The above lesson on the nuances of mythological avarice is the reader's introduction into "Captain Marvel Fights the Menace of Greed" from Captain Marvel Adventures #111 (August 1950). The story is a quaint piece of agitprop crafted to evangelize on behalf of the post-WW2 "enlightened" variety of capitalism while dispelling any lingering spectres of Depression Era socialist agitation. While popular mythology might lead one to think that the national consensus of the World War II period continued unbroken though the mid-1960's, the truth is that the immediate post-war years were a time of rampant labor unrest. [...]
Dr. West's Magical Revivification Formula TM ! Another fine product from the Romero Corporation, a Skeletal Family Company! (Side effects may include a shambling gait, a slight rotting aroma, and an irrational craving for the flesh of the living. Should your skin split and slough off of your wet, gleaming skull, discontinue use immediately.) Given the known limitations of the four-color printing process on cheap newsprint, perhaps photographic testimonals weren't the wisest method of marketing a skin care product, especially when the rictus-grinning models looked like they just stepped in [...]
Let us move to New Hampshire And get back to nature In a pre-fab McMansion built on a clear-cut postage stamp. Let us move to New Hampshire Where vanity plates are cheap. HOTMILF bolted to the bumper of your Ford Galaxy and RONPAUL1 on my Escalade EXT. Let us move to New Hampshire, We will claim to be "independent," Make fun of Democrats, and vote Republican. Let us move to New Hampshire Where the finer things can be found Like fireworks, gun shops, And cheap crystal meth. Let us move to New [...]
From the "Dear Josie" advice column in Josie & The Pussycats #73 (December 1973), a poignant look at the problems facing yesterday's youth: Wow. Josie takes the "tough love" approach to a whole new level. The quotation marks around "groovy" and "bells" give the proceedings a certain Jack Webb je ne sais quoi : "Flares," "bells," "Bolivian boot-cuts" -- cute "with it" names for something as insidious as communist ideology. You kids need to realize that crimes against fashion are no laughing matter. [...]
During the Spring 1993 semester, I composed a series of "morning poems" which took the form of doggerel glosses scribbled in the margins of my class notes. Only fourteen of the original set of nineteen poems have survived the passing of time; the other five have been lost to various purges, though it is possible that a revised complete set still dwells in the documents folder of my wife's old Packard Bell 386. (Not that I'm in a hurry to find out, as I think the incompleteness adds a certain air of mystery, a la lost silent films [...]
A letter to the editor from the July 1983 issue of Blip ("The Video Games Magazine"): A news item from the August 1983 issue of Blip : Moebius - Video Soldier (from Video Soldier in a Radio War , 1982) - Martial chants for a digital age, an era when the battle lines were rendered in monochrome vectors set against featurless black voids and winning meant staving off inevitable oblivion for one more [...]
"If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great." - Alexis de Tocqueville Eh, it's nothing a little exceptionalism and a massive military arsenal can't fix, right? Fred Hughes - Don't Let This Happen to Us (from a 1971 single, collected on Let's Boogaloo, Vol. 3 , 2006) - The pinnacle of soul perfection. The Avengers - The American in Me (from a 1979 12"; collected on The Avengers , 1983) - I'm angry [...]
From a bulk flyer that arrived in yesterday's mail: I know the economy is going through a rough patch at the moment, but if it has started turning tricks for tenners then things are far worse than I previously thought. I suppose it had to find some way to pay for its nasty and destructive addiction to neoliberal policies. "Hey, mister, are you looking for some free market action?" "For real? How low are your interest rates, really?" [...]
Such as whether or not Mr. T really did eat your balls. "Good enough" really is good enough for me most of the time. I am a man of simple tastes and few ambitions. Any penalties that my lack of competitive drive have incurred have been more than ameliorated by my sense of laid-back equanimity. It's when events disrupt my comfortable state of deliberate equilibrium that I get, well, whiny . I was fine with the speed and performance of my current DSL service. It's easy to install and maintain, and [...]
Yet another quaint curio culled from Pizzazz , this time from the puzzle pages of the December 1977 issue: Sweet Christmas in July! I guess it truly is the season for giving... deeply ...of oneself. Hopefully Mr. Cage was enough of a "hero for hire" to reciprocate in kind. (The fact that this ran during the sleazy middle of the Flynt Era makes it difficult for me to believe that it was just another instance of comic double un- entendre . As one of my college literature professors was [...]
The World's Most Adorable Comics Blogging Bull turns six today! In honor of the joy that Bully has brought to a venue often frought with aggravation and stupidity, I offer this fine slice of punk pop whimsy that touches upon the Blessed Bovine's known interests... The Valves - Ain't No Surf in Portobello (from a 1978 single) - From one of the lesser known lights of the Britpunk's Class of '77, this track is an Anglocentric predecessor to The Gremies' "No Surfing in Dorchester Bay," and further proof that the lack of surfability is [...]
Bless me, St. Marlo, in my hour of need. As reality has repeatedly ignored my demands that it conform to my myopic personal vision, I have have been left with no choice but to respond in a manner befitting a mature adult. Since the bugs have not yet been worked out of the holdmybreathuntiliturnblue HTML tags, I will have to resort to the power of HIATUS ! Yes, a honest-to-gosh suspension of effort, because there is no means of protest as powerful as choosing to do nothing at all. [...]
I have no problems with the idea of growing older. A certain sense of fatalism and pronounced lack of ambition have made it easy for me to accept, rather than rail against, the immutable fact that this trip through the timestream is one-way only. It is far better to negotiate the rapids on one's own terms than to be worn down and swept away in a futile fight against the current. Besides, the concept of "youth" so many attempt to cling onto tends to be little more than a fixation on superficial trappings and cluelessness cloaked [...]
Having cemented my status as a somewhat well-regarded niche blogger with a daily readership in the upper three digit range, I have decided it is time for me to further expand my media micronation by branching out into the lucrative world of webcomics. One of the strategic advantages of working in that particular medium is that a lack of talent or an actual knack for humor poses no obstacle to success. Sure, one could take the thought and effort to create something that soars above the sea of mediocrity , but why bother [...]
Neolithic warrior-turned-immortal monster hunter Ulysses Bloodstone has a long way to go and a short time to get there, and of the many talents he's picked up over the course of 10,000 years... (from The Rampaging Hulk #3, June 1977; by John Warner, Sal Buscema, and Rudy Nebres) ..."patience in dealing with killer robots" is not one of them. The Strangeways - Wasting Time (from a 1979 single) - Further [...]
Like, those graphics are totally trippindicular! It's 1983, and the home videogame industry is on the verge of a catastrophic collapse. The mad rush to cash in on the videogame craze has led to a market saturated beyond sustainability with substandard product. The bargain bins of Heartland Drug (oh, how I miss that place) are groaning under the weight of hundreds of unsold cartridges priced at a deep discount. So how did C.B.S. Electronics choose to differentiate Solar Fox , its adequate port of an unremarkable 1981 coin-op title, from the [...]
(from Skeleton Key, Volume 3: Telling Tales , by Andi Watson) While I never self-identified as a goth back in the embarrassing old days, I did listen to and purchase quite a bit of "goth" music. By the time my twenty-first birthday rolled around, I had already started to evolve past my punk rock persona phase, as the stock set of subcultural trappings felt less like sincere act of rebellion and more like a cul-de-sac of clichés. Musically, too, my tastes had begun to shift from the aggro to the atmospheric [...]
The Chihuahua Men of Sirius-7 walk among us! (At least the caption writer had the integrity to make appropriate use of quotation marks.) It's one of the oldest tricks in the Handbook of Lazy Journalism : Take a current hot trend or media property, find a way to tie it back to some tangentially-related wire story, and from there stitch together a Frankenstein's monster consisting of equal parts press release and "news of the weird" item: Joe Q. Jackson's skin has a pronounced greenish hue -- not because of gamma radiation, [...]
Years before the Odinson mixed it up with Ego the Living Planet or the Autobots struggled against Unicron's Orsonwellesian might , the Big Red Cheese found himself going mano-a-planeto with a sentient planetary body which may be familiar to most of you... "Captain Marvel Battles the World" (from Captain Marvel Adventures #148, September 1953; by Otto Binder & C.C. Beck) is narrated by Earth itself. (For some reason I imagine Earth sounding just like Sterling Holloway.) After a quick introduction guaranteed to outrage [...]
On the outside, this unassuming metal box may look like yet another means for Andrew to earn a row of stitches and a tetanus shot, but inside... ...is a veritable treasure trove of 7" wonders from the Me Decade, providing an interesting cross section of funk, rock, and disco flavors of the moment. It's another one of Maura's estate sale discoveries, purchased a decade ago, then pushed to a corner of attic due to my lack of a functioning turntable. The organization and selection of the singles in the box [...]
Armagideon Time
Bison - Quill
Neutral Milk Hotel- Aeroplane Over the Sea
Mr Fogg - Eleven
Crocodiles - Endless Flowers
