Bad hair day

Hello boys and GHOULS, Happy Halloween! I hope you're having a horrible day! Heh heh heh! In honour of this most spooky time of year I've got a HAIR RAISING tale for you to enjoy.

Yes my little pumpkins, dredged from the vaults of LLC comes a terrifying story of vanity involving an old friend of mine, one Mr Frank Grogan.

Lovely man Frank, confident too. He was always willing to BALDLY go where others feared to tread, heh heh heh! Or at least he used to be until he messed with things he shouldn't have and found that there was hell TOUPEE!

But I'm getting aHEAD of myself here, we're in no rush. Come with me now, settle down in the barber's chair and prepare for a CUT down version of a TRIMendous story which I call HAIR-I-KARI!!!

You filthy little fear fans, I know what you're thinking. Get your minds out of the gutter and back on track! It's not Frank's short and curlies that have gone missing, it's his curly locks, heh heh heh!


Oh those nasty girlies, what a diaFOLLICLE way to talk to a fella! Poor Frank is CUT to the quick and desperately resorts to various hair restorers. But all the creams and lotions in the World won't work and a desperate Frank is consumed by the need to find an answer to his problem...


HELLo what's all this then? A full page newspaper ad for Satanic hair restorer. Well I'll be DAMNED! Where on earth can a man get his hands on a product like that? Heh Heh Heh! Allow me to DEMONstrate...

That's right, there was an address on that ad. The address of a shop full of shaggy stuffed animals. A shop WITCH Frank may wish he'd never found, especially after meeting it's owner...


Seems like a fHAIR deal heh heh heh! Desperate Frank's not one to HAGgle. But if you think he has any plans to marry the lovely lady then you're sorely mistaken. No, this is all he wants...





SHEAR lunacy! You can't expect to double cross a witch and get away with it. Not that Frank knows that, he's on his toes and out of there. Forgetting his betrothed, our man makes a lovely hairpiece out of that blond barnet...

HIRSUTEs you sir!


Here WIGo again eh kiddies? Heh heh heh!. But what's this? Our hero has spied someone special in the crowd...


Aaah, love is the dRUG eh? But what if this lovely young girl finds out that our hero's hiding a secret underneath that blond thatch of his? Not to worry, she's not the only one STUCK ON Frank...


The pair are quickly hitched...

Slap it on Frankie boy, heh heh heh!


A brain eating wig, what a BARBERous idea! Heh heh heh!




Oh dear, I'm not sure our blushing young bride will be keen to love, honour and obey Frank now. He's not quite his old self at all. In fact you could say he's turned into a bit of a monstHAIR!.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

All panels taken from Hair-i-kari, which originally appeared in The House of Secrets #111 in September 1973.

"Honestly, it's just a pillow!"

Justice!

FFFFUCCCCCCCCK!

I would happily have handed over £10 just for that panel, but Justice Society Volume#1 is so much more than giant green Nazi robots. I honestly can't think of a comic I've enjoyed more. Every other panel is seven shades of super. I should just stop fucking about and scan the whole thing in.

Golden age characters in a 70's style = YAY!

A couple more offerings for you...

Power Girl enjoying herself on a satellite. Beats sitting on a washing machine.

Keith Giffen pencils. Wally Wood inks. But this is pure Jack Kirby.

Incidentally never have so many super-villains uttered the word FOOLS so often. It's a fooltastic funfest!




Even Hitler gets involved, unleashing a hearty dose of fool mouthed language...


Ja Wohl!

Oh no!

Green Lantern Corps #17 is rubbish.
I'll read it again in a minute just to make sure.
It will probably be even worse second time around.
I may never recover from this crushing comic blow.

****SPECIAL 2am update!****
Sinestro Corps saved STOP
Superman-Prime excellent STOP
Prime fighting Krypto a joy to behold STOP
"Open Wide Mutt!" LOL STOP
Back up story with Jerry Ordway pencils a genuine chiller STOP

YAY FOR GREEN LANTERN!

A letter to The Human Fly

For those who need a reminder, THIS is how the Human Fly gives hope to people like Paul and his crippled girlfriend.

Inspiring? Certainly. But would it really work in braille?

All hail Degaton and his Mighty Cock Cannon

Panels from All Star Comics #60 reprinted in the unmissable Justice Society vol #1.

Shopping list

It is essential that I don't buy any Essentials this week or stray too deep into Gosh's Manga basement, because a heavy bout of comics shopping beckons and my poor wallet can't take the strain of any more ridiculous impulse buys.

I've actually crossed several titles of my list. There will be no Doctor Sleepless #3 because even though I can't think of a writer I enjoy more than Warren Ellis, Doc Sleepless just isn't my cup of tea.

Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters is also binned. The first few pages of Issue #1 were space insecttastic, but things went downhill soon after and I really can't be arsed to give it a second chance.

I'm curious about the World of Warcraft comic from DC, but I had to force myself to stop playing the damn thing on the computer and don't need any excuses to get interested again. Obviously I won't be able to resist skimming through it in the shop, but it ain't going in the nerd sack.

No Ultimate Spider-Man Zombie Variant either. Strangely this will be difficult. I'm a bit of a Ultimate Spidey completist and own three copies of the first issue, one of which is a CGC'd white variant (oh the shame), but I really hate this zombie cover madness which Marvel has descended into and I won't give them any money towards it.

Needless to say I won't be buying the Arthur Suydam collection of Marvel Zombies covers.

2000AD is also out the window. Something's broken there. I'll be back when they fix it.

Soooooooo, here's the clickable list of what I will be bringing home to my stinking comic pit...

Fear Agent Last Goodbye #4
Rick Remender and Tony Moore's homage to EC's Weird Science. A cracker.

Action Comics #857
I'm just about Bizzaroed out so it's a good thing this three-parter comes to an end here. Worth it for the Eric Powell art.

Blue Beetle #20
Never read it before, but it's a Sinestro Corps tie-in so err - KERCHINGGG!

Green Lantern Corps #17
More Sinestro Corps. Isssue #16 was one of the best comics I've read this year. Shame Gibbons isn't drawing as well as writing it.

Tales Of The Sinestro Corps Superman Prime #1
Obv.

Crawl Space Xxxombies #1
More Remender and Moore. OK so you know I said I was sick of zombies a minute ago? Well I am, but these are porn star zombies so err, you know.

I promise I won't whack off over it.

Thunderbolts #117
Ellis being as cynical as he's allowed to be in a mainstream Marvel comic. Can't beat his Norman Osborn.

Ultimate Spider-Man #115
More Norman Osborn. Not as convincing as Ellis' take on the character, but an enjoyable read nonetheless and Stuart Immonen's pencils are fantastic.

Monster vol #2
Manga madness. I feel myself being drawn into this world. I can't stop it. Gahhhhh! More money down the comics drain.

Dear DC

Stop taking up the centre spread of my comics with this shit...

I pay you £2 a piece for your funny books and at that price I think you owe me a nice splash!

It feels like I've been looking at this badly drawn ad for months and I've had enough!

I mean what the fuck is this supposed to be????

the bloated cadaver of Divine?
I can't look at it anymore.
Really, it's making me ill.
Give me back my centre pages NOW you cuntsssssssssssssssss!

There's a super-villain in my local park

Essential Doctor Strange Volume 1...


Clissold Park London, N5...


As reasonable a place as any to start stalking a fearful cosmos I suppose.

I belong to the Merry Marvel Thieving Society

I've been reading Manga.

There, I said it, sorry.

Naoki Urasawa's Monster to be more precise. Why? Well, I was in Gosh! getting my weekly fix and itching to spend more of my hard earned comic cash. Eschewing those pretty Showcases and Essentials, my mind strayed to an old episode of Around Comics in which someone or other (hope you're appreciating the specifics here) recommended Monster. Before you know it I'm shambling my way down to the Manga lined basement and grabbing some honest to goodness manga. Blimey.

I had no idea that Monster was a sprawling epic that runs to 18 volumes. Sadly after reading volume #1 I'm going to have to lay out more wedge on the remaining books. It's not that it's a particularly amazing piece of comics brilliance or anything, (I kept hearing Miriam Margolyes and Andrew Sachs in my head as I read the rather clunky English translation), but it is a page turner. A bit like an airport novel, very readable trash.

The plot centres around a young Japanese brain surgeon working in a German hospital who saves the life of a boy who turns out to be a psychopath. There's plenty of suspense, a nice (if somewhat hard to believe) look at hospital politics and some interesting characters.

The pictures are also very pretty. There's only one Japanese character in the story and it's interesting to see European characters drawn in the Manga style. Apparently Westerners all have huge noses.

Anyway - well worth a look if you fancy a fun, easy read on the bus to work.

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Finally got round to reading a bit of Back Issue #24. As always, there's a fair bit of filler to plough through, but buried in amongst some of the less interesting stuff there's a nice interview with Gene Colan about his run on Dr. Strange. It turns out that Colan based his Strange on a bunch of old photos he had of Mikhail Baryshnikov. There's one in the eye for all those folk out there who knock the likes of Greg Land for ripping off his art from magazines.

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I've been thieving. Terrible I know, but I was thumbing through the display copy of The Marvel Vault in Borders and was unable to resist the temptation to pocket this...
Gahh, it's only a sticker for Christ's sake. No-one's going to miss it and they'll only bin the display copy in a few months anyway. I might go back tomorrow and pinch The Thing Christmas Card.

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Not that I'm obsessed with Nazis or anything, but when I saw the magnificently titled I Killed Adolf Hitler in Gosh, it was obvious that I'd be slipping it into my nerd sack.

Travelling back in time to kill Hitler is a well worn subject in comics, (see Midnighter and Strontium Dog for famous examples), but it's never been done like this...

Top stuff. Highly recommended.

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That man Dave F has been filling my inbox again. Here's his latest offering...

"Blimey! You thought you’d never see the day when Big D posted something that wasn’t Hulk related. Well I just love this panel and had to share it with the world

When your 12 year old friend ‘Sticks’ goes ‘a missing, I think it’s a fairly safe bet that its gonna have something to do with the wild eyed hillbilly who wears dungarees and makes scarecrows in his spare time… Whadda you think true believers?

And while I'm here please let me treat you to another of my all time fave comic covers from the 70s…. Ooooh now I know Absorbing Man has never been 100 ft tall in any of his incarnations, but I was under 10 years old when I first saw this….

Aaah what magic nostalgia!

Anyone ever read this?

I've never been too bothered what Baker gets up to in his spare time,(unless its screwdrivering Cybermen) and when he shunned his Whovian heritage in the late 80s I boycotted him… Fuckin cunt!

DAVE SMASH!!!!!!!

But he endeared himself to me again when I had a chance meeting with him on Cecil Court. Took me a while to track this bloody book down though, and…. I rather liked it. Baker is a funny man and it shines through in his autobiography. Although not smeared with it, there is a healthy sprinkling of Who related history in there for the discerning fan. I mean come on! He has portrayed himself as the Doctor on the cover and history cant be erased can it Tom? Even a Time Lord knows that…. Or can it? You know I can’t fuckin remember actually. Answers on a postcard please!"

Thanks Dave.

Mein Gott!!!

Don't be thinking brilliance like this only happened in the silver age...

Thank you Brubaker and Epting, thank you.

Shopping list

Garggh! my blogging plans have once again been scuppered by my tiny super-villain of a baby. He'll only stop screaming if I hold him. Fortunately he seems to have nodded off in my arms now and, as my years of masturbating over internet porn have made me a dab hand at one handed computering, I'm able to do a bit of typing.

Sooooo dear reader(s) while I don't have the energy to provide you with any real sort of content I am able to offer you exclusive details of this week's LLC shopping list, complete with snazzy links.......

Umbrella Academy Apocalypse Suite #2 (Of 6)

Checkmate #19

Boys #11

Captain America #31

Marvel Zombies 2 #1 (of 5)

I'm also going to be severely tempted by Worlds Finest Showcase Vol #1, but I have so many silver age reprints waiting to be read that there really is no point in me getting it at the moment.

Orbital countdown

Those fine folk at Orbital Comics always have a top 10 board behind the 50p bargain bins. You have to catch them quickly because the wags are always coming up with new ones.

This one works for me at the moment...

Art Life

Warren Ellis has a short story in the latest issue of Forbes.

You can read it here

What on earth are the Forbes readership going to make of that?

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Another fine purchase from the 50p bins of Orbital comics: an Eclipse reprint of the Bob Powell classic Vic Torry and his Flying Saucer, a comic which has a quite fantastic cover...

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Also from Orbital, the filthiest most beaten looking comic I've ever bought, Strange Adventures #210. Overstreet says it has a NM worth of $115, so what's it doing in Orbital's bargain basement? Have a look.

Here's the comic...


Here's it's bag...


Put the two together and PRESTO!

50p worth of Neal Adams magic.