Revenge on Wikipedia: Aristocratic Xtraterrestrial Time-Traveling Thieves

Back around early 2009, I think, I re-read my collection of Aristocratic Xtraterrestrial Time-Traveling Thieves comics, which inspired me to create a Wikipedia page for the series.  It seemed a far better thing to do than to stick up yet another web page that few would see and I would then proceed to not update.  (Not that I'd expect much in the way of updates.)

Normally I visit my Wikipedia watchlist weekly, but in May 2013 I got behind.  When I finally got around to checking near the end of the month, I discovered all my work on the article had been deleted by an editor who decided the series wasn't noteworthy enough. If there was any notice of impending deletion, I missed it.  So much for "keep[ing] useful information ... available on the Internet free of charge, in perpetuity" [http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Mission_statement].

Was the article only of interest to a small group of people? Sure, but it was also the only non-sales link on the first page of Google search results for the topic! In fact, it may have been one of the only web pages to actually give anything beyond bare-bones information on the series. And since it wasn't of wide interest, exactly how much was it costing Wikipedia to leave that article up? I'd guess very, very little. Just because something is not significant does not mean it's not worth preserving.

Don't get me wrong, I like Wikipedia; I use Wikipedia often.  But I think it has some problems.  In this case, the ease of deleting work because one person decided it's wasn't notable enough.

I stick to the fringe of Wikipedia and don't get hung up on its internal politics.  And I'm not going to start now.  I'm just going to re-publish the info and hope people who want to can find it.  I recovered the October 6, 2011 version of the article thanks to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. (How appropriate.) The above text is copyright by me, but the text in this article below this point is attributable to Lee K. Seitz under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, since Wikipedia doesn't want to claim it.

Aristocratic Xtraterrestrial Time-Traveling Thieves

Publication information
Publisher	Comics Interview
Schedule	Bi-monthly
Format	(vol. 1) One-shot (vol. 2) Ongoing
Genre	comic science fiction
Publication date	(vol. 1) August 1986 (vol. 2) February 1987–December 1988
Number of issues	(vol. 2) 12
Creative team
Writer	Henry Vogel
Penciller	Mark Propst
Creators	Mark Propst Henry Vogel David Anthony Kraft
Editor	David Anthony Kraft

Aristocratic Xtraterrestrial Time-Traveling Thieves, abbreviated as X-Thieves, was a comic book created by Mark Propst, Henry Vogel, and David Anthony Kraft and published by Comics Interview. It chronicled the adventures of two thieves, Fred and Bianca, in a futuristic, science fiction setting while often breaking the fourth wall.

Publishing history

Mark Probst and Henry Vogel were waiting to discuss future plans for the ongoing series Southern Knights with David Anthony Kraft in his office. Kraft was tied up on the phone, so Vogel was flipping through Probst's portfolio when he came across a drawing of the two characters who would become the X-Thieves. Vogel asked Probst about their back story, but Probst didn't have one as he'd just drawn them to show off his versatility. Vogel decided the two were high-class art thieves and he and Probst began exchanging ideas. Once Kraft finished his business, he joined in and the three ultimately became co-creators.

The three had been discussing the current trend to name independent comics to parody the name of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, so Vogel initially called them the "Old-Age Extraterrestrial Marsupial Thieves." As the concepts around the two characters took shape, they eventually were renamed to their final title. Since the title was so long, X-Thieves was decided on as the abbreviated version, an obvious play on Marvel's X-Men, which was one of the top-selling comic book titles at the time. This abbreviated title was used on the cover of later issues.

The original idea was to have Fred and Bianca guest star in an issue of Southern Knights, but Kraft said they were so good they should have their own series. Vogel and Probst quickly agreed. To test the waters, a one-shot "micro series" was published first, which introduced the two thieves and most of their recurring foils. Retailers ordered 36,000 copies¹, so a bi-monthly, ongoing series was announced within the one-shot. The Southern Knights then became the guest stars in the first issue of the on-going series. This series lasted a total of twelve issues. Issue #13 was to feature the wedding of the two characters, but it was never published.

Protagonists

• Pansafredicopacog, nicknamed Fred, is a male extraterrestrial known as a s'bwat. He resembles a white, humanoid kangaroo but with a tall, white mane and requires special goggles to see in most environments. Little has been revealed of his origins, but his father is a judge.
• Bianca Arden is a human woman and expert lockpicker. Her origins are also largely unknown, although she did attend and graduate from thief school.
• The Fredmobile is their vehicle, a Tardis 40 Space Yacht. Named in homage to the vehicle flown by The Doctor in Doctor Who, it shares the abilities of being larger inside than out and traveling through space and time (via Way-Back Machine, an homage to Peabody's Improbable History from The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show). It also has the ability to transform into virtually any vehicle, tool, or weapon. Bianca and most others call it the Fredmobile, but Fred himself hates the name and refuses to use it most of the time. He has not come up with a better name, however, so he simply calls it "the car."

Recurring characters

Most of the recurring characters act as somewhat incompetent foils to the two thieves.

• Officer Quinzal Pinback of Interstellar Police (Interpol) is a humanoid male with four arms. He has a tendency to shoot first and ask questions later.
• Clint the Repo Man is a male alien of an unnamed race who continually attempts to repossess the Fredmobile, as the thieves took it without paying for it.
• An unnamed agent of the Interstellar Revenue Service (IRS), who is a male alien of another unnamed race in pursuit of the thieves to collect on unpaid taxes. He is the most competent of Fred and Bianca's enemies, but they continue to escape from or otherwise thwart him.
• The Continuity Inquisition is an organization designed to keep history on track. Under their regulations, any being traveling through time within its own lifetime is to be executed. Because of this, Fred and Bianca usually limit their time travel to their distant past, which includes the late 20th century.

Reprints and collected editions

• Fred and Bianca Valentine's Day Special (reprints vol. 2, #5)
• Fred and Bianca Mother's Day Special (reprints vol. 2, #3)
• X-Thieves Graphic Album #1 (reprints vol. 1, #1 and vol. 2, #1-2)
• X-Thieves Graphic Album #2 (reprints vol. 2, #3-5)
• X-Thieves Graphic Album #3 (reprints vol. 2, #6-8)
• X-Thieves Graphic Album #4 (reprints vol. 2, #9-10)

Notes

1. Vogel, Henry (February 1987), "'X-Thieves' X-tra", Aristocratic Xtraterrestrial Time-Traveling Thieves 2 (1): inside front cover

Categories: American comics titles | One-shot comic titles | Humor comics | Science fiction comics | 1986 comic debuts

My Time as Suite 101's Classic Home Video Games Editor

In mid-1996, I was contacted by Julie Bradshaw to become an "editor" for a new web site called Suite 101. They were seeking people for a variety of topics who would maintain a top 5 list of sites related to the topic and write a weekly article about it. I wasn't sure if I could commit to writing one article a week, so I hemmed and hawed with myself. Months of indecisiveness paid off when they announced the creation of part-time editors. I then quickly put in my application as the "classic home video games" editor. I figured I could handle one article a month. And I did…until my wife got pregnant. I managed to continue my duties for a time, but finally I missed an entire month. I realized I had to resign, perhaps just temporarily, so I did so in February 1998.

In case you haven't guessed, I never went back. It's all rather fuzzy now, but a review of my e-mails helped refresh my memory a bit. I never got much in the way of feedback from Suite 101 users, although the management told me at one point my topic ranked "around 55 out of 205 topics," putting me just out of the top 25%.  I enjoyed the writing and later wrote a regular column for Classic Gamer Magazine, but that's a story for another time. A little extra cash never hurts, either.

As I said above, editors also picked a "top 5" sites related to their topic.  I was running the Classic Video Games Nexus at the time, so the hard part wasn't finding five sites, but figuring out which five to link to.  I no longer have records of that, but I seem to remember including the Nexus as one of the links.  Nobody ever said I had to be completely unbiased.

When I was involved, Suite 101 was owned by i5ive communications inc., a Canadian company. (Yes, they used the name in all lower case.) That's pronounced "I-five" (or "eye five"). I don't know what's happened with it since I left, but Suite 101 still exists today with no mention of that company. (i5ive's old domain now belongs to i5ive Affordable Online Insurance.) While my work for i5ive was work for hire, under the terms of my contract I was free to reproduce the editorials on my own web site, so I'm going to assume that also applies to my blog, a concept that didn't exist back then. Furthermore, Suite 101 removed all the articles I wrote some time after I resigned. That kept stale topics from polluting the ones that were still updated regularly. So given the changes that have happened in the 15 years since I wrote these, I doubt Suite 101 has any record of me working for them any more anyway. Here, then, are my bio and the 16 articles I wrote for Suite 101 on Classic Home Video Games.

• c. late 1996: Autobiography
• November 1996: Classic Home Video Games: An Introduction
• December 2, 1996: How to Start A Classic Video Game Collection Part 1: Picking a System
• December 27, 1996: How to Start a Classic Video Game Collection Part 2: The System Choices - The Atari Trio
• January 17, 1997: The November 1996 editorial was repeated for Suite 101's grand opening.
• February 1, 1997: How to Start a Classic Video Game Collection Part 3: The System Choices - Non-Atari
• February 28, 1997: How to Start a Classic Video Game Collection Part 4: Where to Find Classics
• April 4, 1997: New Games for Classic Systems
• May 2, 1997: Atari 2600 Technical Spotlight
• June 6, 1997: Electronicon is Coming!: Would I Con You?
• July 4, 1997: Is It Live or Is It Emulated? - Part 1: Shareware and Freeware Emulators
• July 18, 1997: Is It Live or Is It Emulated? - Part 2: Commercial and Upcoming Emulators
• August 15, 1997: Thrifting: A Definition
• September 5, 1997: Preview: Atari Gaming HQ
• October 7, 1997: System Spotlight: Magnavox Odyssey
• November 14, 1997: Book Review: Phoenix (2nd Edition)
• December 12, 1997: When is a Combat not a Combat?
• February 13, 1998: Piracy: Collectors' Friend or Foe

Robb Waters Does It Again

Once again, Robb Waters has done Rom art.  This time it's a portrait of the action figure.  It's part of a series of portraits of various superheroes and science fiction characters.  And it's actually from 2011, but I'm just now discovering it.

If you missed it, here are the two previous Robb Waters works featured on the blog.

What Child Is This (Playing with a Rom Action Figure)?

The photo at right, of an elementary school-aged girl posing with a Rom action figure holding his Translator, comes from the November 21, 1979 edition of The (Owosso, Michigan) Argus-Press. It was printed with an article picking some highlights of character dolls in the history of the toy industry, starting with the teddy bear (named for President Theodore Roosevelt with his permission). Titled "Toy industry dates from 1903", the article itself makes no mention of Rom, but does mention electronic games in the final paragraph.

The article was published in several newspapers and has no byline, but in one newspaper is marked "NEA," meaning it was distributed by the Newspaper Enterprise Association, a newspaper syndicate of the day. I found five others in the Google News Archive, but only one of them also included this photo. That was the Merced (California) Sun-Star's November 22, 1979 edition, where it was published as "Children of today the same but toys are changing."

I'd love to know more about this photo and the girl featured in it. In particular because this is one of two photos featuring her and Rom! The other appeared in an article called "Choose Toys, Games that Outlast Holidays." In this photo, however, it's a blond boy who's holding Rom while he plays the Mad Magazine Game with the girl in the first photo. Unfortunately, this article not only lacks a byline, it also doesn't list a syndicate, so there's no indication at all of its origins.

I've found copies of this story in seven papers in the Google News Archive. Again, not all include this photo with the article, but most do. The most interesting thing is the range of dates this article printed. Most were published between November 21 and December 24, 1979, however The Day of New London, Connecticut published it a year later, in November 1980. That was without the photo, but the article still has the part about Rom in it. (According to my somewhat anecdotal research, the Rom action figure was marked down to half-price in 1980 from his 1979 debut.) The prize, however, goes to The Rockmart (Georgia) Journal, which published the article in December 1983, complete with references to TV shows that were canceled by then. Unfortunately, they cut off the article before it got to talking about the Rom action figure.

So, back to the title question: who are these children and where did the photos comes from? Based on the fact that both articles appeared on November 21, 1979, I'm going to guess both were part of a package of articles from NEA. I asked my father, who used to be a newspaper journalist, about it. He told me that, in addition to the comics, editorial cartoons, and opinion columns they syndicated, NEA "also provided packages of feature stories, which may have contained photographs provided by companies whose products were discussed." He also added, "newspapers were not required to identify the material as coming from NEA."

Therefore, my theory is that in November 1979, NEA sent its subscribing newspapers a set of stories on toys for the upcoming Christmas shopping season. I'm betting one of the stories' "sponsors" was Parker Brothers, who also provided several photos of children playing with its products. Besides Rom and the Mad Magazine Game, other Parker Brothers products appearing in either of these stories or the photos included the All the King's Men board game, Merlin electronic game, Stop Thief electronic board game, and Wildfire pinball. (And I'm willing to bet that list of toys has evoked a nostalgic response from most of you guys over 40.)

So if you happen to have a 40-something-year-old friend who did a little modeling for Parker Brothers back in the early '80s, please have them drop me a line. Parker Brothers was headquartered in Salem, Mass., but that may or may not have been where the photos were taken. I'll take any clues I can get right now.

Thanks to my dad for the information he provided about NEA.

Rom Trademark Update

It's late and I'm tired, so I'll make this quick.  Hasbro's latest ROM trademark filings—yes, there are two—are nothing to get too excited about.

They started with eight: four each for ROM and ROM THE SPACEKNIGHT for four different categories of goods and services.  They abandoned all the latter*, but the four for just ROM were approved . . . at different times.  That gave Hasbro only six months to use each in commerce.  That means they had to actually sell, or at least advertise, something called ROM.  However, they're allowed five six-month extensions for a total of three years.  Two of them, the ones for toys and paper goods, have reached their maximum extensions and completely expire in January 2013.

So do you want to guess what the two ROM trademarks Hasbro has re-filed for are?  If you guessed toys and comic books, you nailed it.  I could be wrong, but it appears to me that Hasbro is simply starting the process over for another three years.

One interesting note, however, is that the new trademark applications are much more specific about what they're being filed for.  The first is for "comic books" (without all the other paper goods you could think of) and the second is for "toy action figures and toy robots convertible into other visual toy forms".  So apparently Rom might be made into a Transformer.  Ugh.


* The one for paper goods was abandoned because Marvel trademarked "Spaceknights" for comic books back when the 2000 limited series was published.  If I told you registered trademarks had to be renewed every ten years, you might say, "but that means Marvel's reprinting of it this year is too late!"  And you'd be right. But that's okay, Marvel's submitted a couple of "specimens" in the meantime to keep the trademark active.  Would you care to guess what?  Why, the OHOTMU entries.  One's from the "All-New OHOTMU A-Z" in 2006.  The other one is apparently from last year, but I'd have to dig to find the exact comic it came from.

[Next trademark update]