"Meet Mike Stripe!"

No. NOT the lead singer for the group REM, but a new comic strip character I've been working on. Here's a Preview of him, and if you'll click onto the "My Unpublished Work" link at the top of the righthand list, you can read one of his adventures!

And onto other things.

Last weekend my wife had a craft show in the town where my father-in-law lives, so we left at 6:30 AM or so to take her there and set up her booth. After unloading all of this, and loading up the empty boxes, I took the van over to visit with Bill since he had some work he needed doing.

You see, he has this garage that's literally crammed with all sorts'a "junk" he's collected over the years from yard sales and from working as a builder of houses. And upstairs in this one area that measured 8' by 8' or so, were 50+ wooden doors he'd saved just for that purpose.

Now they'd been fine just staying in that area had not the great weight of them pulling the support posts loose from the floor! In fact, he'd already put basement-jacks under that area just to keep it from falling in, so my job that day was to remove all of this weight. This encompassed my having to carry down each door, one at a time, down ten stair steps, walking over rolls of old carpet (like I was on a tightrope), and taking them not just outside, but around the back of his house to an open shed to stack there.

Needless to say, this took a long time to do. I started around 9:30 AM, and didn't have them all removed and stacked until 3:30 PM. In the meanwhile, I finally found those 20 odd door skins he was going to give me to cover the outside of my screened-in back porch. So I also had to carry them out, remove the empty craft boxes from the van, load all of those up to bring home, then REload those empty boxes BACK into the van.

I was so pooped from all of this that afterwards I didn't even feel like going by Waldenbooks to see what new comics were out or by the antique mall to look thru the "cheapie" boxes. Instead I just went back to the craft show to wait until it was time for it to be over for the day.

Arriving back there I discovered I still had about an hour to kill, so since the show was only about a block and a half from the town square, I decided to walk up there and around the square and back just to kill time. (I probably hadn't been on the town square there in a good 25 years just to look around.)

BIG mistake there. It was cold enuff last Saturday just working outside, but the road to the square and back was like a breezeway and I just about froze my nuggets off doing that. plus everything was closed for some reason that day. Not sure because it was Veterin's Day or what, but the square was deadsville, and I headed back to the show. I finally stopped at a Dairy Queen right across from it for a hot cuppa joe, only to have to wait 15 minutes in line due to some bunch of teenagers going to a ballgame somewhere, but at least I did get warmed back up.

Got back over to the show and still had about 20 minutes left till time to leave, so I walked around and looked at some of the other booths. Found one guy there set up with art prints he'd done. He had a great variety of subjects, but mostly they were of movie and t.v. western heroes. There was one of The Beatles that was pretty nice in an 8"x10" matted size, so I picked up that for $8. to add to my collection of such. It's titled: "Four Lads from Liverpool", and you can see it Here if you click onto the Gallery link and scroll down some. It's on the righthand side of that. the artist's name is Cecil Highley, and he told me he taught art in Louisville, KY. for 26 years. I think he's pretty good. In particular I liked his prints of "My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys", "The Lone Ranger Rides Again!", , and, "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance".

Anyway...getting back to my father-in-law...he keeps telling me he has an orange crate full of old newspapers from the 1930-40's in that garage and pretty much knows exactly "where" it's located, so next time I go up I'll dig those out. They might be a good find for me, as he said they have a lot of material regarding WWII. But the most interesting thing is that he mentioned some were from The Chicago Tribune, which might mean they contain The Spirit Sunday Sections (that'd sure be NICE!) He also has an antique ice chest he told me to take home (and would have last time had I room in the van).

Moving right along...I've won several interesting lots in the way of comics here lately, but none yet have arrived. They include such things as around 10 misc. early Bronze LOSH's app.'s in Superboy (pre-having the title change over), a few more Kirby "4th. World" titles, a dozen of so Captain Americas from the mid-1970's when Kirby was doing that run, and finally the other 8 issues I need to complete my run of the late 1980's DC Dr. Fate title. That gives me (except for any of the NEW series) a set of pretty much all of the modern Dr. Fate app.'s now, having sets already of both his 1985 and '87 series, plus several misc. app.'s in such titles as 1st. Issue Special, Amethyst, DC Comics Presents,(etc.). I'd like to concentrate on some of the Silver-Age app.'s of this character I still need, like a Showcase 56, or the Justice League issues where GA characters x'd-over. I wouldn't say that Dr. fate is my favorite mystical-hero; hard-pressed to decide between him and "Dr. Strange" (especially the Ditko issues of the latter), but definately one of my very favorite of the DC GA line-up.

In new books I have been enjoying issues of DC's 52 title (what issues I've read, which has only been #'s 22, 24 & 25). Wouldn't mind having a full set of those up-to-date, as well as the rest of that series.

In personal news...Raking this yard is finally about over with for the year, Thank Goodness! I have only one smaller tree in the back whose leaves haven't completely fallen, and all of those are in one spot, so maybe a half an hour of that will take care of it for good. Last time I raked I got the leaves from my good neighbor's side yard as well. He's always coming over and using his riding lawnmower to mow that big back yard of mine in the Summer, so that was the least I could do for him (also considering that all of the leaves he has are not "his" leaves, but MINE from MY trees! He doesn't even have trees in his yard anymore having cut them down back last Spring.). I was going to rake his front yard next time as well, but I see that he mowed that and those are gone now. I have to admit that I really hate doing "yard work". Seems a useless task mowing since you have to do it every week during the Summer. And I would wait until ALL of the leaves fall before I rake if it wasn't for the fact that they'd literally pile up four feet against the side of the house if I did...

We got a new mayor in this town; one that finally agrees that the old hotel (that's nothing but a burnt-out shell) needs to be demolished. The city tried to save that old building with federal grants, but never could get all of the money they needed to rebuild the thing, and it's just as well. Had they started doing that 25 years ago when it was still in fairly decent condition it could have been accomplished, but now they'd pretty much have to start from stratch. Myself, I think the bricks from it could be used to make a wall around a small park for the local children, and as for remembering what the old place looked like, a bronze plaque with it's engraved image would be nice. The whole thing has been a topic of discussion and arguement around these parts for years. The problem with those who wanted to save the place is that they remember it as it was when they were young, and therfore think that it would take "that much" to repair it. In reality, it'd take millions of $'s, which this town simply doesn't have, and could put towards more constructive projects to help the locals. We'll see what happens on down-the-road with all of that, as I'm sure the new mayor will have his hands full of opposition.


As usual, "Enjoy the typos."