"Post No. 726"

I picked up a copy of the 1972 l.p. "Elephant's Memory" at yesterday's flea market for 50 cents. EM was one of John Lennon's old back-up bands, and this l.p. was produced by John and Yoko. Ironically, yesterday would also have been Lennon's birthday.


In fact, December 8th. will be the 30th. year anniversary of his death. To commemorate the life of John Lennon, my "Beatles & Bizarros" blog site will be getting a New Look. I'll be reversing the order of listings on the page where the Beatles app.'s in comic books will be first. I'll probably change the format of the template a bit as well; perhaps a different colored background.

Over on my Facebook page (link in the right column) I posted three songs in the memory of John, one "by" Elephant's Memory, and two by John (in case you'd like to go over there and give them a listen). David Allen Jones also posted several tribute songs to John on his own FB page, so you might want to listen to those as well.

Went by the local fleamarkets today and picked up a couple of the old Steve Reeves "Hercules" flicks, which were always fun things to watch. As a kid I was engrossed in mythology from the study of the Ancient Greeks, Norse, etc., everything from every book I could read in the local library and/or school library, movies based on such as well as comic books Those will be a good way to kill a lazy afternoon sometime. A major motion picture adaptation will be - IS being made - of "Thor" which will be released in a year or two, which I'm anxious to see.

My old friend Mala Shaw, a comic book collector/dealer from Louisville, KY. stopped by for a little while after I got off work yesterday evening. He had several $1.@ books for sell, but I'm a bit short of spending cash this week. I did, however, pick up 5 from one of his long boxes, which included copies of DC's House of Mystery #'s 214 (Wrightson cover & Aragones), 225 (100 PGR. Giant with a Kirby reprint, plus art by Frank Thorne, Don Heck, Sergio Aragones & Alex nino, with a "Phantom Stranger" reprint from the early 1950's as well as a "Spectre" cameo), MAX-Marvel's Supreme Power #13, written by Straczynski and artwork by Gary Frank, and a Supernatural Thrillers #7 from 1974 with the origin of "The Living Mummy" (Alcala artwork), and the first issue of the Aircel limited series "The Walking Dead" from 1989 (shame that wasn't the Kirkman/Image version as that's bringing some "big bucks" these days).

Got today off and have, as stated, already gone by the flea markets, took mom to church, changed a tire on my wife's van and later plan on getting up on the roof "playing Spider-man" to check the gutters for leaves that are already beginning to fall. Hard to tell it's Autumn here in S-Central, KY. today with temperatures getting up to 90 degrees! Guess I should appreciate not having to turn on the heat.

"Post No. 725"

I wouldn't call myself a die-hand fan of Robert Kirkman's work, but I have to admit that I've enjoyed every comic book of which he's associated that I've read thus far, which included a few issues of Image's The Astonishing Wolfman, Britt, and several issues of The Invincible. He writes books and creates characters that are fun to read, and that, to me, is what enjoying comic books is all about. I'm anxious to see the AMC series adapting his "The Walking Dead" (premiering at 9PMCST/10PM Eastern on Halloween night).


The afore mentioned comics were from that larger lot of 80 misc. comics I won recently and finally completed reading. In just yesterday was another lot I'd won of the first 23 issues of the 1980's Capitol/First Comics title, The Badger. During the 1980's there was such an explosion of great titles from alternate publishers it was difficult to keep up with what was "out there" as well as attempting to weed out the really bad ones from the lot, but Badger, written by Mike Baron (who also wrote another title which I thought was excellant called Nexus) was always on my buying list. Along the way through the years most of that '80's stuff got traded off or sold, so it was nice to get the first nearly 2 dozen of those back in my collections. Not a title probably that I'd ever attempt to complete (I think there was nearly 80 issues total), but definately worth having and re-reading here nearly 30 years down the road.

I had today off from work and having finished up my mowing last night (for hopefully one of the very few times I'll have to do that chore for the rest of the year), I had some free time and took my mother to buy her a new pair of shoes, did some housework and grocery shopping, posted some songs over on my Facebook page, and generally relaxed a bit. Watched another of the four episodes from a Fantastic Four DVD (which contains 4 different animated shows from 2006). The most modern version of the animated FF is sometimes okay and sometimes so-so. For instance, I can't say I like the hair style on "Johnny - Human Torch - Storm", but the animators seemed to think hair sticking straight up resembles a match flame, and I see no reason why "The Thing" should have the FF symbol painted on his chest (in blue, yet!), but overall, they aren't too bad. The episode I watched today starred "Antman" (Henry Pym, one of Marvel's oldest silver-age characters), and they basterized his appearance by changing his blonde hair to black and giving him a goatee (Geez).

Began re-reading a classic favorite of mine last night, H. Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines. Interesting that my 1994 printing has reproductions of the original engravings by Walter Paget. Walter Paget and his brothers were all illustrators in the late 1800's, and one of his brothers used the image of Walter for the first drawn depiction of the character, "Sherlock Holmes".