Monster Stuff!

Time for a gallery of Monster Stuff! Now, given how much Monster Stuff showed up in Cool Stuff posts last month, I wonder if we'll see some Cool Stuff items showing up here?





Well, we're starting off on the right giant-size clawed foot with this pressbook for 20 Million Miles to Earth, with more after the jump!

Meet the Guardians and see the movie critics are calling the “Best Marvel Movie Ever.”

Get tickets to see it starting August 1st!

State of the Blog Address!

Well... I thought that going to a single post a day would result in my being able to keep this up with a seven-days-a-week schedule, but things still got away from me a few times... heck, today's posts (this plus the Fandom Library post) were both done just yesterday (a far cry from when I would be three months ahead of more, eh?)! So, it's time to make a change...

...which means I'll be dropping Sunday from my publishing schedule. Depending on how well I can keep up on things, I may end up dropping Saturday as well starting next month. Honestly, while I'm hoping to get back to seven days a week in October to participate in the Halloween Countdown, I'm not sure I'll be trying to do that this year (I don't have much of a backlog of stuff for those posts).

There are a few features that will be appearing only once every four weeks, and these will be rotating... the reviews I've done of the Fleischer Popeyes, The Monkees, and The Beatles animated cartoon. I'm not sure which one I'll be doing this month (but it may well be Popeye, since they're nice and short).

You may have noticed that there hasn't been a "My Latest Pitch" in some time... nor have some other features appeared (as with last month, if I start running short on time for some features, I'll drop in a Superhero Catalog in its place).

The culprit behind this change is, of course, time. I've been continuing to sell on eBay, and trying to take advantage of those selling opportunities when I can. I kind of put myself in the position where I need to do these sales, as I'd gotten behind on a few bills and needed the extra money to cover them. Fortunately, those bills are done with now, but there's still the fact that my current job doesn't really pay that great (plus, they kept scheduling me for only four days a week... I'm up to five days a week now, but that may only last for a few more weeks at the most).

That may change in the near future, because I've applied to be a local 911 operator! I took the test late last month and had a passing score of 88% (I was shooting for 95% or better, because that was my personal standard when I was going to college, but I guess I'll have to accept passing), and I've got an interview with them scheduled for about three weeks from now. Hopefully, I'll blow them away in the interview! It would be a great opportunity for me... when I went to college to get a degree in Medical Assisting, it was because I really wanted to get into a field where I felt like I'd be helping people, and when it turned out that I couldn't get a job in that field, it was very disappointing... truck driving and my current job don't really help anyone except that the rich get richer, while my finances get worse and worse.

Another time factor has been that this summer, on my days off (even if they aren't on the weekends, which is the case most of the time), I'm watching my kids, since they're on summer break. This means that, for example, this week, I worked Saturday night through Wednesday night, from 10 pm to 7 am the following morning. The first four days, I'd come home and get to sleep (weekdays I have to get my foster son to daycare before going to bed), usually in bed and asleep about 8:30-9 pm, and getting up on average at 3:00 pm (yeah, I know, not nearly enough sleep... most evenings, I catch a nap for an hour or so after dinner). Mondays, my mom watches the kids for us, and Tuesday and Wednesday we have a sitter who stays with the kids (this same person also comes here just before Jessi leaves for work, staying until I get home, on the days we have other options). So, after working all night on Wednesday, I get to stay up all day Thursday with my son, Tristan (daughter Desi went to work with Jessi today, as I have to bring Tristan to an appointment this afternoon). Sometimes, Jessi will take a day off to spend with the kids during the week.

This makes for a very tired Jon, my friends! And it's not like I can spend the entire day off at the computer... I usually take the kids to the library each week, and we try to do some other fun things. Actually, as most of you are reading this, all five of us are probably out on a day trip to Mt. Rainier, with a planned stop along the way at what's supposed to be an amazing yard sale, and then when we're done at Rainier, we're swinging south to check out the Washington Stonehenge.

It doesn't look like I'll be doing so great on sleep this coming week, either... on Sunday, we have my nephew's birthday party to go to (I have to go to that, this is the nephew who, with his sister, were in our foster care for a year or so, and when we realized we couldn't handle that many kids, my brother and his wife decided to step up and take them on, adopting them earlier this year) midday, so after I work Saturday night, I'll come home, get a few hours' sleep, go off to this party, then come home and get some more sleep before getting up to go to work Sunday night! Plus, they've got my days off split this coming week, so I'll work Saturday and Sunday, be off Monday, then working Wednesday through Thursday and off Friday! Thank goodness I'll be back to Saturday through Wednesday the following week!

Anyway, I've gone on and on much longer than I'd intended here! Suffice it to say that I'll be doing my best to keep up on things here, and hopefully, I'll manage to get ahead enough that I can consider getting things back to order around here. In the meantime... feel free to contact me through comments what features you enjoy here, what features you don't particularly care for, and what you'd like to see return that's been missing for a while!

Fandom Library: Squa Tront #3!

Government Comics!

The focus is on finances in this edition of Government Comics!

My Favorite Movies: Star Wars!

You can call it Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope all you want, but for me, it's always Star Wars.

It's almost impossible to imagine these days, when movies have promotional stuff "leaked" to the internet sometimes up to a year in advance of the release date, but back in 1977, there wasn't much in advance about Star Wars. I don't even remember seeing a TV commercial for it at all, although it was certainly there. A novelization of the movie had hit bookshelves (credited to George Lucas, but actually written by Alan Dean Foster, apparently the first release of it had differences from the final movie that were corrected for the later edition, such as Luke's last name being Starkiller) that I'd missed seeing, and of course Marvel's comic book adaptation had started hitting the comic racks before the release of the movie.

I might have not even been aware of it until after it had been out if it weren't for the Star Trek club I belonged to at the time. I've written before about the Puget Sound Star Trekkers, which was my introduction to fandom, and how much it meant to me to have regular contact with fellow geeks, but I don't think I've written about what I was introduced to because of this club, even after it broke away from PSST. Thanks to this club, I got to see Forbidden Planet on the big screen, got exposed to The Rocky Horror Picture Show (as well as its much lesser-received "sequel," Shock Treatment), went to a number of smaller conventions... but the biggest thing they did was get me to see Star Wars on opening day in Seattle.

Comic Reading Library: Tales From the Tomb V2 #1!

No way this can live up to the cover, can it? Well, that comment makes more sense now that I've posted the actual cover for this issue, and not the last page of the Nature Boy issue, eh?

My Characters: Nightfighter!

A Nightfighter illo I did back in 1988! Note some
Ditko influence here. The Ted Kord Blue Beetle was
some of the inspiration for Nightfighter's costume.
Originally, there were white stripes down the outside of
the arms to the glove stripes, as well as stripes down the
outside of the legs attaching the belt to the boot stripes.

With this posting, I start a new series of articles here, where I write about some of the various super-heroes and super-villains I created, some of which date way back to when I was in junior high! For the longest time, I've wanted to find a way to publish stories about each of these guys, but at this stage in my life, the chances of that happening are slim to none... so instead of holding back any longer, I'm sharing these with you guys!


First up is the man called Nightfighter!

Cool Stuff!

This is the last Cool Stuff for July! Let's see what I have to show you. Again, let me remind you that these are not items that I own or even have for sale, it's all photos of items I saw offered for sale on eBay, and may or may not be available at this time.

We begin with this Dudley Do-Right Cartoon Color Fun box set, which does look like fun, doesn't it? Almost as good as a coloring book!