"Post No. 586"

A friend of my mom's told her, as I may have mentioned, that she had around 100 l.p.s she wanted to give away so I took mom by her house for a visit today and collected them.

Although the majority of them were country, there were still several I kept, which included 17 different Willie Nelson's, 2 Dolly's, 2 Johnny Cash, 2 Ray Charles, a B.B. King Live at the Regal, a couple of George Jones, a John Denver, an Eagles, 4 different Emmy Lou Harris, and some others.

From the stack I pulled around 25 that I absolutely knew I didn't want, let my wife look through those first to see if she wanted any of them (she didn't), and took those to a gal at work that likes country to see if she wants them (she didn't either as she no longer had a turntable).

I had thought mom said she'd thrown away the turntable, but it was the speakers that werebad and discarded, so she gave me a turntable which has a cassette tape player/recorder and an AM/FM radio on it as well. I think I'll see which turntable's the best and re-offer it AND those other l.p.'s back to the girl at work.

I heard that the great Forrest Ackerman has passed away. I think he was 90 (if my memory serves me right). Sad. He was a big part of my childhood what with Famous Monsters of Filmlandmagazine. He inspired me to watch many a late night horror flick and buy just globs of Aurora monster models. A piece of many a child's imagination and heart if they grew up in the 1960's, now passed into greatness forever.

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The fourth of this month was the 10 Year Anniversary of The eBay Comics Chat Board, and probably 40-50 well-known posters showed up at one time or another that day or the following one if they were out of town. Those guys (and gals) are some of the finest in the world, and anyone who enjoys the collecting hobby should certainly visit and say "hello" sometime (there's a link to it in my column to the right).

Got in that lot of nine different silver-age issues of Marvel's Two-Gun Kid, including the first three drawn by Jack Kirby (#'s 60-62). As he had done previously revamping The Rawhide Kid for Marvel (from Atlas Comics) with issue #17, he gave a whole new slant to the western hero and made him the most notable of the versions.

Two-Gun Kid lasted well into the 1970's as did Rawhide and Kid Colt Outlaw, but, outside of "The Ghost Rider" (western version), he was the only one to actually wear a mask as he dealt out frontier justice. His secret I.D. was "Matt Hawk", a lawyer, which makes me wonder if Stan lee didn't pull that front name and occupation some years later when Daredevil came on the scene.

His first appearance was in issue #60 (1962), which showed a somewhat goofy smile on his face as he fired his six-shooters (similiar to the one they gave "Thor" in his first corner logo boxes pre-1965). Oddly enough there's variation of that published cover, one with a "hand-written" number in the cover box (the version I received) and the other, machine printed. I'm glad I got the hand-written type as it's really the more desirable for the uniqueness.

Another item which has arrived is a copy of the 1971 Hampshire-DC Publication, In The Days of The Mob #1, which is one of the two magazine one-shots Kirby produced at that time (the other, also by Hampshire, called Spirit World). All of these were paid for via my income from October's ebay sales, which weren't bad at all.

I ended up raking in a little over $100., all paid by Paypal, so I used those funds to reinvest on comics I had on my want lists. I ended up with Swamp Thing Vol. 1 #'s 1, 2, & 4 (completing the first ten Berni Wrightson issues), 9 misc. bronze-age issues of Our Fighting Forces (including the first 5 drawn by Kirby), the copy of In The Days of The Mob #1, a Strange Tales #183 (Ditko "Dr. Strange" reprint), and the 9 S-Age issues of Two Gun Kid, which would have cost me much more elsewhere to obtain, and in the meantime shed myself of over 200 duplicate comics that I didn't want, a handful of paperbacks and some misc. A little smart investing sometimes can save you a few bucks along the way.