The Complete Pacific Comics Re-Reading Blog Series presents:
The Complete Rog 2000
by John Byrne, Nicola Cuti &c
The Complete Rog 2000 (1982) #1
This is a 40 page magazine sized black and white comic book printed on crisp white paper, reprinting John Byrne’s fanzine creation Rog 2000.
It’s a bit odd that they reprinted the material in this fashion, since it originally was published in standard comic book size (and form factor).
Roger Stern and Nicola Cuti both provide introductions.
The first story ran in a fanzine, and it reads as if it ran in a fanzine. I realise that this is just a bunch of kids goofing off, but it’s not, like, good? You know?
Well, except that joke.
The rest of the book is reprints from E-Man, published (and apparently copyright) Carlton Comics. Rog 2000 ran as a back-up feature, and Cuti (the E-Man writer) wrote the stories. These are more coherent, but there isn’t that much more to recommend them. The art chops Byrne got later that earned him a pretty big fan following aren’t much in effect yet.
The jokes are pretty corny, but we’ve all seen worse, right?
That one even made me chuckle.
Hey, I’m easy.
So there you go: A $3 (an outrageous price at the time) reprinting of stuff that didn’t sell in the first place.
I guess Pacific Comics thought they could make some money out of it now? Because it’s hard to imagine that there’s a non-mercenary reason for dumping this in the marketplace.
In Amazing Heroes Preview Special, Fantagraphics announced that they were going to do a six issue (!) reprinting of the series:
Writtenby NICOLA CUTI; Illustrated by JOHN
BYRNE; edited GARY GROTH
6.issue series; 32 full-color pages; $2.00; bi-
monthly from FANTAGRAPHICS BOOKS
“Essentially, what I want to dot” says
Rog-2000 cover artist Don Simpson, “is
bring Rog-2000 back to the basics.”
Simpson, who has agreed to do the
covers for Fantagraphics Booß reprint-
ings of the old John Byrne-created
Charlton series, feels that the earliest
Rog-2000 stories-the ones reprinted in
Rog-2000 the “real” Rog-2000
stories and he’s basing his interpre-
tation of the character cn that.
This didn’t happen, thankfully, but Fantagraphics did a Doomsday Squad reprinting (another Byrne Carlton series) instead.
I was unable to find any contemporaneous reviews, but here’s a recent one:
A pretty nice package collecting all of the Rog 2000 stories in one place. The series is not a serious comic by no means, but it is highly entertaining and a chance to see John Byrne’s early artwork before he hit it big at Marvel Comics, and later at DC Comics.
Why thankfully? I never read any of the ROG stories, actually. My vow to take the character “back to basics” was a jibe at Byrne claiming he was taking Superman back to basics. I seem to recall Byrne pulling out of the deal with Fantagraphics because of something I said about him always taking characters back to basics (nstead of in new, original directions) in an Amazing Heroes interview. Touchy guy!
A few points:
1) John Byrne was hugely popular at this time (circa 1981-1982 when this magazine-size ROG 2000 reprint collection came out. So it made perfect sense for Pacific Comics to reprint these stories (reprinted from where they appeared as back-ups in E-MAN 6, 7, and 9, 10, in 1975, and the other material from the fanzine CPL (Contemporary Pictorial Literature).
My other comics-reader friends at the time nicknamed him “John Byrne, god of gods” for his enormous stature in the field at the time, and his alleged ego, where he would just on a whim completely scrap the continuity and history of series he worked on, like SUPERMAN and FF.
I don’t know Byrne personally to say he truly was an ego to be reckoned with at the time, but that was his reputation. I was at a Miami convention, where some overly eager young fan was talking to him at his artist table, and instead of appreciating the kid’s affection for his work while Byrne was drawing a sketch, Byrne irrittatedly said to the kid: “You’re standing in my light.”
I found that a bit offputting, that he didn’t have more appreciation for his fans, for a kid who just adored his work. But I also believe you can catch any comics creator on a bad day, and just because they’re that way on one day, they might be a great guy any other day you’d meet them.
2) I loved, and still love, the ROG 2000 series, and this particular collection of it. I think many do, certainly many others I’ve spoken with. That wraparound cover is an example of Byrne at the peak of his talent, and beautifully colored, presumably by Steve Oliff. Poster-worthy. And if capionless, maybe even suitable for framing.
In one way, nice to have in black and white in this form, closer to the original art, and in magazine size, but I still craved to see them in color, and I eventually bought the original issues to have them in that form.
3) IMPORTANT NOTE: There are two printings of this Pacific one-shot ROG 2000 issue. The first has the centerfold pages on the story “Wuthering Heights” out of order.
A later 2nd printing corrected the error and has all he pages in the correct order.
4) The DOOMSDAY +1 series reprint by Fantagraphics was in 7 issues from Aug 1986-June 1987. This was in color and with better offset printing. It reprints issues 1-6 (also reprinted as issues 7-12 of the original series) and the 7th Fantagraphics issue has a less seen final story, that originally ran in 2 parts in CHARLETON BULLSEYE issues 4 (11 pages) and 5 (11 pages).
5) I’d love to know what happened to the ROG 2000 reprint planned and advertised by Fantagraphics in DOOMSDAY SQUAD 7, June 1987, as “a deluxe two-issue series” reprinting the Cuti and Byrne stories.
And I was disappointed this was for whatever reason never published, because I would have loved to see these reprinted in color with offset printing. I’d still love to know the reason these were advertised and then never released.
But in the same months, many Fantagraphics titles went from color to black and white. So apparently Fantagraphics had a cash flow and solvency problem, that killed the planned reprint book, and perhaps killed other Fantagraphics books.
This was the period Michael Fleisher was suing Harlan Ellison, Gary Groth and Fantagraphics, and they ran an ANYTHING GOES six-issue anthology series where writers and artists contributed free work, to help Fantagraphics raise money to pay their legal costs and stay in business.
So while I don’t know the exact reason the 2-issue ROG 2000 color reprint series was not published by Fantagraaphics, I suspect that is the reason.
(Michael Fleisher lost his lawsuit, by the way. He alleged that the Ellison/Groth interview in COMICS JOURNAL 53 had damaged his reputation and cost him income. But it turned out records presented in court showed Fleisher’s income had actually doubled from 1980-1987, over the period the lawsuit was filed and finally went to trial.)
Harlan Ellison and Michael Fleisher both died within a few months of each other, in 2018.