Michael Jackson has passed away, and the media circus will not abate until the next celebrity scandal or death – perhaps Redmond O’Neal will do something crazy at Farrah Fawcett’s funeral? In the meantime, let’s console ourselves with a quick look at his career as a comic book character. Don’t worry, it won’t take long.

Considering how fast nowadays that comic books – perhaps fueled by a need-for-sales-and-publicity desperation – have embraced Barack Obama and thrown him into the Marvel Universe, the Image Universe and even stuck him back in the barbarian age, you might have thought they’d have equally embraced someone who was once as globally popular as Michael Jackson. Especially since MJ, back when he was alive, had been seen taking his disguised children into a comic book store to do some non-Wednesday shopping. Or even, as Michael Dean wrote in The Comics Journal #270 about how Michael Jackson almost bought Marvel Comics.

You’d be wrong. Michael Jackson’s comic book appearances appear to be few and far between. Yes, he appeared many times in MAD Magazine and CRACKED Magazine, but that should be considered a special category, since those are “magazines” and not comic books. Let’s take a look at the others.

He made a pre-plastic surgery appearance in Marvel Comics’ Spoof #3 (1973), as part of the Jackson 5. The story was co-written by Steve Gerber and Bruce Carlin and illustrated by Henry Scarpelli. This was similar to MAD and Cracked and even Marvel’s Crazy, but Spoof was in comic book format, not a magazine.

Over a decade later, the self-proclaimed King of Pop pops up in Longshot #2 (October 1985) by Ann Nocenti and Art Adams (the real one, not the fake one that Rich Johnson keeps finding over at Bleeding Cool).

In July 1987, Eclipse Comics published Captain Eo (actually known as Eclipse 3-D Special #18), a 3-D comic book, based on the Michael Jackson Disneyland ride that felt a lot like “Infantile Star Wars.”

And then in 1991, Revolutionary Comics released Rock And Roll Comics #36, a bio-comic of Michael Jackson.

And that’s it. Now that he’s shuffled off, the weird little child-man, his musical legacy forever tainted by sex-and-money scandals, had fewer appearances than a Virgin Comics title. (As always, if you find some MJ appearances that I’ve missed, please post in the comments!)

[Artwork: Cover to Spoof #3, gakked from The Grand Comic Book Database]