John and Bully in 3-D!

It’s Bully’s pal John’s birthday today! John is a great guy. We have never met in person and we know each other only via our blogs. John is, to paraphrase a professional blogger, a real internet friend. John had helped me when I was going through a very bad time by sending me literally thousands of dollars worth of books. By doing this John kept me entertained when my resources were severely curtailed and I was unable to access the art and stories I enjoy. I was incredibly depressed and stressed and John helped keep my spirits up by sending care packages. A whole bunch of bright spots in a pretty dark time. Those lights had to be cast by someone and that was John. He shines. His kindness helped in ways I can’t ever repay. If John and Bully make it to the San Diego Con this year I want to shake his hand, Bully’s hoof and buy them both lunch everyday.

So I can’t think of a better treat than letting everyone wishing John and his pal Bully a happy birthday than for everyone to do so in person. On my budget the cost of flying the thousands of his fans around the country would be impossible but I can make it happen through the magicks of the internet!

So break out the red & blue glasses folks, because while most of you can’t meet John in person I can bring the next best thing, JOHN & BULLY in 3-D!

So click on over to Bully’s place and join the party!

Happy Birthday, John!

A lady with a skull

Found at a used book store last week. How could I pass this up?

Bonus! Illustration from back cover.
The Dream Is Deadly (October 1960). Cover painting by Barye Phillips.

UFO (September 1970)

Colletta hands

Oh, Vinnie. Well, you made the deadline, and that was what was most important back in the day.

Today’s fans complaining about delays in publication amuses me a bit more than it annoys. Would fans now accept anything that had a rushed, Colletta-style production value to it or do the demands of the market require stylized, photo-realistic, highly-detailed computer-enhanced work with snappy presentation? In times past a good story would often balance out poor art (ie, many comics published in the 1990s). Could the same be said of today, or is it that technological advances and consumer expectations no longer allows creators to give less than an endless series of mind-boggling blockbusters?

Lovers #85 (June 1957).

Atoms and Evil

Atoms and Evil by Robert Bloch (Fawcett, 1962).

Click to reach critical mass!

Scene from an S-Mart

“Are there any new movies out?”
“Not really. There was that one about the really old guy trying to have sex with a teen-aged slave.”
“What? I don’t know that one. What is it called.”
“Twilight.“
“Oh. Oh! Is it any good?”
“It is…If you are a 15 year old girl and have no sense of self-esteem.”

– A conversation between my wife and I while shopping.

Don’t just stand there

Space: 1999 – Breakaway (17 October 1975).

Billy Bunny and Daddy Fox

Found this old book Billy Bunny and Daddy Fox at a used bookstore on Adams Avenue this week. There are a few good used book and magazine stores on that street and are worth spending some time in browsing. There were several volumes of the Billy Bunny series in the store but this one contained art I preferred over the others, even though one book contained a drawing of the Luckymobile tearing through a forest that I was loathe to pass up for the time being.

Billy Bunny was a series of books written in the 1920s by David Cory for children featuring the tales of a young rabbit and his many adventures. One of the main themes of the stories seems to be about Billy and his friends and their attempts to avoid being eaten by their carnivorous peers. From what I read, most of the entries are typical cautionary tales about trusting strangers and bachelor uncles.

Each book contains a few minimally colored illustrations credited to artist Hugh Spencer. The art is wonderfully simplistic and un-apologetically two-dimensional. I chose to purchase this volume in the series over the book containing the Luckymobile (reminiscent of Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride) because I really got a kick out of the the two pages featuring the the bourgeois rabbit exploiting proletariat child labor and the ambushing bobcat.

Click the pictures to make Flemish-sized. Enjoy!

Bonus advertisement section!

Bypass to Otherness

Bypass to Otherness was published by Ballantine books in 1961, featuring stories originally published in the 1940s. The 1960s were a boom time for science fiction paperbacks as great “new” authors made the scene. Not many people where aware that savvy publishers had mined the past by raiding the contents of decades of old pulp magazine material and packaged it as new with abstract, vaguely SF-themed art for a modern audience. Aided by the growing counter-culture, science fiction was reintroduced to an entire generation, granting another life to semi-retired, marginal or forgotten authors and ensuring that alternate thought, ideas and art would not entirely vanish as cheap pulp magazines crumbled with age.

Never Forgive, Never Forget

Dell house ad that advocated the destruction of their titles from the sad era when comic books where considered disposable. As bad an idea for posterity and collectors as clipping those Marvel Value stamps.

Absent-Minded Professor #1 (1961).