Oddities #20191129

My first encounter with Scott Adams' comic-strip Dilbert -- for a long time one of my favourite newspaper strips -- was via this poster advertising Xhibition 94, a "corporate development conference" taking place in San Jose, California, in June 1994. A quarter of a century on, I don't remember acquiring the poster, but the bottom …

Hatch, Match & Dispatch – December 2019

The rules: these are only the “big” anniversaries (25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50, 60, 70, 75, 80, 90 & 100+ years), dates are cover-cover dates where known, monthly comics with no confirmed day of launch default to the first of the month, and this list is accurate only to the best of my knowledge, …

Oddities #20191122

Cerebus the Aardvark was an independent comic published, created and written Dave Sim, with art initially by Sim alone, then from issue #65 by Sim and Gerhard (one of those one-named stars, like Madonna or Bono or Elvis) that ran for three hundred mostly-monthly issues from December 1977 to March 2004. The lead character, Cerebus, …

Comics That Never Were #2

Launched in 1975, the hard-hitting all-war comic Battle Picture Weekly was a major hit for IPC/Fleetway. It was created in response to rival publisher DC Thomson's successful Warlord, and when word came that DC Thomson was preparing a semi-spin-off all-action comic with focus on more than just war stories, IPC figured they should do the …

Comic Boxes!

This afternoon I built some comic display boxes out of 12mm hardwood ply off-cuts... The base is 200x200mm, leaving an interior dimension of 176x176mm, so they're on the snug side for comics that are bagged and boarded. Each fits about 60 to 70 comics, or 80 to 100 if they're free-range. They might not be …

Oddities #20191115

Dredged from the cloudy depths of memory canal... the Dublin Event Guide for 7-20 April 1992! Yes, that's Judge Dredd on the cover, drawn by absolute legend Cam Kennedy, reproduced almost certainly without permission -- the cover is not credited within, nor even directly mentioned. Dublin Event Guide was -- as the name implies -- …

Noncomics: William Shatner – The Unauthorized Biography

Once again Uncle Rusty has delved into his Star Trek cabinet, and this time emerged with a rather odd publication indeed... This ain't no comic-book, folks, though it looks and feels very much like one at first glance and first touch. William Shatner - The Unauthorized Biography is one of many similar books published by …

Oddities #20191108

Today's oddity comes from the June 1979 issue of the American SF magazine Fantastic Films, which features a brief interview with top comics artist Geof Darrow back when he was only at the start of his career. In an era packed with SF movie mags -- mostly sparked by the unprecedented and unexpected popularity of …

Noncomics: Star Trek – Planet Ecnal’s Dilemma

From the distant past of 1979 comes a Star Trek colouring book -- but this is not just any old colouring book. This is no mere random collection of line-art images: every page in Star Trek - Planet Ecnal's Dilemma is actually a panel in a continuous story (or half a panel, for the two-page …

Oddities #20191101

A somewhat personal oddity this time, though I guess it's not necessarily all that odd... This is the bag I was given in Forbidden Planet in Denmark St., London, on Tuesday May 25th, 1982. It was my first ever visit to an actual comic-book store, so naturally I kept the bag because I was a …