Swag 2

Not much this weekend, picked up this weird old handheld on Saturday for £2. Baikin-Kun 1982 Bandai. It seems the game is to look after baby bacteria(?!). It's intact and working, but a bit yellowed. I bought it with the intention to sell, but now I got it home, I'll probably just chuck it in the box with my other Game & Watches.

 The Car boot sale was pretty rainy by the time I got there on Sunday, there was virtually nothing there, but I did spot a bag of Batman related tat on a table. The lady wanted a quid but I knocked her down to 50p. Most of it was junk (Joker keyring is OK) but I only bought it for this rather awesome Batman badge.

London Comic & Small Press Expo

I made it to London Comic & Small Press Expo on Saturday, I was a bit late but it seemed the event was still in full swing.

I had a tight budget so tried to make the most of it. I bumped into Mike Leader on the way in, and he recommended Hildafolk by Luke Pearson. As soon as I saw it I knew I had to have it. What a beautiful book. It immediately evoked the work of Tove Jansson, and upon reading did have a flavour of that sort of East European folk tale. Absolutely lovely. I thought it was a little pricey at £8, but glad I bought it. It even smells nice.

Next I had the good fortune to purchase Freakleap from Joe List. Some amusing stories, hit and miss, but when it's funny it's damn funny. His work reminded me a little of Otto Seibold, but creepier.

 

My good friends the Goodman Brothers were present, selling the Square Eyed Stories comics (I really need to finish another strip for that comic) and Dave gave me the latest issue of his own comic Bahala Na which is always a reliable source of entertainment.

Post-event, we had a little gathering, Mike Leader, Nevs Coleman, Nell and the Mighty Dave French turned up (we had a nice long discussion about which acronym we preferred for S.H.I.E.L.D.).

Ultimately after attending the show (and watching one of the discussion panels) I left feeling inspired, and promising myself I would be selling my own work at a table this time next year. There's always such a wide variety of comics, and work there that makes me think I could do this! Alas, I always say this, and I just never seem to get my shit together. We'll see anyway, I'm already working on a few bits and pieces, and have a couple of ideas that might just work. Wish me luck!

Paris and Swag!

Just got back from a lovely time in Paris (apart from getting my MP3 player nicked). As soon as we got off the Eurostar I saw this advertisement for a Moebius exhibition, so it was pretty much set in stone we were going.

It was great to see a load of original paintings of work I'd seen in print for years. His show filled the whole gallery, and it took quite a while to get round. Recommended! 

We went to a vast market at St Ouen, where Nell bought a nice Brian Froud art book and the Taschen Betty Page, along with some jewellery and a handbag. There was a guy selling English language comics, and had some decent alternative stuff from the 70s and 80s including some Corben and the like, but we settled on a couple of old film posters.

When I got back to England I went up North to visit my ma in her new place, pick up my large backlog of comics from Planet Eater and hopefully score some decent swag at the car boot sale. Sadly for whatever reason Planet Eater had managed to miss a couple of issues from my Amazing Spider-man run. Coincidentally, one of them was 649 which is currently going for 15 quid on ebay. Hmmm.

The car boot sale was a good size considering the season hasn't really kicked off yet, but the only swag I acquired was a Mego Human Torch without his 'fire' costume, and from the same guy a Mego Spidey outfit. He took a quid for both so not bad at all. He had a Mego Frankenstein's Monster, but he was in such bad shape I couldn't bring myself to buy it. Wish I had now.

Thrill-Power

Is it possible to overdose on Thrill-power? I've had a bad cold the last few days, so have been sat in absolutely hammering the 2000ads. Some incredible work in those early days. Favourites so far include-

Flesh, the story of how in the future there is a shortage of meat so a time machine is used to go back to prehistoric ages and harvest dinosaur meat! An obvious answer surely? Except they concentrate on herbivores, so the carnivores go apeshit with hunger and attack the base! And to top it off the base happens to be built over a nest of giant spiders. Who also attack them! Good stuff, just the sort of over the top violence kids love.

The ABC Warriors, a team of robots assembled to take on jobs too risky for humans.

Strontium Dog, the mutant bounty hunter Johnny Alpha and his mate Wulf Sternhammer. The first story was pretty mental, involving him going to Hell. It turns out it's a 'fake' Hell created by the mind of another mutant, but still scary enough to keep a ten year old scared shitless for a few nights.

And of course the Judge Dredd stories have been pretty great on the whole. I've read some of them in collected form at some point, but it's nice to read them chronologically and complete. Highlights have been The Judge Child, where Dredd and co. set off to find a prophetic child who can foresee the doom of Megacity One, and the stories introducing Judge Anderson, Judge Death and the Dark Judges, with some stunning artwork by Brian Bolland.



It looks like I'm just about to start on the Apocalypse Wars stories now. I'm not even halfway through the pile yet!

2000AD

I joined Freecycle a while ago, mainly because now and then an oddity crops up that I never really wanted before, but as soon as I'm aware of it's existence I need it. This was true in the case of a stuffed (toy) penguin becoming available, just as the show I was working on needed a creature building that was half-lion, half-penguin. Sadly, the person who put an oscilloscope up for grabs never got back to me. Must have been a lot of people after one of those. Anyway, skimming through the emails I see someone has a full set of 2000AD from 1 -556 only missing 3 issues! I'm quick off the draw, and next morning I'm lucky enough to be the chosen one! The guy only lives down the road, so although I have no transport I get my rucksack and a couple of Ikea bags and pick up the haul. And what a haul! Also about a dozen 2000AD and Dredd annuals. Issue 1 is in pretty good shape (considering those earlier issues appear to have been printed on bog roll), it's got tape down the spine to keep it in one piece, but it's complete. I already have #2 (First Dredd) so keep the nicer copy. The owner cut a few pin-ups from the backs of some of them (he was a kid to be fair), but who cares? These comics aren't worth a particularly huge amount financially, but entertainment-wise they're priceless! There's work from Brian Bolland, Dave Gibbons, Kev 'O Neill, so much early work from many other big names. So for the next few weeks I will be subsisting on a steady diet of Zarjaz Thrill-power.

Some of the haul!

Laika

I received a book voucher from Nell's folks for Christmas, so obviously I was going to try my hardest to spend it on comic-type books. I got a couple of books by Jason ( The Last Musketeer and Werewolves of Montpellier- both highly recommended), and finally picked up Laika by Nick Abadzis.

This was a great book! It certainly melted my ice-cold heart. Convincingly fleshed out characters (presumably based on real people) on the Soviet Space mission in the 50s. Their mission- send a dog into orbit to see if a human could survive the trip. The artwork is clean, with lush colouring and on nice paper. A decent read for all ages for sure, and well worthy of the Eisner it won.

It's pretty cheap on Amazon at the moment, so get over there.

Blasted hippies

Easy for him to say, a Norse God with a magic hammer.

Thor #154 July 1968

The Thing about girls...

Good old Reed. To take Ben's mind off being a hideous lump, he'll show him what a hot wife he managed to score. They don't call him Mr. Fantastic for nothing...



Fantastic Four #68 November 1967

Ants in his pants

After seeing the Beyonder on TV, Spidey appears somewhat excited. Even his Spider-sense is tingling.





Secret Wars II #7 January 1986

The Brain

Spectacular Spider-Man magazine #2 November 1968

Doom goes all Kevin Arnold

Sniff.

Marvel Super-Heroes #20 May 1969

Sea you in court

Daredevil #7 April 1965

The Hulk's cunning plan

Alas, he is interrupted by the Avengers...

"Ughh...Wha..??" Indeed.

Avengers #1 September 1963