Remember, Remember - The FIFTH Of NOVEMBER...

Copyright REBELLION

November the 5th again.  Guy Fawkes or Bonfire Night - whichever appellation you prefer.  I should really think of something new to write, but my energy levels are on the wane at the moment so I'm afraid it's a repost yet again.  However, if you've read it before, you've likely forgotten by now, and if you haven't, then it's new to you anyway so no harm done.

Remember, remember - er, wait just a second, I've forgotten.  No, hang on - I've remembered again.  November 5th, GUY FAWKES' NIGHT - BONFIRE NIGHT - GIVE PENSIONERS AND PETS A HEART ATTACK NIGHT - whatever you want to call it.  For all those participating in the firework festivities, here's a cut-out Guy Fawkes mask from a 1997 issue of BUSTER.  I think this was printed in the insides of the comic just about every year, and may even hark back to my own childhood - it certainly looks familiar.  (Although, back then, it would've been a cardboard free gift - with its own elastic - tucked inside the comic.) 

Anyway, take care if you're having a firework display or attending a local bonfire - fingers and skin are handy things to have, so take appropriate steps to ensure that you or your kids aren't parted from them.  REMEMBER THE FIREWORKS CODE!

(Click on images to enlarge, then click again for optimum size.)

Incidentally, I only discovered sometime within the last year or two that the mask below had also been given away with the 1965 Hallowe'en issue of Buster.  Are there any earlier free gift appearances - and did it ever appear again after 1969 - anyone know?

The comic below was pulled from circulation at the last moment because Buster and his pal playing with fireworks on the cover was belatedly considered a potentially bad influence on kids, who might (subconsciously) follow their example.  I managed to acquire one from an IPC Group Editor at the time of publication so that I wasn't missing an issue.

BABE Of The DAY - DOLLY PARTON...

Dolly Parton rang me the

other day, begging for a date, but I

said it was too cold to leave my house.

Well, bless 'er soul, she kindly sent this

red-hot photo to warm me up.  All I

 can say is - "Hello Dolly!"

SEVEN FACSIMILE COMICS - DID YOU HAVE THEM...?

Copyright relevant and respective owners

It seems like only two or three years back since I heard that several facsimiles of famous IPC/Fleetway and DCT comics were being issued with The Guardian and The Observer newspapers, but I only learned of them after the fact and never managed to obtain any at the time.  Thank goodness for eBay, eh?  I now have all seven of them, which I managed to acquire recently for a very reasonable price (far less per issue than a new comic would cost nowadays).  They were issued in 2009 - a staggering 14 years ago, though it sure doesn't seem anywhere near as long as that to me.  These facsimiles were published when several people I knew who have since died were yet hale and hearty - where did the time go?

Interestingly, the DCT comics have no interior references to the fact they're facsimiles, whereas the IPC/Fleetway ones do.  In 2009 Egmont owned the copyright on titles and strips which were later acquired by Rebellion.

Anyway, thought you might like to see them so no sooner said than done.  If you had any of them at the time, what did you think of them?  Comments welcome.

NOSTALGIA Meets MODERN TECHNOLOGY - Guest Post By Doctor ANDREW MAY...

Copyright non-existent

Crivs, you'll never know what it took for me to resist adding 'Or Then Again, He May Not' to this post's title, but suffice to say I'm exhausted by the mental battle that went on in my head while I wrestled back and forth with my conscience.  This current post surely proves that if you visit this site often enough, you'll eventually find something worth reading  - and have you struck it lucky today!  (That's a statement, not a question.)  Doctor Andrew May has done all the work with this post, so all that's required is for you to read it, and then show your appreciation for his efforts in our comments section.  Take it away, Andrew...

******

There's a great site called Comic Book Plus [ https://comicbookplus.com/ ] that has a huge repository of good-quality scans of old comics that are now in the public domain.  These are comics where no one saw fit to renew their copyright when it expired, so you won't find anything from DC or Marvel there, but there are plenty of gems including (due to a legal cockup) the whole line of black and white Skywald magazines from the 1970s, such as Nightmare and Psycho.  There are also dozens of Charlton comics from the 1960s, including the one pictured above - Unusual Tales #46, cover-dated August 1964.

I'm showing you this one because it leads into the main topic I want to talk about in this post, namely the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the creative arts.  This has become something of a hobby-horse of mine over the last few months, and I'm really grateful to Kid Robson for giving me the chance to air it here.  Anyway, this issue of Unusual Tales includes a 2-page text story (by Joe Gill, probably) that addressed this exact topic almost 50 years before the mainstream media started getting all excited about it.

The story recounts what happens when an inventor comes up with a fiction-writing computer and sells it to a pulp magazine publisher.  His sales pitch emphasizes the economics of the thing: "We save the money we pay to writers.  In addition, it sets up the type and does the printing, editing and binding.  So we don't have to pay any person a salary."  He also demonstrates how the machine can be programmed to write in different genres, such as romance, sci-fi or Western.  But when it's put to work, the computer gets its wires crossed and comes up with nonsense like "Elizabeth took Jose in her arms and bit his nose.  Then she turned upside down and took the first spaceship for Mars.  Heartbroken, Jose took out his gun and began to smoke it."  Far from being a disaster, however, the result is a hit with readers, who like the humorous novelty of it.

This makes two really good points about AI, first as a threat and then as an opportunity.  Mainstream journalists tend to focus on the "threat" aspect - not surprisingly, because they're the ones whose jobs may soon be done more cheaply by computers.  But there are opportunities in AI too, such as the one highlighted in the story, where it breaks new ground by "thinking outside the box".  There are opportunities, too, for those people who may have creative aspirations that - prior to AI - they couldn't do anything about, because they lack the necessary artistic skills.

I'm very much in this latter category, which is why I've taken to AI so positively.  I don't have any difficulty writing prose, because that's basically my job, but I've used Bing's chatbot to create song lyrics, which is something that's way outside my comfort zone.  Here's an example that I liked enough to put on YouTube: The Zen Matrix [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pq3XgvnDNR4 ].

That video also uses AI-generated art, courtesy of Bing's free Image Creator service.  You just type in a short textual prompt and the computer comes back with four matching pictures.  For this particular video, I used a number of prompts like this one: "A young woman in the lotus posture, imagining that she is in a Matrix-like computer simulation, in anime style".  The prompt for the lyrics was "Write a song called Zen Matrix from the point of view of someone who has discovered through meditation that they are living in a simulation, using esoteric and surreal imagery."

I can understand why someone with genuine artistic talent might be worried or angered by this sort of thing, but from my point of view it's fantastic.  Here's another example.  I've always wanted to produce a comic of the kind I used to love in my younger days, and Bing Image Creator gives me the chance to do just that.  You can see the result below.  I was so pleased with it that I wrote an article around it and sent it to Fortean Times magazine, who published it in their July 2023 issue.  So "professionally published comic book creator" is another item I can tick off my bucket list!

Click on images to enlarge, then click again for optimum size

Another type of computer tool that's much better now than it used to be is text-to-speech voice synthesis (partly thanks to the use of AI to parse text on a phrase-by-phrase rather than word-by-word basis). When Kid recently wrote some posts in the style of Stan Lee, I mentioned in a comment that you can turn text into a pretty reasonable facsimile of Stan's voice via the Fake You site [ https://fakeyou.com/ ] (you can use this for free without signing up or logging in, but if you try at any time other than 8 or 9 am UK time, you may end up in a long queue).

Going back to the Comic Book Plus site I mentioned at the start - another advantage of all their comics being in the public domain is that, not only is it legal to download the comics for free, but you can also use, adapt or alter them however you want.  So I had the idea of taking a story out of one of them, putting the dialogue through the Fake You site, and creating a kind of animated cartoon.  Unfortunately, I couldn't get this to work in a convincing way when characters need to be speaking with any kind of emotion in their voice, so I went for a "documentary" style story with a single narrator doing a voice-over instead.

The story I picked was a short feature by Steve Ditko from another Charlton comic, Konga #7 from July 1962.  As some of the Fake You voices are better than others, I just went for the most convincing one I could find, which was Tom Cruise (although I deepened it slightly, to make a better fit with the narrator's appearance as drawn by Ditko).  Anyway, here is the result - my favourite effort so far on the theme of "nostalgia meets modern technology"!

******

C'mon, Crivvies, don't let me down.  Be so good as to take a few moments to leave a comment to show that you appreciate Andrew's time and effort in writing this post especially for readers of this blog.  And I'm sure you'll find something interesting at the links he's provided.

Rueful SCHOOLTIME SCANDALS Repost - The LABRADOR 'SAUSAGE' DOG...

Mr. CURRY was the janitor of the second primary school I attended.  He lived in the end house of the fourth row down from mine, straight across from the school, and his house came with the job.  Imagine my surprise when, a year or two after we'd flitted to a new house and neighbourhood, I noticed that Mr. Curry had become janitor of the primary school just around the corner from us.  His house (that again came with the job) stood in splendid isolation in the school grounds.

Before flitting, I'd been a secondary school pupil for nearly two years, but Mr. Curry was still a regular sight on account of him passing my house to or from the pub on the far side of the shops across the street.  It was therefore a tad strange when, after we'd flitted, he again became a regular sight to me in my perambulations around my new neighbourhood, either when I passed the school on my way to the town centre, or saw him walking home from his local public house.  He liked a drink, did Mr. Curry.  Died quite a few years ago now.

Let's now jump back to when I was yet living in my former neighbourhood and was still a primary school pupil, sometime around 1968, give or take a year either way.  While gazing out of the window of the annexe huts across from the main building one afternoon, I saw Mr. Curry taking a kick at a Golden Labrador dog which appeared to be seeking shelter in the doorway.  His kick may have connected, but I couldn't say with certainty after all this time.  I was shocked to see an adult behave in such a heartless manner towards one of man's best friends, and felt sorry for the poor animal.

The very doorway.  The school was demolished nearly two
years ago.  (Nine years as of 2023.)  Photo taken circa 1984

Later that evening, coming back from a pal's house, I saw that the dog was again sheltering in the school doorway.  Had it been abandoned?  Was it lost?  Or had it tracked down its young master to the school and was now faithfully waiting for him to emerge from the building, not realizing that he'd gone home several hours before?  I told my father about the dog, and, along with my brother, we went down to the school and brought the dog home with us.  It was a friendly animal, and hungrily scoffed the cold link sausages we fed it from the fridge.

My father, who worked for the police, arranged for them to collect the poor dog and house it in their kennels 'til collected by its lawful owners.  He later informed us that the canine had been claimed, but even at the young age I then was, I wondered if he was telling us what had actually happened or what he knew we wanted to hear.  Many years later, I saw inside the station kennels for strays, and they were the dirtiest, smelliest, vilest quarters imaginable.  To think that, if the dog wasn't reunited with its owners, it had spent its last days in such conditions is awful to contemplate.

I never much liked Mr. Curry after that, though, truth to tell, I hadn't much liked him before, but he fell even further in my estimation from then on.  Strange thing is, whenever I see a Golden Labrador now, I can't help but think of that poor beast from so long ago, and still find myself hoping that it was a happy ending all round for the dog and its owners.

Sometimes there are some things we're better not knowing, don't you think?  Just in case.

FRIENDS REUNITED...

"Those were the days, my friend, we thought they'd never end..." is something me and a pal used to sing around the time of Mary Hopkins' hit single of the late '60s.  Or maybe it was just a little later (though not by much) when my pal and myself belted out those lines as we gadded about the streets enjoying ourselves.  (Hey, give us a break, man, we were only about 9 or 10 years old, no older than 11.)  Occasionally, in later years, we'd still warble bits of the song, as it reminded us of when we were kids with forever seemingly ahead of us.

Those days did end though, after my pal joined the Royal Navy in 1977 and seemingly started to hold me in lesser regard than previously.  Whether it was by sometimes not visiting me when he was back home on leave (though he usually did - as far as I know), or not coming to see me when I moved down to Southsea (at his request) for 3 or 4 months at the start of 1981, he appeared to be distancing himself from me as he immersed himself in his new life.   Were there aspects of his marriage that he didn't want me to know about (his wife left him after about two-and-a-half or three years), or was he worried that I'd inadvertently 'blow the gaff' on the lies he told everybody about himself if I met his new friends?

Who knows, but I was always puzzled as to why he bothered to invite me to visit (and even stay) with him in his new location when he evinced absolutely no inclination to have anything to do with me when I took him at his word and accepted.  Perhaps his wife had thought it a good idea and he was only trying to 'keep her sweet', or maybe he thought (and hoped) I'd never accept, but whatever the reason, he treated me like a bad smell for the entire duration of my stay.  That's why, without telling him of my intention, I decided to have nothing more to do with him when I last saw him in a canteen in Haslar Hospital in Gosport towards the end of April 1981.

I last heard his voice in 1987 when it emanated from the speaker of my Panasonic telephone answering machine as he pretended to be a Detective Chief Inspector in the Hampshire Police Force, so even his last words to me were a lie.  He just wasn't the same person I'd known as a kid and teenager - or maybe he was and I'd just never noticed at the time.

Anyway, as regular Crivs will perhaps know, 5 weeks ago today, I discovered he'd died around 10-and-a-half years back, so if there'd ever been a chance of me burying the hatchet (there wasn't - I was too angry and disappointed in him) it was now gone forever.  And yet I find that I still have fond memories of him when we were kids, teens, and young adults, and I have a better opinion of who he seemed to be then, than the absurd fantasist and liar he 'became' after joining the Navy.  Or maybe it's simply that my fond memories are more of my childhood than of him, and he merely 'benefits' from the association?

As I said, I last saw and heard from him in the '80s, which is a hell of a long 'separation' for two people who'd once been such firm friends (or at least I'd always thought so) and faced all sorts of adventures side-by-side as we explored office buildings, schools, hospitals, hotels, pub rooftops, and all sorts of other places (after hours) in which we should certainly never have been.  'Side-by-side'?  Well, that's not quite accurate - he was usually a few feet behind me as I led the way, urging him to follow in my footsteps.

He was especially a few feet behind me on the night we were jumped by a gang.  As I faced up to them he cowered at the back of me, then did a runner as I got belted over the head with a big bit of heavy wood.  I was outnumbered by at least 6 to one, so on that rare (and only) occasion, I thought it best to follow my pal's lead and make myself scarce, following in his wake as he disappeared over the horizon.  At least the huge lump on my head got me some time off work the following day.  (This would've been around early 1975 when I was still 16, in my second job since leaving school.  It was a local Co-op in case you were wondering.)

So in memory of happier times, I dug out an old primary school photo he'd given me back in 1978, copied it, framed it, and placed it next to an old primary school photo of myself (same school) on a nest of tables on the hall landing.  Mine, as you can see, is black and white while his is in colour.  I could've made it b&w to match my pic, but why deny him his moment to outshine me and put me in the shade?  It's not something he ever managed to do while he was alive, so I can afford to be generous.

And there you have it!  Two childhood friends who once seemed inseparable, finally reunited, side-by-side - even if only in framed old photos atop a table in a hall landing.  It's not much perhaps, but it'll have to do, won't it?

(Tiddely pom).

******

Any friends ever let you down, to the extent that you completely disassociated yourself from them?  Tell all in the comments section, Crivvies.  C'mon, it's no fun if no-one joins in!    

KEITH GIFFEN - R.I.P.

Keith Giffen, co-creator of Rocket Racoon, sadly passed away on Monday (9th), aged 70.  Another sad loss to the world of comicbooks, alas.  Condolences to his family, friends, and fans.  

A.A.B. Update... (The Last Word)

In case anyone's interested, I've added yet

another update to my post on the late A.A.B.,

which can be accessed by clicking this link.

BABE Of The DAY - DENISE MILANI...

The delightful Denise Milani

just popped in for a nice cuppa char

and a biccie, Crivvies, so I'll have to take

my leave of you all for a while to give her

my full and undivided attention.  Just as

well I got some choccy digestives in

- she deserves only the best.

LONG AGO And FAR AWAY... (Updated)

Copyright D.C. THOMSON & Co., Ltd

Today (Wednesday as I type, though it'll be Thursday by the time this post is published) I finally got around to finishing something I started over 40 years ago.  Back at the end of 1982, I decided to buy, every week through 1983, each new issue of The Dandy, The Beano, The Topper, and The Beezer so that I'd have a full year's run of all four comics for posterity.  After around four months my family moved to another house and neighbourhood, yet I continued with my weekly quest to obtain each new issue of all four comics.  (Incidentally, at this time The Topper and Beezer were no longer tabloid size, but the same dimensions as The Dandy and Beano.)

Through no fault of my own I missed three issues of The Dandy and one of The Beezer, though I managed to buy every one of The Topper and, I think, The Beano.  I say 'I think' in the case of the latter, because when I made a note of the missing comics at the end of that year, I also included the Christmas Beano for 1983, though I suspect I may've just wanted a spare, due to the fact that I regarded and stored my Christmas issues as a 'separate' collection.

True, this was mainly down to me usually buying only the yuletide numbers anyway (free gift issues aside), and I likely wanted another one to include with the year's run, though why I simply didn't buy two issues at the time, I'm not quite sure - maybe it just didn't occur to me until afterwards.  Anyway, as regular readers know, four years after flitting to that new house, we returned to our old one and all my comics (new and old) accompanied me.  Over the years, however, it always rankled me (when I remembered) that I didn't have a full set of two of the four weeklies, but I always intended to get around to completing them "before too long".

Well, the decades passed, but today I finally ordered the absent issues from eBay and they should arrive within the week with any luck.  (If not, hopefully by the start of next.)  Then I'll venture into the loft and dig out my boxed collection of all four titles and insert the previously missing numbers into their respective spaces.  So it may have taken me 40 years to complete my collection of these four D.C. Thomson weekly comics, but I still feel a sense of accomplishment now that I'm at the end of that particular journey.

It really shouldn't have taken me so long, but it was a case of 'out-of-sight, out-of-mind' - until I'd rediscover my list of absent issues and say to myself "I really should track them down".  Way back then I'd originally intended to order the required back numbers from DCT themselves, but you know how it is; once I put that list down, my determination to obtain them swiftly dissipated until the next time.  There were quite a few 'next times', but I finally got around to it in the end.

Regular readers will be used to me saying, in regard to long-ago events, that it only seems like yesterday, or last week, or a couple of years at most, but cliched though it is, it certainly doesn't seem anywhere near as long as 40 years.  I must confess to having a feeling of satisfaction that I completed those respective collections in the house where they began all that time ago (even though the missing issues came out within my time in that other residence), but I'm probably the only person in existence to see some strange kind of significance in that fact.

Are there missing gaps in any of your collections yet to fill, and just how long have they been 'incomplete'?  Comments welcome.

******

Update: Well, whaddya know - the comics arrived today, Saturday 7th, and thereby took me back 40 years into the past and enabled me to put right a situation (missing issues) that should've been dealt with at the time.  You know what they say though - better late than never.  I only hope I've got at least another 40 years ahead of me, though I'm not taking any bets on it.  (Click on images to enlarge, then click again for optimum size.) 

FREE! GREEN-SKINNED MONSTER T-SHIRT TRANSFER! (A.K.A. The INCREDIBLE HULK!)

Copyright MARVEL COMICS

On Saturday, September 30th, it will be 51 years since The Mighty World Of Marvel #1 went on sale.  I've celebrated the event several times on this blog over the years (usually with a repeat of an earlier post), so on this occasion I'll simply show you the front cover - just to remind you (if you were around back then) of what a good job Big John Buscema made of it.  As far as I know, it was the first, last, and only time he produced an original cover for a UK weekly, so it's worth owning just for that fact (if it is a fact) alone.

Ah, 51 years ago - how is it possible?  It seems nowhere near that long to me, just a few short weeks at the very most.  This post, therefore, has a two-fold purpose - to celebrate and remember MWOM #1 - and also my youth, when it seemed immortality was a reality and no mere elusive illusion.  So join me in raising a glass to a true comics classic - I wish it were still around today.  And if you'd like to record any reminiscences you might have of this great mag, you can share them with your fellow Crivs in the comments section.

(It's okay, Crivs, I spotted and corrected my typo of 31 years [instead of 51] almost immediately, as you'll see if you refresh your browser.  No one has commented on it, so maybe I fixed it before anyone noticed it.)

UNCLE DAVID McCALLUM R.I.P.

Just learned that Man From U.N.C.L.E. actor David McCallum has died at the age of 90.  Another part of my childhood gone, alas.  Condolences to his family, friends, and fans.

******

I should mention that David was a fellow agent of mine.  Don't believe me?  See my badge and I.D. cards (not signed them yet) for proof.

And below is David's badge...

PENGUIN Classics MARVEL Collection - FANTASTIC FOUR... (And SPIDER-MAN)

Copyright MARVEL COMICS and PENGUIN CLASSICS

Here's a nice book I picked up the other day.  (Just as well I could run faster the the security guard.)  I already have every story contained within, but it has interesting bonuses which make it worth adding to my collection.  (Only kidding about the security guard, by the way.)  And besides, I've got the equivalent one about Spider-Man so the Fantastic Four one complements it nicely.  Now you've seen it, run out and buy one.

And I've just remembered that I forgot to show you the Spidey volume which I got a few months back, so here it is for your palpitating peepers.  There are also Captain America, Avengers, Black Panther, and X-Men volumes, though I haven't got them and don't think I'll bother.

ROM SPACEKNIGHT #1 Facsimile Edition...

Copyright MARVEL COMICS and HASBRO

I can't remember whether I ever definitely bought a ROM comic or not.  I have a feeling I may've bought either the last issue or an Annual, but I couldn't swear to it.  If I did, I'll still have it, so maybe I'll find it tucked away in a cupboard one day.  I also have an inkling that I may've read some of his adventures reprinted in b&w in a Marvel UK mag, but can't recall which one. 

One thing I do know is that I never bought the first issue, but now, thanks to Marvel's superb series of Facsimile Editions, I own it now as it popped through my letterbox this morning (Friday).  Haven't read it yet, may not do so for a while, but good to have in my collection nonetheless.  (And it's got the 'Continued After Next Page' lines before the ads.)

So why not run around to your local comicbook store and obtain a copy for yourself?  You'll only regret it if you don't. 

A.A.B. - IN MEMORIAM - TEN YEARS LATER... (Updated Yet Again - See Bottom Of Post)

Me, as Best Man, 15th December 1978.  The marriage was short-lived

On Monday 14th January 2013, I published a post about someone I once knew.  (Click here for details if you're interested.)  Little did I know at the time (only having found out on Sunday just gone) that a Facebook comment on Sunday 13th January 2013 - the day before the post - had expressed sadness at news of his demise sometime the previous week.  Well, what a shocker!  (Thing is, if he's dead, who subsequently amended some of the things on his Facebook page that I alluded to in my 'piece'?  But that's for pondering on another day, perhaps.)

When I recently did a 'Google Search' to again find his FB page, among the selections offered (though only when I used one particular browser out of several available to me) there were some photos and comments that aren't on his site, but apparently in the comments section on someone else's FB page.  (That's how I discovered the comment about his passing, though I was only able to access that link twice - it seems to have now disappeared.)  The photos show a ravaged man who looks far older than the 52 or 53 years he was at the time, likely as a result of him being an alcoholic, something he admitted when he visited our home town sometime in the late '90s or thereabouts (he'd lived 'down south' since late 1977) to a woman he called 'Auntie Margaret'.  

In case you're wondering how I know this, the woman herself told me when I ran into her around 1999 or 2000 and she mentioned that he'd been up for a visit a year or two before.  She'd attended the same church as him, his sister and parents (as in the same denomination, though maybe a different congregation) and was therefore a friend of the family, but he regarded her as an 'aunt-type' figure so that's how he referred to her.  Whether she minded or not (or was actually flattered) is something I'm not privy to, not that it's important.

To be honest, I have mixed feelings about the news of his passing (if information that's ten years old can accurately be described as 'news' - though it was certainly news to me) as I now wouldn't have crossed the road to pee on him if he were on fire (as I said somewhere before).  However, this guy was once one of my best friends (if not my very best friend - when I was young enough to subscribe to such a notion), so for the sake of our childhood friendship I felt a little sad on learning he'd passed away.  (I'd met him on my first day at my second primary school, on Wednesday 10th November 1965.)  Strange, now, to think that while I'd subconsciously assumed he was yet gadding about somewhere, he'd embarked on the 'long sleep' more than ten years ago.

Sadly, he was a compulsive liar and inveterate fantasist who never seemed to realise that the 'tall tales' he told were so completely unlikely that many people who knew him as an adult regarded and dismissed him as a pathetic object of silent ridicule.  Who knows what made him like that - a need for attention, perhaps?  So the person whose death I'm sad about is the 6 (going on 7) to 21/22 year-old I once knew and liked, not the person he later became (or perhaps always was, but I just never noticed at the time).  Undoubtedly, a large part of my small sadness is related to the reminder of my own mortality that his passing begets, but it's also to do with a life he wasted and a potential he never fulfilled.

In previous posts I've referred to him as Billy Liar, which is probably more apt than Walter Mitty as there was an element of pathos to Billy Liar's predicament, whereas Walter Mitty's was more humorous, being played for laughs more than anything else.  I also called him 'Adam Cowie' on my blog, but his real name was Alan Bowie, which, long after I jettisoned him he amended to Alan Bowie-McDonald - though don't ask me why.  When we were teenagers he lamented the fact that he didn't have a 'middle' name, so I suggested Adam and he became for a good long while Alan Adam Bowie.  (Or A.A.B. when he was writing it on lampposts and walls with a broad-tipped ink marker pen.)

Anyway, unless reports of his death are 'greatly exaggerated' (and if they are, he'll probably be behind it) that's him gone from this softly-spinning green and blue globe which hangs upon nothing, and I'll never see him again this side of doomsday.  Except in memories and old photographs of course, when I still held his friendship in some regard before his slow-but-seemingly-certain slide into decadency and despair.

So here's to the memory of Alan Bowie - though not the Alan he became, but rather the Alan I believed him to be before the scales finally fell from my eyes and I saw him for what he was.  However, the end of our friendship was as a result of his unacceptable attitude and bewildering behaviour, not that of mine.  

Ah, all is vanity and vexation of spirit.

The 10 year-old Facebook comment about his death, which I only saw this Sunday (17th)

(Update:) On his Facebook profile are numerous lies that bear little or no resemblance to reality, but one is so easily checkable that I'm surprisingly surprised (after all, none of his lies should ever have surprised me) at the audacity of it.  He claimed to have a rare form of Motor Neurone Disease called ATOL, but it's so 'rare' that it doesn't exist.  I checked with the Motor Neurone Disease Association (MNDA) and they've never heard of it, even asking me what the initials stood for.

Now, I very much doubt that he actually had MND, but if he did, you'd have thought that was bad enough without having to invent a 'rare form' of it, wouldn't you?  Or perhaps he just had to be different from your 'average' MND sufferer.  All I can say is that I'm extremely glad I don't suffer from his overwhelming compulsion to tell great big obvious stonking whoppers.  Now, you'll have to excuse me - I've got to take my new spaceship out on a trial trip to Alpha Centauri, but don't worry; thanks to its nuclear-powered warp-drive I should be back before teatime.

What do you mean you don't believe me?  Cheek!

A.A.B. in the back garden of his bedsit in St. Andrews Road, Southsea, December 1978 

Stop The Bus Dept: I've just found a recent email from the MNDA in my Junk file, which made me wonder for a moment whether I might've been doing my former friend an injustice in regard to his 'ATOL'.  Here's a 'cut and paste' of part of its contents...

There is a form of MND called Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS):  This is the most common form of MND, with weakness and wasting in the limbs, muscle stiffness and cramps.  Someone may notice they are tripping when walking or dropping things.  Life expectancy is usually two to five years from the onset of symptoms.

I don’t know if this is perhaps what your friend had, but it may be that he was using an incorrect acronym.  There are many variations of MND but I am not familiar with ATOL.

However, according to my ex-pal ATOL is a rare form of MND, whereas ALS is the most common so simply getting the acronym wrong wouldn't really account for the discrepancy.  I'm therefore disinclined to be charitable and give him the benefit of any doubt - especially as there's no doubt all his other lies were definitely just that.

(Yet another update:) I 'phoned a couple of funeral directors near to where he'd lived and one was able to confirm his death as they'd arranged proceedings.  He died on January 10th 2013 and was cremated on February 1st (16 days short of what would've been his 54th birthday).  Strange to think that he left our home town in 1977 and that for most of his life he'd lived elsewhere.  I wonder whether he ever missed the place where his parents had brought him up?  Also, he left this world under another name, not his birth name, which, to me, seems incredibly sad.  Was that his wish or was it something he hadn't even considered?  I'll never know, but he'll always be Alan Bowie to me, not Bowie-McDonald.  I never knew that man.

P.S. I've just been messaged by one of his FB friends who informed me that he died of cancer.  Surprisingly, he made no mention of that particular illness on his FB page.  I hope his demise wasn't too painful and that he met it peacefully.  Marge, the woman with whom he lived (not his wife), predeceased him, but I don't think it was by long.  Perhaps, along with his illness, he just lost the will to live after she died?  A sad end indeed.

Again, outside Portsmouth Register Office, 15th December 1978.  In case
you're wondering why I'm the only one looking at the camera, there were
two (one in front, one on the left), both taking photos at the same time

(And another one:) The Cornish Gazette kindly provided me with a copy of his funeral service notice and I was surprised to see only the name of McDonald used, not Bowie-McDonald.  The latter double-barrelled name was the one I supplied to the funeral directors when making enquiries, and the dates of his death and cremation - as well as his age and where he'd lived - are a match, so there seems no reason to doubt it's the same person.  His second wife left him (just like his first) and he and his daughter were estranged (her decision) so the 'much loved husband and father' is likely only following the usual 'etiquette' employed in such situations.  After all, no-one who dies is ever a "wrong 'un", are they?  Still, it's a sad situation, all things considered.  (Though I suppose it's always possible there was a reconciliation of sorts if they learned he was dying.)

I've printed out his death notice and affixed it inside a notebook he gifted me back in December of 1980, which is quite appropriate and also somewhat ironic I suppose, in that the details of his funeral service are now recorded in the pages of the book he gave me over 40 years earlier when he was very much alive.  And here endeth his story - a whole 10 years and 8 months after he died.

Update, 10-1-'24: I've now also added an 'In Memoriam' notice which appeared in my local weekly newspaper today.  For the story of that, see here.

Alan around the age of 7 or 8, I'd guess.  He gave me this
photo when I was down in Southsea/Portsmouth in 1978

PHOTO-FINISH...

I have several photos of me as a child, most of which I recall being taken.  I often wonder, though, whether I would remember them were it not for the fact that I saw the prints not long after they'd been developed.  If you see a photograph within a couple of weeks or so after it was snapped, it's really no great feat of memory to remember the occasion it was captured on camera as the print is a reminder of the event.  However, if I were to see a photo for the first time 20 or 30 years after it was taken, I'm uncertain as to whether I'd remember my presence or participation when it happened.  What I'm suggesting is that memories of some things often need reminding of at an early stage, otherwise they 'shrivel and die' on the vine without ever 'flowering', never having been 'watered'.  (Figuratively speaking, that is.)

That may mean, of course, that every subsequent time after the first that we look at a photo and remember it being taken, we're not actually recalling the event itself, but rather the memory of having been reminded of it the first time we saw the photo, then the second, then the third, etc.  In other words, the 50th time you look at a photograph and remember, you're remembering the 49th recollection of the event (which was a memory of the 48th), not the actual event itself.  A 50th-generation memory, so to speak.  Has the memory deteriorated in the same way that a 50th-generation copy of a video would, or am I pushing the analogy too far?  

Any thought, Crivvies, or am I talking my usual load of old pants?

Hang on, I've just remembered an exception.  In my post Field Of Dreams, I show a couple of photos which I remember being taken even though I didn't see the prints until at least 40 years later.  Why those two and not others?  Haven't a clue.   

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

The lovely Valerie gazes adoringly at

me across the room as I snap this photo of

her.  It's amazing just how irresistible a man

becomes in a pair of Yogi Bear pyjamas.

(I think my luck's in tonight, Crivs.)

ONE BIG 'NOW' - OR MANY DIFFERENT 'THENS'...? (Updated)

When I look back on my childhood, there are some aspects of it which seem to have made a disproportionate impression on my memory banks in relation to their actual duration.  For example, when I think of comics like Wham!, or Fantastic - or any of the Power Comics in fact - it feels like they were on sale for years and years, whereas the reality is that Wham! lasted for only around 3-and-a-half years and I bought it for probably less than half its lifespan before it was merged with Pow!

Fantastic lasted for 89 issues - a mere year-and-9-months - yet, again, to my mind, it was part of my life for 3 or 4 times that.  Thunder?  Jet?  Each only survived for 22 issues, but in the misty mazes of my memory, seem to have extended way beyond their far-too short lifespan.  Another example from my own experience is the first issue of the revamped Smash!  I sold my copy to a classmate after only 4 days, but the images of its contents were so seared into my consciousness that when I obtained a replacement 15-and-half years later, I remembered every page as though I'd last laid eyes on them only a day or two before.

And it's the same with toys.  There will be many a toy that I probably owned for weeks or months (perhaps even days or hours in some cases) that I still recall with startling clarity as though they accompanied me through life from childhood to adulthood.  And isn't it strange how we seem to retroactively remember each toy as though we owned them all at the same time for the same duration, when in fact, some will have been dispensed with before others ever came into our possession?

Strangely, that illusion still holds sway even when we know that one particular toy was bought in 1965 and another in 1969 after the '65 toy had been swapped, given away, or thrown out.  The two (and others) survive in memory as contemporaries, even though they weren't.  It's even the same with people.  I had friends and acquaintances who never made it into their 20s (or who just got their foot over the threshold) who still seem relevant and current to me as if they yet lived and hadn't bowed out of life's race (not that it was their choice) two-thirds of my life away.

Sometimes, when I look back on yesteryear, my life seem to have consisted of one single large tapestry 'woven' together from various experiences; at other times, lots of separate, individual, unconnected 'pieces', each one occupying its own private space in my mind.  Though when it comes down to it, is it all ultimately the same thing?  If that makes any kind of sense to you (and that'll depend on whether I've managed to convey my thoughts with even a hint of clarity or coherence), feel free to add your own musings in the comments section.

******

Update: As is typical of me, I knew where I intended to go when I started writing this post, but soon forgot in which direction I was headed not too long into it.  (The ol' 'brain fog', alas - I just can't seem to maintain my mental focus for long these days.)  One thing I meant to say was that it seems strange to me that moments in my youth which were relatively short periods of time in the scheme of things, whether they be days, weeks, months, or a couple or so years, feel like they lasted for a far longer span than succeeding decades.  For example, the last 35 years or so don't seem anywhere near as long or as memorable as much shorter 'episodes' which preceded them.  Go figure, as the saying goes.

The MIGHTY THOR And 'The WHITEY WHO'...?

Picked up these two little 3-and-a-half inch (approximately) figures in a charity shop yesterday for 50p each.  The one on the left is Thor (obviously), but I don't know who the one on the right is supposed to be or whether he's even a Marvel character.  An out-of-proportion Frost Giant perhaps?  If anyone knows anything about them (name of manufacturer or whether they're home-made, etc.), feel free to enlighten me.

Heavenly Hauntings By The GHOST Of STAN LEE - Part Six: The UNCANNY X-MEN...

Copyright MARVEL COMICS

Hi, true believers, Smilin' Stan Lee here again, inhabiting the form of a Mego 8 inch action figure through which I communicate with you earthbound fans from my comfy cloud in the Heavenly Hills.  Thus far, we've looked at Thor, Iron Man, Spider-Man, Doctor Strange, and the good ol' Fantastic Four, so let's now turn our attention to The Uncanny X-Men.

Sometimes I just can't win.  Back in the '60s I gave writer Arnold Drake a crack at writing the X-Men, only to later learn that he thought I'd ripped-off his Doom Patrol series for DC Comics.  Both mags featured a wheelchair-bound leader of strangely-powered misfits, and each team had a group of baddies they fought on a regular basis.  In Doom Patrol's case it was The Brotherhood of Evil, and in the X-Men's case it was The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.  Doom Patrol debuted around 3 months before X-Men, but it usually took around 6 months to put a new comic together, so the timeline doesn't really allow for Arnold's claim.  He tried to get around that fact by claiming I must somehow have learned of his idea before it appeared in print - perhaps in a tip-off from someone at DC.

Then there are those who claim it was Jolly Jack Kirby who dreamed up the X-Men and all I did was dialogue his pages based on his margin notes - yet Jack is never accused of ripping-off the Doom Patrol, only me.  So if I had nothing to do with creating the X-Men, how can I have ripped-off the Doom Patrol?  And if Jack came up with Marvel's merry mutants, why does he get a pass on having plagiarised DC's team?  See what I mean?  I lose out either way - it's no wonder I suspect there are some people who just plain don't like me.  Anyway, contrary to those calumnious claims, I, along with Jack, created the X-Men, and the Doom Patrol had nothing to do with their birth.  It was simply one of those curious coincidences that occur from time to time in the world of comics.

I was the first scripter of the X-Men, followed by Roy Thomas, Arnold Drake, and almost countless others since then.  I gotta say I'm proud of Roy, who took on the mag without missing a beat and continued in a style almost indistinguishable from my own.  If it hadn't been for the credits, I'd probably never have been aware that I wasn't still writing the strip.  (I've got a terrible memory y'know - can't recall whether I've mentioned it before.)  Good on ya, Roy.  Incidentally, Arnold's up here too and I've forgiven him for his rash claims, so panic ye not, Merry Marvel Maniacs - harmony reigns in these here Heavenly Hills.

Excelsior!  And may your amulet never tickle!

Incidentally, if you're interested in reading an informed take on the old 'who did what' debate, Amiable Al McKenzie has published a well-researched post over on his blog, which can be found by clicking this link.

My very own ish of DP's debut.  Copyright DC COMICS