Saturday, November 28, 2020

Tower Records Fall & the Rise of Flying Colors Poster/Calendar

A look back at the last 14 years of our Flying Colors exclusive calendar/poster...and the story of how we came up with the idea to do a calendar/poster.

Basically, we stole the idea from Tower Records. In late 2006, Tower Records had declared bankruptcy and was closing all its stores.

You can read my blog about the final fall of Tower Records HERE!

As most old-time music fans know, Tower Records was a chain of great shops (even though in this last years of the company, customer service was way less than stellar).

But music lovers really depended on Tower as a place to find not just current best-selling albums/cassettes/CDs, but as a place to discover music we didn't even know we wanted.

Every year, Tower would produce a poster to give away to anyone visiting their stores. So when Tower was on the slow death march to shutting down, I was a bit bummed that the tradition of getting their annual poster was going to end.

So, I thought, let's begin a Flying Colors' tradition to pick up what Tower dropped... but do it in our own comic book lovin' style!

The first year of the Flying Colors poster, 2007, we went with an all John Romita Jr look.

JRJR had done a commission for us featuring several Marvel characters on the roof above Flying Colors. We made that the centerpiece of the calendar (and our exclusive cover to Amazing Spider-Man #666)... and that's how it started.


Over the years, we've distributed thousands of these poster calendars every year to schools, libraries and to FlyCo Faithful.

2021 will be our 15th annual poster/calendar... and we'll let you know when it's available (hint: very soon!).

These poster/calendars are designed by cartoonist Jeff Bonivert.
Read Jeff's TMNT/Casey Jones graphic novel HERE!

Read more of Jeff's kooky comics HERE!


Thanks for reading... and please share this with your friends!

As always, more Comics & Other Cool Stuff are on the way!

Monday, November 16, 2020

SyFy Wire looks back on Mark Gruenwald's Squadron Supreme

I was recently contacted by the good folks at SyFy Wire. They were putting together a feature about Marvel Comics' SQUADRON SUPREME series, so they asked to use a screenshot from my 1988 interview with the late writer and editor Mark Gruenwald.

See the the Squadron Supreme feature HERE!

And HERE's my original interview with Mark Gruenwald from WonderCon 1988 in Oakland CA... one of a very few interview videos with him. Mark is a well remembered, highly regarded writer and editor for Marvel in the '80s. Besides Squadron Supreme, his Captain America run is still sought after...and it's still a fun read!