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Smoke got in my eyes.

§ October 23rd, 2007 § Filed under Uncategorized Comments Off on Smoke got in my eyes.

So as you may have heard, big chunks of Southern California are ablaze, driven by strong winds. Most of that activity is quite a bit south of the store, so we’re not in danger, though I’m surprised we haven’t yet had our semi-annual brushfire just over the hills behind us yet.

However, on Monday I’d gone to a grocery store very near my house, and between going in the store and coming out of the store, a grassy embankment on the other side of the parking lot had caught on fire. It’s right there next to a freeway offramp, and I’m guessing the culprit was “tossed out cigarette butt.” Thankfully, the fire department was right on top of it and took care of the fire in short order.

Employees Jeff and Aaron live much closer to the Piru and Fillmore events, so think kind thoughts for them, as well as for everyone else affected by these fires.

On Sunday, the winds had blown lots of smoke and ash our way, turning the skies orange, and I took a couple photos outside the shop:


I didn’t color correct this image, or alter the contrast or brightness. I took these photos at about 3 in the afternoon. It cleared up later that day for a while, and it was actually sunny, but since then the skies have been consistently cloudy, the air thick with ash and smoke.

As long as I was out there takin’ photos, I grabbed a pic of that tree the city planted in front of our shop:


The tree had grown crooked, so the city employees in charge of this sort of thing set up an elaborate system of wooden poles and rubber straps to set the tree straight, to no real avail.

And that branch that sticks out way to the left, there…it’s just the right height and length to poke at the doors, or rest on the hoods, of any car that parks there. I’ve spoken to one of the city guys to do something about trimming that branch, but no go so far. I’m thinking about doing it myself, but I can just see me doing a nickel up the river in the ol’ graybar hotel on the tree vandalism rap.

Also, if you take a close look in one of those street photos, you can see where our shop was from 1983 ’til 1990:


Yes, it’s a massage parlor now. It was a massage parlor before we were in there, too…there was even a working shower in the back. Could have used showers in our later locations, come to think of it. “Sold…POGS…must…wash off…shame….”

And just look at that…their tree isn’t deformed. Man.

"Doom to anyone who steals me gold!"

§ October 22nd, 2007 § Filed under Uncategorized Comments Off on "Doom to anyone who steals me gold!"

So a customer recently unloaded his collection of funnybooks on us, as he’s moving, and isn’t taking the books with him. As is usually the case when we receive collections in bulk like this, the vast majority of the books is going straight to the bargain bins, but a few items are being kept aside. An Albedo #2 (the first appearance of Usagi Yojimbo), a couple copies of Tales from the Tube (the comic-sized edition and the one from the surfing magazine), and not just one, but two New Mutants #87, second printings, signed by the man himself, Rob Liefeld.

However, also in this collection was three copies of this bit of horror film history, about which I was previously unaware:


It’s a magazine-sized promo for the film’s release, only twelve pages long, and in color…sort of. I’ll explain that in the moment.

In what will likely come as a shock to most of you, I’ve never actually seen any of the Leprechaun films, despite my love for cheesy-yet-great horror films. I mean, I’ve even seen The Gingerdead Man (starring Gary Busey as an executed killer who comes back in the form of a murderous animated gingerbread man cookie), and yet I’ve never seen a Leprechaun film? Not even Leprechaun 6: Back 2 Tha Hood. Ah, well…Netflix, here I come, I guess.

Anyway, here are a few samples from the book, such as this panel with the Leprechaun in question:


As the Leprechaun zips through these few pages seeking his lost gold, he spends some time causing mischief and delivering ironic, or at least rhyming, punishments:


The artwork for the most part is a tad on the amateurish side, but serviceably cartoonish. There’s at least one terrifying full-page image of the Leprechaun’s face, which reminded me a bit of the heavily photo-referenced pin-up pages from the old Partridge Family comics.

And there are a couple bizarrely creepy panels like this in the mag:


Those two panels along the bottom there show the Leprechaun’s hand reaching out for the lady in the first panel, and the second panel shows the woman, presumably stripped of her clothing and her hair, in case you couldn’t see what was going on in the scan. Geez, Lep, what’d that lady ever do to you?

I mentioned the book was “sort of” in color a few sentences back, and that’s because this is some of the worst printing I’ve ever seen. Dark, muddy, blurry…here’s a sample of what the art looked like without my fiddling around with brightness and contrast:


The inside covers were both full-page ads…one was for the Sci-Fi Channel, and the other was for this frightening thing. Rick Dees! AIIIIIIEEEEE:


The back cover was a reproduction of the movie poster, with the blurb “LOOK FOR THE ‘LEPRECHAUN’ BOARD GAME” at the bottom. I did a brief Googling, and looked at Boardgamegeek.com, but couldn’t spot it. I hope it does exist. I’m picturing a Monopoly-type board, where every square, and every Chance and Community Chest card, has the Leprechaun’s face on it, with a word balloon that reads “WHERE’S ME GOLD?”

Anyway, for some good scans of the entire story, this Angelfire site has full-color images donated by the artist himself, and unencumbered by the horrible printing job. (And since it is an Angelfire site, it’ll likely have pop-ups and bandwidth issues, so if it’s down, check again later.) The main page is located here, last updated eight years ago. There’s a link to what is apparently a more up-to-date Leprechaun page by the same person, but I couldn’t get it to load. Well, it has been since 1999 when that link was presumably posted.


Because I know some of you wouldn’t believe me…here’s the trailer for The Gingerdead Man. Some dialogue Not Safe for Work:

Brian’s Decision.

§ October 21st, 2007 § Filed under Uncategorized Comments Off on Brian’s Decision.

From Spider-Man, Storm and Power Man (1992):


Here’s what I think Brian would say:


How’s ’bout you?

Please enjoy the velvety touch of Donny Osmond.

§ October 20th, 2007 § Filed under Uncategorized Comments Off on Please enjoy the velvety touch of Donny Osmond.

ad from Flash #272 (April 1979)

"Fan Fiction is an Internet site…."

§ October 20th, 2007 § Filed under Uncategorized Comments Off on "Fan Fiction is an Internet site…."

“Key Character in Harry Potter is Gay”

“One of the main male characters, a master wizard and headmaster of the book’s witchcraft school, known as Albus Dumbledore, was declared by author J.K. Rowling to be gay.”

[…]

“She then noted that Dumbledore’s love was his ‘great tragedy,’ and then chuckled, ‘Oh my god, the Fan Fiction.’

“Fan Fiction is an Internet site where fans can speculate, converse and write on books, movies, shows, etc.

“One branch of the site is dedicated to Harry Potter, and explicit scenes with Dumbledore already appear there.”

(via Metafilter)

FRECKLE WATCH 2007.

§ October 19th, 2007 § Filed under Uncategorized Comments Off on FRECKLE WATCH 2007.

  • Death of the New Gods #1 sold remarkably well, selling through all our copies by Thursday afternoon. I haven’t been looking ’round the internet at reactions to the series, but I imagine folks aren’t responding well to Off-Model Jimmy Olsen:


    WHERE ARE THE FRECKLES, MAN?

    And is this really what Jimmy’s Superman Signal Watch looks like? C’mon:


    Actually, none of this bothers me…well, maybe the freckles thing…as I’m just glad we’ve got Jim Starlin writing and drawing the New Gods. If I can’t have Kirby, and I can’t have Simonson, this’ll do. It’s a little odd, in that off-kilter Starlin manner, but entertaining.

    Oh, and the “retailer incentive” variant covers we received all have heavy dirt scuffs along the spine. Swell.

  • Superman: Bottle City of Kandor trade paperback – cover by DC Direct merchandise, apparently. Soon as Employee Aaron saw this cover, he pointed it out to me and said “Is…is that an action figure in the background?” And, yea, verily it was.

    Cover aside, this is another great collection of Silver Age ‘n’ ’70s Superman weirdness, culminating in the story with one of the greatest titles for a Superman story ever: “Let My People Grow!”

    And, if I may self-link, I addressed not long ago the questions about Kandor that DC Comics DARE NOT ANSWER.

  • Clean Cartoonists, Dirty Drawings was a hoot to flip through. Some of the illustrations came as no surprise…yeah, Wally Wood drew all kinds of filth (and his “Disneyland Memorial Orgy” is included) and Steve Ditko’s fetish stuff is represented, but Superman co-creator Joe Shuster? Charles Schulz? And Jack Kirby? Though Kirby’s pages are more “upsetting” than “dirty,” like walking in on your grandfather while he’s putting on his ballgag.

    There is a generous preview of the book on the official site allowing you to flip through a large number of the pages at reduced size.

    Oh, and Not Safe for Work, in case you couldn’t guess.

  • Archaic #10 – actually came in last week, but we got in a reorder because it was drawn by one of our customers, Weshoyot, and we all like Weshoyot.
  • Marvel Zombies 2 #1 – I’ve no beef with the Marvel Zombies comic in and of itself. That’s fine…it’s dark-humored and fairly clever. I’m just hoping that Marvel’s usual business practice of “find something popular and drive it into the ground as quickly as possible” with their onslaught of “zombie variant covers” hasn’t hurt the sales potential of this title. “Giving the customer what they want until they’re sick of it” rarely works as well as “leave the customer wanting more.”

    So far, the comic seems to be selling okay for us. Once you’ve got the customers buying the first issue, unless things go horribly awry most of them should stick through ’til the end. But Marvel probably shouldn’t press its luck with a Marvel Zombies 3, or, God help us, a regular series.

    Joking around the store, we were trying to come up with variant cover ideas for Marvel Zombies 2, playing off the “zombie variants” for the rest of the Marvel Universe. Employee Aaron’s idea would be just featuring all the heroes in their normal, non-zombified state. My idea was that they would all be actually dead, slumped to the ground, unmoving. Logo at the top, lots of white space, and then just a pile of superhero bodies and parts of bodies at the bottom.

  • So pal Dorian asked me to order for him a copy of Lio: Happiness Is A Squishy Cephalopod, which was a reprint volume of a comic strip I hadn’t heard of.

    It came in this week…I flipped though the book before putting it in Dor’s box…and then I placed an order for a copy of my own. What a wonderful and beautifully drawn strip, cheerfully morbid in a way that reminds me a smidgen of Gahan Wilson. And, like most comic strips that commit the crime of not being blandly unamusing, it has its share of humorless detractors who proclaim it unfit for children.

    Here, have a handy Amazon link:


    Buy two! Buy a dozen! Give ’em away for Halloween!

  • Pretty much all the posters we get nowadays have some pixelation, but you have to get your nose pretty close to the surface of the paper to notice. For example, if you look at the straight red line in the background of this Black Canary poster (in person, not just in the scan at the link), you can see what I’m talking about. But again, like I said, you’ve got to get pretty close to notice.

    But on this Batman poster, the pixelation is quite a bit more noticeable. This was the cover of issue #655, and I don’t think it was quite meant to be blown up to this size. If you see it in person, get a look at the bats, and at Andy Kubert’s signature. You don’t have to get too close to see the pixels, so hang this sucker high on the wall.

    Perhaps I exaggerate slightly, and it’s not really that distracting on the Batman poster. It’s just, compared to the others, the image in this Batman poster seemed less suited to being blown up to poster size.

    A side note: Employee Aaron noted that, if you didn’t know who Black Canary was, the poster makes her look like a crazed killer, with the blood of her victims splattered around her.

  • That the cover of the Army @ Love trade paperback is covered with pull-quotes from many, many reviews, I found very amusing, and very appropriate, given the nature of the book.

    So buy lots of copies of this book, and of the series itself, so that it’ll keep going and I can keep reading it. Thank you.

  • When we cracked open the shipment boxes on Wednesday morning, Employee Jeff grabbed the Transformers: Beast Wars comics and wouldn’t let me see them. I can’t imagine why.

The many faces of Pink Batman.

§ October 18th, 2007 § Filed under adam west Comments Off on The many faces of Pink Batman.

PINK BATMAN

IS HAUGHTY.

PINK BATMAN

IS ASHAMED.

PINK BATMAN

IS MIFFED.

PINK BATMAN

IS MILDLY SELF-CONSCIOUS.

PINK BATMAN

SEES YOU.

Found at the shop.

§ October 17th, 2007 § Filed under Uncategorized Comments Off on Found at the shop.

Marvel Comics promotional card (1994)


I don’t really know anything about this card or how it was distributed. I suspect it may have been intended as a school giveaway, but that’s just a guess. If anyone has any details, please feel free to let me know.

Blogging about blog banners is a sin.

§ October 17th, 2007 § Filed under Uncategorized Comments Off on Blogging about blog banners is a sin.

Starting today, I’m going to begin cycling through the various title banners that have been generously submitted by you, the loyal Progressive Ruin readers. I’m going to swap ’em out every few days, so remember to refresh that browser cache of my site every once in a while.

If you’d still like to submit a banner for future use, the details are, again, as follows:

  • 825 by 100 pixels, “mike sterling’s progressive ruin” all in lowercase, monospaced Courier font – when completed, send as an attachment to mikester (at) progressiveruin (dot) com.
  • No guarantee that your banner will be used, or for how long if it is used. Nothing personal, and I do appreciate every submission.
  • If I use your submission during this initial “cycling through the banners” period, a credit (including a link to your site, if applicable) will appear at the top of my sidebar. Should I decide to use one of the banners on a more permanent basis, a link will still be present, but probably will be moved to underneath my personal info.
  • I may also eventually create a randomized logo banner feature, causing a new one to load with each visit, in which case a separate page featuring all the used logos, with credits, will be created.
  • This is not a contest; there is no deadline. So long as I have an active website, and barring unforeseen circumstances and/or a change of heart, I will continue accepting banner submissions.

Again, thank you to you folks for your contributions. They’ve all been a lot of fun, and I truly am grateful for your time and effort.

Plus, a lot of you seem to think I’m some kind of Swamp Thing fan. I have no idea from where you got that impression.

"THOGAL RITUAL IN THE CAVES OF NANDA PARBAT!"

§ October 16th, 2007 § Filed under Uncategorized Comments Off on "THOGAL RITUAL IN THE CAVES OF NANDA PARBAT!"

Haven’t done a “let’s look at DC’s solicitations” post in a while, but this time around I found a few items I wanted to comment upon:

  • Finally, finally being released is the Teen Titans story by Bob Haney, Jay Stephens and Mike Allred (as Teen Titans: The Lost Annual), delayed for…well, quite a while, actually. I have a desktop wallpaper featuring Stephen’s pencils for the story on my computer, and the file is dated from August of ’03.

    And sure enough, some quick Googling turned up this 2003 post from Stephens on the Mike Allred message board about the cancellation (that I originally saw on an old Newsarama posting that I can’t get to load at the moment):

    “They say the story, written by original Titans CREATOR, Bob Haney, is simply ‘too weird’ and contradicts the current, highly successful, efforts of the new Titans monthly. In fact, they actually argued that the timing was bad, and that releasing the comic when the Titans weren’t so popular would be a better idea. This is the first time I’ve heard the argument that a tie-in to a hit project is uncommercial.”

    Whatever the reason for it finally being unleashed (probably something to do with the Teen Titans Year One mini), I’m just glad it is. Some lost Haney craziness is most welcome, especially if the powers that be thought it was “too weird.” That’s like a badge of honor…can’t wait to see it. And what I’ve seen of Stephen’s pencils look wonderful, so this is going to be one fun and good-looking package.

    Here’s the Nick Cardy cover:

  • Batman #673 – For some reason, this sentence lodged itself in my head:

    “This special flashback tale also revisits Batman’s life-changing Thogal ritual in the caves of Nanda Parbat!”

    “THOGAL RITUAL IN THE CAVES OF NANDA PARBAT!”

    “THOGAL RITUAL IN THE CAVES OF NANDA PARBAT!”

    This makes for a good personal mantra. Repeat that sentence to yourself in times of need.

  • Legion of Super-Heroes #38 – Reading this description:

    “Saturn Girl, Timber Wolf and Star Boy’s mission on the moon of Triton goes awry as Invisible Kid leads them into a lethal predicament. Meanwhile, Lightning Lad’s duties as team leader aren’t going any easier as he’s forced to sit through a painful tryout session for new Legionnaires.”

    …and knowing that Jim Shooter is responsible fills me with some small measure of hope. It just sounds like an old-fashioned Legion story, so let’s just say I’m cautiously optimistic.

  • Okay, The Spirit #14…this part had me sold:

    “Written by Sergio Aragones & Mark Evanier”

    I liked Darwyn Cooke’s Spirit stories at first, though I got a little weary of them after a while, for no real good reason I can name. But those two creators have rekindled my interest in the title.

    And this next bit just absolutely clinched it:

    “Art by Mike Ploog”

    Anything that gets me new Ploog funnybook art on a regular basis is a must-buy.

  • Trials of Shazam #11 – Holy frijole, is this comic still not done yet?
  • Batman: The Killing Joke Special Edition HC – Not too thrilled that it’s an eighteen buck hardcover, but at least it’s available outside of that Alan Moore trade paperback. Not that the Moore book is bad (especially since they’ve finally fixed the errors), but judging by the number of first printing Killing Joke prestige format comics we’ve sold lately, there’s still demand for just the one story on its own.

    Then again, a new first edition hardcover will likely attract more attention from buyers (and orders from retailers) than reprint #17 of the old prestige format edition.

  • Time Masters TP – I liked this series, and I’m really hoping the coloring is vastly improved. Not that the original colorist was bad or anything, just that the reproduction in the original comics seemed a little shaky.
  • American Virgin #23 – Whoa, final issue? I know it wasn’t a huge seller, but it seemed to be doing okay, at least for our shop. Was this a planned ending to the series or was it, um, decided for them?
  • Jack of Fables #19 – They’re really really really trying hard to make Babe the Miniature Blue Ox a wacky cult favorite character, aren’t they?
  • Batman: The Killing Joke Collector Set


    The last thing we really need is yet another Batman figure, but that Joker figure is fantastic.

  • Showcase Presents Series 1 Action Figures


    YES: Finally, a Jonah Hex figure. (Alas, no Hex variant.)

    NO: Please, no more Superman or Hawkman figures.

    MAYBE: Variant “Red Kryptonite” heads for Superman. I don’t want more Superman figures, but, but…RED KRYPTONITE HEADS.

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