Vintage movie poster: Burn, Witch Burn


Vintage ad: Halloween Kool-Aid


Today's best picture ever: Trick or treat!


Pop culture roundup: Dylan; vinyl; Marvel; Twin Peaks; Wonder Woman

The New Yorker discusses the long (long, long)-awaited release of Bob Dylan's complete "Basement Tapes," out next week.
In 1984, he told Rolling Stone, “I never really liked ‘The Basement Tapes.’ I mean, they were just songs we had done for the publishing company, as I remember. They were used only for other artists to record those songs. I wouldn’t have put ’em out.” The public wasn’t quite as skeptical. In 1975, Robert Christgau gave the album one of his rare A-plus grades and wrote, “This is the best album of 1975. It would have been the best album of 1967 too. And it’s sure to sound great in 1983.”
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Meanwhile, the Guardian has a detailed review of the Basement Tapes box set.
...the albums that preceded The Basement Tapes sound like works of supreme confidence, but these recordings sound rickety and strange...Sometimes he sounds like a man who thought the guy who shouted “Judas!” might have had a point after all, returning to the kind of songs he would have sung in folk clubs six years previously as if hoping to tunnel his way out of the mid-60s and back to a less chaotic, complicated time
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Via Jazzwax: A series of short educational films about how vinyl records were made back in their glory days.

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Variety previews Roy Thomas' upcoming "75 Years of Marvel Comics: From the Golden Age to the Silver Screen," a humongous, 712-door stop from Taschen (in the tradition of its big DC book a few years back) that traces Marvel from its early days as a struggling comic book publisher to its current status as a Hollywood powerhouse.


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"Twin Peaks" is returning to TV 25 years after its cancellation, but the Double R Diner (Twede's Cafe in real life) has been serving cherry pie and coffee that whole time. Fun place. I stop in nearly every time I drive to Seattle.

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The New York Review of Books looks at two new tomes examining the weird side of Wonder Woman. I read an excerpt from Lepore's book in the New Yorker recently and it's quite good.
It’s Jill Lepore’s contention in The Secret History of Wonder Woman that in looking back to the original Wonder Woman for a model, Steinem and her cofounders were on to more than a commercial hook. The superheroine, Lepore argues, has all along been a kind of “missing link” in American feminism—an imperfect but undeniable bridge between vastly distinct generations. Hiding in her kitschy story lines and scant costume were allusions to and visual tropes from old struggles for women’s freedom, and an occasional framing of battles like the right to a living wage and basic equality that have yet to be decisively won.

Fab Friday: Vintage Beatles pics








Kinky! "Tied-up" Batman and Robin action figures

On the way from Figures Toy Company.


Teaser video and picks: Doctor Who - Dark Water

A preview of this week's episode of Doctor Who: "Dark Water."












Leaked scene from Avengers: Age of Ultron


Marvel Comics now feature Jack Kirby co-creator credit

Apparently as part of the recent legal settlement between Marvel Comics and the Jack Kirby Estate, the publisher is now listing Kirby as a co-creator in its comics when appropriate.
All-New X-Men #33, Fantastic Four #12, Inhuman #7 and Wolverine and the X-Men #11 include the phrase “Created By Stan Lee and Jack Kirby,” while Death of Wolverine: Deadpool & Captain America #1 states, “Captain America Created By Joe Simon and Jack Kirby.” The credits pages can be found below.
This is a long, long time coming.



Vintage ad: Halloween at Woolworth's


Vintage movie poster: The Brain That Wouldn't Die



Today's best picture ever


Black Panther film, Avengers two-parter and more big news from Marvel

Marvel Studios today announced a whole mess of upcoming film projects, including a Black Panther film.

Let's bullet them out Stan Lee style:

ITEM! "Captain America: Civil War" May 2016.

ITEM! A Doctor Strange film in November 2016. "Sherlock" star Benedict Cumberbatch is likely the lead.

ITEM! "Guardians of the Galaxy 2" May 2017.

ITEM! "Thor: Ragnorak" July 2017. 

ITEM! "Black Panther" November 2017, to star Chadwick Boseman, who recently starred in the James Brown bio-pic "Get On Up." Here's concept art:


ITEM! A Carol Danvers as "Captain Marvel" film July 2018.

ITEM! "The Inhumans" November 2018.

ITEM! "Avengers: Infinity War," a two-parter with the first installment out in May 2018 and the second part a year later.

That's pretty much the rest of the decade. Can movie-goers stomach this many superheroes. I guess we'll see.

Vintage movie poster: The Colossus of New York



New comics Oct. 29, 2014: Tales From the Crypt Archives 5; Howard the Duck Omnibus; Iron Man Epic Collection; Avengers Masterworks 6; Archie; Peanuts; Pogo, more

Click the links to order discounted items from Amazon.

The EC Archives: Tales from the Crypt Volume 5
Dark Horse Comics is proud to bring you more creepily classic Tales from the Crypt! Digitally re-colored using Marie Severin's original colors as a guide, this twisted tome features stories drawn by the unforgettable artistic talents of Jack Davis, George Evans, Jack Kamen, Graham Ingels, Reed Crandall, Bernie Krigstein, Bill Elder, and Joe Orlando!


Get down, America! Vote Howard the Duck in 2008! That's right, folks. It's an election year, and what better way to celebrate than to cast your vote for the one candidate who'll tell it like it is. Born on a planet populated by talking waterfowl, Howard the Duck found himself trapped in a world he never made: ours! Howard was the archetypal outsider, able to see through the absurdities of human society in the 1970s with uncanny accuracy and an acerbic wit. His adventures presented writer Steve Gerber with a platform from which to engage in an ongoing critique of contemporary fools and pretenders, from power-mad capitalist wizard Pro-Rata to cult leader Reverend Joon Moon Yuc to the dreaded Doctor Bong! Experience for yourself the complete comic adventures of Howard in this Omnibus collection, reprinting his first appearances and the entire run of his first series. Collecting stories from Adventures Into Fear #19, Man-Thing #1, Giant-Size Man-Thing #4-5, Howard the Duck #1-33, Marvel Treasury Edition #12, and Marvel Team-Up #96.


In 1963, Marvel had hit after hit, bringing new characters and fresh concepts to a public primed and ready for heroes with feet of clay. And none touched both that heroic ideal and human reality like Iron Man! A jet-setter, playboy and brilliant scientist, Tony Stark's life changed forever when a batt lefi eld explosion ripped into his heart...and only the amazing Iron Man armor could keep him alive! Stan Lee and Don Heck built the foundati on that would turn Iron Man into a cultural icon.
COLLECTING: TALES OF SUSPENSE (1959) 39-72 (IRON MAN EPIC COLLECTION VOL. 1)



Get ready for Earth's Mightiest Heroes matched with two of comics' mightiest talents - Roy Thomas and John Buscema - as the Marvel Masterworks take you on a trip through one of the most stellar creative periods in Avengers' history! It's cover-to-cover watershed moments for the Avengers: the Black Panther joins the team, the Avengers fi ght the X-Men, an all-new Masters of Evil debuts, the first-ever full telling of Bucky Barnes' tragic death, a reality-bending batt le between the new Avengers and the original Avengers...and don't forget the first appearance of Ultron! And this storied Masterwork concludes with one of the most famous stories in all of Marveldom: the debut of the Vision and "Even an Android Can Cry."
COLLECTING: AVENGERS (1963) 51-58, ANNUAL (1967) 2, X-MEN (1963) 45.

ARCHIE 1000 PAGE COMICS CELEBRATION collects 1000 pages of iconic Archie tales in this one amazing volume! Follow America's favorite red-head as he navigates the pressures of the American teenager in the awkward, charming, and hilarious way you've come to know and love.

The paperback rerelease of Fantagraphics’ award-winning, best-selling Peanuts series.
Our second paperback volume of the acclaimed Complete Peanuts series finds Schulz continuing to establish his tender and comic universe. It begins with Peanuts’ third full year and a cast of eight: Charlie Brown, Shermy, Patty, Violet, Schroeder, Lucy, baby Linus, and Snoopy. By the end of 1954, Pigpen and his dust cloud join the crowd. Linus emerges as one of the most complex and endearing characters in the strip, and acquires his security blanket! Charlie Brown is becoming his best-known self, the lovable loser, but he hasn’t yet abandoned his brasher, prankish behavior from our first volume. And, Lucy has grown up and forcefully elbowed her way to the center of the action. For readers unfamiliar with the early years of the strip, Snoopy’s appearances here may come as the biggest surprise: he behaves, for the most part, like a dog! Partial color.
This is the second collection of Don Rosa’s wildly popular riff on Carl Barks’ Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge comics.
“Jumpin’ jacksnipes!” Duckburg’s richest tycoon is on the hunt for legendary square eggs—and he’s bringing Donald, Huey, Dewey, and Louie along! It’s our second complete, chronological book of Duck adventures by internationally celebrated fan favorite Don Rosa—following in the footsteps of Disney legend Carl Barks with his own distinctive style! Famed for his prizewinning Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, Rosa wrote and drew two decades’ worth of ripping Duck yarns and is among the world’s most beloved modern cartoonists. Star stories in our second Rosa book include “Return to Plain Awful,” Rosa’s sequel to Barks’ “Lost in the Andes.” Then, in “His Majesty McDuck,” Scrooge beats the IRS by seceding from the Union... only to have his new country colonized by the Beagle Boys! Plus more! Presented with a rich archive of Rosa’s cover art and behind-the-scenes factoids, these Duckburg epics are getting a definitive, comprehensive North American edition for the very first time—at a bargain price worthy of Scrooge himself! Full color.
Walt Kelly takes on Senator Joseph McCarthy in the form of wildcat “Simple J. Malarkey” (a controversial move at the time) and more in this collection of years 1953-1954 of the seminal mid-century newspaper strip.
It’s in this volume (featuring another two years’ worth of Pogo strips) that we meet one of Walt Kelly’s boldest political caricatures. Folks across America had little trouble equating the insidious wildcat Simple J. Malarkey with the ascendant anti-Communist senator, Joseph McCarthy. The subject was sensitive enough that by the following year a Providence, Rhode Island newspaper threatened to drop the strip if Malarkey’s face were to appear in it again. Kelly’s response? He had Malarkey appear again but put a bag over the character’s head for his next appearance. Ergo, his face did not appear. (Typical of Kelly’s layers of verbal wit, the character Malarkey was hiding from was a “Rhode Island Red” hen, referencing both the source of his need to conceal Malarkey and the underlying political controversy.) The entirety of these sequences can be found in this book. But the Malarkey storyline is only a tiny portion of those rich, eventful two years, which include such classic sequences as con-man Seminole Sam’s attempts to corner the market on water (which Porkypine’s Uncle Baldwin tries to one-up by cornering the market on dirt); a return engagement of Pup Dog and Houn’dog’s blank-eyed Little Orphan Annie parody “Li’l Arf and Nonny”; Churchy La Femme going in drag to deliver a love poem he wrote, Cyrano style, on Deacon Mush-rat’s behalf to Sis Boombah (the aforementioned hen); P.T. Bridgeport’s return to the swamp in search of new talent; and of course two rousing choruses of “Deck Us All With Boston Charlie.” In addition to presenting all of 1953 and 1954’s daily strips complete and in order for the first time anywhere (many of them once again scanned from original syndicate proofs, for their crispest and most detailed appearance ever), Pogo Volume 3: “Evidence to the Contrary” also contains all 104 Sunday strips from these two years, presented in lush full color for the first time since their original appearance in Sunday sections 60 years ago — plus the usual in-depth “Swamp Talk” historical annotations by R.C. Harvey, spectacular samples of Kelly’s work scanned from original art, and a whole lot more! Black & white with 104 pages of color.