Posted By Dan Greenfield on Apr 8, 2024 | 2 comments

MORRISON MONDAYS!

For this week’s MORRISON MONDAYS — our new, weekly feature spotlighting homage covers by cartoonist extraordinaire Bill Morrison — it’s Bongo Comics’ 2002 Futurama Comics #8, a riff on 1975’s Giant-Size X-Men #1.

Naturally, there’s a funny story to go with it.

Take it away, Bill!

By BILL MORRISON

While I was editing Futurama Comics and drawing the covers, I read Eric Rogers’ script for Futurama Comics #8, a send-up of X-Men comics titled Planet X-Press Men, and naturally thought of doing an X-Men parody cover. Dave Cockrum and Gil Kane’s Giant-Size X-Men #1 was an all-time favorite of mine and given its iconic status, it was a natural choice.

At the time, the Certified Guarantee Company (CGC) had only been grading comics for about three years, and it seemed like the book I saw enclosed most often in their familiar plastic case was Giant-Size X-Men #1. Obviously, because it contains the first appearances of so many popular X-characters, many collectors had it graded and slabbed (and still do to this day). For that reason, I decided to do a double-parody for the Futurama Comics #8 cover and lampoon CGC as well.

I drew the cover, and then asked Bongo’s Art Director, Nathan Kane, who also colored the cover, to create a convincingly photorealistic image of a plastic CGC frame. I wrote a funny version of their label copy and changed the company name to “Comics Incarceration Co-op.”

After the issue was printed I decided it would be fun to submit a stack of copies to CGC and get them slabbed and graded, thus creating a slab-within-a-slab effect. When they came back, I was delighted to discover that CGC included a special notation on the label! Along with the grade, creator credits, date, etc. the issue is designated as “1st CGC parody cover.”

I have no idea if there have been subsequent CGC parodies, but hey, first is first!

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