Hibou

When we got to the center of Mahanoy City, PA... I found the dedication and told my wife and my daughter that I had to get a picture of this. My daughter responded with what will now forever be a humorous comment. She said, "What are we doing? We just spent 2 hours in Santa Claus Coal Town." I will always laugh at this... So, to be fair - she was intrigued and very interested in Centralia but she missed the transition where Centralia became Mahanoy City. It's easy to miss if you're half asleep, which she kind of was. And so I took a bunch of pictures here but later my wife had to make this comment to me... she said that she had never taken a more bizarre picture of me before, as I was standing there smiling next to a someone who was hung! I'm sorry - I can't explain it either! I think I was just overwhelmed with this historical trail that I had just spontaneously set up for myself. The Molly Maguires have a rich history and I would encourage everyone to look it up. It's basically the beginning of the labor movement in the US. There's much to cover here if you ever decide to come to this historical part of Pennsylvania! https://pabook.libraries.psu.edu/literary-cultural-heritage-map-pa/feature-articles/legend-molly-maguires

Something happened to me here. I parked the car and told my wife and daughter that I just wanted to get out for a second to walk down this road that you couldn't really access with a regular car... an SUV, yes, but I didn't want to subject my family to any further insanity than I already had by coming up here. So, I got out of the Jeep and started walking down this road... it was so quiet. So peaceful. And then in the distance, I heard it. The far, lonely cry of trains... I took a video of the short walk with the ghostly wail in the distance. It was perfect... Synchronicity. The ghosts shot through me. Or was it The Shadow... Walter B. Gibson? At this moment, with my tired and under the weather daughter in the car, along with my wife who all just wanted to get home... I felt a fantastic pull. A new mission... no, rather a quest with an insane amount of XP points at the tail end! I needed to feel the ghosts of the old St. Nicholas Coal Breaker and the gem of gems, in my mind... The old Huber (Maxwell) Breaker. I found my way back to the car while picking up some sample souvenirs of these Black Diamonds. I apologized for being so long but told them that we were back on our way up north - as were were. We took the small roads through this area and then there it was, what was left of the area that used to be the home of the massive St. Nicholas Coal Breaker. What's left now is what Blaschak purchased off of this site and still operates to this day. I'll certainly have more to add to this later... I took a lot of pictures around this area but it was time to hit the next destination that I felt I needed to see on this 'possessed' day and it was just a short drive ahead in Mahanoy City, PA. That could only be the Molly Maguires!

My daughter's flight wasn't scheduled to arrive until Sunday evening at 7pm, so my wife and I left here just before noon to take the trip down to New Jersey. It was a nice ride down and we got to the airport without any issues. There had been some bad rainstorms that had come through down there but those were ahead of us. The only issue we had was trying to find appropriate parking for the gate we had to be at. When we dropped off my daughter at this same airport back in March, it was much easier because we got there at 3am... this was now 5pm and it was a completely different story down here! It was a little frustrating but we eventually figured it out and then proceeded to wait for our daughter to walk through the doors into the waiting area. That felt like an eternity as my eyes were fixated on those doors like an owl looking into some brush. When I finally caught site of her, I don't think I could run up there any faster... ... it was fantastic! We got out of that airport as quick as we could and packed up her suitcases and left the airport. My daughter was absolutely exhausted after landing from this 13 hour flight. I had originally planned to drive back up into Pennsylvania to rest for the night but we were a little behind schedule now and I thought it would be best just to find a place to stay in Jersey, get something for dinner and park it for the night. That all worked out well and so we all got some early rest... well, sort of. You see, to celebrate this evening, I had found an interesting bottle of Japanese Scotch to go along with what was originally going to be my farewell cigar. I saved it for this moment and this was now my Welcome Home cigar! The next morning my wife and I were rested but my daughter was feeling a little under the weather and still exhausted. We left the hotel around 9am and started our way up to Pennsylvania. As we're driving and my daughter is dozing off from time to time, I started to think that maybe this would be a good time for her to see Centralia which is what I mentioned here on another earlier post. I figured it wasn't anything that she would have to get out of the car to see as the experience of it is simply driving through and viewing on the GPS where the streets... ok, fine. She indicated to us that her mission for the day was to not get out of the car until we got back home to Central NY. Well... unfortunately, she has a crazy father. I got us up to Centralia and showed her 'the town'... the Ghost Town. Like I've stated before, the streets are there, but they no longer have names. You can still make out where houses might've stood some 60 years ago. Where a mailbox might've been. Fire hydrants and steps... ghosts of the past. Ghosts still visible in this lost mining town.

Those four months seemed to just crawl along here back home but for her, she was having an amazing experience continuing her studies while working one day a week at another school where she was teaching English to Japanese children from the ages of 4-8. Some of her interests, outside of her academics, are religion, animals, anime and yes, K-Pop. She visited many temples and did a lot of outdoor activities surrounded by, what I can only describe as, magical gardens! She went to Tokyo with a group as well as a trip to Okinawa. She even won tickets to a K-Pop concert in Tokyo that she went to on her own! It's funny as I told my wife, along with friends and family... I felt more comfortable with her there than I would've if she was here at home and had to walk home from her job at the grocery store at 11pm. I just felt like she was safe there. She explained that the country of Japan seems more serious and structured than here and everyone abides by a common set of rules. I think she liked that even though it was a bit of a departure from what she was used to here. Of course there are more nuances to that but that was just my abbreviated summary. As her time over there was winding down, I was starting to make plans for when we would have to drive back down to Newark, NJ to pick her up as she would be returning in the middle of July. It was here when I decided to trade in our old vehicle and upgrade a bit, seeing how I was planning a couple of trips for us. I scheduled my two vacation weeks to coincide with her flying into NJ... that would use up one week and then I scheduled my second vacation week to coincide with PulpFest which was two weeks after that. My requests for those two weeks were approved, I upgraded to the Shadow-Mobile and started to count down the weeks for when she would return home. Everything was lining up nicely but there would be a slight kink in the plans. At work, our Union contract would expire on July 31st and up to this point, there had been constructive and positive talks. However, two weeks before I was to take my first week off to go down to NJ, negotiations and talks fell apart and there was talk that a strike was now imminent. With this news, I realized that my second vacation week, the trip to PulpFest might have to be shelved. I knew I could only deal with things as they came so I didn't make any plans or reservations for PulpFest, I was just excited to take this week off in the middle of July to pick up my daughter!

I have to flashback to March of this year (2023)... my daughter is about to embark on a 4 month journey to Japan as part of her collegiate studies. In March, we drove her down to Newark, NJ for her flight to Japan. On the way down, from Central NY to Newark, NJ, I stopped at a Cigar's International Superstore in Bethlahem, PA. I bought a nice selection of cigars including this Japanese influenced one.. the Kintsugi from Alec & Bradley. https://www.cigarsinternational.com/p/alec-bradley-kintsugi/2036410/ That was going to be my farewell cigar. Now I know that I've written about this before but this was certainly a trying time for me. The night we arrived in NJ, I ordered us a Margarita Pizza for all of us and I proceeded to find some Ginger Ale for my mixer. I debated going outside to have that cigar against pouring a Scotch and Ginger Ale and staying in the room. Well, I decided to stay in the room as my wife and my daughter spent the entire evening going over last minute preparations on one of the beds. I camped out on the couch on the far end of the room and enjoyed my mixer while I reviewed some of my watched items on eBay that night. There were a couple of books that I was targeting and with some of those, the auctions had ended. Well there was this one book that I was paying very close attention to because it was another of my favorites, but the recent prices jumped so much on this issue that it was getting close to becoming out of my league. One of the auctions that had recently ended on this issue was for a purple label, restored copy. It went for a bit more than I would've paid but there was another copy, this one with a green label or 'Qualified' grade that I was kind of interested in as well. I wasn't sure what I was going to do on this particular book as the timer was ticking down to the last 20 minutes or so. I'm sipping my drink and reflecting on the moment, with my daughter just hours away from getting on a plane to travel 6,713 miles... Of course my mind went back to one of my favorite memories with her, as she would often come into my comic room when I had it set up as such. She would sit with me at the desk chair and would look at all the comics I had on the walls. I would have her pick out her favorite comic and then her second and third and so on... she would always pick this one particular book as her favorite and it made sense to me as it featured a family on the cover and she has always been about her family! So as those thoughts drifted through and kind of settled where appropriate, I decided to throw in a bid for this book that was now minutes away from ending even though what I really wanted to do was take her back home like we did when we escaped the dreaded Canadian Maple TVA Terror Drones back in 2006... I put in a bid and was surprised to see that I won the book... I figured it was just meant to be! So this was more of a sentimental purchase than anything even though it is a book I genuinely like as well. I've owned two copies of this one in the past... one that I purchased raw and sent it in to CGC with it coming back as a 4.0 and another that was a CGC 3.5 in an old blue square label. So this copy, graded as a CGC 2.5 (Qualified) fell a little short of the others but it had just enough eye appeal for my liking. This one was a little different than the other green label copies that I had been seeing. Most of these were missing a page or two but this one was complete - just married pages. Fantastic Four #3 The first issue of the FF with their Costumes, Headquaters and Fantasti-Car along with the 1st appearance of the Miracle Man. What was shocking and provided more evidence that this was meant to be, was that this book that I won (CGC 2.5 Qualified) went for $370 less than the other copy I was watching that ended just two days earlier. That issue was a CGC 1.8 (Restored) with tear seals to cover, cover re-attached, with glue, all 3 edges trimmed and the back cover married. So that was certainly a win for me and it felt right to have this book (what was my daughter's favorite all those years ago) back again. The next morning was one of the most difficult mornings for me that I can remember. I gave her a small Bon Voyage bag that had this last little 'school drawing' inside that I had done for her a couple of nights earlier... But it was this picture that was absolutely crushing. Even today...

The image on the left is from a Canadian Edition of the November 1st, 1936 issue... the one on the right is the same issue but the US Edition...

It was going to be a long drive down to Pittsburgh, PA but I was kind of excited, not only for the Pulp Fest, but because I hadn't been to any location in Western PA. My familiarity was strictly focused around North Eastern Pennsylvania as well as central PA, I just thought it would be nice to semi explore a new section of the state! So now, before I get to this next portion of this journal - I'm going to have to go back in time (no surprise) once again, to set up the subtleties of this weekend. What in the world have I gotten myself into?!

So back to very important (and serious) business... When I discovered this thing called "PulpFest" earlier this year, I made it a point to try and get to this event. One of the first things, was going to be to try and secure this date around my work and get this time off as a vacation week. Once that feat was accomplished, it was interesting to see how everything else just fell in line to make this trip and experience a reality. And that needs to mark the emphasis of this entry. Synchonicity. (For all of us of a certain age, yes, we watched this on our first generation cable TV) So why Synchroncity? Well that was the term that was used in the 80's - twenty years later it was discovered that this was actually the Matrix. Ok, I'm just kidding here but that's exactly what it feels like.

I'll have to break this attempt at continuity for a moment to start to document this incredible weekend that's now winding down. But before I get to that, I have to go back a little bit as apparently I wasn't done with my Elizabeth Olsen / WandaVision post. I mentioned above that this weekend was going to be my first experience going to a pulp convention... Pulp Fest! But before we all made that trip, I received an email from Sideshow offering me a discount on selected items. I curiously looked through their selections and when I saw that the Iron Studios Halloween Wanda statue was included, well... So it was delivered just as we were getting back home but here she is. Details and (much) better pictures here! https://www.sideshow.com/collectibles/marvel-wanda-halloween-Version-iron-studios-909485

In comics, you would have the top third cut off as a remainder for the vendor to receive credit, with vinyl, you would have cut-outs or punched holes / cut corners from LP's designated as discounted LP's but in pulps? I've noticed in some instances where small punch holes are seen in pulp magazine covers. Apologies for another 'newbie' question, but is that an indication of something similar to the above mentioned?

I know this is a very subjective question but in general, are Canadian editions of The Shadow Magazine valued the same as the regular US copies?

Already here - and I brought the cheap Scotch 😂...

In that 1937 episode, which marked the 13th of the premier season, included in the sponsors advertisement, is this little message... "Ladies and Gentleman. An event of unusual interest will be broadcast from this studio at the end of the program." So not only were you held in suspense by this episode of The Shadow... you were also going to be held in suspense from Blue Coal as well! What was this event that was going to be broadcast? Well, as usual, half way through the episode there was the commercial break where the announcer included this important message ... "While you're engaged in last minute preparations for Christmas, don't neglect the health and comfort of your family. Be sure of a cozy, warm home during the holidays by ordering a supply of Blue Coal. No matter how cold or how mild the weather, Blue Coal is the most economical fuel for heating or cooking purposes. Up in the arctic regions where the temperature today is at least 60 degrees below zero, fur traders and trappers are keeping warm with Blue Coal. They've used other fuels, only to find that Blue Coal will keep them warm, more economically than any other fuel. Blue Coal is a Pennsylvania Anthracite. The fuel that burns long and steadily. It is the fuel that furnaces, parlor stoves and cooking ranges in New England, were especially designed to burn. And the finest Pennsylvania Anthracite is Blue Coal - mined by the Glen Alden Coal Company, employing American labor and it is transported by American railroad. Every carload is laboratory tested for purity and uniform size before shipment. Blue Coal comes in all domestic sizes - egg, stove, chestnut and pea size. For economy sake and for greatest comfort in cold weather, insist on Blue Coal. Phone your nearest Blue Coal dealer. You'll find his name listed in the 'where to buy' section, of your classified telephone directory, under the name Blue Coal." Now I don't know if it was just the repetition of the name, but I was beginning to think that this Blue Coal was magic! In case you were wondering about the sizing mentioned in the commercial, this is what he was referring to... Egg: Comparable to a softball in size, egg is one of the largest sizes available (between 2 7/16” and 3 ¼”). Egg is not very common and is often omitted in some classifications. Stove: Stove is equivalent in size to a baseball (between 1 5/8 and 2 7/16”) and is one of the most popular sizes in the large coal segment. Chestnut: Often referred to as nut, the chestnut size is slightly larger than a golf ball (13/16” to 1-5/8”). Pea: Comparable to a quarter (9/16” to 13/16”), the pea finishes up the larger sizes of coal. Anyways, this wasn't the 'event of unusual interest' that was teased at the beginning of this episode... apparently that big announcement was still to come. Right now, however, it was time to get back to see how Daniel Carver was going to be shown the error of his ways during this Christmas season! Finally, at the end of this episode it was time for the unusual event. That event was the announcement that The Shadow radio program was to be given the coveted Pilot Radio Award. The award was presented to Harry A. Smith, president of the Blue Coal Company, who accepted it on behalf of the Glen Alden Company and D.L. & W. (Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad). It was this that made me believe that Blue Coal was so very instrumental in the success of The Shadow radio program and I needed to start digging (underground perhaps) to see just how long this 'marriage' went back. The story or origins of The Shadow went back to 1931 (technically July, 1930... 93 years ago!) with the magazine publishers, Street & Smith but there was another story here that I needed to discover!

Something else started to happen here as well and I can't really tell you why, although I certainly mentioned it when I wrote about the Pennsylvania Anthracite region. I listened to a lot of episodes over a short period of time and perhaps that's where the 'theater of the mind' aspect took an unexpected turn. The best example of this (for me) is within this Shadow episode that aired on December 19th, of 1937, the week before Christmas. This episode is one of my favorites and features Orson Welles as The Shadow / Lamont Cranston and Agnes Moorehead as Margot Lane. It's a take off of Dickens' - A Christmas Carol, but oh, so good!

This was one of the first episodes I listened to... I admit, I was jumping around a lot and not listening to these in any order. Early on, I was more fixated on the names of the episodes rather than the years or seasons and voice actors and actresses. So, just to highlight how everything was synchronized just right at this time, in order to fuel this search I was on, I listened to this episode called The Mark of the Bat. The name certainly stuck out of the playlist I was looking at and with good reason. After I listened to this one, I had to see when it originally aired and had to smile and shake my head when I saw that it was first heard on the air during the last week in July of 1938... 85 years ago this week! At the 5:21 mark, Alexi says to Marie ... "Shadow passed across the moon" "No, no. Bat, like a great bird, it's an omen..." Based on how popular this series was in 1938, I'm pretty sure Bill Finger listened to this one! Again, I listened to this right around the same time that I discovered this 1936 cover of The Shadow Magazine.

Like I said. this new chapter kind of started last November / December (2022) when my interest in the character, The Shadow first sparked. There's so much to write about and it's kind of difficult to sort it all out seeing how we're now 8 months into 2023 but I'll try to fill this in appropriately. The reason why I'm saying it's a little difficult is because I haven't been keeping track of the time frame in which I've acquired certain items. I've accumulated a rather nice assortment of Shadow related memorabilia in addition to some pulps and comics. I'll get to those soon enough but I guess a good starting point will be to go back to what really pulled me into the character, before I started linking all of these other thoughts I've had over the course of the past year. And for that, I'll reference my entry relating to The Shadow that I made back in March of this year. I focused that entry around the visuals of looking through multiple images of The Shadow Magazine pulps and 'seeing' Batman. From that, I discovered the Anthony Tollin article in Alter Ego #176... Now prior to this, I had written about some other related Shadow material but I wasn't being too clear on that... to no surprise. Part of the reason why those posts were so disjointed was because as I was writing this stuff, I became aware that I was very close to writing a screenplay and I had to stop... I was just enjoying it way too much and it sounded so good. I needed to pull it back. Anyways, now that I have a definitive direction I'm going in, I can now try to lay out a more concise layout of this collection of mine and tying into the stories that I'm truly fascinated by as it relates to The Shadow! So yes, the images I was seeing from the pulps, the connections to Batman... that was certainly enough to pull me in but it was actually another media that truly hooked me and that was radio. Being able to take that journey back in time as I would drive through the night, hit just right and set me off on this trail. When this number starts (at the 2:56 mark), it's 1937 and I'm definitely tuning in!

2013 - 2023 Rusty Staples and Sunken Treasure... Or how an owl found his way underwater ... underground. DIGITAL STAPLES : PART II I still find this kind of crazy how this all lined up and rather organically too. Re-reading those first couple of entries from ten years ago, when this nutty journey of mine (or should I say, this nutty journal) started, was a little difficult. What I mean by that, is that I distinctly remember that moment in time - the moment right before I headed underwater. Little did I know that it was to be a metaphor with what was going on in my personal life. Now when I stated that Rob started all of this (in terms of writing this journal) , well maybe that was a bit of hyperbole. Yes, he certainly encouraged me and definitely helped to fuel many of the topics I've written about. Yet, right there in the first few lines of that initial post from ten years... Anyways, that generous act sort of gave me an idea to write about how my collecting focus has evolved from the time I got back into collecting and buying key books to where I am now after finding these boards. Maybe along the way I'll discover why I'm attracted to these types of books so much. From the start, I've been on this path of discovery. Trying to find something... it started as a past reflection which ultimately led to a fascination with underwater themed books and then moon themed books. As things in my life changed, so did my collecting habits until it all kind of started to fall apart. I found a few defibrillators which helped to keep things ticking... In time, the hobby kind of reset itself within me and I admit, some of that was caused by the nonsense of 2020 - 2021. In these past three to four years, I've surpassed the collection I assembled ten years ago in terms of number of books but no where near the quality. The books I've sought out in these past few years are ones that I'm fond of for one reason or another but they're no where near the quality (not speaking of grades, but titles and issues) of the books assembled during my underwater and moon phases. The evidence for that statement is right here in these long departed books... RIP... And so here I am, yet again, embarking on a new journey with new discoveries... trying to find something, although I've already kind of hinted at what it is that I'm searching for. That's probably why I chose the Star Trek quote a few entries back. This new expedition is leading me not underwater but underground. That being said, the collections I've assembled over the years may still pop up in this new venture. For instance Dan Dare and the Fantastic Four are still very important to me as are certain underwater themed books as well as the moon themed books. I've talked about three of those already in the Detective Comics 70, House of Secrets 92 and Daredevil 158 issues. The rest of this year is going to be quite interesting for me and it all started forming back in December of 2022. In a few days I'll be heading down to Pittsburgh, PA for PulpFest 2023 ( https://pulpfest.com/ ) and to be honest, I'm just as excited by this as the first time I went to NYCC with Rob all those years ago. So this is officially the beginning of the next chapter. How an owl found his way underwater ... underground.

2013 (2023 Review... ) Posted July 29, 2013 One aspect of collecting comics is something called 'focus' and it wasn't until I got here that I learned exactly what that was and how helpful that can be in this hobby. With so many publishing companies, genres and ages, it can be overwhelming... both financially and personally. I grew up on late 60's and 70's comics. Mostly Marvel and DC... Looking back, it was almost impossible to not be influenced by the mass marketing that was being launched on the youth of those years. From bedroom sets to sleepwear. Clothing to underwear... Toys. Books. Cartoons. TV shows. And comics... I was mostly into Marvel as a child. My favorites were Spider Man and Captain America. I also liked DC books as well and I loved the Justice League. I think that came about from an addiction to the Super Friends! My parents bought me comics off the rack and sometimes I would buy them with whatever money I saved by various means. My fondest memories though, came from the trips to the 'half-price book store'. It was there that I could find all sorts of odd comics and they would only cost a nickel or sometimes ten cents. Whether they were remaindered and had the cover torn half off or cover-less, it really didn't matter. That's how I found some old horror comics and science fiction comics. Still, at the end of the day it was all about Spider Man, Captain America and the Justice League (Super Friends). It wasn't until 1978 or 1979 that I found my way into an actual comic shop. It was sort of an enigma to me back then as I wasn't sure if it was okay to be in such a shop as a kid. The owner of this comic store looked very much like John Lennon and there was this 'back room' that I wasn't allowed in. Later, I found out that this back room was where he sold Maxfield Parrish artwork as well as more adult oriented comics or underground books... Robert Crumb and such. I became a regular at this shop and as the years advanced into the early 80's, this comic shop became paradise to me and the shop owner (Mike) taught me what would become my introduction to actually 'collecting comics'. He taught me about grading and values and even something called 'speculation'. He also introduced me to other obscure mainstream titles that he thought might appeal to me as well as telling me stories of the earlier history of these comic books. From his favorites... 50's books to SOTI (Seduction Of The Innocent: Wertham) to the comics code. His advice to me was that if I ever found books from the 50's at a garage sale, to buy them all as they were generally hard to find. I was fascinated by these stories and my mother even validated this point as she told me that in the early to mid 50's (when she was a child) she loved to read Superman comics, Harvey, etc. and had a lot of them. Sadly, they were all thrown into the garbage or burned up. I have a feeling that the reason that happened might've been attributed to what was going on in this country courtesy of Dr. Wertham. As I was learning about this, I was also discovering these Byrne/Claremont X-Men comics and then came The New Teen Titans. When TNTT came out, Mike suggested to me that I might want to buy 2 as he thought the book would sell out quickly. He said I could keep one and later sell one. It wasn't too long after TNTT #1 was released that I saw his prediction come true as you now had to pay $12 for a NM copy of that book. I think this is when I officially became a collector. It might've been only a couple of months later but I was able to resell that extra copy of the Teen Titans back to Mike for store credit. I actually made a profit on this comic and I was 11 years old! With some store credit in hand, I turned to Mike for any suggestions as to what else might be good. I didn't know this at the time but he also had an affinity to the works of Bernie Wrightson. I guess most everyone did... So when he showed me some Wrightson Swamp Thing books... well that was a whole new experience and I was definitely hooked! It was in these next few years, through the early 80's, that I seemed to be attracted to so many different types of comics and I was making my own money at this point through delivering newspapers. Soon after, I was old enough to get a part time job at a grocery store so now I had more money which was wonderful because it was around this time that I went to my first local comic convention. If the comic shop was paradise... the comic convention was something even greater! The comic convention actually had Golden Age books! It was in the mid to late 80's that I fell in love with Golden Age books but had to admire them from a distance as I didn't have the kind of money to obtain most of them. If I spent $30 on a nice GA Fawcett book... that was like treating myself to a fancy steak dinner! It always seemed like the books that I was really attracted to, were always out of reach. I think I bought an early Wonder Woman comic in the mid 80's simply because it was affordable, but trying to get a hold of a GA Batman book was almost unheard of back then for a 16 year old making $40 a week! That might've been how I got to collecting in such a hodge-podge manner. Whatever I could afford that looked appealing to me when the opportunity arose. There certainly wasn't a focus back then! ... ... ... And so, this is where it began. Ten years to the day. I just thought it was perfect to rekindle this particular journal today... and probably as it should've been all along.

To be continued...

Let's start this of with a video, shall we?

And now here we are... Where Rob kind of started it. Where I began it, where I sold it... and where I now begin anew. So... ... ... ... 2013 - 2023 Rusty Staples and Sunken Treasure... Or how an owl found his way underwater ... underground. I think I've figured out this journal thing finally and hopefully the 2 other attempts can be deleted in time. Anyways... A few weeks back I met a good friend of mine for lunch and for some strange reason, he had just out of the blue purchased a really cool book for me. Why? He's just like that and an overall good guy. Anyways, that generous act sort of gave me an idea to write about how my collecting focus has evolved from the time I got back into collecting and buying key books to where I am now after finding these boards. Maybe along the way I'll discover why I'm attracted to these types of books so much. And with that, perhaps it will prove to be therapeutic! To start this off I'll post the very book that my friend Rob purchased for me. We couldn't figure out why Pizza Hut found this book to be so important to reprint it and use it as a giveaway...

Say... Does anyone want to see some 90's 'Super-Models' ...? Like Linda Evangelista, Naomi Campbel, Christy Turlington and Cindy Crawford? Oh, just say YES!

What a night! I ended up taking that long trip out to Russia to see Rob again at his (partially owned) bar... I believe it's called the Broken Gull, if memory serves me right. I met more new friendly faces and had a few delicious beers along with the amazing pizza that I had the last time I was down here, although I had to share it this time around... I just wasn't feeling like I could finish the whole thing tonight. I was able to check on the Blue Coal Time Damper in the basement and was happy to see that it was working perfectly. I made a slight adjustment though based on the events of the night. Somehow, someway, a member of the TVA was able to slip in and was able to conduct a full conversation with me and pulled some vital childhood information before I was able to figure out exactly what was going on. I was able to determine that this was just a chance encounter as this person's cloaking device was working flawlessly without a single glitch. If he only knew that he was mere feet away from the only two patrons who had possession of The Book! I have a feeling that this individual (I'll call him Kevin) was on a separate reconnaissance mission and Rob and I were not (or could not be) on his target list for the evening! Needless to say, we made it out without a hitch and upon inspection, the Blue Coal Time Damper was humming right along... cloaking our time and local coordinates! *** BREAKING *** ***ATTENTION*** The aforementioned TVA has been identified without the use of a cloaking device. If such a being is witnessed, initiate evasive maneuvers! Yes, this was a harrowing experience for the both of us but we made it out with stealth and wit. Definitely a learning experience! So... Speaking of experience, my theme song came up once again tonight in our discussions and I thought it would only be appropriate to link it here, once again. I'll call this 'Intermission' for some strange reason ... And so with that, and as a nod to my dear friend, Rob, who had a profound effect on me writing this journal... I'll end it here. THE END. ... ... ... The End to this chapter that set to document 2020, TheEndOfTheWorld along with the insanity that followed in this post-pandemic market where we saw copies of Marvel Two-in-One #62 reach two point five million dollars (sarcastically) due to this infamous spanking panel!

There was one last thing I neglected to add to this Scarlet Witch addition - the finale, of which I found a little late. Yes, I posted this video before but it's an appropriate bookend to this post. As I was browsing through various sites, in search of Elizabeth Olsen / Scarlet Witch memorabilia, I found this trading card. So, to be honest, up to this point, I hadn't even considered that trading cards were a still a thing in the realm of non-sports cards. So this was kind of a shock but it led me to another quest. That resulted in my discovering that Upper Deck had actually released a WandaVision card set earlier this year! Now of course, once I discovered this, I immediately reverted back to the early to mid 90's and bought a box and two booster boxes. I told my wife that I had just set up a retro 'date night' for us... Well. I bought a box from SteelCityCollectibles... Along with a couple of booster boxes from another site... I set aside a Saturday night for my wife and I to open up a bunch of packs - I know, crazy fun, right?! ... but it wasn't long, before we both realized that we really weren't in the 90's any longer. The quality of these cards were sub-par (in my opinion) and the fact that the best chase cards we pulled out of a box and two boosters was Jimmy Woo, only left me with more disappointment. Lesson learned. So that is (now) officially the end of the Scarlet Witch thread within this journal... it was fun, enlightening and certainly, memorable! And so from here, I can continue on with my time travel... I have so many stories! Tomorrow, I'll finally get to meet up with Rob for his birthday and then it's full speed ahead. ... ... "There's no such thing as the unknown—only things temporarily hidden, temporarily not understood.” “Beam me up, Scotty!”

So to close out the Scarlet Witch books, I have these last two to add but they're very recent acquisitions... in part because one of them was just released and is just such a great cover! The new Scarlet Witch series, released this year (2023), is written by Steve Orlando, with cover art by Russell Dauterman and interior art by Sara Pichelli. Sara Pichelli and interior art... It's a really good series although I do have to admit that I'm a few issues behind now. The first issues marked the debut of Darcy Lewis... https://comicbook.com/comics/news/marvel-comics-darcy-lewis-first-appearance-scarlet-witch-2/ Anyways, the first issue featured a bunch of variant cover including this really nice piece by David Nakayama. But the book I had to get was the amazing variant done by Adam Hughes and the reasoning behind that is pretty obvious... after-all, it's an homage cover to John Byrne's West Coast Avengers #56 and the beginning of 'Dark Scarlet Witch'. Of course I had to pair this Adam Hughes book to the original. At the end of the WandaVision series, West Coast Avengers 56 spiked a little in demand and value but it has since cooled off quite a bit and is just another book at this point. Adam Hughes did a phenomenal job on this one (when doesn't he?) but this copy, with the complimentary signature, just sealed the deal for me. Such a great cover! John Byrne : West Coast Avengers 56 from 1990... So that's the end of the story on the arrival of the Hot Toys Scarlet Witch along with a majority of the key books I acquired since the end of the WandaVision series two years ago. It's been fun finding these and adding them to my personal collection and I'm sure there will be more to add in time... especially with the upcoming MCU series featuring Agatha and another with Vision.