Copious Collections

It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad Correspondence!

2011-10-15T08:30:00.001-04:00

I got home last week to find a message from my mother on the phone, which in itself is not unusual, but this time it was a pretty unusual message (even for my mother).

She claimed that she had a letter for me that had arrived to the house which appeared to be to me from me! After calling and being reassured that I had understood correctly, she asked me if she should open it. I decided to wait and make the mystery a bit more mysterious.

I wasn't able to get over there right away check it out, but once I did get my hands on it I immediately understood it was some kind of old self addressed stamped envelope thing. Since I hadn't sent away for anything and hadn't lived at home in about 4 years, I knew this was a pretty damn old letter.

Upon opening the envelope I discovered this:

(Click to read.)

A sweet letter from Mad Magazine! Back when I had graduated Mass Art, I had submitted a bunch of applications for work. I got nothing but a bunch of "Thanks but no thanks" letters, if I got anything at all. I had totally forgotten about Mad and their promise of an official response if you included the SASE.

I was delighted to find it even personalized with my name and the cross outs in red look like handwriting, probably some poor intern who does nothing but this all day, but it's still a nice touch!

A little late(six years!), but a pleasant surprise none the less!

In which No Prize was awarded.

2011-03-06T10:56:00.001-05:00

Great Googley-moogley! It's been a while, but by now you should all be used to that. Regardless of my absence from the blog-o-sphere, I am here now and a blogging we shall go.

I recently acquired a neat Marvel Comics collectible for my copious collection. A genuine No-Prize! Notice I said "acquired", not "was awarded". Unfortunately I did not win the coveted No-Prize but purchased it off eBay for the pricely sum of $12.

BEHOLD!

The Marvel No-Prize was handed out from the late 1960's to the late 1980's. They were intended to be a joke, Stan Lee created a contest where no prize was to be awarded, it became a running joke in the letters columns that he would tell readers that they won a No-Prize. Eventually, some people didn't get it and would write in wondering where their prizes were. In response to this and to further the joke, Stan started mailing readers who won No-Prize an actual No-Prize like you see above. Unfortunately some people still didn't get it and upon receiving their No-Prize wrote back saying that the prize was left out of their envelope!

The most common way to win a No-Prize was to write in and explain away a continuity error in a believable way. If your explanation was good enough, you scored the No-Prize. Over the years different editors gave out No-Prizes in varying amounts, so they probably aren't terribly rare but you don't see them up on eBay in great quantities. I usually only see one at a time and usually from the same seller. Different editors also gave them out for varying reasons, some stuck to tradition and others just gave them away to who ever asked for one, which cheapens the idea if you ask me.
Eventually Marvel did away with the physical prize and would award them honorarily (and literally, readers win no prize), they still do that from time to time. Today the physical No-Prize is reserved for "meritorious service to Marvel above and beyond the call of duty" so they are rarely awarded.

For this True Believer that seems fair.

EXCELSIOR!

Cosmic Cognizance: Thanos

2010-12-17T13:44:00.001-05:00

It's time for a new post my spaced out cadets. This time around I'm going to be talking about one of my very favorite villains and often a major cosmic threat to the Marvel Universe, Thanos, the Mad Titan!

Thanos was created by Jim Starlin and the character's first appearance was in Iron Man #55 in 1973 (which I have been meaning to review for quite some time).
Thanos is a master planner, schemer and manipulator. He is the kind of villain that will do pretty much anything to achieve his goals, he's worked along side heroes almost as often as he's gone up against them. Despite the horrors he has inflicted upon the universe, Thanos does have a sense of honor and once his word is given, it is not broken.
He is able to absorb and project vast amounts of cosmic energy and like Dr. Doom, has found ways to marry advanced science and magic, using it to further enhance his already impressive abilities. At the end of the day though, it's his intellect that is his greatest weapon.

Thanos is a member of the Eternals. A race of beings created by the Celestials (who will be featured in this segment "soon"), the Eternals are really an offshoot of human-kind. They are immortal, ageless really, but can be killed. This is important to note since Thanos is obsessed with death. Well, more enamored with Death (notice the capitalization there), not just death but Mistress Death, the embodied personification of death in the Marvel U.

Before we get into that, let me tell you a bit about the man himself. Thanos grew up on Titan, with his father Mentor (the leader of the Titanian colony of Eternals), mother Sui-San and his brother (and member of the Avengers), Eros aka Starfox. Thanos grew up wanting nothing, his family loved and cared for him but Thanos liked to dwell on darker things than did the people Titan. This darkness and his immense intellect grew and he schemed. He grew to become the most powerful of the Eternals. His first act of devotion to Death was to attack Titan, killing millions, his mother included. This was just the first in many attempts to gain favor of his Mistress.

Death did indeed take notice and seems to enjoy his attentions. She eventually named him Her Avatar. A title that is no small honor, to be the universe's Avatar of Death. Despite these honors Thanos has always been frustrated with his relationship with this force of nature. Death, while allowing Thanos to spend time with Her, has never spoken to him. The reason being that despite Thanos being essentially a demi-god, he is still considered mortal and the embodiments of abstract concepts in the Marvel Universe (especially Death) rarely speak to lesser beings. This one thing has driven Thanos to more and more desperate attempts to just get her to speak to him. At all.

Thanos has twice gathered the Infinity Gems, you may remember them from the first Cosmic Cognizance post here. Thanos' real goal for becoming a god and killing half the population of the universe with the power of the Infinity Gauntlet, was to be the equal of Mistress Death. Unfortunately, as She expressed through a lackey, Thanos was now MORE powerful than even Death Herself and it was improper for Her to speak directly to him. This, more than any other event towards the end of the Infinity Gauntlet saga, was what caused Thanos to slip just enough to give the heroes the upper hand (or Nebula the upper hand, but that's another post).

He has had some noteworthy arch-nemeses, in his early appearances he fought against the Kree warrior and eventual Earth defender, Captain Marvel or Mar-Vell. They first meet when Thanos get a hold of the Cosmic Cube, a device that will grant any wish of the person who possess it. Thanos is defeated when he tosses away the Cube, assuming it to be used up, and Marvel destroys it. The destruction of the Cube undoes everything that Thanos began. Much later, Thanos (who was currently dead by the hands of Adam Warlock) actually appears with Death to meet Mar-vell upon his deathbed, not as a foe but as a guide to the afterlife. This gesture was Thanos' paying honor to a worth adversary and speaks of Thanos' sense of honor.

Thanos has also fought against but actually more often along side, the cosmic hero Adam Warlock who you might recall from one of my very first comic reviews. Adam and Thanos know where each other stand and how far they can trust the other. After the first Infinity Gauntlet saga, Adam Warlock broke apart the gems from the Gantlet and entrusted them to people he believed could protect them. He kept the keeper of the Reality Gem a secret for a long time until it was revealed that Thanos actually had it. Adam knew that only someone like Thanos could protect, and respect, such a powerful artifact. Both Adam and Thanos knew the Reality Gem was only able to be controlled in conjunction with the other gems, to attempt to use it on it's own was a risk even Thanos would not attempt.

I think I have saved the best for last, Thanos' number one adversary, the thorn in his side, the one being that hates Thanos the most is Drax The Destroyer. I won't go too far into Drax's story here because he deserves his own post (and this one is longer than it probably needs to be), but Drax was created by Kronos, for no other purpose than to destroy Thanos. This is interesting because Kronos, who became a cosmic being, was once an Eternal and father of Mentor, making him Thanos's grandfather!
I would say that Thanos never really took Drax seriously as a threat. He was often more concerned with the meddling of the Silver Surfer and Captain Marvel, than of Drax. This doesn't mean that Drax never fulfilled his destiny, but well, I'll leave it at that for now.

That about covers the Mad Titan's biggest adversaries. Since he's considered a major cosmic threat he's come up against just about every cosmic and earth bound hero at one time or another. There are some great Thanos vs Thor (and Asgard) fights, for example.

Thanos has lately changed somewhat. He has finally learned from his past mistakes and no longer tries to become Death's equal. He tried to turn over a new leaf a few years back, going to planets he felt he needed to make amends with and trying to do some good. It didn't go as well as he had hoped, but he was trying. He still devotes himself to Death, but doesn't seek out universal genocide. He is really only truly happy when he is dead and generally that works out well for the universe, if not so well for those of us that love reading about his exploits.

The Collection Fled Across the Desert and The Goog Followed.

2010-10-17T12:01:00.001-04:00

Welcome back friends, to this 51st rambling of mine! I am sorry to say I missed the milestone of my 50th post with my last blog, but we're here now so let's carry on, shall we?

Today I am happy to share with you a newly completed collection, but isn't comics this time. This week I completed my collection of Isaac Asimov's The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction containing the original printing of Stephen King's "The Gunslinger". I have been after these books for some time, not entirely continuously, but here and there for well over a decade or more likely closer to 15 years or so.

The title of the blog is a play on the very first line of King's epic tale, "The Man in Black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed." What did follow was a nearly 30 year trek for King and his constant readers as we tried to keep up with the titular Gunslinger. The full Dark Tower cycle was completed only 5 years ago and really began when King first put that line down on paper, at age 19.

The actual story wasn't published until October 1978 in the F&Sci-Fi magazine. The Gunslinger was broken up into it's 5 chapters and released slowly in the magazine, pt.2 was in 1980 and pt. 3-5 in 1981. The full story was not collected in one book until 1982 through Grant, a small publisher that still works with King to produce limited editions of his books. A first printing of the novel can easily run you $500 to $1000+ on ebay and has been, for a very long time, my ultimate Holy Grail and White Whale. Hell, even a second printing can run for $200+.

I have first printing of all 7 Dark Tower books but the first one.

But back to the magazines:

These puppies have really become pricey since the comic books adaptions of the novels started. What I originally started collecting for $25-$30 a book sky rocketed to $50 to even $200 a book! This set me back for a bit but as I was starting to keep my eyes out again for affordable auctions for the last 2 books, I got lucky and snagged them both recently, right on budget. One I got in a lot for $34 and the other on it's own for $30, both in better shape the the older one's I had. So it was a double excellent score and a collection complete.

Now if I could just find me a First Printing of the novel on the cheap....oh well, we all need our ultimate goals to make this collecting thing fun.

See you all next time!

And the Survivor of Their Epic Battle Must Face-- The COMICS BLOG!

2010-09-06T07:00:00.017-04:00

A comics blog? I know, it's been ages. No excuses. So on to the blog:

This time out, I'm going to review the very first comic I bought as a collectible. Up until this comic, I had only been buying new books, of course, making this purchase did not open any doors to collecting. That didn't happen until fairly recently. But I was totally smitten with Wolverine at the time and had to have this book:

Incredible Hulk #181 from 1974

This is the first full appearance of Wolverine. Technically #180 is his first appearance, but it's only on the last panel of the last page, so this is his first full appearance where he actually DOES something.

The issue is the end of a two part story, so it starts right off with Wolverine jumping into a fight between Hulk and the Wendigo, who were battling in the wilds of Canada. Wolvie was sent to break things up and to keep the two monsters from wreaking too much havoc. Wolverine immediately attacks the Hulk but when he realizes that his claws can't puncture the Hulks hide he switches over to the Wendigo, who isn't so fortunate to be as thick skinned as the Green Goliath. Eventually Hulk concludes that if the "little man" is fighting Hulk's enemy then he must be Hulk's friend and they both team up to beat up the Wendigo. Once said Wendigo is defeated Wolverine realizes that the legends of the Wendigo are true, he is immortal and Wolverine's "talons only rendered him unconscious!" So Wolverine apparently stabbed the beast into a K.O.

After a short awkward pause during which Hulk contemplates his new little friend, Wolverine suddenly attacks Hulk and the battle starts anew. This is the start of the great Wolverine/Hulk feud, Hulk hated Wolverine for betraying his assumed friendship. They fought many times after this, and eventually developed a begrudging friendship and respect, but they still rag on each other when the opportunity arises.

While they are wailing on each other, a man and a woman, who are involved in all the action from the last issue, drag the Wendigo's body to a nearby cave. Their plan being to remove The Curse of The Wendigo from the creature and transfer it to the Hulk. The point of this is that the Wendigo is the woman's brother...or well, the guy the Wendigo once was, is the woman's brother. The guy that is with her is the best buddy of the Wendigo...or the woman's brother ex-wendigo...wait, where was I? Geeze, even I'm confused. Ok well, to make a long story short, he protests afflicting the Hulk with the curse since it was his fault (the guy, not the Hulk) that his friend became the Wendigo, so while she is distracted he transfers the curse to himself, saving his friend but dooming his love for the woman.

Meanwhile, Hulk has knocked out Wolverine and sufficiently proven once again that Hulk is strongest one there is. He then runs into the woman, who is mourning her failure...I guess...at the friend becoming the new Wendigo and the Hulk and her watch the Wendigo wander off into the Canadian wilderness and the sunset.

Ok, so it's a pretty weird first appearance, but it was a darn good fight. Eventually I hope to get a copy of #180 if for no reason than to try to make some sense of this story!

This post holds the record for the most typing's of the word "Wendigo" ever in this blog. So hey, if you didn't follow the action up there, at least there's that. Until next time, or until we get to join Wolverine and Wendigo for some poutine and sugar pie up in Canadia, which ever comes first.

Cosmic Cognizance: Galactus

2010-07-23T15:53:00.001-04:00

Today we are going to take a look at your favorite "Devourer of Worlds" and mine, The Mighty Galactus!

Galactus is probably my favorite of Marve's Cosmic Pantheon. He is certainly one of the most powerful beings in all of the Marvel U (the most powerful would be The Living Tribunal). Galactus is a survivor of the last universe, which was destroyed in a "Big Crunch". Originally called Galaan, he was a scientist from the planet Taa. He attempted to escape the destruction of his universe in a space vessel, but was caught up in the cataclysm anyway. As the last sentient being in the universe he was joined to the Sentience of the dying Universe and managed to survive through the Big Bang, albeit in a whole new form. After gestating in something like a cosmic egg for a few billion year, Galactus emerged.

Galactus is able to channel a force called the Power Cosmic. This is what gives him his god-like abilities. He has been seen using this power for molecular reconstruction, matter transmutation, teleportation - of himself and objects of any size, energy projection, the creation of impenetrable force fields and inter-dimensional portals and cosmic awareness to name a few. He has been known to re-create entire planets and to raise the dead. He can even manipulate with a being's soul. He always imbues his heralds with a small fraction of the Power Cosmic, which is more than enough for any mortal to be unstoppable in their search for sustenance.

One thing that most beings in the Marvel universe don't understand is that Galactus is not exactly a villain, at least he's no more a villain than a tornado or tsunami. He's a force of nature and necessary to the balance of life in the universe. To survive, Galactus must consume the life energy of entire planets. As you can imagine this does not make him popular. In his incredibly long life he has devastated countless worlds and destroyed untold civilizations, but he takes no joy in this. He understands his place in the cosmos and thinks no more of consuming a planet than one would of destroying an ant hill. Galactus is beyond reproach and beyond anyone's opinion. Galactus is, and must be.

This does of course not mean that he hasn't tried to limit the amount of destruction he causes. Being a scientist AND a god has enabled Galactus to develop the most advanced technology in all of the Marvel Universe. His suit and World Ship are specifically designed to extract every last big of energy and convert it to his use as efficiently as possible. He has even tried to find alternate forms of sustenance (like the Infinity Gems), but nothing has ever held his unending hunger at bay like planet energy.

Galactus' home, the mobius strip-shaped Taa II, is also known as The Worldship. It's a fitting name as the vessel is easily the size of an entire solar system. Once he has been signaled by his herald, Galactus will take a smaller vessel, only about the size of a moon, to the planet to begin siphoning and converting the planet's energy.

Galactus has had many heralds, the Silver Surfer being the most famous, but he was not the first. Considering that he is a god, it is fitting to have someone announce his imminent arrival (which also allows more advanced civilizations some time to flee). The main reason for having a herald is to have someone searching out suitable planets for consumption, two heads are better than one after all.

His herald's have included:

The Fallen One
The Silver Surfer
Air-Walker
Firelord
The Destroyer Armor
Terrax
Nova (Frankie Raye)
Morg
Red Shift
Johnny Storm
Stardust

I could go on and on about Galactus, but I wanted to give a nice overview of him and his abilities. He will pop up quite often in future Cosmic Cognizance postings, as he's an important part of the Marvel Cosmos, so you will learn more about his as we move along. Next time though, I think I'll move on to some of the Abstracts. Now there are some wild and interesting beings, but they pop up so rarely that I will probably group a bunch of them together in one post. Stay tuned!

They Came In Peace?

2010-07-06T18:09:00.001-04:00

Hello hello and hello! After far too long of a break I am finally back with a new post. Time just always has that way of slipping on by. Things have been cooking though, so I have the beginnings of a new collection to share.

I have always been fascinated by the old "Mars Attacks!" cards that came out in 1962. I know my father told me about them when I was young, but I can't remember what prompted the telling. Either I had heard about them and asked or he mentioned them and then had to explain the reference, most likely the latter. Either way, I had been interested in them partly because they were something that sounded so cool but were far enough in the past that I would probably never catch a glimpse of them. Fast forward 30 or so years and thanks to the intertubes of the net here, every card is available for drooling over. I first looked them up years ago, then promptly forgot about them. I wasn't into collecting much, I didn't have any disposable income (I still can't say much for that, but I have learned to manage it better, heh), so I didn't dwell on the cards.

Recently I saw that some company had made posters of the cards. I thought that was such a great idea and, honestly, I was shocked it had taken so long for someone to do it. Unfortunately it turned out they were not posters but wall clings. Ugly. But with the Martians on my mind and finally some experience collecting, I turned to ebay, smacking myself in the head for not thinking of it earlier. I told myself I was just curious as to what was out there and how much the cards were going for, knowing not too deeply that this was bullshit. I wanted me some cards!
I was pleasantly surprised to find that much like comic books and toys there were deals to be had if one was patient. Sure there are some cards that run into the hundreds and a full sets were going for $2000, I could see that patience would net me some cards for no more than $10-$15 a pop. So I set my goal to not spend any more than that and to also get a nice frame to display them in. This helped to limit how many cards I could blow money on and has the added bonus of looking really awesome hanging on the wall.

So far, these are the cards I currently have, I just got #36 in the mail today!

Click to get a closer look.

As you can see, they are not mint, but that's ok. I like my collectibles to have a bit of character. Although, if I can get a slightly better #50 somewhere down the line, I may do just that. Otherwise I don't mind.

Let me give you a bit of the history of the cards in the event that you don't know much about them.

Released in 1962, there were 55 cards in the set, #55 being the checklist. On the backs of each card told the story of how Mars attacked Earth and the story continued through each card so that they told a complete story. Eventually Earth strikes back and destroys Mars, but not before the Martians spend years fighting with all sorts of horrible weapons, like shrink rays, freeze rays and giant insects!

You can see the whole set HERE, click on each image to read the whole story.

The cards which were inspired by EC Comics, were pretty popular, they only cost a nickel per pack of five cards and they were totally gruesome. Kids immediately ate them up, and not surprisingly parents immediately freaked out. Topps, who put out the cards, tried repainting some to reduce the gore, but that was not enough and shortly they stopped production all together.

There was a set released in the 90's which expanded on the original story, so watch out for any cards with numbers past 55. They aren't originals, but were painted in a similar style to match and are fun in their own way.

So there you have it! I'll up post some updates when I get more, when ever that may be. I have space for 4 more cards in my frame, so I have to choose wisely!

Until next time!

Durian: Where Fruit is King.

2010-05-16T19:48:00.001-04:00

It's been a busy time for your brave blogger. I met George Romero recently (see previous blog), Elise and I continue to work away at wedding plans, for example see THIS post on Elise's blog about a stamp I designed and had made, we both saw and enjoyed Iron Man 2 and this past weekend I had the opportunity to finally try the infamous Durian (a fruit so controversial I feel it needs to be capitalized) AND I made a new batch of Bacon Bourbon!

Pardon me while I borrow heavily from Wikipedia:

"Widely known and revered in southeast Asia as the "king of fruits", the durian is distinctive for its large size, unique odour, and formidable thorn-covered husk. The fruit can grow as large as 30 centimetres (12 in) long and 15 centimetres (6 in) in diameter, and it typically weighs one to three kilograms (2 to 7 lb). Its shape ranges from oblong to round, the colour of its husk green to brown, and its flesh pale yellow to red, depending on the species.

The edible flesh emits a distinctive odour, strong and penetrating even when the husk is intact. Some people regard the durian as fragrant; others find the aroma overpowering and offensive. The smell evokes reactions from deep appreciation to intense disgust. The odour has led to the fruit's banishment from certain hotels and public transportation in southeast Asia."

Our lovely host TheRedMenace invited us over to try this strange delicacy. We had all heard about it and were dying to try it but the fruit's reputation had us all somewhat nervous. Some reviewers said it smells like old gym socks left out in a swamp and tastes of garbage and rotten onions, some talk about it being sweet and tasting of almonds. We didn't know exactly what to think but we were up for the adventure!

We all expected it to immediately give off a foul oder but it really didn't smell like much of anything, maybe a bit of melon husk. Speaking of husk, this thing is pretty uncomfortable to hold, it's heavy, about the size of a football and is packed densely with spikes. They say the fruit is capable of killing a person unfortunate enough to be under the tree when one of these things fall. Surprisingly though, it's not difficult to break into. The spike tips are hard but the rest of the fruit is a bit rubbery. We were again struck by how much it did NOT smell once it was cut open, we may have been lucky, since this fruit was previously frozen for transport across to the states, that may have cut it's fragrance.

The edible insides are a bit stringy and very custard-like around a large seed. I waited patiently, barely containing my excitement, while the plates were passed around and then dove in. I found the fruit to taste strongly of honeydew melon at first, then I got the almond flavoring and there was a bit of a sweet onion after taste that was not unpleasant. Everyone agreed that it was not as bad as we were all expecting. I really enjoyed it and kept going back for more.

Maybe if we were in Asia at their peak season we'd find it more off putting, but knowing now how it tastes, I doubt it. The Durian has certainly lived up to it's status of King of Fruits.

----------------------------------

In other food adventures, I made up a new batch of Bacon Bourbon this weekend. The recipe is so simple and the results are enjoyable enough that Elise recommended I add it to the blog.

I found this recipe when we were having an Iron Chef Bacon Battle a year or two ago. The original recipe called for Four Roses bourbon...

...and, are you ready for this? Bacon. Ok, well a half pound of bacon. Basically, you cook up the bacon, let the bacon fat cool a bit, add the bourbon and let sit for a few hours. It's best to use a bowl that's easy to put in the fridge, that helps to solidify the fat and makes it very easy to remove. I scooped out as many of the bacony bits as I could but some will always remain in the mix. Add it all back into a bottle and you are good to go. This time I felt the bourbon needed to be MORE baconey and added the drippings from a full pound. I think it was worth it, even if it makes the bottle a bit icky looking (or more delicious looking, depending on your perspective).

Here the bourbon has been transferred to a new bottle where you can see the fat sticking to the top.

The Four Roses is pretty inexpensive, it's about $20 a bottle. It's a nice smooth bourbon and the bacon leaves a nice smokiness and sweetness in your mouth. I really enjoy using this to make a Manhattan with some cherry bitters, or as I call it, a Cherry Bacon Manhattan. Mmmm boy!

Staying Scared!

2010-05-04T19:27:00.001-04:00

Woah, time sure gets away from you! As I signed in to write up this blog I was shocked to see that it's been just over a month since my last post. My apologies. So to make it up for you, I have a fresh, brand-spankin-new blog! Ok, so that's not much of a gift but hey this is free, you get what you pay for.

This very afternoon, I got to meet and shake the hand one of my favorite directors! George Romero, director of some of my favorite movies, like Creepshow, Night of The Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead, was in the Harvard Square Newbury Comics. He was there promoting his new movie, Survival of The Dead and he was signing! I found out about it just yesterday and luckily I am one train stop away from Harvard, so I was able to get there pretty quickly. I secured a spot about 20 people in from the beginning. I am glad I didn't wait much longer because the line quickly started to snake all the way out the store and was halfway down the ramp of the Garage when I left!

George showed up a little late, but that's not unusual, people are almost never on time for these things. When he did arrive he got right to signing but the line didn't start moving, after about 15-20 minutes the employees eventually put the clues together and asked that everyone only have one thing signed by Mr. Romero. That did the trick and things finally started moving.
I snapped a few pictures from a distance but only one came out any good:

When it finally got to me, I found Mr. Romero to be in very good spirits and very friendly. I know people say that all the time as though they expect celebrities to be rude but I have found that they aren't often genuine. Guys like Bruce Campbell know their fans expect Ash from Evil Dead 2, so that's what he gives you, but it's more refreshing to meet guys like Romero, Stephen King and Penn and Teller and have them talk to you like a person and not put on a show....not that I don't enjoy Bruce Campbell but you get the point.

I had brought a bunch of comics that Romero had co-written for DC, called Toe Tags and a prized Dawn of The Dead Poster Book. The Poster book was given to me by a friend as a birthday gift a long while back. It is signed by Dario Argento and Tom Savini. He knew I had been drooling over it for a while, and although it was not terribly expensive, it was just out of my reach at the time (which sounds totally lame when you realize it was only like $25 or so, I had a shitty job). As I write this I am shocked at how cheap it was, but it was in the days just before Zombie boom, so no one was really interested in this but us.
I always felt that the only signature that was missing was Georges, so I am extremely happy to finally have it!

Romero was at first impressed when he saw the signatures and asked me when I met Dario. I told him, "Unfortunately this was a gift...wait! I mean that fortunately this was a gift, but unfortunately I did not get to meet Dario or Tom." He understood and asked me if I had a preference for where the signature went, I told him no, any where is fine, so you can see his signature on the bottom left. He shook my hand and off I went!

It sure brightened up an otherwise tiring day! See you guys next time!

Movie Review: Clash of The Titans

2010-04-03T16:41:00.001-04:00

Another blog? Three in one week?! Has the world gone mad?! Well, sure but no more than usual. This time I have a new movie review for you, my faithful followers.

Elise and I have just returned from seeing:

Let me start off by saying that I am a huge fan of the original. So much so that I have no problems looking past all the inaccuracies (nerd alert!), it is called Clash of The Titans, not Perseus The Movie, I understand that it's really a showcase for some cool mythology and imagery. Unlike movies like Troy for example, which WAS based off of specific mythology and I just could not look past the errors, especially since they neutered all my favorite parts and characters (poor Ajax). But enough of that, back to the review at hand!

The creators obviously held the original in high regard, you could see elements of it all throughout the new movie, there is even a short scene with Bubo, the clockwork owl! There are some new characters that were not featured in the original, like Io, although they changed her story, it was still nice to see some new characters.
Speaking of characters, that was one bone of contention that Elise and I shared. We didn't know the names of ANY of Perseus' friends! I don't think they said any of their names in the damn film, it was especially annoying since some of them were pretty cool. Sam Worthington, who play Perseus, seems to be in every big action movie lately, I'm not entirely sure why, he's not bad but he hasn't really earned the status he seems to have fallen into. Still, he's fine, I don't have an opinion of him, and that might be my problem with him *shrug*
As for the special effects, they were pretty damn good. The Stygian Witches were fantastically creepy, Pegasus looked pretty awesome even though he was a bit under used, they threw in some middle eastern mythology in a group of Djinn which all looked totally bad ass and Medusa was very cool but I still think I prefer Harryhausen's version.
The Kraken was pretty freaking awesome looking, it would dwarf the original easily. I am a bit torn between the original and the new Kraken, I'm not sure which I thought was cooler. The face of the new Kraken reminded me of a comic book villain but I can't place my finger on who, so I might have to give the nod to the original for being more...well original, still though, the new guy is pretty impressive.
The Gods were pretty good, they seemed to be taking a bit of advice from JJ Abrams in the lens flare department, they sure were shiney! I think my main complaint is only that their beards were very fake looking, it was almost distracting, but I guess it added to the joyful campiness of the movie. Hades' special effects were really cool, but I do wish he was more threatening or powerful looking. Ralph Fiennes played him kind of decrepit, I think I actually prefer the Disney James Wood's Hades, but still not bad.
Calibos was much more powerful in this version, but looked kind of lame.

The over all plot is very different from the original. Instead of trying to save Argos and win Andromeda's heart, Perseus really just wants to stick it to the Gods for getting his family killed. Andromeda is a side note, not his motivation. This was another thing I didn't mind, it was similar enough to still earn it's name while bringing something new to the table also.

Overall, I think I enjoyed this more than Avatar. It wasn't pretentious or preachy, it was just spectacle and giant monsters! I'd give it a solid B (fitting, since it's really a big budget B movie). It's a lot of fun and a good way to spend an afternoon. I'd catch it at a matinée for the most bang for my buck, but avoid the 3D, I have heard it's a terrible conversion. The movie was only turned 3D to try cashing in on some of that sweet sweet Avatar bread, so go for 2D, like we did.

If you've had a chance to see it, let me know what you thought!

The Secret of the Sorcerer's Blog!

2010-04-02T07:30:00.005-04:00

Bonjour my batty blogee buddies! It's time for another Comic Review! I know, it's been a while. You know the excuses by now so I'll spare you. I finally had a few minutes to spare to read this comic, I had it out on display a few months ago and it's been sitting out waiting to be read and blogged about since then! It's about time I get to it!

A short note first, I always try to scan my copy of the comic being reviewed, but my scanner is not cooperating. As a matter of fact, the next order of business is to look for a new scanner. So today this cover is one I got off the intertubes. It's close enough in condition to my own, so it's good enough fer ya! Nah, you guys deserve better, but this is the best I got...So I present unto you:

World's Finest Comics #103 from 1959

This is one of my father's old books. The first story in this comic does indeed feature Batman, Robin and Superman. It begins with Batman and Robin driving by the Gotham City Park and noticing someone freaking out and running around. They get out to investigate and to see if the fella needs any help. It turns out he is babbling about a dragon! A dragon that he unwittingly released from the box in his hands. Just as Batman is thinking this guy is nutty he sees the dragon in question and it's a biggun! Batman promptly jumps back into the Batmobile and drives around the dragon in circles in an attempt to confuse the creature. Once the dragon stomps on the poor Batmobile as Batman and Robin dive for cover, they use a combination of a search light and a fire hose to drive the dragon into a nearby cave...I guess enormous caves are normal features in the parks of Gotham. Robin promptly contacts Superman, knowing he's the only one capable of tying the dragon up. As they are waiting for him Batman questions the guy who started the whole mess.

The fellows name is Atkins and he and his partner Bork bought a treasure map off a bandit, who smuggled these four treasures, each created by a sorcerer, into the US years ago with his accomplices, they hid the hot loot and all died in a car crash, all but the one guy they bought the map off of, who was about to die too...apparently.

When Superman shows up to, and I quote, "hogtie that dragon!" they discover the dragon is gone, along with Atkins. Since Atkins was helpful enough to tell Batman exactly what his plan was, they knew where to find his partner. Superman went to confront Bork while Batman and Robin continued on to the third spot expecting to run into Atkins.

When Superman finds Bork he has a giant spherical prism and Superman instantly knows that the power has "unhinged Bork's mind!" So instead of trying to reason with him, Superman tries attacking without warning. The prism sends Superman careening off wildly! As Bork puts it, "Just as an ordinary prism distorts light touching it, this prism distorts and deflects energy!" Ahem, I believe light IS energy, Mr. Bork. But I digress, Superman decides to use his superbreath to blow the prism out of Bork's hands only to have that deflected too, out into the ocean where a bunch of tankers are blown all out of the water! Of course saving those poor sailors and the ships is a cinch when you are the Man of Steel, but this give Bork just enough time to make his get-a-way.

Meanwhile, Batman and Robin have discovered where the two power hungry madmen are off to meet up at and now have to contend with the powers of the prism AND the dragon! Robin, thinking quickly, is able to get the prism and uses it to knock out the dragon, who shrinks down and is able to be put back into his box and out of the way. Having come back to his senses, Bork tells Batman where the fourth treasure can be found. While they are discovering his location Atkins finishes digging up the third treasure, a glove that dissolves inert matter! He creates a chasm where Bats and Robin are standing and they are just barely able to grab the edges to save themselves. Just as this is happening, Superman finally shows up and he's promptly deflected by the prism again! But when he recovers, to Atkins' shock and mine, Superman begins to sing! While even Robin is puzzled by a surely mad Superman's actions, the prism suddenly shatters in Atkins' hands! Superman used his "super-tone" to break the prism! So not only can he leap buildings in a single bound but Superman also has a beautiful singing voice. I never knew.

But the cunning criminal still had one treasure up his sleeve, a mantle (a kind of cloak) of invisibility! Thinking that he's about to get away scott-free, Atkins tries to flee, but Superman, holding true to his name, acts quickly and crushes a boulder into powder and blows it over the area, as the dust settles they are easily able to see Atkins and Batman places a well times right hook to knock the crook out! Pow!

To be sure that no greedy men will ever be able to use the treasures again, Superman wraps them all up in the mantle and hurls them into space, where the air friction sets them afire! The End.

Whew, that was a lot of typing for a 12 page story! I think I'll skip the last two stories, one with Tommy Tomorrow and one with Green Arrow. Maybe I'll do a sequel blog down the line. But for now, I leave you with this copious conundrum, is Superman a baritone or a falsetto?

New Tattoo 4 U!

2010-04-01T14:04:00.000-04:00

Greetings blogees! I have been hard at work coming up with a new tattoo design. I think I have finalized it, there are a couple of things I need to tweak, but I think I have finally hit a milestone in the design. I was so excited I decided to share it a bit early!

Click through to see!

So? What do you think?!

Also, April Fools....as if you didn't already smell that coming from a mile away!

Boxing in the Long House

2010-03-26T19:14:00.000-04:00

Is that title confusing? Don't worry, all will made clear!

Last weekend Elise and I were discussing way to improve our "studio" room. This is the room that holds our computers and art and craft supplies and comics. Plus junk. Lot of random junk. One of the many eye sores in the room is my big collection of 18 long boxes and 2 short boxes of comics. Elise has 2 long boxes (only one remains full).

As we talked I told her about some new boxes that are actually drawers. So instead of having to move box after box after box to put away comics you just pull out the drawer and you're done! Brilliant! Wonderful! Expensive!

Yeah, the really good drawer boxes are about $20 a pop, where as a regular long box runs about $7. I wasn't ready to drop that kind of cash but I was sorely tempted! Tempted enough to look for some alternatives online. I found some really nice custom made wood cabinets...with no price listed. This of course translates to "if you have to ask, you can't afford it". So I kept looking, I found a few solutions, but not many. Some people use filing cabinets which are slightly less ugly than a bunch of dirty long boxes, but they are also expensive and heavy and not really ideally suited to holding comics.

Surprisingly there aren't many clever solutions to comic book storage to be found online! But I did manage to run across BCW Supplies. They had a version of the comic book drawers that were cheaper and just as sturdy than the original creators of the Drawer Boxes. The bonus is that BCW gives you the option of just buying the housing, so you can use the long boxes you currently have (minus the lids)! I decided to give it a go and Elise was taken in by the black plastic short boxes, which I also considered but their cost each was considerably more expensive than what I had planned and they didn't really solve the problem of easy box access.

Shipping was pretty expensive, but I did order 20 boxes (taking advantage of their volume discount) and it was a combined weight of nearly 50lbs!

The pile looked more impressive in person...

Putting the boxes together was actually pretty easy and I'd say the whole process took no more than 15-20 minutes which was far less than I had anticipated.

Once everything was switched out (with a healthy dose of swearing and knocking stuff over) we both felt there was a big improvement, it was much less messy looking and more organized, if a bit imposing too.

Upon some testing I found the drawers were not quite what I expected. Although to be honest, looking back, what I was expecting was somewhat silly, given the materials.

I assumed it would be a piece of cake to pull the drawers out and generally it is, it's not more difficult to move the bottom box than the top, but the drawer housing doesn't change the weight of the long box, so you are still tugging on a 30lb box! It can be a bit of a challenge but it's much better than moving 3 whole boxes to get to the one on the bottom.

The houses are very sturdy, even with all the weight of 3 boxes above them they do their jobs wonderfully.

One other thing, or two, that I noticed last night is that you have to support the heavier boxes, they don't hang out of the housing very well and when you do pull them out the comics inside tend to fall forward, making it a bit hard to get new books into anything other than the very front.

I think I just need to fine tune my technique, even if I have to pull the whole drawer out to put some comics away it'll still be FAR easier than it used to be.

So after a bit of rearranging and ample use of the label maker, we now have this:

Better, not perfect but much better. As of now, I'm pretty happy and am looking forward to putting away new comics!

Cosmic Cognizance: The Living Tribunal!

2010-03-11T12:44:00.003-05:00

Welcome back my favorite four-color fanatics! I have a new Cosmic Cognizance character to captivate your craniums! ...whew, I think I almost over alliterated there.

Ok, so today I have decided to talk about the the biggest of the big, the most powerful of the powerful. No other being, save one he himself has only ever hinted to, holds as much power over the whole of the Marvel multi-verse. I give unto you...

The Living Tribunal

First appearing in Strange Tales #157 in 1967 he revealed himself to Dr. Strange and threatened to destroy Earth unless Strange was able to prove to him that earth was capable of more than just evil. Pretty standard comic book fare really and a bit of an overused Stan Lee plot device, but eventually the character was elevated far above his origins.

Today he is the law of all that is. His word and decisions ultimately dictate reality and not just the main Marvel Universe (aka 616) but for the entirety of the multi-verse. His rulings and powers are able to literally chance the laws of physics. The Tribunal, for example, even declared that the all powerful Infinity Gems were no longer allowed to work in unison. He was able to be captured by Thanos while Thanos possessed the Infinity Gauntlet, along with just about all of the universe's gods and abstract concepts (most of which will eventually be spotlighted in other CC posts), but Adam Warlock bowed to his judgement when Adam briefly held the Gauntlet, recognizing the Tribunal's ultimate authority in the universe, despite actually being more powerful than the Tribunal at the time.

The three faces of the Living Tribunal represent Equity, Vengeance and Necessity, respectively (I believe that means from left to right in the image). The few times the Living Tribunal has chosen to reveal his covered face to someone, it is always reflection of that character's own face. The face is a "Cosmic Mirror which reminds us to always judge others as we would have ourselves judged."

The Tribunal has hinted that there is One that even he serves. I suspect that this "One" is a fourth-wall breaker. In a Fantastic Four story (FF #511) they manage to get to meet God, who happens to be sitting at a drawing board and speaks and looks exactly like Jack Kirby!

If this is truly who the Living Tribunal is referencing, then I can imagine no greater God to watch over the Marvel U.

A Copious Collection Complete!

2010-03-06T08:50:00.003-05:00

Good Morning faithful bloggees! It's your humble blogger, The Goog, back for more showing off!

Lately, or well, the past year or so, I have been working to complete a run of The Silver Surfer, Vol. 1. I originally had just assumed such a task was out of my price range so I bought a copy of The Essential Silver Surfer (which collects all 18 issues of the series in an affordable b&w trade). I enjoyed it so much that, just curious, I took a peek at what some issues were going for on Ebay. To my surprise there were quite a few up for very affordable prices...and some not so much. After not too much thought at all, I decided that I'd like to try grabbing a few for my collection. The first issue I snagged was #3, which is the first appearance of Mephisto, Marvel's version of The Devil (or a Devil). I've always like him, so it seemed like a nice book to have. That of course sparked me to keep looking for good deals and slowly I started to piece the collection together.
I tried to only use the money I made from selling unwanted comics on Ebay to buy other (read: better) comics. So for the most part the whole collection was essentially traded, which worked out well for my bank account.

The main challenge about this collection is that when these books were released, 1968-1970, they weren't hugely popular. The Surfer was something of a pop culture figure along with the Hulk and Spidey and was popular with the college crowd but the books were not big sellers, so they didn't print many, making them somewhat scarce now-a-days. But with persistence and patience great deals can be found.

So without further ado, I present:

The latest acquisitions, which have a nice kind of poetry to the idea, were #1 and #18, the first and last issues. I got an amazing deal on #1 which is in fantastic condition and probably worth quite a bit more than what I paid for it. All the books are in pretty nice shape and I'm still giddy about having them in my collection.

So with this second goal complete, my first being collecting every appearance of Adam Warlock, I have decided to take a break from serious collecting. Well, at least until I have more books I want to unload on Ebay or the next Boston Comic-Con in April, which ever comes first!

Harpoon Oyster Stout Tast Test

2010-02-26T18:48:00.003-05:00

Happy Friday night everyone! I've been away from blogging for a bit, life's keeping me busy. I have a new drink review for you though, so that should smooth things over until the next comics post. Today I have for you a review of Harpoon Brewery's 100 Barrel line of beers' newest release, Island Creek Oyster Stout.

The 100 Barrel Series is a limited release beer, Harpoon releases new brews every few months. The last release was a Ginger Wheat which was very good, if you look you can probably still find some available. The thing about 100 Barrels is that they only make 100 barrels, so once it's gone it's gone. They have gone back and made some popular releases occasionally, but not often. I believe I have tasted all of the 30 releases, some have been better than others but they are always worth trying.

Ok, on to the beer in question. Yes, the beer is made with real oysters, I remember seeing Harpoon's Facebook updates about harvesting the oysters themselves. I actually don't think I've seen them so excited about a beer before!

So, upon first whif and taste I didn't get much of anything, it smelled like a stout but nothing out of the ordinary. It was a mild first sip and I didn't immediately get any oyster flavors, but on my second taste it finally caught up to me. The aroma was a bit briney and there is a definite sweet brine finish, which is an odd sensation for a stout! The more I drink it the more defined it seems to get. It's salty more than oystery but not unpleasantly salty. I have to say, I wish I had some oysters or even clams to wash down with this beer. It's not a party beer, but it would go very nicely with a few bivalves! Letting the taste sit on my tongue I can finally really get the oyster, I think that I might not enjoy it if I was just handed this drink with no knowledge of what it is. I would put it firmly in the "acquired taste" category, but since I sought the Oyster Stout out, I can't say I'm disappointed.

To sum it all up, Harpoon Island Creek Oyster Stout is not for the weak of heart but if you are looking for something different, you can't get much more of it!

Cosmic Cognizance: The Infinity Gems

2010-01-28T09:33:00.009-05:00

Welcome to the first entry into a new feature I'm calling, Cosmic Cognizance, where I will focus on some of my favorite of Marvel's Cosmic Superheroes and Super Villains. For my first entry I decided to cover The Infinity Gems. You may ask, "But The Goog, how can gems be a character?!" Go ahead, I'll wait... "Ok!" I'd say "Let me tell you!" The gems are in fact sentient. So there. Ok, now, where to begin?

Let me tell you what each gem is:

Green: The Soul Gem, gives the wielder the mastery of the Soul. It is potentially the most powerful of the gems and over time actually steals the soul of the person using it. It is often referred to as vampiric. Any souls stolen by the gem are not actually consumed but end up in a pocket dimension inside the gem where the soul lives in peace, so not too bad of a trade off for having your soul ripped out of your living body.

Red: The Power Gem, gives the user access to all the power and energy that has ever and will ever exist.

Purple: The Space Gem, provides mastery over space. This allows the user to exist in any an all locations and to warp or rearrange space.

Blue: The Mind Gem, boosts psy powers and allows access to any mind and or dream.

Yellow: The Time Gem, allows control over Time itself. A user could change all time or only local time, for example ageing or de-ageing an individual.

Orange: The Reality Gem, with this gem the user can fulfill any wish even if it contradicts the laws of science, in effect you can bend reality. This gem can not be used on it's own and must be used in conjunction with the other gems.

(a side note, I keep seeing on Wiki that they have the yellow and orange gems reversed. I'm not sure why that is, the comics are pretty clear on which is which, but there you have it)

Ok, when the gems first appeared in the comics, the only one we knew of was the Soul Gem which was given to Adam Warlock by The High Evolutionary. In fact once the other gems started to appear they were just called The Soul Gems.

Thanos later gathered all the gems and siphoned off their power to create a weapon capable of destroying a star. He is stopped by Captain Marvel and Iron Man with the help of a now dead Adam Warlock. Adam manifests in the final moments, using the last of the stolen energy of the Soul gem to turn Thanos into stone.

Eventually the Elders of the Universe gather all of the gems in an attempt to kill Galactus and gain true immortality. They are thwarted by the Silver Surfer and Death herself curses the Elders with immortality. This leaves some of them in eternal torment or robbed of the very thing that gave them their long lives and titles of Elder. A few of the lucky Elders get away and take the gems with them.

Once again, Thanos is resurrected by Mistress Death as her champion and now a bit more wiser, realizes the true potential of the gems. He then sets out on a quest to once again reclaim them and by either besting or tricking the remaining Elders he manages to gather the gems once more and mounts them to his glove, he re-christens them the Infinity Gems and creates the Infinity Gauntlet.

The gauntlet allows Thanos to essentially become a god (his second time holding god-hood actually). He then proceeds to erase half the population of the universe to balance life and death. He captures the living embodiments of all reality (Eternity, Infinity, Death, Galactus, the Celestials, Chaos and Order to name a few) and keeps them prisoner. Eventually he is stopped by Earth's heroes and is thought dead.

As a result of this, a resurrected Adam Warlock claims the Infinity Gauntlet and is allowed audience with the Cosmic heavyweights (since he is now at or above their own level). The Living Tribunal declares that from now on the gems will never be able to be used in unison. Adam agrees and offers to form a Watch to safeguard the gems. He keeps the Soul gem but gives the others to four of his friends, leaving the keeper of the Reality gem a secret. It is eventually revealed that he has entrusted the gem to Thanos himself! Warlock knew Thanos was not dead and entrusted the gem to him also knowing that Thanos would not be stupid enough to try using the gem without the others present. Since the gems also no longer work together and no one would ever attempt to fight Thanos for it, the gem is actually as safe as it could be.

The gems are indeed kept safe for a while until the cancellation of The Infinity Watch where Marvel dumps all the gems AND Adam into the Ultraverse. I won't bother getting into that, no one ever talks about it and I think it's barely cannon. But the gems and Adam all eventually return to the Marvel Universe.

Some time later Galactus decides to collect the gems himself to try to solve his never ending hunger. The gems are not able to fulfill this role and only end up releasing an evil force into the universe which Thanos has to stop (this all happening in Thanos' short lived but excellent title book).

The Gems in their Gauntlet form make an appearance in the JLA/Avengers crossover where Darkseid tries to put them to use only to discover the gems do not function outside of their home universe.

Recently all the gems have come into possession of the Illuminati of the Marvel U. Each member (Iron Man, Professor X, Namor, Dr. Strange, Blackbolt and Reed Richards) keep a gem in secret and have sworn not to use them. Reed had attempted to wish them out of existence but the gems are actually needed for cosmic balance, so his attempt failed. They apparently made an appearance in the limited Pet Avengers series, so I'll have to track those books down!

I believe Reed now keeps the gems in a safe place, where they no doubt wait for the next cosmic crossover!

I think that's about it! There's a bit more I did not mention, but I can leave the details for other posts, I think this one is long enough and this is about as detailed as I can make it with out being TOO dull. At least I hope so!

(Edit: hoo, I should have triple checked this, lots of typos have been now fixed)

Busy But Productive Weekend!

2010-01-24T16:13:00.005-05:00

Whew! I'm beat! I just finished a project that Elise and I had been talking about for some time. Said project being a new kitchen floor! We were in the works to have something installed by Home Depot, but that was a major headache and we eventually put it on hold because it had just become too much trouble. We had moved onto our next project of getting some ceiling fans installed. Since we have a concrete ceiling and no existing light fixtures this is not a simple task. We recently found someone that lives in our building and is a contractor, so on our trip back to the Depot to buy some fans for him to install, we stumbled on to some Do-It-Yourself flooring and $80 later we walked off with the means to achieve our original project goal.

This is the before picture (the fridge isn't always that far out, we had moved it away from the wall)

Not very pretty.

Aaaand, 4 hours, one sliced open knuckle and a rip in my pants later, Viola...

Not too shabby! It makes the kitchen much more inviting and more pleasant (and hopefully less blinding when you turn the light on first thing in the morning).

My other project was finished on Saturday. I had decided that I wanted a personalized avatar for use online instead of the "Mad Men"avatar I had been using. I figured it was poor advertising for my art to NOT have a personalized avatar. Elise loved this idea and asked for one for herself too. I had started this project about 2 weeks ago, I had a few bad starts and had wasted a few hours before settling back on my original idea (Illustrator instead of Photoshop). It took me probably close to 12 hours to finish Elise's avatar in the end, but in that time I learned quite a few tricks, so many that once I finished her avatar I started mine and completed it in a half hour! Here are the finished pics:

I think I could continue to tweak Elise's, hers is a bit more complicated than mine (which is more stylized) and I could probably simplify it a bit more, but overall I'm really happy!

Malta Goya!

2010-01-22T20:23:00.005-05:00

No, that's not a foreign greeting, it's a drink. From Goya to be exact. I have seen this malt soda in the supermarket for years but have never tried it. I have heard from a few people that had tried the drink that it was gross. I have had Goya's other sodas many times, my favorites are the pineapple and coconut sodas, and their ginger beer is surprisingly spicy!

So this past week while making a quick food run I decided I was going to give it a try since all I would be out is a whole .59!

I was expecting something something super sweet due to it's very dark, almost stout-like color. It turns out the soda has a nice barley flavor and is lightly carbonated. It's not overly sweet and actually quiet pleasant especially if you like barley. It reminds me of the way the house smells when brewing beer with my friend!

I'm sorry it took me so long to give this Malt Soda a try, I don't think I'll drink it a lot, it's got a lot of sugar in it and hardly a health drink but it's definitely going to move into the occasional rotation along with the other Goya drinks I like and it is most certainly not gross.

New Header!

2010-01-02T12:17:00.004-05:00

I was reading a Marvel Two-In-One this morning and came across this weird little ad in one of the pages, I've run into it quite a few times, but this time I thought it would be a fun experiment to try to make it my new header! I think it came out pretty well!

Here is the original ad, for comparison:

So? What do you think?

WHAT IF Spider-Man JOINED My Blog?

2010-01-01T06:00:00.003-05:00

Hello and Happy New Year my loyal legions! Welcome to the futuristic world of 2010 AND a new comic blog! I thought I'd skip my theme of alternating Marvel and DC and go with a vaguely New Years theme. I thought Marvel's What If would be appropriate, since we do not yet know what this brand spanking new year will bring.

So I promise I'll go back to DC next time, maybe I'll even go with DC for the next two entries! Until then, I present you with...

What If #1 from 1976

I have always loved the What If comics. They take a familiar and popular story and give it a twist, so we get to see what might have happened if events played out differently. Sometimes it's a major change, other times it's a very small event that snowball's a character's life out of true. The series, and all What If's in Vol. 1 and 2, is hosted by Uatu, The Watcher.

For Marvel's first entry into the this new format, they picked a scene from The Amazing Spider-Man #1. In the book, Peter Parker is still very new to the world of super-heroing and decides to try out for a job with the Fantastic Four. He's thinking it'll pay more than any other lame job he could find, so he sneaks into the Baxter Building in an effort to impress the FF. They are more than ready for him and quickly catch the inexperienced Spidey. Spider-Man equally quickly free's himself and bounces around Reed Richard's lab showboating and trying to convince the FF that they'll be even better with a fifth member.
Once things start to calm down, Sue reveals that the Fantastic Four are a non-profit! Pete is so disappointed that he storms off. Now in the original comic, Spidey swings off into the city in a huff while the FF stand around dumbfounded. In this reality, Sue calls out to Spidey and he decides he was a bit rude after all and comes back. They then eventually decide to let Spider-Man join.
This is where things start to get really kooky, when J. Jonah Jamison sees that Spider-Man is now with the Fantastic Four he totally changes his tune about the ol' Web Head and becomes his biggest fan. Spider-Man's rogue gallery starts to change, the Chameleon, who was planning on impersonating Spidey had to scrap all his plans now that he's with the FF and falls into obscurity, and the Vulture is no match for The Fantastic Five and is quickly tossed into jail.

When things start to get really serious (well as serious as they can get with the Red Ghost and his super monkeys) Reed starts to ask Sue to stay behind since they have Spidey to help out. Reed is only trying to protect Sue but she is starting to get jealous of Peter. This leaves her vulnerable when the Puppet Master shows up. He has already taken control of Namor who has had a long standing crush on the Invisible Girl. Sue also has a bit of a crush on Subby and feeling rejected by Reed and the rest of the FF, runs off to meet with him. This is of course a trap and the mind-controlled Namor kidnaps Sue to the bottom of the ocean.

The Puppet Master uses a hologram of Namor to taunt the rest of the FF into challenging Namor for Sue. The FF race to Namor's lair and there is a huge fight involving all sorts of weird sea creatures and a giant octopus. Eventually Namor and Sue break free of the Puppet Master's influence but when given the chance to return home, Sue actually decides to stick with Namor! She goes through some kind of experimental shell-like device called the, uh, Shell Device, and is given gills. When Namor realizes that Sue is dying by not being in the water he picks up the device and throws it through the underwater dome "saving" Sue.

At this point the rest of the, once again, Fantastic Four cut their losses and escape too. Reed tries to take solace in the hope that Sue will be Namor's conscience and help to protect the surface world from Namor's (almost indiscriminate) wrath. Spider-Man laments to Johnny Storm that maybe if he had never joined the group that none of this would have happened, but Johnny just tells him to relax and "like the song says--What ever will be, will be."

Whew! Did I mention this was a double issue? Well, it was! You can rarely go wrong with a What If comic and this was a whole lotta fun! I hope you guys had as much fun reading my summary as I had trying to decipher the events.

Happy New Year! See you next time!

The Decade In Review.

2009-12-31T15:59:00.005-05:00

The 2000's.

Yup, that happened.

Aw heck, I was going to leave this very short, but I'm starting to get all reminiscent.

This was a heck of a decade. There were some losses to my family that we are still feeling and some near losses but there were some new additions also.

I earned a Fine Art degree, and held a few different jobs.

I lost touch with some old friends but gained many many new friends.

I got to travel the world a bit, visiting New Zealand, London, Las Vegas and Philadelphia.

and most importantly:

I met my Lurve, moved into a new condo with my Lurve, got engaged to said Lurve and we'll be married Lurves by this time next year.

Happy New Year and here's to 10 more. For good or ill and to learning and growing.

*raises glass*

Movie Review: Avatar

2009-12-28T08:06:00.003-05:00

Hello gang, I hope everyone had a nice X-Mas and are getting ready for a great New Years!

Yesterday, Elise and I walked up to the Capitol theater in Arlington to catch Avatar in 3D. We both weren't exactly taken with all the hype, but both felt that the technical achievements of the movie made it worth seeing in the theater in 3D instead of waiting for DVD. We were not disappointed.

The 3D was outstanding and almost completely immersive. I was only taken out of the experience when things like computer monitors were also displaying in 3D, it was so odd to see that I stopped focusing on the movie and focused on the monitor. It was perhaps a bit too cool of a visual.
The forest scenes were amazing and quite often nearly breathtaking.

The planet, Pandora was beautiful. The inhabitants were a weird mix of slightly familiar creatures with a twist and a HEAVY dose of deep sea creatures. This last part I found slightly distracting, some of the creatures were SO heavily deep sea that it took me out of the movie, while some others were so unusual that I wanted to see more of them!

The mix of live action and CGI was seamless. Absolutely seamless. The Na'vi each looked like individuals and the main characters all looked like their alien counterparts. It was almost too easy to forget that this wasn't some kind of amazing makeup and that the past 40 minutes was all computer imagery! When humans interacted with the Na'vi it was also completely believable. It was pretty astounding.
The eyes and those tiny facial movements and micro expressions that people make and that we don't necessarily consciously notice are what make CGI characters come to life and the Na'vi were absolutely life like.

The story is basically Dances With Wolves in space and was fairly stereotypical. This is not necessarily bad, it IS James Cameron after all, so you have to expect the movie to look better than it's written. The only really groan worthy part of the movie is the depiction of the bad guys. They're your basic mindless military and corporate slimes. Cameron pretty much just transplanted the jerks from Aliens straight into this movie. The bully's are all totally 1 dimensional and not much time is devoted to developing them, actually scratch that. NO time is devoted to developing them. For it's nearly 3 hours, only about 3 or 4 characters get any development time. But that's probably ok, there were a lot of people/characters running around and not all of them really had a lot to do. If they were each developed, the movie would have been 4-5 hours long! This is really a special effects movie and you just have to go with that.

So, to make a long review short, the movie may not be perfect but it is quite a lot of fun. The technical innovations that were created just for the movie well make the movie worth seeing in the theater. This WILL NOT be the same at home.

I give it a B+/A-

ps- I'm not sure if I'm looking forward to Na'vi cosplay at next years comic con's but there is no way we WON'T be seeing it. If it's done well, it'll be something to see. But, if it's not done well...it'll be something to see.

Happy Winter Festivals!

2009-12-22T13:27:00.003-05:00

So I hope everyone is all caught up on their End of the Year/Holiday preparations. I know I finally am. I also have some time off coming up! Which means I should be able to get through some of those comics that have been mocking me. Which in turn, also means more comic blogs! ...don't hold me to that though.

But in the mean time, I have a new Baman Piderman video I wanted to bring to your attention!

Behold! The Epic: Baman Piderman: Happy Winter Friends, Part 1!

Can Baman and Piderman save poor ol' Pumpkin?! I'm dying to know too!

While we all wait for the next part, I hope you all have a safe and Happy Holidays!

...by the way, if you haven't ever seen Baman Piderman, you may want to scroll down and see my other posts about it. Otherwise this cartoon is going to be indecipherable!

Lesson: Magneto is a Dick.

2009-12-08T09:00:00.001-05:00

I have been recording my collection of classic Marvel cartoons from VHS to DVD the past few days and I have had the chance to re-watch or at least re-listen to some odd happenings. For example, I present you:

Man! I thought Magneto was going to Hulk out for a minute there. I'm not even sure what I could possibly say that would be funnier than that video.

This is only the first few minutes of a 20 minute cartoon. It just gets weirder from there. Like, for instance, Magneto heading to the Baxter Building to take over leadership of the Fantastic Four because he feels he's more Fantastic than Mr. Fantastic. What a maroon!

So the lesson we have learned today?

Magneto is a Dick.

A Clash of Comic Titans!

2009-12-04T09:00:00.000-05:00

Boy, I wasn't sure I was ever going to get around to another one of these! I apologize for the lack of posts. I feel like I haven't had a whole lot of time for catching up on my new comics, let alone reminiscing about my older ones. I have finally had some time to do some reading and catching up, thanks to the long Thanksgiving weekend. I made a dent in the new books and was also able to make a decent dent in the new older comics I have acquired as of late. Speaking of which, I present to you a very recently acquired Bronze Age book:

The Invincible Ironman #54

I had been looking for this for a bit because it has the first appearance of Moondragon, who was once a member of Adam Warlock's Infinity Watch and keeper of the Mind Infinity Gem. She is also currently a member of the new Guardians of the Galaxy and I have lately been attempting to collect the first appearances of the Guardians. With the purchase of this book I am nearly done, but coincidentally the book I am most seeking out to complete my set is the elusive Ironman #55! Which contains the first appearance of Drax The Destoryer and one of my favorite villains, Thanos! Seeing as this particular issue of Ironman was drawn and written my Jim Starlin and has the first veiled appearance of a major baddie, it's pretty had to come by in decent shape and under $100. So the hunt continues.

Back to the issue at hand, so to speak. When we first see the future Moondragon she is calling herself, get this, Madame MacEvil. Madame MacEvil? Really? She didn't put much thought into that one did she? Anyway, she decides to pit Ironman and Namor against each other to see who is tougher. She uses her supercomputer (who she argues with the entire issue, because she gave it emotions and it's all uppity) to take control of Tony's armor and then force him to attack Namor! Namor being Namor, assumes this is further proof that the surface dwellers can't be trusted and just dives right into the fight. Poor Tony is held helpless as he pummels and is pummeled by his ally. Eventually he regains control and zooms off not even trying to apologize to Namor, who at this point is (pardon yet another pun) royally pissed and probably wouldn't listen to reason anyway.

The issue ends pretty much around there without much explained, aside from everyone going their separate ways. Thanks to the ever helpful Wiki, it turns out that Moondragon *ahem* Madame MacEvil is not actually evil, she's running around trying to find someone that's strong enough to combat and defeat Thanos. As to exactly why, well, hopefully that story will be told once I get my mitts on that Ironman #55. Until then, this has been the Goog and I'm outta here!

Guest Blog: Recipe Friday!

2009-11-13T09:50:00.001-05:00

I have another guest blog up over at Journey of Will. This time it's my recipe for pickled ginger!

Head over and check it out!

Journey of Will

New Logo!

2009-11-09T09:00:00.001-05:00

Elise and I finally had a weekend where we had a free day. Well, aside from food shopping and some laundry at least, so we decided to make it a "Studio Day", which basically means we spend the day, as beautiful as it was out, inside working on some projects. I have been trying to redesign my Castle Thunder Graphics logo for some time without much luck, so I sat down to do more work on that and Elise focused on getting some knitting done.

I'm happy to say that I quickly found my stride and stumbled onto a design that I really enjoyed really quickly, thanks to some suggestions from Elise. Here you can see the new logo:

That's a pretty big change, but I was pretty sick of the old one. I think this design better represents my style of work, it's much more fun and light and clean.

Since I was on a roll, I decided I should update my web site with the new logo and while I was in there, I decided to update a few other things. I have stream lined the site a bit, I think it's a little cleaner looking but I do still want to get around to giving it a complete overhaul, but until then I'm pretty happy. Also, some stuff was shockingly out of date! It was really about time for a little house cleaning. Go check it out, and look for some new images, and let me know what you think!

Castle Thunder Graphics

p.s.- I also added a few new items to my Cafe Press store. Go check it out!

Halloween Wrap-Up!

2009-11-02T10:35:00.006-05:00

So this year's Halloweeniversary was another fantastic time. Many costumes were worn and as always folks out did themselves. My personal favorite costumes were Buck Rogers and Wilma Deering. If Bob was not an owner, him and Erin easily would have won the costume contest. Fantastic!

Elise and I opted for an obscure video came, Plants Vs. Zombies. See below for pics:

Us recreating the epic struggle.

For next year, Sean and I have some major plans. These costumes may be our biggest effort, if we succeed, it may be the stuff of legend. Fingers crossed. We only have 363 days left to work on em!

Return of the Undead Blog! Zombies, Pt.3!

2009-10-30T09:00:00.003-04:00

Happy Halloween Eve my little Hell-o-weenies! (Hell-o-? Forget it, I'm committing) Welcome to the latest and final part of my zombie movie blogs!

This blog will focus on the Modern Age of zombie movies, as defined by me. I'm thinking this blog will have more movies to talk about, so I'll keep each movie a bit more brief.

Let's get to it!

Modern Age

As I said the other day, the line for Silver and Modern is a bit vague but I'm drawing the line between Day of the Dead and today's first movie, "Return of The Living Dead". Both films were released in 1985. Return is a lot of fun, it plays as though what happened in Night of The Living Dead was based actual events that were later suppressed by the government. The film was a way to "hide out in the open". Some of the zombies that were later contained were sealed in containers to be shipped to government facilities, but a few were lost. One is discovered and the zombie is released and starts to wreak havoc and quickly starts turning others into zombies. My favorite part of this movie is the effects, the first barrell zombie is outstanding! It looks like a zombie right out of an EC horror comic!

The reason that I list this as the turning point to Modern is that they really supe up the zombies in these movies (there were a few sequels, none as good as this). The zombies are essentially unstoppable, taking out the brain doesn't do anything and each part of the zombie is capable of moving on it's own if hacked off. That is a bit too much for me in terms of believability, but it's still a whole lot of fun to watch. The other notable thing is that, to my knowledge, this is the first time that zombies are shown searching for brains. This never comes up in any of Romero's movies and isn't in official zombie cannon anywhere I know of, yet it's become a staple of zombiedom. One other notable point is that you see the zombies being clever, if you've ever read Marvel Zombies, then I think you'd find the zombies familiar.

1985 was a banner year for the undead because "Re-Animator" also came out. Re-Animator tells the gory story of Herbert West, who has been cooking up a serum to return the dead to life. Unfortunately this never works out the way he wants it to and the dead are usually hopelessly insane and violent. This is another one for those of us that like cult movies and a healthy dose of gore.

Here's a quick one, "Night of The Creeps" from 1986. Outer space slugs take over your brain, turning you into a zombie. It's a campy cult movie that actively tried to be a "B" movie and poked fun at a few other genre's. I haven't seen it in ages, but I loved it as a kid.

With this next entry, we return a bit back to the classic zombie. I mentioned this movie in my first post. It's Wes Craven's 1988 "The Serpent and the Rainbow". It makes the claim to be based off actual events, but that's pretty damn loosely. This is about an ethnobotanist that's investigating Clairvius Narcisse a man that was documented proof of zombieism. Or what was considered an actual zombie. The poor guy was poisoned by a voodoo priest, he was left in a state very similar to death but not actual medical death. When the poison wears off, he's left brain damaged upon waking due to lack of oxygen and is now a "zombie".

So the movie is loosely based upon the book of the scientists experiences in Haiti. But it's got zombies and is a call back to the Golden Age, so I have included it.

Next we'll walk over to an adaptation of Stephen King's scariest book, 1989's "Pet Sematary". I imagine everyone knows the story here, the Pet Sematary is actually an old and spoiled Mic Mac Indian burial ground. The ground has turned sour over time and sends those buried in it back to the person who put them in the ground. Unfortunately they are now completely evil. This is another step away from the classic zombie, but not a step far away. The undead still return from the grave and seek the living, but it's usually only their loved ones that "reap what was sown".

In 1990, George Romero's long time special effect make-up guy Tom Savini directed a re-make of "Night of The Living Dead". He updated the movie while keeping it very faithful to the original. The make-up effects are outstanding and the zombies are all very creepy looking. The major difference, character-wise, is that Barbara is not so helpless in the re-make. Here she quickly decides to have a hand in her own survival and becomes a bad-ass instead of sitting on the couch in shock mumbling to herself like in the original. I really enjoy this movie, but it's still pretty low budget. I'd call it "B+" instead of a "B" movie :)

"28 Days Later", Released in 2002. Great movie. Despite popular belief, there are NO ZOMBIES IN THIS FILM. Moving along.

Also in 2002, "Resident Evil". An adaptation of the video game of the same name. The game is chock full of zombies and did a great job of introducing zombies to a new generation and I would say single handedly started the zombie renaissance we are currently in. The movie had one short scene involving some zombies and was mostly a reason for the director to have his hot model wife run around in skimpy clothes....not that I'm against that. But it's not much of a zombie movie, the game is much creepier.

Ok, now we're venturing into controversy territory. Zack Snyder's 2004 re-make of "Dawn of The Dead". I actually signed an online petition against this. It's sacrilege! It's blasphemous! It was a big goddamn hit. It introduced us to the sprinting zombies, I'm still not crazy about this. Zombies are dead. They're rotting. They're not coordinated enough to run. Ok, I'll give you maybe right at first, but not all the time. Well, love em or hate em. Snyder gave em to us, no doubt also confusing the infected from 28 Days Later for the living dead. From now on, I'm coining the term "Snyderian" for fast zombies. You read it here first folks.

Ok, well, back to the movie a bit. I decided to give it a shot and I was pleasantly surprised. It wasn't great, but it was actually pretty good. Snyder did some interesting things here and has gone on to continue to make some interesting things. I don't think Dawn needed a remake, you can't perfect perfection after all, but he did make an entertaining movie.

I think I'll finish my list up with this, Edgar Wright's "Shaun of The Dead", also released in 2004. This movie is fantastic and belongs on the list at the bottom only because (well aside from chronology) to truly enjoy it you have to have seen a few of the movies already on the list. I'm not saying you won't enjoy it otherwise, but you'll get a fuller understanding of what Wright was paying tribute to. They got everything right, it's damn funny, it's character driven, chock full of character development and the zombies are SLOW. There is nothing I don't like about this movie. Highly recommended.

Oh ok, a few more notes.

"Land of The Dead" (2005) Romero's return to his zombies. This time he shows us society attempting to build itself back up, but the zombies are still evolving. People are still too busy fighting among themselves to pay attention to what's happening in the world. It's pretty good, very gory and has some great scenes.

"I Am Legend" (2007) In the book, they were vampires. In the movie they were mutants, but looked vaguely like zombies and people refer to them as such. NOT ZOMBIES.

"Planet Terror" (2007) Part of the Grind House double feature, this was Robert Rodriguez's tribute to "B" movies. Hilarious and expertly crafted to be as cheezy as possible. A lot of fun. Does contain zombies!

"Diary of The Dead" (2007) Romero's most recent take on zombies, I haven't seen it yet. I have heard nothing good about it, unfortunately.

"Dead Snow" (2009) A Norwegian take on Nazi Zombies. I haven't seen it yet, but it's got some good reviews.

I think that just about covers it. Let me know what you think and if you think I missed anything.

Have a Happy Halloween everyone!

Zombies, Zombies, Everywhere! Pt.2

2009-10-28T09:00:00.002-04:00

Today I continue on my review/list of movies I deem important to the Zombie genre. In the last post I talked about what I felt were the "Golden Age" movies, White Zombie, Plan 9 From Outer Space and Plague of the Zombies.

These movies all focused on the classic and well, true definition of a zombie, an undead slave. With the next few movies zombies have shaken off the shackles and are taking things into their own hands...namely your brains.

Silver Age

This next movie is THE zombie movie. Before this, as I stated above, zombies were always portrayed as slaves. Here they are horror, they are the embodiment of our fears of death, always slowly on our heels, relentless and unforgiving.

In 1968 George Romero gave us, "Night of The Living Dead". It was a small independent film that came out in black and white when most other movies had made the switch to color. It was not received well, critics panned it but it did find a cult following. Today it has been placed in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as a film deemed "historically, culturally or aesthetically important".

There was no artistic choice in the movie being shot in B&W, Romero chose it because that's all he could afford. Many of the choices in the movie were not done for artistic purposes, the most obvious being that the main character is black. There is never any mention of his race or any indication that anyone thinks anything odd about his skin color. This was a bit of a big deal in 1968. Romero has said he chose Duayne Jones to play Ben only because he "gave the best audition". He had no intention to comment on race relations in the movie, although it is quite subversive.

This is also the first film to show the dead seeking the flesh of the living. Romero has mixed the classic zombie with a good hand full of ghoul and created an entirely new monster. The undead are not angry, they are not insane, they are simply instinct. They represent what we fear most, death, and are out to take what we have and that they do not, life.

This movie set the standards for decades to come.

Coincidentally, one decade later in 1978, Romero gave us the sequel "Dawn of The Dead". This movie has no direct relation to any character from the first movie, which is understandable if you've ever seen Night. This takes place an unspecified time later, my guess is days, despite the obvious 10 year lag, society is still trying to hold together but it's all falling apart anyway. A few people find themselves together and head out of the city in a helicopter. They land on the roof of a shopping mall to rest and resupply when they realize that they could live like kings if they can clear out the zombies. This has fueled the minds of many a zombie enthusiast. What's the best place to hole up in and defend? Everyone has an opinion of this, some people spend maybe a bit too much time thinking about it...but then again, maybe they'll be the ones who survive the next major disaster because they've been planning. Think about that those of you who laugh!

*ahem* Anyway, this is my personal favorite zombie movie, there's so much to love. There are some very clear messages in it, yet it never takes itself too seriously. It's gory and it's funny and I think it set a standard for movies like Shaun of the Dead and Zombieland. This and Night are MUST SEE'S if you have never seen them. Period.

A year later than Dawn of the dead came Lucio Fulci's 1979 "Zombie", or as it was known internationally, "Zombi 2", an unofficial sequel to Dawn of the Dead. The movie is notable for, well, pretending to be a Romero movie and it's gore. In the first 10 minutes of the movie a zombie fights a damn shark! How awesome is that?! It sets a high mark that the rest of the movie doesn't quite stand up to, I found it a bit of a chore to watch although not unenjoyable. If you like gore, this is a good one for it. Recommended only for hard-core zombie or gore enthusiasts.

Things get a bit trickier from here on out, so I think I'll go with one more before calling it the end of the Silver Age. This final movie is, yet again, from George Romero. It's important for one thing, arguably, but as there were no other significant movies I could pick out in the years between, I'm moving on to this. Romero's part 3, "Day of The Dead" made in 1985. Day picks up much like Dawn, new characters and a new location. This time we're following some soldiers that are holding an army base with a few civilians and a doctor that's experimenting on the zombies. The one thing I find important in the movie is the zombie, Bub. The nutzo doctor has been able to train Bub to do certain things like salute the soldiers. He is proving that there is still some humanity locked away in the undead brains, he is hoping to be able to control them some how, but the soldiers, who are a bunch of dicks, are horrified and have other plans for survival. If you are a fan of the last two movies, I'd recommend this one, but it's much slower than the others and it is not quite as rewarding to watch. It is important for the overall evolution of the undead through Romero's movies. Aside from that, well, I'll just say I've seen this one a few times, compared to the dozen times I've seen the other two each.

With that, I'll leave the Silver Age of zombie movies and we switch to the Modern Age. The tricky part is that the next movie also came out in 1985, yet planted the seeds for what is becoming the "norm" for zombies. See you in a few days my delightful decomposing disciples!

In Honor of My Most Favoritest of Holidays, I present ZOMBIES!

2009-10-26T09:00:00.003-04:00

Greetings gluttonous ghoulies! As promised, I have a new blog, or series really, about Zombie movies! This is in no way an official list, as I scanned the Wiki for movies I wasn't remembering, I saw about a thousand movies I haven't actually seen. ...probably for the best because zombies don't generally get a large budget thrown at em. But there are a few notable exceptions.

I'd like to start the week off with what I'm calling "Golden Age" Zombie movies, Wednesday will focus on "Silver Age" and we'll end the week in the "Modern Age".

I am going to skip posting pics with these posts, since Blogger makes it frustratingly hard to add more than one or two, but I will include links to the Wiki page for the movies in case anyone is interested in learning more about them.

Golden Age

For the fist film, I am choosing, as it would be logical, the first recognized zombie movie. "White Zombie", starring Bela Lugosi and directed by Victor Halperin in 1932. It was an independent movie at the time and came out about a year after Lugosi's hit, Dracula. White Zombie wasn't a big critical hit, but it did do well enough that they made a sequel, which I have not seen.

I enjoyed this movie, it's very moody and atmospheric and Lugosi is usually fun to watch. The zombies in the movie are probably the closest to "real" zombies as you are going to find, maybe with the exception of "Serpent and the Rainbow" but that's for another blog. These zombies are true walking undead which do the bidding of their master, who as you can probably guess is played by Lugosi.

This is probably skipable unless you are a zombie completest or love Universal's classic horror movies, otherwise I think most folks would be a bit bored with it.

I can't help but pick this movie as my number two, it's a classic but not in the way the director had attempted. "Plan 9 From Outer Space" is famous for being horrible. It was directed by Edward D. Wood Jr. in 1959. I think the reason that this and Wood's other movies are so popular is that you really get the impression that Wood thought he was making a modern masterpiece. His eagerness to tell you the story shows as much as the strings and cheap sets do. I love this movie, it's just so much fun to watch, but it's probably best viewed with a group!

The zombies in this are closer to the classic zombie, but still retain their origins, meaning they are walking corpses who do their master's bidding, except in this case the masters are from outer space.

This movie is also notable for containing the very last footage that was shot of Bela Lugosi, the brief clip was shot by Wood for another movie but was edited in as a selling point. If you have ever seen "Ed Wood" by Tim Burton, then you'd know the story. That's also a fantastic movie, but not on topic, so we move on.

This next description is going to be brief, because I have only seen the movie once and it was probably over 10 years ago. This movies is the Hammer Horror Studios', "Plague of The Zombies" from 1966. It's notable for being, I believe, the only zombie movie that Hammer Film Productions made and they did it well enough that much of the imagery in the movie has influenced many later zombie movies. If I remember correctly this was the first movie to show the dead rising from their graves! It continues with classic idea of zombies as slaves toiling away for their masters.

With that, I will leave you for today. The next movie is a big leap forward in how we view zombies and is one of my all time favorites. It also is the transition into the Silver Age...see you soon my repulsive readers!

On Second Thought...and a review!

2009-10-23T10:10:00.005-04:00

Well, I have been putting this off and since Elise made a blog post on her site about the same thing and did such a good job it, I'm just going to refer you to her posts to read about the museums we visited while in London. We couldn't take many photos, so there's not a whole lot to share. I could type something up, but visiting a museum is really a visual thing, so I decided to spare you (and myself) long descriptions. So please read if you haven't:

London, part 2.

Next up, I wanted to share a short movie review with you. Last night, I went with Dover, Medford and Stoneham to see Zombieland. At first, Dover and I weren't all that excited about the movie. It's a zombie comedy and had a lot of potential for suck. After a few reviews we started to change our tune, it sounded like it was actually pretty good. Then Stoneham and Medford caught it and enjoyed it so much they demanded that we go see it with them!

I have to say, the movie was pretty damn fun. The characters were interesting, there wasn't a lot of back story, but you really didn't need it. We've all seen the rise of the zombie and the fall of civilization in all the other zombie movies so we understand that part. The movie gives you just enough to get an understanding of the character's personalities, then gets to the plot and plenty of zombie slaughter. The zombie kills are all pretty creative and some have to be seen to be believed.

The thing I liked the most about the movie were that the characters all avoided the basic horror movies mistakes, thanks to the main character's insistence on living by "The Rules", for example. #1, Cardio. You can't outrun a zombie or a group of them if you are out of shape. The rules definitely save everyone's lives throughout the movie and keep the movie from falling into the same old shit we've all seen before. Even the few times where you saw the joke coming a mile away, I didn't care because I was looking forward to seeing it!

So all in all. It was a ton of fun, I absolutely recommend it.

My one complaint might be that the zombies were less zombie-like than I'd prefer. They were much more a cross of "fast" zombies and the infected in 28 Days Later. I personally prefer the classic slow zombie to the newfangled runnin' ones, but I was able to put that all aside and enjoy them being destroyed and messed with throughout the movie.

Finally, I have one announcement. While having so much fun at the movie and thinking about it for this review, I decided to put together a blog about my favorite zombie movies. So next week, I'll break it up over a few days and present to you a review of a ton of flicks from what I'm going to term the Golden, Silver and Modern age of zombie movies. Stay tuned!

Holiday in Londonia!

2009-10-11T08:40:00.005-04:00

(You expected a Clash reference for the title, didn't you?)

Hello! We're freshly back from a short vacation to the lovely megalopolis that was London! The trip was great, but far too short. I can't believe I have to go back to freaking work already! Oh well, I have to pay off the bills I racked up while there, so you gotta do what you gotta do.

I'm planning on stretching the trip out to a few blog posts, which shouldn't be too hard, since we did quite a lot in the 4.5 days we were there. Yet there are still so many things we'd like to see that we've already talked about a second trip in 3-4 years.

For my first post, I thought I'd mix the U.S. and the U.K. a bit. In my internet searching for fun things to do while in the city I came upon a few familiar names. It turns out that London's got a few statues of American presidents and one historic building where a founding father lived while ambassador.

First up, within the first day or two of us wandering around sight seeing, we ran into a statue of Abraham Lincoln in Parliament Square! This we we had not expected to see.

I guess the statue is a replica of one in Chicago, which was presented to England to commemorate 100 years of peace between the US and the UK. There is no plaque mentioning this, so I had to look that up when we got home.

The next statue I had read about, but didn't expect to find quite so easily! This turned out to be right outside the National Gallery, in Trafalgar Square.

This statue of George Washington was presented as another gift to England about a year after the Lincoln statue. The people of Virginia decided that Britain could use a statue of the guy that helped defeat them in 1776, but since they knew that Washington had refused to ever set foot on British soil again they shipped dirt from Virginia to stand the statue in, so technically I'm standing on good ol' American soil as this pic was taken.

Finally, and since we found the first two so easily I insisted on finding Ben Franklin's house. It turned out this was also very close by and was only a couple of block away from Trafalgar Sq.

I knew that Franklin was an ambassador to the US in London for a good while. From what I remember he was well liked by the people and kept up his reputation for being a ladies man while there. The house had a tour, but we didn't feel like paying for it, so we settled for a pic of the spot to complete our trifecta of American leaders/founders.

Next time, museums!

Great Hera! Comics!

2009-09-25T17:02:00.004-04:00

I have finally gotten my act together and written up a new Comic Spotlight! I apologize for the lag between spotlight posts, I haven't been able to find much time to read comics lately. Even my weekly books are piling up!

Ok, enough excuses. This week I'm sharing a new DC book with you. This particular book is another from the Aunt Collection. I present to you:

Wonder Woman #88 (1957)

I was pretty excited when going over these old comics again to see that I actually had a Wonder Woman issue below 100! That struck me as a fairly big deal considering she's been around since 1942.

This book is pretty beaten up, it almost fell apart when I was reading it and I didn't even notice the pink stain until I scanned the book. But it's still a pretty nice cover and it was a fun read.

The first story, which the cover is based off of, is about WW finding this mysterious box in her bedroom upon waking. There is a warning not to open it, yet she decides to anyway, assuming someone is playing a trick on her. Just as she's about to open the box, she hears gunshots and quickly heads outside to stop a car full of bank robbers. When she gets back inside she finds the box missing. She goes about her business and later finds the box again sitting in the middle of the sidewalk, but just as she's about to open it, she notices a baby falling from a window of a tall building! What are the odds?! After saving the happy baby and giving it back to it's bad mom, she finds the box missing again. When she next comes across the box she has to stop a madman with a grenade then box disappears again. Frustrated, she decides to take her invisible jet back to Paradise Island when she sees a parachute with that danged box! Stepping out onto the wing (of the jet plane!) she finally gets to open the box which unleashes the X-Bomb and a message from some Martians that she has sealed the fate of the earth! Acting quickly she lasso's the bomb and quickly works out where the Martians are hidden and directs the bomb at them, destroying the whole fleet and saving earth!

The second story was told from the perspective of WW's lasso. It was a tale of WW lending the lasso out to some folks in a carnival who needed some self confidence, they believed the new tricks they could do were because of the magic lasso, but really they just needed some courage to perform the tricks themselves. Awww.

The last story was about some nut job who put out an ad offering $1,000,000 to anyone that could provide Wonder Woman's secret identity. After spending an entire day fighting off the public trying to get her to tell them her secret, she goes to bed. When she wakes up she finds that someone figured out she was Lt. Diana Price and had plastered it everywhere. She then spends the day trying to convince everyone she ISN'T Diana Prince and continually fails. At one point she decides it's a good idea to made a Diana out of sea weed, dress it up in her clothes and parade it around and "save" it. There-by being in two places at once! No one is fooled. At the end of the day she gives up and goes to bed only to find that when she wakes up, it was all a dream! The nut job has also given up and taken back his bounty. Her secret identity is still safe! Whew!

There were also a bunch of funny tips for young ladies between the stories. One two-page spread talked about the uses of a broach. Fancy!

A couple of other's talked about superstitions around the worlds about how girls divine their future husbands and the like. They were pretty entertaining.

I think I might actually make up a separate blog topic to spotlight old ad's and funny items like this. They are too much fun to not share!

Now to actually remember to DO it!

Well, that's it! I hope you enjoyed the review, see you next time!

Bizarre Foods...?

2009-09-24T13:09:00.009-04:00

As you may have read here and here, I and a group of friends went out to Tu Y Yo in Powerderhouse Sq. in Somerville this week to sample some authentic Mexican foods. I'm not talking about burritos here, this was real Mexican.

I don't think I'll bother to go too deeply into what was eaten, since Elise and Erin both did a great job describing that already. So I'll keep the first couple of things short.

First up, is the tacos de chapulines. These were fried grasshoppers in tacos. I can't honestly say much about the actual grasshopper, it was fried in the taco with some amazing spices and was quite delicious. I could have easily eaten a whole order on my own. The texture was a bit odd, crunchy but there was one good moment when I could tell I was biting in to a bug. If I get the chance to taste grasshoppers on their own, I'll look forward to it. If they are half this good then I'll be pretty happy.

Next we sampled Crepa de Cuitlacoche en Salsa Poblana. This is a fungus that grows on corn. It's quite nice, and as you can imagine, tastes and feels a bit like cooked mushrooms...since that's what it was. It's very good and I look forward to eating it again.

For my main course, I decided on getting Frog's Legs or Ancas de Rana en Mole Verde. I had never had frog's legs so I wasn't quiet sure what to expect. People often say that they taste like chicken, but I couldn't agree less! They had the texture of slightly underdone chicken but tasted like fish. It was quite bizarre but I enjoyed it. There were a lot of small bones that also had an unusual texture, I definitely knew I was eating an animal that I was not used it. Overall it was very good and when I had finished my amphibian I used the rice and beans on the side to soak up all the delicious sauce.

For dessert, Elise and I split an order of Flan. There wasn't anything unusual about it, but we both enjoy flan, so why not? I also got Hot Chocolate (Oaxaca style). You can see the cup in the pic above. The chocolate was not your average cocoa. It was thin in consistency, but the taste was a bit bitter like good chocolate. It was very good, not too sweet although it was sweetened with sugar cane I believe.

So I highly recommend Tu Y Yo. The food was great and they have plenty of menu items for people that are less adventurous than we are.

Next up, we have talked about locating and trying the infamous durian. Stay tuned!

Camping in NH

2009-09-22T10:15:00.002-04:00

This past weekend we were finally able to get outside to do a bit of camping before the season is over. Our original outing, which was planned to be a 2 day, was cancelled due to rain and thunder storms all weekend. We had been able to get a few hikes in over the summer but this was the first camping trip.

We got up at about 4:45, so get ready to be up in Lincoln, NH at 8am. There is an area set aside for camping about 3 miles in from the Lincoln Woods Visitor's Center, it's first come first serve so we wanted to get there early to stake out a good spot.

I have been to this camp site two times previously. The first time was the day after our infamous hike up Mt. Flume on the Flume Slide Trail, one of the most difficult in the country we found out later. When we got down the mountain the next morning, the ranger at the station was kind enough to suggest the camp site, which is free, and has a privy! We found a nice spot and set up camp and just snoozed and relaxed the day away and recouped from the previous day's hike. Unfortunately just as we were setting up our camp fire it started to pour! Luckily, we had already eaten and I was extremely glad I had packed a book, because it rained all night. My two friends were not so lucky.

The next time we were there, it was just Sean and I. We had planned a few days in October to camp and do some day hiking. Unfortunately it didn't work out as planned. I ended up getting a blister really quickly. I refused to believe it, since we had barely started our hike AND the hike is only about an hour, so I ignored it. By the time I stopped to do something about it, it was too late. Sean didn't fare much better. Undaunted by my painful blister, we decided to go for a walk after setting up camp. When we got back we discovered that the squirrels had chewed their way into Sean's food, which was hung in the trees. We were both pretty miserable, not to mention it had been raining, so we were having a very difficult time getting a fire going. By the next morning, we had both given up and decided to head back.

This time though, there was no "unfortunately's" to be had. We got our spot, set up camp and chilled out. We got a crap ton of fire wood and got a nice fire going. We also were able to spend some time exploring the river that's close by and soaking up some sun, since it was damn chilly in the shade of the camp.

It was a chilly night, but we had flapjacks to look forward to in the morning. So after packing and cleaning up we went in to Lincoln to get some hot food and coffee to prepare us for the drive home.

Overall it was a really nice weekend, hopefully next year we'll be able to come back for more than one night.

For some pic's, go on over to Journey of Will and read Elise's account of the trip!

Guest Blog: Recipe Friday!

2009-09-18T09:07:00.002-04:00

Sorry I haven't been posting lately, I've been finding it quite hard to find time to read as of late, so my comics are really getting backed up.

I'm planning on a new Collection Showcase this coming week though and it should be a pretty good one.

Until then, I can only direct you to Elise's blog, where I have helped out with a guest Recipe Friday!

Turkey and Escarole Soup

New Baman Piderman!

2009-09-04T10:48:00.003-04:00

Huzzah! Two new episodes of my favorite special heroes!

Make da Cards!

Escape da Cakes!

Enjoy!

(wow, there sure where a lot of ! in this post.)

{wait, I meant, "wow! there sure where a lot of ! in this post!!"}

Comic Review

2009-09-01T11:32:00.006-04:00

Greetings! As my friend Gary suggested, I decided to post a review on some comics I've been reading or have recently read. These posts differ from my post about my personal collection, mostly because they are about modern comics and/or graphic novels.

Speaking of which, I almost posted this in the Graphic Novel Addict forums, but decided it might be a better blog. The topic today has been inspired by our recent reading of The Boys vol. 1 and some of the discussions that sprang up from it on the forums and the meeting.

The reviews today feature a theme, namely Garth Ennis. Ennis is the writer of The Boys, the two books I'm going to talk about and my favorite series of all time, Preacher.

The first book I want to talk about is The Chronicles of Wormwood, by Avatar Press and co-created by Jacen Burrows.

Wormwood tells the story of Danny Wormwood, a tv producer and the Anti-Christ. He is joined by Jimmy, a talking wise-ass rabbit that he made sentient on a whim and Jesus, yes THE Jesus. Unfortunately, when Jesus returned and started preaching peace, he was beaten to severe head trauma at a protest and barely survived. He's functional, but not performing much in the way of miracles now. So a mentally challenged Jesus and a talking rabbit are Danny's only friends in life.
He has no desire to bring about Armageddon and turn his back on his father at every opportunity, mostly because he enjoys life and doesn't want it to end.
I won't spoil the rest of the story, since it's by Garth Ennis, there's a bit more to everything than my summary lets on. It's pretty vulgar and as is Garth's style, over the top. It's a fun read and I wish they did more than the 6 issue series + one shot, but that's all we got.

Burrow's art is a bit amateurish, but he is a good story teller and has an apt eye for Garth's dark humor, much like Steve Dillon. You can visibly see his work improve over the series, which is nice.

This improvement is notably nice because after Wormwood, they got together again to produce Crossed, also for Avatar.

Crossed is in a similar vein (pun mostly intended...even if infection humor is kinda gross) as The Walking Dead, not to say that it's as high a quality as Walking Dead, but it's about the end of the world due to a plague and the infected, or Crossed, are out to destroy the uninfected. The infection starts very suddenly and, much like the Rage Virus from 28 Days Later, causes those infected with it to seek out and perform the most horrible and disgusting acts on the uninfected as they are able, before the victims turn into new infected. The infection manifests itself as a rash across the face in the shape of a cross, hence the name.
This book is consistently one of the most disturbing books I read, Ennis and Burrows take pleasure in showing you the horror caused by the Crossed. It really brings home the "end of the world" theme. How does society build itself back up after the majority of humanity have committed the most atrocious acts imaginable? At least Zombies don't take pleasure in the things they do, they are just animated instinct. The Crossed are devoid of all emotion but lust and the ability to take pleasure in the misery of others. They are not exactly smart, but there is malice.
The survivors are generally interesting characters and they find themselves having to make decisions for their survival that most characters in similar stories or movies don't generally find themselves in. They often have to sacrifice their humanity just to preserve that very humanity.

Overall, since I've already compared the series to The Walking Dead, I guess I should put my final thoughts like this. The Walking Dead is about as good as End of The World stories get. Crossed is not quite in it's league, but it's kind of in it's own league...a league of splatter horror. Where TWD focuses mainly on the characters, Crossed is more about the horror first. So if you enjoy horror, this is a book for you.

I find myself really enjoying Crossed month to month, but I have to say, I can only recommend it if you have a strong stomach.
EDIT: I forgot to mention, there is no collection for Crossed out yet. Just individual issues.

Aww hell...

2009-08-26T09:58:00.003-04:00

So I decided to read this survival book that Elise got me for my birthday. I was looking forward to it. (...you can probably see where this is going)
The book is supposed to be a guide on urban survival, but a quirky one. Flipping through it, there are lots of drawing and humorous pictures demonstrating various things. It seemed like it might be a fun read.

My first indication that something was amiss was in the acknowledgements where the author gave some final thanks:

"Finally, I give my greatest loving gratitude and heartfelt thanks to all of the Ascended Masters and Cosmic Beings, the Archangels, angels, Elohim and elementals. Time and time again, They have freely given Their life's energies to me (and all of us), sustaining me in times of self-perpetuated darkness. It will not be forgotten."

I thought "Ok, that's weird, but he may still have some useful knowledge to impart."

Then he goes on to say, in the intro and in the first few pages of chapter 1, that "I'm not going to go in to detail about blah-biddy-blah because there have been other books written about that already"....but he says this THREE FREAKING TIMES in about 5 pages. So I'm left to wonder, "Why the frak I should be reading this book?"

Then he introduces the cartoon characters that are going to be teaching me how to survive, Head Candy, a lollipop, Vinny the (Uptown) Cockroach, Robbie Rubbish, uh, Trevor...and Holy Cow.

Now before I go much further into this, let me point out that in the introduction, he also says that:

"This is not a book based upon religious prophecy, dogma, or "end times." Regardless of your faith or lack of it, I'm betting that you reside in a human body that lives upon a physical planet. If this is true, you and your loved ones will benefit from the contents of this book whether Armageddon happens or not. That said, embracing and strengthening a personal and family spiritual path will deepen your connection with the Source, the only truly permanent supply on Earth."

So...it's not about God, but it should be? Is that what you're saying? The "Source"? Is that like the Force? Are we also equating an urban disaster as Armageddon? This is really starting to stink of something...why do I keep thinking of the county fair?

Ok, back to Holy Cow. So despite this not being about God or even if we have faith in some cosmic being, he gives us this...

"Although Holy Cow has at times been labeled a busy body, her true intentions have simply been misunderstood by our pass-the-buck society." "She...acts as the great recorder and doer of all that needs to be done." "Holy Cow is the patron saint of the decisive decision-making and fearlessness."

Nope, nothing religiousy or religiously deceptive in there.

The one thing that he really wanted me to understand was that "Ultimately, we are all the cause of the distress in our lives, whether we care to acknowledge the fact or not."

This is a book about urban survival. So I guess that dam break that flooded my neighborhood is my fault? The tornado that killed my relative and destroyed my home is my fault? WHAT?!

This is all in the first 20 pages of the book.

What I have gotten out of the first 20 pages of this book is that the disaster I'm trying to survive is my fault and that only faith and being at peace with my energies is how I and my family will survive....but he's not going to tell me how to do the surviving, he's only going to give me common sense knowledge to keep me calm, so that I can survive...

...my brain hurts.

If you want to read a real survival book, check out Survive! by Les Stroud (my other birthday present from Elise) and Wilderness Survival by Gregory J. Davenport. These will teach you about survival, long term and short term, with no bullshit.

"When All Hell Breaks Loose" -FAIL.

It's Fun, and it's located in that Spot...right there...

2009-08-25T13:07:00.004-04:00

I've been neglecting this blog a bit lately, but I really haven't had that much of anything really interesting to say, so I thought I'd put up a post about a fun arcade we go to occasionally.

I know the blog title is pretty lame, but it was the best I could come up with. The FunSpot is in Laconia, NH near Weirs Beach and, according to their Facebook page, is the largest arcade in the world! That I find a bit surprising, it is pretty big, but they aren't very good at keeping up with new video games, the most modern game I remember coming across was Primal Instinct for crying out loud :)
But where the FunSpot excels is in classic video games. They have pretty much all of them and they are usually in great working order. I occasionally find a game that's under the weather but considering how old some of them are, it's a good track record.

If you have ever seen The King of Kong, then you may be familiar with The FunSpot. They have the Pac Man and Donkey Kong games that the world records were broken on. If you haven't seen King of Kong, I recommend it, it's a fun movie about classic games and the culture around them.

If you find yourself up that way, pop in, it's a lot of ...well, fun. They also have some really old coin op games, some Skee Ball, pinball, table hockey, all that good stuff.

Just a bit further down the street you will find Weirs Beach. They also have 3 old arcades, although these arcades do have some newer games along with some classics. It's basically set up in a boardwalk style and the arcades are open all along the front, so that means these particular spots are only fun in the summer (see what I did there?).

So if you are up for a trip, it's about 2 hours away or so, it's a fun day. You get to relive some of your childhood, have some fried dough and ice cream and look at touristy crap that you are surprised people actually buy. Well, I love looking at that crap anyway.

Here comes Comics! The Blog Without Fear!

2009-08-14T13:53:00.006-04:00

Howdy! Welcome back. I had wanted to get this up earlier today, but we were out last night for dinner with family and blah blah blah, I didn't get to it.

But here it is now. So enjoy!
So, for my latest installment of comic blogs, I wanted to focus on the comic that probably changed the way I thought of comics...for good or ill.
This particular comic fell into my hands back when my great aunt had to be moved into a nursing home. She was living alone in the home that her husband built with his own two hands. I never met him, and I only knew Aunt Joan as the very warm and generous woman that lived in a crazy house. She was a severe pack rat and had TONS of crap lying around, so much that you could barely walk and well, there was really no ability to clean, especially given her age and health, so the house was fairly filthy. My sister and I recognized this, but weren't really too bothered by it probably because we enjoyed visiting. Aunt Joan was an excellent gift giver :)
Eventually she couldn't continue to live there so for a number of weekends we would go and clean. I'm not sure to this day what happened to most of the stuff but we packed all the things that she needed and the rest was left to us to divvy up or get rid of. Among the things I came away with were quite a lot of art supplies (Aunt Joan fancied herself an artist, and she wasn't bad when she was a younger woman) and a handful of comics that we found shoved into a book case.
There weren't many comics but the few that there were turned out to be pretty nice. I'll show you one or two of them as we go along. But the comic that was my favorite then and still holds a place in my heart now is...

I didn't think too much about the comics when I got em, I was happy to have some "new" books to read and I stuck them into "The Father Collection" for safe keeping. This one particular book I read over and over again. I even carried it around with me to school a few times.
[Commencing embarrassing story...now]....and attempted to get the other kids to nickname me Daredevil just like they did to Mat Murdock. Of course Mat's nickname was in irony and meant as a taunt, I was just asking people to call me Daredevil. So yeah, that didn't work out so well and I dropped it pretty quickly.

If you don't know much about Daredevil, he was struck blind as a teenager in the process of saving an old man from an oncoming truck. The truck was transporting some kind of toxic waste, which was apparently not secured very well because when the truck swerved to avoid the old man it lost a drum which smashed and splashed right into Mat's face.
He lost his eyesight, but came to realize that all his other senses were heightened to superhuman levels. He also developed a radar sense, which allows him to "see" 360 degrees around himself. When his father, a washed up boxer just trying to scrape out a living and raise his son with all the opportunities he never had, is killed Mat puts on a costume and brings the thugs to justice. There's a bit more to the story than that, but that's his origin in a nutshell. It's a damn good origin story and while I don't read Daredevil much anymore I'll always have a soft spot for him.

I eventually realized that the book was a #1 and therefore must be worth something. I started to look at the comics I had differently. Around this time I was starting to pop into my local shop more and more often, often enough that I started to see the shop as kind of crummy. Luckily I had also met another friend that got me to go with him to NEC in Harvard Sq. and the next thing I knew I had the fever and was there every Wednesday.
I eventually decided that if I'm going to be serious about this thing, then I should treat my dad's comics a little better and get them their own bags and boards. Since they weren't in mint condition I wrote them off as mostly worthless but sentimental. As I mentioned in my first comic post it wasn't until recently that I really saw what I had.

This book in particular I knew was something I would normally never be able to add to my collection, so I am pretty proud to have it. I stopped looking at comics as an investment, now I look at them as art suitable for framing as well as reading, instead of things that are kept in a dark box away from the light.

A Trip For Some Proper Fish.

2009-08-09T09:02:00.005-04:00

One of my favorite dishes is Fish and Chips. This came up in conversation with a friend a few months back and he said that the only proper fish and chips he's had in this country was from a place in NY called A Salt and Battery. Dave, being from London, knows a thing or two about fish and chips.It was suggested that we take a trip out there one day for lunch. Eventually we pinned down a date and made plans to go. That day, was yesterday!

Elise and I met up with Dave and Garth at 8:30 and headed out. It was a long trip, we were making pretty decent time until we hit some traffic around 11:30 in Connecticut. We had a good time chatting and joking and grilling Dave for some travel tips, since we're actually planning a trip to London for October.

We finally arrived at 112 Greenwich Ave in Manhattan about quarter of two or so. The shop was really small so it was pretty crowded, but the guys behind the counter knew what they were doing and things moved along pretty quickly.

I ended up getting a large Pollock and chips, pickled onion and a side of curry sauce, plus an Idris Ginger Beer (which claimed to be "Firey!" but was not. It was quite good, but if you want a spicy ginger beer, you need to find the Goya kind. THAT'S spicy!)

Unfortunately I was too busy mowing through my food to bother to get a pic, so this is Elise's. So just imagine that, but bigger and there you have my meal. Plus a small onion.

The fish was great, the chips also great and only made better by the curry sauce. The onion was also quite good. There were a TON of things on the menu, we all spent a fair bit of money trying things but we also shared some too.

For dessert I got a Banana Fritter, which was basically a battered and deep fried banana...

Soooo good.

After eating we drove around the city a bit and got to see some sights. For example:

The Flatiron Building!

We drove through Times Sq, around the Empire State building and along the perimiter of Central Park. It was pretty nice, but damn, I don't think I'd want to drive around the city myself, Dave was amazingly calm for the drive being so hectic and a bit crazy at times. But it was a lot of fun.

There were no sightings of Spider-Man, unfortunately, but Elise and I want to come back for a long weekend to do some touristy stuff, so we'll have another chance to see him then ;)

It was a great trip and if you're ever in the area, I highly recommend stopping for lunch!

A Salt & Battery

(all pics are by Elise, by the way)

OMG Anniversary!

2009-08-06T17:46:00.004-04:00

I don't have too much to talk about, but I wanted to mention that today marks the anniversary of the first date of Elise and I. We've been together for 7 years now! Man how time flies when you're having fun!
To celebrate, we're going out for some sushi from the place that's conveniently across the street and who also conveniently has some great sushi.

While we're on the subject of fish (and changing the subject slightly), this weekend we're heading into New York for the day to seek out the best Fish and Chips in the country. At least in the opinion our friend from England. As a great connoisseur of Fish and Chips myself, I'm quite looking forward to it!
A blog will follow! Stay tuned!

Recipe Friday Guest Blog

2009-07-31T09:52:00.002-04:00

I have another Recipe Friday guest blog over at Journey of Will. Go check it out!

Uncle The Goog's All Purpose Seasoning™

and for my last guest recipe...

Chicken and Vinegar with The Goog

Featuring "The Blogpost of The Future!"

2009-07-31T06:30:00.002-04:00

Welcome to the second of my blogs spotlighting comics from my collection. This comic is the first from the books that belonged to my father. From here on to be known as "The Father Collection". These books my dad was able to put aside and save from my grandmother, who tossed out any she ran across them.

My father saved a few dozen, in various states of ruin. There are a good bunch that are in Good and Very Good condition and the rest are pretty bad. A lot have covers missing or writing on them, most of it from my dad.

He gave the comics to me when I was pretty young, they were kept in a brown paper bag for most of the time I had them, so I'm sure that didn't help to preserve them. I really didn't think too much of them until we went on vacation up to Vermont. Then I'd always bring the comics on the trip with me and I'd read them in the car and during the week.

I remember trying to convince my parents that the free passes to Palisades Park in NY were still good since there was no expiration date. I refused to listen to their outrageous statements of "but the tickets are over 30 years old" and "I'm pretty sure that the park isn't even there anymore". I was convinced they were lying because they just didn't want to take us.

Most of "The Father Collection" is DC, my dad was a big Superman fan, so on that note...

I bring you, Action Comics #256 from 1959! The unbelievable story of Ultra Superman!

The basic story is that Superman volunteers to be a test subject for this time displacement device, he is going to be sent to the year 100,000 AD for one hour. When the hour is up, Ultra Superman steps out of the tube and announces to the crowd that their Superman wanted to stay in the future for 24 hours so he came back to keep the portal open.

He then goes on to show off his new future powers by projecting a vision of the future and a warning about 4 disasters. He tells everyone about 3 then runs off to prevent them all. The 4th is revealed to be the assassination of the President! But even Ultra Superman doesn't know how to stop it, for just as we do not know much about ancient Egypt, his future knows little about the present!

This turns out all to be a ruse, because as the President's car blows up, Superman steps out and reveals that his big brain was all a costume! He was working with the Secret Service to flush out a spy! They knew about the plot against the President the whole time! The spy is, of course, the most obnoxious reporter that's been following Supes around all day.

So the President is safe and the damn commies are in jail! Huzzah Superman!

The extra Supergirl story is pretty much her trying to protect her secret identity. She's trying to be Supergirl and yet keep hidden. She blunders along almost revealing her secret identity a few times while trying to convince her friend that there is no such thing as Supergirl. In the end, Supergirl shows up to her school and performs some feats of strength in front of a surprised Linda Lee, then reveals that it was a robot sent by Superman as a demonstration...of something, being a super cool robot I guess. Superman was nice enough to leave a note for Linda explaining he saw her problems and sent the robot to help clear things up. Then he signed it...Superman. You'd think that the fact that since Clark and Linda are COUSINS that he's sign it Kal-El or at the very least Clark. Oh well, I'm not Kryptonian, so I really can't speak for their customs.

Next time, I'll show off one of the prizes of my collection. I hope you enjoyed the blog, let me know what you think!

I'm lookin at you, Gary.

(edit: fixed mispelling of Kal-El)

We're Best Fwends!

2009-07-29T09:47:00.002-04:00

If you haven't seen Baman Piderman yet, you are missing out! Recently Attack of The Show on G4 has spotlighted these shorts on some shows, which is how Elise and I discovered them.

The videos are about a special Batman and Spiderman, who are friends. They have some adventures of a sort. The best part of them is that it's not offensive, the animation, while pretending to be crappy is actually very well done and it's hilarious.

Check it out!

Pwactice da Counting
Make da Band
Find da Sandwich
Hab da Pumpkin

A Productive Sunday

2009-07-26T19:12:00.006-04:00

Every so often, Elise and I decide to put a day aside as a "Studio Day". This basically means we work on whatever art projects we have been planning, or procrastinating on, and get our butts in gear and do 'em...or at least start 'em.

Today was one such day! Elise spent most of the day sitting on the couch knitting a scarf she's been putting off completing and I spent a big chunk of the day at my drawing table. She got the better end of the deal, if you ask me...even if that scarf was as tedious as it looked.

So anyway, I mainly wanted to get some good sketches done for a tattoo that someone at work comissioned me for. When I took it on, it sounded like a lot of fun. She's looking for a Cupcake Mafia. I have no clue where this came from, but that's what they wanted (the tattoo is going to be a gift, I believe). There's a cupcake eating a canoli, a cupcake in a track suit and a Don cupcake petting a cat.

I though it sounded like a fun challenge, I was right about the challenge, that's for sure. It was really difficult to find the right balance of anthromorphic baked good with the stereotype and make it actually recognizable for something that no one's ever seen before (or at least I imagine so). I think I did a pretty good job. The canoli eating cupcake was easy. The track suit cupcake and the Don were quite a bit more difficult. Figuring out the frosting hair was driving me nuts. I eventually got the track suit but the Don's hair was not working out. I was trying to make him look like Brando in The Godfather, but since I was trying to avoid faces it wasn't working out well. I had to have the hair do most of the work. After wracking my brain, it finaly hit me. The Simpsons! I googled Fat Tony and viola! The perfect hair for my Don Cupcake!

...or at least I hope so, I have to email this to the client on Monday.

The next thing I got to work on, around doing my laundry, was a new shirt for my Cafe Press Shop. I worked on one design but I think I was rushing it and I was only getting frustrated, so I put it aside and worked on the piece Elise has been after me to put up for ages.

This little guy came out of an old project at school. It was just a sketch for a book mock-up, but Elise LOVED it. Loved it to the point that I can pull it out and show it to her at any moment and she will squeel with delight at the sight of it :)

I redrew it larger, cleaned it up and uploaded it to my shop. I also added a couple of shirts to one or two previous designs.

Check it out!

Castle Thunder Graphics Cafe Press Shop

Hiking of Herculean Hardships!

2009-07-22T17:40:00.008-04:00

Ok, well the hiking wasn't really THAT difficult, but the title sounded pretty good, right?

As you may have seen on Journey of Will (you do read JoW, don't you, and if not, why not?), Elise, Sean, Mel and I went for a day hike up Mt. Monadnock in NH on Sunday. It was a beautiful day, cool, breezy and sunny. The perfect weather for a hike!

We set out pretty early and got to the trail around 8:30. There were already quite a few cars in the lot, so there were people already on their way up! Monadnock is one of the most climbed mountains in the world apparently, second to Mt. Fuji in Japan, at least that's what Elise's blog says and the internets don't lie!

The first 20 minutes were pretty rough, I quickly hit the "why the hell am I doing this again?!" wall, which I don't usually hit until a good hour or more into a hike, you know, just far enough in that you feel stupid turning back. This trail was one of the rockiest I have every been on, at least right at the start. Mt. Flume was the worst really, but that didn't get horrific until well into the hike, but the Monadnock trail did eventually smooth out a bit and walking was easier. Actually, the higher up we got the better the hiking was, which is contrary to my usual experience.

Once we broke the tree line, we got some great views:

As we got a bit higher, I came across some wild blueberries! I ate one, gave one to Elise and guarded the last two from some passing hikers, for Sean and Mel. It turns out that my diligence was not needed because about 5 minutes later we came across a nicely open area and a TON of blueberries, which I set to grazing upon. They were pretty tiny, but tasty!

Shortly after this little break we got to what we thought was the summit, only to find that the true summit was pretty far off...

If you look really closely, you can just make out some specks that are other hikers! We still had some trekking ahead of us. This part of the mountain was set ablaze a couple hundred years ago for some reason or another, then once that was done, they decided to do it again for good measure. So there are very few trees past the ones in the pic above. This made the top section of the mountain really windy. But there were more blueberries to give us the strength to carry on.

Once we finally got to the top, with the nearly 2 dozen others already up there, there were some astounding views!

...and one of me! So jaunty!

What you probably can't see in the pic is that there are dozens of names and dates carved into the stone at the top. Some I found dated to 1880! Many of them were too eroded to read anymore but it was pretty neat. The practice is discouraged now, but I did see one name in sharpie from 07. Sharpie? Really buddy? Guh.

Well anyway, we had lunch and rested then headed back down. The trail down was pretty decent, but there were a few difficult rock scrambles. Aside from that it was mostly uneventful.

We got back to the cars and had a long exhausted drive back home.

All in all it was a great day out, and a highly recommended hike! If you haven't checked out Journey of Will, Sean and Elise both have some alternate pics up.

At Last, You Will Learn What Lives Within...The Comic Box!

2009-07-17T15:40:00.001-04:00

Welcome to the first in a series of posts (coming somewhat regularly, but I don't want to bore you with em) featuring some of the comics in my collection!

I have been reading and collecting comics since somewhere around 1993 or 1994. I had comics as a kid and if I was good my parents would sometimes buy me these grab bags they had in a rack at the supermarket. I still have a bunch of them, although I drew in some or got lollipop goo on em (I'm not kidding, I have an issue of the A-Team that I clearly remember drooling an orange lollipop onto accidentally), but I still have em.
My father actually was able to save a couple dozen comics from the wrath of my Grandmother by hiding what she didn't throw away. He put them away and eventually gave them to me, so I have some pretty sweet DC books from the Silver Age (which I will feature from time to time). I also had a great aunt that was something of a pack rat (which is a bit of an understatement) and she had a few silver age books I ended up with too, including what I consider the prize of my collection.
That particular book will probably be featured next time, but for my first post I wanted to go with the theme that got me into real collecting, not just visiting the local comic shop and picking up the new books, I mean real collecting, as in books that tend to be as old or older than I am.

One of my favorite characters, for some reason, is the B list Marvel character, Adam Warlock. He's a Stan Lee and Jack Kirby creation and his first appearance was in Fantastic Four #66 and #67 and at the time was only known as Him.
Him was created by the Enclave to be a perfect god-like being whom they could control and use to take over the world. The plan didn't work out. Recognizing them as evil and destroying their lab, Him eventually left for deep space, with some help from Ben Grim's girlfriend, Alicia Masters.

Adam has since gone on to be a Christ-like savior of Counter Earth, the keeper of the Soul Infinity Gem and a staple of Marvel's cosmic superheroes.
His main power, in my opinion, is his ability to regenerate when he's injured. Each time he forms a protective cocoon around himself and eventually he emerges with slightly different powers. It's a pretty handy ability to have because it means he can be recreated time and time again as each writer sees fit, so the character doesn't necessarily have to get stagnant. He can always be retooled to fit modern sensibilities and no one has a reason to complain about the change, unlike characters like Superman or Spider-Man. If you are going to go and change them, you better have a damn good reason. Often, that's reason is pretty paper thin and only ends with the characters reverting to their old selves, proving that there is no reason to change the character but that the companies should be looking to change the creative team on the damn books.
But I'm getting off on a rant here, back to comic collecting.

So the reason I chose this as my first comic post, was that over the years I had been picking up new Warlock stories but had never read his origin or his original series from the 70's. I knew the story, but not all the details. Some stuff was collected in trades but most of it wasn't. While at the Boston Comic-con I picked up a "Marvel Masterworks, Warlock Vol. 1" on the cheap. I enjoyed the early adventures but didn't expect to ever see a Vol. 2 (it actually just came out last week). So I gave myself the task to collect every appearance of Adam Warlock, as opposed to just key appearances. If I'm going to start something, I figure I might as go all the way.
This was partly inspired by the fine folks I see regularly at Comicazi in Davis Sq. and at gang at Graphic Novel Addict, the graphic novel book club we belong to and it was also just something I had been considering for some time any way.

I found that I quickly learned a lot about comic grades, which comics were more scarce than others and which comics I personally found desirable. This moved me into other characters and other stories and other creators. So far it's been a lot of fun trying to hunt down a decent issue of a comic for a decent price. I feel like I'm finally starting to have a real collection, instead of a crap load of modern age comics that I'll never or rarely read again, I now have a number of comics that are worth re-reading even if it's just to look at the art and that is kind of a cool feeling.

Hooray consumerism!

With that, I'll leave you before I start on another rant!

Fragged by Mother Nature

2009-07-17T14:04:00.000-04:00

For the past 3-4 months we've been planning a hiking trip for this weekend. It was planned to be an overnight, but I took Monday off just to have an extra day to relax and recuperate, if recuperating was needed.

Mother Nature on the other hand, had other plans. It's looking like 80% chance of thunder storms up in NH this weekend.
Rain + Thunder & Lightning= Shitty Hiking.

It's pretty disappointing, we haven't had a chance to go camping at all this year due to various happenstances, so I was really looking forward to going. We even has a couple of new recruits to our little hiking club who have never been on a trip like this before.

To try to salvage as much of the weekend as we could and since Sunday is supposed to be the better part of the weekend, we all decided to not let our gear go to waste and we're going to hike up Mt. Monadnock. I think it should be a good day, it's going to be nice and sunny, there are no trees up there so the views should be pretty spectacular and if not, well I still have Monday off to catch a movie and try to forget the horrors we suffered.

So take that Nature! You can kick us in the nuts and we'll just take it and smile!

oh crap...um, I bow to your will oh great Gaia! Please bless us with your favors, I knew not what I was saying!

...we're doomed.

I'll put up some pics if we survive!

Copious Conundrums

2009-07-12T16:05:00.000-04:00

I find myself in a bit of a pickle. I'm not sure how I feel about the blogspot blog, I don't know html so I can't customize this page to the extent that I had hoped. I tried to install wordpress onto my personal site, but it's not compatible. That boils down to the Frontpage files that are on there, so I'd need to completely redesign my website with another program to get wordpress on there.
At least, that's what seems to be the case.

I have been planning a website redesign for years, but it's a big project and a lot of work that I haven't quite found the time for yet. Also, I have no idea what to redesign it to. I have been wanting to update my logo, come up with some new and more accurate business cards, so I guess I should do that, then go from there.

I guess in the mean time, I'll continue to use blogger here. This will hopefully get me into some kind of blogger mindset.

If anyone has any ideas or suggestions, for anything website related, feel free to post em.

Welcome to the world of tomorrow!

2009-07-07T14:24:00.000-04:00

Hey, welcome to the blog! I don't have anything fantastically special to talk about right now, seeing as I JUST started this up, but I plan on writing something up shortly. I can't guarantee perfect posting punctuality (but I can guarantee enough alliteration to make you sick) but I'll be posting as often as I have something worth sharing.
I'm currently planning on using the blog to talk about some of the comics in my collections. There aren't a lot of amazing pieces, but I've got a few that I'm proud of. I've got the collecting bug lately and I wanted to share what I've picked up and I'm hoping to get some discussions going in the comments.

Well, that's all I've got for now. Blog worthy post to be coming soon!