Category: dc 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!

2019 Hobby Goals

Yup, we’re gonna do this!

I haven’t written one of these in a few years, and back then, it was on another site, and just about cards. Kinda limiting, but also a lot easier. I’ll manage this, though, and hopefully I won’t put anyone to sleep while I do it, as I do have a lot of ground to cover.

Overall Goals:

  1. Have fun!
  2. Figure out which stuff I really love and enjoy, so I can stick with that, and find good homes for the other stuff.
  3. I was going to move some of the Blogspot stuff here at one point. I need to see if that still makes sense to do.
  4. Keep working on getting my house in a place where it’s set up well to store and display my stuff for years to come.
  5. Ascertain which things I really wish to pursue, and write about, as hobbies.

Now, with this last item, the site has a mission statement in the top right, and here’s how it looked when I started writing this…

“This site is the ongoing story of a man and his hobbies, which he apparently needs more of (or at least different ones), despite already collecting toys, comic books, trading cards, books, video games, t-shirts, music, musical instruments and movies, as well as playing tabletop games, traveling, following some sports and keeping entirely too busy on the Internet, mostly doing nothing there.”

First, the collecting hobbies:

Toys? (Really action figures, for the most part.) Yup. More on this in a bit!

Comic books? Definitely. We’ll go into more detail soon.

Trading cards? Yes, but I think the collection needs to evolve a little. More on that in a bit.

Books? I love books, I love actually reading books, and I need to do a lot more of that, but I have a huge backlog of books right now, not a ton of space to keep adding them, and, again, the more books you own, the less likely it is that you’re going to read them all. A 2019 goal is to finish some books, figure out which ones I haven’t read yet, figure out which ones I don’t need to read, and adjust the collection accordingly.

Video games? I played them for a couple hours tonight, in fact. I am trying to figure out what I wish to actively pursue getting, though, and I’m also going to try to figure out which things I really need to own here, too. (I had a moment in a game store about a month ago where I was looking through my game want list, and wondering why I was still planning on spending money or other resources on certain things, and I’m going to listen to it.) I’m pretty sure I’m close to being sold out of the on-the-fence and don’t-need-it stuff, but it doesn’t hurt to check regularly. I’d like to try to avoid selling off anything else I may regret selling (Panzer Dragoon Saga, anyone?), but that’s a general thing with the various collections.

T-Shirts? I wear t-shirts. I don’t know that I collect them, or really want to, but I have been trying to figure out some practical way to have proof that I’ve owned some of the cool things I’ve worn over the years, without it taking up space that serves no purpose. I haven’t settled on an ideal method yet. T-shirt quilts have been suggested to me, but that’s stuff that takes up even more space than the shirts, and we’ve got a decent amount of blankets in the house, so we’re probably not going there. I’m looking for suggestions on the best ways to clearly photograph old t-shirts and display the pictures (digitally or hard copy), I suppose.

Music? Yup. I’ve stepped up my efforts to get more CDs of artists whose entire catalog I want to own (I’m almost done with Siouxsie and the Banshees, but could really use a copy of “Downside Up”, if anyone’s got it laying around), while CDs are still somewhat widely available. I’m also still buying vinyl, but not in the frenzy that other people are. If something moves me, I’ll grab it. I got a handful of records on my holiday trip to NJ (EZO’s self-titled first record, Alphaville’s “Forever Young”, The Mighty Lemon Drops’ “World Without End”, The Tourists’ “Reality Effect”, and a sealed copy of the self-titled EP by Miracle Room, who are amazing, if you’ve never heard ’em), but way more CDs. Storage (I really hate jewel cases, but don’t wish to go full Case Logic, because it makes them easier to steal and harder to sell; also, I have a little, but not a lot more space for vinyl) is a concern, as it always is.

Musical instruments? Nothing new for a while unless an amazing deal comes up. I finally have a room just about set up to where I can play and record music again, and I even played a musical instrument for fun recently (this is kind of a big deal, because I have music-related anxiety that’s kept me away from making music for over a decade), but I have a lot here, and am not sure how much use I’ll get out of any of it. I could probably use a rack mount case for some of my synth modules and the like, but that’s also money toward storage and display for stuff I might not use. The same mild skepticism applies to any plans of having my instruments and other pro audio gear repaired and reconditioned, because repairs on synthesizers and the like are expensive and above my level of expertise, and so much of this stuff, I could be doing more efficiently on a computer, if I’m going to do it at all, but at the same time, these are museum pieces that hold value (sentimental and financial). So, lots to figure out here. People who do this stuff, talk to me!

Movies? We’re basically between formats right now. We don’t have a 4K TV in the house or a 4K disc player, but as Blu-Rays are already a generation behind, and DVDs are 2 generations behind, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to keep buying. I’m not ready to start unloading anything I have, but I’ve thrown the brakes on buying anything that isn’t essential.

So, that’s all the collecting stuff. Now, the “doing” stuff.

Playing tabletop games? Have a game I’m attending on Sunday, in fact! I have also been amassing a lot of old RPG stuff (1st edition D&D, Marvel, DC Heroes, etc. kinda stuff), because it shows up here all the time (a lot of colleges and a lot of fellow nerds in the area), so I do have to figure out what I can use, of what’s here. I may have some of this stuff available for sale or trade soon. I would LOVE to start up a TSR Marvel Super-Heroes campaign, locally or online, but I’d need to brush up, find interested people, and make time.

Traveling? I really like traveling, but long-distance traveling is also really hard (it can be tough for people without disabilities, and we’re two people with them) and costs a lot of money. Plans need to be made with my better half to figure out where we’re going next, individually or collectively.  Short-distance travel is plenty of fun, too, and, yes, the flea market stuff falls under this header.

Following some sports? Everyone in every part of this business makes it really hard to keep wanting to, but I’m still here. Baseball’s still my number one, despite some “about as gross as football” practices. Hockey’s my #2 sport, but I rarely watch it on television. I have the Islanders in my Twitter feed, and I see them that way. They’re better than expected this year, but I still feel like conditioning’s a problem there. The sport in general, like most professional sports, has a concussion problem that needs to be addressed. I’ve also spent about the past 2 years watching more professional wrestling than I had in the previous 15 or so, and that’s something I’m very conflicted about, because again, concussions, and again, a lot of terrible people make money off of people paying attention to professional wrestling, but at its best, professional wrestling can be incredible, and it can be pretty hard to give things up that are under your skin. I do it and have done it (I stopped being a present-day Yankee fan as soon as they moved into the mall, and I gave football the bird a good while ago), but it takes more effort and sometimes more disgust with the behavior of human beings than it should. I also do have a non-spectator sport that I’ve been out of for a while, but hope to get back to in the spring: running. I love running, but had some injuries a few years back, and life happened after I was healed. If I do start running again in the spring, you may hear some about it here.

Keeping entirely too busy on the Internet, mostly doing nothing (t)here? I’ve found myself wanting to do less of this, certainly less in front of the general public than I used to, and definitely less in venues run by Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey and Google, but I’m still here. Trying to figure out the best way to go about having a private message board or social network for my friends that will actually get used by people. That’s a slog, largely because, for people to use anything in 2019, it needs a mobile app. The web browser is an antique at this point. I rarely end up talking about the Internet itself on this site, though, so let’s not mention that as a point of focus for it anymore, or at least not now.

Wow, them’s a lotta words about a short mission statement. Much shorter version: for the time being, I’m not advertising my site as covering t-shirts, books, musical instruments or movies as collecting hobbies, as I rarely talk about them and am back-burnering all of those hobbies, I think. Also changing “toys” to “action figures”. Now, obviously, because I’m a human being with a soul, I’m still going to be buying, collecting and hopefully reading books that are not comics, and if I’m finding that I should talk about them on here, I will again, but yeah, I need to actually read some, and finish some (I have like a half dozen books in progress right now, dating back over a few years).

That brings us to:

Collecting hobbies:

Trading Cards
Comics
Action Figures

Sort-of-in-the-middle hobbies:

Tabletop games (RPGs, and some board games; we got Letters From Whitechapel as a wedding gift, and I’m dyin’ to play our copy of it, as I loved playing it the first time I did)
Video Games
Music (it’s not exactly passive enjoyment)

Doing stuff hobbies:

Travel (long and short distance, with focuses on finding, documenting and sometimes buying old things, seeing museums and landmarks, eating in cool places, and seeing live entertainment)
Sports (baseball, hockey, professional wrestling, running)

There! I’ve covered what the site focuses on! What a long side trip!

Now, for what I’d like to accomplish in these arenas this year:

Trading Cards:

Here are the rough notes I put together for this piece on cards:

1. Come up with plan for current-year Topps cards
2. Decide which side sets you’re gonna keep getting
3. Try, whenever possible, to only trade for current year stuff
4. Get that fucking Bernie Williams auto already
5. Knock out the Fleer/Donruss/Score/UD sets ASAP
6. Finish Garbage Pail Kids 1-3 ASAP
7. Finish Ringside (1…more…card…)
8. Keep plugging on Dodgers
9. Keep plugging on Fleer Ted Williams
10. Start finding fun non-sport sets to pick up
11. Sell off doubles and digital stuff (decide what stays on the latter)

The last few years (basically since the seeds were planted for me to move to my home of coming up on 4 years now), I have had significantly less interest in current-year baseball cards. Really, I think it’s that I’ve had significantly less interest in paying for current-year baseball cards. They’ve never been a great value, but they’re kinda the worst lately. When new Topps blasters hit the shelves in my local big box stores, I check the card count on them, and I’m kind of stunned that it’s orders of magnitude higher than common prices per-card, all for the promise of getting something that I might not even want to keep. On the other hand, blowing them off leads to situations like the one I have right now, where I’m missing a bunch of now-expensive rookie cards, including Mookie Betts’ rookie card, from the past 4 years’ Topps cards, and I kinda want to keep being a sucker and having complete flagship sets. Kinda.

I’m definitely not interested in opening packs of everything that comes out anymore, and I’m trying to break myself of the desire to collect sets based on graphic design (which was, of course, expensive and filled my house with a number of things I wouldn’t own otherwise). I think I’d rather just look at checklists for each set, list each player whose card I’m interested in on this site and my want list, and see if I can trade for ’em, or something like that…buy singles if I can find ’em…that kinda jazz. Will I still with this? Dunno.

I’m not doing much of anything with digital cards lately, but I have no idea if there’s any practical way to unload the ones I don’t want, and I haven’t nailed down which cards I’d like to “keep” in the apps yet. Seems like the bottom fell out of the value of things on the Topps apps when they introduced secondary, cash-only currency, to the surprise of basically no one on Earth. If any of you are still doing Topps Digital stuff, by all means get ahold of me, and we’ll talk.

There’s stuff I have been, and continue to be excited about in cards. My interest in picking up playing era Brooklyn Dodgers cards has been re-invigorated lately…

I bet you thought I was never gonna put a picture in this post, didn’t you? This is a ’53 Bowman Color Billy Loes that I picked up on COMC.

And here’s a ’51 Topps Red Back Gene Hermanski that’s on its way to me, also from COMC (if the watermark didn’t give it away).

In the same shipment, I’ve got another ’59 Fleer Ted Williams coming…

Remember these? I mentioned them here. I’m still working on ’em (I’ve gotten 3 in 4 years, by golly), and I’ve got Yount on the way. There are a few expensive ones (Babe Ruth is in the set), but I’ve got a bunch of the cheap ones yet to grab, as I’m at 7 out of 36 right now.

…and yes, I’m even working on my ’72 set still! 5 down recently, thanks to my old local.

So, yeah, there’s been more focus on old stuff when I’m shopping (when I’m actually really shopping, and not just looking for the biggest lot of things I can actually use for the lowest price at flea markets), which tends to happen to people. I’ve no problem with that.

I’ve also been more excited about non-sports stuff these days than I have in, like, ever, but I’m still trying to work out what I wish to fill my house with. I have a very short list of Garbage Pail Kids series 1-3 cards that I need:

1985 Topps Garbage Pail Kids Series 1a (matte preferred, last update 04/02/18): 5 (regular back), 9, 33, 41

1985 Topps Garbage Pail Kids Series 1b (matte preferred, last update 04/02/18): 2, 8 (checklist back), 29 (checklist back), 41

1985 Topps Garbage Pail Kids Series 2a (last update 04/02/18): 49a, 58a, 63a, 75a

1986 Topps Garbage Pail Kids Series 3b (last update 04/02/18): 96b 99b 104b 106b 107b 108b 112b 116b 120b 122b 123b

…so, I guess we can start there. As for other stuff? I like super-hero cards (though they got totally out of hand after a while), and if you’ve got a bunch of 1991 Impel DC Cosmic Cards, I’m the guy to send them to, as I’m working on finishing that set off. I just finished Series 1 of ProSet Super Star Musicards (and you’ll be seeing a bunch of those here soon), so I need to track down Series 2, and possibly the UK set, as featured by Night Owl here. I have Topps Howard The Duck, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Return of the Jedi sets in progress. Beyond that? I haven’t figured it out yet.

Yes, I want to finish ’81-’98 Donruss, Fleer and Score flagship sets soon. I’m not that far on most of it. I’m not sure beyond that (Fleer and Donruss kept going, sorta), and I’ll keep the wants on my list, but I feel like those were the important years for those companies. I also want to finish Upper Deck flagship from ’94-’10, but in the immortal words of Louis Gossett, Jr., “My grandmomma wants to fly jets!”. I don’t wanna create a feeding frenzy or nothin’ here, as that would make my job harder, but past ’95, y’all have some idea of how hard it is to finish building an Upper Deck set, right? Like, not even the ridiculously huge ones from ’06-’09, I’m talking the smaller ones. If you weren’t there, buying them at the time, you’re gonna have some difficulty, as I’ve been.

And yes, I really need to get off my ass and get that fuckin’ Bernie autograph. They’re available. They’re not hugely expensive. He’s still my favorite player. I need one.

Earlier this year, I did a cool thing to my  card want list, too. I started including dates on each set I’m building, and updating those individual dates when I get something new. It’s gonna take a while for this to really bear fruit, but eventually, I’ll be able to tell if there’s stuff on my want list that I’m just *really* wasting document space on, and taking the focus off of other things with, stuff that’s not urgent for me to buy or trade for, just plain unavailable. It started on April 2nd (right around the beginning of baseball season, somewhat appropriately), so at the moment, I can tell you that there are 159 matches, or “card sets I haven’t done anything with since I started the process”. That’s still a lot, but down the line, it’ll shrink, and I’ll be able to search for “/18”, “/19”, and so forth to see which stuff’s getting neglected or not showing up, and make decisions that’ll help me focus the collection better. I should maybe do this to the non-card want list eventually, too, but it’s formatted a little differently, and the other collections work a little differently than cards, so we’ll see.

Moving on…

Comics:

My notes on the comic collection for this piece weren’t quite as meaty, just reminders to read books (I’ve spent a bunch of this week catching up on recent back issue purchases, and yes, I did read Claws Of The Cat a little while ago; fun book, really interesting early snapshot of Marvel trying to figure out how to approach the idea that women existed as independent beings and wanted things for themselves, and I wish they hadn’t bailed on the original character concept and made Greer Grant Nelson into Tigra quite as quickly as they did), find and make space for what’s here and what will be (I need to get more boxes, and clear off more shelf space), and lists of which titles I’m working on getting back issues of.

Basically with comics, I’ve decided that I’m looking to finish the back issue collection I started as a kid, with a little more focus than that kid had. With a few exceptions, that means that the back issue runs I’m looking to finish right now end with books that started in the early 1990s, but mostly are ’70s and ’80s books, with a few ’60s exceptions. Reading complete runs of books is a lot of fun, so I’m doing it wherever possible, and deciding from there if I’m keeping them. I need to read the last 20 issues or so of Blue Devil next (if you’ve never read it, it’s a lot of fun, sort of an “inside Hollywood” story masquerading as a super-hero book, vaguely similar in that regard to Mark Evanier and Dan Spiegle’s Crossfire), then I’ve got Walt Simonson’s writer/artist run on Thor (#337-367) ahead of me, which I’ve wanted to read in a sitting or two for a long, long time, and also finished on the last NJ trip.

I’m also buying new comics, too, but the cycle of constant super-hero relaunches at the big two comic companies (and while I read all kinds of books, I am, and will always be first and foremost a super-hero kinda person), and the habit of “writing for the trade paperback” at the smaller ones definitely makes it harder to stay invested and interested in the ongoing stories. I want to get to know these characters and be a part of their worlds for more than 5-12 issues, and if you don’t like a few core characters that the big two are terrified of messing with long term, you’re going to have a hard time finding that. It’s also tough to figure out which of the smaller books will catch on, because if you miss something or word of mouth gets to you late, you’re looking at Walking Dead/Saga prices for back issues (or buying trades, but with that, it hurts, because I don’t like buying things twice, or waiting 6-18 months between segments of an ongoing story that people around me are discussing when we’re talking about a form that my brain processes as “monthly”), and that’s simply not in my budget.

I do have a question: do any of you reading this ever trade comics with one another, the way us card weirdos trade cards? I figure there’s a chance that the form factor (and its higher base shipping cost) may make that prohibitive, but it’s worth asking, as I do end up with doubles sometimes.

Action Figures:

Along with the “figure out how to store/display them” stuff that you’ll read throughout this, basically, when we’re talking about action figures that I’m collecting right now, we’re talking about Mego (and Mego-like figures) and DC Direct (but not usually DC Collectibles, the new name for the line, as I don’t care as much for the sculpts and designs they’re using these days), with some DC Universe Classics, Justice League Unlimited, and a few Marvel Legends figures here and there. I have legacy collections of a bunch of different types of figures (Star Wars, G.I. Joe, a ton of super-hero stuff from Super Powers to Secret Wars to all the Toy Biz stuff, some McFarlane stuff, etc.), all of which I’ve really got to make some decisions on, but the stuff I named above is really the stuff I showcase and still actually buy on the regular without second-guessing too much.

My plans for ’19 are to keep an eye on what Mego’s doing, pick up a little bit of the Figures Toy Company stuff, get what I can of vintage Mego stuff (and parts to fix what I have left of my old Megos), and if some of the DC Direct and Marvel Legends stuff comes up and is of interest, maybe that, too. I’m not in love with the quality of Legends figures, but the sculpts can be really great at times, and they’re producing figures of characters I’ve wanted figures of for my entire life. Beyond that, it’s just a matter of assessing the other stuff, figuring out if it’s staying, and documenting the fact that I had it before I sell or trade it if it’s going. I really, really need to get better at doing studio-quality photographs of all of the various types of collectibles I own, so I can just run some digital frames of these things.

Music:

I covered a bunch of this up top, but to sum up: find space for things, finish off some CD catalogs of artists I love, get better sounding playback equipment in the rooms my spouse and I use the most, and where vinyl’s concerned, pick off a few of the things I’m actively hunting (originals of Black Sabbath’s 3rd through 5th albums and “We Sold Our Soul For Rock N’ Roll” for posterity, Nina Hagen’s “Fearless”, Jobriath’s first album, all of Klaus Nomi’s albums, and any pressing of Iggy Pop’s “The Idiot” are priorities, but past that, I’m working on the Celebration, Kate Bush, KISS and Toyah catalogs and anything that catches my fancy).

That should put a cap on yet another very long post. Thanks for reading, feel free to ask questions (or answer mine from within the post), and I hope that, within your hobbies and outside of them (as best we can outside of them these days, anyway), you had a great 2018, and have an even better 2019.

My Year In Hobbies

Hi!

Yup, STILL alive. Have been free enough to start writing again for a little while now, but as I’ve had a great number of things to talk about, it was tough to decide where to jump in. Decision made: I’ll talk about as many of them as time permits in one go, in chronological order.

A screenshot from the Playstation 3 video game Skyrim in which a dark brown horse (center) is named "Dong's Horse" by the game engine, since the rogue character I was using (bottom) was named "Dong".

Despite some questionable character naming on my part (I did not know it would automatically name my horse “Dong’s Horse”, but I ended up making up a song about him and everything…oh, and naming my main fantasy baseball team “Dong’s Horse” this year, too…we won, by the way!), and a whole lot of allegorical racism in the dialogue that seemed to come a little too easy to the developers, The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim for Playstation 3 was $5 that quite literally saved my life over the winter. I ended up getting the flu in early January (flu shot, which I still strongly recommend, did not exactly work for a bunch of people last year), and the secondary respiratory issues I had after the flu damn near killed me. Had this game not given me something to occupy myself with as thoroughly as it did, I may not have rested enough, and we might not be here to read about my dirty horse name. So, warts and all, thank you, Bethesda, for helping to keep me alive this year.

Mego's World's Greatest Super-Heroes and Star Trek figures sit on a desk. From left to right, Mr. Fantastic, Mr. Spock, Iron Man and The Lizard.

In late February, I unpacked a few of my old Mego figures to keep the Mr. Spock I got at Brimfield company on my desk. By December, thanks to a trade, a wedding present, and the return of Mego in July, after 3 and a half decades out of the toy business, this picture looked very different. More on that later.

I had a good day at the Digital Press store in March. Pictured are Atari 7800 Space Duel, Bally Astrocade Clowns/Brickyard and Dog Patch, XBox Blood Wake and Panzer Dragoon Orta, and XBox 360 Beautiful Katamari and Project Sylpheed.

Then, this happened.

For reasons I’m still trying to process, a near-complete (just need #95 Gene Tunney) 1951 Topps Ringside set, complete with a wrapper, was sent to me by one of my frequent benefactors. I still have not gone through my half-full Ringside set that I was working on before this happened, to see if I want to merge the sets (upgrading some, etc.) or whether I just want to keep the gift together. Whatever I end up deciding, I will likely have a bunch of Ringsides for sale or trade in 2019.

A near-complete Batman joined the crew in late March, once I dug him out and put him together from two partials.

…then, a complete Superman joined them the very next day, after a similar process!

After years of owning this oddball signed piece, I finally worked out that the signature on the baseball was not, in fact, Dave Kingman, but rather, Jimmy Key. I’d call that an upgrade.

I made it to the Hartford Yard Goats‘ opening night just in time to get this picture of New England Fisher Cats 3rd baseman Vladimir Guerrero, Jr. standing on 1st base after a walk in the first inning. I got to see an impressive legacy infield of Cavan Biggio, Lourdes Gurriel, Jr., Bo Bichette and Vlad Jr. that night, and while that didn’t bode well for the Yard Goats, it was nice to see their ballpark, Dunkin’ Donuts Park, for the first time of what I hope will be many visits.

That trade I mentioned, when I posted my early Mego picture, yielded a replacement for my long-lost Falcon figure and, for the first time in my life, I got a Mego Aquaman figure!

My local comic shop (full disclosure: I host their website) had an amazing thing happening on Free Comic Book Day this year, in addition to the free comic books (not pictured).

I may have gotten a little out of hand.

May Brimfield was its usual self…

Cool, weird stuff a-plenty…

…some of which I regret not buying.

That can’t be said for everything I saw there, though, wow, this one pins the Weird-Shit-O-Meter, don’t it?

Sometimes, I left the house to go to places that weren’t stores or flea markets, and that was good.

Though, it should be said, I did still collect things while I was out.

I’m not a big car guy, but I parked next to this car that night, and a picture of it probably needs to be shared somewhere, so here.

I snuck in a yard sale or two at my house over the course of the year. Ron Guidry’s niece bought a bunch of his cards from me at this one, which was pretty cool.

I’ll be a little short on Gator doubles for a while.

(Photo Credit: Licky Oats)

A decent amount of my stuff found new and much better homes this year. My friend Licky Oats bought Bettie and King Kong Bundy from me after seeing them in pics of the garage sale, and this happened.

Another cursed object from my local flea market.

(Sorry. I had to.)

Had a few nice DC Direct adds this year, too! My better half got me my old pal Etrigan for my birthday.

The scene I happened upon at the Toys R Us closing. (Yeah, I got one.)

KRUSHER!

Ideal Toys did such great stuff. This is a replacement of an old childhood friend, by way of my friend Max (Thanks again, Max!).

July Brimfield. I don’t know, either.

Every time I post a picture of a pile of vintage lunchboxes like this, it can be anywhere from 5 minutes to a few years afterward, I get deluged with people asking me how much they are, and if I can pick them up for them.

I don’t do much in the way of fashion in my old age (I’ve kinda traded in fashion for comfort), but this piece by Mia Vesper, who was set up in Brimfield in July, is amazing.

Not my area or my era of vintage toy, but what a cool looking piece.

…and another cursed object. Actually pretty cool composition, feel bad about not getting the seller’s info now.

HA HA HA HA HA! HA HA HA HA PEEK-A-BOO!

Again, I do get out sometimes. Janet Jackson for free-ish because of the class action settlement against LiveNation? DONE. This was a great show.

While waiting for the new Megos to show up, I remembered that I had these fellas in a Sterilite somewhere in my basement, so…

…the posse expanded!

Had a really nice RPG/non-sport card/CCG find in August. At some point soon, I’ll get into more detail on the CCG stuff, but in the meantime, if anyone’s looking for ’90s Star Wars, Star Trek or X-Files CCG stuff (I’m starting to amass more mass-produced Magic: The Gathering stuff than I’m comfortable with, as well), talk to me before it gets sent to COMC.

First sighting of the end cap!

First full end cap!

My picks from the first batch…

…and they join the crew!

I got this awesome specimen of humanity, too (he’s a Marvel Select, just an amazing figure).

I met Oil Can Boyd in August! Nice guy, even better dresser!

I started moving some of my old cassettes on Discogs a few months ago (Sorry, the Type O’s gone now…), and that’s not been half bad. Check out my stuff if you still like/buy/collect cassettes, there’s some real gems in there.

Chekov snuck in a few weeks after the first new Mego purchases.

Another well-loved lunchbox, spotted my local market. The Angels would come up a few times this year.

Rough, but still super cool.

Added my oldest comic to the collection, with a classic Mac Raboy cover where Captain Marvel Jr. prepares to beat the crap out of some Nazis. Back cover’s toast on this, but it’s still so cool to have.

Had a nice day in September at the market, netted me a bunch of TCMA stuff and a couple of cheap update/traded/etc. sets that I needed.

Then, I headed back to Brimfield for the last trip of the year.

In looking through my pictures from this year, I realized that I photographed this beauty of a chair multiple times. I wonder if the dealer still has it (I’ll find out in May, I suppose), and what they’re asking for it.

I wish this game hadn’t been on the pricey side (I think they wanted $60-ish for it). Note the cameo from the Evel Knievel bike underneath it.

There was a dope-ass vintage Halloween vendor at the September show.

I normally don’t go in too deep for sp00p, as the kids call it these days, but this was quality merchandise.

This was from them, too. Tons of black cats and pumpkins.

Yeah, let’s!

One of the coolest, best buys I’ve seen at any of the markets here, and I’m still kinda kicking myself for not getting in on it. Sadly, even though the sign told me not to be, I was a dummy.

Brimfield, home of antique furniture that’ll bring a tear to your eye…

No, seriously.

There are also giant Playmobil pirate men there.

There were people who saw this set and got a different kind of tear in their eye, but I kinda loved it. It has that “bedroom of a teenaged girl who did a lot of psychedelics” look to it, and I spent time with those types in my misspent youth.

Another “Why didn’t I buy this?” piece. I don’t know why it spoke to me kinda loudly, but it did.

Another dealer in September had a ton of ’40s-ish magazines, lots of The Ring and such.

But also some dope-ass nerd shit!

Rough shape, but these covers are absolutely to die for.

I mean, COME ON.

There were Aurora models…

Micronauts like you wouldn’t believe…

Extremely questionable electronics…

Great shirts…

…and, as the season wrapped, the 1970s came home to roost.

Bela Lugosi did, as well.

So did Tootie.

I’m still on the lookout for one of these rascals, though, as the card on this one was all sorts of messed up.

Norm, on the other hand, showed up, as did a coffin for Bela (the first of 2).

As did Mott The Hoople (a local flea market find).

I call this picture “True Detective Season 3”.

The Gorn and Frankenstein’s Monster arrive! If you haven’t been keeping count, we’ve gone from 4 to 19 so far.

And then I got married! (Photo Credit: MacRamos Photography)

But, like clockwork (or at least a slightly malfunctioning clock), I was back at the flea market the morning after the wedding. I did not buy this beast, but figured y’all would want to see it, just the same.

A wild Samantha appears!

It’s a reissue, but it was still one of my grails. Got it as a wedding present, thanks, Rich.

Pidey-Man! Another wedding gift, this great condition figure came from Etsy. I’d been missing him since about 1981.

Here he is with the rest of the crew, along with Bela in his newer, larger coffin (which will come into play later).

We picked up this light for the wedding, which, because of the lighting in the room, was a dismal failure, but man, does it make my bedroom look pretty.

Greg Brady and Alice arrive! (I told you the coffin’d get more use. They look so happy together.)

Jo from The Facts of Life shows up to keep Tootie company! (Yes, this habit got out of hand in a hurry.)

On our last visit of the season, my local flea market was brimming with good will!

Also: Bowman Chrome! (This box is a keeper.)

So’s this card, which was in the box, despite not being Chrome.

Honeymoon time! Lest I bombard you with general honeymoon pics, as much as some of you would love them, I will do my best to keep them collecting hobby-centric, particularly as there are already 498,310 pics in this post!

Armchair Books, Edinburgh, Scotland. One of the best used book stores on Earth.

Traveled a few thousand miles, thought “I’d maybe like to get a cool edition of some Poe” before I got there (despite him being an American writer; just occurred to me before I left that I didn’t have much in the way of hard copy Poe), and there it was on the shelf. I paid more than nine shillings, but not that much more.

Look at this beauty! The first computing I ever did in school was on a PET. This was in the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, which is one of the best museums ever. Again, I could bombard you with hundreds of pics just from this museum, as we spent close to 6 hours there over 2 days, but I’ll do my best to keep it collecting hobby-centric.

These platforms were not in the National Museum of Scotland (I saw them at a thrift shop around the corner), but goddamn it, they should’ve been. If these shoes could talk, they’d have some stories, let me tell you what.

Gerry Rafferty featured heavily in my mind on this trip, as part of it involved taking the train he’d take back and forth from Edinburgh to London during the period of time post-Stealers Wheel when he was fighting with his record label, and just because he’s an extraordinary, underrated musician, so his case at Rip It Up: The Story of Scottish Pop was an essential stop. (I wrote a little more about Gerry and one of his better known songs here. I am also reasonably sure that there are other Gerry Rafferty fans from the card hobby reading this.)

Alex Harvey is another pretty incredible, underrated Scottish musician (who I’m still just getting started on the music of), and while I wish more of the exhibit featured him, I was still glad to see him here.

Do not attempt to adjust your television sets. You are seeing Strawberry Switchblade featured in a museum!

Many old friends here…

…and here, near the exit.

An Apple 1 computer, if you’ve never seen one.

Here’s the monitor.

The Wall of Telephones!

The only One Laptop Per Child laptop I’ve ever seen in person (at left). Granted, that’s a good thing in a way, because these were supposed to be deployed to places where, logically, I wouldn’t have seen them yet, but still, something else to see one in person.

What, did you think I was going to a foreign country and not hit the flea market? Found a Fields of the Nephilim EP I needed here, too. (More on them in a bit.)

Yes, despite there being very little of a visible card collecting hobby in the UK, I did buy packs of trading cards there! Match Attax is still very much a going concern, so I grabbed a pack of those, and I also got a pack of Lego Incredible Inventions cards, as well. Fun stuff, and if there’s demand, I can scan some up in a separate post.

Onto London! This was a really nice, if pricier than I like my funny books, piece at Gosh Comics.

Orbital Comics are another solid store in central London, and they’ve got a great sense of humor.

I present Exhibit B on that, in the form of the section of their back issues devoted to Captain America one-shot issues.

Some of my London comics haul. First issue of Son of Satan’s Marvel Spotlight run, Captain Britain #3, some Marvel Two-In-Ones, and, while unspectacular by comparison, I was missing the first issue of Mike Allred’s Silver Surfer run, so I grabbed it.

So, we went to London (and grudgingly left Edinburgh, which is one of the most amazing places ever) for a specific reason, which was kind of the centerpiece of the trip, as planned anyway.

How’d it work out?

(Photo Credit: Alexander Milas. If you look at the picture, dead center, the person directly behind the pains in the ass with their arms up appears to be me.)

Well, the good news was that both bands were brilliant.

The bad news, not to go to another town and talk trash on the people there or nothin’, but the bad news was that the crowd was…I’ll be extremely polite and describe them as “uncooperative on all fronts”, and try to leave it at that. I’ve been going to concerts for 35 years, in multiple countries, all kinds of music (including hundreds of shows where mosh pits were the norm), all kinds of people, and while they’re lauded as loyal, devoted, intense fans, the London Fields of the Nephilim crowd was…I dunno…let’s just go with what I said above, but also use that “intense” word twice, then drop it. The band were good enough to largely overcome whatever we experienced down there in general admission.

If you feel like watching the show we saw…have at.

Back to the flea market pictures! I spotted this beauty (and even played it a bit) at Old Spitalfields Antiques Market.

This was the first time I’d seen the Lego Voltron, at Westfield mall, which we stayed near, and which we spent entirely too much time in, even though we were, in fact, in London, and probably should’ve been anywhere other than a mall, particularly one quite as Black Mirror as Westfield. In our defense, we’d done the overwhelming majority of the touristy, sightseeing kinda stuff when we were there in 2017. Anyway, they did a nice job on this.

The Space: 1999 dolls, along with the Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, Mork, etc. toys, were in a place called Monkey’s Emporium in the Stables Market in Camden Town. Prices were…about what you’d expect from a place with high tourist foot traffic and probably excruciating rent, but they had some neat pieces. Camden Market in general was a lot of fun, stuff to look through everywhere, felt endless but in the good way, even though I’ve heard that they lost a lot over the course of several fires in the last decade.

Last time I was in London, I forgot to check the dice at The Orcs Nest Game Shop. I would not make this mistake twice.

Back home, I added the new Marvel Legends Thing figure (left) to my rock shelf.

I also started adding Mego Wave 3, as the Cowardly Lion showed up!

We got a PS4 as a wedding present, and I’ve been enjoying this awesome, awesome game. If you’re playing, let me know, I’d love to add you to a game, even if we start from scratch.

The Screaming Werewolf arrives!

This finally happened. When the $5.00 Blu-Rays turn into the 3 for $5 Blu-Rays and Point Break is there…well, it’s time to see Point Break. (My other 2 from that grab were Better Off Dead and Sid and Nancy.)

Serena and Endora from Bewitched join the party! Two of the best new Megos to date!

Told you there’d be more Angels! Finally got some Hasbro Angels (Sabrina, pictured here, and a pretty rough Kelly, who you’ll see later) after 40 years.

And just like that, Kelly, Jeannie, Major Nelson, and “Mirror, Mirror” Kirk and Spock join the party, too! This year just got completely out of hand on this front, and I love it. Mego collecting has turned into “make the coolest, weirdest crowd scene ever” for me, and I’m down.

I got a few CDs when I was in NJ. If you put $1-3 CDs in front of me, and it’s stuff I want to fill holes in my catalog, I can’t be responsible for my actions.

I did not, however, buy the Kenny Rogers picture disc. (The Mighty Lemon Drops record behind it, we won’t talk about. The Wiseblood record underneath it, I already had.) It is with a friend, though, and I have visitation rights!

GIANT-SIZE MAN THING

(Anyone got a spare issue 2 for me?)

It’s the blue whale in the Museum of Natural History! The lighting is weird in here, I think, because of the holiday party they were having in the whale room that day. (I barely got in to take this pic.) Thanks to my friend Sola for bringing me to see the whale, and other natural history-like things!

Figures Toy Company Catwoman arrives, as my (to date) last Mego or Mego-like figure of 2018!

So, that’s it for now. (I know, not a lot to digest or anything, right?) This is what happens when you’re working on house renovations, planning a wedding and a honeymoon, and dealing with multiple illnesses (in addition to the flu and flu-related fun, I got another one of my famous concussions the night before my wedding…the wedding was in October, and I’m only just now getting to where I’m about 90% back from it): you take a bunch of pictures of cool things to write about, and then don’t get around to writing about them. We won’t even get into the stuff I’ve scanned, or need to scan. So, my choice was to either plan to write 20 posts that I, of course, wouldn’t write, or to bomb you all out with one very long post that will melt your brains. Predictably, I chose the latter!

I will be back very soon with an update on how I did on 2018 collecting goals that I had (it was busy enough over the last year that I didn’t even write the ’17 year in review post properly, or go into my ’18 collecting goals), and what I’m looking to do (spoiler alert: put a bunch of my stuff that I’m not enjoying enough into good homes) in 2019.

Thanks for being patient with me while I’ve been off living life, and I look forward to your comments!

How To Enjoy Your Hobbies When The World Is On Fire, Part II

When we left off, I still had 5 comic books to read. I just finished reading ’em (and doing my Previews order for April), and here’s how I did…

Brilliant every month, and some of the best reading you’ll ever do in the super-hero genre. Ta-Nehisi Coates has done an amazing job on this book so far.

…but wait, there’s more! Coates is also doing this book with Roxane Gay, and right now, the story’s focused on the origins of the Midnight Angels from the main Black Panther book. It’s very good, but with this and a third Black Panther book coming in April now (The Crew, focusing on Black Panther’s team; Ta-Nehisi Coates is also at least co-writing this one, and Butch Guice is drawing it), I’m concerned that Marvel’s trying to make me broke in the short term, and in the longer term, that they’re going to get me invested in characters in books that they’ll cancel once the promotion of the Black Panther movie is done. (See also: Ant-Man.) If you’re not sweating all of that, and just looking to read a good story, this is a solid book.

Remember when I said there were three Jeff Lemire books in my pull? Thanos is the third. This started off slow, aside from the “hey, I haven’t seen this character in the supporting cast in a while” factor, but it feels like it’s building up some speed now. If you’re a cosmic Marvel junkie, you’re probably already reading this or at least waiting for the first trade. Mike Deodato’s on art here, and while I haven’t paid really close attention to his career, I enjoyed his Wonder Woman a bunch, and this is of the same quality, even if the feel isn’t exactly the same.

You’d think that, with me being a pre-Crisis DC nerd, I’d have been all over this book, but the “Give Gerard Way his own line and let him get weird with characters I love” factor made me a skeptic going in. When I read the title of the book, and the initial promo copy for it, it felt like a bad case of “trying too hard”, but that’s a pretty good argument for not reading ad copy, and that’s about it. I flipped through it after passing on it initially, and ended up grabbing it right away. The book itself has been a lot of fun. This wasn’t been the best issue of the book (kind of a “middle of the story” feel to it), but the characters have been fun, the art’s the right kinda weird, and I’m looking forward to seeing where it all goes.

Last, but not least, Future Quest has been awesome. I was also really skeptical about this latest attempt by DC to do something with their Hanna-Barbera characters (to the point where I completely passed on The Flintstones, which was a huge mistake on my part), and while it’s true that some of the line (Scooby-Doo Apocalypse and Wacky Raceland) is a mess, this is not in that category. It’s an ambitious attempt to link most of the early Hanna-Barbera super-heroes (Jonny Quest, Space Ghost, The Herculoids, Birdman, Frankenstein Jr., The Impossibles, Mightor, and I’m actually probably forgetting a few in there), and while it’s a lot to keep up with at times, this is one of those issues where it REALLY works and comes together. There are 3 more issues after this one, and then I guess we’ll see what they do with the line in year 2 from there, but give this a look in trades if you missed picking it up initially.

So, I did it. I did a bunch of stuff I enjoy doing, despite the world being in the process of going to seed as I did it.

How do I feel? I’m still pretty distracted, exhausted and nervous all the time, and was even as I was going through the cards and reading the comics. Life is super unstable on a global level right now, so that’s understandable. I still think it is pretty important to keep doing the things you love at these times, even if you don’t get as much joy from them as you normally would, just to stay in practice on being a human being instead of a husk. So, even if I’m only half-enjoying what I used to fully relish, I’m going to try to keep at it, as should any of you reading this. The people who are doing the bad things want us to forget how to enjoy ourselves, and they’re pretty good at making joy difficult to access. This is just one more thing that we should not let them win on. They’ve gotten their way far too often already.