Jay Pegs

This is a fraction of what you get if you type site:themagicrobot.wordpress.com into Google Images. No wonder my scanner is broken !!!

Xmas

My favourite Xmas song this year is about 15 years old (but it’s new to me). And I THINK it’s a Xmas song. I can’t make out many of the words. It’s still fab though and it goes something like this.

PS: And this one isn’t too shabby either.

PPS: But on reflection, apart from Bing crooning “White Christmas” this is still the best ever Christmas song.

Merry Christmas you suckers
you miserable men
That old festive season
is with you again.
You’ll be spending your money
on cartloads of junk.
And from here to New Year
you’ll be drunk as a skunk.

Merry Christmas you suckers
it’s perfectly clear
that you fall for it all
a bit sooner each year.
If it goes on like this
you will find pretty soon
that you’re singing White Christmas
as early as June.

This Christmas card racket
will cost you a packet.
Each season it seems to expand.
The cards are so clever
though nothing whatever
to do with the subject in hand.

You’ll be taking the kids round
the multiple stores
to be frightened to death by
some old Santa Claus.
Then it’s parties with spirits
and vino and beer.
Merry Christmas you suckers
and a happy New Year.

Merry Christmas you suckers
you bleary-eyed lot.
You’ll never get rid of
that headache you’ve got.
But I hope you feel splendid,
you certainly should,
with your stomachs distended
with turkey and pud.

Merry Christmas you suckers.
Jump into your cars.
Roar off to your neighbours
to sink a few jars.
Though your vision is double
just keep smiling through.
There are others in trouble
a lot worse than you.

Beyond any question
acute indigestion
will plague you
and make you unwell.
You won’t take the warning.
You’ll wake up each morning
undoubtedly feeling
like hell.

But stick to it suckers.
Go swallow a pill.
For this is the season of
peace and goodwill.
While we patiently wait for
that nuclear blast,
Merry Christmas you suckers.
It may be your last…..

Nuff Said 46

There are eight different covers available for the first issue, due to be published in January 2014. Good grief !!

Eerie number one

If you count a few hundred “Mads” and a number of “pocketbooks”, Thorpe and Porter produced a couple of thousand (mostly black and white reprints of American) books and comics between the early 1950s and the mid 1970s. I believe there were only three issues of “Eerie” circa 1952. This British version contained the contents of Avon’s “Eerie” No 1 and to fill up the remainder of the 68 pages, SF/Fantasy stories “Dara the Viking” and “The weapon out of time” from Avon’s “Strange worlds” No 2 and “Crom the Barbarian” from Avon’s “Out of this World Adventures” No 1. But not all issues of Eerie No 1 appear to be the same !?!

The copy available on the Interweb doesn’t contain the strips from “Strange Worlds” or “Out of this World Adventures”. It consists of black and white versions of the whole of Avon’s “Eerie” No 1 and No 2 between different inside and back covers. Either this was a “copy-and-paste” job (which is doubtful considering the source of the file) or my copy has been tampered with (looks original to me), or there were actually two completely different versions of this comic !!! Looking at the “Classics Illustrated” ads It appears that my copy is the earlier of the two. The images on the blog are from my issue. Here is the “other” issue.

Many Thorpe and Porter titles disappeared after a few issues, but Kid Colt, Tomahawk, Laurel and Hardy and Korak had respectable runs. The “Classics Illustrated” issues were very popular. Here is the back inside cover and the back cover from my “Eerie” number 1.

Too many Eerie number ones

Warren’s “Eerie” officially appeared on the newsstands/at the newsagents with Issue number two. Number one was only an “ashcan” edition supposedly meant to claim copyright of the title. I’m puzzled as to what that was meant to achieve. There had already been a number of comics entitled “Eerie” not too many years previously so didn’t someone somewhere already own the rights to the name ??

IW/Super produced three issues of Eerie, numbered 1,8 and 9. No I don’t understand it either. And number 1 was mostly material from “Spook Comics” from the 1940s.

Not too long after Warren began publishing the title even Alan Class used the name. Why Alan would go to the trouble of producing a new logo for a one-shot no-number comic that only contained the usual ACG material already available in his other monthly reprints is another mystery to me !?!

The cover and contents of the mid-1960s un-numbered “Eerie” (cover story from ACGs “Adventures into the Unknown” 74 of 1956) was finally recycled by Alan Class for the last ever issue of Creepy Worlds published in 1989.

A number of Warren comics were reprinted by K.G.Murray in the 1970s.

Eerie is currently available monthly, although I prefer collecting the Archive books of the Warren series. 15 and counting so far !!

Once a year

This book belongs to dept: I’ve just bought the 2014 Batman and Superman Annuals even though I’m sure I’ve read the stories they contain in earlier DC comics. But this year the production values are quite high. I like seeing the artwork on good quality paper, slightly larger than comic book size and housed in sturdy card covers.

Car boot sale dept: A couple of years ago I bought a stack of dog-eared annuals from a charity shop. It was just before xmas and what with one thing and another I threw them in the car boot and then forgot all about them. Over time other items obscured them from view. Tools, car covers, magazines and a record player that were about to go to the tip but were reprieved at the last moment, etc etc. This weekend I decided it was time I tidied the vehicle and was amazed at how much “stuff” had accumulated at the back!! These were the most interesting looking of the 20 annuals……

Two much stuff

1 oz of plastic with a hole in the middle

Another day another box. I nearly did myself a mischief pulling down this box from the top shelf. It weighed a ton, being brim fill of “Record Collector” magazines from the 1980s. Pushed down the side were these singles last seen 20 years ago. I’m almost tempted to get the Record player out of storage….

Nuff Said 45

Here is the complete strip.