Pat Calhoun

here's the Wonderman splash for that issue:

With Tara the space pirate and Wonderman's interplanetary adventures (Silver Knight is great too tho' fantasy) late issues of Wonder Comics should qualify.

Our pals at Atlas Tales have a JIUW9 cover story splash: this yarn starts the bonanza with a bang...

Of all the Atlas fantasy-/-horror titles Journey Into Unknown Worlds is rare in that the early issues were predominantly SF. JIUW #9 is cover-to-cover SF: more importantly all 5 stories are fabulous and those jackpot issues are few and far between.

not the same title as Surf's above as it lacks the exclamation point, but trying to make it a 'killer' day here- in the best sense of the word...

Picked this out with Fantasy Reader #13 to share the shipping, and because I always buy a few books for my late brother JCC's birthday 9/7, and because I like Lion and didn't have a Prather: this early (May 1952) pbo is one of the few he wrote that wasn't part of his Shell Scott series that ran at Gold Medal all through the '50s and '60s (my mom was a fan), and when GM picked up 'Lie Down, Killer' they ran it through several printings and covers then ditto in their Crest reprint line.

I had so much fun with 'PN40' (Avon SF Reader #3) that I bought an Avon Fantasy Reader #13 to have a copy of Fowler Wright's 'Original Sin', a story that made a huge impression on me as a child: I've never forgotten it, and still consider it a towering short story masterpiece. The opening part of 'Original Sin' describes the Doctrine of Futility which prompts humankind to commit race suicide by lethal injection...

Go, Cat! your combo of wise and young-at-heart is a winner: wishing you well -Pat

I remember the day I bought this back in Dec 1979. We were taking my infant son Crane down to the East Bay (Berkeley-Oakland) for his first visit to Gina's pals there. While Gina was catching up with them Crane and I made our first bookstore run. $50 was heap o' scrill to us: but the magic kicked in, and I ended up with two children in tow...

While we're still raucous here's the one that started it all. My parents brought this greenstone tiki back from New Caledonia where their romance was the happy face on war's end in the South Pacific. It cast a spell on me at an early age: not only did I never fight it - the magic sustains me still...

here's a more expensive pet rock: 1-3/4" antique jade beast

I was thrilled to see Michael (aka 'art book' Flex) show some appreciation for 'pet rocks' (in 'the shadow side' of this thread), so I thought I'd post my newest here: 'snakehead', 3" find on Russian River flood plain last week.

here's a corner with 3 zones: some comics, some mushroom jungle UK PBs, and some old color-plate (well the Undine is B&W but still nice) books (between Odyssey and Hoffman is the great 'Peter Schlmiehl' by Albert Chamisso 1830 ed w/ Cruikshank illos -also b&w- and to right of Hoffman the awesome 'Three Tales' by Gustave Flaubert featuring his master fantasy novella 'The Legend of St Julian'. (Athene = NC Wyeth, Great Stag (Flaubert) = Robert Diaz de Soria, and Fountain Scene (Hoffman) = Mario Laboccetta.) + small comic & pb sample of ones shown...and (seen through glass at upper left 5" square Don Quixote tile...

Just reread PN40 (some decades in between) and I imagine that while Fowler Wright was pounding this out on his typewriter Dean Swift was smiling in the clouds.

I'm going to go with the 'Magic Shopping Cart' at Lanning's Books in downtown San Diego in the mid-1960s: it was filled with coverless precode comics for a penny apiece. And the highlight of that was the Wolverton SF; 'Brain Bats of Venus' and Swamp Monster' made a visual-verbal phantasmagoria that transcended the printed page: oozing around me in an all-encompassing universe of wonder. The cart always stayed full – new glories and infinite possibilities abounding. I would pull out foot-high stacks searching for the black spines of TrueVision. Also posting ‘Nightmare World’ splash (more BW ‘nuff said) and image of Trina Robbins that accompanied her memoir of diving for ducks, mice, Lulu, etc, maybe a few years after my PCH wallowing…

Cool - Mockingbird has another cover just inside the outer one...

Hawkman and the Spirit were both inspired by their own deaths...

Here's about a quarter of my office rug that I've lived on for over 40 years. I remember when I met my wife and saw this proud possession of hers...and thought 'if I marry this woman'... Just to the left of the center medallion is a very worn spot where my son Crane used to sit and play video games...

(from early on in the great novel 'Ali & Nino' by Kurban Said) more rug pictures and backstory if possible, please and thanks and cheers