Hepcat

Here are pictures of some of the Aurora superhero kits from my collection:

This is a travesty: Controversial Women's 800 Metres Chromosome testing to ensure that all athletes competing in Women's events were XX was conducted by the IOC between 1968 and 1996. Such testing was undertaken because of concerns that some countries would resort to cheating of any kind to fatten their medal totals. Chromosone testing was discontinued after 1996 in response to criticism that it was "socially insensitive and humiliating" to competitors that failed the test. The IOC instead implemented a rule in time for the 2012 Olympics which disqualified athletes from female events if they had testosterone levels above 10 nanomoles per liter. The median testosterone level for women track and field athletes was found to be 0.69 nmol/L and the 99th percentile level was 3.08. The normal male Olympic athlete's testosterone range is in the twenties although it can get as high as 38. The 10 level was actually criticized therefore as it set a target at which women steroid abusers could aim in their efforts to cheat. But in response to a legal challenge in 2015 the IAAF had to abandon its testosterone testing of competitors in Women's events. The current standard is therefore whoever wants to compete in Women's events can. Canada's Melissa Bishop set a new Canadian record but finished fourth in the 800 metres behind Caster Semenya, Francine Niyonsaba and Margaret Wambui. Concerns were previously raised about all three of the athletes who finished ahead of Melissa Bishop but the IAAF never disclosed their test results for privacy reasons. Would Melissa have won the Gold had the IOC a strict gender policy for Women's events? I think so. And what's the point of having Women's events in the first place if there are no strict gender testing requirements? If there's to be discrimination on the basis of sex, why then is there no actual discrimination on the basis of sex? What we have now is special status for women - sort of. It's political correctness run amuck is what it is.

Here are photos of some of my Aurora warship kits: The German Wolfpack U-Boat was among the kits I built that suffered my sister's vacuuming depredations.

Here are photos of some of my Aurora warplane kits: The artist responsible for the box art on most of the above model kits.was Jo Kotula. The ones pictured above that I think were among the ones I built as a kid were the Avro Arrow CF-105, MIG-19, Fokker Triplane, Focke-Wulf, Messerschmitt, Lightning, Starfire and Starfighter. The Avro Arrow CF-105 and MIG-19 I had hung from my bedroom ceiling with threads. They escaped my older sister's depredations. The rest which I had on an end table she vacuumed which resulted in some of the tiny parts being sucked into the machine. This broke my heart and put an end to my building of warplane and ship models.

Oh no! The ones you remember were a more modern technology. The ones I had were powered merely by winding a string around them and then flinging them.

No. They must have come out after my time. In the seventies perhaps? Cool! A young pro! What year was this?

Thank you! I have lots more to post. I have to be careful though because I don't want to duplicate things I've already posted.

The best thing about this set released by Fleer in 1965 is actually the wrapper, although the cards themselves are pretty cool as well: The set sold well enough to spawn a sequel; [im]http://i1101.photobucket.com/albums/g434/Balticprince/BaseballWeird-Ohswrapper.jpg[/img]

I haven't thought about that toy in ages. They were hot for one or two of my elementary school years and my friends and I all got one or two as birthday or Christmas gifts. Yes. They were a hot fad for a year or so in 1963(?) in my neck of the woods. All of a sudden they popped up in every corner variety store and five-and-dime such as Woolworth and Kresge's. At 39 cents or so they were fairly cheap and I was able to hit my dad up for the price of one because a buddy of mine had already done the same! That plus the fact that my father had tops himself as a kid back in the old country so he was positively predisposed to this new interest of mine. The first one I bought was a Whistler. Duncan though sent older high school and college kids around to the elementary schools during lunch hour to demonstrate the tricks that could be done with the tops and I really caught the bug. (Can you imagine twenty year olds hanging around elementary school grounds these days? Sad what everybody would think.) Within a few weeks I had graduated to a top-of-the-line Imperial which was better for doing tricks. I never mastered the man-on-the-flying-trapeze or any of the really advanced tricks which involved flinging the top but then catching it in the throwing string before it hit the ground. I tried to find a MOC Duncan top at toy shows all through the eighties and nineties with no success. Since Ebay appeared on the scene though, they've come out of warehouses and attics and I now have several dozen.

Here are pictures of my three Aurora monsters in hot rods kits:

Jack Davis may very well top the list of my favourite comic artists. Here are scans of several of my comics and magazines featuring Jack Davis cover art:

Here are scans of a few of the "Big Daddy" Roth T-shirt designs with colouring courtesy of fellow Roth fanatic Weldonmc that I have in my collection :

Now here in alphabetical order are scans of my twelve favourite DC covers from 1961 that I have in my collection:

Great resource! I wonder how many truly bent Mad collectors have taken on the task of amassing a complete set of 93 paperbacks?

Oh man! Phenomenal score! Lot of really great mags there, and those early Cracked issues are super difficult to find.

That is perhaps the Mad issue at the very top of my most wanted list!

Oh man! Great score! All those issues in the two batches you bought were really nice.

I've had this box of Hawk Weird-Ohs Decals complete with the shipping box for about thirty years: I picked it up at Collector's Corner in Scarborough which specialized in car model kits.

Can anyone report on the Mad Archives? Are they as good as the other Archive editions?

With what issue did Mad magazine go to colour interiors on glossier paper?

The fold-ins began with issue #86. What was the last issue featuring a fold-in? I've found that issues #86 and up in uncreased condition are much tougher to find than the earlier magazine issues. Creased copies are so common that dealers are of course quite careless about penalizing their assigned grades for back cover creases.

And I didn't know of the existence of these books before I read your post!

Here's a scan of the only comic in my collection cover dated May 1956:

The Maine high school year ended in late May and by this time fifty years ago I was headed back on the dog to my home in London. My feeling at the time was one of absolute euphoria! The long(!) ordeal was over and I was free for the summer a month earlier than the June 28th date or so that elementary school classes in London had ended for me previously. Such happiness! I remember very little about the return trip other than the joy I felt. I know that I transferred to another bus in Hamilton this time for the last leg of my journey . It was a bright airy new station and like most was blessed with a newsstand and spinner rack for comics. I deliberately revisited that same station some twenty years later and found it small and uninviting. The newsstand was gone although the luncheonette was still in operation. It wasn't at all appealing though. Its business fluctuated not with the times of arrival or departure of buses but with the arrival of monthly welfare cheques! I asked the waitress. I must have bought a copy of Showcase 63 somewhere on the way back because I remember having very mixed feelings about the Inferior Five concept. I just couldn't rationalize how this parody of a superhero team fit into the DC Universe and it troubled me. The answer was of course yet another one of the multiple Earths but even so up to this point the other Earths lacked this element of zaniness intrinsic to the doings of the Inferior Five. I was also excited by the appearance of the Weather Wizard in the latest issue of Detective Comics: Nonetheless I found it vaguely unsettling. While it never made any sense for villains not to crop up willy nilly all over the place, together with other DC comic readers I had become accustomed to Flash and the other superheroes having their own specific gallery of villains and accepted it as a fact of life. For the Weather Wizard to crop up in a Batman tale therefore seemed not just incredibly innovative but somehow bizarre. Hence the cover which highlighted how very startling this development actually was: I found both the cover and story of the then current Justice League simply uninteresting: I also perused that month's House of Mystery:on the stands: I found the disposable use and throwaway concept for superheroes just plain wrong though, and I didn't buy the issue..I also have a vague recollection of perusing but not buying these other two issues as well: They just weren't as appealing to me as the DC comics were in 1964. Moreover my Fox and the Crow subscription still had a few issues to go and I would be appalled to discover when I got home that the irascible pair had now been reduced to being featured on only half the cover by the execrable Stanley & His Monster: This of course raises the perennial question of whether I'd grown out of comics at the age of fourteen or whether DC's products had slipped in quality over the previous two years. While I personally think that the DC line was not as good in 1966 as it was in 1964, I recognize that the Go-Go Check years were to many including our own Alan DC's new Golden Age. Buying a Mad magazine when embarking on an intercity bus or train trip had become a bit of a tradition for me, but I have no specific recollection of buying this issue which was on the stands at the time: But I know that I bought this issue of The Worst from Mad shortly after getting home: By the way, Alfred E. Neuman's vocalizing consisted of belches. I also perused the then current issue of Drag Cartoons on the stands: I had no inkling that the inclusion of a strip devoted to this Wonder Warthog character constituted the first big break for Gilbert Shelton since it was his first strip in a nationally distributed magazine, but I was intrigued anyway. It looked pretty cool. I was disappointed though that there was no Ollie Ollie Overhead strip by Dennis Ellefson and that some of the stories were reprints I'd seen previously so I didn't buy it. I did buy that month's CARtoons though which was where Dennis Ellefson had gone: It was the Warren horror magazines to which I was really drawn at the time though. I bought both these issue either on my journey home or immediately upon my return: I sent away the funds to subscribe to both that summer and duly received a card from Warren confirming my subscriptions. The incompetent louts then fulfilled only my Eerie subscription! Ironically enough my father approved of my new interest in magazines because he thought they were more "adult" than the comics I had been buying previously and were thus a sign of maturity! Well I did admire the cleavage on display in the Warren mags so I suppose he may have been right in a way.... But nonetheless over three months of blissful idleness awaited me on my return to London. My buddies were still in school for a month though so I initially had to occupy myself by shooting baskets at my local elementary school court. Hey, I'm Lithuanian. It's what we do! I also sprained my left ankle badly for the first time on that court and I've been prone to turning that same ankle ever since. I've had to wear high top running shoes or an ankle brace to be safe from re-injuring that ankle since university if and when I've been doing something involving running or jumping. Riding my first generation Nash wooden skateboard down the driveway into Thames Park was another favoured activity: I was deterred by neither steepness of slope nor potholes since I never wrecked myself falling at that age anyway! In a few weeks time I'd also get this gem of a Monogram slot car kit at a hobby shop on Seven Mile Road just west of the Southfield Expressway in Detroit: Of course I then attempted to run it on the steeply banked track upstairs at Cowan's Hardware on Dundas Street in downtown London but I found the damage I was inflicting on my lovingly assembled slot car rather distressing. I didn't therefore run it often enough to get very good at it. I'd also brought the Cox Spitfire I'd bought at a hobby shop in Wells(?), Maine back with me: I had to send away for a new body for it because crashing it had damaged the old one beyond repair. After rebuilding it though, I never flew it again since I knew I'd just end up destroying it. It made a delightful racket when I fired it up in the house though! Here it is today: And I still had my Duncan spin tops! I never got beyond the Around-the-World trick which consisted of throwing the top behind your back and then catching it in midair in the palm of that throwing hand still spinning. That right there was a pretty good trick of course. I would have to take a first year French course in summer school since I wanted to continue secondary school back in London. That was no problem at all for me since the class was over by 10:30 and I was home with that day's lesson mastered before 1:00 PM. The rest of the day I devoted to hanging out with my buddies on the street or in the park. Even dances Saturday evenings at one of the local elementary schools! I was growing up. Looking back they were good times indeed.

Yes. I'm the lucky owner of seven of the Bethlehem Adventure of the Fly comics! I think they're supposed to be lynx....