1990 Trivia Quiz

Okay! The new scanner's working! Here's a newspaper clipping from April of 1990. Jack Hicks was a popular local columnist. My first job, although he probably never realized this, was emptying his trash cans about twelve years before this clipping! Anyway, Paul Mullins of COMIC BOOK WORLD ( http://www.comicbookworld.com/ ) got a call from Jack and recommended me and a few others to come up with a comics and cartoons triva quiz. This, then, was the result. I knew Art Metzger who went on to work at Barnes and Noble but don't recall a J. J. Johnson but if you're out there, guys, "Hi!"

Even More Album Covers

Once again, via COVER BROWSER (Check it out at http://www.coverbrowser.com/) here's a few more album covers that we pop aficionados should enjoy. After this, I should finally be able to return to some semblance of normal posting as I'll be setting up a new scanner later today. In the meantime, here's another Jack Davis cover, psychedelic vampire weirdness, El Santo himself, a French Disney LP, a Murphy Anderson DC heroes cover, Col. Hogan on drums and SOUPY!!

RIP-Dave Simons

I never met Dave Simons but on FACEBOOK we had more than 20 mutual friends so last year I friended him. I knew his work as a penciller and inker from various eighties Marvels. He and I exchanged just a couple of personal messages but I was able to follow his cancer struggles through his status updates and actually became, I suppose, a part of his support network by commenting on them. Dave was more often than not upbeat and proactive in his messaging and updates, talking about wanting to do this or that--such as get out to see WATCHMEN-- and then finally having a good enough day to do it! It's an odd feeling. Technically, I never met Dave Simons and yet due to the virtual vagaries of Facebook, I'm really going to miss him.

A Few More Albums

From yesterday's discovery of COVER BROWSER, here's a few more weirdly nifty LP and single covers. There's another overcrowded Jack Davis one, a GREEN HORNET guest appearance, a BRIDES OF DRACULA image on a MONSTER MASH cash-in by cartoon voice artist Bob McFadden (note the writer! Popular '60's poet Rod McKuen!!), a bizarre one from radio (and later TV's) Ralph Edwards, a second (from the looks of it) album sponsered by Joe Simon's SICK and seemingly ripping off the successful FIRST FAMILY LPs of the Camelot years and finally a whole album by a series of fondly remembered talking fruit flavor drink mix characters!

Cover Browser

http://www.coverbrowser.com/ is a nifty timewasting site I discovered via Bud Plant's blog ( http://budplant.blogspot.com/ ). Lots of comics and book covers but also whole sections for foreign DVD's and the ever-popular odd album covers. Check under "Misc." for the latter but only if you have a lot of spare time. Unlike most sites like this that offer a smattering of goofy-looking televangelist LPs, drug covers and foreign albums with titles that translate strangely, this one offers upwards of 2000 covers in the LP section alone! I just looked at the first 500 and there were a number of gems like these seen here (including Cincinnati's own beloved COOL GHOUL! I got to meet the Ghoul's daughter about a year ago and she said that everyone who finds out who her father was says how much they adored him.) There's also an unauthorized use of Alfred E. Neuman, a rather definitely unauthorized use of BATMAN (perhaps two if you count the Adam West 45) and a nice Jack Davis cover. THE FRIENDLY GIANT was a gentle children's program I used to watch back when I was already too old for it on NET, the predecessor of PBS.

Will Elder At the Movies

With his practically patented "chicken fat," Will Elder was perhaps the maddest of the original MAD artists. His lifelong collaborations with Harvey Kurtzman are well-known. Less familiar to fans, however, might be the numerous movie posters and movie and TV ads that he did in the 1970's. Here's a lovely, crisp version of Villie's poster for the dreadful Alan Arkin-directed vehicle, FIRE SALE.

Batman and Bob

Was watching an old episode of BATMAN with my son the other night when, as often happens with sixties and seventies TV programs, my friend of many years of OTR Conventions, Bob Hastings, appeared onscreen. I've now known and often acted opposite Bob myself for two decades but it always gives me a thrill to run across him in old episodes like this. It's happened recently with THE FLYING NUN and WONDER WOMAN, also. I guess its a Six Degrees kind of thing. "Hey, I can match Adam West in two!" In this case it was even cooler because Bob's scenes were all with another guest star who had, like Bob, been a fixture in old time radio--Alan Reed! "Hey, I can match Fred Flintstone in two!"