"Autumn"

And what's happened since the last time I did a blog post....

Well, we had to take my dad down to the hospital the other night. He's gotten out there and tried to use a handpump to air up one of the front tires on his riding lawn mower. I'm sure it really didn't need any air in it, but he's old and thought it was low, and can't seem to grasp the mechanics to use the small air compressor I recently got him, and thus, strained a couple of muscles in his chest. My mom, fearful as the mother-hen as always, took him down to the emmergency room where they ran all sorts of tests on him and discovered nothing was "wrong", but kept him over-night just for observation. He's back home and the next day I went down and mowed their entire yard and did the trim work just to keep him from over-doing it again.

Let's see...I bought a 10" Emerson color t.v. w/a built-in VCR recently for my pc room. I had a little B&W model that picked up a couple channels, but not much. At least with this one it's Cable-Ready and I can watch a flick on tape while in here working around if I wish. My t.v. in the living room has both a VCR and DVD player, and I may add a DVD to this one as well sometime. I only have around 3 dozen DVD's anyway, but literally hundreds (maybe thousands) of VHS tapes (most of which are in storage 'cause I don't have room for them here; been buying them since the early 1980's).

Speaking of watching things, I bought a copy of The Transporter and watched it. Not a bad flick at all, and I think I'd like to see the sequel.

Went by a local pawn shop yesterday where I discovered they'd gotten in a few boxes of fairly modern-type comics again, the better part of which were 3/$1.00 stuff. I pulled out quite a bit of good reading material, a lot of which was from the 1980's and early 1990's.

Among all of the bad stuff published in the 1980's (primarilly rip-offs of TMNTs), there were many gems being pubbed because independent printers saw a market in letting anyone with some cash print their own comics. This was also the time when such independent publishers such as First, Eclipse, Renegade,A-V,Warp Graphics and others made their mark; many of these creators are still doing work today, of course, in mainstream books. This also allowed a greater amount of freedom for the artist and writers on their material, without the restrictions demanded by the mainstream publishers (in particular, D.C. & Marvel).

So, among what I purchased, I got such comics as Scorpio Rose #1, and Cap'n Quick & A Foozle #1, both of which had great artwork by Marshall Rogers (and a tip o'the hat to anyone who recalls which character from D.C. "Scorpio Rose" - created by Steve Engleheart - was supposed to have been a continuation of in this form).

I got a couple of books with Giffen art, such as Trencher #1, and PunX #1 And other stuff like Negative Burn #11 (with work by Gaiman, Bolland, Barr, Moore & Feazell), and Mars 1 (w/work by Mark Wheatley). Along with these I picked up nearly 30 issues of V2 of Nick Fury Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. (Marvel), 4 issues of Tales to Astonish V2 (Silver-Age "Sub-Mariner" reprints), No.1 of the first D.C. Nathaiel Dusk L.S. (from 1984), and some udder stuff. All great reading material! Don't ever let anyone tell you there's not decent reading material in comics; no matter what time period comics have been pubbed, there's always something good if you just weed thru he crap.

And...Autumn in now upon us, and it began early here with leaves from my three large trees falling over a month ago. Now they're attempting to take over the yard with a blanket of dried-brown, so it won't be long until raking time. For the present I can still mow/mulch them up, but they'll eventually get too thick for that and I'll have to make piles of them, rake them onto a tarp and haul them to the far back of the lot for disposal. Give it about 2 more weeks and they'll really be covering everything.

Finally got rid of all of the rest of the old wood I had around here. I told my wife to either do "something' with it or I was going to clean up around the shop and toss it away. big mistake, I guess because she drew craft patterns on all of it and it took me over 6 hours to cut all of them out! Well...at least that's done and gone now.