"Day Off Ramblings"

Made a few on-line type purchases/won auctions and the like recently.

One of the auctions I won was for 5 misc. issues of the 1970's DC title, Batman Family, of which for some unknown reason I currently didn't have a single issue. There were 20 issues of this title published by DC between 1975 to 1978 or so. They contain Barbara Gordon "Batgirl"app.s, plus "Robin", and some even have the original silver-age "Batwoman" in probably what was some of the last of her stories.

Something I never could figure out about the original Batwoman, as well as the original "Batgirl" was why they wore such colorful, bright costumes if they were trying to imitate Batman? Needless to say, I feel the costume the curent Batgirl has to be much more in the tone of the character.

Other issues in this lot include app.'s of such characters/villians as the original "Huntress & Sportsmaster", "Catwoman" (in her original costume), "The Outsider", and "The Man-Bat". Looks like they'll be some good bronze-age reading.

Yet another lot I purchased/won was nearly 20 misc. app.'s of the Michael Gilbert character, "Mr. Monster", with issues from the first series by Eclipse Comics, plus some of the Dark Horse ones and even two different Graphic Novel collections. It includes his first app. from Vanguard #7, and the first issue of his Eclipse series, plus others. Should be more than enough to satisfy any "craving" of those great tales.

And finally, I used the BIN to purchase a copy of the 1980's DC title, Omega Men #3, simply because it's the first app. of "Lobo". I got this cheap (under two bucks) and consider it being a good investment considering he's pretty much a major sort of character running around in The DC Universe these days.

And, later on today, I'll be going to look once again through several long boxes of fairly modern stuff ('80's-'90's comics). I've gone though these boxes already a couple of times and pulled out anything really good, so this time I'll be scarfing up some just misc. filler stuff, like issues of Namor, and Alpha Flight, and the second series of Nick Fury or Dr. Strange. At thirty cents a book it's not a "big" investment, but a lot of decent reading I'm sure.


And, in other news. My father-in-law will be having his stomach operation next Monday (the 25th.) at the U of L Hospital in Louisville (KY.). They'll be removing the part of his intestine which contains the cancer, then reconnecting it. He'll probably be up there at least a week.

My own father, who is pretty frail, is still fairly healthy for a man who is about to turn 86. I was over there visiting today, charging up the battery on his riding lawnmover. He's got bad cabin fever from our Wintery weather here in South-Central, KY. as of late and just itching to mow a lawn and get out of the house. Of course, it'll more than likely be a couple of months before grass-cutting time again.

Weather here has as usual been off-and-on good for the season, but there's been three weekends in row with snow and it's predicted for us once again this coming weekend. None of the snow accumulation has been bad enough to really give us any problems, especially in making it to work, though. It's usually melts off mostly by noon and very little, fortunately, has actually stuck to the roadways. Last weekend we did have a pretty cold night with temps dropping into the teens, but more often it only gets into the 20's, so we've been very lucky so far. Of course, we still have a couple of months ahead of us until truely warmer weather arrives, and one never knows the "future of weather".

(I recall one Winter, I think it was 1968 here, when the temperatures got warm enough that as a teenager I went swimming in the nearby lake in March, only for the temperatures to drop drastically and we had one of the largest snows in these parts ever the following month of April.)

But Spring arrives in just a month now. I welcome it with open arms.