Posted By Dan Greenfield on May 27, 2024 | 5 comments

MORRISON MONDAYS!

By BILL MORRISON

Roughly 14 years ago, Bongo scribe Ian Boothby pitched an idea for a five-issue mini-series about Jeff Albertson aka Comic Book Guy. The plot would revolve around the death of the titular character, the impact of his absence on Springfield and America itself, and the ensuing mystery of whether or not he is really dead. As editor, I gave it the green light without hesitation and Ian was off to the races. The resulting saga, drawn by John Delaney and inked by Dan Davis, includes not only an intriguing mystery, but also a graveside eulogy by Stan “the Man” Lee, a presidential order to shut down the internet, and a massive war between geeks and nerds!

Bill Morrison pencils, Andrew Pepoy inks

For the first issue, I decided to draw the cover and settled on an obvious homage to Jack Kirby’s Fantastic Four #1 cover. This was also a nod to my FF #1 tribute drawn at the dawn of Bongo, the cover of Simpsons Comics #1 (More about that in a future article!) Then, because this mini-series was shaping up to be a real epic, someone suggested we do some variant covers that would parody famous death-of-a-character cover images.

Jack Kirby pencils, George Klein inks

Variant covers were (and still are) a popular gimmick, and we thought it would be a fun way to generate excitement for the first issue. However, Bongo publisher and Simpsons creator Matt Groening wasn’t keen on the idea, feeling that it would take unfair advantage of our fans by forcing them to spend a lot of their hard-earned money to buy the same material multiple times. I admired Matt’s compassion for our loyal readers and saw the wisdom in his decision, but I still hung on to the desire to parody some iconic covers for CBG’s first issue.

So, we decided to do a radical thing by giving the premier issue four actual covers, all within the same edition of the book! All four are printed on glossy cover stock and appear not as pin-ups, but as legitimate covers before Page 1 of the story. I believe Bongo was the first (and possibly only) publisher to ever pull such a stunt, and I welcome challengers to that claim!

And so there’s no mistake, this edition of MORRISON MONDAYS should probably be titled MORRISON, DELANEY, AND PEPOY MONDAYS, as un-illiterative as that sounds. Cover A, my FF #1 tribute, was inked by Andrew Pepoy and covers B, C, and D were dawn by John Delaney and inked by Andrew!

Delaney and Pepoy

Bogdanove pencils, Janke inks

I know 13th Dimension readers are among the most savvy in the world when it comes to spotting homages, but for those who may need a cheat sheet, here you go! The B cover is a parody of Jon Bogdanove’s and Dennis Janke’s Death of Superman cover, C is a sendup of John Buscema’s Avengers #56 cover, and D is a spoof of George Perez’s Crisis on Infinite Earths #7 cover.

Delaney and Pepoy

John Buscema pencils, possibly a combo of Frank Giacoia and Klein inks

George Perez

Delaney and Pepoy

Fun Fact: Matt Groening’s original idea for Comic Book Guy’s real name was Lewis Lane!

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