BALDER The BRAVE COVER GALLERY...

Images copyright MARVEL COMICS

I bought this four-issue limited series of BALDER The BRAVE back in 1985/'86 (wow - 32/33 years), but it's only in the last 15 minutes that I finally got around to completely removing the price sticker residue that blighted their appearance since I first got 'em.  (Well, since I peeled the stickers off after getting the mags home more than three decades ago that is.)  Read them at the time, but can't recall a thing about them, except that artist SAL BUSCEMA was emulating the drawing style of WALTER SIMONSON, who wrote the four-ish tale.  (Walt drew the covers.)

Anyway, nothing profound (or even remotely interesting) to say, so I'll let you all get on with appreciating the four covers on display here.  Feel free to share your thoughts and observations with the rest of us, if you have any.  You know where the comments section is. 

ELVIRA'S HOUSE OF MYSTERY COVER GALLERY...

Images copyright DC COMICS

CASSANDRA PETERSON is her real name, but viewers back in 1981 knew her under the name by which she hosted a television show called ELVIRA'S MOVIE MACABRE, in which she introduced horror films.  In 1985, DC COMICS revived their HOUSE Of MYSTERY mag with Elvira's name attached to it.  It lasted for 11 issues and one Special - and I have them all, hence this latest entry in the Crivens Cover Gallery series.

Anyway, before we get to that, here's a story in which Elvira plays a small part - if such a description covers such an impressive 'chassis'.  In the mid-'80s, I used to have a big glossy Elvira poster (which I've still got rolled up somewhere) on my wall, and one night a friend and myself were recording a 'cassette-a-letter' for another friend in Japan.  I titled these tapes 'GROAN With GORDIE' and they consisted of music and audio clips, interspersed with either solitary monologues from myself, or conversation with any mutual pal who was visiting at the time.

As we conversed, our eyes drifted towards the Elvira poster, and we extolled her charms in a fairly non-gratuitous, non-lecherous way.  It was a brief digression, but imagine my surprise when my pal in Japan said in his reply tape that his feminist girlfriend objected to our 'sexist' comments about Elvira in her bathing suit.  I'd never met his girlfriend, and the tape had been produced for him, not her, so I told him that she could object all she liked, because, as far as I was concerned, she didn't have a say on the subject.  I also suggested that perhaps he should exercise a little common sense and listen to future tapes on headphones or when she wasn't around.

In the end, it didn't matter, as she eventually told him she was going on holiday with a girlfriend for a week or two and simply never came back, leaving him in Japan by himself.  Not a very nice thing to do, if you ask me, because they'd gone to Japan as a couple.  So let that be a lesson to you all - never go to the Orient with a feminist.  (Sounds like a catchphrase to live by if you ask me.)

Anyway, that's enough of my self-indulgent nonsense - on with the show.  Remember though, you're ogling what could be described as 'good girl art', so if your wife or girlfriend is a feminist, perhaps you'd be better waiting 'til she's not around.  You wouldn't want her suddenly going on holiday with a pal, would you?  (Or who knows - maybe you would?)

MIGHTY MARVEL CHECKLIST - ON SALE NOW!

Images copyright MARVEL COMICS.  Published by PANINI

MIGHTY WORLD OF MARVEL #9

100 PAGE SPECIAL!

We celebrate the life and art of MARIE SEVERIN, MARVEL's First Lady!  Don't miss a special feature on her career, rare artwork and some of her best humour stories!

A new series begins!  The THING, and the HUMAN TORCH are still in despair over the end of the FANTASTIC FOUR - but DOCTOR DOOM has plans for them both!  By CHIP ZDARSKY and JIM CHEUNG!

The GUARDIANS Of The GALAXY go in search of the INFINITY STONES - with a couple of unexpected stowaways!  By GERRY DUGGAN and ROD REIS!

HAWKEYE enters the lair of the TAKE BACK CONTROL cult!  By KELLY THOMSON and LEONARD ROMERO!

A Marvel classic!  DOCTOR STRANGE confronts the DREAD DORMAMMU for the first time!  By STAN LEE and STEVE DITKO!

The AGING SPIDEY-MAN battles GNATMAN and ROTTEN!  By STAN LEE and MARIE SEVERIN!

The INEDIBLE BULK tries to remember his own origin!  By GARY FRIEDRICH and MARIE SEVERIN!

Plus Marie Severin reveals all her secrets in... "HOW To Be A COMIC BOOK ARTIST!"

Featuring material first printed in MARVEL TWO-In-ONE #1, All New GUARDIANS Of The GALAXY #12, HAWKEYE #32, STRANGE TALES #126 and NOT BRAND-ECHH #2, 3, and 11.

On sale 15th November.

£4.50.

ESSENTIAL X-MEN #8

100 PAGE SPECIAL!

The 'MOJO WORLDWIDE' saga begins now!  The maniacal madman kidnaps both the Gold and Blue X-MEN teams, and throws them into a nightmarish series of their greatest battles!

Featuring material first printed in X-MEN:  GOLD #13-15 and X-MEN:  BLUE #13-14.

On sale 15th November.

£4.50.

DEADPOOL UNLEASHED #21

76 pages of the MERC with the MOUTH!

DEADPOOL makes a deal with CABLE to take down STRYFE - but the sinister clone has a few tricks of his own!  Also:  will Deadpool actually kill Cable for real this time?!  By GERRY DUGGAN and SCOTT KOBLISH!

The conclusion to 'TOO SOON?' is here!  Deadpool teams up with the PUNISHER, DOCTOR STRANGE, SQUIRREL GIRL, SPIDER-HAM and HOWARD The DUCK to take on a shadow demon!  By JOSHUA CORIN and TODD NAUCK!

Featuring material first printed in DESPICABLE DEADPOOL #289-290 and DEADPOOL:  TOO SOON? #4.

On sale 15th November.

£4.50.

HEY, LOOKEE HERE - IT'S THE ETERNALS ('85/'86) COVER GALLERY...

Images copyright MARVEL COMICS

Believe it or not, images possess a great power - the power to return a person to the time and place they first saw them.  And so it was that I found myself transported 30-odd years into the past when I rediscovered this 12-issue series in a cardboard box earlier tonight.  Once more I was in my room in the house I lived in at the time, and once again I was standing in the large cupboard that contained my black metal filing cabinet in which I kept most of my comics.  (I'd probably need around 20 filing cabinets now, and that's just a conservative estimate.)

So strongly do I associate these dozen mags with the house I was then living in that I almost feel out of place in my present surroundings, as if I've suddenly been transported into another dimension.  However, I'm sure you're not here to read my self-indulgent ramblings, you're here for the pretty piccies.  So here's 12 of them to either remind you of comics you had back in the mid-'80s, or to show you what you missed if you weren't around at the time.

The ETERNALS, of course, were created by JACK KIRBY in the mid-'70s and I have all 19 issues plus the Annual, but it was never really a major success for MARVEL.  However, such is the reverence that some fans and comic pros have for all things Kirby, it was decided to revive them in this limited series.  SAL BUSCEMA handled the internal art chores, echoing WALT SIMONSON's style on THOR, but I can't remember anything else about the run.  If I ever get around to re-reading the issues, maybe the memories will come flooding back, but if you're looking for a detailed review of the plot then you've come to the wrong blog, Charlie.

They've more than likely been reprinted in a collected edition by now, so if you're interested in finding out what the storyline was all about, you could try tracking down a copy on eBay.  In the meantime, feel entirely free to enjoy Crivens' cataclysmic cover gallery. 

(BOND) BABE Of The DAY - VALERIE LEON...

With the recent sad news about STAN LEE,

it's time for a bit of humour to alleviate the gloom.  So

here from 1970 is one of the famous HAI KARATE TV

ads starring voluptuous VALERIE LEON.  This is the

very first 'moving' Babe post - I'll maybe do more in

the future.  Isn't Valerie absolutely stunning?

STAN LEE PASSES AWAY...

I've just learned that the chief architect of the MARVEL Universe, STAN LEE, has passed away.  There will be many fine tributes on other blogs to 'The Man' I'm sure (as well as some scurrilous comments from the anti-Stan brigade), but all I want to say at this time is that I was privileged to meet him, shake his hand, and have a chat with him as he signed autographs.  All sensible people know that, without Stan, US comicbooks may not have been around today, so we owe him a great deal of appreciation and a huge debt of gratitude.  Condolences to his family, friends, and fans.  The world will never again be the same.

Hey, ANYONE REMEMBER TONIBELL?

Remember the TONIBELL Miniball?  As far as I can recall, that was the only time I ever saw mention of the Tonibell name, but I spotted this toy ice cream van being sold on eBay recently, so obviously it was once a well-known company for SPOT-ON to make a die-cast van with the name on it.  I did a little light digging and discovered the following photo of a real Tonibell van on the Internet.  Below that is some info about the company, which I found shortly after.

Click to enlarge

And below is an ad for the aforementioned Miniball, plus a photo of my very own, purchased back in the late '60s.  I took the photo seconds before retrieving the ball from the attic of my former home, 19 years after having inadvertently left it there in 1972.  I've now had it back in my possession for 27 years.

TV TOPS - EVER HEARD OF IT?

Copyright D.C. THOMSON & Co., Ltd

Much as I hate to admit it, there are some things I do not know.  The existence of this comic was one of them until a few moments ago, when I saw it on sale on eBay.  I don't know who the publisher was (though going by the type-set lettering on the strips, D.C. THOMSON is the most likely suspect) and there's not even a mention of it in the late DENIS GIFFORD's COMPLETE CATALOGUE OF BRITISH COMICS (which makes it incomplete), so I can't say how many issues there were or anything else about it.  If you bought this comic back in the day and can reveal any info behind its existence, please enlighten your fellow Criv-ites.  (It's clearly modelled after LOOK-IN, but that's about all I can contribute.)

GREAT NEWS INSIDE, PALS! (YEAH, RIGHT!)...

Images copyright relevant owner

I showed the above cover a few posts back, but cop a gander at the interior page below.  Out of the five titles listed, four of them are combined issues, while TIGER is the only one which remains un-merged.  Nowadays, publishers would love to have even half the sales that these comics had back then, but at the time, the circulation wasn't considered high enough to continue the subsumed weeklies as individual titles.  Makes you think, eh?  

BABE Of The DAY - DON'T ASK ME WHO...

Here's today's 'Babe', fellas.  I can't tell you

her name 'cos I never asked her for it.  Well, do

you blame me?  She never asked for mine.

RUMINATING REPOST: TO SLEEP, PERCHANCE TO DIE...

When you're young, you have absolutely no concept of never having existed.  On an intellectual level (if you ever felt disposed to consider the matter), you know there was a time when you weren't around, but you can't truly conceive what it was like because non-existence is a difficult if not impossible state to imagine.

Think of any period in mankind's history from before you were born; the Old West, the Victorian Era, the 1920s or '30s - whatever.  Even though you never experienced them, you almost feel as if you have, thanks to history books, old photographs, artists' impressions, TV shows, historical fiction, movies, etc.  And because you can't remember your beginning, it seems as if you never actually had one and that you've been around forever.  At least, that's what it seems like to me.

Consequently, when I was a teenager of 14, I subconsciously laboured under the impression that I had always been.  (Though the same perception also applies to any point in my childhood from when I first became aware of my surroundings.)  It's unlikely that I was alone in that regard, and it's surely the same for 14 year-olds today.  It's only because fourteen years to someone of my age passes so quickly that I finally realized just how inconsequential such a period of time actually is.  I've got things lying around the house which have never been out of the wrappers since I bought them that are older than that.

As you inexorably inch closer to that time when the condition of non-existence threatens to once again engulf you, it's a prospect you tend to contemplate more than you did (if at all) in your younger days.  Finally, you begin to be able to nearly catch a glimmer of what extinction might be like, and the prospect isn't a pleasant one.  I recall waking up in hospital one day after a procedure which required my unconsciousness, and was alarmed to find I had no recollection of even a half-sleep-like state between being knocked out and coming to.

As I said, no half-remembered thoughts, vague dreams, or hovering on the edge of awareness to connect me to my pre-anaesthetised self - only an absolute absence of even the slightest sense of continuity between the two conditions.  It was then that I realised what oblivion must be like.  It was as if I'd been dead for however many hours I'd been out, and, although my body was still functioning, as far as my mind was concerned, there was no discernible difference between death and unconsciousness.

So, death is not merely a case of not waking up, it's also not even being aware of going to sleep or being asleep at any stage in the process.  Shakespeare was wrong; there are no dreams in the sleep of death, only a blackness and silence from which we never awaken - an eternal nothingness, an everlasting night.

That's no doubt why I often find myself wishing I was only 14 again.  The illusion of no beginning (and, by extension, no ending), while temporary, is a comforting and necessary notion, otherwise we'd probably abandon our journey before we were very far into it.  After all, what's the point of taking a road to nowhere?

Come to think of it, I wouldn't even mind being half that age.  Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to get back to work on that elixir of life I'm developing.  I just can't afford to relax if I want to be here in 2118.

******

We are but older children, dear,

Who fret to find our bedtime near.

Lewis Carroll.

BUSTER GETS A 'ROCKET' FOR HANDLING FIREWORKS...

Image copyright relevant owner

Here's an evocative firework image for tonight, but be sure not to copy what BUSTER and his pal are doing above (handling fireworks and setting them off in close proximity to others) as someone is likely to get badly hurt if they imitate their hijinks.  This comic was pulled at the last moment because of the cover (a few got through), which shows that the possibility of comics setting a bad example for kids (even inadvertently) is a reality recognised by publishers, not a figment of the imagination of readers like myself.  It always amazes me when people who claim that comics can have a positive effect on readers (and they can) then deny the possibility of the reverse being equally as true.  Logic dictates otherwise.

PENNY FOR THE GUY? SURE - IF THAT GUY'S BUSTER...

Copyright REBELLION

BUSTER had several good artists in his time, but possibly the best remembered (to those of a certain age) is the late ANGEL NADAL, who drew the strip from 1962 to '74.  (REG PARLETT took over when COR!! was merged into the comic.)  This particular page is from an issue dated October 29th 1966, and is relevant because it's all about 'Firework Night'.  (Or 'Bonfire Night' or 'Guy Fawkes Night', or whatever it's called these days.)  This is scanned, panel-by-panel, from the original art, which I own - and very glad am I to have it to be sure.  (And it's not for sale.)

Thanks to PHILIP CRAWLEY for alerting me to where I could find an image of the published page (www.bustercomic.co.uk), but I've now replaced it with a scan from my very own, newly-acquired copy.