Kung Fu Grip! #3B: Super Special Edition

When I was a snot-nosed third grader, I was super envious of one of my classmates who had this folder that he'd decorated with the Marvel Comics Super-Hero stickers. Between 1974 and 1976, the Topps Chewing Gum Company produced a senses-shattering assortment of Marvel hero decals sold in wax packs like baseball cards–complete with a flat pink slab of chalk-flavored bubble gum.

Three decades later, in the fall of 2007, I hand produced a limited edition series of two-hundred covers for the third issue of Kung Fu Grip! (The Stick & Move Special Edition). Featured on the front of each copy was a sticker collage made up of "slaps" that had been sent to me over the years by slap-taggers and street artists from around the world.

Quite often, though, while working on that cover series I would remember that childhood classmate's folder, and I thought about trying to recapture that vintage flavor on one of my sticker collage covers. But I never got around to actually doing it. Now five years later, though, the idea still continued to haunt me.

And so, last week I made up my mind to place a conservative bid on a small collection of Marvel super-hero decals (circa 1975) that I found on Ebay. A few days later, the assortment was mine. Muahahaha!

Now, cuz I don't want you to be super envious, I ain't gonna say just how utterly cheap I got the collection for. But only a few years ago, the price I paid would've been completely unheard of. (Or perhaps it was the hand of fate that tipped the bidding in my favor...)

Anyway, as you can see from the scans included with this post, I wound up producing two "super special collector's edition" covers. One of these will most certainly be kept in my personal collection, but the other will likely be offered for sale at the underground publishing & art show that I plan to curate later this year.

This past January, I decided to put together an exhibit in order to commemorate a decade of my continuous zine production between 2002 and 2012. And whenever I envisioned the covers of my zines on a wall, I would see half-a-dozen copies of the KFG3 special edition also on display. Among them, I could also see a cover like this one hanging on the wall.  When the time comes, it really will.