Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Tales From the Quarter Bin--The Mighty OOP

Well, we've had our fun with German, so now it's time to look at what the Greeks do with Marvel comics:

Look at that caveman go...Yup, in Greek, Thor apparently is OOP.

OOP, Thor did it again...Not really, of course. It's actually theta omega rho...it's just that in that funky title font they're using, it sure looks like OOP to American eyes. Look, here it is again, in a less-odd font:

Foreign languages i can handle..foreign alphabets freak me out, thoughHeck, I can even do it here, with character map: ΘΩΡ!!

Man, I wonder why the hell I never thought to start up a Theta Omega Rho fraternity in college for comics nerds...a Thor frat would so have kicked Animal House's Deltas' asses...and picture John Belushi as Volstagg...

Anyhoo, back to the comic. I've got to say, this is one craptacular comics package. Seriously. The cover represents a story that is not even in the issue!! What we've got is Thor #126 (the first chapter of the epic Lee/Kirby 6-part Hercules story), a Tales of Asgard story, a short Western (!), and a lengthy Kull the Conqueror story!!

Not too bad for only 45 somethings (seriously, I don't know Greek currency), you might be saying. Except, half of it is in very muddy black & white, with every other pair of pages kinda sorta partially(and only partially) re-colored by the rankest amateurs. For example, in the Thor story, the splash is "color," pg 2-3 are B&W, 4-5 color, 6-7 color, 8-9 B&W, and so on. And the color...I seriously believe they had only a 4 color press. Check out this page from the Asgard story:

This isn't the worst example...but I couldn't pass up BDSM LokiAbysmal. I'm pretty Loki's NOT supposed to be dressed like George Michael's wild night out...they just didn't have enough crayons for his (green?) leotard. I hope all US comic exports to Greece weren't done this poorly...

And just so you can see the wide range of Marvel's available in Greece in 1978, check this out--I don't know whether it's a sales chart or just a list of what's coming out this month:

I would comment if I understood any of these besides OOPAnd while I ponder why, exactly, a comic sold in Greece has the Comics Code stamp, I can take one very valuable lesson from this:

Whenever I'm bored to tears with JMS's version of Thor, I can wake myself up by thinking, "OOP! OOP! OOP!!"

ΘΩΡ, indeed....

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