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Michael Jackson’s strange dance through the comics world

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Captain EO is gone, but he leaves behind a mountain of pop culture artifacts. Here are a few comic books that had Michael Jackson as a backbeat.

The 1973 issue of Spoof (pictured) was a fun, of-the-moment commentary on generational politics, with Spiro Agnew and Richard Nixon bemoaning the lowering of the voting age. The best art here is, of course, the ‘Dazzler’ cover by Bill Sienkiewicz, who was such a jolting arrival on the comics scene in the 1980s with his covers on ‘Moon Knight,’ ‘The New Mutants’ and other titles.

These are just a few of the comics featuring the Gloved One (there was also an Jackson-meets-Jonathan-Swift concept cover of ‘Rock ‘N’ Roll Comics,’ for instance) For further reading, Comicboook.com has a list of M.J. moments in comics history and, most fascinating of all, there’s this well-executed 2005 article from the Comics Journal about the strange business saga of Marvel Comics and Stan Lee and how that saga could have been even more surreal considering Jackson’s flirtation with buying the comics company.

-- Geoff Boucher

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