I guess I should post my B-day week haul. I was going to splurge on a huge Gundam but decided against it and instead focused on making $1 book finds from several different spots around Brooklyn. NY may be a shit hole of fuck faces but man can you find some good stuff that those Fuck faces don't want at all. I spent a total of $23 and I am quite proud of my haul.
Starting out I got a Dell copy of Robert E. Howard's Bran Mak Morn. I have not read these stories yet but they sound like Conan stories that take place during roman times so I am very excited. Don says good things about it and has the full collection. I like little pocket books so I can read it on the go and this one is my new lunch time reading book.
Next is Norman Mailer's Miami and the Siege of Chicago: An informal History of the Republican and Democratic Conventions of 1968. The last Mailer book I read was An American Dream and that was about 17 years ago but I remember it fondly and I tend to like reporting books and essay collections from authors like Orwell and Mailer rather than their fiction so this one will be my shitting book.
Paul Krassner's Tales of Tongue Fu was a garbage bin pick from the book store on their pay what you want rack. I gave .50 cents and its actually quite funny so I got a good deal. The Main character is the mutant son of a Japanese Kamikaze piolt and an American nurse with a 15" tongue so I can relate even though I have a very short tongue.
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For the comics I got a Hulk and Sub-Mariner which must have been written when Stan Lee was going through some shit because he puts his therapist in the credits.
The Time Bandits comic adaption of the movie (which if you haven't seen you should, its awesome) Its a very faithful adaptation that gets all the main points in 48 pages, but kind of the tweeks the end so it doesn't seem as fucked up.
Above Top Secret Comics is nice. I already have a copy of this but for a $1 I figure that it would make a nice trash box addition. Its a bit of Wes Crum is a character and I think this is one of his earliest works. He is mainly known for his adult comics like Anal Intruder From Uranus.
The Odyssey Adaption is fucking amazing. The art by Jess(Jesus) Jodloman is top notch and Bill Mantlo writing keeps it quick and to the violent point.
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Clive Barker is fucken Bananas. I don't really know what to say other than I use to find Clive Barker comics at my Library as a kid and have memories of them being super fucked up but this one really takes the cake.
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The Berni Wrightson Masterworks Series is good, I love Bernie and the stories are all good but they did some weird color shit to the rpint and it just doesn't look that great, but for a $1 I can't complain ( even though i just did)
Next I got Twisted Tales with an awesome Richard Corbin cover and short comic inside. Pacific is an interesting publisher that was a short lived venture in the early 1980's that speciallized in bringing together some of the best artist from the previous four decades, the only catch is that Bruce Jones would right almost all the stories and these great artist would illustrate them. Bruce Jones is pretty good and he can be great but you get the sense that he is over worked even though he is trying his best.
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Same with the Alien Worlds except Bruce Jones did do a great cave man story in this one with a cave man named Jake. Pacific would eventually go out of business. Rumor has is was due to Neil Adams demanding a huge advance and then never producing a work in time so they couldn't recoup their money.
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Where Monsters Dwell is good. One has a nice Ditko story that you can feel the Stan Lee castration as you read, but the art is awesome. The other one has a cool story warning about the dangers of AI
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The advanced reading copy of End of Megafauna is ok. If the final version has color images that it would be fucken amazing because the drawing by Peter Schouten are top tier. but this copy has really low quality images. Ross Macphees writing is pretty weak. He whole point seems to be that humans are not responsible for the disappearance of the Megafauna and here is a whole book full of reasons why BUUUUT humans are responsible for the current mass extinctions because we have scientist and data now. I could be wrong I only read like 10 pages
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Will Eisner is a gem and the fact that he was still making magazines till he died in 2005 should be goal for us all. in this Quarterly 2 he has a great story called Life force and reprints Spirit comics from the 40's. He also has a great Shop Talk with his friend Gill Fox where they reminisce about their recently departed friend Lou Fine who was an amazing artist. they talk about Lou's background and influences and basically sound like old friends who miss their buddy.
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Vampire Tales I have not gotten to yet but the art looks amazing and it has some great articles about Vampire Hunting: for fear and profit, the conclusion of a three part essay.
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The House of Hammer I have also not really gotten into yet though I did read half of an interview with Michael Carreras who was the son and heir to Hammer Studios founder James Carreras. He talks about what is in-store for Hammer moving forward into 1978, detailing his plans for expansion and getting back to their gruesome roots. Notably he mentions some of their non horror fair such as Steel Bayonet which I have not seen and will try to hunt down.
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Early Starlog are the best Starlog, its a much nerdier and technical version of what the magazine would later become. They would explore what was happening in real life space sciences and what the cutting edge(at the time ) special effects were up too as well as sci-fi media stuff like movies and books. I look forward to reading about P.S. Ellenshaw the Matte painter for the upcoming new movie, Star Wars (this issue can out in 1978)
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Really happy with everything, nothing fixes my moods better than getting into some old books, comics and magazines. They fill my brain with weird factoids and the older magazines make me feel like im living in a time when things were new and exciting. I don't know they just make me feel good. I'm sure I could find all this info somewhere on the interwebs but there is something about finding them in the wilds of life that make me feel like God put them there just for me.
