Super Joe Unlimited Comics, Cool Conventions, Edgar Allen Poe Trading Cards and More!

The PopCulteer
March 3, 2023

We have quite a few cool things (and one bit of unpleasantness) to tell you about tis week, so let’s dive in…

Super Joe Unlimited In The Comics

Regular PopCult readers should remember Power Comics from their very entertaining The Masters comic books that I wrote about in this blog, and they should also be well aware of Super Joe Unlimited, the revived action figure line that that I’ve been writing about for the last couple of months.

And folks who read PopCult very carefully might have already figured out where I’m going, since I spilled the beans back in January, not realizing that they weren’t ready to announce anything yet, but now, this is official: Power Comics will be releasing a Super Joe Unlimited Comic Book, sometime this summer, and the cover, which you can see at the head of this post, will be available for sale at ToyLanta later this month.

How about I just post the press release here?

Today, Power Comics, Inc. proudly announces it’s partnership with Super Joe Unlimited to produce for the first time, an official comic book series dedicated to Super Joe!

Super Joe Unlimited recently relaunched the 1977 Super Joe 9” action figure line selling out it’s initial production run of figures and accessories. Piggybacking on that tremendous success Power Comics will release the comic book series entitled Super Joe Unlimited this Summer.

“We are very excited at the opportunity to bring Super Joe to the wonderful world of comics,” stated Jason Schiermeyer, CEO of Super Joe Unlimited.

Austin Hough, publisher of Power Comics, Inc. added, “There is very little back story surrounding Super Joe, so it’s like we have this ‘blank canvas’ to really create something new and special. And, we all know how much artists love a blank canvas.”

Issue 1 features comic book legend Bob Hall (right) recreating his iconic cover of Marvel Comics’ G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero #4 from 1982 using the Super Joe action figures and play sets from the original 1977 toy line.

Power Comics is making this cover available as an 11”x17” print, autographed by Hall, and available exclusively for the upcoming Toylanta con March 24th-26th.

If you can’t make it to ToyLanta, you can still get in on the Super Joe Unlimited action.

Posters can be purchased for $25 each via PayPal at powercomicsinc1@gmail.com and picked up at the My Vintage Toys and Trains booth at Toylanta March 25th and 26th. When ordering, please include the number of posters you are requesting in the Notes section.

If you cannot attend Toylanta, you can still purchase an autographed poster, or posters. Simply add $12.50 to cover shipping (up to 10 posters), and please make sure to include your mailing address. The autographed poster(s) will ship flat following the conclusion of Toylanta.

Follow Power Comics, Inc. on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter for more announcements concerning release dates, availability, story lines, AND the announcement of the rest of the creative team behind Super Joe Unlimited!

POWER UP!!!

That’s very cool news, and I have to say that I’m glad they’ll be selling the poster through the mail, because this year, ironically enough, I will be skipping ToyLanta in favor of attending JoeLanta in August.

About That Irony

Last year, when the folks who run ToyLanta decided (at the suggestion of many GI Joe collectors) to return to their roots and spin off JoeLanta as a separate show, it came together too quickly for yours truly to attend. We had other plans for that time.

By way of quick explanation, originally, over twenty years ago in fact, the show was called “JoeLanta,” and it was devoted to the 12″ GI Joe. around 2016, as the show grew and came to incorporate more toys and even another Atlanta toy show, they changed the name to ToyLanta.

While the change was quite successful and helped raise more money for the Cody Lane Foundation, fans of the original show were missing the “good old days” and wanted a show just for them again. So now there are two great toy shows, both for the benefit of the Cody Lane Foundation, and your PopCulteer, sadly, had to make a choice. Last year, when I had to miss the first new JoeLanta, I decided that in 2023, I would skip ToyLanta and attend JoeLanta.

Another reason for this is that, since 2013, in those years when the pandemic allowed us to travel, we always went to my choice, JoeLanta/ToyLanta. This year I wanted Mel to pick someplace she really wanted to go for our March travel destination. We had never been able to go to the Humana Festival (which has yet to start back again), but I figured Mel would want to make some kind of theatre trip.

Several weeks ago, I discovered that Tom Kenny, the voice of SpongeBob Squarepants, would be appearing in Lexington, Kentucky. He would be there the same weekend as ToyLanta, but since we’d already decided to skip ToyLanta, our weekend would be free. Here’s the irony, Tom Kenny is a guest at The Lexington Comic and Toy Convention.

Mel is one of our world’s most enthusiastic SpongeBob fans, so we’re skipping one toy show to attend another.

There is one other point that’s more coincidental than ironic, but Bob Hall, who drew that awesome cover for the Super Joe Unlimited comic will also be in Lexington (along with Jim Starlin, Mike Grell, Sam Raimi, a few dozen former Power Rangers and more). I’ll tell you all about that show and ToyLanta in the coming weeks, and I’ll have plenty of photos from Lexington at the end of the month.

News On Another Comic Con

Another show that I won’t be attending, but is still very cool, is ITHACON, in Ithaca, New York. The show happens at the Emerson Suites on Ithaca College Campus on April 22 and 23.

ITHACON is the nation’s second longest running comic convention (after San Diego), and this will be its 46th iteration. This event highlights comics, cosplay, gaming, anime, manga, and pop culture. It could make for a fun weekend road trip for the die-hard comics fans among you.

The convention is presented by the Comic Book Club of Ithaca. Membership tickets for adults cost $20.00 for both days of the convention, while tickets for Sunday access cost $10.00. Youth memberships for ages seven through seventeen are priced at $5.00, and adults are eligible to bring up to two kids under six for free admission. As a bonus, anyone who purchases tickets by April 16th will receive a special “swag bag” upon check in.

“ITHACON is a celebration of creativity and entrepreneurism. It’s a small show that always punches above its weight class,” says Ed Catto, of Ithaca College’s School of Business.

Ed, as you may know from past PopCult posts, is an old friend, and one of the high-mucky-mucks at Captain Action Enterprises.

You can follow ITHACON on Facebook to see what guests they’ll be bringing in this year. The timing is off for Mel and I to attend this year, but in the future, who knows?

The Poe-Man’s Kickstarter

Robert Jimenez has a new Kickstarter campaign for a cool new trading card set, and it was fully funded in its first hour so you know you’re going to get it if you kick in. This trading card set is devoted to none other than Edgar Allen Poe. I know a lot of PopCult readers are big Poe fans, so perk up your ears.

POE: Ghastly Vignettes is the 6th Zerostreet Trading Card Set. This 36 card set features artwork by Robert Jiménez inspired by the work of Edgar Allan Poe.

The set features a “cover” card plus 25 vignettes inspired from passages of Poe’s work which are quoted on the back. There is also a 10 card subset of printed sketches. These 10 illustrations will also be available as reward add-ons, but may be sold out by the time you read this.

Featured Poe stories include The Gold-Bug, The Murders At The Rue Morgue, Hop-Frog and more.

Each Kickstarter set will include the 36 card set in a tuck box, one Raven sticker, one Lenticular card and one metal card. Extra cards can be added on as well.

It’s forty bucks plus shipping for the full set and bonus cards. I’ve already jumped in on this one. There were add-ons that would allow you to buy the original art, but I believe that’s all been spoken for already. You can still get other Zerostreet card sets and other cool stuff.

There’s about two and a half weeks left in the campaign. You can find it HERE. Check out the video here…

The Elephant In The Comics

I was going to write an essay on the Scott Adams/Dilbert meltdown, but after thinking about it, why waste my time and yours talking about a barely-talented cartoonist who did a comic strip that was mildly amusing for the first year or so before he started repeating himself?

In recent years, Adams has become increasingly toxic and vocal online, and to me that’s when Dilbert went from being a mildly amusing, poorly drawn comic strip that used to be sort of funny to being the work of a crappy human being who was beneath my notice. I figured that one day he’d self-destruct publicly, and that day came last week. He spewed racist garbage so toxic that his syndicate pulled the plug on his comic strip and book contract, his other book publisher dropped him and his agent quit. More than half the newspapers that carried his strip had already jumped ship.

Anybody who’s seen his online presence couldn’t have been surprised. He’s been one of the most awful people on the internet for more than a decade. I know I lost any interest in the strip.

With the benefit of hindsight, I see even the early strips differently.

Dilbert is the extreme narcissist. He’s always right, and everybody who overrules him at work is a moron who doesn’t deserve their position. How dare a woman even work at all? His bosses…why, they went to college! Damn those idiots! And he’s such an impotent twerp that he doesn’t dare say what he thinks. He goes home and imagines his dog saying all the things he believes. He is the ultimate incel with a superiority complex.

For years Adams has been blaming “cancel culture” for the fact that no Hollywood studio wants to make a live-action Dilbert movie. The real reason is, they already did.

It was called Falling Down.

And that is this week’s PopCulteer. Check back for our regular features and fresh content every day.