"The Eve of The Eve, and Fred"

I was finally able to get all of the comics that I had saved from various lot deals lot into some sort of alphabetical order and all of the remaining ones in boxes and stored. Now I have just what I really want to keep in my comic book collection, and once again, I have a "secondary" collection of a few boxes that at some future date (when I have the time and energy) I'll put back in order with the prime long boxes.

While going thru those misc. comics I did decide to pull my issues of AC Comics Fem Force just because I always liked reading those. AC Comics is most closely associated with Bill Black, who on his own is sort of a semi-pro artist, but he did put out several interesting titles and even managed to snag a few pros to do various covers and obtained the property rights for some well known icons such as Roy Rogers and Lash Larue.

Although DC wishes to ignore the fact, AC even revived the Charlton hero, "The Blue Beetle" for a couple of issues back in the 1980's after Charlton folded and before DC got hold of him
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The Fem Force series is composed of various super-powered women, all of which you would recognize as revamped Golden Age characters such as "The Phantom Lady", "The Black Cat", or any one of several various jungle girls (most notably published by Fox in the 1940's).

Above is the cover to one such issue that was a special telling the "untold origin" of this team, and it's not bad even though nothing spectacular, it had a readable storyline and acceptable artwork by different artists. (One thing was for certain with FemForce is that there was always plenty of "T&A" shots of the heroines.)


And today here on "the eve of the eve" I went in at noon and just had a 5 hour work day. Even so we were pretty swamped all of that time and probably did more than any single day of the year since...well....last year. Just one more shopping day to go and it'll be all over except the crying for those retailers who really took a whoppin' this year. I've read that there were many retailers that went into the hole this time due to the economy, and they were forced to price their merchandice at times even below what they paid for it to avoid closing shop. (That's pretty sad.)


Not sure if I'm going to get back to my local comic shop before their 20% off back issues sale ends this month but I sure hope so. It's a case with me this time of actually having some extra cash to spend, but not the time to do so.


And...on ANOTHER NOTE...


Over on Fred Hembeck's blog site on his December the 5th. post he talked about his Omnibus which reprints just globs and globs of his great artwork over the years. And, he has a link, which is Thus of an interview with him. In this interview various fans expressed their delight or dismay of his work, but one in particular really erked me when I read it.

It was from a person who went to a comic convention and got a lot of artists there to do free sketches on a page, but Fred wouldn't do one unless the person paid him ten bucks for it. This person said he lost a lot of respect for Fred that day.

Tell ya how I feel about that.

Get over it.

One of the main reasons that I don't submit free artwork to fanzines and or the small press or the like much anymore is because all one ever gets for the sweat and tears and toil (IF they're lucky) is a freebie copy of whatever zine it gets published in; NO cash gratuity at all. And after the approximately 40 years that I've done such artwork, you know, it'd really be nice to see a little compensation for my work in appreciation. If a person thinks it's good enough to print in their little pubs, then they should also be willing to pay something for it.

It's not that I haven't personally asked many a soul to contribute to some odd project I was doing myself with only the compensation for their time and work being to retain the copyrights to the piece and a free copy of the 'zine. But also, I've stated that I could always use a photocopy rather than the original, and even at times have offered to pay for said piece. In fact, I personally own a nice piece of Fred's work. And yes; I paid for it. Fred's a pro. I don't expect him to do something for free. So, if you want some nice original or whatever artwork, then pull out your wallet you cheap bastards and give those people you admire some cash. They don't expect you to come to their house and work for nothing.

And, by the way Fred, I'm STILL wondering what the devil the word: jem is all about at the top left of your blog page???