"Tim Hildebrandt"

Somewhere around here still stored after 30 years is a set of fantasy posters by The Hildebrandt Brothers that Pizza Hut restaurants gave away back around 1978.

When I moved back to this area in 1979, I got a job at the local PH as a cook (and worked there for around 4 years). Over on the floor in a large, flat box was probably 100 such posters, still left over from a previous promotion. The boss told me to simply take what I wanted of them, and I recall getting maybe 10 sets, or sets as complete as I could as one of them was completely out, so I had one set with 5 of the 6 different posters, and maybe 9 sets of 4 other different ones.

Naturally, I kept the most complete of the sets, and gave away other sets to various friends I thought would be interested in them. Everyone really seemed to like them, whether they'd heard of the Hildebrandts or not. They had magicians and dragons; some rather tongue-in-cheek, and quite large and colorful.

But this wasn't the first time I'd personally took notice of the Hildebrandt work as I'd admired the Star Wars poster (for the first movie) a couple of years before that while still living in Bowling Green, KY. I recall looking at it for quite a while before I went in to see (what is now known as Episode 4: "A New Hope") it premiere there. Over the years I'd be able to instantly recognize their work on book jackets and paperbacks, etc., and I always thought it excellant.

It saddens me now to hear that Tim Hildebrandt, twin brother to Greg, has died at age 67. One more artist to add to the list of any future work to be greatly missed. We've already lost several fine artists and other professionals in the fantasy, sf and comic world this year. It seems the list just goes on, and on.


Well...


My goal wasn't reached by the end of last year to complete the four different series of DC's The Doom Patrol, but with yesterday's mail, I have now (6 months "late" of such a goal) completed such. With the 6 misc. issues I received I have the full runs of the 1960's series, the 1986 series, the 2000 and the 2004 ones. I believe I started this goal around 2-1/2 years ago, and naturally I began by obtaining all of the original issues, and you would think that those would have been the most difficult to locate. But, not really. If you have the cash to spend, those are all pretty much available. In fact, I spent just as much, if not more time, locating all of the Vertigo series. I had to purchase several "lots" to obtain just an issue or two, here or there, to fill in the holes in the run, and then finally use the "Buy It Now" option to grab up the remaining issues. I'm not even going to wager a guess at what I've spent to do so, but it's been a major amount of any funds I've had for the past couple of years for comics.

At least now I can concentrate on other titles and characters I'd like to obtain full runs of, along with some stuff I just want to read.