February 2006

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The Origin of Lighter-Fist!

Once again, instead of working on something worthwhile, I've come up with another ridiculous comic-book script, this time for a super-villian whose power comes from Bic lighters-- a bad man to meet at a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert.

PANEL ONE:
Picture of our villian in costume, posing.
TITLE CAPTION: "The Origin of Lighter-Fist!"
BOTTOM CAPTION: He can blow up the world!

PANEL TWO:
Picture of an ugly, somewhat pinheaded dolt, "cigarette" dangling from his mouth, inspecting the lighter in his hand.
CAPTION: One day while lighting a reefer, low-life and criminal Vaclav Skrota learned a fact that changed his life.
SKROTA: "Warning: This lighter has the explosive power of one stick of dynamite." Geez, and it only cost 59 cents!

PANEL THREE:
Skrota burns with sudden realization.
SKROTA: Wait a minute-- with cheap dynamite at my command, I could blow up anybody or anything that got in my way. I could rule the world! Or at least fuck it up!

PANEL FOUR:
Another super-heroic, er, -villianous pose in costume and mask, holding his lighter high.
CAPTION: Overnight, Vaclav Skrota was transformed into LIGHTER-FIST-- the most explosive super-villian who ever lived!

PANEL FIVE:
Lighter-Fist at a bank-teller's window, brandishing his fist at the poor wage-slave.
CAPTION: He immediately goes on a crime spree!
LIGHTER-FIST: Give me all your money or I'll blow your head off!
TELLER: But-- but I only look gay!
BANK GUARD (running up behind him, gun drawn): Hey, buddy, drop that Bic and spread 'em! I am gay!

PANEL SIX:
Lighter-Fist turns on the guard and swings, in Jolly Jack Kirby style (if Jack had drawn characters with lighters).
LIGHTER-FIST: You asked for it, my homo-erotical friend-- behold the power of LIGHTER-FIST!

PANEL SEVEN:
A mighty cloud of "Ka-Pow" covers the area where fist meets skull.
CAPTION: The impact of the explosion was heard across the room!
GUARD: Yaaah! My head!
LIGHTER-FIST: Arggghh! MY HAND!!

PANEL EIGHT:
A policeman takes away the defeated Lighter-Fist, whose right arm now comes to a burnt point.
CAPTION: Unfortunately for Lighter-Fist, the impact of his mighty punch also destroyed his own hand.
LIGHTER-FIST: Shit! I never thought of that!
POLICE-MAN: When we get in the car, hang your arm out the window-- it stinks!

THE END OF LIGHTER-FIST . . . or is it??

Posted by Steve Monaco at February 28, 2006 3:18 PM

 

Dennis Weaver, R.I.P.

As they say, deaths come in threes, and following Don Knotts and Darren McGavin comes the news that Dennis Weaver has passed away at the age of 81. He was a better actor than many people might think, and I will always love him for his hilarious portrayal of the marijuana-phobic motel manager in Touch of Evil. ("Ah'm the night man!") Adios, amigo.

P.S. Here's a link to the five-part on-line interview with Weaver from the archives of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

Posted by Steve Monaco at February 27, 2006 1:39 PM

 

Happy birthday, Steve Monaco . . . and Ralph Nader

Ralph turns 72 today, and the new documentary about him, An Unreasonable Man, sounds great, and I can't wait to see it. Yours truly is now 52, which feels like the number of miles-per-hour I'm zooming down the other side of the mountain. Call me morbid, but I can't forget the words of the 92-year-old woman who was offered a deal on magazine subscriptions: "At my age, I don't even buy green bananas."

Posted by Steve Monaco at February 27, 2006 2:30 AM

 

The Monday Movie Quiz #96

How about another detective movie, one that's set in the same basic era as The Maltese Falcon but made nearly half-a-century later. (Another hint: unlike the pic below, the movie is in color.) Name the film that features people who look like this:

If you know it, send me an email with the title by late Sunday night. If you're correct, expect to see your name in next week's four-color winner's circle.

Posted by Steve Monaco at February 27, 2006 2:24 AM

 

Last week's Movie Quiz winners

When Roger Ebert's right, he's right, and his pithy assessment of last week's quiz movie, The Maltese Falcon (1941), nails it: "The movie is essentially a series of conversations punctuated by brief, violent interludes. It's all style." And man, what style! Even considering its source-- one of the finest, most enjoyable novels ever written, no matter what the genre-- director John Huston made a movie so dazzling that, as Ebert also points out, it "accomplished things that in their way were as impressive as what Welles and Gregg Toland were doing on Citizen Kane."

He couldn't have done it, however, without one of the most striking casts of all time, character actors all, including Humphrey Bogart in the role that helped define the rest of his career. Playing Sam Spade as anything but a nice guy, he's alternately hilarious and explosive (much like the movie's blend of dialogue and action), and it's a credit to the rest of the cast that he doesn't command attention at all times.

Of course, much of the rest of that cast played some of the gayest characters the movies had ever seen outside of Franklin Pangborn-- Sydney Greenstreet (in his first film) is always putting his hand on Bogie's knee, and his relationship with his young "gunsel," Elisha Cook, Jr., is also suspect. (In fact, "gunsel" was a slang term of the day with homosexual implications; today he'd be called a "bottom," which, considering Greenstreet's girth, must have been a fate worse than death.) And the gardenia-scented Joel Cairo, played to perfection by Peter Lorre, is more of a lady than the film's femme fatale.

If the film has any flaw whatsoever, it's the casting choice of Mary Astor. As Steve Perry pointed out in his email, as a sex symbol, she just wasn't that hot. (Astor in real life was another story, as her diaries attest, and her hands-on affair with George S. Kaufmann is well documented in Hollywood Babylon.) Rewatching the film, I was more impressed by Lee Patrick as Spade's secretary Effie-- later in her career, she played plump, nervous old biddies like Topper's wife on TV, but here she's likeable and attractive.

(The best actor in the film has only one line and gets no screem credit: the character of Capt. Jacobi, who staggers into Spade's office with the falcon and then dies, is played by the director's father, Walter Huston.)

Enough. If you know the film, you know it so well that you don't need me to tell you any more about it, and if you don't know it, for God's sake, get thee to a video store! So congratulations and a Mickey Finn to the following quiz winners: Wayne Palmer, Mark Gisleson, E. Yarber, Christina O'Sullivan, Corey Anderson, Jim Youngdahl, Bill Hearne, Hank Parmer, and Kevin Musolino.

P.S. Mr. Yarber also provided a personal Hammett-related story that, with his permission, I'm going to share: "I read the novel in one sitting while taking a bath in my then-new San Fransisco apartment. Hammett was very clear on the buildings and addresses mentioned in the story, and I quickly found myself identifying places I passed every day. (The villains all lived in ritzy places I would never be able to afford). In fact, as the story came to a climax, I found myself growing increasingly nervous... the action was getting closer and closer to the very spot I was at!

"I had a very strange feeling upon finishing the book, and soon discovered that Hammett had written it (as well as most of his other Black Mask stuff) at a small apartment across the street from where I was living! He'd made this apartment Spade's, just as Spade's office was in the same building where Hammett had worked writing copy for a jewelry store (the local Pinkerton offices were there, too)."

Posted by Steve Monaco at February 27, 2006 1:16 AM

 

Greil Monaco's No-Life Top 10-- The Even-Less-than-Usual Edition

I always feel bad about stealing Mr. Marcus' dormant gimmick (although not bad enough to quit, obviously), but I feel worse than usual this time because I have even less than usual to offer. You'll see.

1) Dick Cheney's "Shotgun Boogie." Listening to Dick Dead-Eye coldly demote his victim from "good friend" to "just an acquaintance" within seconds, I thought how lucky Patrick Leahy was that Cheney wasn't armed during their Senate showdown. I was surprised that the Veep of Darkness didn't take the same mea culpa approach he took to explain the Leahy incident: "I don't think I shot him-- I don't remember doing it, anyway. I may have done it, I probably did. Anyway, it was long overdue and I'm glad I shot him." And while Harry Shearer started his radio show this week with a bang (nyuk nyuk) by playing "Shotgun" by Junior Walker and the All-Stars, no one seems to have played the perfect song: the lovely ditty by Tennessee Ernie Ford mentioned (and linked) above. It even has an appropriate verse about meeting "a purty gal" who impresses Ernie with the size of her gun.

2) The above reminds me . . . When the author of The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire died (coincidentally, almost 13 years ago, on Feb. 24, 1983), a New York anchorman-- don't know who-- told his audience that the theatrical world had just lost a giant: the great playwright, Tennessee Ernie Williams.

3) My own mea culpa. Sometimes, you miss having an editor. Okay, no, you don't, but I wish somebody had told me before I posted my comics script last week that "Dog on Fire" is not only the name of a song by They Might Be Giants, but that the song is the theme for The Daily Show! Shit, I suppose I'll find out next that I also didn't make up the name "Couch Pundit." (Actually, Steve Perry came up with the name-- too bad he didn't know the Giants song, either.)

4) I still love Beaver. I'm finally getting around to the DVD set of Leave It To Beaver, and it's so nice to see the shows without the time-compression they get from TV Land, which makes faces look like they're swimming around on the kids' heads. The earliest episodes are the best, when Jerry Mathers' cuteness and Tony Dow's earnestness were completely genuine. Here's a sound clip from one of my all-time favorites, "Beaver Gets 'Spelled," where Wally forges a note from Mom. The last voice in the clip is that of the steely Doris Packer, the toughest TV prinicipal ever.

(From the unaired episode "Wally's Secret Underwear")

5) I turn 52 next Monday. And every birthday, I have the same question: How is it possible for the years to fly by, yet the days just drag . . .

If you actually made it to the end of this, I'm sorry, but you have to admit: you were warned.

Posted by Steve Monaco at February 20, 2006 11:18 PM

 

The Monday Movie Quiz #95

A very easy-to-identify movie from the '40s this week, made only slightly more difficult because the clue is a cast photo, not a still from the film. But it's one of the most famous and recognizable casts of all time, even in a weird pose like this:

Of course you know who they are! (But it was just too good a pic to waste.) So send me an email by late Sunday night with the title of the film they starred in, and if you're correct, expect to see your name in next week's winners circle, which, I predict, will be record-breaking.

Posted by Steve Monaco at February 20, 2006 2:49 AM

 

Last week's Movie Quiz winners

Hollywood doesn't make many deal-with-the-Devil movies any more, which is odd, since the old adage is "Write what you know." It's also odd that the best of the bunch, last week's quiz movie The Devil and Daniel Webster, hasn't been remade a dozen times, because it's the kind of classic they love to ruin.

So far, only Jennifer Love Hewitt has challenged the magnificent Walter Huston in the role of Mr. Scratch (or, in Jennifer's case, just "The Devil"). I don't need to see her interpretation to know that it's nowhere close to the scenery-licking performance of Huston's as he reels in the soul of a money-grubbing young farmer. Co-star Edward Arnold wasn't in Walter's league as an actor, but his inherent stuffiness worked well for the character of Daniel Webster, patriotic windbag.

(By the way, the role of Mr. Scratch was also played by none other than Michael Berryman, on an episode of Michael Landon's turgid-angel TV show, Highway to Heaven. I didn't see it, but I'm sure all it lacked was Jennifer Love Hewitt.)

I knew I'd be amused as always by Huston, but re-watching the film, I was impressed by the performance of James Craig as the protagonist, Jabez Stone. He does a good job of playing the change in the character after his devil's bargain has been sealed. This is also the other great Simone Simon movie (Cat People, of course, being the other). Here she plays a part that is basically Hell's own whore, and she looks fantastic.

I liked the way the movie's mood goes from folktale to fantasy to horror movie, and some of the spooky scenes (well-directed by William Dieterle) must have influenced Roger Corman and Mario Bava. The supporting cast is filled with great golden-age Hollywood regulars, and there isn't a pretty one in the bunch (especially Jane "Ma Joad" Darwell), making the later scenes with their ghostly, distorted faces seem genuinely eerie.

So congratulations and a second chance to the following quiz winners: Hank Parmer, Wayne Palmer, Joe Rosenberg, E. Yarber, Christina O'Sullivan, and Kevin Musolino.

Posted by Steve Monaco at February 20, 2006 12:50 AM

 

"It'll be a long time before that puss of yours looks human again"

Myron Healey slaps Joyce Jameson around in the 1954 feature Gang Busters, based on the radio program

I'm still surprised by how violent some of the old radio shows were, like the Lights Out! clips I posted awhile ago. Lately, I've been enjoying a crime show from the '40s and '50s called Gangbusters, and when the show was "on," it was a riot. And also tough as hell, even more surprising when you consider that it was primarily a kids' show. Here are a couple excerpts (1, 2) from an episode called "The Case of Blackie Thompson." Blackie is a typical Gangbusters serial killer, gunning down a carload of cops with gusto and teaching his girlfriend about the wonders of pigskin gloves.

Posted by Steve Monaco at February 19, 2006 12:57 AM

 

The Adventures of Dog-on-Fire!

Since my Saturday traffic is about 3 or 4 people, all of whom I know personally, I thought we'd continue in the vein of last week's Shadow posting and keep it comics-and-nostalgia related. But this week's entry isn't from the past-- it's a brand new comics script by yours truly. Sorry, but I have no idea why I did it.

PANEL ONE
TITLE: "The Adventures of Dog-on-Fire"
(Picture underneath title of a very miserable-looking, blazing canine.)

PANEL TWO
(A happy-looking dog, ala Tramp from Lady and the ..., trotting down the street.)
CAPTION: Meet Lothario, a happy, horny mutt from the other side of the tracks. He has dozens of girlfriends and hundreds of kids-- life is fuckin' sweet!

PANEL THREE
(A flaming ball falls from the sky and onto Lothario, knocking him flat.)
CAPTION: One night, a meteor falls from space and lands on Lothario, causing him to spontaneously combust!

PANEL FOUR
(Bigger but similar picture like panel one, with the dog in a mock superhero pose.)
CAPTION: The meteor turns him into . . . DOG-ON-FIRE!!
DOG: Yelp! Yipe! Whine!

PANEL FIVE
(A mansion is burning and two men are on the sidewalk in front, watching. In the house, an old man is in a front window, waving his arms.)
CAPTION: Meanwhile, the old Osbourne place has mysteriously caught fire.
OLD MAN: Help! Help!
MAN ON SIDEWALK #1: Old Man Osbourne is trapped in the house! He'll be burned alive!
MAN ON SIDEWALK #2: But the fire's out of control. No one could possibly save him!

PANEL SIX
(Dog-on-Fire runs by and the men point to him.)
MAN #2: Hey, that dog's already on fire! Let's send him in the house!
MAN #1: Go get 'im, boy! Go rescue the old prick!
DOG: Yelp! Yipe! Whine!

PANEL SEVEN
(Dog-on-Fire drags the old man out of the house with a firm jaw-hold around the old man's neck.)
MAN ON SIDEWALK #1: He's doing it! He saved the old man!
DOG: Grrrrr! Yipe! Yowl!
OLD MAN: Aaargghh! My t'roat!

PANEL EIGHT
MAN #1: Let's hear it for Dog-on-Fire! Our hero!
MAN #2: May he rest in peace.
(Close up of Dog-on-Fire, flat on the sidewalk, burned to a cinder.)

THE END

Posted by Steve Monaco at February 18, 2006 1:06 AM

 

The Dick Cheney shot-glass

Posted by Steve Monaco at February 15, 2006 11:20 PM

 

Last week's Movie Quiz winners

People usually think I'm kidding when I put The Seventh Seal on my list of favorite Westerns, but I think it's a great one-- The Man with No Name crossed with Masque of the Red Death. (Roger Corman was a big Ingmar Bergman fan-- don't you think it shows, especially in the Poe films?) It's also on my list of non-English language pictures that I'd most recommend to first-time foreign film watchers. It was one of my first favorites, right up there with M and Beauty and the Beast, and I can't believe that any movie-loving teenager today wouldn't be impressed by it, too, subtitles and all.

(On the other hand, never underestimate the general public's loathing of the subtitle. At my neighborhood video store, they label non-English discs "WITH SUBTITLES!", and I was told that, before they added the warning, people would return the movies livid with rage and demand refunds. An old, not-too-bright acquaintence of mine may have spoken for all of them, when he complained about the Italian scenes in The Godfather II: "I don't go to the movies to read.")

Although the movie is in black-and-white, it is one of the blondest films ever made. Bibi Andersson was a vision of Swedish beauty, and I guess the same could be said for Max von Sydow. Both positively glow on the screen. I prefer the darker-haired actors, though, especially the great Gunnar Bjornstrand (he was last week's picture clue). He's funnier, too, now that the translation is better and closer to what was really said (I've seen old prints of French films where "Merde!" becomes "Damn!") At one point, his character tells a maid, "I could have raped you, but I'm tired of that kind of love. It gets a bit dry."

Several of Bergman's films work especially well on TV, and this is one of them. Even in the crowd scenes, like the harrowing plague march, don't suffer by being on the smaller screen. (It also helps to hide the occasional evidence of a studio-shot film with a modest budget.) And like another great Bergman-von Sydow film, Hour of the Wolf, the quieter moments are intimate to the point of claustrophobia.

So congratulations to the following quiz winners who know a classic when they see it: Wayne Palmer, E. Yarber, Hank Parmer, Jim Youngdahl, Christina o'Sullivan, Bill Hearne, Christopher Bahn, and Kevin Musolino. Sorry I made you wait a day for your kudos (my goddamned DVD player croaked last night in the middle of the movie, which is kind of fitting when you think about it).

Posted by Steve Monaco at February 14, 2006 12:30 AM

 

The Monday Movie Quiz #94

Welcome to my 500th blog entry! Actually, the Shadow posting on Saturday was the real 500th entry, but I didn't know it then. But logging on tonight, I couldn't believe that it was possible-- ask anyone who knows me, they'll tell you I don't have 500 things to say, but maybe five things that I say a hundred times apiece.

Anyway, we've been having a good turnout for the golden oldies, so let's have another, this time from the year 1941. Recognize these two famous characters?

If you do, send me an email by late Sunday night with the name of the movie they're in (if you know their names, you know the title). If you're right, expect to see your name in next week's statesmanlike winners circle.

Posted by Steve Monaco at February 13, 2006 12:18 AM

 

The Shadow in "That sickening, pit-of-the-stomach feeling"

The Shadow sez: Buy my employer's tires!

Bonus Saturday sound treat: a tire commercial from 1937 starring a pre-Kane Orson Welles. Listen especially to the creepy, fear-mongering tone-- enjoy, and drive safely.

Posted by Steve Monaco at February 11, 2006 4:03 AM

 

Ralph Nader, Sundance star

One of my fondest memories of Ralph-- joining Bob McGrath in a duet of "These Are the People in Your Neighborhood" on Sesame Street

A new documentary about Ralph Nader, An Unreasonable Man, premiered at the Sundance Festival (and was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize), and the film's subject attended the screening. No word on when it will be released, but it sounds too good to miss-- here's an early review by a Sundance attendee and Nader supporter that makes the film sound like it does a good job setting some 2000 records straight. (One more time: 250,000 registered Dems in Florida voted for Bush, and they blame Gore's loss on Nader's 96,000?) Ironically, a documentary about climate change-- and Al Gore-- also premiered at the festival. It wasn't nominated for anything, and I'm sure the Dems blame the Nader doc.

P.S. On a very sad note, Ralph's mom died a couple of weeks ago at the age of 99.

Posted by Steve Monaco at February 8, 2006 11:48 PM

 

"Brian Wilson singing by the 105 freeway-- what could be better?"

Last may, I posted a piece to Culture to Go about the childhood home of Brian, Dennis and Carl Wilson becoming a California landmark. (Unfortunately, the house itself was torn down long ago, and replaced with a freeway.) But I missed this great webpage by Kurt Benbenek, an eyewitness to the ceremony itself. Even if you're not a Beach Boys fan, it's often laugh-out-loud funny. Here are a couple of excerpts:

"I saw Beach Boy Al Jardine walking around and mingling with the the early-morning fans. He's a very small fellow. I didn't bother to get his autograph or shake his hand. I wasn't that interested in him."

[STEVE ADDS: To date, meeting Al when I was 17 is still my only brush with BB greatness.]

"Two older Beach Boys fans discuss the political ramifications of the official program guide, while the man in the red shirt ponders the influence that Pet Sounds had on The Beatles."

Posted by Steve Monaco at February 8, 2006 11:06 PM

 

My movie year (so far)

By now, this little exercise is just my excuse to show some groovy old movie posters. Like this one from Sweden:

1) The Flying Deuces (1939), directed by A. Edward Sutherland. This one has been argued about for years at its imdb user comments page, with some fans saying it's not up to their Hal Roach work and others saying it's the best thing they ever did. Depending on what part of the movie you're watching, both views are right. It's cheaper than their Roach stuff (and considering the boys made $300 a week, that's saying something) and not everything works, but there are some parts that are truly sublime L&H. Examples of the latter: Stan's impromptu harp concert in jail, using bed springs (and what a barbed tribute to a certain Marx brother, especially Ollie's disgusted reaction), and the unexpected and lovely "Shine On, Harvest Moon" that they perform in the middle of their jail break.

2) The Giant of Marathon (1959) starring Steve Reeves, directed by Jacques Tourneur and Mario Bava. Besides being a loser of a peplum, there's a big problem with parts of this film. B-Movie Central describes it well: "They beat the ever living hell out of their horses. There were a lot of horses tripped up and rolled in this film, and they couldn't possibly have done it without injuring not only some of the horses, but some of the riders as well. [In one scene, an actor's] horse took a front end dump. Whoever was on the horse ended up under the the horse's hooves when the horse got up and ran off. The other scenes that made me cringe were the ones where the Persians launched their main assault. The Athenians had dug trenches, and when the horses hit them, the horses and the riders were rolled into one big jumble." They go too far in the other direction with animals today (John Waters had to kill an artifical fly at the beginning of Serial Mom), but when you see an old movie like this, you understand why.

3) A Snake of June (2002), directed by Shinya Tsukamoto. This is by the maker of Tetsuo: Iron Man, which was literally a heavy-metal horror movie (those who've seen it know what I mean), but ultimately seemed a forced exercise in weirdness. Not this one-- it's a genuinely creepy story of voyeurism, done in a strange, dreamlike style. The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw wrote a typically fine review. I'll just add that it would make a great double feature with Peeping Tom. Recommended.

Posted by Steve Monaco at February 7, 2006 12:25 AM

 

The Monday Movie Quiz #93

It's another movie from the '50s. Know this guy?

Hint: the movie has one of the most well-known and imitated scenes in cinematic history. and it involves a two-person game.

So, know the title? Then send me an email by late Sunday night, and-- if you're correct-- you'll see your name in next week's winners circle.

Posted by Steve Monaco at February 6, 2006 2:36 AM

 

Last week's Movie Quiz winners

One of the nicest things about doing this blog has been finding out that I'm not alone in disliking certain highly-revered movies. Casablanca is the perfect example-- Roger Ebert is even on record as saying you're not a movie fan if you don't like it. I wrote about my indifference to it a few years ago (you can find it here), and I was gratified to receive a few non-Ebertian thumb's-ups from readers who didn't think it was that great, either.

Another of my cinematic heresies is that I really don't like Hitchcock much, or much Hitchcock, or both. And it's primarily the '50s movies I'm supposed to consider classics that bore me the most. There are three main reasons: 1) unless it involves Laurel & Hardy or the original King Kong, I hate rear-screen projection (Stanley Kubrick even commented with snide distaste about Hitchcock's overuse of the device), 2) I don't like J-J-Jimmy Stewart much, either, and 3) I'm uninterested to slightly sickened by Alfred's ice-cream blonde fetish. Give me Sophia Loren!

I find that the Hitchcock pictures I liked when I first started watching films seriously are still the ones I find most satisfying, and at the top of the list is Strangers on a Train (1951), where he interprets Patricia Highsmith (novel) as interpreted by Raymond Chandler (script), and proves worthy of both. It's full of Hitchcockian gimmicks that quicken the story, with a wow finish and a great momma's-boy murderer.

Robert Walker had spent a year in the cuckoo's nest before he played psychotic Bruno Antony, and he's proof that unstable actors should play unstable characters. In Walker's case, the gamut of facial expressions he flies through are remarkable, and add a layer of true darkness to what was meant to be an "entertaining" story about a celebrity and his crazed fan who "swap murders." I wonder if the forgettable Farley Granger wasn't deliberately chosen as co-star because he wouldn't distract the viewer from Walker's performance.

The final merry-go-round scene is Hitchcock at his very best. It's still exciting, so I can only imagine how it must have electrified audiences 55 years ago. And the old-time carnival scenes aren't the only look at an America of yesterday-- check out the record-listening booths where Farley roughs up his wife, or, for that matter, the entire premise of strangers meeting on trains!

So congratulations and a personalized necktie to the following quiz winners: Wayne Palmer, Jim Youngdahl, Vince Tuss, Peter Schilling, E. Yarber, Angela Anderson, Tim McDonough, Bill Hearne, Steve Perry, Corey Anderson, Kevin Millard, and Hank "Last Minute" Parmer.

Posted by Steve Monaco at February 6, 2006 12:30 AM

 

Monster comix

Dark Shadows #10 (Gold Key, 1971)

Life with Archie #12 (Archie Comics, circa 1962), a book-length Archie version of Journey to the Center of the Earth.

Strange Tales #73 (Marvel, 1960), art by the immortal Jack Kirby.

Image from the cover of Tales from the Crypt #22, art by Mad editor Al Feldstein.

(Covers from The Grand Comic Book Database-- best webpage ever.)

Posted by Steve Monaco at February 1, 2006 3:37 AM

 

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