“The Nice Price” was a late 1970s branding initiative by CBS Records, where perennial backcatalog faves got badged and repriced as midbudget offerings. Nearly all of my old Clash tapes and CDs sported the sticker when I bought them. The copy of Combat Rock that Maura scored for me somewhere still has its one on […]

All those PSAs and parental lecture were right — peer pressure can make a person do the darndest thing. I can hear my mom’s voice now: “If Mike Sterling bought some original comics art, would you buy some, too?” Well, yeah, mom. Mike is the coolest cat in the funnybook blogging scene, and that would […]

About five years back I caught some fortunate breaks which increased what the beancounters would call my “discretionary income.” Being a sober and pragmatic middle-aged man, I used that windfall to chase down various childhood artifacts of deep personal significance. This was not some wild spree, however. Taking a page from my renewed record collecting, […]

Apparently today marks thirty-four years since the debut issue of the post-Legends “Bwah Ha Ha” incarnation of the Justice League. It’s a day I remember well, though for more personal reasons than its significance within funnybook history. My paternal grandmother had moved out of our house the month before, returning us to nuclear family status […]

(being an excerpt from my forthcoming bestselling novel and big budget movie adaptation) When it came to my research, I didn’t take any shortcuts. Over the past five years, I’d worked my way down the entire recommended reading list. Danielle Steel, V.C. Andrews, John Jakes, Robert Ludlum, Herman Wouk, James Clavell. Michner. Krantz. Forsyth. L’Amour. […]

Even as my fifth-grade classmates rushed to put childish things behind them, 1983 saw me still enthralled by the plastic treasures of the toy aisle. It’s something I’d hold onto up until my final year of junior high, for a cluster of related reasons. One, I was a shy and awkward nerd who wasn’t in […]