Fickle

In 1966, don’t ask me why but it was deemed appropriate to call superheroes “camp”. I’m guessing that word was shorthand for “affected”, “exaggerated”, “over-the-top” or “corny”. The Batman TV show was played for laughs although the comics themselves by the mid 1960s, after years of bonkers interplanetary and time travel stories, had returned to more gritty realism. But the Batman TV show spawned a whole host of more lighthearted superheroes in the comics from Archie/Radio Comics with the Mighty Crusaders to MFs version of Captain Marvel to Lightning’s Fatman the human Flying Saucer. Others of the time like Charlton. ACG and Tower were just hoping to boost sales with superheroes very loosely based on the Marvel style. I wouldn’t call the Tower line “camp” though but someone did.

Jumping on the bandwagon is this “novel”. It is helped immensely by Al Jaffee artwork though.

Finger

The UK edition of The Fickle Finger of Fate had a more-contemporary photo cover (but retained Al Jaffee artwork inside). Note that it is now “A Camp Classic”

King Albert’s Book

I recently found this book in the loft, and for a few minutes I wondered if it might be valuable. Not particularly. But it is quite interesting. Numerous copies were printed and many still survive. There are currently 84 copies for sale on eBay, ranging from £5 to an optimistic £130.

The idea of the book was to raise funds for Belgium after the German invasion in 1914. It contained a collection of tributes to King Albert Ist consisting of prose, poetry, pictures, music etc from famous politicians, authors, historians, scientists, composers and clergymen. Published in December 1914 and costing 3/- (or 3/6d by mail order) by a number of newspapers including the Glasgow Herald, the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Sketch and obviously it was heavily advertised within those publications. It aimed to raise 1/- from each book sold for Belgium. It seems that hundreds of thousands of copies were printed as the USA alone received 250,000 copies.

https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=meBAAAAAIBAJ&sjid=fqYMAAAAIBAJ&pg=1656%2C3201765

As Germany invaded Belgium in August it was a momentous logistical achievement to collate all the material from these people and get the books printed in a four month period. King Albert survived the Great war but died in 1934 aged 58 in a mountaineering accident. A statue and monument were erected a few years later.

 

Alan Austin

People of a certain age (ie: me) bought comics from (and sold comics to) Alan Austin in the 1970s. I think he’s right that there were probably only a couple of hundred “serious” comic collectors in the UK in the early 1970s and his mail order lists were received by many of them. He was perhaps the first full time comic dealer here in the UK, starting at a very young age, but later moved away from comics into the book trade. But he kept a love for comics eventually writing this little book about his early years. Recently published four years after his death it is a fitting tribute to a nice guy.

I can’t say I totally agree with his assertion that adults only collect the comics they recall from when they were children. Yes I recently purchased Wham number 1 out of nostalgia but have no desire to revisit the 100s of Beanos and Valiants that came through the letterbox weekly. I think Marvel and DC comics from the 1960s onwards grew up as their readers did.

Alan Austin 1955 – 2017

Secrets of our Spaceship Moon

This paperback is the follow up to Our Mysterious Spaceship Moon. As far as I can tell it repeats the exact same information/speculation as included in the earlier book.

It does make you pause and think though. How come the Moon is where it is? It is a quarter of the size of Earth and large in relation to Moons that circle other planets in our solar system. Is it a chunk of Earth that separated when our world was formed? Did it come from elsewhere and got “captured” by Earth’s pull? Into a perfectly regular orbit? Why does it orbit Earth and not the Sun with its greater gravitational pull? Was it steered into position by aliens using planet-sized engines or could it have been placed there by a giant hand?

And it seems a remarkable co-incidence that although of vastly different sizes the Moon and the Sun appear to be a similar size when viewed from Earth and allow the phenomena of solar eclipses to be witnessed periodically here.

Like this book I think I’m repeating myself too. I’ll get my coat.

Blackies

This bookmark fell out of an old book as I continue my ruthless reduction of my “library”. A quick look around the Interweb convinces me I’m right in chucking stuff in the wheely bin rather than waste time trying to sell it on EEbuygumbay. Blackies Annuals are selling for a couple of quid even though some are almost 100 years old!!

Clarnico

I found this bookmark (from the 1930s?) within the pages of a very old copy of Mill on the Floss. (An “Everyman edition” therefore not valuable despite being 100 years old).

In the 1920s/1930s Clarnico was the largest sugar confectionery company in Britain, producing a mind-boggling 700 different varieties of sweets. Clarke Nickolls & Co began in 1872 making jam. They were taken over by Trebor in 1969 and are so forgotten they don’t even have their own Wikipedia page.

How many?

Self-help books annoy me. Why should anyone be taken in and believe that someone else knows better how you should live your own life? “the life-changing magic of tidying up” was published a few years ago by Marie Kondo. This bonkers “organising consultant” has now been given a TV show. Her latest advice, along with obsessive clothes-folding, is that for a stress-free and clutter-free life you shouldn’t own more than 30 books. This minimalist militant says “Let’s face it, you are going to read very few of your books again”. Once you have read your newspapers/magazines they should be immediately thrown in the trash so as not to upset the neatness of your coffee table. Clothes you haven’t worn for a few months should be sent to the charity shop. So in the summer do you throw away your overcoat, gloves and scarf because you haven’t used them recently? Saying that you should only keep things that bring you joy isn’t really very practical is it? Do I chuck out the Washing Machine,Lawnmower…cutlery? As for just keeping 3o books….that’s impossible. I need 30 bookcases so I can empty my 150 boxes full of books/magazines and then I’d be able to see/display what I own. 

Meanwhile back in August….

Next to last book dept:    I’ve recently bought (and quickly recycled into Tesco’s Book Bank container) Stoner by John Williams. I think I’ve finally learnt my lesson. Don’t buy something just because someone else says it is wonderful. The glowing reviews said this obscure novel was the greatest literature of the C20th. No it isn’t. It’s absolute rubbish. Even I could do better. I struggled through the first 70 pages amazed at the one-dimensional characters and slow plot. I’ve better things to do with my time. Just sitting and stareing into space is a better use of my time than reading this book. Whilst I was in the right mood I went to the CD shelf and picked a dozen titles to throw in the wheely bin. They were all purchased on the strength of reviews in “Mojo” magazine. They were all crap too!

Last book dept:     I said I wouldn’t buy any more books and yet here I am happily reading this year’s Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide. Not that you can place much credence on their prices. 10p each is a far more realistic price for any comic made since 1980 !!  I’ve been buying this annual price guide religiously since the 4th issue. I saw the first three books advertised in comics and magazines in the early 1970s but back then I didn’t have the technology to send money to the States!

Dunno why we’ve still got the X-Men on the cover though. Aren’t they last year’s/last decade’s thing??? Surely the sales of their (pretty well unreadable) comics must be on the skids by now? Aren’t there any hot new modern comics/characters these days and if not why not??

PS: Over the years I’ve bought all sorts of stuff from Amazon. Not just books: car parts, canned unicorn meat and even a new element for the oven the other day. So why don’t they sell the new updated FUGG??? That’s Fogel’s Underground Grading Guide. This is the anti-matter version of Overstreet containing details of numerous “underground” and “adult” comics that Overstreet pretends just don’t exist.

More questions than answers

I’ve been reading the new book by Padgett Powell entitled “The Interrogative Mood”. You’ve probably heard about it. It’s the one where every single sentence in the book is a question. Although it’s an interesting concept the American-centric aspect of many of the questions (whatever happened to Howdy Doody, Tab, soda fountains, S&H stamps etc) began to irritate.

It does however make you stop and think about life, the universe and everything with questions we probably don’t stop and ask ourselves often enough like:-

“Do you subscibe to the notion that people who knew what they were doing began to die off about 1945 and are now on the brink of extinction? Do you prefer diarrhoea to constipation? Do you know the distinction between moss and lichen? Is it your impression that people who worked in animation in the 1930s did more drugs than people who work in it today? Are you engaged in a fight against clutter? Does honey come out the front end or the back end of a bee? Have you ever lost a shoe and thrown away the second shoe and then found the first shoe? What would you think an Uzi machine gun might cost? When was the last time you saw an ostrich? Would it be feasible to go to India and not be heard of again?” etc etc etc for over 100 pages !!

Of course, there is another school of thought that says it doesn’t do to question things. If we analysed our lives and the universe too closely we might come to the conclusion that most of our waking hours are spent in ultimately pointless endeavours. If I knew which part of a bee honey came from or could prove that the “authorities” don’t have any more clue about what is going on than anyone else would my life be any better? Even writing this blog whilst humming a Jimmy Cliff tune from 1972 is futile but I do like to keep myself amused in my tea break…..

The more I read this book, the more I began to formulate my own questions which the author had missed.

“Do you update your Facebook page at the same time as checking your phone for texts and watching TV? Where do you go to my lovely when you’re alone in your bed? Where have all the flowers gone? What’s so funny about peace, love and understanding? Will the last word ever spoken be “why”?” etc

Collecting

Collecting isn’t just a male preserve. Have you seen how many shoes and handbags most women accumulate? But it is true that men as the hunter-gatherer are the main hoarders of “stuff”. Before I came to my senses I had a garage full of bits of old cars. I once kept the back half of a Triumph Herald car sitting at the bottom of the garden. The intention was to throw the bootlid away and make it into a garden seat!! At one time I saved all the Programmes from Pop Concerts and Football matches I had attended.

In this interesting book Hunter Davies gives some thought to the reasons why people collect things and what motivates them to start (and stop) collecting. I suppose he had to do something on wet Saturday afternoons when the local Football team were playing away!! Funnily enough I own four of the six items pictured on the cover of this book. Blow Football games and William Books must be in many attics. Hunter has an enviable collection of Beatles memorabilia. It did help that he met them in the late 1960s when he produced the first in-depth book about them. He was also present in studios when they were recording and was able to pick up disguarded (?!!?) scraps of paper containing now-precious hand-written lyrics etc.

Hunter writes a monthly column in The Sunday Times called “Mean with Money”. Certainly, not throwing things away can have financial advantages…but only if you keep them long enough for values to rise I fear. If only I’d hung on to all my childhood comics until now!! But fashions come and go and they might just as well have remained worthless newsprint. He even concedes that collecting stamps is an ultimately pointless exercise although it kept him well amused whilst he was actually doing it.

I’m not sure if collecting stuff now for the future will make your fortune. Certainly not comics. This week both the X-Men and The Fantastic Four UK monthlies have started again at Number One. How long will it take before those issues have any real value? Never, I should think. The problem is that everything gets saved nowadays. People collect toy cars, keeping them in their pristine unopened packets. That never happened in the 1950s, so if an ancient boxed Dinky toy has survived it is consequently valuable. I sometimes wonder if future generations will have the slightest interest in the Victorian furniture and large gloomy paintings that so often feature as “valuable collectibles” in TVs “Antiques Roadshow” and the like. All you can do is collect things that you actually like and if they appreciate in value then that is a bonus. But if WW3 arrives, Victorian furniture, toy cars and comics won’t be much use to anyone …………

100 copies

ITEM:   A couple more books have found their way onto my groaning bookshelves. A mere one hundred people will own this hardback edition. I’m sure many more will grab the paperback. A quick glance reveals that the logo was designed by Todd Klein. The book was printed in Canada. And there is a vast Bibliography at the back. Scarily I seem to own much of the weird and wonderful stuff in that list (although all my 2000ADs and Sounds newspapers were burnt in the great cull of ’86 !!).  I don’t have any of the Discography though, and I wasn’t aware that he produced some artwork for the 1982 B.J and the Bear Annual !!  Now might be the time for the completists out there to snap up one from their local Charity Shop/eBay whilst they are still 25p each ??

And I must look out that old copy of “Escape” to re-read the fascinating  account of his visit to the USA in the mid 1980s.

Although, unlike some people, I don’t believe it to be the centre of the Universe with all ley-lines converging there, I do think that some magic has emanated from Northampton over the last 30 years.

ITEM:   Here is another book limited to 100 copies. However this is more probably to do with the steep cover price. And the fact that they will be hard-pressed to find 100 people like me that are actually still interested in what must be the most obscure comics on the planet !! 

This book is all about the long-forgotten British comics of the 1950s from the small publishers who tried to copy the American comics of the day in both size and format. These pale imitation super heroes were sometimes entertaining but more often just plain rubbish. But looking back through the prism of time fascinating all the same. At 464 pages this work is a labour of love by compiler Mike Higgs. Yes the very same guy who wrote and drew the unique and funny “The Cloak” back in Odhams “Pow” comic in the 1960s. What I’d like next Mike would be a collection of “The Cloak”. How about it ??