New comics for old kids.

While the interest in 1970s comic collecting is still quite active I'd like to see made real the opportunity for people to finally 'complete' their collections with the publication of these unpublished but completed comics from the '70s. Ideally a facsimile approach as has been used for a few selected reprints recently, that particular month's ads and editorial filler inclusive... especially any letters page that could be found which was readied at the time, would be my choice (although with a modern cover price and bar code naturally). 

As I understand it, DC had these following six comics prepped and ready to roll, even advertised, when these titles were suddenly cancelled:  

Vixen #1 

Firestorm #6 

Black Lightning #12 

Kamandi #60 & 61 

Shade #9

Showcase #105 & 106 starring Deadman and The Creeper were similarly prepped, but their stories were used in slightly altered form in dollar titles of that time and collectors of '70s comics would almost definitely have those. Firestorm #6 was once included in a much later collected edition, but for people who have the original five comics that makes most of it superfluous as well as being in a different format. 

As well as being allowed to read and enjoy them in the form they were meant to be in, decades after they were promised in editorial hype at the time and/or at the ends of the issues before, for me such regular comic book format editions would be filed with the original '70s comics, finally completing their runs!

The covers of three other such cancelled titles are known to exist:  

Mister Miracle #26 

Ragman #6 

Black Lightning #13 

If there were interiors at least started and still existent they would be as welcomed even if only completed now. There were mystery and war comics also cancelled in the late '70s, but as other general mystery and war titles continued I suspect any contents found homes in the same fashion as the two Showcase issues did. 

Marvel also had at least one '70s title produced and in production when it was cancelled:  

Ms. Marvel #24 

Although this was included inside a giant-sized various features '90s comic, even that is now becoming costly (due to what would have been the second appearance of the popular villain Sabertooth), and again, filed under another name and in a different format. There was also an #25 started but only completed later in the '90s that also could appear under it's own separate edition. 

I'd definitely pre-order a copy of each of these at a modern price given the chance. I'm certain they would be good sellers, equal to the most popular '70s facsimile editions that have started to become highly valued with prices multiple times the cover amount being asked on some such as Batman #251, Hulk #180-182, and Giant-Size X-Men #1. 

Other facsimiles, or at least individual comic book editions, I'd like to see would be '50s (and even '40s) Atlas/Marvels... starting with the Bill Everett Sub-Mariner revival starting with #33. I was excited by the facsimile edition of The Black Knight #1 by Joe Maneely & Stan Lee and notice it has started being resold at higher prices perhaps from demand of people finding out about it's existence after the fact. Some of the late '40s Marvel heroines had equally high quality art; The Blonde Phantom, Namora (connected to The Sub-Mariner), and Sun Girl (connected to The Human Torch) could make for a theme series of facsimile editions of first appearances and the first one to three of their solo title.

The Poppermost?

I was looking at some early '60s Pop Weekly magazines, a magazine which started up before The Beatles were even nationally known. It's interesting how in the bag of the solo singer/pin-up things were in England, and to a lesser extent in the U.S., at this time. This is the climate where the Beatles were told by Decca in early 1962 that groups were not very popular, and other than mainly instrumental groups like The Shadows, The Tornados (their Telstar instro was crowned in America before the Fabs invaded), The Ventures, that was mostly true. The Springfields might be considered a group but while they were airplay in Australia and the U.S. they weren't too successful in England. Peter Jay And The Jaywalkers (a bit like an early '60s Madness) and Sounds Incorporated were draws live for dancing and also backing all the solo singers, but their records weren't moving a lot of copies usually.

So page after page there's all these mostly now forgotten singers featured... all with perfect hair and the latest clothes, and to me mostly indistinguishable...some late '50s leftovers from the stage name stable too, and as often as not covering a U.S. hit generally in a too clean Pat Boone style. It makes me wonder if The Beatles hadn't come along (first mention in a November 1962 issue) if this publisher would've survived on the cooling Elvis fan base and the Buddy Holly memorial society brigade? Buddy was if anything bigger in England than anywhere, unlike the big E he'd toured there, and even posthumously most of the releases were top sellers and hits, only the Everly Brothers as any real competition. Cliff Richard had some decent songs now and then but they had begun to smooth him out like all the rest. Just before The Beatles broke things open for groups his B-side Bachelor Boy was his best side in months if not years, and it was more of a sing-a-long than a rocker at all.

Yes, things were pretty clean and smooth before those four long hairs, inspired a little by Buddy Holly without imitating (like Mike Berry or Tommy Roe obviously were), crept in through the back of those NEMS shops and that mostly novelty and comedy discs label Parlophone. In their first photo appearance in Pop Weekly they are in a junk yard and referred to as looking related to The Temperance Seven (one of those more novelty act groups), and this was after Brian Epstein had given them a good scrubbing and make-over! It's fun to see Love Me Do making the bottom of the singles chart, going away one week, creeping back in and not exceeding number 25. Then comes Please Please Me and before too much longer they and the Merseybeat group sound are the hot new thing and all the Bobbys and Marks and Adams are yesterdays news.

The instrumentalists are who I believe kept the rock & roll flame alive to get to them though. Add in The Champs, The Wailers (no, not the Jamaican guys), Johnny And the Hurricanes, Sweden's Spotnicks... and even Santo & Johnny and Dwayne Eddy should to be mentioned as well, and the fields were well ready for seeding with groups having vocal chops. The folk scene was alive and well if not top of the pops, and it represented, like the skiffle boom that brought John and Paul together in the first place, that there was genuine life out there in the U.K.

So often 1959-1963 is pictured as a dark age, but really it was a new dawn. The business may have been trying hard to push personalities that were models more than interesting singers, but the fans knew what was what the real deal just like The Beatles, The Stones, The Who and others had. There was no going back after Please Please Me pleased a nation looking for something original with life and roots to it. Enter Bob Dylan, stage left!

What do we have now if not a lot of models packaged as singers-entertainers as if stamped from some mode in a formula? Pushed to the best seller list before publication, because a couple international corporations control at least 80% of everything? Slap the auto-tune on ever thicker, lyrics that are about nothing in an a known person's life, instrumental backing from studio perfectionists if not actual machines... always darkest before the next dawn? We sure seem to need something now that even 'gangsta' rap is over forty years old (this should be grandparents' music, exactly like mentioning liking Al Jolson or Rudy Vallee to Mick Jagger in 1964).

The best thing that could happen is for the top heavy, coke snorting, yet still lumbering, dinosaur, that was the music industry should completely die and all the little b.s. corporation controlled content hypers and deliverers combined to go with it. What might follow i can't imagine, but that would be much of the fun!

We need a whole lot more Spider-Man, and a lot less of...

 Why is it so perennially popular with some to 'destroy an enemy'? It's like some sort of inhuman strain of anti-diversity, anti-competition as a road to some perfection that of course never comes. In practice it's like that cartoon where Elmer Fudd has killed 'da wabbit' in a Bugs Bunny opera cartoon, or in the real world more like a lot of miserable people trying desperately to not be a square peg or even think original thoughts under some 'strong man' at the top. It's been noted that in U.S. politics things somehow went from a Republican president Reagan and a Democratic speaker Tip O'Neil working together, to the present of, well, genuine personal physical violence threats in the same building today from some of the most extreme of one party against the other (with some proudly displaying a photo of that same 'great communicator' Reagan on the wall as if their great cause's hero)! Of course if one party did destroy the other in a two party democracy guess what you can't have anymore? A democracy! Generations of people voting and quoting in lockstep is hardly a good foundation for one, but forthrighteously dedicated to wiping a party and democracy out no matter what the lowest means required? That's a revolution devoutly not to be wisht.

Just look back at U.S. commercial comic books of a different time, way back in 1992 (October dated comics), and a few comments by hype master Stan Lee...

    It's time to correct a mistaken notion! We often get letters from loyal Marvelites gloating over the fact that some of our books may be outselling the competition, and wishing us well in our mission to conquer the comic book world by defeating our rivals!
    And therein lies the mistake! The last thing we want to do is conquer anything or defeat anyone! Sure, we have competitors, but just between us, most of them are friends of ours.

Stan got it! I think this wasn't the first time he made the point in his soapbox feature either. He was doing his small part. So how did so many people get so far off the rails, often becoming more corrupt than that they wish to expose the corruption of? To go back to the controversial Ronald Reagan, I think he was right in calling the soviet union of socialist republics an "evil empire". It was the kind of thing you could point to as an example of what a democracy isn't. Only a generation and half in politics later and the same people who crudely link any socialism to the worst horrors of communist fascism, who proudly display their Ronnie photos, are willfully oblivious to the left overs of that CCCP with a top KGB agent pulling the strings, lapping up disinformation the CIA links directly to that land that gave us Lenin and Stalin. Talk about weakness inviting attack! They were living it and enabling it, thinking they benefited somehow, while rotting away the structure of their own home of the free!

The rhetoric of violence and absolutes is not for a nation of human beings. Calls to 'destroy destroy destroy' are not only bad for business they are bad for the whole enjoyment of life. Christianity teaches to love your neighbor, to not cast the first stone, to look first to the timber in your own eye rather than focusing solely on the mote in anothers! Again, the worst of the zealots will pose with the Christian bible while breaking it's most central tenets... or do they really need it spelled out literalist style not to gas thine citizens for yonder photo op at the house of the Lord? 

Now a word to the wise...

...from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. These are words I believe I was living by before they were said; to not provoke unnecessarily, to not incite or to manufacture outrage. There is neither excuse in it for atrocity, nor for provocation, because two wrongs never make a right.

"We will always defend freedom of expression, but freedom of expression is not without limits. We owe it to ourselves to act with respect for others and to seek not to arbitrarily or unnecessarily injure those with whom we are sharing a society and a planet. We do not have the right for example to shout fire in a movie theatre crowded with people, there are always limits. In a pluralist, diverse and respectful society like ours, we owe it to ourselves to be aware of the impact of our words, of our actions on others, particularly these communities and populations who still experience a great deal of discrimination."

In light of the recent events the world has witnessed which are the result of violent rhetoric, and distributing simplistic extreme political commentary, I would like to say... yes, you Classic Comics Forum... allowed an erstwhile Trump-supporter to post violent rhetoric about people being swine and animals, to be gutted and shot... some of your moderators 'liked' these posts. Yes you... moderator 'cheese thief' posted a blatant anti-PM of Canada rant about him being with terrorists, simply for advocating people choose their words more thoughtfully. Yes you 'white guardian'... right before Christmas, but a little after Trump began calling for supporters to come to Washington on January 6th, subjected me to a warning, who did nothing as egregious against your rules but posted the above words, who provably in fact tried other times to balance and calm potential 'situations', to be reasonable and adult and even apologize where I had not lived up to my own standards... you warned me to take a more "nuetral" tone then refused to explain what I wrote that would've brought this to be reported or be any kind of an issue.

Do you still pretend I was causing a problem but then say nobody complained? Can you say you hold yourselves to a high standard when you break your own rules? I will confess... I did write one thing political in my last few months there, in the lowest case of type, I did make one small reference about a former mayor of New York City, the one called by fools a 'hero' of an extremely horrible day, an election day there when he was not running because he was such an embarrassment as a human being. I did not name him, the intelligent and informed would know this could only mean one Mr. Giuliani. While so many real heroes lost their lives, he has, and maybe still has, the hubris to be referred to as 'the hero of 9/11'. The man made New Yorkers sick before that day, and now this past Wednesday morning, when it was Mr. Giuliani inciting a crowd of pro-Trump thugs and bullies, name-callers with plastic zip ties and hit lists, to storm the Capitol building in a "trail by combat". They who murdered a police officer doing his job there, like the police offers of NYC who were doing their jobs the day Rudy became a real 'hero'. If that small word to the wise was the real trigger for cautioning me I will now wear that with pride, and whoever, moderator or reporting member, who took umbrage has branded themselves forever a loser with it. Forgive me Classic Comics Forum for being absolutely bang on target with that infinitesimal slight to your Rudy? It was probably just because I have paid attention to the world around us, not covered my ears and hummed or set up long 'see no evil' ignore lists to wish loud mouths away. I have my own thoughts, and I almost always put a lot of thought into what I share from them, and I own them, I don't hide behind multiple 'screen names'. I have a weakness for only taking so much hypocrisy before calling it out; be it from a falsely glorified mayor or dudes  running a comic book chat. Excuse me for knowing that careless promotion of violence can precede the real thing? For finding tolerance of that repellent, not likable in the least?

Although I didn't vote for his Liberal party in the last two Canadian federal elections, Justin Trudeau is still my Prime Minister, and I would say more intelligent, more thoughtful, than the people who 'liked' one moderator's extreme and very political post about how he was with the terrorists based on the speech I quote above. In fact Mr. Trudeau was doing his job as a real leader does; defending a diverse and hopefully not so divided Canada, en Francais, and I stand behind everything he said even in translation. This so outraged a countryman, although no doubt manipulated by what we allow of slanted media in Canada? Someone who would later then take a role in banning the 2019 best new member and the 2020 friendliest member? Well, je ne c'est pas Charlie Hebdo! Because two wrongs do not make a right. I was not for George Bush Jr. when he demanded everyone was either with 'us' or with terrorists after 9/11 any more than for cartoonists deliberately being provocative and ugly; I was very much, very gladly, with Jean Chretien, Liberal PM then, who had the integrity and maturity to stand alone and kept us out of an Iraq invasion based on totally false WMD 'evidence' while other weak as water 'leaders' bent into moral pretzels by the will of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, and probably like weak willed Bush Jr. himself (unlike his father who resisted those exact same hawks who had never seen combat themselves in dealing with Iraq after the Kuwait invasion).

So long as that woman under any name is still protected and 'liked' there, with her vapid self-absorption and pro-violence stupidity, it's not a forum worth being on to talk about anything, even comic books. Not If the moderator who lectured me on my lack of "neutrality" is still warning others, or if the one who turned on his own Prime Minister and fellow Quebecer with misinformation of reactionary reductionist name-calling is still a moderator, nor if the one who 'liked' a gutted like swine post by the erstwhile female Trump defender can still hold his high standards up for admiration... I could only say, j'accuse. Keep the false "friendliness" for those who fall into line in fear of excommunication and look the other way at power-tripping hypocrites using intimidation. Sadly I've been made ashamed I was ever there. Almost as ashamed as when I started seeing extreme fascistic violent lunatics with huge guns and muscles take over comic books in the late '80s (and the Rambo pajamas for little boys and paraphernalia with the Confederate flags on it being hawked to southern U.S. teenagers) and stopped reading many comics at all. You could never make me half as sick as you have made yourselves however. These are horrible times for people who want a healthy and strong U.S.A., or non-rare multi variant cover fantasy comic books read by actual readers, not violent porn for utter losers pretending they are adults, nor pretend investment objects to be preserved for future profits. Even banned people can still read your post pages via Google caches by the way, and when I said I would not post again I meant it, all you've really done is axed the lines of private communication between me and others there. I wonder why? Well, maybe a message like this would be why. Perhaps your high standards couldn't begin to respond or explain?

"Gut them like swine"?

Until recently I participated in a forum of generally older and fairly internationally based comic book readers. It had a small area for politics even, which was already a bit of a rarity in the early days of a U.S. president Trump, a bit dominated by the left so you did get some of that rhetoric and then the opposing talking points back from a couple who would express the fashionable victimization as a minority there decorated somewhat with killer comics characters posing with guns. But feelings apparently got hard, many of my posts were centrist and informational, and I don't think very much at all would've been over me. I like anywhere I can post my thoughts which are my thoughts, or information from an outside established source against any slanted half-truth. I probably more bored folks being long-winded, or as I might think of it, comprehensive, whereas the usual style lately has been provoking or even manufacturing outrage.

So that had to go and in a place about comic books that seems logical enough, I have real people in my life to discuss political stuff with and even another comic book centric forum that has always allowed it (even if there are some ignore-feature happy types who make big shows of who they are not 'listening' to nah-nah-nah can't hear that person). I petitioned however that there should be some slack in the moderation, 'politics' can be very real and have a direct effect on people and they should be given some leeway to express themselves generally. Take the bizarre anti-masks during a pandemic 'movement'. I felt okay about posting informational encouragement for mask wearing, it really isn't political but about protecting all human beings, like my parents in their late 70s whom I worry about a lot.

Unfortunately there is one poster that comes and goes, I don't know if they get banned and allowed back or what goes on, their ID name changes as well; she was a one of a tiny number of pro-Trump posters in the closed politics area, so maybe felt hard-done by there (they called news reporters names and generally championed Trump as a great guy). Post politics they described Black Lives Matter stuff in the streets as animals who should be shot. I tried the ignore feature finally rather than leave myself, complained to one moderator. I admit, I don't feel good putting anybody on ignore and I took her off it (and anyway, when not signed in you see everything anyway). I'm trying to be careful about getting 'political' in anything, I avoid some obvious bait from either 'wing', I take my share of slack though when I really want to reference or balance something with more context. For example, again post the decision to have no politics, one of the moderators, who is a fellow Canadian, gets worked up about Prime Minister Justin Trudeau saying something he sees as being with terrorists and against people in France. Most people, even myself in Western Canada, aren't getting much of this in their news, a lot of them are supportive against Trudeau (who I didn't happen to vote for in the last election), I try and find the speech in question. It was in French but there is a translation in a reputable long-running Asian newspaper and I post that for context.

Not to belabor that topic, I mention it as an example of a moderator certainly not taking a neutral tone. They are entitled to feel betrayed by Canada and communicate about it with some passion. I gave extra context, that it was a two wrongs don't make a right situation to me, not judging one as equal to the other; both people got their say. In early December the previously described woman for Trump, now maybe not so much for, returns to the violent rhetoric, current poisoner of countries, with a comment that a group be gutted like swine. Here we go again, different group, same extreme simplistic reactionary junk, but it gets support from a couple of the moderators! In my world you never say something like that about any people. Not good. Certainly not good if you don't want heated 'political' eruptions that supposedly were bad in the past causing people to leave. Well, unusually people don't take issue with it, it seems more ignored, except I feel the need to balance and post information in light of the revelation that a policy paper stating "we want them infected" was circulating in the White House people like this woman installed and empowers. The silence from the majority, most people being careful, seems like we've gotten through this latest extremist outrage zinger down two moderators who 'liked' it, and I let it lie hoping perhaps people might google the "we want them infected" quote for further info.

Then unfortunately, just before Christmas I get a message to be more "neutral" in tone from a moderator I haven't heard from before. I reply in private admitting how I can make mistakes and that I like to correct them if I have, please show me the post in question someone found objectionable. Response is, it is just a "friendly" reminder. So out of the blue as far as I can tell, and still don't know of who or what triggered this cautioning, nobody complaining, I am lectured to tiptoe even more carefully. Beyond festive mood killer this! I guess I'll never know who, or over what, there was an issue. I'm pretty much fed up with the being oh so careful lest some extreme minority be upset. I, voted once best new member, once friendliest member, post a 'that's it, I'm gone, this is how I'm treated while others doing much more deliberately here are supported'. There is a you can't quit we ban you rule breaker punctuation mark as the whole site is now righteously blocked to me. I have no idea how this might be viewed by people I was on good terms with there other than a few I know outside it. I did have voices taking my side and I appreciate it, but I only want to say I left, and I left because I didn't want to become an ignore list type of person, nor a report button pusher type, but most of all I am not going to be involved in coddling known problem people. That woman caused problems many times with various members, instigated, really posted not all that much about comics other than what she bought or hot new item flipped for a big profit, hardly ever about reading the things in other words. There are loads of places for those comic book 'fans'. Didn't really add very much and was pretty much always centered on her and reflecting what was hot or a desirable grade of key issue.

I lose a place where people read and talk about what they read, they lose whatever I brought that at least some expressed they valued, over three moderators, including one Canadian, one English who decided to be the latest victim of the make a majority bend to the blowhard wind of the extreme fringe. It makes me ill to be around the stuff, it is what is making nations ill and handicapped, sometimes at very critical moments. I felt no choice but to give up on the forum because submitting, or pretending to, to vague rules of conduct I didn't earn being lectured about makes me feel sick. I am sickened when those who flout the professed neutrality conduct requirement with actual extremes are supported, and even protected, from the actual majority of balanced, centrist, even the now apolitical givers up, who wanted to share a genuine love of comic books. The iron gate comes down and we are separated for their own good. Troublemaker me who couldn't take a "friendly" word from above, but never believe themselves to have higher standards, they are only a couple or so more hypocrites in a modern parade of them, crossing paths with someone who simply has to live to certain standard. I never needed the warning, it was the timber in your own eye, not the mote I always have admitted can be in mine. I simply had no choice given me, ultimately or inevitably, other than to leave.

Long-winded me, a tempest in a teapot... banning of politics is a style of the times but like so many of these styles it really doesn't work in practice where everything even protective masks never mind skin color one is born with are somehow politicized. We can only submit or refuse. I will not, maybe cannot, tiptoe around chosen extremes more than I had been, and if that's 'not good enough' then in fact it's better than! And I'm still at the comics forum I was in before finding this other one sealed off for nobody's protection. Still able to post political thoughts if I want. A ton of bricks was piled on top of the "friendliest member" at the other place, in contrast to forgiveness and even support for violent rhetoric and echoed misinformation talking points. It was never I who manufactured outrage, who told half-truths, or echoed simplistic misinformation from dubious websites, but I have been emotional... definitely. I'll accept the blame for that one; emotional but minus the hate. Despite putting in at least as much positive as I hoped to get back, that one forum became most definitely not for me and it's just sad. 

R.I.P. beccabear67 at Classic Comics Forum a.k.a. CCF

Yes we can.

 We the people, all of the people!

Doo-doo-doo Looking Out My Side Door

Some photos from July 2nd on the balcony. Living the dream on Vancouver Island!

A couple of spottys...

This guy's a bit squirrely...

Just don't be pawing up my nuts junior...

"I'm ready for my close-up"...

Grazin' in the grass!

The United States as a ship...

There are two Captains, each promises smooth sailing. Captain #1 steers hard to port based on an outdated chart. Disloyalty is punishable by being thrown to the sharks.

Captain #2 over-compensates steering hard to starboard, disagreement means you must be loyal to Captain #1.

Either Captain left alone will hit a reef probably breaking the ship in two.

The passengers are sea-sick from zig-zagging back and forth and eyeing the lifeboats, but don't want to be on any boat at all now.

Remember them. Never forget.

Where things can lead when too many listen to a perpetually outraged 'strong' man who blames entire groups of people and promises greatness.







https://apnews.com/70257e76e3c67da50b2d35da2e1db160

I used to be...

Okay, deep breath, big confession, show and tell. Names will be withheld, but though I have barely drawn a thing in the last fifteen or twenty years, I used to be an artist. Partly I really haven't wanted to anymore, and partly I started to get pain in my hand making it increasingly difficult. It's hard to make a long curving line in ink if you can't move freely, and the depth control to use a brush can desert you even more completely. Here is a small selection of what I did do back when I could do it. There's a lot more but my old computer and the scanner that worked only with it were on their last circuits and now not even functional enough to scan anything more.

I liked ink, I liked finishing someone else's work in ink, the more different the style the more I usually enjoyed it, and I probably inked a lot more of others' drawings than of my own. I even got paid a few times, I even did a comic book once, unfortunately it was being sold before they had artists fully lined up and I had a day job I could get out of only partially (and with a lot of stress and lack of sleep) and maybe I wasn't even capable on a first job to get in 25-28 pages, b&w (no color to fill things in for you) in on a monthly basis. I tried two with tone sheets (that stuff got really expensive on this scale), did a couple more without but trying my own by hand shading to fill the b&w panels out, and inevitably I crashed. I took about six weeks to do an issue. You don't know these things until you do them. Hell of a first gig, b&w, 25-28 pages. A letterer on the issue I crashed on had erased some of the pencil art. I got ten pages in and then some and the art seemed to get more demanding in detail. I said I'd finish the next one and started on it and UPS-ed the unfinished comic in. I got a phone call at my day job of an editor in a panic, though it seemed mostly because the letterer had numbered the pages wrong, but he was sure I had a missing page. I still got paid, the cheques cleared, the bonus cheques, the reprint cheques, but sadly end of that 'career'. I mailed back the issue I had started on and had to keep denying I had a missing page. I hope he figured it out finally. Did I feel like crap though, I had let everyone down, I had let the pencil artist down in a way that still bothers me because he was/is a fantastic artist I learned a lot from (dared hope he learned something from me back, not for ego, just because that's what I valued), let down whatever readers there were, let down the company, let down the day job business I was a third owner of. Not fun.

I still kept my hand in, did some illustrations for text fiction mags that paid in copies, appeared in a German magazine with some outright cartoons, inked a lot of different artists for fun or once in awhile for publication (one I think I only finally saw the three issue the comics ran in a dozen years after the fact). In 1994 I was doing sample pages for DC comics and doing pretty well. I had just written to the art director some stuff about how I'd grown up reading Supergirl comics (she'd sort of just come back to comics at this time) and Shazam, but really didn't feel i was right for the Lobo (or Swamp Things) pencil pages (photocopies) and probably said I really hated this over-muscled psycho-grinning space-biker character and how it made you feel stupid to be associated with comics. Crossing that missive in the mail was a letter on the DC stationary (a tower of super characters on one side holding up the DC logo on the main side) telling me  he liked the new sample pages and how fast they came back, and that so-and-so would've probably contacted me by now about an assignment...

...well I never got that letter, if anyone did I wonder what they made of it, or maybe it was simply not sent. Maybe it was the sort of cartoony Lobo they had wanted to assign me, and I had just said how I detested it. I built up this idea and saw hints of it in one of the letters I'd gotten back. I decided if it was I would not do it. I had used different pen names for art and writing, I could do it and blame someone else while taking the money and credit within the company... but I had no interest in doing this kind of work, it was a lot of what I hated about what I knew of comic books at this time (I had stopped entirely as a reader circa 1987): extreme, violent, 'dark', male bodies looking like only The Hulk used to, women posing in ways that made their spines look broken with helium filled boobs. I never got another letter from anyone. I must've said the wrong thing. I even telephoned NYC twice and was kind of blown off by someone that seemed like a very busy temp, though once they took my number down (although it was on every sample page anyway). Just not meant to be... back to doing stuff for fun or little publications, or making my own. I did see more writing  published, (even under my real name) qualified to join the Fantasy & Science Fiction Writer's Association (which I did for a single year), and even was nominated for an award (one of my pen names, an anagram of mine, and I didn't know about this until a few years after the fact). I was having some other problems in life come to a head, including health, and just let people and things fall away bit by bit. Met someone who wanted to marry, he was diagnosed with stage four cancer and the next year and a half from that were full of ferry boats, buses, and sleeping in chairs in hospital rooms in two U.S. states.

Back to the artist's story, what I didn't know all that time is how the art director had died fairly suddenly. I had no idea! To me it was all a closed chapter, something and someone I used to 'do' or 'be'. For years I still imagined that art director in an office getting comic books together and out to the printers on time (I didn't look at comic books very often, and one local comic shop even had a big cut-out of Lobo in the window to really repel anyone like me), wondering if he ever thought of me one more time or ran across the old pages. I wondered if Dick Giordano who I'd met with twice further back might've asked about me? Other than people I knew's own comics, which were mostly all for little companies, I didn't crack one open again until a long time later; someone had given my boyfriend the first issue of an X-Men comic set in the past, made by the artist who had done it when I had started reading in circa 1979-80... something I could at least relate to looking like what comics had looked like. But anyway, the art director had died about when I had gotten that last letter, maybe it was his last letter to anyone... and finding this out so long afterwards was a real shock. It must've been mayhem at the DC offices afterwards, who would give much priority to an inker who had last worked four years earlier for a publisher on the other side of the continent? I could've done it though... I wasn't the total loser as I suspected; I could've done 17 or 19 or whatever pages that was the main feature in a monthly DC comic, certainly the fewer pages that their new talent Showcase book required, open for color, and they knew I was versatile and had done professional level work on some very different artists' styles.

"I coulda been a contendah!" Going back I see some familiar names did make it, and am happy for them. It doesn't seem too important to me anymore, I am someone who no longer is an artist, I'm a was though, and I think I was pretty good. It was an identity once, I needed it, then I just didn't. Plus the comic books had really changed, basically to what looked like underground comics without the humor or unofficial low-brow status. I knew some underground cartoonists but I was never cut out to do that kind of thing much myself, it was deconstructive somehow, naughty... and they were deconstructing the mainstream comic books now to extremes where it was damaging. I cared about readers, about kids that some seemed embarrassed to have as readers of their super-people literature... basically a lot of the positive fun had gone (and as I wrote elsewhere, the superheroines in particular all seemed to be getting killed or maimed). I didn't want any part of that even when I was trying out at DC. The circulations shrank, the specialist shops and conventions became something between the main focus and the only focus. Pretensions were inflated beyond reason and comic books were no longer comic books but graphic novels or sequential narratives... who has a Crime & Punishment with super costumed people in them? I sure didn't and don't, as either a writer or an artist.

These are a few remnants of another age, like the 20 cent to 50 cent cheaply printed comics I grew up with. Not to be continued.

Jerome (the Giraffe, but also a Beare)

Canadian radio personality and puppeteer (and so much more), Rod Coneybeare has passed on. He was a stalwart of the music-centeric The Friendly Giant CBC Canadian tv program for decades and I always tuned if as much for his wonderful voice as for the equally wonderful music.

(He's the bloke with the beard and hand up the rooster)

His son wrote a nice tribute to his father recently here: http://www.wilsonconeybeare.com/2019/09/rod-coneybeare-1930-2019-ourfather-rod.html

Also, the CBC website shares a trove of memories (including video and audio): https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/obit-coneybeare-cbc-friendly-giant-1.5275900

Another site (with the above photo) is: https://kawarthanow.com/2019/09/09/friendly-giant-puppeteer-rod-coneybeare-passes-away-in-lindsay-at-89/

Some jigsaws for you!

I've taken some original photos and made them into virtual jigsaws here:.
https://www.jigsawplanet.com/beccabear67/Original-photo-puzzles

Kinks Klippings

I've been meaning to upload some of these for awhile; one of the great '60s British groups, and '70s, and '80s, and... you get the idea.

I'm a bit rusty at this. Starting in early 1965 but probably on sale in late 1964 The Kinks debut as 'Good Guys' in Rave magazine...

And here are some early Beat Instrumental appearances starting with Dave as their Player Of the Month!...

The last two are from hard cover annuals for Teen Beat and Top Pop Stars 1965-66. If you open them in another window and then double-click on them and choose 'view image' you can see them much larger.

I'll try to get some of the others I had gotten ready long ago and not managed to come up with anything much to say about, such as the Small Faces, Pretty Things and early Pink Floyd up soon. I don't really clip these by the way, the magazines stay complete as nature intends.

"Bad morals are still morals"?

The U.S. Supreme Court has recently added a strange new precedent to the law books. A professed Christian man who makes and sells wedding cakes with people's messages on them has been backed in the 'right' to discriminate on the basis that his writing a message on a wedding cake for a gay couple goes against his 'principles', as if writing on a cake were a legal personal document of some kind! Anyone else could come into his open to the public bakery and buy a wedding cake with a message of their liking iced upon it, but like the black kids who used to have to go to the back window of a deep south diner, to 'those' people he won't sell what he has advertised and will sell to everyone else. It's his freedom. A strange freedom, a silly freedom, but should it be made a legal precedent of any kind?

Well, we certainly don't want to force anybody to sell a cake that would violate their deeply held personal and spiritual principles! No, much better some people innocently go into a public business expecting to buy a cake like anyone else only to be judged immoral in some way and singled out for exclusion... in the land of the free. But I have a principle of my own that so far has stood the test of time and fluctuating subjective moral judgement... it is people before things. People, or a flag? Hint: choose the people. But, you say a cake maker is a person. Indeed, he may otherwise be a very nice and reasonable, well meaning, good book reading Christian. Except the gay would-be customers are just wanting a cake, they are 'doing' nothing wrong, they are just being people like anyone else buying a cake, a cake that says something like "Congratulations on your marriage Bill + Steve" (and would Belinda + Stephanie be as morally wrong to this baker?). The would-be cake seller, though offering alternative cakes, is actually 'doing' something, well, I've never heard of this before... of cakes and writing on them being the personal reflective statement of the baker/seller. Huh? In the U.S. of A., the big deal making dynamo of modern history? Since when? That ones not in the Bible, the Qur-an, the Upanishads, or any of the Buddhist meditations I breathed carefully through as a teenager.

Perhaps we should think of it as the U.S. of Amnesia as it wasn't that long ago since Mr. Sammy Davis Jr. was told the freight elevator in a hotel was just as good. So those gay people getting married are 'free' to go to another baker. Don't question why somebody who will only decorate cakes for some people but not others goes into the retail bakery business in the first place, we wouldn't want him to have to question himself, we'll get the top court to protect him in his one man extreme but mostly silly worldview about other people's marriages.

Then there's always the rubes who will say, hey, why do 'those' gay people have to marry and force their marriage on others? There are gay people who don't marry. They are probably trying to trick some poor devout Christian fellow into endorsing their union against 'his' will. Uh, yeah, because it is all about him, not cake, not people being able to go into a shop open to the public like anyone else and get the same thing offered for sale as anyone else. Some Christians seem to think their religion invented and gets to define marriages, but big news flash from the greater perspective here... there were people pairing off in monogamous couples of all kinds long before the earliest dated writing that went on to be collected into the Christian Bible. Yes, shocking I know, but Adam and Eve, or really a couple pretty similar to them way back when, did not even have books of any kind. They lived thousands and thousands of years before wedding cakes were invented, and they were married to each other. Bill + Steve, and Belinda + Stephanie are married, like an Atheist couple, or an Inuit couple, or a handicapped couple, or a multi-racial couple, or any two consenting people over the age of consent are... married. And there is nothing wrong with that. You are not married to an Inuit but it can actually be perfectly okay that someone is you know! Nobody is married to cows, or furniture, surely we really don't need to question to the point of silly extremes do we? Silly extremes like cakes normally for sale suddenly being personal statements of deep spiritualism. Polygamy may one day be legalized who knows, but at present given a history of abuse to vulnerable women and unable to consent children (and driving out excess males for someone else to take responsibility for), we haven't gone there yet and it's not legally accepted. If they wanted a cake with eight names on it however, how many people would tell them their money's no good?

You don't see 'no shirt, no shoes, no service' signs often these days, but even so... 1. The sign would appear at an entrance, in advance of any interaction. 2. Nobody is infringed by putting clothing on, and if there were some real reason they would be they could ask for accommodation. 3. It isn't a restriction based on a grouping of race or gender/expression/marital status. 4. Other patrons may have their experience effected by someone not wearing the basics of clothing of the community and should be considered.

I was so very proud of my country, Canada, when along with Holland we simply recognized different people's marriages as what they are; marriages. That and the U.S. moon landing are things I mark as positive progress for we human beings. I don't see anything extreme or wrong in gay people wanting to marry. They are doing nothing against anybody else. So why does a top court say they 'did' something to a baker who in not doing something was actually 'doing' something different than he was doing for every other customer? Already a U.S. hardware shop is hanging a sign about not selling to gay people. And does it really come into the equation if they are unpleasant in some way? Looking for trouble or 'uppity'? Devout Hindus are 'allowed' as it were to open a McDonalds type hamburger place in the west, it's a 'free' country, but the reality is that they would tell everyone they can't serve a beef hamburger and probably go out of business. It doesn't matter if they are 'uppity' or not, or of a high or low caste, we couldn't possibly 'force' them 'not' to open one. We can't 'force' bakeries not to open for business in a community to the public to sell cakes equally, but if they don't the existing laws against discrimination of people based on a grouping should apply, and if damages can be shown some form of restitution, not doubt very small as we're talking about a wedding cake, ought to potentially be on the table as with any other discrimination case. Yet supposedly what we can't do is simply and realistically say that maybe if cakes are such a strangely spiritually fraught business for them that, like a person allergic to bee stings, they should go into some less complicated endeavor. No, we'll all have to risk being subjected to sudden judgement and exclusion based on some group we are inherently a part of, lucky you if you don't happen to be part of many disapproved of groupings.

My gosh, to not turn us all into pretzels of twisted logic, because guess what, twisted logic is 'still logic'... to say, put things like cakes second to actual living breathing people in front of us... now that could lead to a Jewish person having to make a cake with swastikas festooned all over it... yes, all over it, this could really happen! Not. Well, not if you are a rational adult person of at least a little real world experience, and some of us have experienced actual discrimination too painfully often. Some of us have family histories with people murdered by populist strong men and Orwellian double-talk people's states who promise much and then seem to never leave quietly after wreaking havoc on many, but not all, in the name of a flag or high 'principle'. You thought this was just a guy doesn't want to sell a cake, big deal, so why should he? He doesn't 'have to', that would be far too mundane or rational a thing to do, but being open to equal trade is a foundation of western democracy, and also the freedom to seek damages when through no fault of your own you have been treated unequally. Take a bite on that!

Bad morals being 'still morals' is a science fiction genre writer's conceit. One of those things that can be an entertaining basis behind a story but brought into a three dimensional reality akin to a driver-less car being tested that turns out to be 'unsafe at any speed'. Obviously people are entitled to say something is personally not for them of course, or in the case of someone allergic to bee stings have that basic gravitational reality 'forced' upon them if they try to take up bee keeping. So who is making a cake maker marry another man? As for the big ineffable spirit man in the sky who nobody has ever been able to prove the existence of... well if there is a creator, and I do keep an open mind, 'he' seems to really like variety. Haven't you noticed? There are some who spend entire lifetimes studying that variety and learning, a wise person knows something about how much they still don't know, and possibly even what they can't know. I can't know what it's like to be a man in love with another man, not first-hand, so why wouldn't you take the word of those who say they do know from personal experience? Do we tell someone who hears a sound we can't that this sound doesn't exist simply because we can't hear it? Perhaps God is that sound for other people and is whispering or imparting instructions to judge and discriminate through collections of translated old writings from various times and places, but that seems a more negative possibility than two people marrying, people who we at least know from other writings existed long ago in a place called Sparta when there was no Christianity.

It's all fun and games...

...until some planet loses it's sun!

I originally bought them with dimes from returned bottles out of a spinner rack at a corner-shop. The first 'super' comics to grab my interest since Supergirl (Kurt Schaffenberger version), and Shazam! (which also had Schaffenberger art) earlier... the 'Uncanny' X-Men! I was just in time for Phoenix to meet up with some British television inspired villains (looking like Peter Wynegarde and backed by a Hellfire Club straight out of the Patrick MacNee and Diana Rigg Avengers) and become rather a bit twisted (a Peter Cushing lookalike named Hammer was to be found in the Iron Man comics of the same time). Dark Phoenix was pretty trippy stuff to be reading at the age of twelve, but what really got me reading was that they introduced a mutant girl around my age! The characters were actually fairly 'real' looking, and even wore interesting clothing some of the time. Wow. I wondered what made them want to change (usually without any comment or verbal agreement) into the gaudy spandex, but you know, you just accept these things as somehow necessary in a comic book. If not for that though I reasoned, this could be decent science fiction ala John Wyndham, Theodore Sturgeon or A.E. Van Vogt.

Anyway, I wanted to post something, so thought I'd blather on like a newly forged fan and gush about the Chris Claremont & John Byrne X-Men comics I've been buying/re-buying. Someone slipped my bf a copy of X-Men: The Hidden Years #1 at some point in the years past and it sat there until I glommed onto it and eventually sought out all the ones that came after it. I guess it was inevitable I'd want to follow up with what I could afford of the '70s issues I loved so much. The art had a lot of expression, preserved by star inker Terry Austin, the women in particular had presence and humanity (and a subtle sexuality in contrast to a lot of the ridiculous stuff that others would plaster about the super-universes before long).

And then of course Phoenix had to die. That sun she lustily scarfed down had an inhabited planet of billions... oops! Even at 12 I knew phoenixes rise from their ashes (plus they would've told me in the Dark Shadows re-runs), and so she has come back over and over. The best come-back though was finding out original X-Woman Jean Grey wasn't actually Phoenix after all. Thank you Kurt Busiek (apparently), and again John Byrne. But by then I had really reached the end of following comics (Supergirl's dead body gracing various covers played a part in that; it seemed like everyone had been getting rid of super females in particular since Phoenix had been put on trial and taking the ultimate fifth). It was good to know poor Jean Grey hadn't died after all, and her humanity even in copied form had actually saved all of creation! Yay! Now Supergirl has been on tv for three seasons too, so it's easier than ever for me to 'get my cape on'. I missed this bit of colourful fantasy in my life after all.

Not much to say.

Still clinging to the planet. Remember EDWARD BEAR!

Artwork by Paul Weldon of Edward Bear.

Beatleg

A friend bought this bootleg Beatles record and I really like the cover so have scanned it in. I wonder who the Mrs. Newton is/was? Very Appley name. This would make a nice t-shirt or wall hanging for someone more of a Beatlenik than I am... a small contribution to the continuing story of Bugalow Bill in cyberspace...

It's a 'J', 'R', 'P' and 'G'.

Tommy doesn't know what day it is.

    A preview of a new production of The Who's Tommy, October 29th at the Lucky Bar in Victoria, had some genuine high points. With main event vocalists rehearsing during the sound check, expectations would be high. Real power with some solid players backing. Sooke is in for a huge treat I think!

     Erik was part of the pre-Tommy set with various guests which was fun as intended. He contributed to a solid Substitute and Can't Explain which I really dug. I'm A Boy was also irresistible. Very cool to see the former lead Laundronaut in action finally! I apologize for not naming names; everyone added something noticeably unique and cool, and it was a good crowd genuinely grooving on the sounds and sights.

    There would be some last wrinkles, but with as complex a project as Tommy, even without the pre-show, inevitable. A lot of people having to work together in ways they might never have before. As a Shindig with a cover feature on The Who said it not too long ago, for many of us our interest ends with the birth of Tommy. I'm jaded, I admit it. Maybe unfairly this high-concept art rock whatisit stuff gets knee-jerk lumped in with the silver capes and recreations of the
meaning of stonehenge. Hearing the material performed live does give me new respect however, and I'm sure the actual show by these Sooke Harbour Players will be f-ing kick-ass stomping great where it should be!

    It's not like I'm not aware of Simon Simopath, Ogden's Nut Gone Flake, Odyssey And Oracle and S.F. Sorrow. I have respect for what Peter Townshend was attempting with Lifehouse and ultimately Tommy, but like Sgt. Pepper's I'm always likely to be the contararian seeing the bare spots on the tapestry rather than in awe of the overall design. I'm about the singles rather than the albums with very few exceptions (Revolver, Village Green Preservation Society, Then Play On). I want the peak moments and impatient to get to them, the context gets wasted on me usually.

    Do yourself a huge favour (if you can) November 6, 7, 13 ,14, 20 & 21st (7:00pm), 15th (2:00pm) at Edward Milne Theater in Sooke. Tickets at door, or Sooke Shopper's Drug Mart, The Stick or online at Eventbrite.ca

Toronto-centric rewriting of Canada's rock history.

    You might want to get this new Backbeat book "The History Of Canadian Rock 'N' Roll" by Bob Mersereau. After all it covers such worthy groups as Toronto's Ugly Ducklings and Paupers, and Ottawa's Esquires and Staccatos. Unfortunately the framework of the 'story' being told is pretty much a latter day fabrication. Rather than Toronto playing an actual anti-Rock anti-Canadian music stance (eventually necessitating actual laws forcing Canadian radio chains headquartered in Toronto to play a percentage of home-grown recordings after a decade plus long foot dragging), it all starts you see with white doo-wop groups in Ontario covering black U.S. groups in a sometimes exaggeratedly chipper manner and 'creating' hits with borrowed song, and then Paul Anka partly based in New Jersey with his originals like Puppy Love and Put Your Head On My Shoulder. I'm sorry but as popular as these white doo-wop and crooner pop tunes may have been at the time they are not Rock & Roll to me. It's almost hilarious to see only at the tail end of Chapter 3, subtitled 'The Whole Country Joins In,' what was happening in Vancouver with Les Vogt & The Prowlers, The Stripes, The Nocturnals, or Aragon Records get mentioned at all (oh, sorry, the last three never do), and the date 1956, at least that is given, might stick out in contrast to the entire preceding chapters for any reader paying attention.

    Let me fill you in. Toronto media may have supported a few local clean cut white almost piss-takes of doo-wop (Crew Cuts, Four Lads), but it wasn't until maybe 1959 when any actual sound of Rock & Roll made it to their Canadian owned radio and tv (probably Ronnie Hawkins). The Chum chain in particular was known for throwing Canadian rock singles into trash cans in front of their producers into the early 1960s! The story of Rock & Roll in Canada belongs entirely to some key stations in Vancouver (especially via DJ Red Robinson), Winnipeg, Ottawa and Montreal and as many smaller ones in other places. Toronto groups like The Consuls never got their record played by the big Toronto stations. Even Windsor Ontario's CKLW radio/tv behemoth was a very late convert. And outside of Toronto groups? Why it just wasn't possible anything worth hearing could come from there... at least until Winnipeg's The Guess Who started charting in the U.S. in 1969.

    It took a feisty Australian, Ritchie Yorke, to write a real history of a real Rock music scene in Canada with "Axes, Chops & Hot Licks" way back in 1971! He also helped bring about the Canadian content regulations to address the very real anti-Canada and anti-Rock arrogance of the powers that be in Toronto. Imagine Canadian airwaves having to be forced to play the music of it's own audience! It was taken as an extreme outrage by the suits at the top of course, they knew a hit only could come from New York or maybe Los Angeles. People like Yorke, Walt Grealis, Duff Roman and Bernie Finkelstein fought Toronto for years with minimal resources and deserve more than footnote status in any book purporting to survey such a history. There might in fact have been no Rock 'N' Roll history to write past 1971 had the big TO maintained it's grip more viciously. Canadian rock groups of the 1950s and 1960s deserved far better treatment than they actually got from big town bullies in Toronto, and that should be the main story of at least the first three chapters of this current book. Yorkville musicians and clubs in particular had almost everyone against them in 'Toronto the good'. People who had top leave that scene under constant siege went on to make it in spite and in exile so latter day Toronto-centrists could bask in the reflected glow of Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, The Band, Steppenwolf, David Clayton-Thomas, glows they mightily worked to have snuffed out back in the actual pre-revision day.

    Backbeat has published some excellent music history books in the past, unfortunately this is one of the lesser and more flawed entries in their catalog due to severe omissions and some common basic ignorance. It's Toronto that comes in at the tail-end of the story of the early years of Rock in Canada, well, except as chief nemesis of the actual and historic producers and supporters of Canadian Rock music. If we're going to give prime time to super scrubbed up doo-wop cover groups and crooners then maybe there could have been more on the Maritime folk music scene too, but for a book titled Rock 'N' Roll the lion's share should really have gone to actual Rock groups of which les Vogt & the Prowlers on stage in Vancouver were an example of in 1955!!! The Bear Family label in Germany knew this in 2003 with two CD collections of Les Vogt & The Prowlers and Real Gone Aragon (on the Canadian label established in 1946, while eastern label Quality records was content to simply license U.S. recordings). The Vancouver Record Collectors Association and Michael Willmore knew before that, issuing four great albums of historic Canadian Rock sides sans any cultural grants. Too bad those in eastern offices missed so much of the reality when it happened all over the country.

    Further in there is also way too much about Leonard Cohen and Diana Krall for something labelled Rock History.

Green & Perfect

Here's a collection of 'clippings' originally posted to a Fleetwood Mac fan site about two of my favorite artists; Peter Green and Christine McVie (nee Perfect). It seems about time I gathered these back pages together in one place, hope you find them of interest.

Here's the group with a newly added Danny Kirwan (looking very much like Tom Kirby of Michigan's Tonto & The Renegades we thought)...




But before that, the even earlier years (from Rave Magazine)...



Player Of The Month for November 1966 in Beat Instrumental...



Launched!



A good review...



More coverage soon followed...









And meanwhile here is Christine getting noticed with Stan Webb's Chicken Shack group...







Peter Green began a monthly column in Beat Instrumental with the September 1968 issue (here are the first four)...









Meanwhile back at the ranch...



Front page news (courtesy Richard Morton Jack) and easier to read text below that...





Pete gets personal...