Hibou

Okay, back to our regularly scheduled programming... Hopefully. I know I'm jumping all over my timeline here and hopefully I'll find a way to synchronize it again but for now, it's going to be a mess for a while. So back to last weekend, it was my our anniversary, as I explained, and for us... it was a near perfect couple of days. What could've made it better? Well... possibly winning $150,000 on the Game Of Thrones lottery ticket we purchased for $10 in Pennsylvania. With that, we could move out of this house and neighborhood we're currently stuck in. Anyways... While we were in Butler, PA, we didn't have a chance to stop at the thrift store that we did a year before, but we did find a Goodwill nearby to our destination but sadly, there were no treasures to be found there. They had a lot of Pittsburgh Steelers shirts but they were all too small for me. We made our way to our destination and spent almost 9 hours there... again, for us... it was worth it. This was to be the first few days of the last vacation for me for the year. My time off renews again on January 1st of 2025. So right before this quick road-trip of ours, I found an item on eBay that I felt was a 'now or nothing' moment for me and usually that kind of feeling is related to some obscure or rare memorabilia or trinket from the 1930's or 1940's regarding The Shadow. Well, that's exactly what it was and I was determined to win this auction and I knew, well in advance, that this was going to be painful. It was. I kind of had a feeling that we weren't going to be home when this item arrived so I redirected this item to be shipped to my parents house, who were also watching our pup while we took this brief road-trip... our dog loves spending time at my parents house for some reason... Perhaps it's because she gets spoiled so much with fresh blankets and home cooked meals. My mom is awesome. So yeah... I was able to safely obtain this 'grail' (?) of a Shadow collectible and it's none other than the boys version of the Shadow Club badge from the 1930's / 1940's. The girls version of this badge featured the pin back type while the boys version was the screw lock, lapel type. When I got the badge and lightly cleaned it, I really felt like I was now fully part of the Shadow Club but only 80 years in the future! I love knowing that I now own one of these! https://comics.ha.com/itm/premiums/radio/the-shadow-club-silvered-brass-lapel-emblem-girls-version-street-and-smith-1930s-condition-vf/a/122438-15495.s (This HA link was not the one that I found - again, I found a Boy's Version of this badge...)

Today was a perfect autumn day as we spent it going to the local stops... LCS, thrift stores and ended the day by getting some groceries to bring over to our younger daughter. I found a couple of cheap good books at my LCS for $10 each. These were nice to find at a good price (great Katy Keene work in that PEP Comics 92 from 1952!), but my favorite finds were from one of local Goodwill stores here... I couldn't pass up this nearly brand new 1980's Sears hairdryer and quite possibly one of the greatest vinyl finds ever... Stanky & His Pennsylvania Coal Miners! Now of course I couldn't resist this LP (who could?!), but thanks to YT, we can all experience this wonderful moment together. In honor of my dearly departed grandmother, who immigrated from Poland in the 1920's to France... and then to America in the late 1950's... here is the classic Stanky & His Pennsylvania Coal Miners tune, "Who Likes Pierogi?" For the record, my grandmother made THE BEST Pierogi on the planet. (I know... every single pole that might read this would fiercely debate me. As they should!)

Wow... What a week and a half. I had this amazing get together with Rob planned and I'll get into that soon But I have to start off with this amazing BBC recordings that I just found. One of my favorite Depeche Mode tunes... Walking In My Shoes. Dave Gahan's voice sounds so good here!

From Butler, PA we made our way to Hazleton, PA in the wee hours of the morning. Sadly, a stop in Ashley, Pa at the old (remains of the) Huber (BlueCoal) Breaker wasn't in store but simply driving thought that area gave me some renewed adrenaline to complete this trip. I pulled off the highway at the NYS / PA line to take a 30 minute nap but was back on the road in no time to finish off this road trip. We made it back safely and were able to take in some US history which made the trip so worth the time and effort!

Now of course I can't explain this but why should I even have to? This was our Anniversary weekend and we wanted to go west... out to Erie, PA and then south to Butler, PA. No reason whatsoever except for the call of history... Right?! Of course... I can't believe that this timeless classic is now thirty four years old!

Ok... I'll try to piece this weekend together, the best that I can. My wife and I just completed a circumferential tour of New York State and Pennsylvania. This was our trip...

Wow. The 'edit' function on the CGC boards needs to work better. This song has been rolling through my head this entire weekend. Yeah... And yes, I'm summoning the HBO series, CARNIVALE, but I'll get to that later.

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I brought my drone along for this trip and was excited to let it fly through its first test run even if I was incredibly anxious about its first flight above water... even though it wasn't perfect, I was able to get a few pictures. These are those test pics…

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Now of course I have to fine tune the resolution on the camera and such but for its first dry run, I'll call this a success.

I'll have to continue from here, in time...

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This would have been awesome to have experienced in Real Time...

Of course my 'drive by' post from Friday night was cryptic (as usual) but it was written as I was enjoying one of the most relaxing nights I've had in a while. My wife and I decided to go on a road trip this weekend and I found a very nice spot to rent a cabin / motel for the day just on the New York / Pennsylvania border on Lake Erie. We got there early enough in the afternoon on Friday so we had time to find a local grocery store and bought some dinner to heat up back at the motel. You know you won the day when you can get a meal for two, consisting of chicken, mashed potatoes with gravy, vegetables and a portion of Vegetable lasagna for under $8.00. We brought that back to heat up, watched the news and then went out on the deck to sit under the stars and enjoy the peace. I brought a cigar and some scotch to enjoy as the temperatures along the lake dipped into the 50's. Probably my favorite (affordable) go to scotch is Islay Mist 8 year. Created in 1927, it's kind of a hidden gem in my opinion if you're a fan of peated scotch. Although blended, I've read somewhere that around 80% of it is Laphroaig... like I said, for the price, it's almost perfect if this kind of scotch is your thing. Especially on a crisp, autumn night. My wife and I spent some time outside just talking and shortly we heard the tide come in on the lake. I told her it was the ghost of the Edmund Fitzgerald even though sadly we know that it never made it past Lake Superior. And yes, we're both fans of Gordon Lightfoot ... Eventually my wife said she was very tired and was going to go to sleep. I had my cigar and drink to finish up as I sat under the company of the numerous stars, constellations, and additionally, the sounds of the crashing waves. It was just so peaceful. Of course my mind drifted and I thought about our destination in the morning as we would continue on with our road trip... I couldn't help but to retrace my numerous steps over the course of the past year. It got to me a bit.

I've made my way back here to Western, Pennsylvania. As much as I would like to try and retrace those steps, rewind that clock, I know it's not going to change anything. Sitting here off of Lake Erie enjoying the sounds of the crashing waves... the start of a great weekend.

... so much to write about and so little time. I hope to catch up later this week. I'm very excited about my latest find / purchase - a key component to my growing Shadow collection!

Weird... I just remembered something from when I first drew that Batman and "The Bowery Bum" picture... (Okay, maybe I just wanted to hear one of my favorite tunes again... ) The memory is this... I had just finished the Batman drawing and I showed it to my (then) girlfriend and expressed what I was most pleased at. Her response? "Don't think you can't draw knee caps, ever again!" Why do we remember such mundane?!

Well this is depressing. I was just about to start a round of House Cleaning posts to try and catch up but I just found out that a little over a week ago, John Cassady had passed. He was only 52 and such a talented artist. I remember being blown away by his rendering of Captain America in the series from 2002, 22 years ago. The draughtsman quality of his line seemed to be second to none and it had a huge impact on me in terms of how much information can be relayed to the viewer with such few lines. The impact wasn't on the John Byrne level... (I love this!) ... but it was significant nonetheless. Even though I haven't done a lot of drawing lately, I can look back and see some of the influences of that in my own work. So yes, this was very depressing to hear of his passing but it might fill in a little detail to a story that grabbed the community's attention back in March. According to John's sister, Robin, he might have had a brain condition that led up to his ultimate passing. He had a heart attack earlier this month but that's when it was revealed that something else might have been occurring... As I mentioned, this comic cover by John Cassaday created a bit of a stir for many reasons. More on the discussion of that can be found here... https://bleedingcool.com/comics/john-cassaday-draws-one-beast-of-an-x-force-cover/ In this article, one of the comments mentioned, suggests that his style had evolved recently and that assertion can be backed up by this cover he did last year. (Above original art is available for sale here on this site - https://www.albertmoy.com/GalleryPiece.asp?Piece=20447&ArtistId=506&Details=&From=TDetail&Mag=% ) I really like that John featured the 'Cannonball Special' on this cover. We'll never know the story behind any of this now, sadly. This kind of hits as hard as Neal's passing and I have to tell you, my heart jumped when I typed in John Byrne's name into Google and saw that the artist had passed away at the age of 83. ... ... ... That was the Scottish John Byrne. Rest in Peace, sir... https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/dec/01/john-byrne-renowned-playwright-artist-dies-aged-83 https://petehocking.org/2023/12/24/john-byrne-a-brief-introduction/ So, tonight I'll scan some books that I've purchased, I'll take some pictures of all of the Shadow related material I found in these past couple of months... and I'll be sure to raise a glass to a dearly departed artist. (I know I haven't paid my proper respects to Ramona Fradon, but I certainly will in time... that one was tough on me. Very tough.) But for tonight - Rest in Peace, John Cassaday. Your art and dedication to this field will forever be remembered and personally, I hate that there are mentions and articles out there that refer to you as a 'Cartoonist'. What I just wrote, brings to mind one of my first few posts of my journal, Rusty Staples and Sunken Treasure... ... thank you CGC for preserving that. Something I wrote and drew 35 years ago... I raise a toast to John Cassaday... A true American artist.

Image comics released another new Universal Monsters title and this one is Frankenstein! This was solid - good writing, good artwork, all by Michael Walsh. This is his cover but as with the Creature of the Black Lagoon series, there are some great variant covers as well! I was happy to find that World's Unknown #3 as I have a slabbed copy of that one but I wanted to read the story. So today wasn't spectacular in terms of comic finds but this was the store where I got that Wonder Woman #83 and that was one of my favorite recent finds.

There was a flash sale at the LCS that Rob introduced me to so I stopped in today but only found a few books, I wasn't really looking for anything specific though and had to save a little money after overspending last weekend at my other LCS... I'll get to that purchase a little later and was super excited about it. I probably should've flipped through that Dazzler before purchasing it but I liked the cover a lot on this one... (Ashley Winter variant) The writer (Jason Loo) is a huge fan of Dazzler so I get the enthusiasm (he even wrote full songs for the character to sing in the story) but it's probably not a series I'll continue buying. Dazzler had a whole fight against the antagonist, Scorpia while singing her song at a concert. I guess that's different.

What a week... or rather, what a couple of weeks! In time, hopefully I'll get together with my best friend, Rob as there's much to talk about. I have some time off next month so we'll see. Current events and news has me feeling pretty anxious these days but I haven't been able to put my finger on it. One of the best words of advice Rob ever gave me was (paraphrasing) "not to care". Now I don't mean that flippantly, rather to try and not let the problems of the day to day get to you despite the constant echoing. That is good advice... (This song has been running through my head for a few weeks now) Anyway, I'm totally obsessed with these AI videos and as I've said before, it's only a matter of years before AI will be producing Marvel and DC movies and TV limited series shows. Speaking of, I just watched the first episode of The Penguin and wow... wow. It looks great. Interestingly, I looked up who directed it and saw that Matt Reeves' The Batman (which I still think is the best since '89) probably had a big influence on Craig Zobel's vision for The Penguin. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-features/the-penguin-director-colin-farrell-1236007407/

Now I know that I just have to add this... So this hasn't been my only questionable purchase within the the past year and a half. Just before David's passing, I ordered one of these as I wanted to make him laugh with my newly acquired Zombie Apocalypse distractor gun... I showed this to Rob and yes, he laughed along with the quip, "Why the hell did you need that?!" Well... Zombie Apocalypse, or course. Again... YMMV.

So... I covered that part at least and here is my questionable purchase. Look... I know very well that politics are not allowed here but would it be wrong for me to say that this US election season has me very, very nervous? Well, that's my justification (why not?) for buying this at this point in our time stream. YMMV