and we can't build our dreams

(from Captain Marvel Adventures #113; October 1950)
B.E.F. - Suspicious Minds (from Music of Quality and Distinction, Vol. 1, 1982; collected on The Best of B.E.F. 2002) - In which the Ware and Marsh production team (previously of the Human League, and the heart of Heaven 17) reimagine one of The King's finest works with the help of tarnished glam idol, Gary Glitter. ("Because I love you too much, baby..." Major contextual eeeeew, there.)

"We can't go on together with suspicious minds." Too true, which is why there are major developments in the pipeline concerning Armagideon Time.

Stay tuned.

parade of sub-stellar objects

Oh, how I miss those comics anthology series of yesteryear.

When I first started collecting comics, many moons ago, no trip to the flea market quarter bins (which is where the bulk of my childhood collection came from) was complete without an issue or three of Marvel Premiere, Marvel Spotlight, Marvel Presents, or any of the reprint-heavy "100 Page Giant" books DC put out in the early 1970's. This was before peer and industry pressure imprinted themselves on my tastes, and the criteria for selecting which comics to buy was based entirely on my own childhood whims. Thus my formative comics-reading years featured a parade of of d-list (or lower) characters...and as the twig is bent, the tree is inclined.

That the stories were utter crap for the most part didn't matter as much as the gnostic aspect of being the kid who eschewed Superman (boring) or Batman (tired) in favor of an optimistically-branded "sensational new character find of 197x" or a back-bencher given some solo face time. There's something magical about that mix of youthful enthusiasm and gullibility, where you're eight years old and totally jazzed about owning the first appearance of 3-D Man or The Torpedo. While there's always a chance that such affections can calcify into an unfortunate state of fan-entitlement and delusions of "ownership," that sincere fascination with the excitingly stupid and absurd is fandom's unpolluted state of grace.

It's not about collectability, speculation, or gratifying the yearnings for vicarious bad-assery -- it's about enjoying entertaining nonsense for its own glorious sake.

Comics publishing has changed since then, and despite calls from the usual armchair quarterbacks, the anthology format is a non-starter in the current evironment. Readership has contracted across the board, and publishers have retreated to the security of proven franchises. The days when straight-ticket Marvel or DC buyers could float a solo appearance by Woodgod or Monark Starstalker are unquestionably over...if it was even feasible to begin with. I didn't realize it back then, but the quarter bins I dug through in the early 1980's were filled with the previous decade's unsold stock.

The growing shift toward trades as long-term revenue generators has effective killed the incentive to publish one-off slush pile stories featuring obscure characters. If a franchise is deemed strong enough to merit publication, prevailing wisdom demands going with either a prestige format one-shot or a limited or ongoing series better suited for publishing in collected format.

While it saddens me that scattershot risk-taking wide-tapestry approach of thirty years ago has gone the way of the dodo, it is difficult enough these days to sustain sales on proven properties. Quality titles outside the major franchise boundaries (Manhunter, Blue Beetle, etc.) are lucky if they clear the two-year hurdle before their cancellation is inevitably announced.

Sure the next generation of pre-adolescent quarter bin divers won't have the joy of discovering the 21st Century's answer to Woodgod, but then again, what kid reads superhero comics these days?

The Innsmen - Things Are Different Now (from a 1967 single; collected on Green Crystal Ties Vol. 8, 1998) - Here's another fine piece of midwestern garage rock, this time from a Michigan outfit unafraid of letting the bassline call the plays.

Friday Night Fights: You Curl My Toes

(from The Sensational She-Hulk Graphic Novel, 1985; by John Byrne & Kim DeMulder)
Yep, nothing kills the mood worse than cockroach breath.

Larry Williams - You Bug Me Baby (from the Specialty Profiles collection, 2006) - Not only was Larry (no relation to Barry) Williams one of the most influential songwriters of the early days of rock and roll, he also played a role in Little Richard becoming a born again Christian...by attempting to shoot the Georgia Peach over a drug debt.

(It was too magnificent to last forever.)

Halloween Countdown: October 30 - this magic moment

I remember that day as if it was yesterday...

(From The Witching Hour #36, November 1973)
Almost seventeen years together and four years this day as husband and wife, and we owe it all to the Dark Arts!

(I kid. Maura is actually an animist non-traditional Catholic, which parses as "witch" to my Puritan-descended cognitive processes.)

Happy Anniversary, my Funky Foo! Even on those very rare occasions when things have been less than harmonious, they've always been interesting.

Combustible Edison - Bewitched (from the Four Rooms OST, 1995) - I don't particularly care for Tarantino's body of work, as I also possess worn copies of the Psychotronic movie guides and familiarity with the films he liberally cherry-picks his gimmicks from. I do appreciate fine vintage and contemporary lounge music (while despising the obnoxious lounge revival subculture), and this soundtrack album delivers the retrolicious goods.

Siouxsie & The Banshees - Spellbound (from Juju, 1981) - The creative wheels fell off the band with 1986's Tinderbox LP, but not before Ms. Sioux and Company recorded an impressive body of goth-pop-adelic gems which still stand the test of time.

Halloween Countdown: October 29 - think about it

Back in my junior high days, my friend Brian and I would hike up the Middlesex Canal path to the (now defunct) Northeast Trade Center whenever Jolly Jim's Flea Market rolled into town. A three dollar admission fee (if a friend wasn't working the gate that day) would grant one access to a hundred or so stalls filled to the brim with overpriced crap...and the one dude in the far corner who sold comic books.

Brian was an early adopter of the comic collector ethos that stresses bags, backing boards, and buying multiple copies of a book for investment purposes. For him, these trips were joyless exercises in speculative accounting where he'd blow ten bucks on two "hot" comics that he'd never actually read.

For me, though, it was all about the quarter bins, which in those days were packed near to bursting with overstock from the previous decade (i.e. the 1970s). Three dollars would net the ambitious longbox digger a dozen issues of disposable entertainment -- reprints of Silver Age DC sci-fi stories, random issues of Marvel Team-Up and Marvel Two-in-One, and books involving obscure bits of trivia gleaned from my (then) incomplete run of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe.

None of the comics I purchased could even remotely be classified as "money" books -- though that hasn't stopped some of the sleazier comics stores from slapping a ten dollar price tag on the Monark Starstalker issue of Marvel Premiere and seeing if some fool will take the bait -- but I didn't get into the hobby to see a return on my investment. I got into it because it was dumb escapist fun.

That's how I ended up with a complete run of the "It! The Living Colossus" stories from Astonishing Tales. They aren't especially good or groundbreaking or intellectually stimulating, but they entertained me.

It! (the exclamation point signifies a clicking sound, as per the language of the African bushmen, I assume) originally debuted as "The Colossus" in Tales of Suspense #14 (February 1961), back in the days when Marvel's bread and butter were improbably named monsters bent on terrorizing the world. The Colossus was an example of the socialist Realism aesthetic gone horribly wrong -- a hundred foot tall stone statue commissioned (under threat of death) to celebrate the power of the proletariat.

Unfortunately, the Marxist concept of historical inevitability did not take into account the possibility that a crab-like alien creature would appear, merge with the monument, and go on a rampage behind the Iron Curtain...

...which offered Jack Kirby the opportunity to re-imagine The Amazing Colossal Man as Cold War agitprop. Damn cool, indeed.

Though the story ended with the promise of a new age of global peace and understanding, The Colossus returned in Tales of Suspense #20 (August 1961), in which the Soviets decide to ship the now-inert statue to Hollywood as a "gesture of peace." The alien crabmen, having backslid from their previous state of enlightenment into a warlike state, once again seized control of the Colossus, resulting in another stone cold rampage. The American military fared no better than its Warsaw Pact counterparts in stopping the carnage, and even the mighty beatniks were helpless in the face of the stone titan's wrath.

It was left to Bob O'Bryan to save the day, and the unappreciated set designer concocted a plan to lure the aliens out of the Colossus and into a bigger, meaner looking statue loaded with high explosives and a remote detonator. O'Byran's quick thinking earned him the renown long denied him as well as the affections of starlet Diane Cummings.

The Colossus, now sporting the "It!" moniker, returned in the pages of Astonishing Tales #21 (December 1973) as one of Marvel's many attempts to dress up superhero material in monstrous clothing. Bob O'Byran, having been upgraded to a crack special effects man during the interim, decides to put the Colossus to use as the star of a sci-fi blockbuster. His work is interrupted, however, when a ham actor rival for Diane's affections causes an accident that leaves O'Bryan confined to a wheelchair and trapped in a perpetually surly mood.

Bob's rants about the cruelty of fate are interrupted by a bunch of goons seeking to abscond with the Colossus, and in his impotent rage discovers he has the power to telepathically control the statue. He also discovers that animated stone constructs are vulnerable to nerve gas -- despite having neither lungs nor nerves -- and the Colossus is hauled off to the lair of Dr. Vault, a mad scientist of the most generic variety.

Vault has a hankering for a strong, new body and thinks that a bald, granite statue with no genitalia would be perfect for his purposes. He is not as keen about the size, though, and uses his mad science prowess to shrink the Colossus to a more strip club-friendly eight feet tall. The process is interrupted around the thirty-foot benchmark by O'Bryan, who reasserts control and smashes up Vault's hidden lair. Filled with a renewed sense of purpose, Bob spent the next three issues fighting various scale-appropriate fellow monsters from Marvel's pre-superhero days in between indulging in bouts of typical four-color melodramatic angst.

Viewed with a grown up's eye, the stories are pretty bland and predicable, with the beats rigidly mapped to the overused device of O'Bryan losing his connection with the Colossus at dramatically convenient moments. They also suffer from an over reliance on passing reprinted Silver Age material as in-story flashback sequences and Dick Ayers, an artist whose work I tend to like, trying too hard to mimic Jack Kirby's early 1960's style....which was nifty in 1961, but baffling and distracting in 1973.

Yet for all that, I still retain a good deal of affection for the run, because there's a point where you just have to put aside the quibbles and take the concept of a thirty-foot telepathic flying (Did I mention the Colossus can fly? It! can, and why shouldn't It! be able to?) statue that fights Giant Space Gargoyles on top of the Capitol Records building and fights Giant Chinese Kung-Fu Fighting Dragons for the absurd thing of flawed beauty it is.

That would be Fing Fang Foom, Jack Kirby's re-imagining of Godzilla as Cold War agitprop!
It! The Living Colossus's Astonishing Tales run ended on a inconclusive note with issue #24, but the dangling plot threads were resolved a half-decade later in The Incredible Hulk #244 (February 1980). Bob O'Bryan -- successful, married to Diane, and walking again -- comes out of semi-retirement to protect the City of Angels from the fury of the Jade Giant, only to have his control of the Colossus wrested away by the fiendish Dr. Vault.

Having finally gained the perfect body he'd waited so long for, Vault falls prey to excessive euphoria and tries to go toe to toe with the Hulk. It goes about as well as you'd think...

O'Bryan takes the destruction of the Colossus in stride, as he'd already moved on past the animated statue follies of youth into more adult pursuits. Comics being comics, though, both Bob and the Colossus have made the occasional appearances since then, as there is no character so obscure or resolution so final that someone won't resurrect It! out of irony...or even worse, totally sincere reverence.

Alien Sex Fiend - Get Into It (from It: The Album, 1986) - I was really into it for a year or two, then I fell out of it, forgot about it for a while, then rediscovered it.

Halloween Countdown: October 27 - derivatives of the damned

The events leading up to the recent economic meltdown, as depicted in The Witching Hour #51 (February 1975):

It sounds like a sweet deal...until you realize that you've leveraged your immortal soul for far more than it is actually worth. When the spiritual commodities market crashes, it crashes hard, and no amount of intervention, government or divine, can stem the karmic tide.

(Satan, being the wily devil he is, was able to finagle a seven figure bonus for himself from the executive board just prior to the collapse -- and government takeover -- of the Beelzebub Brothers brokerage house.)

The Misfits - Horror Business (from the Horror Business EP; collected on The Misfits, 1986) - No Halloween Countdown would be complete without something from the Garden State's unparalled masters of horrorpunk, so here is the band's loving tribute to Alfred Hitchcock, Sid Vicious, and Nancy Spungen.

Patterson's People - Shake Hands with the Devil (from a 1966 single) - Here's a dandy little slice of 60's freakbeat that proudly wears its infernal raunchiness on its sleeve.

Halloween Countdown: October 25 - comfort and joy

Given the present state of the world, it's only natural to feel a little depressed. That's why I've decided to brighten your day with some uplifting content taken from "The Day Happy Died," a heartwarming tale from The Witching Hour #47 (October 1974).

Little Rusty Boland is in a bit of a funk. His house has burned down, his parents have abandoned him, and most devastatingly, his faithful dog Happy has trotted off to Doggie Heaven.

Rusty perks up a bit when he spots what appears to be Happy's ghost wandering around the neighborhood. The poor kid follows the pooch into the local cemetary, where a (not entirely) shocking revelation awaits...

Wow! Who didn't see that coming?

Well, at least Happy is safe, right?

"That's right, kids! Not only will you die horribly and your spirit will walk the earth for all eternity, but your beloved pets will waste away and die from broken hearts! Sweet dreams, little ones!"

I know I'm feeling much happier now. How about you?

Danse Society - We're So Happy (from Gothic Rock, 1994) - It's a repost, yes, but of a very fine piece of 80's gothica that fits today's theme so perfectly that I couldn't resist.

Friday Night Frights: They Said It Couldn't Be Done

...and then there was the time when Josie McCoy was captured by a mad scientist who wanted to hack open the Pussycat's skull and make a powerful narcotic out of her gray matter...

(from Josie & The Pussycats #67, February 1973)
I miss those days when comics were wholesome family entertainment.

The Zanies - The Mad Scientist (from a 1958 single) - Promethean hubris meets vintage novelty song!

(None dare call him mad.)

Halloween Countdown: October 23 - pale shadow of the bat

Longtime AT readers may remember last year's Halloween Countdown post on the subject of Dell's superheroic take on Frankenstein. As I mentioned back then, Frankie wasn't the only public-domain horror icon to be dusted off and repackaged by the publisher to cash in on a hot trend. Dracula, too, got a chance to strut around in spandex and fight the neverending battle for truth, justice, and the Transylvanian way...

I shall become...a bat. Kinda... Sorta...
Putting aside the whole parasitic embodiment of evil issue associated with the brand, the idea of Dracula as superhero isn't that unworkable a concept. After all, one of the most iconic and popular superheroes of all time owes more than a little to the Dracula mythos. Despite being done to undeath, the "benevolent vampire with a tortured soul" trope has proven popular (and profitable) enough to support a whole host of works dealing with the subject.

Not that this has any bearing on the Dell's Dracula comic book series, however, which is by-the-numbers drek of the most shameless variety.

The Dracula in question is not the infamous Count Dracula of novel and film, but rather a modern-day human descendant of Vlad Tepes who has fled the communist oppression in his homeland. As the blurb at the beginning of Dracula #4 (March 1967) puts it: "His family name he wishes to clear from the false legend which surrounds it is little know (sic) here."

While some might see little moral difference between an immortal bloodsucker and ruthless monarch who liked to impale his enemies on sharpened spikes, it is a matter of great import to Drac Junior...and what better way to set the ignorant masses straight about the false rumors of vampirism than to dress up in a vaguely bat-like costume and call yourself "Dracula?"

Upon arriving in the States, Drac Junior assumes the identity of "Al U. Card," a rather obvious pseudonym for someone who is obsessed about keeping a secret identity despite the clever touch of telling folks that the "U" stands for "Ulysses." Most of his time is spent working his comic book science mojo in perfecting the magic formula which allows him to turn into a bat (again, way to buck the stereotype, Al), but his off hours are spent fending off the advances and inquiries of B.B. Beebe (no shame in groaning, dear readers), a jet-setting Nellie Bly of the swingin' sixties...

There's a little bit of Dracula in all of us, my Sterno-eating friend.
After a couple close calls, Al is forced to reveal his true identity to B.B. when he saves her from a skydiving mishap. B.B. turns out to be steadfastly supportive of Al's ambitions, and even helps him set up his "Secret Cave" headquaters/squat in an abandoned military bunker that fortuitously comes pre-loaded with a room full of bat cages.

Al wastes no time getting back to his primate-to-chiroptera transformation studies, which rankles the increasingly clingy B.B., who demands that Al help her drive a minibus full of children to the beach. Al wisely begs off, not realizing that the chagrined B.B. and gaggle of snotnoses are headed right into the clutches of The Evil Piper (as opposed to The Awesome Piper), an evil genius with dastardly ambitions...

When Nickelodeon advertising executives go bad...
B.B. roughs up the Piper with some Judo moves, but is quickly overpowered by the hypnotised kids, who take great pleasure in tossing her into the minibus and rolling it off an oceanside cliff. (Kids. God love 'em.)

A guilty Dracula arrives just in time to save Ms. Beebe from her own personal Chappaquiddick before rushing off to put a stop to the Evil Piper's reign of terror...which largely consists of stealing a red convertible from a nearby gas station. ("Today, a sweet ride. Tomorrow, the world!") It all comes to a head on the cliffside, where Drac finds himself stalemated by the Piper's threat to harm the children.

With neither side able to break the deadlock, it is left to B.B. to resolve the Kobayashi Maru scenario with some out-of-the-box strategic thinking....

The sad answer to "If everyone else jumped off a cliff, would you?"
As the little bodies rain from the skies like sacks of wet sand, the Piper gets a taste of the fist (and angst) of Dracula...

A precision fighter, Drac ain't.
...and it turns out that the kids are fine, as B.B. somehow managed to set up a safety net below the cliff's edge. She explains her the reasoning behind her cunning plan thusly...

"I studied child psychology under John Wayne Gacy!"
The exercise in child endangerment leaves B.B. with an unshakable conviction that she is destined for a life of superheroics. Over Dracula's half-hearted protests, she takes a swig of the magic bat transformation potion and is reborn as "Fledermaus," or "Fleeta" for short.

Stepping out for a key party at the Langstroms' place...
EVILDOERS BEWARE!

(Or not, as it was the last issue of the series, not counting some early 1970's reprints of the run.)

Christine Pilzer - Dracula (from a 1966 EP; collected on Femmes de Paris, Vol. 1, 2002) - Les enfants de la nuit...quelle belle musique go-go ils font.

Halloween Countdown: October 22 - the way of all cellulose

In 1954, horror comics offered the grisly promise of a plague zombie poked by bill hooks and bisected by a rail...

(From "Forever Ambergris," Tales from the Crypt #44; October-November 1954)
In 1973, horror -- sorry, "suspense" -- comics offered a terryifying promise of a one-page nailbiter narrated in the first person by an oak tree...

The story is titled "DEATHBOX" and comes from DC's The Witching Hour #30 (April 1973), apparently by way of some high schooler's creative writing project...

Click...if you DARE!
It's scary because there's a coffin and dead people are buried inside coffins! Somebody call Count Floyd!

I'm not one of those fans who loudly proclaim that Frederic Wertham and the Comics Code Authority ruined the comics industry (mostly because the industry has shown it is more than capable of destroying itself), but the institution of the CCA did deal a blow to the horror comics genre from which it still hasn't fully recovered. Many have tried to recapture that gleefully transgressive EC horror vibe of the early 1950's, but the results have, at best, mimicked the mechanics without capturing the underlying soul.

Halloween Countdown: October 13 - shapeless in the dark again

Autumn is in full swing up here in New England. The days are getting shorter, the nights are feeling chillier, and the leaves on the trees are turning lovely shades of gold, red, and orange. Unless you count clean-up and prep work (which I don't), the home gardening season is effectively over.

The flowers in the beds which surround our house on the hillside have all gone to seed, save for a small clutch of pink impatiens determined to hang in there until the first frost and, of course, the various grouping of mums. I have nothing against mums, despite their status as harbinger for summer's demise. They're pretty enough flowers, though they lack the majesty of zinnias or sopranos, but they leave me pining for a more sophisticated late season blooming plant -- something, say, like the Evil Puritan Strangulation Vine...

An extremely hardy and aggressive hybrid of clematis and pansy, the Evil Puritan Strangulation Vine was introduced to the region in the 1600's by Prudence Carver. Goody Carver was executing by drowning in 1631 on charges of witchcraft, manifested by her unwillingness to sell her plot of land to Miles Standish for pennies on the pound.

Just prior to her execution, Carver enjoyed a last meal of wildflower seeds with a goat's blood chaser, and from her bloated, rotting corpse sprang the first documented specimen of Clematis puritanus asphyxiata.

The plant does have a (somewhat deserved) reputation for being difficult to cultivate, mostly due to the fact that it will only germinate in the rotted corpse of an evil spellcaster.

Despite what you might have been told, this does not have to be an insurmountable obstacle. There are many occult home and garden outlets willing to supply the needed remains for quite reasonable prices. (Some experts will tell you to seed the bed with a premium 3:5 witch/warlock mix, but I've had perfectly fine results using a cheap industrial-grade hedge wizard mulch.)

One of the best things about the plant is that it requires no special fertilizer or plant food once the first shoots poke through the soil. In fact, the plant can make do with whatever material is at hand. All it needs to thrive is plenty of water, well-drained soil, and the blood of your enemies.

If there is a drawback to planting an Evil Puritan Strangulation Vine, it's that the plant does tend to get a bit leggy and can quickly turn invasive if not carefully kept in check.

To prevent this from happening, I recommend sticking to a regular schedule of deadheading and pruning, which is best done by hand or teeth.

With a little bit of time and effort, you too can have a healthy, beautiful addition to your late-season garden that will make your neighbors green with envy and your enemies regret that they ever had the temerity to cross you.

The Cure - The Hanging Garden (Studio Demo) (from the expanded rerelease of 1982's Pornography LP) - Gone are the relentless beats and claustrophobic production of the album version, leaving behind a haunting remnant that sounds like it was plucked off of Seventeen Seconds.

Halloween Countdown: October 12 - the devil is not rocked

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the hottest musical act of 1973 --- SATAN & HIS 3 DEVILS!

Because "Satan and His 3 Skeletons" didn't sound quite as groovy...
Inspired by the classic sounds of rockabilly and the delicious taste of Underwood's potted meat product, SaH3D are the pioneers of the red-hot "diabolic rock" craze. They play to packed houses up and down the entire length of the Jersey Shore, and teenyboppers and music critics alike can't get enough of the band's unique mix of dime-store costumes, slap bass, and infernal evil.

As is the way with demonic pacts, however, a tragic reckoning is not long in coming -- in this case a dispute between talent and management. Frontman Ricky, tired of Mr. Holman's Colonel Parker-esque accounting practices, takes a long ride with the band's manager out to the moonlit countryside to discuss the matter....

"Apart from my ferocious appetites for hookers and blow, I mean."
...but Eustace "Mr. Sixty Percent" Holman turns out to be a tougher negotiator than anticipated, and evokes the dreaded "I will smear you into red paste under my Buick De Soto" clause on Ricky.

He saw the Reaper in the dashboard light.
With the situation between the disputing parties resolved, Holman zips back to the club, hoping that either Sammy Hagar or Gary Cherone have no prior obligations for the evening and can fit into a skintight devil costume. Imagine Holman's surprise when he discovers that Ricky is apparently alive and well and performing like a man posessed....

Honestly, between the heat, the smoke, and the noise, every club venue feels like Satan's domain to me.
Seriously, the kid is on fire this time out, and even Holman can feel it...

"Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?"
Having rocked his murderer into the grave, Ricky tops off the set by vanishing into a cloud of sulfuric smoke and hellish laughter, while his befuddled bandmates are left to muddle on through the encore with an off-key instrumental rendition of "Free Bird." (The Horned One does not hold a monopoly on ultimate evil.)

The story ("The Devil Will Get You If You Don't Watch Out") from The Witching Hour #40 (March 1974) ends with a explanation from the sexy witch narrator that it wasn't really Ricky at the end, but actually one of the witch's relatives from "the Low Countries -- the very, very Low Countries." If I understood that right, what she is saying is that the instrument of unholy vengeance is actually a session musician from Luxembourg. Scary, indeed.