Category: comics

Personal Comics Chronology #2: April 25th, 1947 (All-Star Comics Vol. 1 #35)

CW: spoilers to still-ongoing stories in links to plot synopsis, Julie Schwartz mentions in video interview with John Broome, comic book violence, links to information about terribly abusive people in the field of psychology, mention of death in a swimming pool, defense contractors, anti-Native American racism in text story

All-Star Comics Vol. 1 #35
DC Comics
Release Date: April 25th, 1947

Reprinted in:

Best of DC #21
All-Star Comics Archives #8

(From what I can tell at first glance, the first book I reviewed is not being reprinted by the rights holder.)

Weird that I’m just noticing that the two oldest comic books I own are both issue #35 of their respective series.

I got this book at a comic convention in Toronto in 1999, and I’ve been legit terrified to read it all this time, for fear that *gasp* I might damage a Golden Age book, and even worse, damage the only original, pre-1970s revival issue of All-Star Comics (featuring the Justice Society of America, probably my favorite super-hero team) that I own. Younger me was a cowardly, superstitious lot!

This book was written in its entirety by John Broome, who was about a year into his time at DC by this point, but 11 years into his writing career (he sold stories to pulps and such, as well). According to Wikipedia, John’s first credit is a strip called Pals and Pastimes in Funny Pages #7 (Centaur, 11/01/36), which is the 118th American comic book in Mike’s database in order of chronological release, overall (though it’s tied with another Centaur book, Funny Picture Stories #2, as they came out on the same day), though Mike’s Amazing World claims that the strip, credited to a W.J. Broome (whose work is not connected to the main John Broome bibliography, which also only lists his DC work, not his Fawcett work, which is listed on his Wikipedia bibliography), started in issue #5, so I’ll leave the sorting out of that mess to the actual comics historians rather than this very amateur one.

DC Comics, at the time that John’s first story was published, had only released between 25 and 27 comics overall, were not called DC Comics yet (that was a long road), and Marvel Comics and their characters in any form wouldn’t exist for about another 2 1/2 years. John would go on to write comics until 1970, making significant contributions to both the late Golden Age and especially the Silver Age, when he retired from comics to travel with his wife, and eventually taught English in Japan. He lived for nearly three more decades, passing away while swimming in a pool in Thailand in 1999, but he did make one appearance at San Diego Comic-Con in 1998. (Here’s an interview with John, done while he was there. In it, he talks about his friend and co-worker Otto Binder, the author of the Captain Marvel Jr. story from our last edition, as well as his time at both Fawcett and DC, some of the books and characters he worked on, and his life since, though I really wish the interviewer would’ve pulled on that thread more).

Per Degaton (co-created in this issue with John by artist Irwin Hasen) was perhaps John’s first major co-creation, in a career that saw him co-create a LOT of characters. Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps are probably the most famous, but Captain Comet, Detective Chimp, the Phantom Stranger (who we’ll be getting to sooner than later), the Atomic Knight, the near-entirety of Flash’s Rogues Gallery and Green Lantern’s 1960s roster of villains (he wrote most of the first 100 and 75 issues of Barry Allen’s and Hal Jordan’s adventures, and was also writing both Jay Garrick‘s and Alan Scott‘s adventures before DC discontinued most of their super-heroes at the end of the Golden Age), Eobard Thawne, Wally West, the Elongated Man, Carol Ferris, and Guy Gardner are among the characters he had a hand in. Until I’m done with my read-through of my comics from this point until December 4th, 1969 (The Flash Vol. 1 #194 is his second-to-last book, with Green Lantern Vol. 2 #75, which I don’t have, being his last), you’ll be seeing John in these posts somewhat regularly.

Before we get to all of that, though, I should probably (finally) read this book!

The Front Cover:

Cover of All-Star Comics #35, June-July 1947 issue. The Justice Society (The Atom, Dr. Mid-Nite, The Flash, Wonder Woman, Hawkman, Green Lantern and Johnny Thunder, who looks particularly aghast) watch Per Degaton do weird time travel stuff to 1947-era modern technology, including skyscrapers, airplanes, cars, guns and trains, inside an hourglass, against a blue background. Story title is "The Day That Dropped Out of Time!". Art by Irwin Hasen.

Irwin Hasen, who we talked about a bit above, drew the cover (and has a cover signature on it, which is a bit surprising, as I thought we were still in the “no one gets credited except Bob Kane” era), and it’s a good one. It introduces Per Degaton in a way that makes him look like a big deal. He also draws the full-JSA sequences inside the book.

The back cover is an Eveready battery ad, claiming that their flashlight batteries contain energy “equal to the amount needed to smash out 200 Major League homers!”. How did they even figure that out?

Inside front cover is a house ad for The Dodo and The Frog, and goes over National Periodical Publications’ Editorial Advisory Board: Lauretta Bender (wow), Josette Frank, Charles Bowie Millican (who, in addition to working in the Department of English Literature at NYU, also worked with the CIA, which was founded about 5 months after this book was published), W.W.D. Sones and S. Harcourt Peppard (another one with a creepy as hell body of work). Sheldon Mayer is listed as Editor in the publication info.

The Splash Page:

I have my pretty deep objections to the whole “Wonder Woman taking notes (as Secretary to Hawkman’s Chairman) for the big bad men who she could squash like grapes, every damn one of them, even Green Lantern” part of it, even if it’s really Hazel Callahan of her, but with that off my chest, it’s still cool seeing a JSA meeting table splash page in an original All-Star for the first time.

Our Justice Society of America team for this issue:

Hawkman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Green Lantern, Dr. Mid-Nite, Johnny Thunder, The Atom

At the meeting, Wonder Woman brings up a shield she found with an inscription in Macedonian reading “To the Justice Society of America, In everlasting gratitude” with a signature she can’t quite make out, that no one at the meeting remembers the team getting, but she’s on the case already, borrowing a device called a Magic Sphere from Queen Hippolyta (whose name either Broome or the letterer butchered as “Hypolite”) that looks kinda like one of the monitors they used in 1950s space serials, and the device purports to “reveal the past of any object “with proper stimulus!”, so from there, we spend a book-length issue of All-Star Comics watching the Justice Society watch TV, essentially.

As the story begins in earnest, all of the world’s technology becomes old-tymey or disappears completely, and we see great dialogue like “Great snakes, Joe! What in thunder has happened to us?” and “All this confounded equipment has vanished into thin air!”. After experiencing 8 months of 2025, I wanna go to 1947 in a time machine and tell these people to STOP COMPLAINING!

At this moment in the story, the Justice Society gets an urgent message to come to the hospital bedside of Professor Zee, who tells them about a new lab assistant he hired named Per Degaton, who kinda sucks in ways that are familiar to all of us. Power-hungry, erratic, red hair, convinced that his merits, without saying what those merits are, entitle him to advancement in the world…it’s almost as if this comic book about time travel has predicted the events of the present day!

After finding out Professor Zee’s theories on time travel (including the “domino effect“; Broome loved his science, much like Gardner Fox did) and his possession of a time machine (Which, wow, he just hired the guy, maybe a probationary period and a background check before you let the guy near the good shit?), Degaton straight-up shoots the professor, which is how he landed in the hospital.

Professor Zee is just about to tell the JSA what pivotal event in history Degaton’s changed to make the modern tech go away, when, no shit, he gets shot again. Active attempted murder investigation, in a hospital with security, and the dang Justice Society are there, and a creepy hand holding a gun just pokes in the doorway and busts another cap in him! This does not bode well for the effectiveness of, well, anyone!

Apparently, the doctors think that penicillin is the only thing that can save Professor Zee’s life (from a second gunshot; personally, I think they’ll do something else to save him, and the doctor just has the clap), and their supplies of it blinked out because of the time travel thing, so it’s up to the JSA to find some.

The Flash sets off to do that, The Atom sets off to BEAT THE SHIT OUT OF Per Degaton, because this is what an unpowered 5’1″ guy with a chip on his shoulder on a super-hero team does, Hawkman goes to protect the Mayor of Gotham City (good luck with that, buddy) because, and I love him, but Hawkman’s kind of a fuckin’ fascist, and with a team still in place that has Wonder Woman, Green Lantern and Johnny Thunder’s thunderbolt, three beings who can do virtually anything, they send Dr. Mid-Nite (a blind man whose only power is that he can see perfectly in the dark, so he wears special goggles that simulate darkness), by himself, to protect all the scientists of the world from Degaton. I mean, I guess good for them for having faith in their colleague, but wow, y’all. The more things change… The rest stay behind to protect Professor Zee from gunshot #3, because they did such a bang-up job on gunshot #2.

Also, in terms of predicting the future in other ways in a time travel story, congratulations, John Broome: you’ve basically written the plot of Avengers: Endgame.

We cut to The Flash (art by Lee Elias), after a stash of penicillin that’s been hidden in a special time capsule made of metals that’ll protect it from the effects of time travel (Gosh, that’s convenient), and when he arrives, he meets Degaton and his gang of weirdos, who are using the time capsule cave as a hideout (Even more convenient!), and he’s doing OK fighting three or four ordinary men (keep in mind, even the Jay Garrick Flash was, at least as it’s been retconned, in touch with the Speed Force, and able to travel at the speed of sound) until Degaton drops a stalactite on The Flash’s head when he’s not looking. (Remember this part for later.)

Rather than killing him outright while he’s unconscious, they wait until he’s semi-conscious and woozy (while writing this initially, I forgot what CTE was called for a minute), and put him in the time capsule with the goddamned penicillin, expecting him to run out of air and die before he can escape, despite his being able to do super-speed shit (This is why you’ve never advanced past lab assistant, Degaton!), so of course he does super-speed shit (probably one of the earliest examples of a Flash vibrating through solid objects written by Broome) and escapes with the penicillin, but by the time he’s out, Degaton’s flown the coop!

And now, it’s time for a Del Ennis Wheaties ad! There’s a name you don’t hear every day. Good little career, too.

From here, we cut to The Atom’s part of the story (art by Paul Reinman), where Degaton’s riding tanks into the subway tunnels in Gotham City, somethin’ somethin’ THE ELEMENT OF SURPRISE, and then his assistant Kale (who is literally the smartest character in this entire book, smarter than the guy who built the time machine, even), mentions that he rounded up “a hundred mugs” for his job, and they would like to get paid, so he suggests robbing the vault of an insurance company nearby (See? SMART!), as there’s a million dollars in gold inside, and that’d make the boys happy! (Alas, the math isn’t great. Adjusted for inflation, Kale and each of his mugs would get $146,050 in 2025 dollars, which, for world conquerors, ain’t shit. Can’t even buy most houses with that!)  At first, Degaton just punches poor Kale in the face, but then he decides that it’ll make the fellas loyal, so he starts firing tank rounds at the wall of the vault, in the subway tunnel, because those things are really stable, right?

This alerts The Atom to where they are, because the shots crack the ground open underneath his feet (What did I just tell y’all?), and The Atom BEATS THE SHIT OUTTA SOME GUYS when he finds them, grabs Degaton, almost gets the identity of the pivotal historical event out of him (Degaton spills “The Battle of” before he’s interrupted), and then Kale whacks The Atom in the back of the head and knocks him out. (Mugs at Your Six: 2, Justice Society: 0 after 2.)

Kale suggests that they just shoot The Atom at this point (See? SMART!), and instead, Degaton calls Kale’s mind “petty” (What’d I tell you about this fuckin’ guy, too?) and puts The Atom in the accident test room of the insurance company, in a trap that he’ll never escape! (Spoiler Alert: The Atom escapes, and heads to the hospital with “The Battle of…” as his contribution, sadly, without BEATING THE SHIT OUT OF Per Degaton.)

We interrupt this story to tell you that SWIFTY SEAVER WINS FOR BEAVER! WHUT? Oh, it’s a Jim Wise ad for P.F. Canvas sneakers, made by B.F. Goodrich, which I assume is now a Raytheon joint. (Michelin bought the tire business in ’86, and United Technologies bought the rest in 2011, and Raytheon bought United Technologies in 2020. I don’t think Raytheon give a rat’s ass about making sneakers these days, though, too busy making murder tools. Golly, this is a lot of mergers and acquisition info for a 1-page advertising comic about a kid winning a foot race at a summer camp!)

After that thrilling little bit of sponcon, we cut to the tanks riding out of the Gotham City subways, ready to raise hell, and for some reason, technological objects are still changing back to old-tymey shit, so Hawkman (drawn by Joe Kubert) spots a man’s car turning into a horse and buggy, and then the bridge he’s on turning into a rope bridge, so he’s gotta go save that mug before coming after Degaton, and he does. While this is going on, Degaton takes over an antique shop to serve as his new headquarters, the Mayor of Gotham tries to bust a cap in Kale’s ass, but first, his gun turns into an old-tymey gun, and then it just disappears!

Hawkman arrives just in time, starts beating up some mugs, and when he turns to tell the mayor to stay behind him, Kale knocks his ass out! GO KALE!  (Mugs at Your Six: 3, Justice Society: 0, middle 3.) The Gang takes them both to Degaton’s new secret lair, and when Hawkman regains consciousness, he asks, “So you’ve taken over an antique shop, Degaton! What’s the idea?” (Good taste?)

At this point, I miss 4 pages of my copy of the book, because as I remembered from 1999, my copy of All-Star #35 is missing its centerfold. (I got it for a song.) Any of you hoping for my description of a nude drawing of Al Pratt, sorry.

However, I tracked down images of those 4 pages, so I can tell you that the real reason Degaton chose an antique store is because everything in it was too old to be affected by his time travel history changin’ plan. (I swear, nowadays, you probably go into an antique shop and find Pogs and Furbys. I can tell you that I’m old enough to have found a book that I’m in at an antique shop, so I guess anything goes.) It also had some sort of trapped bed, so of course Degaton tries to kill Hawkman and the mayor with it rather than just shooting them both, and that works out about how you’d expect. (They make sweet, sweet love in the bed…nah, Hawkman and the mayor escape the trap, and he flies the mayor to City Hall, where OF COURSE he’ll be safe! Has Hawkman BEEN to Gotham?)

My copy of the comic resumes with Dr. Mid-Nite (drawn by Frank Harry) arriving at the Hall of Science at Gotham University, where all of Gotham’s scientists (Hey, I thought he was supposed to protect more than just Gotham’s! Rip-off!) are trying to make plans by candlelight, because they’re deeply romantic people and also the power’s out. GOTHAM PLUNGED INTO DARKNESS! IN OTHER WORDS, IT’S WEDNESDAY. (Also, maybe not the best idea to gather even all of these guys in one building, y0.)

The scientists decide that they’re going to re-invent all technology, if they have to, from memory! (BOOOOOOOOOO!) Lurking in the building, Kale wants to just waste them all, like the only sensible person in this comic book, but Degaton insists on making a super-villain speech first instead, because Degaton’s a dildo, y’all. He announces himself, brings in Kale’s army of a hundred mugs, and then Dr. Mid-Nite rallies these nerds into battle against the mugs! “Fight, men of science! Fight for liberty — and for the future of the world!”

During the battle, Dr. Mid-Nite gets the jump on Degaton, and is about to break his back Bane-style, but…sing it with me…a mug on his six knocks him the fuck out! (Mugs at Your Six: 4, Justice Society: 0, middle 4.)

From here, Per Degaton tries to force the world’s greatest chemist, physicist and biologist, all of whom he worked for at one point (You’d think these cats would’ve warned Professor Zee via whisper network or something, but you know scientists, they’re so competitive!) to be his assistants (don’t kink-shame, y’all), and orders them to set a trap to kill Dr. Mid-Nite, but doesn’t check their work. (Jesus, this again. No wonder this guy got shitcanned so often from these gigs.) One of them tips off Dr. Mid-Nite as to how to escape the trap, of course, and he rescues the three scientists just as they’re about to get bumped off by a firing squad.

All the heroes, concussions still a-blazin’, regroup at the hospital, where the penicillin has taken effect, and Professor Zee’s conscious and ready to talk! For reasons they don’t get into, apparently this historical turning point that Per Degaton interfered with was the outcome of the Battle of Arbela, also known as the Battle of Gaugamela, so they head back to Degaton’s first lair, where he’s keeping the time machine, and Green Lantern goes in by himself (oh god, I can see where this shit is going) because somethin’ somethin’ the element of surprise.

Green Lantern walks in on Kale asking Degaton why he’s getting ready to destroy the time machine by sending it 10,000 years into the future and blowing it up (always sensible, that Kale) and Degaton says it’s to keep the time machine out of the Justice Society’s hands. At that point, GL makes his move, but Per Degaton had the good sense to build a button that released “a solid bar of invisible air pressure” just as he was about to tackle Degaton (oh, come the fuck on), and Green Lantern hits his head on the wooden (remember, kids, Alan Scott Green Lantern’s weakness is wood, huh-huh, huh-huh) control lever, which also serves the dual plot point of moving the lever from 10,000 years to 10 years! (“You gotta be fuckin’ kidding.”-Palmer)

Green Lantern emerges from the time machine with the 5th concussion of our story, 10 years in the future, and finds the Justice Society waiting for him, 10 years older, because he botched the raid so bad that Degaton took over the world and forced them into hiding! (See? Endgame, basically!) If you’ve ever wanted to see Johnny Thunder with bad five o’clock shadow, READ THIS BOOK.

They all prepare to go back to the time machine to go to the Battle of Arbela to fix things, and, as planned, the time machine BLOWS THE FUCK UP. Point, Degaton!

But, wait! Green Lantern, I shit you not, uses his ring as a time machine, which he could’ve done without even attempting a raid, and could’ve avoided 10 years of misery for the world and especially his friends! COME ON, MAN!

The next page is a half-page of not-terribly-funny one-panel gags at the top, and an ad for a competing battery product (Bright-Star, still in business in the town of Hanover, PA), and then we get a 2 page text story, The Trap by Charles King, which is a weird, kinda racist Native American murder mystery that I couldn’t bring myself to read in detail because, well, that.

They cut back to a scene of Per Degaton, ruler of the world (and Kale), ruling the world from perhaps the most basic, threadbare office I’ve ever seen in my life, never mind a comic book, and while he’s gloating, the telephone in the office re-appears, and a train does the same outside his window! But how?

They cut back to the Battle of Arbela, where the JSA intercept Degaton’s Army of A Hundred Mugs and their modern weapons attempting to change history, kick their asses, make Alexander the Great happy (questionable, that), and he inscribes the shield from the beginning of the comic, explaining the mystery signature.

At that point, the JSA start fading away, because, according to Wonder Woman, “Since we’ve set the past straight, it means that ALL THIS NEVER HAPPENED!”, and they reconvene in front of the Magic Sphere, which translated the message on the shield from Macedonian, and now they can see Alexander’s signature, plain as day.

As for what happened to Per Degaton? He’s back at Professor Zee’s lab, with Professor Zee apparently unharmed (?!) and unaware of what’s taken place, and he thinks that he dreamed being ruler of the world for 10 years. (Spoiler: this part didn’t fully take.)

And that’s the end! Back inside cover is a Thom McAn ad. Also, in the late 1940s, about half of all ads had baseball in them. I miss Thom McAn, but, well, CVS happened. No, really, look at the corporate history at that link. It’s whack.

What’d I think of the book?

I can tell y’all with certainty that John Broome definitely got better as his career advanced. There are still early flourishes of the stuff that made his ’60s work cool in this story, though. It’s also cool to see, as someone who was a kid in the summer of 1981 and was wondering “Who the fuck is Per Degaton?” while reading All-Star Squadron #1, where he came from, and I’m glad that the one issue of pre-1970s All-Star I’ve ever been able to get my paws on retroactively became a key issue, thanks, I guess, to that no-good Roy Thomas. This one was never bought for the point of reading it, though. I just wanted an original All-Star Comics issue, a thing I basically thought of as unattainable, because I rarely saw them, and they were never cheap, and I got one. It just took me half my life to get around to actually reading it.

Truthfully, as someone who adores the JSA, every Golden Age JSA story I’ve read except the first one in All-Star Comics #3 (which is technically all solo stories, but which had a great framing device of them bragging about their adventures at the first JSA meeting) has been pretty dire. We’ll see, as we advance through the ’40s and ’50s books, how quickly the stories improve in the super-hero books, though by the time the DC Silver Age stuff started, from experience, I can tell you that they felt like they were on more solid ground.

Without having read all of All-Star or any of the characters’ solo books back then (someday, maybe I will; here and there, I get scraps of it), I’d guess that most of what makes the Justice Society great really started in the Silver Age when the writers who had the first pass at the characters like John Broome and Gardner Fox came back to them when they were more seasoned, and mixed with kids who loved the JSA, then grew up, got into the comics business and started fleshing these characters out more.

Now, if only they’d gotten around to fleshing out Kale some more. When I get to my re-read of All-Star Squadron, I’ll have to see how Thomas uses Kale (he shows up in one issue), who was absolutely the best part of the story, way cooler than Per Degaton as written here. He was like a Jonathan Banks kinda dude in this. REALLY liked Kale!

On This Date:

Births: actor Jeffrey DeMunn, who I first saw in Resurrection with Ellen Burstyn and Sam Shepard when it first hit cable (I keep meaning to revisit this one), but who is more well-known these days as Dale on the television adaptation of The Walking Dead, was born on this date.

Film:

There were a few interesting and/or notable films released both domestically and abroad in the week or so around the release of All-Star Comics #35:

It Happened on 5th Avenue was out in limited release (I’m assuming major cities) on April 19th. Odd Man Out with James Mason was also out in limited release on April 23rd. If you were in London at the time, Black Narcissus by Powell and Pressburger was out on April 24th. Three pictures came out on April 26th in either limited or wide release: Hard Boiled Mahoney (a Bowery Boys picture), Land of the Lawless (a Johnny Mack Brown western) and, in limited release, The Captive Heart with Michael Redgrave. I’ve seen none of these, but I did see Powell and Pressburger’s The Red Shoes (their next film after Black Narcissus) recently, and that was pretty incredible.

Both Odd Man Out and Black Narcissus are free on YouTube, at least for the time being, so if you watch them before I do, let me know what you think.

Sports: Lou Thesz beats Whipper Billy Watson to win the National Wrestling Association (eventually merged with the National Wrestling Alliance) world heavyweight title at the Kiel Auditorium in St. Louis, Missouri. It was the beginning of Lou’s 2nd of 3 title reigns with this belt. (I tried to find a kinescope of this match for y’all, but to no avail. It’s probably in the bottom of the East River along with the rest of the DuMont archives.)

Music: there weren’t a lot of albums released in 1947, but Music Out of the Moon was an April 1947 release. A cassette of this album was actually listened to during the Apollo 11 mission, and it’s also widely regarded as the most popular Theremin album of all time.

Here, have a listen…

Other Comics:

There were 11 books released on this date, and in a refrain that you already know you’ll be hearing a lot until I get into late 1963’s books, I own none of them. Highlights are Detective Comics #124 (with an allegedly drawn by Bob Kane Joker cover story, plus Air Wave, Slam Bradley, and Curt Swan drawing the Boy Commandos), Feature Comics #111 (with a sadly non-Lou Fine Doll Man story and a 3 page story featuring Rube Goldberg‘s character Lala Palooza), Kid Eternity #6 (without getting into too many specifics, one of the Kid Eternitys is in current DC books), The Kilroys #1 (an ACG book, and the only #1 of the week; this ran for 8 years and 54 issues, and I’m completely unfamiliar), Laugh Comics #22 (with Katy Keene, Betty/Veronica and Debbie Twist stories by Bill Woggon in addition to the Archie cover story), and Shadow Comics #75, which has a railroad tracks bondage cover!

What’s next?

CRIME!

Does it pay?

Tune in to find out!

A Re-Intro Intro Post

It’s been nearly a decade since this site launched, and my intro post both is and isn’t an accurate description of what this site is (and isn’t). This post is a little better and clearer (I have a few adjustments to make to the policies here), but good luck finding it in my archives if I don’t point it out like I just did, so in the interest of letting people, both old and new, where I’m at…

Hi! I’m Scott. I run this website that’s very 20th century in that it’s mostly, but not entirely about my collecting hobbies. That’s a weird place to be in 2025, but it’s my life. What else do you really want to know about me, truthfully?

What I usually do here: I procrastinate about posting.

What I’d like to be doing here: I’d like to post a little bit about all of my hobbies, and while they’re hobbies and it’s not mandatory or anything, I’d like to make them make sense within the context of my life in the present day. I’d also like to occasionally list some of my belongings for sale or trade here, but I’ve got some work to do on that (see below).

My approach to this, I’ve come to understand, is bass-ackwards. I’m writing dry, overly long stuff about relatively esoteric subjects, in an age when people either want short videos or long podcasts. What I’m starting to do again somewhat publicly gives me joy and helps me to make sense of and remember my life, at a time in my life when it’s harder to do both than it used to be. It’s its own form of therapy for me. If you’re along for the ride on that, fantastic. If not, I’m sure I’ll be doing it anyway.

A thing I should also mention again about my collecting hobbies: I’ve been looking to wind them down, and have, for the most part, since my 50th birthday a little over a year ago. Will this impact my ability to run a website that’s largely about collecting hobbies? I doubt it. I may have something of a backlog of things to talk about.

What I’m doing toward my goals here: right now, I’m starting a few different projects, and will be fleshing out some others in the near future, ideally.

First up is Personal Comics Chronology, a project inspired and heavily fueled by the legendary generosity of information sharing that is Mike’s Amazing World of Comics (rest easy, Mike). In it, I’m reading all of my comic books in chronological order, by release date, taking notes about what the books make me think and feel, and also contextualizing them by talking about what happened in the world on the day that they were released. I am in the early stages of this project, but the posts have begun.

Next up is The Player Collection Project. (No fancy category link for it yet.) I’m gonna write more about this than I did the comics project, because there’s already an explainer page for the comics project, and at least one example of what I’m doing is up already (the second installment is about half done). After four and a half decades of primarily being a trading card set collector (which tends to land the cards you collect in a box or binder that rarely, if ever gets looked at, in my world), I am working toward organizing collections for all of the players I like (and being honest with myself about who they are and how many there are), using non-set collection cards I already had aside, and also pulling one duplicate copy of each card of a player I collect from my duplicate card boxes (which are mostly used for trades these days).

I got started on this tangent when I was going through the handful of player collection binders I’ve started to assemble, and realized that they felt incomplete without things like base Topps cards in them. It got started from there, and as these things frequently do, it spiraled into becoming a lot of work. I’m enjoying seeing this start to take shape, but it’s very time consuming and genuinely physically demanding to go through this many cards.

So far, the only evidence of this process that you’ll see, unless you happen to be on a card collector Discord I frequent, is I’ve given Trading Card Player Collections its own section in my not-at-all-mobile-friendly sidebar, consolidated the various types of player collections I have in progress to make them (ideally) less confusing (there are now just two: one for people who play or played baseball, even if they played other sports, and another for the people whose cards I collect who played other sports), and added or re-added a LOT of players to the lists. I’m not quite ready to do any trades for cards of any of these people, as I’m still sorting through my trade boxes, but I will be, eventually.

As for how it will present itself in the future here: I may feature players, show off cards I’m rediscovering, and talk in greater detail about what I love about the cards or the players. Or it could take some other form. Who the hell knows? I’ll figure it out. The Plan is still very much a work in progress.

Another fun to consider goal here is to be able to passively fill card binders with these player collections, for the rest of my life, whenever the mood strikes me. If I never finish, that’s OK. If I do, that’s OK, too. If things continue to trend the way that they have in my lifetime, I probably won’t add a lot of new player collections, even if I continue to follow the sports/other occupations of new people that I could theoretically come to collect cards of, because I ran the numbers, and new additions started trending downward sharply after 1991, with the only upticks being in 1997, 2001, 2007 and 2019. So getting caught up, eventually, is theoretically possible.

The thing that this process has made me hyper-aware of is that my ideal of what the personality of trading cards is supposed to be is framed around 1980 and 1981 Topps cards and especially the 1981 Topps Baseball Stickers set, which makes sense, because these were the years that I discovered baseball, bought my first baseball cards, completed my first set (the 1981 stickers), and saw my first baseball games, including my first in-person baseball game, but it also solidified my somewhat subconscious feelings about liking some specific teams that weren’t my then-favorite Yankees, including the Tigers, Royals, Orioles, but especially the Brewers.

The Brewers are also on my mind lately because of Just a Bit Outside: The Story of the 1982 Milwaukee Brewers (excellent, recommended documentary; it’s streaming for free on The Roku Channel), and because I talk to a few Brewers fans these days who are enjoying their current success (I dunno if I’m ready to fully embrace another baseball team as a fan, though), but back in the early 1980s, they struck a little kid in New Jersey as being really cool motherfuckers. So, I’ve added or re-added a bunch of them to my player collection list.

Other reasons I added players: they have great names, they look awesome in their photos, they have inspiring, hilarious, or occasionally sad stories that resonate with me in some way; they jammed with Rush in their spare time and had a band with David Rosenthal from Rainbow (fun fact: David once gave me, through an employee of his, his old Casio FZ-10M sampler and his sample disks, but to date, I haven’t been able to get it working, and repairs on synths/samplers are expensive; I also broke a toe by running into this sampler once, when I had it on the floor…heavy bastard…); they’re still playing in independent or non-U.S. baseball leagues well past the point where most people considered their careers to be over, presumably for the love of the game; they were in a Larry Cohen movie, acting, not just playing themselves; or, of course, that they were or are just very good at their jobs.

Anyway, that’s cards.

Other Stuff:

I’m likely to reduce the internal restrictions on reviewing movies, music, books and so forth a bit, to where I can talk about the experience of enjoying the physical media that I’ve acquired over the years. Seems only fair.

I may also talk a little more about playing video games competitively, since I’ve been doing a lot of that of late, relative to what I’ve done in the past. Don’t panic, this isn’t going to turn into some Twin Galaxies-obsessed joint, nor am I likely to become someone who streams games on Twitch (not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it’s just not really my world, though I do use Twitch) or anywhere else, and takes the Esports scene seriously. I’ve just been playing Street Fighter V competively (if poorly) lately (it’s teaching me a lot about how to achieve success at a goal through wildly unpredictable behavior, even if they’re still relatively difficult lessons within the context of the game itself), and I’ve been playing MobilityWare online multiplayer solitaire for about 14 years (last time I looked, I was ranked #359 worldwide on iOS Game Center, out of about 668,000 players, with close to a .750 winning percentage after around 22,000 lifetime games). I’m not an excessively competitive person in my old age, but these seem like decent outlets for what’s left of my competitive nature.

I haven’t been doing much with toys of late, in part because there’s a great deal of fascism-generated uncertainty in the toy industry right now. I’ve also got some space restrictions that I’ve run up against, and a lot of things to think about with regards to what to display, what to keep, and what to sell. Not to worry, toy weirdos: I will be posting about toys here and there, but for the time being, at least, it’ll probably be about toys I already have.

Stuff you probably shouldn’t expect to see here for the time being:

Travel stories, unless they’re past tense ones: my household is still isolating whenever possible, in the interest of COVID caution, after about 5 and a half years, so no trips to conventions, sporting events, or even record stores are on the horizon anytime soon.

Second Life stuff: I’m barely there, even now that there’s finally a somewhat-functioning mobile app, unfortunately. I’ve sort of lost touch with and track of the community, and it’s an uphill battle to get motivated to find new fun people there, particularly since the company who runs it (in all of its incarnations) have done their level best for decades to dissuade smart, funny, creative users from being there. I still have account(s), and I also still have Heck, but I’m not there often at all, and there are no events planned in the near future. If you want this to change, please give me a reason to change it.

I think that covers things for the moment.

Any questions?

One of the New Things: Personal Comics Chronology!

A few years ago, while I was in the middle of some grief spending (which is all I’m going to say about that), I had an idea.

I was looking at my comic books, realizing that I hadn’t read some of them in a very long time, realizing I’d read most of the series in fragmented fashion because of the nature of back issue shopping, and also realizing that I was getting a bunch that I hadn’t read, and that I probably should do something about this.

I thought about reading the various runs of comics I had straight through, but in some cases, that hovers around or over 20 straight years of books now. So, the other thing I thought about, spurred on by the Newsstand section of Mike’s Amazing World of Comics (RIP Mike, and thank you), was to read (or re-read) all of my comic books in chronological release order, release date by release date.

Also, so this isn’t a completely fruitless exercise (not that there’s a damn thing wrong with fruitless exercises), and so I can have a clearer idea of what I’ve read (and how I felt about it as I was reading it), I want to take at least brief notes on every one of them.

To help further contextualize them, I want to have a quick look at what was happening on each release date, and talk about notable events, releases in other media, births, deaths and so forth that feel meaningful to me, mostly in entertainment and sports, but if there’s a really major world event on any of the dates, it’ll probably get mentioned briefly. The “On This Date” part is still something I’m fleshing out, and as it gets into the 1980s, especially, I’m going to have to take care not to let it overwhelm the comics, but I think it could be fun if I keep it light, and if no one, especially not me, expects it to be all-encompassing.

There’s also a possibility I’ll offer some personal insights on what was going on in my life at the time these comics were released (or acquired, though the focus is going to stay mainly on release dates), depending on what I remember about it.

The likelihood of me ever finishing this project is…well, it’s going to be difficult. My earliest comic book (Master Comics Vol. 1 #35) was released on December 30th, 1942 (don’t get too excited, it’s missing the back cover, and in general, I only have a small handful of books from the 1940s and 1950s), my earliest completed series is The Atom Vol. 1 (#1 was released on April 24th, 1962, though I do also have the three issues of Showcase that introduce Ray Palmer and Jean Loring to us), and I am still buying new single-issue comics, though I’m looking at possibly winding that down (my current rules of thumb are “no more mini-series”, and “if a writer and/or artist leaves an ongoing series I’m reading, that’s very likely it for the title as a monthly book for me”).

I’ve also got a considerable, but not overwhelming recent-issue backlog to get through before this starts, which I will not be writing up on the first pass, just so I’ve got a clear and coherent starting point, and so, if I make it all the way back around to mid-2025, I can revisit the books I was reading when I started this and think about them fondly then, with a lot more comic books in my head (and on a website, for when I forget about them) than I started out with.

There are still a few things to iron out yet, above and beyond the backlog (which currently consists of Birds of Prey Vol. 5, Fantastic Four Vols. 7-8, Moon Knight Vol. 9-forward and a few mini-series, all of which I’ve read at least some of, but I’m not fresh on what I’ve read; Moon Knight’s gonna be a beast, because I’m about four and a half years behind, but the rest, I should be able to knock off pretty quickly).

First, what to do about trade paperback collections, hardcover collections, and single issue reprints, either in standard comic size or treasury edition size? I’m still figuring out collections (and I need to make a list of what I have), but my current inclination is to read the ones I don’t have single issues of along with that release date’s issues. Most of my trades don’t go all the way back to the beginning, so I’ve got a little time to sort this out, and I reserve the right to change my mind on the process here, but will try to keep it consistent once I do start reading.

With treasury editions, they were so much a part of the 1970s comic-reading experience that, even if it’s a Famous First Edition reprint of All-Star Comics #3 or Whiz Comics #2 or something, I want to read those around the time of their original release date in the 1970s. (I have a few recent “facsimile edition” reprints, just because this stuff’s expensive nowadays, but I’ll be going with original 1970s-early 1980s release date on those.)

Another thing to sort out: what happens if I buy a back issue book when I’ve already covered its release date here? Well…the comics section of my want list is only a few pages long at this point, some of which I’ll never get to buying or trading for (though if you’re a person who wants to trade comic books through the mail or via a contactless visit, we should probably talk), but if, just to give you an example, I get House of Secrets Vol. 1 #123, and I’m past June 19th, 1974 in my read-through, it will be dealt with in a bonus episode, and I’ll throw a link to it in the original piece about that release date. (If anyone has a reasonably priced copy of that, by the way, I’m also all ears. The comics speculators got WEIRD about that one a couple of years ago, and I haven’t managed to find it at a price that I don’t consider extortionate.)

The presentation of all of this may not be especially visual, for what is a largely visual medium. If I’m to get any of it done and not get bogged down in the details, it’s going to need to be quick and dirty, for the most part, but hopefully, I can make the process compelling for y’all, and for me.

Also, if anyone’s wondering about how precarious the data on Mike’s Amazing World is with Mike gone, I’m told that its existence is secure for the foreseeable future, but I’ve also got a head start on making my own internal list of release dates, so if something does go blooey, I’ve got some chance of this project surviving it.

Finally, if I read something and find that it’s either not for me, or just not something I need to continue owning, I may be offering some of the books for sale or trade here. (I really don’t wanna futz around with eBay or any of the marketplaces, especially not Facebook.) I definitely need to pare down everything I own, and that project will be One of the Other New Things on this site (and yes, I realize that I’m burying the lede here, but I wanted to get started on this other thing first), but we’ll likely start with the comics.

So, that’s one of the things I’ve been thinking about doing (with a little about an overarching other thing), and I think I’m going to try and get moving on it. I don’t think it’s anywhere near the world’s most original idea. Lots of people do and have done this sort of thing (I link to Comics Archaeology in the sidebar, for one). All I have to offer to it is me, and hopefully that’s enough for everyone, myself included.

Let me know what you think about all of this in the comments, and I’ll keep y’all posted on a rough start date (including updates on how much of the 2021-2025 backlog is finished).

…and then I disappeared for 4 months.

Sorry about that.

I did not abandon my mission or anything like that, and as you know if you follow me elsewhere, I am still alive and as well as I was before the pandemic started, from what my doctors and I can tell, anyway.

It’s just been something of a weird time to put aside the world’s troubles and think solely of hobbies, even if I am still engaging with mine. I will say that I’m doing so tentatively, for a variety of reasons. I’ve made a handful of card deals (thanks to Madding, Night Owl, AJ, Vossbrink and Gavin, and I hope I got everyone there), but haven’t quite managed to get all the scans done that I want to.

To talk a little bit more of cards, I also picked up something really awesome that I want to feature here, but again, for a variety of reasons, I haven’t had the time or energy to do it justice yet. Until 5 minutes ago, I hadn’t even opened it, even though I got it in late June, and that’s a damned shame, because it’s amazing, it’s something I think a lot of you are going to want to get for yourselves, and I’m glad that writing this post got me off my ass to look through it. I know that not even telling y’all what I got is a big tease, but I wanted to let everyone know I was alive here, before I started scanning and writing at length. It’s gonna be a little while longer on this one, too, because I have a lot of card backs to read, and a lot of card fronts to look at more closely. Stay tuned, and your patience will hopefully be rewarded.

I haven’t just been doing things with cards, though. While I’ve tried to keep the number of transactions I’ve made for frivolous things to a minimum, mostly because I don’t want people to have too much unnecessary contact with one another, here and there, I’ve grabbed some things. A record or two, a few DVDs, a couple video games, some comics, that sort of thing. I’ve not been in a retail store of any “non-essential” kind since March 6th (thankfully, my local comic shop does both curbside pickup and delivery), and my local flea market did the difficult but sensible thing and never opened up this year, but some stuff still found its way to me, and I’ve caught up on some other stuff. I even completed a few comic book series I’ve been working on collecting for a very long time: New Teen Titans Vol. 1 and All-Star Squadron, with the last issue of Son of Satan on its way to me as well, thanks to that eBay coupon (and thanks to Grogg for alerting me to that, as well, because I didn’t get an email notification about it).

A lot of this stuff, I haven’t spent time with yet, though, because again, it can be hard to focus on fun things with a series of looming existential threats around us all. As I’m able to get past all that, in tiny chunks, I’ll be telling you about it.

In the meantime, I hope that you’ve all been well and safe, or recovered fully if that wasn’t the case. I also hope that you’re managing to keep yourself busy with fun things on occasion, too.

A New Feature!

Highest Priority Comic Book Set Want List (Updated 08/25/19)

Yup, finally made one of these. Have a longer, non-card want list that has everything except comics, as well, but I’m looking to get some stuff finished relatively soon here. Will happily trade cards for comics, if anyone’s interested in doing that.

On the subject of trades, though: I’m going to be largely out of commission where any new trades are concerned until the 10th of September, as I’ve got a few short trips in my future, and a trade with Bo to wrap up. Really, I should’ve waited to post this until then, but I have to do things when I have the energy to do them, and when I remember to, or they don’t get done.