Body Crime No. 174-Full Issue (6 modcomics and more!)

Okay, I'm going to go out on a limb, and call this a first for the site: a complete, 52-page issue of a TG Comics title. I say "out on a limb," because femur's "Honeymoon of Horror" is 24 pages (of awesomeness!), which is pretty much "full length" by near-contemporary standards. And Suzanne de Nimes has some pretty lengthy ones as well. But still ... Fifty-two pages, between a front cover and a back cover!

And what do you get for that? You get six brand-new "Body Crime" tales, three brand-new ads, and a new cover. If you start here you can click through each page in sequence. Or, the links below will take you to individual stories:

Upward Mobility: The Medallion of Zulo is the secret ingredient in a witches' brew of lust, greed, and vengeance!

The Bell System Body Swap: The man was dead; but who exactly died in his body? Bobbi and Michel Jensen, amateur detectives, unravel a skein of long-distance shenanigans!

Double In-femme-nity: Gil Manning, body-crime detective, investigates a sinister sanitarium, where anyone can check in, but only dames can check out!

The Thesmophorian Addendum!: Interpol battles an anarchist conspiracy to engulf the world in gender-role confusion!

The Napoleon of Body-Crime: In this special Body Crime?Superman crossover, the former Man of Steel saves some old friends in trouble, and uncovers the amazing truth behind The Great Shift!

The Smuggler Switch-Off, Part 5: Vic Kanone returns to San Francisco, and finds that even more of his old friends have had their bodies stolen by runaway sex slaves!

I have also added eleven new "Body Crime" modcovers and five new Pulps and Paperbacks; these showcase content related to the modcomics in the new issue. Of these sixteen modcovers, fifteen of them will be new to you!

Finally, a big "Thank you" and acknowledgement to the work of Suzanne de Nimes, whose "Jill Trent" was a major influence on "The Bell System Body Swap." I couldn't have written "TBSBS," which palely imitates the "She-Sir Science Sleuth" style, without that terrific modcomic as a model and inspiration.

Very good. Excellent work with the modified comics, and the scripts are very deadpan funny.

WOW! What a contribution! Thanks for the effort! And the results.! I'm being greedy here ( what else is new!) And I am hoping for your superman/Lois covers & or comics.

Very nice! That must have taken quite a while to do. It as seamless as something like this can be and you have a wonderfully sense of humor.

Ooh, this is great! Well, actually, I haven't read the comic yet - I will soon, but just wanted to give you some quick kudos first on the effort!

I've always been attracted primarily to "long-form" recaps, and hoped more people would take a stab at them. It's a lot of work, but I think the payoff's also a lot bigger when you can pull together a full story.

Detailed feedback to come!

I'm still savoring these stories slowly, but, wow, "Upward Mobility" was great! At first, once I figured out how much body-swapping the story would involve, I figured things would get too confusing, with panels being pressed into service of a story they couldn't really handle.

But it all works out beautifully - not too hard to follow, and everybody actually seems to be "in character," with dialogue and art matching up well.

Good job on the technical side, too, with the colors matching, and the recaptioning not looking too obvious. Only one minor quibble, the blue used in the captions looks slightly off. One thing I usually try to do is grab colors (with Paint Shop Pro's "eye dropper") for the captions that actually appear in the art on the same page. That way they look more "realistic," like colors the four-color printing method would actually produce.

I love the "Back Matter" too - the Body Suit ad is particularly well-produced. I can't figure out where you got the "progressive boy-to-girl" images from - looks like they must have always been that way!

Thanks for the nice things said about "Upward Mobility"?comments that are especially gratifying considering the source.

Notes, reactions, explanations, excuses follow:

I'm not sure why the caption color wandered from the original. I usually try to get very close matches. Probably it was sheer, mindless carelessness on my part early in the adaptation process, though I kind of hope it was a byproduct of some later coloring changes. "UM" came from a different book than the other stories in that "Body Crime" issue, and femur and Andi can testify to how much hair-tugging I did while trying to bring it into some kind of consistency by tweaking color filters. But, yeah, probably carelessness on my part.

Still, if that's the big quibble, I am astonished. I did SO MUCH EDITING to make that particular story. The original comic?which you can find here?was twice as long. I'm glad people expect comics from this period to be a little sloppy, because that's the only excuse for some of the "coloring mistakes" that emerged after I moved panels around. I also reused at least one panel at two different places, did lots of element combining into single panels, and at one harrowing spot had to take the corner of one panel and quadruple it in size to turn it into a plot-necessary image. I was also saved by the fact that two characters in the original were practically look-alikes (well, they were cousins in the original story) so I could use them to portray a single character in my revision. Does the story still make sense considering stuff like that? I'm glad if it does! (Comparison of page 2 of the original with page 2 of my modcomic with the two attachments.)

The progressive change images in the "Body by Fisher" mini-ad were just photoshops of the original two faces. I copied and squeezed features. I thought the results very amateurish myself, and hoped the usual sloppiness in contemporaneous material would cover for it.

Jailbird's Romance Page 2

Upward Mobility Page 2

I found that re-scripting a comic strip is a greater challenge than doing a 'one off' so well done,
Helen