Baaaaaaane!

Big Dave F has been posting pictures of himself dressed as Bane on Facebook...

What can you say?

He's going to Kapow in this costume.

I fucking love Dave.

Readers

Couple of bits from friends of London Loves Comics.

First off, Peter Kirkham sent me a link to a very affordable ebay listing of Roger Langridge art. £35 a piece for some very, very lovely original art. Go get it before someone else does! LINK

Next, John Bishop posted a brilliant piece of vintage convention promo work to his Facebook page.

Here t'is...

Classic bit of Stan Lee: "I think I'm probably my biggest fan!"

HaHa!

How about a date?

No chance, mate.

This makes me laugh...

This soap joke victim just looks so fed up. It's like the tosser who did this has done it a thousand times before and this poor person is just resigned to being the butt of yet another tedious practical joke! HeeHee!

1979 Fun Factory Ad, scanned from Daredevil #158 - Frank Miller's first on the book!

Strike a light!

Here's a funny thing; for all the fuss Fredric Wertham and his pals kicked up about the pernicious influence of horror comics on the children of 1950s America, they never once complained about ads like this...

(click the ad to spark up the size)

*EDIT: As per usual, I don't know what I'm talking about. A quick Google search reveals that Wertham did mention ads for whips, guns and knives in his testimony before the subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency and Crime. Read what he had to say here.

He probably would have had a pop at this ad, too, if he'd seen it.

Scan from Tales From The Crypt #22, February 1951

Things I Want #1

On the last episode of 11 O'Clock Comics, host Vince B was enthusing about a mid 90s Mars Attacks! comic from Topps. This got me thinking about one of those holy grail-type collectibles that I'd really like to add to my piles of decaying man-tat - The 1962 Mars Attacks bubblegum card set. Designed by no less than Wally Wood and Bob Powell, the final painted art for this classic set was provided by Norm Saunders, the same man who came up with this classic...

A quick google for Mars Attacks cards revealed a Boing Boing link to a rather lovely Flikr show of the English version of the set*. Check it out HERE. Truly stunning, eh?

I have to own these! Full sets go for quite a bit on ebay. Incomplete ones are pricey, but not totally out of my reach. Individual cards are very doable.

So it begins.

*The cards in the English version are smaller than the American ones.

Sheik Toxic Moron and the 3-D Confusion Maze

This is genuinely nuts.

1991 ad from Captain America #387

MART!

Good God, has it really been seven months since I hit up a Royal National Stinkathon?

Ridiculous. I am ashamed.

Sadly, yesterday's affair was a bit of a let down on the comic buying front. I blame the noticeable decrease in 25p boxes. Mr Krypton, the cock who normally rules the 25p roost, had ditched his cheap tat completely, replacing it with one of his famous "50% off silver age sales." Lots of mylar. Not much value. It was ever thus. Bah!

I loitered at Heroclix man's stall for a bit, but his Man-Toy prices have hit absolutely insane levels. As pretty as it was I wasn't going to give him £15 for his Surtur figure - it's £3 on ebay you robbing little gimp! And what about those issues of Kick-Ass he had pinned up behind him?! £20 for number #1, tenner for the others? Is he melting his Heroclix down and smoking them? If anyone bought those they should be burned on the huge pile of money that they can clearly afford to set fire to!

I should have bought the 2000AD #1 that was going on one stall for £35, but I balked and bottled it at the decisive moment. It was a decent copy, and £35 was a fair price, but my days of paying £35 for a comic are behind me for the moment.

So what did I buy? Nothing much. An old 2000AD I needed for £1.75. A couple of Marvel Handbooks which I probably already have, a Captain America issue featuring MODOM for 40p and one of the three remaining issues of the original Iron Man Armor Wars that I'm missing for 50p. That's it.

No matter, for Mr Bishop was on hand to brighten my day with a stack of 2000AD doubles that he didn't need. For those that don't know he recently scored the first 300 issues for NOTHING on Freecycle. Ridiculous. Also in attendance were LLC readers Tam and Dex. We had a nice yarn about comics in the shitty pub next door, procuring a window seat from where we watched King Stinker rifling through the bins for food, and various miserable dealers packing up box after box of unsold tat into their comic vans. Heroclix man had the nicest motor. No surprise there.

Tomorrow

MART!

I'm there.

Come.

Drugs!

Stumbled on this.

I like that Wikipedia has shit like this clogging up its orifices.

Go to these events and read this comic!

Few quick plugs!

Friend of London Loves Comics, Lord Hurk is one of several artists who currently has work on show at Orbital Comics as part of their Kaleidoscope exhibition. Details HERE.

Tom Pearce has requested a plug for the upcoming Pencil It! event at Westminster Library. It's on March 25th. Details HERE you'll have to do a bit of scrolling to get to them. Is 'graphic novel supremo' an official title, by the way?

Mr Wheatley sent me a text. It said: "Axe Cop...Wow!"

Wow is right. Check out The Axe Cop HERE

Some fine 2000AD Reader Art

Straight from the Greg Land/Salvador Larroca school of extreme photo reference, comes this superb 1988 reader pic of Linda Lawsardi!

Couldn't find the exact pic it was copied from, but here are a couple of classic Lusardi Page 3s from back in the day...

Dog

Cosmonaut

Actually, if the reader hadn't made it clear who he was drawing with the whole Lawsardi thing, I'd have guessed the woman in his picture was Anita Dobson.

No confusing the identity of the chap in this pic though, or the film it's ripped from...

Judge Stallone?

It'll never happen.

Scans taken from The 1988 Judge Dredd Annual

Kapow!

Just bought a weekend pass tothe Kapow! comic con which takes place in London in April.

Could be terrible. I fear it'll be more about films and video games than comics, but I've never been to a proper comic con, so I'm quite excited.

Anyone fancy it?

Link HERE

Welcome to my parlour

In this case the kiddies were the flies...

some toy for $1.98.

Maddness (sic) indeed!

Scan from The Superhero Book of Goodies #2, 1977

The Green Horror!

In case you didn't know, the excellent Four Color Fear has just been reprinted by Fantagraphics. This survey of obscure pre-code horror classics is a must have for horror comics fans. Every single one of the tales inside is a stunner, they all come with footnotes and, in the middle of the book, there's a glossy gallery of classic pre-code horror covers.

I had just started to scan in one of my favourite stories from the collection when my crappy scanner exploded. Bah! Got the first page. It's a particularly bonkers effort...

for a series of black-and-white scans of the rest of the story, (in which the cactus' face can be seen!), go here.

To read more about Four Color Fear, download four of the stories from the book as PDFs and check out one of Fantagraphics' nifty little flick-through preview vids, go here.

March!

Greetings, dwindling band of interpals!

How goes it?

I come to you LIVE from LLC Towers where the search for employment continues at fevered and increasingly desperate pace.

The good news is I've secured some Saturday work to keep the wolves from the door, the bad news is full-time employment remains a distant dream. Ach well. I continue to rely on my lovely missus to keep me in food while I fritter away what remains of my savings on the odd graphic novel - to whit...ORC STAIN!

Oh man, I know I called Skullkickers my perfect fantasy comic, but honestly, Orc Stain tops it. I've still got a third of the first trade to read, but as soon as I finish it, I guarantee I'll be boring you with a hearty LLC Recommends. It's the best comic I've read in ages, and easily the most fun to look at. That James Stokoe fellow is a talent and a half, I tell ya.

So yeah, Orc Stain's brill. Other than that, I've been rereading old Hellboy trades and playing a lot of Bulletstorm on the Xbox. Top game. As I've said before, I'm not a big gamer, but I do like a decent FPS and this is really high octane, blood spattered FPS fun. Story is written by Rick Remender and the lead character is basically Heath Huston. Profanities abound + you get bonus marks for killing stuff innovatively. Fine, fine game.