American Trademark Designs

A nice Oxfam find t'other day - a 1976 survey of American trademark designs. Magic stuff. Pages of cool 70s design. Lots of familiar stuff, but some obscure beauty as well. Some of my favourites for you...

Triadex Corp

Don't know about you, but that screams 70s dystopian sci-fi at me.

'Grand Prix' for the John Frankenheimer film

Amazing use of motion lines. Love, love, love this design.

Information Science Inc

Ticketron

Parker Outdoor World

rogue lion in among the sports!

First Isaiah Corporation (a religious group from Philadelphia)

very grumpy religious lion.

Those are some of my favourites, but there are hundreds of other spectacular logos in this gem of a book. Got to love Oxfam.

Smokin' babe!

scan from Collins Girls' Annual 1959

Rediscovering an old friend

Snagged this in the Oxfam shop on Bloomsbury Street on Thursday...

Classic cover from an issue that I used to own before my comic collection was used as wallpaper. One of my favourites. Not exactly breaking the fourth wall, but threatening to, if that makes sense. Certainly would have jumped off the newsagents shelf back in the day.

Brought back some nice memories anyway.

Charity Shop Comics - AIDS Awareness

Here's an extract from one of the finest introductions to a comic I've ever read...

WTF?! Talk about tenuous analogies!

It's a masterfully inappropriate start to the 1993 comic curio, AIDS Awareness, that I found lurking in the corner of Oxfam this morning.

While the people behind this book undoubtedly had their hearts in the right place, you have to laugh at the tone of the piece. Never mind that cracking intro, check out the Simon Bisley cover...

So, that's a terrified bloke with two syringes hanging out of his arm, catching a reach-around from a skeleton while a gigantic sperm heads for his crotch and three ghostly condoms float about in the background. Magic! It's an image that screams AIDS! at you isn't it?

Course it is!

It's also an image that has absolutely nothing to do with the story inside, a reworking of A Christmas Carol in which some bloke returns home from work to this...

YEEEEES!

The dribble running out the side of his mouth is an AIDS giveaway, but judging from dad's reaction it came on quick. His son probably looked fine at breakfast.

Your eyes don't deceive you by the way, that is Dave Gibbons artwork. He's one of a number of big-name creators who donated their time and talent to this enterprise. Later on in the story Bryan Hitch, Charlie Adlard and John Ridgeway pitch in with a few pages.

Then there's a really odd pin-up from Kevin O'Neill in the back...

John Pain, Guilty as Hell? What exactly is this? Some vengeful AIDS demon?

Again, seriously: WTF?

To round things off, there's a huge pic of a bloke with a gun and a badge that says "Spunk" on it, and a competition...

At first glance it appears to be a competition to "Win AIDS". This is mildly amusing in itself, but it's the questions that really get me. Even allowing for the fact that it appears in an AIDS Awareness comic, question C is right up there as a jaw-droppingly inappropriate teaser!

Surely the most tasteless comic competition of all time.

Huzzah!

For more charity shop finds, click the Charity Shop Comics label below.

Charity Shop Comics - Smash Annual 1976

Picked up for £1 in a Stoke Newington junk shop...

It's bog standard stuff inside, but oh...that cover!

Artist unknown, but I have a feeling some George Best photo reference might've been involved. Whatever, it's a great piece. Click it for HIGH KARATAY!

For previous charity shop finds, click the tag below.

Disturbing Dennis

A nice find in Hackney Oxfam today, A 1959 Dennis The Menace annual in reasonable shape for 59p. It's full of the usual pranks and slipperings, but features a back cover which disturbed me slightly...

Click for a larger image

Like every other British kid, I read The Beano and became desensitised to Dennis's frequent beatings, but this one? I don't know, it's all a bit sus.

Leaving aside the angle of Dennis' arse or the fact that he's pointing to a "Handle With Care" sign, there's also something a bit dodgy about the way Dennis' dad is rolling up that sleeve, it's almost like he's about to flex his biceps for the men in the background. His expression is, well, let's just say he's focused on that arse and he doesn't look like he plans on holding back, a fact that clearly meets with the approval of those onlookers. Take a look at their faces, the chimney sweep's fucking loving it! And what's with the identical folded arms, splayed feet, clamped shut legs and ramrod straight postures?

No wonder Dennis looks so scared. Those are some creepy, sadistic looking bastards his dad has invited round to watch him take a hiding.

The Attack of the Rooks

Click the pic for a rooktastic close-up

Illustration by Ernest Griset. Scanned from The Mountain Sprite's Kingdom by Lord Brabourne, Routledge 1881, first edition.

Purchased from Hackney Oxfam for 59p!

Failure

Several months of harassment later...



A moment of clarity...


Sadly it doesn't last...



Ah, the 50s!

Scans from Secret Hearts #57, April/May 1955 reprinted in Heart Throbs: The Best of DC Romance Comics, 1979. Purchased for 59p from Hackney Oxfam. Yay!

Indy music

They don't make compilation albums like this anymore...

...spotted in a Hackney charity shop

Pictures!

AND THE SENTENCE IS SCANSSS!

Yes chums, a quick change of ISP, and I'm once again able to connect to the internet at speeds fast enough to allow me to reproduce other people's work without their permission.

A cheery result.

The week in the cottage was a bit of a disaster. My son developed a fever of 104 the night before we were meant to travel and stayed ill for the next four days. We eventually got out of London for three nights, but it was hardly the relaxing break I'd planned on. Ho-Hum.

As a result I only got one book read - David Boring. A fine effort this one, the tale of a man who likes fucking girls with big arses from behind because the shape of their butts reminds him of his mother's hairdo...

Yeah. Anyway, David has two friends: a lesbian named Dot who digs straight girls with boyfriends, and Whitey, a trilby wearing schoolfriend who travels light. They live vacuous lives in a paranoid world that might or might not be under attack from some unknown terror organization.

David, who drifts between unsatisfactory relationships, falls for a girl named Wanda and embarks on a boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets shot in the head sort of affair. He sees God, holes up on an Island inhabited by the distant relatives of a bunch of mad Irish servants and gets tangled up in a murder investigation.

Those are the bare bones of it chums. To be honest I'm not entirely sure what it was REALLY about, but I liked it a lot.

Its an odd and darkly humorous tale.
Its handsomely crafted by Daniel Ghost World Clowes.
It was written eight years ago.
I recommend it. End of.

Now, just because I can, here's a scan from Alter Ego #11 which I picked up in Hackney Oxfam for 19p!


The scan of Judge Death also comes from Oxfam and can be found in the 1995 compilation Judge Dredd in the collected Judge Anderson from Titan books. It cost me 99p and is probably out of print now. Thus is revealed the beauty of the charity shop comic.

I LIVE!

So I finally have an internet connection at the new house. Phew, I can once again bore people who stumble upon this site while googling for spandex porn with my uninspired thoughts on disposable culture. Huzzah! Fire up the ancient scanner and let it begin!

First order of business: I heartily recommend that you check out Mr Wheatley's latest collaboration with his son Will HERE, it features the finest DC/Marvel crossover moment EVER...

God I love the Red Skull.

Next have a gander at this book I picked up in Hackney Oxfam the other day...


I only bought it for the superb dedication in the front...

WTF?!

but it's nice to see that, as shit as it is, the book does have a little bit of history stuck to its cover...

The old 01 prefix, the original Forbidden Planet. That's a blast from London's comic past right there.

I don't have much in the way of new comics to recommend to you, as I've hardly had a chance to read any what with moving house and all. However I have checked out Warren Ellis's new Avatar offering Anna Mercury, a phallus packed action adventure story starring the kind of PVC clad dominatrix that often shows up on Ellis's website. Bit of a wank fest obv., but good fun nevertheless. Give it a go.

Also worth a shout is the second part of the fantastic Marvel Atlas. I recommended the first part HERE, and part two is just as meticulously mad.

Elsewhere Kick-Ass #2 made me laugh again, even if it did only take a couple of minutes to read.

CENTAURS!

From Scary Tales #11.

Bought for 10p from a charity shop in Finsbury Park.

Art by....Steve Ditko!

Charity Shop comics: Comic Relief 1991

A fine visit to Hackney Oxfam today. For £4.50 I got 5 vintage Fighting Fantasy books, a Morecambe and Wise annual, this awesome bit of schlock horror from 1980...

Please click to read some truly inspired blurb

and an abysmal Comic Relief special from 1991. Never mind the fact that it features a galaxy of my least favourite British comedy personalities, the real horror of this comic lies in it's cheesy appropriation of Marvel and DC legends to raise money for charity. I won't bore you with a lengthy analysis, these two panels should serve to give you a flavour of this awful publication.

Charity shop comics: Commando #2366

My addiction to comics makes it impossible for me to pass a charity shop without checking it for treasure. Sadly most people are savvy enough to realise that old comics are worth money, so my dream of happening upon Fantastic Four #1 will never come true.

Nevertheless, I cling grimly to the hope that there are still silver age gems lurking in some undiscovered corner of my local Sue Ryder.

While I wait for the sunny day when I happen upon these beauties, I thank the comic gods for small gifts such as last week's discovery of seven 1980's Commando comics in the Hackney branch of Oxfam.

At 10p each it was impossible not to buy these little classics. Any guilt I felt over wasting my cash on more junk was quickly assuaged by the knowledge that I was helping to save the lives of poor Africans.

Huzzah for the healing power of war comics!

Best of the lot is probably...

The harrowing tale of Joe Preston, a young idealist who drops out of medical school to train as a fighter pilot, only to see his best friend blown to bits by the Nazis before the two of them even take to the air.

Child's play for the mighty Luftwaffe

Dead

Any right minded hero of a Commando comic would be driven insane by this and wreak a terrible revenge on the Hun, but our man Joe comes over all shellshocked...

Grow a pair of balls Joe!

Unable to face the thought of combat, Joe seeks a transfer to the Air Ambulance Service and before you can say "coward's way out" he's on board a converted wellington bomber saving allied lives in the jungles of Burma.

While on a routine airlift, Joe happens upon a wounded kamikaze pilot.

Showing signs of the shellshock which forced him out of the RAF he pisses off his entire squadron by turning down the chance to finish the injured man off.

Understandably shocked by Joe's disgraceful show of compassion our boys refuse to help the crazed medic with his plan to save the man's life.

For some reason this fellow is all too keen to lend a hand though....hmmmm

In the world of Commando comics you should NEVER trust a foreigner

Let alone two

And so inevitably

Kamikaze Hijack!

With a live grenade in his hand the hijacker easily takes control of the air ambulance and demands that the pilot fly him to the nearest Japanese air strip. But in an AMAZING twist, another Kamikaze pilot shows up and shoots the ambulance out of the sky

Remarkably the crew (and the plane) survive the crash landing. But alone in the jungle with a bunch of Britishers our Japanese friend begins to get antsy and when Joe tries to reenter the air ambulance to treat his patients he nearly comes a cropper. But just as the hijacker is about to fill him full of lead...

Salvation comes crashing out of the undergrowth in the form of Tom Croft, a deranged soldier who has been missing in the jungle since the start of the war and who, as Joe discovers, hates the Japanese...

Proto-Rambo

When a bunch more Japanese soldiers show up on the scene, Croft eagerly jumps into the fray, but Joe stands back until the Japanese start slaughtering his patients and fellow crew members

At last Joe sees sense. His refusal to kill is all wrong. He's in a Commando comic in the middle of the Burmese jungle surrounded by bloodthirsty assailants, it's kill or be killed...

No Joe, no!

The daft sod hesitates and is about to be shot when the grenade which the hijacker used to take control of the air ambulance mysteriously explodes killing the Japanese.


GOD has intervened on Joe's behalf and our man at last seems to have learned his lesson. He even manages to raise a smile as the crazed Croft gets to work on the survivors of the grenade blast.


And back in blighty with injured air ambulance pilot Eddie Ball in tow, Joe has a beautiful moment of Commando style clarity.

Vermin have to be exterminated

A hardcore moral even by Commando standards, but a poignant note to end on.