Without you, there would be no Last Kiss. And the last 23 years would’ve been a lot less interesting.

Last Kiss in Alter Ego #114

by John | Jan 1, 2013 | Blog

You could buy Alter Ego #114  for all the great articles about golden age comic creators such as Allen Bellman (who did the cover) and Don Rico.

Or you could buy it to read my pal Michael T. Gilbert’s amusing and informative piece about the Charles Atlas ads that ran in comic books. (And made all of us comic geeks into the manly, muscled men that we are.)

But mostly you should buy it (on sale at a discounted price here—for now) because it has a full-color page featuring four of my Last Kiss gags about Wonder Woman.