Sporadic Sequential
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Extra! Extra! Extra Extras

JK Parkin was kind enough to invite me to contribute a piece for Blog@Newsarama's summer "I ♥ Comics" feature (and kind enough to grant me an extension when I forgot about my original deadline), and my essay entitled "I ♥ Extras" is up right now. In it I share three of my favorite bonus features, one from each of the three scientifically-established Golden Eras of Extras, but there were many, many more I could have mentioned. Rather than clutter up that piece, though, I thought I'd list some other memorable extras here on my blog as a kind of extras extra:
  1. The footnotes in Finder
  2. Carl Horn's extensive end notes at the back (front?) of each volume of The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service
  3. The tiny little comical corner sketches by Tite Kubo and Takehiko Inoue in Bleach and Vagabond
  4. The cover-to-cover extras in each issue of Eightball
  5. Kaoru Mori's hilarious omake from Emma detailing her obsession with Victorian culture
  6. The comedic 4-koma strips at the end of Alive where manga-ka Tadashi Kawashima and Adachitoka depict humorous alternate takes on serious scenes from the current volume
  7. The evolving character relationship map at the start of each volume of Sgt. Frog
  8. The thorough translation notes at the end of pretty much every Del Rey manga
  9. The full color fold-out maps and posters from Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
  10. Chris Ware's fold-out dust cover jackets for Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid on Earth and McSweeney's Quarterly Concern #13
  11. Colleen Coover's sketch gallery in the Banana Sunday TPB
  12. Joann Sfar's notes and watercolor studies at the end of Klezmer
  13. Jake Tarbox's notes on Japanese culture in comic form from Raijin Comics anthology
  14. The "How This Famous Cover Was Born" feature from the first Superman vs. The Amazing Spider-Man crossover (I think this was the first time I realized that covers might undergo significant revision from original concept to published version)
  15. The fake Victorian advertisements in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, including the pulped Marvel Douche one
  16. Pretty much any pin up gallery of such-and-such's "Most Famous Foes!"
  17. The table-top dioramas included on several of DC's Treasury Edition back covers
  18. Any character sketches or concept art, especially from artists such as Steve Rude, Jill Thompson, and Alan Davis
  19. The paper doll in the Paris TPB
  20. The extensive supplemental documentary material at the end of Project X - The Challengers - Cup Noodle - The Miracle of 8.2 Billion Served - The Magic Noodle, Nissin Cup Noodle, particularly the two-page photo spread of what Chris Sims called "The Official Handbook of the Cup Noodle Universe"
As for the worst extra feature ever, I'd have to award that honor hands-down to the passive-aggressive anti-omake in Gin Tama where creator Hideaki Sorachi wastes space by complaining (in a ridiculously large font) about having to come up with material to fill the bonus pages.

So what extras am I forgetting? What bonus features stand out in your mind as some of the greatest extras to grace the comic book page?

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