Hepcat

In general I really like all Carmine Infantino's Mystery in Space covers. But they only started with issue #61. Up to #60 Gil Kane pencilled the covers, and I'd rate the #55 wash tone the worst: (Not mine.) While the monster is decent, Adam Strange and especially Alanna are dreadfully rendered. Here's how Adam Strange and Alanna should look: And Wonder Woman 108? So dreadful that I don't even care to add it to my collection!

Timmy rules! And I don't necessarily have any objection to grey tone covers. It's just that there are three DC superhero ones - a Wonder Woman, Mystery in Space and Green Lantern - that I think are really lousy.

Repairing and re-entering a post from 1 March 2018: After the draconian law banning pinball machines in Canada was repealed in January 1976, two particular machines acted to set me on the path to permanent pinball degeneracy. These were both to be found at the York Hotel in downtown London directly across the street from the CNR passenger train station. The first was the Wizard released by Bally in 1975: A very well designed game, it sold over 10,000 units which smashed Bally's previous production record of 5254 for a pinball machine. I had the game completely mastered and built up a total of nineteen free games on a single quarter one afternoon before I succumbed to fatigue.The other game was in the other room by the old fashioned greasy spoon lunch counter attached to the York Hotel. (How I miss those greasy spoons now!) It was the Royal Flush machine which Gottlieb released in 1976: I had my best run ever on this machine late one afternoon. I'd hit everything and I had the machine lit up like a Xmas tree. I was already up to five or six free games but I wasn't even targeting the free game hole. My timing was so good that I was hitting the silver ball hard enough to propel it off the glass and I just wanted to keep hitting. And then believe it or not but a hippie watching me play with astonishment leaned on the machine so hard that he tilted it thus ending my best run of all time! I wanted to strangle him. So no, I've never needed drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, etc. Pinball and other assorted baby boomer kids' stuff including comic mags, bubble gum cards and monster and other model kits, muscle cars, and rock music and stereo equipment are all it took to set me on the path to ruin. And here I am today!

It occurred to me some twenty years ago that if it hadn't been for the revival of interest in superhero comics in the 1960's prompted by editors such as Stan Lee, interest in Golden Age comics would have died off as the kids who bought them in the 1940's sailed off into the sunset. But the baby boomers who had been captivated by Silver Age superhero comics acquired an interest in the predecessors of their childhood heroes and gave the demand for Golden Age comics a tremendous boost.

Yes, those were indeed the two key developments right there. Until I was exposed to all those great covers from the Golden Age in those publications, I had basically zilch interest in Golden Age comics.

The Western Fair in my home town of London is still going strong. 2019 was its 151st year! While attendance for the ten day September fair peaked at 446,000 in 1976, attendance these days of 175,000 or so is still very respectable in comparison to U.S. state fairs. Here are some pics: Oh man! Don't you wanna be there?

Well if you see Chris Claremont sign the comic, why do you need someone else to verify what you saw? Are your eyes that bad? Get the book signed, take it home and live happily ever after. And leave it to someone else to eventually pry the comic from your cold dead fingers.

I wish I had cleaned out my bank account, backed up the truck and bought large quantities of the relatively cheap Harveys from the late fifties through the sixties from the Harvey File copy catalogue Diamond Galleries mailed out in 1993 or so. I used a rifle shot approach though and bought only a few Black Cat Comics, Fighting Fronts, Warfront and miscellaneous horror titles. For several auctions in a row in the early years of this century I was the high bidder for Harvey lots in Heritage Auctions but I was usually stymied at the end by the Reserve and ended up not getting them. I did "win" lots of dozens of Little Audrey, Felix the Cat and Spooky comics from the late fifties to the early sixties though.

Repairing and re-entering a post from 6 February 2018: Scans of my two favourite Gorgo covers from my collection: 2 15

When I first came across (figuratively of course) this early Mystery in Space comic: I was reminded immediately of the cover of this Aquaman comic from my collection: Incidentally I was so impressed by Aquaman 11 with the intro of Queen Mera that I subscribed immediately to Aquaman and received a copy of Aquaman 12 above in the mail barely over two weeks later!

Well me I've always been on the side of plenty, in this case comics, for all. Bring on more old warehouse finds!

You know the model kit business has changed dramatically since my kit building days as a kid in the mid-1960's. Model kits were sold in all kinds of stores in those days, from corner convenience or variety stores as they were called in my neck of the woods, to hardware stores, to book stores, to five-and-dime stores, to toy departments of department stores and of course in hobby shops although dedicated hobby shops were few and far between and of course usually weren't very big. But other than in the hobby shops, the selection on display varied from less than a couple of dozen to a few hundred all produced by a handful of well known companies, e.g. Aurora, Revell, Monogram, Hawk, Lindberg, AMT and MPC. And only the most dedicated hobby shop or hardware store had a Pactra or Testor's paint stand as elaborate as this one here pictured on the back cover of Big Daddy Roth 3 magazine: But!!! It didn't really matter. The selection was still more than enough to overwhelm the average kit loving kid anyway! Normally even the price of a single kit was hard to swing. But the fact that they were on display in so many stores meant that they became something to be desired, i.e. the stuff of dreams if a fellow could but put a few quarters together. Now however model kits are found only in the occasional hobby shop, but these shops are massive compared with the ones I remember. They stock well over a thousand different kits and include exotic imports from the United Kingdom, Europe, Japan, Korea, wherever! And paints, a whole wall of different variants by assorted manufacturers! The selection in even my local Wheels & Wings Hobbies is overwhelming. But you know their target market is adults. Aging baby boomers. The kids aren't there. Quite simply kids don't have the patience to lovingly and carefully construct a kit these days since video games have them demanding instant gratification. Oh well. C'est la vie. If and when I ever retire, I'll start building model kits again myself. Who knows? In time I might get far more adept at painting than I ever was as a kid.

Here are front and back cover scans of my earliest Black Cat Comics:

Who knows? A few boardies here may indeed have performed a valuable public service.

Not surprising at all! Beany and Cecil are very cool. Here's a photo I took about eight years ago of my Beany and Cecil jack-in-the-box and Skill Ball Set:

Wow! Is your Black Cat 27 really that white? The ones I've seen at shows have had covers much more yellowed covers.

Me I wish there were far more warehouse finds! I'm on the side of plenty.

We had one here in Golden Age years ago but it seems to have disappeared in the changeover a few years ago. I tried to find/unearth it several times but failed miserably.

Interesting question to be sure! But you know that both Joe Kubert and Russ Heath did so much for DC in the 1960's (all fabulous of course) with which I'm fairly familiar that I'm actually more intrigued /excited to find Atlas war or western titles with Joe Maneely or John Severin artwork.

Oh man! I looked through that book in the book store at the Wellington Square Mall in downtown London, Ontario when it was first published and it made me pine for all the Batman and other comics I'd missed because I was born too late! Not that I was prescient enough to actually buy the book either. Now of course a really nice copy would fetch a pretty penny indeed.

That was Batman Annual 7 from Spring 1964: You bet there was! Here's a scan of my copy:

I know Batman comics from 1955 or so to early 1964 (particularly those illustrated by Sheldon Moldoff) take a lot of flack in comic fandom these days, but that was my Batman! That was the one to which I was first exposed and the one that competed for my attention and dimes (plus pennies) on the spinner rack. Therefore I still have fond memories of that Batman, as well as Batwoman, Bat-Girl, Bat-Hound and Bat-Mite! Quite simply I always smile when I see Batwoman, Bat-Hound, etc. And if comics don't make you smile, what good are they?

My favourites are whatever they serve up at the Super Corn Dog stand at the Canadian National Exhibition: I don't think I want to know the ingredients. Nor I'm sure is any food manufacturer willing to emblazon the stand with its brand name and thus take legal responsibility for supplying the raw material for the corn dogs served up at the stand. All I know is that I make sure I get the really big one they sell every time I hit the Ex and that has about 3000 calories in grease alone! They're the perfect accompaniment to cotton candy, roller coasters and eyeballing girls in slinky tops and short skirts!

Oh yeah! That's a nice one.

Repairing and re-entering a post from 31 January 2018: It was fifty years ago this month that the Creeper debuted in DC comics: An interesting detail was the mention of Commies in the very first panel of the story: To this point of the Silver Age at DC there had been considerable reluctance to finger Soviets or Communists as enemies. Julius Schwartz's titles in particular would very annoyingly label spies as being agents of an unnamed foreign power. "Why not name the foreign power, Julie?" Robert Kanigher though continued to be just as oblivious to what his fellow editors were doing on this subject as on every other. He did on occasion feature Reds as the enemy both in his war comics as well as in Wonder Woman: For once I'm with Robert Kanigher here. While Archie, Dell and then Gold Key were even more weak-kneed than DC when it came to portraying Commies as a menace, other comic companies were considerably less reticent. Ace for example published this Atomic War title just fifteen years earlier in 1952-53: 1 3 4 Fiction House, Standard and many others published a virtual riot of comics based on the Korean War: Atlas published war comics such as these as late as 1959: In fact Stan Lee showed no reluctance to portray the Reds as villains well into the sixties. Sue Reed's mention of beating the Commies in the space race features prominently in the origin tale of the Fantastic Four: Here are another couple of examples from 1962 and 1965 respectively: The war comics at Charlton continued to feature Americans battling Commies right through the sixties: 24 26 21 26 51 And this was not just in the war comics but throughout the entire line: 2 1 17 21 22 Here from Space Adventures 40 is a page that's a particularly good example: I read a beat up old copy of Space Adventures 40 at a friend's house once and only once back in 1962 but those few panels stuck in my memory for 55 years until I finally managed to pinpoint the precise issue I'd seen that day! And over at Harvey there was this one published in 1966: All very cool indeed in my opinion! (The really large scans above are all from my own collection.)