Ayn, Neal and the world around me...

[dover]

A nice recent arrival bought from a boardie I had the pleasure of meeting at Heroes last year. He and another Barbarian will make this years Heroes a great one.

 

 

 

 

Superman

 

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[dover]

How about some Adams covers for 1970!

 

 

1970

 

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[dover]

 

Happy Birthday President Washington!

 

Titled Washington's Birthday, a federal holiday honoring George Washington was originally implemented by an Act of Congress in 1880 for government offices in the District of Columbia (20 Stat. 277) and expanded in 1885 to include all federal offices (23 Stat. 516). As the first federal holiday to honor an American citizen, the holiday was celebrated on Washington's actual birthday, February 22.[1] On January 1, 1971, the federal holiday was shifted to the third Monday in February by the Uniform Monday Holiday Act.[2] This date places it between February 15 and 21, which makes the name "Washington's Birthday" in some sense a misnomer, since it never lands on Washington's actual birthday, February 22.

 

 

Thanks to the almost utter failure of the Articles of Confederation, in the summer of 1787 the office of President was created. In Article II, Section 1. the Constitution of the United States enacted the office and position of the President and Vice President.

 

It seems that though we did not need a king, we needed more than the Articles of Confederation put forth. We needed a real "central" government with actual powers and a system of checks and balances.

 

I don't believe there was ever a doubt when they wrote it where the first President would come from, Virginia, or who it would be, George.

 

Article II, Section 1, Clause 1: The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same Term, be elected, as follows.

 

 

[dover]

 

I love math. Not sure why but it is the perfect language. All problems are challenges. In a weird coincidence, my son has been having "math" related dreams lately. Any connection? He and I do his math homework together. I teach him the tricks and explain what the question is really about. And in explaining math problem, I can teach him about life and how to identify problems and how to make them simpler to understand and how to solve them. This all comes back to a fascinating set of books, which became a movie.

 

I told him that "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass" were written by a dad for his daughters but more interesting was that he was a mathematician. The books contain many references and allusions to math. I was trying to show him how it is okay to be smart, to like math and science and that it could be fun at the same time.

 

My wife feels he should not be dreaming of math; me, I find it wonderful. Believe me, he is 100% all boy. He plays, he runs, video games, soccer, you name it. Allowing for the both sides of the brain to be stimulated is perfect.

 

 

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is an 1865 novel written by English author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. It tells of a girl named Alice who falls down a rabbit hole into a fantasy world (the Wonderland of the title) populated by peculiar and anthropomorphic creatures. The tale plays with logic giving the story lasting popularity with adults as well as children. It is considered to be one of the best examples of the literary nonsense genre, and its narrative course and structure have been enormously influential, especially in the fantasy genre.

 

Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871) is a work of children's literature by Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson). It is the sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865). The themes and settings of Through the Looking-Glass make it a kind of mirror image of Wonderland: the first book begins outdoors, in the warm month of May uses frequent changes in size as a plot device, and draws on the imagery of playing cards; the second opens indoors on a snowy, wintry night exactly six months later, on November 4 (the day before Guy Fawkes Night), uses frequent changes in time and spatial directions as a plot device, and draws on the imagery of chess. In it, there are many mirror themes, including opposites, time running backwards, and so on

 

The math side of the books (you will never watch the movie the same way):

 

Since Carroll was a mathematician at Christ Church, it has been suggested that there are many references and mathematical concepts in both this story and also in Through the Looking-Glass; examples include:

 

* In chapter 1, "Down the Rabbit-Hole", in the midst of shrinking, Alice waxes philosophic concerning what final size she will end up as, perhaps "going out altogether, like a candle."; this pondering reflects the concept of a limit.

 

* In chapter 2, "The Pool of Tears", Alice tries to perform multiplication but produces some odd results: "Let me see: four times five is twelve, and four times six is thirteen, and four times seven is—oh dear! I shall never get to twenty at that rate!" This explores the representation of numbers using different bases and positional numeral systems: 4 x 5 = 12 in base 18 notation, 4 x 6 = 13 in base 21 notation, and 4 x 7 could be 14 in base 24 notation. Continuing this sequence, going up three bases each time, the result will continue to be less than 20 in the corresponding base notation. (After 19 the product would be 1A, then 1B, 1C, 1D, and so on.)

 

* In chapter 5, "Advice from a Caterpillar", the Pigeon asserts that little girls are some kind of serpent, for both little girls and serpents eat eggs. This general concept of abstraction occurs widely in many fields of science; an example in mathematics of employing this reasoning would be in the substitution of variables.

 

* In chapter 7, "A Mad Tea-Party", the March Hare, the Hatter, and the Dormouse give several examples in which the semantic value of a sentence A is not the same value of the converse of A (for example, "Why, you might just as well say that 'I see what I eat' is the same thing as 'I eat what I see'!"); in logic and mathematics, this is discussing an inverse relationship.

 

* Also in chapter 7, Alice ponders what it means when the changing of seats around the circular table places them back at the beginning. This is an observation of addition on the ring of integers modulo N.

 

* The Cheshire cat fades until it disappears entirely, leaving only its wide grin, suspended in the air, leading Alice to marvel and note that she has seen a cat without a grin, but never a grin without a cat. Deep abstraction of concepts, such as non-Euclidean geometry, abstract algebra, and the beginnings of mathematical logic, was taking over mathematics at the time Dodgson was writing. Dodgson's delineation of the relationship between cat and grin can be taken to represent the very concept of mathematics and number itself. For example, instead of considering two or three apples, one may easily consider the concept of 'apple', upon which the concepts of 'two' and 'three' may seem to depend. A far more sophisticated jump is to consider the concepts of 'two' and 'three' by themselves, just like a grin, originally seemingly dependent on the cat, separated conceptually from its physical object.

 

[jimjum12]

I love math. Not sure why but it is the perfect language. All problems are challenges. In a weird coincidence, my son has been having "math" related dreams lately. Any connection? He and I do his math homework together. I teach him the tricks and explain what the question is really about. And in explaining math problem, I can teach him about life and how to identify problems and how to make them simpler to understand and how to solve them. This all comes back to a fascinating set of books, which became a movie.

 

I told him that "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass" were written by a dad for his daughters but more interesting was that he was a mathematician. The books contain many references and allusions to math. I was trying to show him how it is okay to be smart, to like math and science and that it could be fun at the same time.

 

My wife feels he should not be dreaming of math; me, I find it wonderful. Believe me, he is 100% all boy. He plays, he runs, video games, soccer, you name it. Allowing for the both sides of the brain to be stimulated is perfect.

 

 

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is an 1865 novel written by English author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. It tells of a girl named Alice who falls down a rabbit hole into a fantasy world (the Wonderland of the title) populated by peculiar and anthropomorphic creatures. The tale plays with logic giving the story lasting popularity with adults as well as children. It is considered to be one of the best examples of the literary nonsense genre, and its narrative course and structure have been enormously influential, especially in the fantasy genre.

 

Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871) is a work of children's literature by Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson). It is the sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865). The themes and settings of Through the Looking-Glass make it a kind of mirror image of Wonderland: the first book begins outdoors, in the warm month of May uses frequent changes in size as a plot device, and draws on the imagery of playing cards; the second opens indoors on a snowy, wintry night exactly six months later, on November 4 (the day before Guy Fawkes Night), uses frequent changes in time and spatial directions as a plot device, and draws on the imagery of chess. In it, there are many mirror themes, including opposites, time running backwards, and so on

 

The math side of the books (you will never watch the movie the same way):

 

Since Carroll was a mathematician at Christ Church, it has been suggested that there are many references and mathematical concepts in both this story and also in Through the Looking-Glass; examples include:

 

* In chapter 1, "Down the Rabbit-Hole", in the midst of shrinking, Alice waxes philosophic concerning what final size she will end up as, perhaps "going out altogether, like a candle."; this pondering reflects the concept of a limit.

 

* In chapter 2, "The Pool of Tears", Alice tries to perform multiplication but produces some odd results: "Let me see: four times five is twelve, and four times six is thirteen, and four times seven is—oh dear! I shall never get to twenty at that rate!" This explores the representation of numbers using different bases and positional numeral systems: 4 x 5 = 12 in base 18 notation, 4 x 6 = 13 in base 21 notation, and 4 x 7 could be 14 in base 24 notation. Continuing this sequence, going up three bases each time, the result will continue to be less than 20 in the corresponding base notation. (After 19 the product would be 1A, then 1B, 1C, 1D, and so on.)

 

* In chapter 5, "Advice from a Caterpillar", the Pigeon asserts that little girls are some kind of serpent, for both little girls and serpents eat eggs. This general concept of abstraction occurs widely in many fields of science; an example in mathematics of employing this reasoning would be in the substitution of variables.

 

* In chapter 7, "A Mad Tea-Party", the March Hare, the Hatter, and the Dormouse give several examples in which the semantic value of a sentence A is not the same value of the converse of A (for example, "Why, you might just as well say that 'I see what I eat' is the same thing as 'I eat what I see'!"); in logic and mathematics, this is discussing an inverse relationship.

 

* Also in chapter 7, Alice ponders what it means when the changing of seats around the circular table places them back at the beginning. This is an observation of addition on the ring of integers modulo N.

 

* The Cheshire cat fades until it disappears entirely, leaving only its wide grin, suspended in the air, leading Alice to marvel and note that she has seen a cat without a grin, but never a grin without a cat. Deep abstraction of concepts, such as non-Euclidean geometry, abstract algebra, and the beginnings of mathematical logic, was taking over mathematics at the time Dodgson was writing. Dodgson's delineation of the relationship between cat and grin can be taken to represent the very concept of mathematics and number itself. For example, instead of considering two or three apples, one may easily consider the concept of 'apple', upon which the concepts of 'two' and 'three' may seem to depend. A far more sophisticated jump is to consider the concepts of 'two' and 'three' by themselves, just like a grin, originally seemingly dependent on the cat, separated conceptually from its physical object.

 

(thumbs u

[dover]

 

A glorious day in the world around me.....

 

One of my children was chosen by their school to compete in a math competition put on by the state. Two kids from each class were asked to compete based on testing scores, so just being picked was a wonderful notion to start. Schools from all over the state came to the contest to determine first a state winner and then a regional winner. The group of children, at the contest in the grade they were competing, was very diverse. (We are still a melting pot and all children have the potential).

 

The students are given questions, one at a time to answer. They write their answer on a dry erase board and hold it up. They also start out with ten tickets and each time they get one wrong, they lose a ticket. When all 10 are gone, you are eliminated. If in the end you have any tickets left, you are eligible. When all was said and done, our child passed the test, the competition, and is now eligible to go to Atlanta for the regional among 4 states. Though not winning the out right state top math student, they did come close. I was so very proud. As I have stated, I do love math.

 

Even more interesting to me was another lesson I learned from this same child. A lesson I have tried to teach but never know if it sinks into the character. While driving home and passing a stretch of road with some litter strewn about they said something that hit home. "Daddy, look at all that trash. I bet that hurts mother earth. It must be like a needle in her. Each piece of trash must be a needle hurting her."

 

There is hope.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[dover]

 

Great big Dollar Comics! I would love to find a run of these beauties, with Neal in mind. THis book is also from 1977. A year in which Mr Adams had a break out of sorts. It is just a thoery right now, but something happened that year and I think I can prove it in the future.

 

I am working on it, but his stuff from 1977 and even '78 is really very good. More to follow.......

 

[dover]

 

Neal Adams covers from 1971

 

 

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[dover]

Today is Dr. Suess's birthday!

 

 

Theodor Seuss Geisel (pronounced /ˈɡaɪzəl/; March 2, 1904 – September 24, 1991) was an American writer and cartoonist most widely known for his children's books written under the pen names Dr. Seuss, Theo LeSieg and, in one case, Rosetta Stone.[1] He published 44 children's books, which were often characterized by imaginative characters, rhyme, and frequent use of trisyllabic meter. His most celebrated books include the bestselling Green Eggs and Ham, The Cat in the Hat, One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish, Horton Hatches the Egg, Horton Hears a Who!, and How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Numerous adaptations of his work have been created, including eleven television specials, three feature films, and a Broadway musical.

 

Geisel also worked as an illustrator for advertising campaigns, most notably for Flit and Standard Oil, and as a political cartoonist for PM, a New York City newspaper. During World War II, he worked in an animation department of the U.S Army, where he wrote Design for Death, a film that later won the 1947 Academy Award for Documentary Feature.

 

Geisel's birthday, March 2, has been adopted as the annual date for National Read Across America Day, an initiative on reading created by the National Education Association.

 

 

 

 

.....and in a tradition of being an over active father, I dressed up as the Cat in the Hat and headed to school. I surprised my daughter's first grade class with a surprise reading of the Cat in the Hat! You know in life that it just does not get much better than seeing the joy on children's faces, the smiles and the giggles.

 

And of course when the Cat in the Hat shows up at a school, he must visit all the classes. Every teacher would pull me in or request a visit to talk to the children. I put on my best accent and gave them what they wanted. They would call out their favorite books or ask if I was real or wonder where Thing 1 and Thing 2 were.

 

As they say, you get out what you put in; I gave it my all and my children and a few others will always remember, even if only a little.

 

 

 

[dover]

TuPennyConan

 

We will never forget you!

 

[dover]

TuPennyConan

 

We will never forget you!

 

 

Day two of my hunger strike for freedom.

[dover]

TuPennyConan

 

We will never forget you!

 

 

Day two of my hunger strike for freedom.

 

Sorry, I had to eat.

[dover]

I was working on a sales thread the other night. Anyone that has done it knows the process. Get the books out of some long box, trapped under some other random long box. Find the books you were looking for, get them out for scanning. Start scanning, remove from bag, scan, back in bag, next. Once you scan then you have to photo shop the size of the picture and then the size of the file. Then the upload and on and on. But how many times in the middle of this do you stop and start reading these books that have sat for so long?

 

Getting out my Omahas and Hepcats was one of those times when I had to stop and read a little. I loved these books. The stories were far from super hero type. They were stories of age, of life from a perspective not often seen in comic books. I remember looking in every store when I traveled to find some, anything. It was hard and often left me empty handed even after three stores. But I loved the stories. Naked cats? Animals? Telling a story about teenage and young adult life? I know, sounds crazy but I was hooked. I also chased Starchild and Wandering Star and Cerebus the Earth Born Pig, as well as many other off the wall indies back in the day. I read these with the same fervor that I read the Miller DD run and the Byrne X-Men, I just spoke less of these in certain circles.

 

All ways nice to dive back into the collection, even if it is time to sell, they can't take the memories away.

 

.

 

 

 

[dover]

Good news from CGC.

 

I have some books there with some initial grades. I should fill out my Peanuts registry quite nicely, upgrade and be able to sell quite a few after that.

 

 

Peanuts #1: CGC 4.0 - consider that there are only two above this in 7.0 Wonderfully, most of the grade comes from internal issues so the cover will look fabulous.

 

 

Peanuts #1015: CGC 8.5

 

Peanuts #4: CGC 9.2

Peanuts #5: CGC 9.4

Peanuts #6: CGC 9.4

Peanuts #7: CGC 9.2

Peanuts #8: CGC 9.4

Peanuts #11: CGC 9.4

Peanuts #11: CGC 9.2

Peanuts #11: CGC 6.5 (Don't know what happened here.)

Peanuts #12: CGC 9.6

Peanuts #13: CGC 9.4

 

 

and one Adams:

 

Hot Stuff #8: CGC 9.6

 

 

 

[dover]

Welcome back TupennyConan! I missed your contributions.

[dover]

Atlas Shrugged sighting!

 

Family movie night and we watched, The Pagemaster. A cartoon movie about adventures through books and their stories. One of the books in a pile was, Atlas Shrugged. I did not see it but my wife insisted on replaying it so I could see.

 

She loves me.

 

 

 

 

Later, I had to look up the director, Joe Johnston, to see about any affiliation and found something I did not expect.

 

Joseph Eggleston "Joe" Johnston II[1] (born May 13, 1950)[1] is an American film director and former effects artist best known for such hit movies as Honey I Shrunk the Kids, Jumanji, The Rocketeer,[2] Jurassic Park III, Hidalgo, The Wolfman, October Sky[3],

 

and the upcoming Captain America: The First Avenger.

 

 

 

From there, I found this quote and it all tied together:

 

"Yeah and it's also the idea that this is not about America so much as it is about the spirit of doing the right thing. It's an international cast and an international story. It's about what makes America great and what make the rest of the world great too."

 

[dover]

10,000 views......

 

[dover]

 

 

I have out grown the day to day superhero books written now and produced in many series. How many Batman titles are there? X-Men titles? I remember when there was only one X-Men book to buy each month. Can you believe that? Only Batman and Superman were so bold as to have two titles starring their images and exploits. I have not bought a new title off the stand in 5 or 10 years. I would like to, I wish I could. I would love to find something to spark my interest. Alas, I just can't. Just as well, more money for Adams bronze greatness.

 

But......one of the very good friends I have met from these boards sent me a few books. Wanted me to give them a try. He and I tend to be very alike, almost in a spooky way at times. And he was right. The Hawkworld series was great. It did not try to overwhelm the reader with a volumous amount of type and back ground; it seemed to hold just what it needed. Like any good book or series, I felt wanting more when I was done. I would like to read more along this story line.

 

I would like more series like this. This same person had also sent me the Adam Strange 3 part series; done by Kubert. Again, he was right and they were great. I also had to add building an Adam Strange run to my comic wish list.

 

It is fun to read comics again, I hope to find more.

 

 

 

 

[dover]

Came across this on a cool website: http://www.nealadams.com/comicchecklist.html

 

JONAH HEX (DC)

#91 (January 1985) Layouts by Adams. The cover of this seems to be copied from Superman #243 but was drawn by Ed Hannigan and Mark Texeira.

We were sent scans of pages from issue #11 by a fan asking if Neal worked on this story because it seemed like some panels were done by Neal and the inking was done by "Giordano and friends". Neal never did work on this story. What happened is that the artists simply used a lot of Neal's art as refrence to draw from.

 

 

...

 

"This Jonah Hex cover was clearly done with a sense of humor by 2 artists who respect Neal's work"

 

 

"Nope. Neal didn't do the art for issue number #11 of Jonah Hex, but if you look real close, you can see how Neal's work influences the best artists."

 

 

Time to look for a Jonah Hex #91.....

[dover]

Got this wonderful Adams to add to the hoard.