DARK KNIGHT OVER METROPOLIS...

Images copyright DC COMICS

If I were a proper reviewer, I'd tell you all about the plot of the

three comicbook titles you see before you - but in order to do that,

I'd have to re-read them to refresh my memory.  Which, by the way,

I am going to do at some stage, but why should you have to wait

until then to see these impressive images?

What concerns me more at the moment is that these mags are

now a quarter of a century old.  Yup, 25 years ago is when they

first hit the stands in comicbook stores on both sides of the pond.

I nearly said spinner-racks then, but I'm uncertain if they were still

around back then - for comic mags anyway.  (The comics are

dated June, but probably went on sale around March.)

When I think of the people I knew who are now dead that

were alive back then, it's hard to get my mind around sometimes,

as 1990 still seems fairly recent to me.  However, I haven't opened

the door on this trio of tasty treats in order to depress you with such

thoughts;  no, I merely want to encourage you to seek out these

issues for yourselves, if you haven't already got them.

And if you have, what are your memories of them?  Go on,

leave a comment - this blog needs something worth reading! 

SANTA IN SENSATIONAL 'STITCH-UP' SCANDAL...

Okay, I'll admit it's a little early for SANTA CLAUS to be raising his bearded head, but there's a reason for this post.  Not a great one, admittedly, but any excuse to indulge in a bit of personal nostalgia is always good enough for me.  Anyway, you got in here for free so you'll take what you get and be thankful for it.  (Don't you just love it when I'm masterful?)  Here's the story.

Back in the '60s, after school one day, a classmate by the name of RAYMOND BENNIE (may even have been Benny, can't remember) invited me back to his house.  During my visit, I noticed a stuffed Santa figure, which was probably a cat's plaything, though that thought likely never occurred to me at the time.  Raymond kindly said I could have it, and so little Santa came back home to live with me.

He immediately fell victim to terrible abuse, as me and my brother utilised him to play 'dodge ball'.  I'd kneel on my bed and try and hit my bruv with Santa by throwing him across the room at my ducking and diving sibling.  Then he'd return fire from his bed, chucking Santa back at me as I tried to avoid being hit.  Eventually, SC became a bit loose around the seams, so I undid his stitching and took him apart, intending to sew him back together again and tighten and tidy him up a bit.

Alas, it never happened, and eventually poor old 'cotton wool' Santa suffered, I assume, the fate of most things in a state of disrepair, and was unceremoniously discarded without even a thanks for the moments of enjoyment he had afforded me and my older relation.  I think I still had his pieces when I spied his twin in a back garden across from the house of one of my mother's friends whom we were visiting one day in 1968 or '69.  (Early '70 at a push.)

I'd just acquired my second QUERCETTI FIREBALL XL5 parachute toy from a superb shop in Rutherglen, called JOHNNY'S, and it had overshot it into a neighbour's garden as I played with it in the backyard of my mother's friend.  As I went to retrieve it, I noticed the double of my stuffed Santa lying on the neighbour's back lawn.  It did occur to me for a second to 'liberate' him, but my virtuous nature won out.

Anyway, I've never again seen another duplicate of that Santa since then, but several years back I bought the one in the picture at the top of this post, merely to 'fill the space', as it were.  Apart from the fact that it's a Santa Claus, he's really nothing like the one I used to have back in the '60s - but he reminds me of him, if you know what I mean.

I sometimes wonder if Raymond Bennie, who emigrated down under with his family in the late '60s, ever thinks back to the stuffed Santa Claus that he (or his cat if he had one) used to have once upon a time when we were both young and innocent and thought we had forever.  And does he recall giving him to me - or even remember my name?  Probably not.

I occasionally think of Raymond and wonder what he's doing now.  More often, however, I think of that Santa and wish he were still mine.  There are two other Santas I wish I still had - maybe I'll tell you about them one day, too.

A Merry Christmas when it comes. Ho ho ho!

Raymond Bennie in July 1967

Update: In December 2023 I managed to obtain via eBay a replacement for the Santa I got from Raymond when I was yet a primary school pupil.  I did a separate post about him, but thought I'd add a photo here as well.  If you'd like to read that other post, click here.