AURORA MONSTERS Of The MOVIES - The FRANKENSTEIN MONSTER...

The original box, 1977

I bought the above model in Glasgow in the late '70s.  I'm not sure which shop I got it in now, but Goldberg's or Lewis's spring to mind.  A couple or so years after building it, I gave it to a pal, but I bought another one when Revell re-released the kit around 20 odd years later.  Still haven't built it, so I've borrowed a pic of one from the Internet.  Didn't Hypnotator do a great job?  That's the standard I have to aim for.

Built & painted by HYPNOTATOR

The reissue box, 1999

KLASSIC KIRBY KOMIC KOVERS: The FOREVER PEOPLE #10...

Image copyright DC COMICS

Apparently, it wasn't JACK KIRBY's idea to guest-star DEADMAN in The FOREVER PEOPLE - he was asked to include him by, I think (too lazy to check), CARMINE INFANTINO.  The result was an entertaining enough story (continued from the previous issue), but it wasn't really the Deadman that Deadman fans knew and loved.  However, it was by the Jack Kirby that Jack Kirby fans knew and loved, and that was good enough for them, so who are we to argue?

BABE Of The DAY - NICOLA BRYANT...

NICOLA BRYANT - 'nuff said.  What's

that?  You want words with a photo like this?

Are you serious?  Who's bothered with words at

a time like this?  Okay then, here's a cute Babe

scratching her back.  (You happy now?)

JIM REEVES - FOUR WALLS...

Here's JIM REEVES singing FOUR WALLS -

live - no lip-syncing.  Now this is how to sing!

KLASSIC KOMIC KOVERS: SUPERMAN #100...

Image copyright DC COMICS

Another collectors' item classic cover for all you cavortin' Criv-ites - SUPERMAN's 100th issue!  It's taken a couple of liberties with the small repro of the 1st ish (namely, adding 'First Issue' and updating the masthead to a more accomplished one), but I very much doubt that many readers in 1955 had ever seen an actual copy of #1, so it didn't much matter.

However, you've no doubt seen it on this very blog, and now you've also seen #100, so aren't you glad you dropped by?

THE BEAR FACTS - WISH I'D HAD ONE OF THESE...

Back around 1963 when I was a kid, I had a shaped, cardboard YOGI BEAR Hallowe'en mask (bought from WOOLWORTH's), and in 1965 or '66, I bought another one (again, from Woolies).  Here's an outfit I probably would have killed for though.  Ain't it neat?  (Update: Managed to re-acquire another Yogi mask the same as the one[s] I had when I was a lad.)

BABE Of The DAY - IMOGEN HASSALL...

What a way to be welcomed in the morning,

eh?  A fresh glass of orange juice and a beautiful,

bikini-clad Babe in the shape of stunning IMOGEN

HASSALL, and the world seems like such a great

place to be, don't you think?  I know I do!

STAPLES IN THE SANDS OF TIME...

I decorated my back room recently.  I say 'recently', but it actually took me about 29 years to start it, and then it was months of hanging a couple of strips of wallpaper every few weeks 'til it was finished.  Because of a medical condition, I tire easily, and I just didn't have the stamina to apply myself to the task with any energy or enthusiasm.  Therefore, it was a bit here and there when I could.  And I was absolutely knackered at the end of it, let me tell you.

The room used to be my brother's, mainly, when we stayed here the first time around.  I say 'mainly' because we shared it for quite a few months when my room suffered from damp during the winter months, and there was a period when we swapped for a while, so the room was 'officially' mine as well.  As regular readers will know (and lost the will to live at my continual re-telling), we flitted to another house after eleven years, then moved back (sans brother) four-plus years later.  Along with my old room, I also commandeered my sibling's former sleeping quarters.

Yeah, big deal, you say, get to the point.  Well, while I was in the long, slow, arduous process of trying to hang a few strips of wallpaper, I found staples embedded in various spots in the walls, where my brother had affixed all his heavy metal posters back in the '70s.  I decided to leave them there (after flattening them into the wall with a hammer), as, having been there for more than 40 years, I didn't have the heart to remove them.  Long after I'm less than a memory, these old staples will likely still be there, a permanent testament to the fact of my family's presence in this house down through the decades.

I've touched on this subject before, but it amazes me to think that we always leave our mark on wherever we've lived, even if we don't realise it at the time.  When I revisited a former dwelling sixteen years after having moved out, I was surprised by just how many 'markers' of our time there yet remained.  Wallpaper, tiles, lowered ceilings, marks where circular fluorescent lights had been, etc., it was all comfortably familiar to me, as if we'd never been away.  And when we returned to the house in which I now reside, our departed doggie's scratches in the back door were there to welcome us and remind us of our prior occupation.

We all leave some kind of mark behind us, however trivial, and regardless of whether we intend to or not.  What feature of any of your former homes will attest to you once having lived there long after you're gone?    

KLASSIC KOMIC KOVERS: SPIDER-MAN COMICS WEEKLY #50...

Image copyright MARVEL COMICS

It was around six years since The INVINCIBLE IRON MAN had last appeared in his own strip in a British weekly (FANTASTIC), but in 1974 the wait was finally over and ol' Shell-Head was back.  I think I'd already bought this ish, but if memory serves, it had some slight flaw that made me seek out another copy.  I do remember making my way down to the Old Village quarter of my town as it was starting to get dark, with the glow of the street lights reflected in the fine film of rain on the glistening pavement, and buying my second copy from a now long-gone newsagent's.  I acquired the above copy some years back, and the newsagent remains open in memory.  One glance at the cover and I'm back there faster than a fart from The Flash, buying this comic on a wet January evening in the long ago-days of 1974.

"LOOK AT THAT FOUNTAIN. EE, IT'S CHAMPION..."

In a totally self-indulgent exercise in rampant nostalgia, here's a photo of the fountain that used to lie at one end of my local town centre.  It was turned into a 'rockery' in the late '70s or early '80s, before being demolished when the shopping centre was enclosed under a roof not too long after.  I still prefer it as it was in this photo though.  Although on a much smaller scale, it always reminded me of the fountain in the opening credits of '60s TV show The CHAMPIONS.  Still does in fact.  (You wouldn't recognise this area today.)

BABE Of The DAY - JOLENE BLALOCH...

JOLENE BLALOCH has the best-looking

lips for sucking porridge through a straw that

I've ever seen.  Surely there's a way to put such a

unique talent to use?!  Let me think about it for a

second, I'll come up with something.  (Nah, I

 was wrong - can't think of a thing.)

PART FOURTEEN Of SCHOOLTIME SCANDALS: OVER The HILL, BUT NOT QUITE OVER 'The DALE'...

Nah, she wasn't this hot - almost

Her name was Miss Dale, and she was seriously sexy.  Small, blonde (update: nope - redhead actually, the ol' memory was playing tricks), early 20s, she usually wore a blue denim mini-skirt and also indulged in some serious sadism that too many teachers of the period were prone to.  She had a nasty habit of punching your arm several times to emphasise whatever point she was making, and I certainly wasn't the only kid who suffered from a bruised upper limb in her class. Where did such rage come from?

One day, she decided to test our spelling by reading out words to the class, so that we could then write them in our jotters to be marked by her diminutive, angry self.  One of the words she uttered was 'yawn', which, due to my familiarity with the Shakespearean-style of speech in MARVEL's THOR, I took to be 'yon' and thus wrote it in my jotter accordingly.  She then collected our efforts and sat at her desk to evaluate them, while we busied ourselves with something else.

After a while, she called me out to her desk and berated me for seemingly misspelling the word, then belted me with the tawse - solely for what she considered my lack of spelling ability, not because I was cheeky or anything.  50-odd years later, I now know just what an utterly inept teacher she was not to have considered the possibility that I'd been thinking of another, perfectly legitimate, phonetically similar word to the one she'd had in mind.

Her response should surely have been: "There are two words pronounced that way, define the one you mean."  Then it would've been a simple case of me explaining exactly what word I'd had in mind, and her then asking me to spell the other, the one she was looking for.  The fact was, I'd spelt the word properly, it was just a different word to the one she'd been thinking of.  And yet that glaringly obvious possibility never occurred to her.  What a thicko.

I did learn a few valuable lessons that day though.  Firstly, that teachers weren't always right; secondly, that Miss Dale, though sexy, was a bitch - and thirdly, there's no way clearly hormonal people should ever be tasked with imparting knowledge to any group of children, when their main method of teaching seems to consist of punching and belting them until they 'learn' things.

This was primary school, mind, so we're not talking about teachers having to deal with surly and unruly teenagers - we're talking children of only 8 or 9 years old. What the hell were educationalists thinking of back then?  As I've said before, kids today don't have a clue about just how lucky they are compared to ourselves.

As for Miss Dale?  I have absolutely no recollection of ever seeing her again after I left primary. Maybe she left before I did.  However, it would be nice if she learned how to manage her anger issues and went on to become, at the very least, a competent (and kinder) teacher.  The alternative simply doesn't bear thinking about.

MARVEL TALES COVER GALLERY...

Images copyright MARVEL COMICS

MARVEL TALES lasted an astounding 30 years, from issue #1 in 1964, right up to #291 in 1994.  Like MARVEL COLLECTORS' ITEM CLASSICS, it reprinted some of the earliest tales of the most popular heroes from 'The House Of Ideas'.

But, hey - you're not here to read me wittering on in my typically boring, long-winded fashion.  So why don't I just cut to the chase and show you the covers of the first dozen issues?  You'd like that?  Well, I have to confess I'm a tad disappointed you never took any time to think over that proposition, but who am I to argue with all you crazy cavortin' Crivvies?

So here they are!  Any happy memories of any of them?  Then feel free to share them in the comments section.

I obtained my original copy of this issue in Blackpool in 1973 or '74

BABE Of The DAY - JOLENE BLALOCH...

Hell's Bells, what's the world coming

to?  I saw a link in my visitor stats to what

looked like a DC Universe site and clicked

on it to check it out.  I'd have spared myself a

wasted journey (and a shock) had I only known

what 'slash' fiction was.  I made a hasty retreat,

so here's JOLENE BLALOCH to show them

what they're missing should they ever decide

to drop in on my blog again.  (I sure won't

be visiting theirs!  Strewth!)  Be careful

about what links you click on!

MARVEL COLLECTORS' ITEM CLASSICS COVER GALLERY...

Images copyright MARVEL COMICS

Before the MARVEL MASTERWORKS and OMNIBUS volumes, there was - MARVEL COLLECTORS' ITEM CLASSICS!  68 pages of great superhero strips for only 1/6- (or 25c if you lived in the States), they were a handy way of catching up on the earliest adventures of SPIDER-MAN, The FANTASTIC FOUR, IRON MAN, Dr. STRANGE, ANT-MAN and The HULK.  (Even The WATCHER was there to 'watch' over proceedings.)

The line-up varied over the first few issues, before settling down to a regular cast of heroes, and these issues are now highly collectable in their own right.  I had quite a few of them in my youth and have very fond memories of them.  Although I'd already read many of these sensational stories in British weekly periodicals WHAM!, SMASH!, POW!, FANTASTIC and TERRIFIC, this was the first time I'd seen them in full-colour, and I liked what I saw.

It was in the pages of MCIC that I learned that the baddie I knew as The APEMASTER was actually The RED GHOST, and that MADAME NATASIA's name was spelt NATASHA in her original American appearances.  For a short time, in my ignorance, I considered the U.K. reprints to be 'the real thing' and the U.S. originals as mere counterfeits, but I soon wised up and learned to appreciate both incarnations of these strips.

Anyway, in celebration of these great comics of yesteryear, here's a cover gallery of the first dozen issues.  If you remember them with the same fondness as I do, then feel free to share your reminiscences of these mags in the comments section.  Don't be selfish by keeping all those warm memories to yourself.

This ish is dated 1966, but I bought it brand-new off the spinner-rack in
1969.  Thank goodness for delayed distribution of U.S. comics in Britain

Looks like the U.K. price went up with this ish - still a bargain though

BABE Of The DAY - LINDA THORSON...

Lovely LINDA THORSON of

The AVENGERS shows how it should

be done in the 'wearing leather jackets'

category.  She'll be popping in for a cuppa

tea in just a moment (then, hopefully, she'll

be 'popping out') so I better go and put the

kettle on and take off the gimp mask as I

don't want to scare  her.  (Okay, who

 said "Better keep it on then!" ?)

KEN REID'S FINAL FACE-ACHE...

Image copyright REBELLION

Some time back, I showed you the very first FACE-ACHE strip by KEN REID (from JET #1, cover-dated May 1st 1971), so I thought it would be nice to show his very last strip that was published, in BUSTER, cover-dated March 14th 1987, just over a month after he died (February 2nd).  Ken had started work on another page but never completed it, and I have a copy of that unfinished strip.  However, I'm not at liberty to reveal it at the moment, but that time will eventually come.  (Incidentally, you can refresh your memory of the first strip here.)

******

As the years passed, Ken's art, although still meticulously rendered, took on a more stiff appearance and was less 'fluid' than it had once been.  More and more, he started to draw people from a side-on view, which made his pages seem a bit flat.  The first panel of the above page serves as an example of this; look at the unnatural side-on angle of the kids seated at their desks.  They actually appear to be looking off-panel, not at the teachers at the front of the class. 

ROLLICKING REPOST: NOW COMES... COLOSSUS!

Copyright REBELLION

Whenever I first read a book, the images that form in my head are indelible.  Even if I re-read the book twenty years later, the exact same imagery is conjured up in my mind as before - though sometimes a more careful contemplation of the text might reveal that what I'd envisioned was perhaps not in perfect accord with the mental picture the writer was trying to paint.  (It's usually pretty close though.)

What do I mean exactly?  Well, if a writer's description of a location is similar enough to one I'm familiar with, then that's where I'll think of whenever I read the associated piece of text.  For example, KENNETH GRAHAME's WILD WOOD (from The WIND In The WILLOWS) is an amalgam, to me, of two different woods in two different neighbourhoods where I lived as a youth.  Exactly which wood depends on precisely which paragraph (or sentence) I'm reading, but one descriptive passage will suggest one wood, and another the other one.  These images formed in my brain when I first read the book, and these are the images that remain with me to this day, no matter how many times I re-read it.

So what's that got to do with this strip from the FANTASTIC Annual for 1968 (issued in August/September of 1967)?  Well, what I've just waxed boringly about in the preceding preamble is pretty much the same when it comes to comic strips.  With one difference of course, as comic strips have their own accompanying set of images which don't require much, if any, interpretive contribution on the part of the reader.  However, comic strips still carry with them their own associations of where and when they were first read, so they leave their own indelible impressions on a reader's mind in a similar way to what novels do.

For instance, I so associate the COLOSSUS strip - drawn by the amazing Spanish artist JOSE ORTIZ MOYA - with the house and neighbourhood in which I stayed when I first read it, that I'm right back there again in a heartbeat on sight of this particular tale.  Regardless of however many homes I've lived in (or ever will live in) since my initial exposure to this story, whenever I've re-read it over the years, it's always that first house I find myself thinking of each time I pore over this astoundingly awesome Ortiz artwork.

Anyway, it goes without saying that you all deserve a gold BLUE PETER BADGE for having to wade through the previous paragraphs of self-indulgent tosh to get to a point that should've taken only a few sentences.  You know me though - in love with the sound of my own computer keyboard.

If you think you recognise the art style, you'd be right.  As well as drawing Spanish strips and working for WARREN PUBLISHING, Jose also drew strips such as The THIRTEENTH FLOOR and The TOWER KING for IPC MAGAZINES.  He did much more than I've mentioned here of course, and fans of the man and his work might like to read more about his career by looking him up on WIKIPEDIA.  Sadly, he died aged 81 on December 23rd, 2013, but he leaves behind a rich legacy of absolutely amazing artwork.

Anyway, congratulations - you've scaled the final plateau. Now you can enjoy this 12-page strip by one of the comic strip medium's true masters.