This elephant had the right idea.

§ May 8th, 2007 § Filed under Uncategorized Comments Off on This elephant had the right idea.


So I went to the Los Angeles Zoo yesterday, and you know that scene in the first Jurassic Park movie, where the characters are being given their first tour of the attraction, during which no dinosaurs are seen and Malcolm (I think) says something along the lines of “it’s not much of a dinosaur park if you don’t have any dinosaurs.”

That’s kinda how it felt at the zoo yesterday. Several exhibits were “under construction,” so, for example, all the gorillas were put up in, presumably, a Motel 6 somewhere and we got to see construction crew in hardhats instead. And the animals that were there were all hiding in burrows or caves or otherwise in the shade because it was too freakin’ hot.

Okay, things improved as the day went on, and we did get to see plenty of animals, and I got to take lots of oddly-framed photos like the one above, and we had a lot of fun and a lot of three-dollar bottles of water, those bastards.

Why am I telling you about my zoo trip on my comics weblog, you may be asking? Because even at the freakin’ zoo, I couldn’t get away from the funnybooks. See, the L.A. Zoo just opened up, on May 3rd, a new special exhibit called Spider City, featuring lots of little, and not-so-little, eight-legged friends. It was inside a darkened building, with wall displays and glass cases filled with the critters…and as part of the exhibit, there were several large posters on the walls featuring mocked-up spider-themed comic book covers. We were told no flash photography inside the building, so no pictures, but in retrospect the posters were lit enough to have been picked up by my camera. I FAIL AT WEBLOGGING. So, you’re just gonna have to take my word for it that the exhibit had a comic-book theme to it (with a touch of ’50s sci-fi/horror mixed in…one display had the spider enclosed in a tiny scale model of an apartment, which had on its walls even tinier movie posters for films like Horrors of Spider Island and other MST3K favorites). Many of the educational signs strewn about the exhibit also emphasized the spiders’ “super powers” (leaping great distances, strength relative to size, heat vision, stuff like that).

I did take one photo of the exhibit’s entrance, because I thought it was neat:


And just in case you thought this was just a total coincidence that this Spider City exhibit opened at about the same time Spider-Man 3 was released…the gift shop just outside the exhibit was filled with Spider-Man merchandise, and was flanked by one of the large cardboard Spider-Man 3 displays you probably saw in your local theatre. Hey, whatever gets kids’ attentions, I guess.

Should have taken a photo of that, too. GAH. There I was, “having fun” and “relaxing” instead of thinking about generating content for my comic book site. Some weblogger I am.

Instead, here’s a photo of a couple chimpanzees staring each other down, just prior to the one on the left wigging out and going on a chimp rampage:


Honestly, it was really cool. He was smaking the ground, chasing other chimps around, throwing fruit at them…um, probably should’ve shot a pic of that, as well.


Since I mentioned the Spider-Man 3 display…have you all seen the theatre lobby display for the new Fantastic Four movie? The one that features a nearly-life-sized chomelike-substance-plated statue of Silver Surfer on his board? It really is a sight to see, and this time I have an excuse for not taking a picture of it, since I think having my digital camera in a movie theatre is a good way to get myself…disinvited, shall we say. And I couldn’t find an image of it online, either, so if you do get a chance to check it out at your local cinematic googolplex…well, do it quick before someone breaks it (like they did to the life-size Simpsons family couch display at our theatre).


From the eBay sales…here’s a final total on one of the pregraded ‘n’ sealed CGC comics (a “9.6”) we put up on the eBay a week or two back:


That’s a sale that the people and ‘zines who care about this sort of thing probably wouldn’t be too anxious to advertise. It certainly surprised me, given the usual emphasis placed by certain price guides on how having your books “professionaly graded” will increase their values.

As to why we’re carrying the pregraded books in the first place, when we’ve mostly avoided them before: we had a bunch dumped on us in a collection of signed books and variant covers that we acquired basically for a song from a customer of ours. He’s moving, and didn’t want to haul them along. So even at ninety-nine cents per book, we’d still be ahead. Thankfully, the other CCC books did sell for a little more (mostly 10-20 bucks a pop, for Jim Lee Batman and more Origin).


And now…a tortoise with his head in his bowl:

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