Kathy Coleman and "MUM'S DIMES"

Many of my readers will no doubt remember my friend Kathy Coleman from the groundbreaking Saturday morning TV series LAND OF THE LOST in the seventies. Well, Kathy has posted on Facebook what I think is a great idea so I wanted to share it here as well. Hopefully many of us will get behind this.

Here's Kathy's original post:

MUM’S DIMES

I have a very interesting story to tell my Facebook friends: My mother passed away when I was 25-years-old. My mother was Australian and we called her “MUM”. About a year before my mother died, she visited my sister Colleen’s apartment that Colleen shared with a roommate. When my mother walked in through the door, she noticed a dime on the floor. She picked it up and asked if this was HER dime. Both Colleen and her roommate laughed because MUM had not been to the apartment before.

After MUM died, Colleen started to find dimes A LOT!!! Colleen didn’t make a connection at first, but after finding so many, she started to wonder if these were a message from MUM. Colleen told me this story and then I started to find dimes A LOT!!! We then told other family and friends and they started to find dimes A LOT!!! We all find them in the most amazing and ridiculous out-of-the-ordinary places.

Colleen found one dime balanced on the doorknob to her office, and one dropped out of the floorboard to her son Ian’s new home. Her son Max found one stuck in the seal of the refrigerator door and one inside the motor of a fan he was cleaning. When our sister got married for the first time at age 62 (which was a miracle in itself) we found over 10 dimes during her reception and wedding. We find dimes in the strangest places. They seem to appear during happy times of celebration and during hard times when we need the reassurance that someone is watching over us. Colleen found a dime right after she had to put her 15-year-old ill Dachshund to sleep and Colleen was feeling distraught.

We recently told this story to a mother and son that we made friends with. The next day, the son texted us to let us know that he had found a dime in the gym locker that he used that morning and again in front of his car door. Other people we have told this story to have also started finding dimes.

I would like to start a Movement in honor of my “MUM” that will benefit charity. I feel that any of you who are reading this story will also start to find dimes. I would LOVE if you will start to collect any dimes you find (maybe keep in a Ziploc baggie) and when you have maybe 10 or 20, drop them off at any COINSTAR and hit the button that donates these dimes to charity. It may only seem like a dollar or two that is going to charity, but if you tell your friends this story, these dime amounts could multiply and make a great contribution to charity! It will make us all feel good and at the same time we are doing something nice for others.

When any of you start to find dimes, please post your stories of where YOU found dimes, and the amount of dimes you dropped off at Coinstar, to my Facebook page. If this really takes off, I will start a new Facebook page called “MUM’s Dimes” dedicated to all my Facebook friend’s stories.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart….Kathy Coleman

Timely Ads-1941

Russ Heath in Comic Book Creator

The latest issue of COMIC BOOK CREATOR is out. Got my contributor copy today in spite of the fact that I didn't contribute much to this particular issue. That means there's all that much more that's new to me! The main thrust of this issue is revisiting the career of the great Russ Heath! Lots of great art, interviews and articles. You can order it from the link in the right column.

Self Portrait in Lenses

First one of these I've made in a while. This one is based from the image below it featuring me in one of my two new pairs of glasses.

Too Many Super-Heroes Ad-1966

If you want to read the whole story, here it is!

http://fourcolorshadows.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-mighty-crusaders-rick-jerry-paul.html

Booksteve Reviews: Al Capp-A Life to the Contrary

As a child, I adored Al Capp's LI'L ABNER. It was a favorite from my earliest memories of it when I looked at the colorful silly drawings and my mother read me aloud the mostly dialect dialogue.

That said, when Denis Kitchen's wonderful series of reprints began in the 1980s, I was never really able to get into the strip. I gave up after the first few volumes but then jumped back in for a couple more as it hit the more classic years of the strip. I did relish the two FEARLESS FOSDICK collections and the later Frazetta collections were gorgeous to peruse.

But what it all comes down to is that, as an adult, I'm more fascinated by Al Capp and the phenomenon that was LI'L ABNER than I am by LI'L ABNER itself!

Which brings us to the recent book, AL CAPP-A LIFE TO THE CONTRARY by Michael Schumacher and, appropriately enough, Denis Kitchen. By this point, I don't think I had any misconceptions about Capp but if I had, this book certainly would have dispelled them.

Capp was, to put it mildly, a real piece of work. The authors offer up his story in a most readable manner, based on endless years of research and presented without much undue editorial comment or judgement. Ambitious and idealistic from the beginning, we see the artist's ego build and build as he stops at nothing for success, stepping over his friends, his family, his assistants and his original mentor, Ham Fisher, in ways that led to a long-running nasty feud and arguably even Fishers suicide.

All the while, he cultivated celebrity and fame and, while maintaining a  public family man image, began to be seduced by same. ABNER translated early to cartoons, then a motion picture, much merchandising, a hit Broadway play, a big screen musical, a TV pilot, a theme park and more! All the while, Capp appeared on radio, in movies, on television and even the covers of LIFE, TIME and NEWSWEEK! Even in an age where cartoonists got much more respect than they do today, this kind of fame was unprecedented.

Meanwhile, having spread himself a little too thin over the years, his strip was handled largely by unheralded and uncredited assistants, with Capp providing the ideas and allegedly always drawing or at least inking the characters' faces.

The authors cover this great rise to fame and fortune in some detail and manage to keep Al a somewhat sympathetic character...until the sixties. Capp's political and social leanings had always surfaced in his strip, resulting in some biting satire over the years. After 3 decades or so, though, the political climate changed in the real world and Capp seemed to be left behind and unable to catch up. By the end of the decade, he was lecturing on college campuses regularly, even putting out an album of one such lecture, and yet he was majorly against the counter-culture, against youth movements and in favor of the Vietnam War!

By this point, though, he had become a bit of a dirty old man and got into big-time trouble in his attempts at non-consensual "seduction" of campus co-eds! This is the section where the book colors in the details of the portrait so that we can see he was NEVER really the benign, upwardly mobile creative genius he appeared to the public to be. Schumacher and Kitchen, although clearly fascinated by their subject, perhaps reluctantly give us a "warts and all" look at the man we thought we knew and it isn't pretty.

AL CAPP-A LIFE TO THE CONTRARY, is an honest, riveting look at a man who was once one of the most famous men in America but whose light faded quickly when he couldn't control his dark side. It could be seen as a lesson...or simply a portrait. Either way, BOOKSTEVE RECOMMENDS!

You can grab a copy at Amazon at quite inexpensive prices now that it's more than a year old.

The Rondo Nominations Are In!

For some reason, and for the 3rd year in a row, my FOUR COLOR SHADOWS blog is nominated for Best Blog of 2013 in the 12th Annual Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards. Those of you who frequent that blog will no doubt realize that while we do run quite a bit of horror and science-fiction we tend to veer more toward superheroes and humor. One reason for that is there are other great blogs that specialize in pre-Code horror comics already. One such blog is Steve Banes' THE HORRORS OF IT ALL, which is ALSO nominated for Best Blog of 2013!

Banes works with Craig Yoe on the regular HAUNTED HORROR comic book that ALSO covers that same territory and which was, itself, nominated for Best Horror Comic!

My friends Martin Grams, Terry Beatty and Tim Lucas all received nominations in various categories as well! Congrats, guys!

Voting is now open and anyone can vote ONCE! If you like FOUR COLOR SHADOWS, I'd appreciate your consideration even though I STILL don't see how I keep getting nominated!

Go here to vote:

http://rondoaward.com/rondoaward.com/blog/?p=32