The 1990 2018 Marvel Age Calendar: One Singular Sensation

Calendars! You can't live with 'em, you can't live without 'em. And I, as shown by my falling behind a few months last year while trying to bring you calendars at the top of every month, can't keep up with 'em. Let's try again harder this year, shall we? After all, calendar months come every...well, month at a pre-determined time, and it shouldn't be that hard.

I do hope you got a nice calendar or two for Christmas, or, if you're anything like me, wait until after the holidays and buy them for half price. 'Course by then the selection is pretty spare and you have to take your chances that the one you're waiting for will be sold out. Hey, there's no Doctor Who 2018 calendar, but there is a lovely calendar I picked up based on Doctors, the Korean soap opera, and there's rather fewer Daleks and Cybermen and rather quite a bit more romantic crushes and disappointed parents. Geez, Hye-Jung! Be a doctor already!

But as Wolverine will show you, sometimes calendars are confusing and difficult to use, inspiring anger and resentment over their smug thirty-to-thiorty-one day a page format and their self-satisfied proclamation of Canadian holidays that we don't get to take off. National Gordon Lightfoot Day is on November 17? Well, thanks so much, Maple Syrups of the North Calendar 2018, but I don't get that day off from work or school or whatever it is I do all day! I curse at thee! Even though you are scratch and sniff. Yum.


Panels from Wolverine (1988 series) #49 (December 1991), script by Larry Hama, pencils by Marc Silvestri, inks by Hilary Barta and Dan Green, colors by Steve Buccellato, letters by Pat Brosseau
Anyway, my point (and I do have one) is that this year for 2018 I do not possess either a Marvel or a DC Comics calendar that could be used for 2018. The year I was looking for was 1979, technically identical to 2018, but I could not find affordable copies of either Superman: The Movie 1979 Calendar or The 1979 Mighty Marvel Incredible Hulk Calendar. That Hulk calendar is really pricey on eBay! Why so expensive, Bruce? Price of purple pants go up again this year? (You can see pages from the '79 Hulk calendar over at the Big Glee blog, however, so take your peepers over there and open 'em up wide.) On the other hand, I could offer you, straight from England, this weird-ass sideways 1979 Roy of the Rovers calendar which only goes up to August because all I could find was the cover image. Keep track of all your football club matches and brawls using this calendar, the official favorite of the blonde guy in red and yellow (the Birmingham Batsons?) and that guy in blue who looks like HOLY COW IS THAT '70S FOOTBALL HITLER?!?


Cover of Roy of the Rovers (1988 series) #118 (Fleetway, 13 January 1979), artist uncredited
Maybe you'd prefer to see the tall and skinny Grendel. I'm sorry, I'll read that again. The tall and skinny Grendel 2001 calendar.


"January" in Grendel 2001 calendar, text and paintings by Matt Wagner
Man, I'm not allowed to look at that one too long, not with those two big pointy things.

Suitable for all ages, though, is this dandy it-also-works-in-2018 1962 Batman Pin-Up Year-at-a-Glance Calendar, which hangs in the very Batcave itself because Alfred was tired of Bruce not flipping over the pages at the end of the month, preferring to "detect" what was going to be the picture rather than just finding it out. Curiously, Bruce was nearly always right.

"The 1962 Batman and Robin Calendar" from Batman Annual (1961 series) #2 (Winter 1961)
(Click picture to It's Big for You in '62-size)
Please excuse the scanning fold that goes across the middle of the calendar because they didn't print it in the exact center of the comic. We like to refer to these months as "The Months Robin and Batwoman's Heads Fell Off."


But y'know, the calendar I can provide for ya all year 'long is the 1990 Marvel Age Calendar, which lines up perfectly with our ultra-modern, jet-packed 2018, so we can relive those wondrous days of multiple cover gimmicks and short-lived, quickly cancelled Marvel series. Ah, it won't never be like that again!

"The 1990 Marvel Age Calendar: January" from Marvel Age #86 (March, 1990); text by Chris Eliopolous and Barry Dutter, art by Ron Zalme, colors by Gergory Wright
(Click picture to Janufize)
Yes, once again the Marvel Age calendar features Forbush-Man sidebars and color highlight of lots of birthdays for Marvel writers and artists, so be sure to bake a cake every day. It also spotlights the usual very corny humor, like this nod towards Johnny Carson's famous "Carnac the Psychic" routine:


Ah, remenber when all it took for a guy to be disqualified from running for the Presidency was being unable to spell "potato?" AHHHHHHHHH I MISS THE NINETIES PLEASE BRING 'EM BACK NOW