Cool Stuff!

This will likely be all Marvel items!

These records are really kind of goofy in concept, aren't they? The sleeves are kind of figural, but for the most part, things just look uncomfortable for our heroes -- especially Captain America! The Hulk looks okay, Thor appears to be entirely too distorted, and Spider-Man looks like he's wearing a ring with the Peter Pan logo! A bit of searching will probably find you MP3 files of these records.

Give-A-Show Video Feature!

Here are two Ewoks stories from the 1983 set that I actually have in my collection. Kind of an odd story how these came to be in my possession: I bid on a 1983 Give-A-Show set that was all Scooby-Doo and Flintstones, but when I opened the package up, it had 14 of the 16 slides from that set, plus four two-part Ewoks stories, plus a few other miscellaneous items I'll be sharing in the weeks to come!

Fandom Library: Spider-Man and The Incredible Hulk - The Great Rodeo Robbery!

Here's another of those advertising supplements that Marvel was doing for a while!

Comic Reading Library: Forbidden Worlds 49!

Character Collectible Spotlight: Hawkman!

First up in the parade of Winged Wonder collectibles is page 2 from Atom and Hawkman #43, by Murphy Anderson!

Puzzle Time!

As always, answers are after the jump!

What, no Cosmic Cube or Evil Eye?

Comic Reading Library: Monster Hunters #2

Toy Spotlight: 1966 Pedal Batmobile!

So help me, this may be the most beautiful thing I've ever seen or posted photos of here... If this were to come out today, there would be hundreds of thousands of geeks wanting to buy them for their children -- even if they don't have children yet -- and then being afraid to let them play with it!

Monster Stuff!

First up this time is this German poster for... what the heck was the US title of this movie? X the Unknown or something like that? I'm sure one of you will remind me, right?

The Indexible Hulk #31!

Issue: Tales to Astonish #75

Title: “Not All My Power Can Save Me!”

Credits: Written by Stan Lee, Layouts by Jack Kirby, Finishes by Mike Esposito (as Mickey Demeo), Letters by Sam Rosen.

Supporting Cast: General Ross, Betty Ross, Major Talbot, Rick Jones.

Villain: None per se.

Hulk Intelligence: Surprisingly eloquent, although he's still slipping!

Guest-Stars: The Watcher (cameo)

Plot: With the Leader dead, the Hulk is freed of his debt! He takes the globe and leaps away, going from Italy to the Alps, where he stops and thinks. Meanwhile, back at the missile base, Ross has been ordered to run tests on Bruce Banner's T-Gun! Of course, during the whole process, everyone's going on and on about how it's too bad Banner was a traitor, and now he's dead. Betty, of course, still defends Bruce. Rick Jones, meanwhile, is in a guard house (nice to know due process doesn't exist here, eh?). Rick decides to tell the guards he needs to talk to the President (the only other person who knows Bruce is the Hulk), but the guards just laugh at him (did Rick lose his Avengers ID card?). Meanwhile, the Hulk decides to try on the globe, and it starts to act on his brain, making it feel as if it's on fire – but one thing does get through clearly, Rick's thought that only the president can help. The Hulk removes the globe, and after taking a moment to recover, leaps off. The Watcher causes the globe to return to him, and we learn it was the Watcher's intervention that let the Hulk interpret that one message. Meanwhile, the Hulk is heading for Washington, DC, and Ross is prepared to use the T-Gun to stop him! As the Hulk nears the Capitol building, the T-Gun is fired, and the Hulk is gone! Or is he? As the Hulk says, “Banner... was only trying to learn... if a sudden blast which altered the light waves around a person, could send him to a different time!” While the Hulk is able to recall all of this easily, note he doesn't think of himself as being Banner! As the Hulk starts to look around this future Earth, he's suddenly captured by some kind of weapon that he breaks out of easily! The army that attacked him is led by a man who instantly recognizes the Hulk!

Invention Exchange: The T-Gun, invented by Bruce Banner – when the heck did he have time to build this thing? And why was he working on some kind of time travel ray, anyway?

Reprinted In: The Incredible Hulk Special #4, Essential Hulk #1

Notes: Adapted as episode 34 of the 1966 Hulk animated series. If you think things have gotten a bit weird at this point, wait until the next time around!

Cliffhanger! King of the Rocket Men, Chapter 11!

Chapter 11

Comic Reading Library: Eerie (Avon) #17!

MST3K: Season One, Episode Five: "The Corpse Vanishes"

This episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 opens (after the opening credits, of course) in Deep 13, where Dr. Forrester has brought back something from the Mad Scientist's Convention for Larry -- it's the Isaac Asimov Body Wash, part of the Foundation Trilogy Gift Set! Larry's excited to try it all out, but it's time to contact Joel and get on with the experiment! Dr. Forrester allows Larry to make contact. The Invention Exchange begins with Joel presenting the Chiro Gyro, which looks like a giant bucket over his head with a cutout for his face (kind of reminds me of Man-E-Faces' head from He-Man and the Masters of the Unvierse). This is used to help relieve neck stress and pain, and when Joel turns it on, it appears as if it's twisting his head in a circle! Dr. Forrester would like to use it on Larry. The Mads' invention is a variation on the squirting joke flower, so they've updated it to the flaming flower!

Then, it's time for Movie Sign, beginning with a Commando Cody chapter, "The Bridge of Death"! After Tom reads the credits as if he was doing a Latin-speaking monk performing services (and Joel stops him before it gets too old), pop culture references in the jokes include Wham-O Magic Window, the Michelin Man, Mr. Peanut, Mr. Salty, Mr. Bubble, an old coffee commercial (the one where the woman thinks, "Jim never has a second cup at home!"), cordless phones, fashion show commentary, James Bond, lawn darts, Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, Das Boot, princess phones, and Gene Hackman.

Then we get to the first break before the feature, and Tom Servo's reading a magazine, "Tiger Bot," which features a spread on Data. Crow and Tom exchange some quips back and forth like teenage girls were expected to do when reading Tiger Beat back when, except with using technical terminology. Oddly, Twiki is picked as the Dream Date of the issue, and of course they go on about him -- until Tom realizes that the insults Crow is making apply to Tom as well! By the time they finish reading the article on Data, they aren't too fond of him any more.

Next, we get into the movie, and the pop culture references include Mr. Ed, the Little Rascals, Abe Vigoda, Life Savers, Shakespeare, the Three Stooges, "I'm Getting Married in the Morning" (changed to "I'm Getting Buried in the Morning"), SNL's Land Shark, Nelson Eddy, CHiPs, the Addams Family, Stanley garage door openers, Billy Barty, Cloris Leachman, soapbox racers, Meals on Wheels, and the Devo song Whip It. There's also a lot of Crow doing a Bela Lugosi impression!

In the next break, Tom Servo runs on-camera, then off, then it's Crow's turn, followed by Joel, and finally Gypsy... then it repeats! What's going on? They're playing tag, of course! Joel gets tagged by Gypsy, then he fakes out Tom and Crow, just in time for movie sign again!

During the next segment of the film, references in the jokes include "Something Wicked This Way Comes," "I'm a Little Teacup," Fantasy Island, "Ticket to Ride," Disneyland "E" Ticket rides, Ice Capades, Churchill's "Nothing to fear but fear itself," Gilligan's Island (took a while for them to get that reference in this time), the ZZ Top song "Legs," International Coffees, "Snow White and the Seven Dwarves," toothpaste ads, "The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe," Dr. Pepper, Burgess Meredith, and Lava Soap. Joel also does a lot of internal dialogue gags in this segment, and the majority of the jokes aren't based on pop culture stuff at all.

Joel and the bots take a break from the movie, and head out of the theater. Crow is giving Joel a haircut while Tom continues to read Tiger Bot. They exchange gossip about some neighborhood kid caught in a thresher machine, a family marrying off their youngest child -- of course, it's all complete BS, I have no idea what even sparked this whole sketch, as it has nothing to do with the movie at all. Perhaps the names of the people mentioned were friends of the cast and crew? It's all rather silly but not as clever as the usual stuff they do in the breaks. The gossip goes into some silliness about a clown parade going horribly wrong and catching on fire, but they don't quite carry it as far as they could have to be as funny as I'd prefer.

In the final segment of the film, jokes are made based on references to Shecky Greene, "Werewolves of London," Ed Sullivan, "A date that shall live in infamy," Cloris Leachman (again), Lee Harvey Oswald, wrestling, the Little Rascals again -- not nearly as many pop culture references as usual this segment.

When they emerge from the theater, it's time for the bots to earn some RAM chips by saying something good and something bad about the movie, as Tom explains. Crow says a good thing was they got to meet an entire family of mutants; a bad thing was they were so stupid they tried to commit inconspicuous murder on the most conspicuous day of a woman's life! Then Tom says a bad thing was it was painfully long, color nonexistent, bad print, Bela was already mediocre... and a good thing he comes up with is... is... is... Tom can't think of anything, and suddenly the top of his head pops off and smoke comes out as he sings "Bicycle Built for Two" a la Hal 2000!

The Mads are pretty happy about Tom being blown up, and they push the button.

Definitely another bad movie, as most of the MST3K fare is, although not as bad as the last one -- at least this one has Bela Lugosi in it, and the actress who plays his wife, Elizabeth Walters (who had a memorable part in "Curse of the Cat People"). Plus Luana Walters, who plays a reporter in the film, played Lara in the Superman serial, and Tristam Coffin is in here, and he was Rocketman in one of the serials! The plot has holes big enough to fly the starship Enterprise through, but there is still enough to enjoy here that I could see myself watching this in its normal form, although I'd likely make my own jokes if I was watching it with other people!

This was kind of a step backward from the previous episode... the jokes weren't flying as fast as I'm used to (then again, by the time I started watching it, Larry had been replaced by TV's Frank, so they'd been doing it longer by then). There's still some good gags, but the best of them this time were when Joel was interacting with the screen -- he went from standing up to brush off an onscreen character's suit with his hands, and then later used a small whisk broom, and then he finally pulled out a big push broom to use on all the characters on screen!

Comic Book Ads!

Time for another parade of comic book advertisements!

And here's the first one, from Private Eye #5! This one immediately caught my attention with the "Electric TV Projector" being sold... yes, of course, it's because it kind of ties in with my Give-A-Show Projector obsession, and I've seen these offered up on eBay quite a few times (naturally, not at prices I've been able to afford). The slot machine on the opposite corner is amusing, just because of the whole "Little Bandit" thing with the picture of the cowboy robber!