While I was taking all of San Diego Comic-Con in, I attended the Comic-Con Goes Plop! panel on Saturday.
Plop! The self-proclaimed “Magazine of Weird Humor” made its debut at DC Comics over 50 years ago. Some of the integral talent involved in the series shared stories and insights about the book’s 24 issue run.
Paul Levitz, the assistant editor for most of series spoke of his time working with Joe Orlando, the book’s editor.
“Lee Marrs (cartoonist, animator and an inductee into the 2026 Eisner Hall of Fame) was introduced to Joe Orlando. Joe hoped to do Mad Magazine for DC Comics. I was approached about a year later and rewrote stories and did penciles,” Marrs shared.
In a pre-recorded message, long-time contributing artis Sergio Aragones displayed some of the original art pages he still had in his possession.
“Before Plop! It was going to be called Black Humor,” Aragones revealed before elaborating on his time on the comic.
“Whenever I go through it, I still laugh,” he said, showing a personally bound collected edition of all the individual issues.
With the introduction of Aragones into the discussion, Levitz expounded on Aragones’ talent.
“It took Sergio, to pencil, ink and come up with a story, 22 minutes. It was most extraordinary as I caught him doing a page.”
Levitz continued his discussion on the book.
“Carmine (Infantino) included the use of the word “weird. There was Weird War, Weird Worlds, Weird Western Tales…it was a descriptive device.”
With this in mind, ‘weird’ was included as a desciptive device for Plop!.
Moderator Jim Thompson (co-chair to the Eisner Hall of Fame judges) finalized the panel with his opinon of the comic, deeming Plop! Issue 1 as possibly its best.
“The covers were extraordinary,” Thompson opined.
