Wait, how do you magnetize aluminum? Stupid useless Google...

We've long since established that if I find a whole limited series in the quarter (or dollar!) bins I'm pretty much obligated to buy it. (Sometimes even not so whole ones, judging by how many I'm missing a single issue of!) But occasionally I'm willing to grab a single; particularly one as promising as today's book! From 1993, Stanley and His Monster #1, "How to Build a Tree Fort" Written and penciled by Phil Foglio, inks by Chuck Fiala. (With Michael Golden inks on the cover, and ink assists from Jim Aparo and Dennis Janke!)

Rambunctious boy (near) genius Stanley and his pet Spot return this issue; 'Spot' actually being a demon exiled from hell for the crime of being too nice. ('Contaminated by goodness' was how Lucifer might have put it.) And they are smack dab in the middle of DC and what would become Vertigo continuity, as angels Duma and Remiel are now in charge of Hell, after Lucifer quit in Sandman #22! The dismayed angels are agog to realize another demon is missing ("Etrigan is bad enough...") when a hellspawn tells them during roll call, without mentioning Spot's goodness.

That bit of serious foreshadowing aside, the rest of the issue is sheer fun, as Stanley finds in the attic "the Heterodyne Boys Big Book of Fun" (which I took as a riff on Huey, Dewey, and Louie's Junior Woodchucks' Guidebook and Reservoir of Inexhaustible Knowledge) containing everything from how to magnetize aluminum to zeppelin plans to how build a tree fort. Hijinks ensue, along with a couple of pretty good dream sequences, before a certain killjoy shuts 'em down...

I'm going to choose to ignore their appearances in Kevin Smith's Green Arrow, so the only other Stanley & His Monster comic I have was their brief origin in Secret Origins #48. I didn't find it on Comixology either, so it's either going to fall into my lap sometime, or I'm never gonna find it...

EDIT: Still haven't found it, but I guess Invasion of the Space Dinosaurs vs. the Armageddon War of the Gods Crises is a pretty good crossover that didn't happen!