The truth is, the Falcon proposal didn’t quite go the way he retold it (If he actually told this story at all, I don’t know). The very LAST thing I would have suggested is that a character be killed off and replaced by a younger version. In my mind, that has contributed to convoluted histories and often inferior knock-offs of the original character. Most characters aren’t so bad that they can’t be fixed by a writer with a feel for it. My idea was to have circumstances play out that would make everyone THINK the original Falcon had died. It made no sense to me that everyone knew who Sam Wilson was, where he worked and who his friends were but that no villains ever used that knowledge to get at him. There were other elements to my proposal but as reported, Mark thought that my idea would make his history more convoluted and so nixed that idea.

Anyway, for anyone who cares, that’s the story. Take care all.

James Brock

…He did both, actually. I suggest you punish yourself for missing this by reading every issue of Groo until you find it.

Yeah, Michael, the Buckley version has oddly enough become the definitive version. It was popular enough that a guy sang it on American Idol last year, even! In fact, after the dude sang it on American Idol, the Buckley version went to #1 on the iTunes download charts – the first time Buckley ever hit #1 on ANY chart EVER.

Looking at the guy who did Hallelujah on American Idol last year, I suspect he knew the John Cale version more than any other and knew it from Shrek.

IIRC it was Simon Cowel who kept going on about the Jeff Buckley version.

So the letter column had every answer being the refusal to define “mulch”.

…Most of the really hidden messages were in the names of the incidental characters whose lives Groo invariably destroyed. Most of them would be twisted in a “Spanglish” sort of way so that if you didn’t at least read Spanish and/or had a few hundred conversations with Sergio Aragones over lunch, you might not get the hidden in-joke.

…And yes, IIRC Mark even dedicated one letter collumn where every single answer to ever single letter was the definition of Mulch.

…PAD wrote me into a Spider-Wimp annual back in the late 80′s, where I played a lawyer who was filing charges against Spidey on behalf of his client, a villain. It was supposed to be a parody of a usenet feud I’d had with net.ghod and usenet egotist Chuq “Chuqi the Hutt” Von Rospach at the time – yes, a spinoff of the infamous “Tyg-OM” feud – where Chuqles played the opposing attorney. In the end, while I won the case, the villain wound up proving he’d done the deed after all.

Or so I’m told, and that’s the punch line. I’ve never been a fan or even a casual reader of Spider-Wimp, and not even PAD writing me into an issue gave me any incentive to buy a copy, much less read the damn thing…:-P

I too can’t view Maus the same way knowing this creator was involved with such low-brow consumer schlock as Garbage Pail Kids and similar candy.

I’m amazed how many people don’t know the song All Along The Watchtower. Despite what Mr. Sturges says, I don’t even think its that much of a hidden joke. Shadow Thief literally says “all along the watchtowers”, and the joke is that joker says there’s a joke in their somewhere, but its so obvious he doesn’t see it. BTW, most cover versions including U2 are covers of the Hendrix cover which is somewhat different in feel and tempo and has easily identifiable guitar solos not art of the Dylan’s original

—–

Ah, so Matt learned everything he needed to know about comic book writing from Mark Evanier’s work on “Groo”. (For those who don’t get it, Evanier was notorious for including secret messages–usually dealing in some fashion with “Garfield”, the Saturday morning cartoon for which he often wrote–within the text of a story. It might appear as the first letter of each sentence on each page or other variation, or might appear in scrambled form as a spell cast by Arba and/or Dakarba or in some other coded fashion. For years, it was one of the two major gimmicks of “Groo”–the other being, of course, the mention of “mulch”.)

My Monday-morning editing comment would be that I really laughed when the line “In 1992’s Captain America #408, the Falcon debuted a new look…” was immediately followed by the cover featuring a werewolf Cap fighting the evil Cap doppelganger. If I hadn’t read that issue [I read every Infinity War crossover], I’d be confused as to which character on the cover was Falcon. But I definitely wasn’t annoyed, so nobody yell at me!

But, yes, the Buckley is one is everywhere nowadays, and I know people who think it’s the best one.

@Zdenko:
I think Superman actually exposed himself to red Kryptonite on purpose so that he could talk to an invading alien ant army. How he knew the red K would give him an ant head is beyond me, because its effects were usually unpredictable.

Over here in Britain it was actually the winner’s single on X Factor (Kind of a British version of Idol) and the winning version got the Xmas No. 1 in the singles chart. Outcry from fans of the song saw Buckley’s version of the song get to No. 2 on downloads alone!

I mean what was the story behind CapWolf?

The villain Nightshade came up with a serum that turned a whole community of people plus Cap into pseudo-werewolves.

The most hilarious aspect was the fact that while that storyline was going on, Gruenwald tried to work in an Infinity War crossover as WELL, which was just way too silly.