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Was working on another project last night, so I didn’t have time to prepare a proper post for today. Sorry about that! But I did write a guest review for the Trouble with Comics group blog that was posted just the other day. So please, go read what I said about a certain comic publication’s huge influence upon a teenaged Mikester! (As usual, I ramble a bit and get off topic, but hopefully you’ll enjoy it anyway.)

CLICK TO PITCH A FIT

1982 comic book ad

…and I was all ready to crank this sucker up and shoot video of it for the delight and edification of all, but alas, the “action” part of the Spider-Man Action Alarm Clock no longer appears to work:

Well, the actual clock part still works, so if your thing is watching the hour, minute, and second hands spin around the clock’s face, then action is your reward, brother.

Anyway, when the clock’s alarm sounds, you get a little playlet of the eternal struggle of man in blue and red leotards versus a guy in a green Halloween costume, as Spidey shoots out of the door at the bottom of the building, “climbs” up the wall, and dives into that top window, there, tackling the Green Goblin. And then Spidey cycles back down through the body of the clock, where he hangs out behind a couple of tiny rubbery doors waiting to be called forth again. The Goblin, however, is still hanging out in that top window, leering at you from your nightstand, mocking the futility of Spidey’s battle against injustice.

Also, there’s a button you can press to set off this whole drama at your whim. Again, theoretically, since ours is busted.

Apparently the clock also projects Spider-Man’s face on the wall, just in case you have any kids you need to terrorize first thing in the morning as they groggily wake themselves from a fitful sleep, subconsciously aware that the Goblin’s eyes are gazing upon them from his building-top lookout. But again, that doesn’t seem to work on the actual clock I have in hand, either. WE CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS.

The clock does come with a Certificate of Authenticity, guaranteeing that this is an Honest-to-God genuine clock that broke during on us during the, oh, seven or eight years we’ve had it:

Thankfully, this guy did a video review of the Spider-Man Action Alarm Clock, and you can dig the excitement right here:

I’ve had these things floating around the backroom forever, and I had to peel off the series of price stickers on each of these, with the progressively lower and more desperate pricing.

First off, Cameron Hodge, a character I’m vaguely familiar with only from seeing him on the covers of comics I process here at the shop…can’t say I’ve ever actually read anything with him in it:

Figure includes a “water blasting bio weapon.”

WATER BLASTING BIO WEAPON.

Presumably this is analogous to an ability Hodge has in the comics and/or cartoon, but I suspect the less I know, the happier I am. But it’s hard to hate a toy that comes with a little squeeze box so you can shoot water at your friends. You know, if my old Darth Vader action figure, instead of having a lightsaber, had a little tube that ran through his arm and was fed by a squeezable water bulb, I would have happily spritzed the Rebels into submission. “BEHOLD THE SPRITELY WATERS OF THE DARK SIDE,” I’d intone deeply, as I gave Han and Luke what-for with liquid evil.

…

Um.

…

Anyway, get a load of this handsome bastard:

Sadly, has no bio weapon of his own, though surely the awesome mustache must have a martial arts belt of some kind. The package does blurb him as a “swashbuckling space pirate,” so you’ll have to settle for buckling some swashes for Corsair’s action feature.

So onto the eBay with you, my two little shelfwarmers. May you find a home there; a better home, or worse, so long as it isn’t mine.

Running a bit late here, so lemme jot down a few thoughts I done thunk about a few of this week’s comics:

• The Flash #1 – Still seems like this is all entirely unnecessary, aside from being a repair job caused by the torpedoing of the franchise, but…well, it all seems pleasant enough, I guess. If there has to be a Flash comic book, this one will do…things are set up quickly, appropriately enough, and we jump right into the action, and we’ve got the Rogues, and we’ve got superspeed stunts, and it’s all very much a Flash comic. Not sold on the art yet, despite a couple of individual pieces standing out nicely. Maybe I’m just not used to it, in that the art feels…gentler than what I’m accustomed to seeing in edgy, no-holds-barred, in-your-face modern superheroic adventures.
• Brightest Day #0 – Spins right out of the plotlines left dangling at the end of Blackest Night. I know some respected colleagues of mine hated this comic with a passion, but I think it looks like it could be an entertaining tour through the DC Universe. Or it could crash and burn completely. I don’t know…it’s all set-up, delineating the multiple plotlines we’re going to be getting over the next year, so we’ll see how it goes. Knocking down the number of issues in this year-long event book from 52 to 26 seems like a very good idea, given that DC’s last 52-issue mini was painfully thin on plot.
• Black Widow #1 – A lot of “wait…another Black Widow comic?” from the customers, since this new issue came right on the heels of two designed-to-be-collected-into-TPBs-for-the-Iron-Man-movie mini-series. Still sold a few, so why should I complain, right?
• PunisherMAX #6 – Dumb name, but still a great comic. The Kingpin storyline of the first few issues transitions nicely into this new Bullseye story, and it’s ridiculous and gross and remarkably entertaining. Plus, there’s a bit of business in here reminding you that 1) The MAX version of the Punisher was in the Vietnam War, and 2) he’s totally in his late 50s/early 60s by now. I really like the idea of Nearing Retirement Age Punisher.
• Irredeemable Special #1 – Good book featuring three short stories detailing backstories for some of the supporting characters. Howard Chaykin draws one of the stories, which involves a house of ill repute and lots of girls in skimpy underwear, so it pretty much needed the Chaykin treatment.

  Also, this time I went for the Retailer Incentive Variant, presenting all the previous “Giant Letter” variant covers from the series that spelled out the title. Thought it was pretty cool, couldn’t resist it.

…or the most beat-up:

from The Tandy Computer Whiz Kids (Fit to Win Edition) (1988) – art by Dick Ayers & Chic Stone

Sorry for the Low Content Mode over the last day or two…I’ve been otherwise occupied with, you know, things and stuff, which hasn’t been leaving me with a lot of prime blogging time. And, frankly, I’ve been going through a bit of a low point re: blogging enthusiasm, and I needed to recharge the batteries a little. Writing a longish review/reminiscence for another site (which should be up soon) helped pull me out of that funk a bit, so hopefully I’ll be back to normal in short order. Thanks for your patience, internet pals!

In the meantime, let’s see what other people who do have something to say…er, have to say, I guess:

• Congrats to Tim O’Neil, who reached his 1000th post, and cites me as one of his inspirations, which is extremely nice of him. He and I have been doing the blog thing for more or less the exact same amount of time, except he did the smart thing and only posted when he felt like it. Anyway, Tim is one of those few bloggers whose posts I immediately jump to whenever I see he has something new up in my feed reader, and I’m always rewarded with something insightful and amusing. Like, for example, this initial installment of his examination of the work of Frank Miller, which already promises to be a good read.
• Tom Spurgeon reviews The Art of Jaime Hernandez, which is absolutely a beautiful-looking book, and highly recommended. I’d been meaning to mention that our store gets kinda/sorta mentioned…not by name, but as the “local comic shop in Ventura” that was the first to carry the original self-published version of Love and Rockets. I seem to remember seeing that original #1 in the local Big Indie Record Store at the time, too, but maybe I’m remembering wrong. I am old, you know…the brain’s the second thing to go.*
• I’ve mentioned before that Andrew is one of my favorite comic bloggers…intelligent, witty, and has a fantastic Bostonian accent that’s a pleasure to listen to over the Xbox Live chat function, helping to ease the pain of his unerring ability to slaughter me repeatedly whenever we play Grand Theft Auto IV together. Anyway, all that preamble is about is to get you to visit this link to another entry in his ongoing series “Nobody’s Favorites.” This time he talks about a character in a comic that I see all the time at the shop, but I think, to this day, I’ve never actually looked inside it. And Andrew’s post makes me glad I haven’t.
• I haven’t linked to them in a while, but every week I download and listen to War Rocket Ajax, the Podcast That Walks Like A Man, and you can listen to the newest episode right here. This is a shorter episode, with Chris and Eugene shootin’ the breeze for about an hour. Good stuff, and one of the very few comic podcasts I listen to.
• Who’s got webcomics for sale in print form? Why, Agreeable Comics does, with new print editions of She Died in Terrebonne and The Loneliest Astronauts available at prices too low to mention here! Also available for sale is the first book collection of The Rack, which features one strip written by ME!!!!!!!, and a bunch of strips by some other guys whose names escape me.
• I should note that I’ve been working on The Bureau Chiefs site, the home of the folks what brung you Fake AP Stylebook. One feature I work on has a name that may be familiar to longterm fans of my site: “This Is A Fetish for Someone.” Mostly it’s just pics of terrible things found by me and the rest of the Chiefs, combined with a short comment or two from me. I also assist pal Dorian and the other Chiefs in the production of his News Briefs column, providing smart-alecky commentary on current events. It’s a lot of fun, and I hope you folks enjoy it as well. Or, at least, aren’t terribly offended by it.

Hmmm…well, I actually feel a bit of that blogging enthusiasm coming back after writing all that. I guess the cure to “not feeling like writing” is “writing anyway!”

* The first thing to go? “Lack of excess ear hair.” Look forward to that, younglings.

• Oh, hey, the first batch of Free Comic Book Day comics is showing up this week! The event looms ever closer. We ordered even more comics than in previous years, so we’ll see how this works out. Not “works out” as in how the actual event will run…our FCBD events are always successful. I’m just wondering where I can stow the boxes ’til the balance of the order comes in and I can start sorting everything.
• That Chris Sims guy reviews bad movies he gets from the Netflix over at Heavy.com, and this week he’s covering Comic Book Pajama Party. It’s girls talking about comics, and there’s pajamas, and there’s…well, terrible, terrible things. I almost rented this for website fodder myself a couple of years back, but decided I didn’t want to have to explain to the girlfriend why I’m watching a video called Comic Book Pajama Party. Anyway, Sims took the bullet for the rest of us, so do the man a solid and read that review.
• I mentioned this on the Twitter, but I’ll bring it up here, too: calling the store to ask us about something is best not done while you’re also placing an order in a fast food drive-though. I mean, c’mon.

Please note the polite laughter of the Flash and Green Lantern. Well, the Flash is probably just being polite, anyway. This actually strikes me as being right up GL’s alley humor-wise.

image from Super Powers Collection: Hawkman (1983)

So anyway, guess which cartoon I saw for the very first time ever this past week?

After revealing on the Twitter that I had never seen the Tick cartoon from the mid-’90s, pal Sean took it upon himself to rectify this particular oversight of mine and brought me his Tick series DVDs.

Now, I was a fan of the Tick nearly from the get-go. A college friend of mine extolled the virtues of the comic book series to me shortly after the original run (by creator Ben Edlund) had begun, and I ended up jumping on with the fourth or fifth issue, and picking up the back issues. However, after Edlund wrapped up his stint on the comics and passed them on to other hands, I lost interest in the series. Not that there was anything wrong with the comics, but whatever particular part of Edlund’s vision that appealed to me so much about those initial installments was no longer there, and the comics just didn’t do anything for me. I realize that’s a minority opinion, and I’m certainly not down on the work anyone’s doing for those comics, nor on the folks who still read and enjoy them. They just weren’t my cup of tea, is all.

And even though I missed the original run of the cartoon, I did not miss a single aired episode of the Tick live-action series, despite the Fox Network’s best efforts at hiding it from potential viewers. I thought it had a strong cast, funny writing, and, of course, Batmanuel. And it’s good to know that the actor who played Batmanuel, Nestor Carbonelle (better known today as Richard from Lost) still has fond memories of the role.

And now, thanks to pal Sean, I’ve seen one whole episode of the seemingly highly-regarded animated series. …Not bad, not bad. Understandably, they’ve left out the Tick’s escape from an insane asylum, which might have been a bit much for a kids’ cartoon, but so far very reflective of the Edlund run on the comic. Yes, because Edlund worked on the cartoon, too, I know. So it looks like I’ll be catching up on this series over the next few days, alternating with episodes of Breaking Bad Season 2 (another series I’m catching up on). That should make for an odd viewing experience.