Thursday, October 20, 2011
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Read Along Star Wars!
So, I imagine a lot of you readers of this blog have probably seen Star Wars a few times and don't really need to read the massively condensed version found in this vintage read-along book from 1979, but I thought it would be cool to scan in this little gem of a find, if for nothing else than the sheer, unadulterated nostalgia.
Note the killer cover and brilliant line-art illustration in the inside front cover of Artoo and Treepio.
Note the killer cover and brilliant line-art illustration in the inside front cover of Artoo and Treepio.
Monday, October 17, 2011
Trading Cards! 1989 Batman Movie Cards!
I have been a dyed-in-the-wool Bat-fan since I first saw the '60s TV show when I was three, and my fandom fluctuated over the years, with the typical hills and valleys that come with any life-long interest. But in 1989, with the release of Tim Burton's first Batman film and having been introduced to comics such as Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns shortly before that, my Bat-fervor was reignited with abandon.
So, even though I was 16 years old at the time, that didn't stop me from buying up several packs of Batman movie trading cards back in the day, and I managed to score a couple of fresh packs during my Chicago visit last month, just for old-time's sake.
And yes, they still had the gum inside.
So, even though I was 16 years old at the time, that didn't stop me from buying up several packs of Batman movie trading cards back in the day, and I managed to score a couple of fresh packs during my Chicago visit last month, just for old-time's sake.
And yes, they still had the gum inside.
I am the Pumpkin King!
Well, maybe not. This year I had these grand plans to get a bunch of pumpkins (check), hollow them out (check), seaparate all of the seeds and roast them (double check) and then really take some time and carve some intricate designs of creepy critters on them in the style of these pumpkins that I spotted in Martha Stewart's Halloween issue.
Alas, time got away from me and although I got them all hollowed out and the seeds roasted last weekend, I found myself this weekend with very little spare time and a bunch of hollow pumpkins that were getting moldier and moldier by the day, so I decided to take an hour and quickly carve some simple cartoony faces.
So, I'm not sure if this qualifies as "my art", but I'm showing them off here anyway.
Happy Halloween!
Alas, time got away from me and although I got them all hollowed out and the seeds roasted last weekend, I found myself this weekend with very little spare time and a bunch of hollow pumpkins that were getting moldier and moldier by the day, so I decided to take an hour and quickly carve some simple cartoony faces.
So, I'm not sure if this qualifies as "my art", but I'm showing them off here anyway.
Happy Halloween!
Sunday, October 16, 2011
G.I. Joe: Operation Death Stone!
There's a huge part of me that wishes I had formed a metal band and called it Operation Death Stone. But I digress...
As a kid, I was crazy about adventure books (those classic decision making little tomes where the reader's choices lead them down various paths to, hopefully, reach the end without dying), and the cultural onslaught that was G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero, having dunked my young imagination in all of the action figures, playsets, Colorforms, paint-by-numbers, sleeping bags and who knows what else.
So I find it odd that I never even knew that there were a series of G.I. Joe adventure books (from the Find Your Fate series), because I assure you that if I had, I would have been on these like Destro on the Baroness.
I managed to score a couple of these a while back (I'll be showcasing them individually here in due time). In all honesty, I have to admit that I didn't exactly sit down and read this book cover to cover, but I did peruse it and read a few sections, but most importantly, I checked out the interior illustrations, which, and I gotta call it like I see it, kind of suck.
One of my favorite things about these books were the interior illustrations (the ones in Fighting Fantasy and Endless Quest were some of the best), so it was a little disappointing to see that these looked like the kind of drawings that I could have drawn when I was 11. That having been said, the covers are sheer awesomeness times a gazillion, which I suspected may be by the legendary Earl Norem, but turned out to be by Hector Garrido.
From what I've gathered, this adventure is bat-shit crazy. At one point, the reader is faced with the decision of whether or not to save the Baroness from a pool of quicksand, and may find one fighting for their life against giant "hysterical jungle cats" on the side of an erupting volcano.
And at one point, the reader, I swear to god, has to wrestle Destro in a WWF-style wrestling match in front of thousands of cheering fans. The '80s were so friggin weird.
So that's Operation Death Stone for ya. I'll be showing off the rest of the books in this series that I managed to find, which I promise you are even more insane than this one. Now you know.
And knowing is half the battle.
As a kid, I was crazy about adventure books (those classic decision making little tomes where the reader's choices lead them down various paths to, hopefully, reach the end without dying), and the cultural onslaught that was G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero, having dunked my young imagination in all of the action figures, playsets, Colorforms, paint-by-numbers, sleeping bags and who knows what else.
So I find it odd that I never even knew that there were a series of G.I. Joe adventure books (from the Find Your Fate series), because I assure you that if I had, I would have been on these like Destro on the Baroness.
I managed to score a couple of these a while back (I'll be showcasing them individually here in due time). In all honesty, I have to admit that I didn't exactly sit down and read this book cover to cover, but I did peruse it and read a few sections, but most importantly, I checked out the interior illustrations, which, and I gotta call it like I see it, kind of suck.
One of my favorite things about these books were the interior illustrations (the ones in Fighting Fantasy and Endless Quest were some of the best), so it was a little disappointing to see that these looked like the kind of drawings that I could have drawn when I was 11. That having been said, the covers are sheer awesomeness times a gazillion, which I suspected may be by the legendary Earl Norem, but turned out to be by Hector Garrido.
From what I've gathered, this adventure is bat-shit crazy. At one point, the reader is faced with the decision of whether or not to save the Baroness from a pool of quicksand, and may find one fighting for their life against giant "hysterical jungle cats" on the side of an erupting volcano.
And at one point, the reader, I swear to god, has to wrestle Destro in a WWF-style wrestling match in front of thousands of cheering fans. The '80s were so friggin weird.
So that's Operation Death Stone for ya. I'll be showing off the rest of the books in this series that I managed to find, which I promise you are even more insane than this one. Now you know.
And knowing is half the battle.
Saturday, October 15, 2011
Friday, October 14, 2011
Tales from the 25¢ Bin! The Shogun Warriors!
For Christmas of 1978, I received one of the most epic toys to ever hit American shelves, a Japanese import in the form of a team of giant robot warriors known as the Shogun Warriors. I peeled away the wrapping paper to reveal my very own Shogun Warrior, the fist-shooting, eagle-helmeted mecha-fighter known as Raydeen (he's the one starring on the cover of issue #5 pictured below and you can see my vintage Raydeen toy that I managed to find again and fix up in my Resurrection of Raydeen Flickr set).
The Shogun Warriors would be one of my first tastes of geeky fandom before Star Wars truly took over my every waking moment. There was something about those massive toys (Raydeen was over 24" tall) that grabbed my imagination and ran with it. I even went as Mazinga, another Shogun Warrior, for Halloween in '79.
But there was no Saturday morning cartoon or breakfast cereal or series of movies for us to associate with the Shogun Warriors, so we had to rely on imaginative playtime with the few lucky bastards who actually had a Shogun Warrior Jumbo Machina (the name for the 2 foot tall toys) and the stories that we found within the pages of Marvel Comics' Shogun Warriors comic book.
These were somewhat of a rare gem for me and my friends back in the day, and were usually quickly taken out of the stack when comic book trading time came around, as we were often afraid that if we traded them away we'd never see another issue again. Well, that was then.
Now, apparently, all you have to do is dig through the 25¢ bin, and it's suddenly wall to wall Shogun Warriors up in here. So, suffice it to say, I snapped these babies up faster than Raydeen can shoot his axe-bladed fist.
(Note issue #16 below. I always loved that cover. I think it always reminded me of my brother's Queen album cover.)
The Shogun Warriors would be one of my first tastes of geeky fandom before Star Wars truly took over my every waking moment. There was something about those massive toys (Raydeen was over 24" tall) that grabbed my imagination and ran with it. I even went as Mazinga, another Shogun Warrior, for Halloween in '79.
But there was no Saturday morning cartoon or breakfast cereal or series of movies for us to associate with the Shogun Warriors, so we had to rely on imaginative playtime with the few lucky bastards who actually had a Shogun Warrior Jumbo Machina (the name for the 2 foot tall toys) and the stories that we found within the pages of Marvel Comics' Shogun Warriors comic book.
These were somewhat of a rare gem for me and my friends back in the day, and were usually quickly taken out of the stack when comic book trading time came around, as we were often afraid that if we traded them away we'd never see another issue again. Well, that was then.
Now, apparently, all you have to do is dig through the 25¢ bin, and it's suddenly wall to wall Shogun Warriors up in here. So, suffice it to say, I snapped these babies up faster than Raydeen can shoot his axe-bladed fist.
(Note issue #16 below. I always loved that cover. I think it always reminded me of my brother's Queen album cover.)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)