CRIVENS! COMICS & STUFF!: 05/11/17

Thursday, 11 May 2017

ACTION COMICS #1 REPRINTS... (Updated)

There've been several separate reprints of ACTION COMICS #1 over the years, and I have eight of them. You often see them on eBay being offered at various prices, but some of them are, frankly, ridiculous. The issue below is listed as high as £865.90 (will it ever sell at that price?), and the ish below that is listed as high as £263.42. I bought around a dozen of the '88 reprint when it came out and have given away several over the years for nothing, so basically, I've being giving away money.

It'd be great to have an original 1938 issue, eh?

1976

1988

1992

1998

2000

2017

2022

Oh, go on then - here's the original.

1938

AWESOME ADS From The PAST (1)...

Remember these old ads in U.S. comics from the '60s? I always wanted one of these posters (for such they were I presume), but America was like another planet to U.K. kids back then, so I knew my hope was unlikely to ever come true, alas. A few decades down the line, I managed to obtain a Universal Studios life-size 'standee' of FRANKENSTEIN's Monster, so my hope was finally realised - sort of. Anyway, a cardboard standee is much better than a poster any day, don'tcha think?

(I'd still like that poster though.)

ANOTHER BABE Of The DAY - IMOGEN HASSALL...

IMOGEN HASSALL sits dreaming

of me, wondering if I'm going to 'phone her

after our night out at the cinema. I'll probably

get around to it eventually, but I've still to take

out SALMA, plus several other babes. Some-

times I wish I wasn't quite so handsome.

RIDICULOUS REPOST: ARREST ME OFFICER! I USED TO PUNCH YOGI BEAR ON A REGULAR BASIS... (Updated)

Bought the above leaflet via eBay recently for a couple of quid. It's the instructions for the YOGI 'PUNCH' BEAR, the one advertised in the special offer below, and which I owned as a child. I've got the promotional leaflet and the instructions, so hopefully it won't be too long before I finally re-acquire an inflatable Yogi himself. (No, Melvin, it's not that kind of inflatable - behave yourself. Tsk! Tsk!)

It's amazing what you find out long after the fact. Case in point: When I was three or four, I remember my father inflating a YOGI BEAR figure while sitting on the back step at the side of the house. (Yeah, the 'back' door was at the side of the house - go figger!) I had what seemed like loads of Yogi merchandise when I was young. In that house alone, I had a MARX Yogi on a scooter, a cardboard Yogi Hallowe'en mask, a pair of Yogi slippers (with little Yogi heads on the toes) and the above inflatable Yogi. (I also had a Marx Yogi & Huck ramp walker about this time, but I may not have got that until we'd moved to our next house, I'm not sure.)

I loved punching the bejabbers out of my inflatable Yogi (in an affectionate way, of course), but no longer remember exactly what happened to him. I have a vague idea that he sprung a leak and was discreetly disposed of, but I probably wasn't told of his fate at the time. I recall my dad putting sand in the base to weigh him down on the day that Yogi first arrived, but I never knew where he'd come from - until now that is. (Confusingly, note that the instructions say not to use water to weigh Yogi down, yet the promotional leaflet says that water can be used.) I recently bought this very flyer, which reveals that the punch toy was a special offer from FAIRY SNOW and associated washing powders - so, over 50 years later, I at last know where one of my best boyhood buddies originated. Now if only I could find a replacement. Does anyone know where I can get one? If so, I'll let you have the first punch.

Did anyone else have an inflatable Yogi when they were a kid? (No - an inflatable sheep doesn't count, you perv!) Then leave your reminiscences in the comments section.

And below is an inflatable Yogi, though whether it's the same make as the one I had, I couldn't say.

DISTRACTED DOGGIES & DAMAGED DEER...

It must have been around 25 years ago. I came home one evening to find my parents entertaining one of their friends, while my faithful dog ZARA gnawed on a piece of wood at the side of my father's chair. It turned out to be an ornament from the foot of the fireplace, and it was now in splinters. I took it off her and let her out in the back garden, whereupon she had one long wee. Obviously she'd needed to go, but my parents, engrossed in conversation, hadn't noticed (or ignored) her, so she'd started to gnaw on the ornament as a distraction.

This had been one of three ornaments, given to my parents by my grandparents for Christmas back in the mid or late '70s. Truth to tell, my mother wasn't too impressed by the present, as it had been acquired from someone in their Darby and Joan club. Considering my mother visited them more often than any of her siblings and did their shopping for them, she felt it was a bit of a slap in the kipper for her devoted efforts. Not that she was looking to be rewarded, but the ornaments had been bought out of convenience and with not much thought.

Sometime around the mid-'80s, one of the ornaments got broken and, though I fixed it several times, it was eventually dispensed with when it got beyond a viable point of repair, leaving only two survivors. So when I saw the remnants of the second of the three to fall foul of an unfriendly fate, I decided to call in INTERNATIONAL RESCUE. Er, no, I didn't, but I was determined to do my best to restore it. I glued it all back together, applied copious amounts of wood-filler, then sanded, stained and varnished it 'til it was once again presentable.

It's darker than it was, but at least it's in one piece again. One day I may do some further work on it and restore it to a more faithful representation of its original appearance, but it'll do for the present. It probably now reminds me more of my dog than my grandparents, but either way, it's a memory that I'm reluctant to relinquish. There was another broken ornament I managed to salvage from the bin (quite literally) and restore, which I'll maybe ~~bore~~ ~~you with~~ tell you all about another time.

(Oh-oh, there go another five members.)