Hepcat

Dracula by the book: His castle: And his favourite serving wench at the blood bank:

Here's another house ad I admired that appeared in the very same comics as the "Atom" and "Hawkman" ads above:

Here are three of mine: 14 15 17

DC's Superman and Batman properties are therefore an excellent example of why it's not only not necessary to have expiration dates based on creation dates, but why basing these expiration dates on creation dates is an absolutely harebrained idea. For Superman and Batman to enter the public domain and thus have multiple publishers and thus storylines is beyond ridiculous.

That one I've had for some 25 years: This one though was among my most exciting acquisitions last year: Here's the ad that Revell ran in publications such as Boy's Life in 1964-65 to advertise the two kits:

More from down under:

I believe in the concept of intellectual property rights. The publishing, music and filmmaking industries and the livelihood of the participants in those industries are founded on intellectual property rights. Removing intellectual property rights would almost completely remove anyone's incentive to create such intellectual property. Moreover I don't see how the public's interest would be served if any johnny-come-lately fly-by-night operator could publish "Superman" or "Batman" comics. Legacy, continuity? Those concepts would go completely out the door. (Admittedly DC itself hasn't done much better than a passable job in that regard either.)

I strongly disagree. I don't see how anyone but DC should have the right to Superman and Batman these days.

Here's more from down below:

Aquaman's continuous publication history from the Golden Age right through the Silver Age was bettered only by that of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. Here it is: More Fun Comics 73 (Nov 1941) - 107 (Feb 1946) World's Finest Comics 6 (Summer 1942) Adventure Comics 103 (April 1946) - 206, 208 - 280, 282, 284 (May 1961) Showcase 30 (Feb 1961) - 33 (Aug 1961) Detective Comics 293 (July 1961) - 300 (Feb 1962) Aquaman 1 (Feb 1962) - 56 (April 1971) World's Finest Comics 125 (May 1962) - 133, 135, 137, 139 (Feb 1964) It's not surprising therefore that there's some controversy as to where Aquaman's Silver Age stories began. Some would date that to Adventure Comics 229 which is the issue where the first recurring character, Topo the octopus, was introduced: And coincidentally Adventure Comics 229 has the same October 1956 cover date as Showcase 4. I don't believe that Topo's introduction though was sufficiently important to rate the exalted "first Silver Age" issue designation. I'd argue that Adventure Comics 260 with his origin story kicks off the Silver Age for Aquaman: I myself became a huge fan of Aquaman after picking up a copy of Aquaman 11 in which Queen Mera was introduced: Though I'd bought The Flash 139 in which Professor Zoom the Reverse-Flash was introduced, The Atom 8 featuring the return of Doctor Light and Justice League of America 22 with the second part of the first team-up between the Justice League and the Justice Society the very same day, Aquaman 11 was the issue which induced me to immediately subscribe! But I was then deterred from subscribing to any more comics when issue #12 arrived a few weeks later folded in half. The Aquaman covers and stories were no disappointment though! So taken was Aquaman with the fulsome endowment of his new fiery-haired ally that he actually married her a little over a year after her introduction: A marriage that was neither "imaginary" nor some kind of hoax was a groundbreaking development for a comic superhero at the time So impressed was I with the Aquaman title that Aquaman immediately became my third favourite member of the Justice League after Green Lantern and the Flash, and just above Hawkman and Green Arrow. Nor was I alone in my devotion to the Sea King. The Superman/Aquaman Hour of Adventure cartoon show which premiered 9 September 1967 vaulted Aquaman up as high as the #3 slot within the DC pantheon of superheroes behind only Superman and Batman in the public consciousness: Aquaman even got his own Hasbro board game in 1967 (with Wonder Woman and the Flash getting ones of their own as well)! I find myself deeply troubled by the scene portrayed on the box of the above board game though. (It's my modern day sensibilities I guess.) Why oh why is Aquaman shown slugging his faithful and devoted friend Topo? For Aquaman to slug a fellow sea creature would be completely out of character. A telepathic "Bad Topo. Bad octopus!" would suffice. A very unkind act on the part of the Sea King to be sure, especially given all that Topo had done for him over the years. Somebody doing the licensing at DC was asleep at the switch I guess. Nonetheless a sealed copy of this game can command prices of up to $1500 these days. And his buxom consort Mera together with Wonder Woman, Supergirl and Batgirl gained Super Queen status with the Ideal Toy Company in 1967: Purchasing one of these lovely Mera dolls MIB could set you back $5000 or more these days. Well worth it since it's only money of course! On a final note Aquaman had the coolest day job of any Justice League member, even better than Batman/Bruce Wayne's millionaire playboy post. He had the exclusive distributorship for Hostess snack cakes across the Seven Seas! Hostess snack cakes must have been an integral part of the dietary regimen that allowed Aquaman to maintain his ripped physique and Queen Mera her sleek but still well endowed figure of course!

A Four Color!

Five more of my World's Finest Comics: Such great team-up stories! And with backup stories featuring Green Arrow plus Tommy Tomorrow or then Aquaman!

This was another ad running in the same issues that sparked an unrequited desire in me as a kid: Here's the copy I acquired some 25-30 years ago:

Here are a couple more then (not mine):

Those Collegeville "Big Daddy" Roth costumes are boss cool! There's also a Surfink: (Not mine.) Were you the one to get Ed Roth's autograph on the costume? I never actually met Roth anywhere but I had a couple phone conversations with him circa 2000.

Those are MPC "Daffy" Daddy-Ohs in the second row betwixt the Marx Nutty Mads, are they not?

I believe the Nash are the most highly prized skateboards by collectors. Am I wrong? I have a Shark:

Oh wow! That Standard Plastics Products Davey carrying case is wild cool and highly coveted by Weird-Ohs enthusiasts (including myself).

Ahhhh, so the "Robin" issues were your favourite part of the Star Spangled run! But where have you posted all the collecting stories from your boyhood?

Issue #100!

Wow, those are nice! The #31 is one of my favourite covers from the Golden Age.

One of the house ads that appeared in most of the comics I was buying in the summer of 1963 was this one: Well, yes! It went without saying that I absolutely, positively had to know the origins of the heroic Kid Flash and Elongated Man plus the dastardly villainous Mr. Element and Super Gorilla Grodd. I couldn't find it though at either Ken's or Les' Variety stores since every store didn't necessarily get even one copy of every comic and of course the one copy could have been swiftly snapped up by another kid. I also couldn't find the then current issue of Green Lantern: I "scoured" a whopping total of three or four different variety stores in my neighbourhood plus another three or four outlets downtown trying to find these two comics without any luck. For whatever reason I didn't think to devote an afternoon to riding my bike around to the other eighteen or so variety stores and drug stores that stocked comics in the square mile or so of my school district. In late August though we went on a family trip by train to far off Toronto to visit relatives and to take in the Canadian National Exhibition which was a mega fair even by the standards of American state fairs: To my dismay I didn't succeed in finding either the Flash Annual or the Green Lantern comic in Toronto although admittedly I only checked a couple of variety stores in the immediate High Park neighbourhood where our relatives lived. Oh well. C'est la vie. I have both comics in my present day collection anyway. I did however pick up this nearly three month old gem that had been forgotten and was still on the spinner rack at one of the stores on Bloor Street: The other thing I very clearly remember from that train trip to Toronto was admiring one of the 1963 CFL coins that had been free inside a ten cent bag of either Krun-Chee or Humpty Dumpty Potato Chips that I'd managed to score at either the CN train station or from the vendor that came down the aisles inside the train itself with a metal basket of various goodies (including cigarettes, chips, chocolate bars and Jocko chocolate drink in cans). Here are some pictures of these coins from my present day collection: I already had about five of these CFL coins and I wanted to collect both the CFL coins and the DC comics badly but my funds were very limited and I couldn't do both. The comics won out. Nonetheless being a huge Canadian football fan I started pecking away at completing this 160 coin CFL set back in the early eighties. It took me until 2000 or so to get all 160 coins because the coins were made available in two series and the high numbers ended up being short printed. Worse yet, forty of the short prints seemed to be distributed only regionally so that only the Toronto Argonaut, Hamilton Tiger-Cat, Ottawa Rough Rider and Winnipeg Blue Bomber twenty player team sets were generally available in Ontario. As a further complexity, the coins available within Humpty Dumpty chips had bilingual English and French text on the back while the ones in Krun-Chee chips had English only text. But I like the 1963 CFL coins so much (partially because of my memories of collecting them as a kid) that about ten years ago I decided to break my set up into two, one with unilingual English backs and one with bilingual backs so that I could keep on collecting these little treasures! I'm getting close to completing a double set but I'm still some 53 coins short. Here are a few pics: Bilingual English backs Finding bilingual high numbered coins of the Calgary Stampeders, Edmonton Eskimos and British Columbia Lions is like pulling teeth though.

It was the Aurora monster models that played a pivotal role in sparking what's ended up being a lifelong interest in model kits for me. I would often accompany my mother to the Kresge store on Dundas Street in downtown London: I didn't mind. While mom shopped for boring stuff, there were many other things to keep me occupied - goldfish, budgies, little turtles, bulk candies, cakes and of course the toy department! Then if I played my cards right my mother would treat me to an ice cream in one of those little metal serving bowls at the dinette counter. It must have been sometime in 1962 when I first saw the Aurora Wolf Man model kit. Here's the one from my present day collection: I was captivated! When the Creature kit turned up with the others sometime in 1963, I was really knocked out: But I couldn't imagine my mother buying me one of these kits so I didn't even ask. I rather suspected that I wasn't yet ready for kits as wild and complex as these anyway unlike the two very sophisticated slightly older boys down the street, Fred and Mike, whose Dracula build-up had left me in awe: But DC then stoked my longing for these kits with these two ads on the back covers of their comics hitting the newsstands in September 1963 and January 1964 respectively: As it turned out, before getting any of these kits I managed to score a super cool Creature-Wolf Man wallet by meeting my sales quota of fifteen Globe and Mail newspapers one Saturday morning in the spring of 1964: (Not mine.) But a lot of the other successful paper boys wanted the wallet featuring the Mummy. This influenced me to make the Mummy the first Aurora monster model kit I bought at a hobby shop in Wells, Maine while I was attending boarding school in nearby Kennebunkport in 1965-66: I even painted it, the first model kit I'd tried my hand at painting since the Aurora P-38 Lightning more than two years previously! I used a glossy Testors grey paint on the Mummy himself and metallic green on the snake. I endowed both with red eyes. It actually looked really cool! At almost the same time as the Mummy kit I acquired the Bride of Frankenstein kit because the box art really beckoned me and I had the money that day to buy a kit: The third in the late spring of 1966 was a Frankenstein's Flivver that I bought at Coles Books on Dundas Street a block or so east of the Kresge store in downtown London: That served to put me off the Aurora monster model kits though since it was rather hokey and shoddy (with plastic as opposed to rubber tires!) compared to the other models I'd built. Moreover it was molded in black plastic which I found less amenable to painting and thus less interesting. Besides by this time in 1966 I was in high school and other pursuits were drawing my interest. My best buddy Anthony L. though bought and built a Forgotten Prisoner of Castel-Maré kit in 1967: With respect to painting he got as far as applying some Testors metallic gold enamel to the chains. Painting was a challenge to most of us monster kids back in the day. Here's a close-up from a few years ago of the Aurora portion of my main model kit cabinet:

He was not of course. I've now modified the order in which I listed my preferences to remove the ambiguity.

More Felix the Cat!