Photography Fans Unite!

I know a lot of you enjoy my BRITTANY ROSE & ME photography site so maybe you can help out here. One of MY personal favorite photographers is a young lady from upper Ohio named Anna Ásfríðr whom I met through FACEBOOK. You see half a dozen samples of her work here (with her permission). Anna is obsessed with photography as an art form! Her work can be found on FACEBOOK and also on DEVIANT ART. She may be young but she has a sharp eye for design, color, artistic quality and a great affinity for her models...including herself. (Thevery photogenic model with the glasses is Anna).

In this economy, Anna is trying to make her own way by transforming her art into her vocation. The problem is that within the past week, her camera completely and utterly died. Not the batteries--the camera!

A Camera Replacement Fund has been set up and donations are being accepted...slowly. In the meantime this truly talented artist is losing her mind with boredom and having to cancel planned shoots!

Anna has generously offered to do a small amount of free commission work (within reason) for contributors. Certainly there are worthier causes in today's society but the way things are these days, we all need to stick together. So if you like good photography or just cute models, there will be a lot more from Anna but only IF she can get enough to replace her camera. If you can, please consider contributing.

On behalf of myself and Anna, thanks!

Please mention Booksteve's Library if you contribute.

The paypal address is
heathengirl.mandy@gmail.com

All Man-1967

Here's a nifty find! A generous reader sent it to me thinking it might be Wally Wood. Clearly it is not. What it is, however, is kinda cool! This naught superhero parody, from 1967, is ALL MAN, as originally published in the so-called "men's sweat" mag of that name. My first thought was that ALL MAN was one of the many such mags published by Goodman's Magazine Management company as a sort of slutty sister company to Marvel Comics but apparently this was from a different but similar company. Not sure but I think the art is by Syd Shores. A little net-searching reveals that the former CAPTAIN AMERICA artist (and later Wally Wood studio mate) did quite a bit of work--mostly painted covers--for such mags throughout the sixties.

Special thanks to Harris Smith for this. Check out his blog over at http://negativepleasure.blogspot.com/

Real Fact Comics Quiz

Here's a cute--if not particularly tough--visual superhero and other quiz from an issue of National's mid-1940's title REAL FACT COMICS. Just in case you can't get the answers (and I couldn't for the final panel), the answers follow.

Playboy Cover to Cover-The Fifties

Took a bunch of old video game manuals to the local Half-Price Books yesterday to sell so we had a little money to work with. We also had a 50 % off one item coupon. Rene picked up some opera CD’s. David got an Artemis Fowl book. Bree took my recommendation on my all-time favorite book—FAHRENHEIT 451.

Me? I picked up LENNON & McCARTNEY TOGETHER ALONE, a look at the solo years of the most successful songwriting team of all time (even though technically most of their Beatles-era songs were written solo anyway). I also got Angela Bowie’s 1993 memoir which jumped right out at me and seemed highly appropriate as Ziggy Stardust’s ex actually friended me on Facebook earlier in the day yesterday!

Most interesting, though, was the box set of PLAYBOY-THE 50’S. Originally $100.00, marked down to $50.00 and I had the aforementioned 50% off coupon! Very similar to the ROLLING STONE set I purchased a few years ago (which didn’t work for me until I got my MAC!), the set comes with a commemorative history book on Hef and his creation of the seminal mainstream men’s magazine. Even more fun is a facsimile reprint of the original first issue with the Marilyn Monroe centerfold. I haven’t checked but hopefully there’s SOMETHING about this magazine that shows it’s NOT the original or else I’m sure these are all going to end up on EBay!

The CD offers what the box called “the First Decade” of issues. Badly worded, there. Since the mag started at the end of 1953 and the collection here only goes to the end of 1959, these are, in fact, all the issues from the first decade in which the mag was published but hardly a decade of issues!

This was, of course, the era when you really COULD say you read PLAYBOY for the articles as much as anything else. With the easily searchable database, I’ve already discovered nice articles about Tom Lehrer, Steve Allen, Brother Theodore and Harvey Kurtzman! All of the great Jack Cole’s cartoons are here as well as lots of silly grown-up stuff by future children’s book author Shel Silverstein. There’s even the original, serialized version of Bradbury’s FAHRENHEIT 451! Lots more from Ray, also, along with TWILIGHT ZONE authors Richard Matheson and Charles Beaumont as well as many others I haven’t gotten to, yet.

As for the girls, that’s the funny part! Looking at these early issues now, one finds it hard to believe they were so controversial in their day. It’s like looking at the Beatles on THE ED SULLIVAN SHOW and saying, “What long hair?”

In any given issue there are only a handful of naughty pics and then not nearly as naughty as many of today’s cable shows such as TRUE BLOOD or SECRET DIARY OF A CALL GIRL. There’s some famous faces including Bettie Page and Tina Louise and some lovely pinup shots but frankly I found the ads more fun!

Tons of ads for what Hef perceived as the PLAYBOY ideal man’s desires—jazz music, tobacco, alcohol, colognes, hats, socks, ties, etc. Lots of writing from him also on his original “Playboy Philosophy.” All in all as much of an enjoyable history lesson as the previously mentioned ROLLING STONE set was about the next generation. Love him or hate him as the aged cartoon character he has become in recent years, Hugh Hefner made an important difference in the 20^th Century and that’s more than most people can say.

Frazetta PSAs-1950's

RIP-Dick Giordano

I never met Dick Giordano but I walked past him at a Con one time about two decades back. I was so in awe that it was still a memorable moment. Last week, word filtered onto the Net that Mr. Giordano was not doing well and now word comes that he has left us.

I first became aware of Dick Giordano when he became a DC editor in the mid-sixties. Dick was actually kind enough to introduce himself to the fans in a little half page yellow box so I actually knew his name before I knew other DC editors who preferred to sign the generic "Editor" to their letters pages (which were probably not really written by them at all). Giordano had a hands on approach and he brought with him from Charlton a number of creators who would go on to remake the industry at the time...most notably perhaps, Jim Aparo.

At Charlton, Dick had started out as a rather staid penciller back in the 1950's, his best known title being SARGE STEEL, about a cop/spy with a steel hand (whom he revived a number of times at DC years later). Over the years, though, he drew everything and drew it well. By the 1960's he had taken over the editorship of Charlton's attempt at jumping on the Batmania/superhero revival bandwagon and thus shepherded Steve Ditko's revived CAPTAIN ATOM, BLUE BEETLE, QUESTION and the other characters who would one day lead to Alan Moore's WATCHMEN.

At some fortuitous point, Dick returned to the art table while at DC and teamed with sixties wunderkind Neal Adams for a memorable series of BATMAN stories. The pair would work together many times for many publishers as well as at their own Continuity Associates.

But Dick did not relegate himself to inking. He pencilled many memorable stories himself and his own BATMAN became a favorite. He also did the legendary unfinished (until decades later!) DRACULA adaptation with Roy Thomas at Marvel.

After technically retiring, Dick would keep his brushes wet with a little work from time to time working on THE PHANTOM and making guest appearances as a revered veteran working on various international titles.

Dick Giordano drew a unique type of comic book realism. His superhero women were not the supercute, overly busty fanboy favorites. He didn't draw girls--he drew adults. He drew women who looked like women and looked genuinely heroic. He drew city scenes that looked more like real cities than anyone since Will Eisner (with the possible exception of the late Marshall Rogers). He drew a BATMAN who was a sane grown-up who would save me if I needed saving and do so for all the right reasons. He drew MY BATMAN.

Thank you, Mr. Giordano. I should have said it to you at that Con twenty years ago. Thank you so much.

Rest in Peace.

Josie & the Pussycats TV Announcement