PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Friday Night Movies 523

The Vault Of Horror is the 1973 sequel to the 1972 Amicus Production Tales From The Crypt. Both films are British anthology films based on stories from EC comics. The Vault Of Horror is written by Milton Subotsky and they are all based pretty closely on the comic stories though none of the 5 stories actually comes from the comic titled The Vault Of Horror. Four come from Tales From The Crypt and one from Shock Suspenstories. The film is directed by Roy Ward Baker and it was his second to last feature. After this he directed The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires in 1974. He worked on plenty of TV shows, like The Saint and The Avengers, before retiring in 1992. He died in 2010 at age 93.

The movie opens with 5 men getting on an elevator in a modern office building. The car stops in the subbasement and the door opens to a nice room containing a table and chairs. The table filled with drinks. The men, Terry-Thomas, Curd Jürgens, Tom Baker, Daniel Massey and Michael Craig, all plop their asses down and start pouring. There are no buttons on the wall by the elevator and no other apparent way out of the room. They talk to pass the time until the elevator returns. They each relate a story that they dreamed. The nightmares are about nasty deeds and in each they all wound up very dead. They all murdered someone in their dreams.

Daniel Massey, son of Raymond Massey, kills his real life sister Anna Massey. They are playing estranged siblings, he's tracked her down for money, their father has died, and he wants the whole inheritance. EC Comics tell you, "You shouldn't be greedy" and the punishment is pretty funny severe. Curd is a magician who will kill for a good trick and Tom is an artist who paints a deadly picture. That beard is something isn't it. I know I'm frightened. The other two stories are all cut from the same cloth. There's a fairly good supporting cast with some names you might recognize: Glynis Johns, Dawn Addams and Denholm Elliott. I enjoyed the movie but didn't quite think it was quite as entertaining as the first in the series. It's still highly watchable, for the level of stupid and goofy, and there is Tom's beard.

Leprechaun 4: In Space is a 1997 horror comedy with Warwick Davis as the Leprechaun. It went straight to video and hardly anyone seems to like it. It get a 3.3 on the IMDb and it gets a 0% from the critics on Rotten Tomatoes. I thought I hadn't seen it but that's because I had actually seen it in 2011 and nothing much stuck in the old noggin. The Leprechaun isn't on Earth in this movie. He's kidnapped Princess Zarina from the planet Dominia. He plans to steal her father's kingdom and rule the planet. There's a bunch of space marines heading for the Leprechaun's planet with the goal of killing him and rescuing the princess. They kill the little guy quite quickly but since he's some sort of magical creature he will return. One of the marines pees on a part of the Leprechaun's leg and some electrical bolts run up the stream to his willie. They rescue the princess and return to the ship.

The affected marine gets frisky with a woman and the Leprechaun pops out of the man's wiener. He gets right back to his plan for world domination. There's plenty of running about in corridors and all the marines get picked off one by one. It's not a good movie but there are occasional bits and pieces that made me laugh.

There's a scientist who destroyed his body, he's researching regeneration and lucky for him the Princess has some regenerating blood. Unfortunately the Leprechaun mixes a spider and a scorpion into the blood and jabs the scientist with it. He turns into a ugly mutant bug man who runs about and kills people. The last marine and a lady scientist survive and release the Leprechaun into space where he blows up real good. Don't worry, he'll be back in Leprechaun In The Hood 1 & 2. L4IS isn't much better than the IMDb score but I'm not sorry to have seen it. Even twice.

What I Read In December 2013

I really racked up some numbers on my booklist and I ended the year with a total of 97 books. Like the sales during the Christmas holiday period I added almost a quarter of the total in that last month. Twenty four different books, some graphic novels, were wolfed down in December of last year.

   

Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix by JK Rowling still continues to entertain me. What more could you want?

Lassie - The Wild Mountain Trail by IG Edmonds has Paul return home from school. He finds out his old friend Hank has suffered a head injury. Hank's gone home from the hospital but he's still a bit loopy. When he runs off into the mountains Paul and Lassie have to save him from himself and anyone else he might hurt. There's some crooks and a firebug on the mountain to complicate things. This is another Whitman book rom the fairly large series of Lassie books. You can read more about the series here. I only have two of them but I didn't look that hard for them. It was ok and while I'll keep it I don't know that I might want to read it again.

Kidnapped by Cole Fanning is a Walt Disney book from Whitman. Disney adapted the Robert Louis Stevenson novel into a movie and then wrote the book based on the movie's script. David Balfour comes to visit his uncle Ebenezer. The old man is a creep and a criminal. He gets a ship's captain to shanghai David and sell him into indentured servitude. The ship hits a large boat and Alan Breck Stewart is the only survivor. Once aboard it becomes clear the Captain will kill Alan for his money belt. Before that happens Alan escapes and takes David with him. David eventually gets back to his uncle for a spot of vengence. Not a bad story but not that well written. I might have read the Stevenson novel when I was a kid, it would have appealed more, but I'm not that interested in it today. I see those Whitman's and any with Disney, or 60's TV, connection seem to come home with me. They're nice quick reads and they do add a bit of variety to the fictional diet. It's another I'll keep but not re-read.

   

Harry Potter And The Half Blood Prince by JK Rowling is the 6th book but you should know that. Harry gets a potions book that used to belong to the Half Blood Prince and finally gets good grades in potions. Of course Snape isn't his teacher, Horace Slughorn is. Too bad all that great knowledge was destroyed in the fire that comes later. Way of the world, huh.

Mr Stink by David Walliams is about a girl who befriends a stinky man who sits on the bench near a store. It's set in the same world as his previous novel but only a couple of characters make the cross over. I found it charming, funny and at the library. The girl's mom is a go-getter who is running for local office and the dad has sadly been forced to give up his youthful pleasures for a family and such. Things work out nicely in the end. A delightful book that once again reminds us not to judge people by what you see. Valuable knowledge often comes from the oddest places. It's been adapted to BBC TV. I'm interested in seeing it.

Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows by JK Rowling rounds out the series and I poured through it mighty fast. I think that was the 8th read through so I'll be taking a break for a couple of years. The page count is high enough in the series I could probably read twice that number of smaller books. I like books that are 150-250 pages, especially if I have to hold it for long. I'm reading an omnibus of Oz stories that has 1400 pages and I have to lay it on my desk at work to read it.

 

The Art Of Ray Harryhausen by Ray Harryhausen and Tony Dalton is Ray talking about his movies and the work that went into them. It's heavily illustrated with his art and there are plenty of interesting stories about his experiences making the stop motion animation for the films he worked on. I have a fondness for those films and have seen some of them several times. I fear the book would appeal more to the movie fan, but you never know, often getting into the mind of a highly creative person is well worth the visit.

Walt Disneys Uncle Remis Stories as retold by Marion Palmer takes the Joel Chandler Harris stories and sanitises them a bit for the Disney audience of hte 1950's and '60's. It's a large hardcover that's got a good number of illustrations. I wasn't that fond of them as I am of the Carl Buettner, or Paul Murray, illustrated stories that appeared in the Disney comic books. The stories are ok but it would be more interesting to read the originals.

   

Sword Woman And Other Historical Adventures by Robert E Howard was so dull and boring that I could hardly finish it. You would have thought I was water skiing across those pages.

Tintin In The Land Of The Soviets by Herge is the first of the Tintin stories. I read a modern English language reprint of the original 1930 black and white version of the story. It's the only Tintin story that was never redrawn for color publication. The story ran in installments in Le Petit Vingtième and then was packaged in book format. The art is much simpler and the story is twice as long as the more familiar color editions which run a uniform 62 pages. The story telling techniques aren't as refined as they would become. The humor in the story is cruder. I had bought an imported French language edition of the first three Tintin stories in the early 1970's but did not read French. I even tried translating the story with a French to English dictionary but it was difficult and I got bored with it soon enough. Due to my circumstances I was one of those Canadian kids that didn't take French in school. I learned German instead. In the story Tintin takes a trip to the Soviet Union. Tintin discovers what a shitty place Russia is and nearly gets shot by a firing squad.

A Tale Of Two Castles by Gail Carson Levine has a young woman from a tiny village travel to the big city. She wants to apprentice as an actor but instead winds up apprenticing to a dragon. I really like Levine's books, she has a good style, interesting goings on and plenty of good plot stuff. There's a bit of mystery, some danger and a good bunch of characters. I'd recommend this to anyone who likes a bit of adventure and fantasy.

   

The Battle Of The Red Hot Pepper Weenies And Other Warped And Creepy Tales by David Lubar is another collection of his short, 2-4 page, stories that have weird things going on. Some are funny, some are dumb, some are entertaining and some are not. It's another thing I got on clearance at the Half Price Books. They must get too many Lubar books in so I find the occasional one in the clearance section. You can pop through them in a couple of hours and then forget about them.

Tintin In The Congo by Herge is the second story and I read the English language replica edition. The original story was packaged as a book in 1931 and the color edition was redrawn in 1946. There were more changes made to the story in 1975. It was the last of the Tintin color editions to get an English translation. For some reason I don't have a copy of the color edition. The story puts our boy reporter in the Belgian Congo where he blows up a Rhino. As I said the jokes were cruder. It's one of the many things that got changed when the story was redrawn. Tintin goes up against gangster Al Capone who has his fingers in a diamond smuggling operation.

Tintin In America by Herge is the third in the series of TinTin stories. The black and white edition came out in 1932 and the color in 1945. I read the latter though I have a copy of the former. Tintin makes a trip to Chicago and gets mixed up with gangsters. Al Capone makes an appearance. The gangsters try to kill Tintin and eventually they chase him into the west where he meets some Native Americans. It's all pretty silly for the most part but I enjoyed it.

   

Star Trek - The Prometheus Design by Sondra Marshak and Myana Culbreath was one of several Star trek paperbacks for half a buck each a while back and every now and again I read one. While investigating the violence on Helvan the crew get infected. It's not a very good story and dull on top of that. Best I toss this one out. 

The Case Of The Shapely Shadow by Earl Stanley Gardner has Perry Mason help the secretary of a real estate broker figure out a blackmail lot. About average for the series. I still don't find them as interesting as some of the other series that ESG wrote.

Hellboy 11 - The Bride Of Hell And Others by Mike Mignola collects more stories written by Mignola and drawn by other artists. I wish he would illustrate his own stories but there you go.

   

Hellboy - The Storm And The Fury by Mike Mignola is the 12th of hte Hellboy collections. It collects the two stories that Mignola wrote. Mostly I enjoy the character and his troubles.

Abe Sapien - The Devil Does Not Jest And Other Stories by Mike Mignola collects a bunch of Abe Sapien stories. I liked most of these too.

Aliens Ate My Homework by Bruce Coville is a silly short novel about a kid and some tiny aliens. He takes them to school where they have a fun time. There are plenty of gags and silly situations. Coville writes well enough and the story moves along quickly. It's not a keeper and I'll pass it along to the bookstore for some credit.

 

Tintin - The Cigars Of The Pharoah by Herge is the 4th of the series. The original black and white story was serialized in 1934 and the color edition was done in 1955. Tintin is on a cruise in the Mediterranean when Interpol detectives Thompson and Thomson accuse him of smuggling. That leads to a chase to Arabia and eventually India. There's a pretty good mystery and we meet some of the longer running characters like the stupid Interpol detectives and master villain Rastapopoulos.

 

Tintin - The Blue Lotus by Herge continues the previous story with Tintin in China during the Japanese invasion. The black and white art was collected and published as  book in 1936. The color edition came out ten years later. It's one of my favorite covers.

 

Tintin - The Broken Ear by Herge has Tintin in south America chasing after the mystery of the stolen fetish. The 6th story first was collected in 1937. The color edition came out in 1943. We meet General Alcazar for the first time.

Tintin - The Black Island by Herge has another of my favorite covers. It's got a good story and Tintin rockin' a kilt. The 7th story came out originally in 1938, it was redawn in 1943 for color publication and again in 1966. Once again Thompson and Thomson think Tintin is involved with a crime but of course they are wrong. Tintin is investigating some counterfeiters and the story leads them to England and eventually the black island off the coast of Scotland.

All in all a nice bunch of stories to read. Most of the books are keepers.

Jonathan Ross - In Search Of Steve Ditko

I just found out about the Jonathan Ross Hugo Award Master Of Ceremonies thingy. I rarely look at anything to do with SF fandom much anymore but an email about a post on Facebook mentioned Jonathan and Neil Gaimin in the headline so I took a look. It started several days ago. Neil Gaiman had recommended Jonathan to the London World Con committee, they'd asked him and Jonathan said he would be happy to do it. It seemed his comic style is too rude and disrespectful for some fans and there was some Twitter hatin' and Jonathan pulled out. Neil's disappointed in the SF community who didn't even give Jonathan a chance. Here's a Guardian article about it.

I first saw Jonathan Ross on his 1988 series The Incredibly Strange Film Show. It aired on PBS a year or two after it came out in the UK. I really enjoyed the series. It was an entertaining look at horror, sf, cult and Hong Kong film makers and Jonathan had as great an enthusiasm for the material as I did. Most of my other Ross exposure has been much more recent. I see him on a lot of the British tv shows I watch on YouTube. He does all the panel shows and I usually find him witty and somewhat acerbic. Occasionally he's rude, but nothing you wouldn't see from most other comedians. He's no Andrew Dice Clay, that's for sure. You can see plenty of Jonathan Ross on YouTube but here's something that was rather different and very enjoyable.

In Search Of Steve Ditko is Jonathan's 2007 BBC documentary on the legendary comic artist Steve Ditko. Ross has a deep love for the Spider-Man comic art that Ditko created and a fascination of the man of mystery behind the comics. Along with Stan Lee, Steve was the co-creator of Spider-Man and creator of Doctor Strange. He drew the first 38 issues of The Amazing Spider-Man starting in 1963 and in 1966 he left the company. He never achieved anything as great again and he refuses to give interviews or comment on his work. You can learn more by watching the documentary. Ross and Neil Gaiman do get to meet Ditko in his New York office but he won't let them interview him for the documentary. That's Jonathan on his mobile outside Ditko's office. After being told to beat it, Jonathan leads Neil up the elevator to Ditko's office, where they get a 25 minute long visit with the illusive comic artist. Dream come true time, huh. Sometimes being a fan boy is a wonderful thing.

I haven't read any of the Spider-Man comics since they were new but I have some collections of the horror and science fiction comics that Ditko did for Atlas, Marvel and Charleton. Some of that art is just astounding. Some of the stories are digital, dowloaded from those comic posting sites that were common a few years ago and some are in collections. I was sad to see most of the comic posting sites go but you can get more than a dozen nice collections of Ditko art on Amazon right now. He still proves to be popular. I liked his Spider-Man art, and still do, but gone back to revisit them. The multi-issue story arcs with continious crossovers aren't what I favor. I sold most of my comics when I moved to the US. It was 1978 and I never replaced the Marvel or DC comics in the years since. Here's a cover from one of Steve's lesser known comic books.

Tintin - Crochet Rocket

While looking for Tintin Nanblock pictures I found this crocheted version at a site called So You Want To Try Tintin which got it from another site called Las Teje y Maneje. It's huge and pretty cool looking. It would be neat to have one of those but I haven't got the space and I bet it would be hard to dust. Not that I dust much.

Comic Book Men Ep 1 & 2

I watched the first two episodes of the Kevin Smith reality show Comic Book Men. It started last month on AMC and there are 6 episodes planned. The show is hosted by Kevin and stars the guys who work in his comic shop. Kevin bought an existing shop called Comicology in 1997 and turned it into Jay and Silent Bob's Secret Stash. In case you want to shop there you'd need to get your ass over to Red Bank New Jersey. It's seems a fairly good sized shop, there are shops that big and bigger here in my area, but I don't know if we've seen the whole thing so far. 

The show is broken into two streams that wind around each other through the hour. One stream is shot in and around the store and the other is shot with everyone sitting around a table discussing the events of the day for the podcast. In the store we rarely see anyone buying anything. Mostly they seem to have people trying to sell some stuff. They show up hoping to get a big cash payment, often with completely unrealistic expectations, and the reality of the market punches them right in their guts. Then they're on tv and that's got to suck. In the first episode some guy brings in a signed Bob Kane Batman sketch from 1970. No one knew what it was worth, thousands seemed a good guess, they recommended using an auction house. There's a mix of toys and comic stuff that rolls in. Some lady brought a Chucky Doll but it had no box and the lady didn't take the money offered. The guy who had the Six Million Dollar Man Doll had a box and they bought that. A guy brought in some movie stuff and they had to call another guy who knew more than they did to help them out. It didn't go too well for the guy trying to hawk his stuff. He wanted a lot more than the expert said the stuff was worth. He didn't get paid.

That sort of encounter happened a lot at DreamHaven's front counter. People would come in with a box of "old" comics, and when you go to take a look, they were from 5 years ago. Over the last many years the back issue market has taken a deep plunge. No one is buying that stuff but this guy thinks he should at least get what he paid for them, you know, since they're old. Stuff before the 1960's still has some good value but hardly anyone is buying that either. Walt makes a joke about how hard it is to sell back issues when every second another collector drops dead and there isn't anyone to take his place. I've seen that happen a lot in many other hobbies. Ridin' high, then the wasteland. There's often a chance to pick up huge collections for cheap. We'll probably see a switch to digital comic back issues if the companies are smart enough. There's already an underground market out there handing the stuff around for free. It's a bit on hold as they work through the loss of Megaupload and recover from the SOPA/ACTA fiasco.

That's Ming Chen, Bryan Johnson, Kevin Smith, Michael Zapcic and Walter Flanagan left to right. Walter manages the shop, Ming and Michael work in the shop, and Walter's long time friend Bryan Johnson just seems to hang out in the shop. Bryan managed the second shop that Kevin owned. It was in LA for about 4 years ending in 2009. Ming and Michael have their own podcast about selling comics. Ming does a lot of web site production for View Askew Productions. That's Kevin's business, they make and sell all sorts of stuff. He also does a lot of podcasts.

The show is mostly fun to watch though sometimes they are a mean bunch. Not unlike when I worked at the comic shop. It's a place that sometimes attracts dicks. Of course all the cool people make up for that. Episode 2 has a guy show up with a replica of the 1965 Batmobile. I saw that car at the local comic book con a couple of years ago and it's a nice car. I didn't get to drive it like the guys in the shop did, that looked like fun. That episode had some guy come in with a light saber handle that he wanted appraised. He was told it was from the first movie but it was from the second movie. That was what the Star Wars expert they brought in thought. He said he was about 90% sure and if it was real it was worth north of $7000. Not bad for a $60 investment 15 years ago. Jason Mewes rolls in during the second episode and tries to run off with stuff from the store. He talks Ming into paying for his stuff. Then he bounces around the store acting all fucked up. I'd find that real annoying, and unless it was a gag, it was pretty sad to see him out of character. Glad I don't have a friend like that. I'll have to keep an eye out for the rest of the series. I've already down loaded the podcasts but haven't listened to them yet. It almost makes it cool to work in a comic shop. I'm kidding, it's always cool to work in a comic shop.

Merry Comics - Bogeyman

 

I found a link to this 1945 comic over at the Crosseyed Cyclops. It was buried in the Share section. The cover's got a goofy superhero type punching some baddies and the first story is a parody of the Will Eisner comic The Spirit. Bogeyman's got some work cut out for him in solving the case. You can read it below.

     

    

The art isn't up to Will Eisner's usual standard but someone named Cooper does an ok job capturing Eisner's style. The story is kind of fun but not too funny. The rest of the stories are about the same quality and they are more general parodies. I can't find out much about the character or the comic online. The comic doesn't have a number anywhere on it, just the 1945 date and Croydon Publishing. Just some more odd stuff, huh.

Amazing Adventures

 

I hadn't mentioned any comics for a while. Here's a nice batch of 6 issues that you can download from the Digital Comic Museum for free. You will need to register, it's free too, and they have a pretty nice bunch of old comics. These are from 1950-1952 and this is the whole run from publisher Ziff Davis. They tried publishing comics but never got real big in it. There are some well known comic guys who a story or two: Wally Wood, Curt Swan, Don Perlin, Murphy Anderson and Bernard Kringston.

   

The painted covers are more like covers to science fiction magazines. I thought they were pretty entertaining. Issue 2, upper left, is by Alex Schomberg, who did a lot of sf mag covers. Issue 6, the middle pic below, is fairly entertaining and kind of creepy. Next to it is the first page from the Bernard Kringston story. He was a mainstay at EC Comics

   

The stories are a mixed bag, some space opera, some monsters and some alien invasions. They aren't the best stories but typical of the time. Worth the look for those inclined.

Tarzan of the Apes

That cover above is the magazine that had the very first Tarzan novel in The All-Story Magazine from Oct 1912. For nearly 100 years the world has continued to follow the exploits of the Lord of the Jungle in books, movies, tv and strips in newspapers and comic book form. It's all popular. Turner Classic Movies has been running some of the Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan pictures in the last month or so and I have been watching them. All 12 of the pictures are available on dvd in various sets. I'm not at all certain that I've seen all of these pictures before but I know I would have watched just about anything with Tarzan as a kid and that hasn't changed hardly any since I grew up some. I was a fan of the tv shows and the comics and the novels, though I hadn't read the later until I was about 17. I never finished reading the whole Tarzan series but my mother did. Several years ago I went out and picked up copies of the old Ballantine series with the Richard Powers covers but I haven't read any of them yet. That's the cover to the first novel over on the left. I saw some of these originals at TorCon - the 1973 World Science Fiction Convention. It was my first convention and I meet Richard Powers there. I was already a big fan. He was a real friendly and nice to talk to. I kick myself for not buying one of the Tarzan paintings, it was only $75. That was alot for me in those days, more than a weeks take home pay, so I passed them up. I guess I have to be happy with the two cheaper Powers book covers I wound up with. Some day I'll sell them and buy a new used car.

Johnny Weissmuller, a former Olympic Gold medal winning swimmer, made a dozen Tarzan pictures, the first in 1932, the last in 1947. After that he did 13 Jungle Jim pictures before he retired from the movie business. I've only seen a couple of the Jungle Jim pics, they were ok, nothing outstanding. Six of the Tarzan movies were done at MGM and then Weissmuller moved to RKO Pictures for 6 more Tarzan pictures. The plots are pretty much the same. Some awful white people come to the jungle looking for treasure with larceny in their hearts. They'll take what they want at the point of a gun if the natives don't do what they say. Tarzan warns them to keep on the straight and narrow but they don't listen and the bad guys pretty much come to a grisly end. The jungle is harsh, death lurks around every tree, I know I would stay away. Adding the Tarzan brand of justice, which often involves a pointy stick, makes the place much more dangerous to the rule breaker. In one movie Tarzan is stuck up a tree with Boy. He breaks off a branch that is as thick as an arm, sharpens the point, and nails some guy who's chasing him right in the chest. That was a damn big tree branch, I bet that hurt, lucky it wasn't me. Another time he called to the elephants, who came down stream and helped Tarzan kick the ass of some cannibals. That made me laugh. I like elephants. I don't like cannibals. Unless they are being stomped on by elephants, then I'm going to laugh.

Like the creator of Tarzan, Edgar Rice Burroughs, I have an issue with the barely literate Tarzan that you often see on the movie screen. "Me Tarzan, you Jane." In the books, which I started reading in around 1969 or 1970, Tarzan was raised by apes after his family perished. They had been the only survivors of a ship wreck. They build a cabin, soon after their son is born, and a bit after that they both are dead, leaving the infant boy all alone. His cries bring some apes  Tarzan is nearly killed by king of the apes, who had just killed his father, but luckily a female ape, who had lost her child recently, takes him under her protection. Years later Tarzan would kill that ape and take his place as king. Tarzan teaches himself to read from books found in his parents cabin. He rescues Jane without her knowing it and falls in love with her. He rescues a Fenchman from the local natives and that guy teaches him French and helps him find his family. Tarzan even travels to Wisconsin in his pursuit of Jane. Not liking the life in the civilized world he returns to the jungle to set up a large estate where he has plenty of adventures. Burroughs isn't the greatest writer but he tells a big story with lots of stuff going on. Mostly I found his writing easy to read, occasionally a sentence would make me stumble and fall, but you pick yourself up and continue on. There were a couple of dozen books in the series and they are in the public domain so you can read them for free from all sorts of places like project Guttenberg Australia or Amazon's Kindle. Not all of them are going to be jems but they should be mostly entertaining. I hope to get to read those sometime in the future. Unless I want to go digital I need to find out where I stuck those Tarzan books. They'll turn up eventually.

TwinLUG at SpringCon 2011

 

TwinLUG was at our largest local comic convention this past weekend. We get a hunk of space in the cavernous room under the Minnesota State Fair Grandstand building, four tables with 80 square feet to fill, and all the food and pop we can cram in our pie holes. This is the first year that we were over in one area. I like that better. We are talking about putting all four tables together and making one large display. We'll see if that actually happens.

I was joined by Brian, Gary, Erik, Max, Roy, Alice and Lisa in guarding our stuff and greeting the comic con going public. Some of the other TwinLUGers are over at LEGO Kid Fest and our Micropolis was about half it's normal size. It still looked pretty good, it's got some of my favorite buildings in it. That's Roy's Halle Barry in the background. Funny story about that mosaic. Roy put it together and mixed up a couple of the squares. He's using the Micropiolis standard base to build with and connecting them together with a lot of technic pins. Very thick, a brick and 4 plates thick, and fairly solid with 6-8 pins per connection. No one noticied that the sections were in wrong all day. We were aiming for some western themed works this year and our spliting the group into two didn't hinder us in getting some nice ones. Brian can always be counted on in making some kick-ass minifig displays.

 

Brian managed two huge dioramas and I could hardly get two smaller ones built so I brought my Japanese diorama The Man In The Moat. My western diorama is called Song Before Bedtime and the western fantasy diorama is The Great Toy Story Train Robbery. It was inspired by the LEGO Toy Story Train set. That's Max's hangin', looks like fun, huh. Nice that the undertaker is so close. That's Roy's Reese Witherspoon. Sadly that hit the floor in the tear down and there was an explosion. Bricks went flying over 20 feet and a couple of them actually had broken.

 

Roy brought his mech and a hover car. Max brought his pink vic viper. That's Brian's big ol' fort with a lot of soldiers and three ladies. Lot's of people thought it was a civil war display but I think the LEGO Cavalry are from a later period, say the 1880's.

 

Brian's village diorama had a mountain with a cave and lots of minifig activity happenin'. Lisa brought a LaCrosse game that was packed with Native American highjinks. You can see more pictures of everything on Flickr.

Out Of This World Adventures

 

The Digital Comic Museum has both issues of Out of This World Adventures, an odd comic and pulp mix. It's mostly story but it's got 32 pages of comics and about 96 pages of text fiction. The DCM has both the whole issue and a comic excerpt. I got the whole thing. I thought the cover on the first issue was nothing special but I sure liked the painting on the second issue. It's highly entertaining. Now for some reason I want a barebreasted  space suit. Below are the first pages fromt he first stories in each issue. There's a barbarian story too. I haven't read them all the way through but I did skim over the comics and they are nothing special but could have some entertainment value. I started reading the A Bertram Chandler novel Raiders Of The Solar Frontier. It's about a guy who winds up on a prison planet. Not sure where it's going to go. Chandler is an ok writer. I read several of his novels back int he 70's but was never a big fan. He was reprinted in a lot of Ace doubles.

 
Avon released the first issue in July 1950 and the second in December of the same year. There were no more. I remember seeing these in Chester Cuthbert's living room back in the 1970's. I was more interested in comics back then but I didn't pick them up. Maybe Chester only had his own copies. He used to buy mass quantities of science fiction books, like several collections, and sell off the duplicates. His basement was full of stuff, floor to ceiling, with little cutouts for the furnace, the washer etc.  Anyway now I have my own and so can you. Well worth a look see for their novelty.